[richmarr]

> Doesn't this just promote the idea that people of different ethnicities really are that different?

This is pretty much the "but we're a meritocracy" argument, and it's unfortunately wrong.

Having worked extensively with the behavioural science behind things like hiring processes, performance reviews, etc. I can conclusively tell you that we do not live in a meritocracy.

People get discriminated against, constantly. That's the reality they live in. They don't need a conference to tell them that.

I'll go further. Believing that you yourself are unbiased and meritocratic is shown to be correlated with an increase in unconscious bias in your actions through effects such as moral licencing. (See the work by Daniel Effron)

(Edit: you can downvote me if you don't like what I'm saying, but you're downvoting science, not opinion)

[scintill76]

I don't think this is really related to the comment you're replying to. Whether or not discrimination exists is not the same as whether or not "the value and importance of intersectionality and representation" (article quote) is something we should consciously pursue. How does that not carry a bias towards reverse discrimination? I agree with the OP, I'm scratching my head about how the article simultaneously argues that we need to treat everyone equally, but also need to tally their intersectionality combo bonus points and force an equal "representation." You can either argue for ignoring all labels or for special label-based treatments, not both.

To take it into a perhaps more productive but related area, how would you say we should overcome bias? It seems to me if you try too hard, you will just introduce another form of bias.

[richmarr]

Yeah, I think you're right. I should read more slowly :)

> You can either argue for ignoring all labels or for special label-based treatments, not both.

So, your question is how to square the value-add of diversity against the idea that race/gender doesn't affect technical ability?

If that's the case then I'd call out what I think is an incorrect assumption; that technical ability is perfectly correlated with either productivity (as an employee) or interestingness (as a speaker).

Nor does the performance of the individual equate to performance of teams or large organisations.

While it's not conclusive, there are studies that show that diversity in the workplace correlates with increased performance, and diversity as a nation correlates with increased GDP.

[scintill76]

> If that's the case then I'd call out what I think is an incorrect assumption; that technical ability is perfectly correlated with either productivity (as an employee) or interestingness (as a speaker).

OK, that's interesting and a good point.

> While it's not conclusive, there are studies that show that diversity in the workplace correlates with increased performance

But how should that affect a hiring manager? Should they round-robin through categories of people for each hire? Isn't that just reverse-discrimination? (Or "regular discrimination" if it's the WASP straight male's turn to get hired.) Doing one's best to look past those labels seems to make sense, but the article seems to say we need to consciously label and balance the representation.

[richmarr]

> But how should that affect a hiring manager?

Reverse/positive discrimination is a choice that you can make if you want to. I don't know what evidence there is to support or refute its effectiveness, but there's both appeal and risk there.

Personally I'd make that call based on the circumstances... a senior recruiter (who has built out some of the best teams in the UK) once told me on team diversity; "as soon as it turns into a sausage-fest you're finished". If an environment was 100% white/male then it'd be much less hospitable to other groups, so personally I would use positive discrimination in that case. If an environment was 51/49 male/female then I feel positive discrimination would be inappropriate.

> Doing one's best to look past those labels seems to make sense

As long as you can look past those labels. Which you can't. Check out the research on moral licencing... it shows that the more you believe that you're being meritocratic, the more your subconscious generates excuses for biased behaviour. The only way I know to 'look past' those labels is to (a) use quotas, which often doesn't make sense or (b) use a blinded assessment process & structured interviewing.

Option (b) is an area I'm working on at the moment.

> but the article seems to say we need to consciously label and balance the representation.

Given that tech is already a sausage-fest, and that it's not a natural state of affairs (the gender split having worsened since the 70s), I personally think it's acceptable to try to actively rebalance the way tech is presented both within the industry and to broader society. It needs to be okay to be a woman in tech. There need to be role models. And this seems like a pretty harmless way to build towards that outcome... it's just speakers at a conference. Nobody is being refused a job because of this, and the speakers will be just as good.

[azima]

Be inclusive and not just try to hit quotas.

[scintill76]

Those could be contradictory. If you're consciously categorizing people in order to "be inclusive", you are discriminating ("make an unjust or prejudicial distinction in the treatment of different categories of people or things"), and probably instituting your own mental quotas to monitor the balance.

If you just mean don't throw "Latoya's" job application in the trash just because she sounds Black and you don't want any of those, few here are going to disagree, and few here would do that either, so it's not very helpful.

[azima]

seems like you're jumping through mental gymnastics to discount being more inclusive. none of that applies when you're actively going out of your way to be more inclusive of POC.

[scintill76]

I am in no way arguing against the actual idea of including every human being, regardless of whether I think they have historically been oppressed. I'm arguing against the idea of choosing one slice of humanity that I need to "be more inclusive" to today, and the idea that that alone is practical, effective, fair advice.

"Be more inclusive" sounds like a platitude that's not very actionable. How do I know if I'm failing? Is it when I don't meet some arbitrary quota or percentage? But I thought quotas were bad. And who gets to decide what the numbers are? Do I know I'm failing when people write articles like this? By that standard I'll never succeed.

> none of that applies when you're actively going out of your way to be more inclusive of POC.

So, should I not go out of my way to "be more inclusive" of Jews or gays? In other comments, you talk about how Asians are successfully assimilated or whatever, so I guess you would prefer I "be more inclusive" more to Black people than to Asian people? Does that mean Asians are excluded from being POC? Or just that "who I need to go out of my way for" is constantly changing and entirely subjective? I feel like a racist for even googling POC to make sure I know the definition, let alone the idea of evaluating what I think someone's racial heritage is, to decide what race-based treatment they should get. ("Does she just pass as white, or is she really white? Hmm, I'd better consult Wikipedia on racial nose shapes and eye colors." This is a deliberately absurd response, but my point is that being "inclusive to POC" means being able to reliably identify POC, which is difficult and pretty much racist.)

[scintill76]

I may have gotten a little carried away here. A simpler, less-likely-to-offend way of saying it: Making any given person feel completely at ease and welcome, is a gift that not everyone has. Telling someone without that gift to just "be more inclusive" won't magically give them that gift.

It's possible that collectively stregthening our capacities for empathy will make that gift occur more often. But again, I don't think dividing and sub-dividing each other into classes that effectively merit more or less empathy relative to each other is the way to do it.

[richmarr]

So, one of the issues I have here is that a lot of interviewing is done without structure, and judgements are so often made based off woolly ideas like 'culture fit' which often just mean rapport.

It's actually often the interviewer who feels nervous interviewing a woman, or a person of colour... and that prevents them from forming a rapport.

With the best will in the world, if you tell someone to be meritocratic and sit them down with someone with whom they have little in common and may never meet socially they'll be less at ease and may not make a human connection and that indirectly penalises the candidate.

One thing that helps here is to have very structured interviews, as having a clear and uniform structure can help interviewers feel more at ease. There are other benefits too.