| I work for Google, opinions are my own. I completely agree that affirmative action kind of backfires in some ways. I'm not entirely sure what the solution to that is. > I dread to think how uncomfortable I would be knowing that I was a diversity hire, and some arbitrary box I fit in was the reason for my hiring rather than my skills and experience. This was actually brought up by a woman at one of the TGIFs at Google and the response was that we don't hire people just because they fit into some arbitrary category. I do think that we make an attempt to get a more diverse group of people into the application pipeline, but you certainly wouldn't be hired just for the sake of diversity. That doesn't stop people, even within the company, from being misinformed however. > As a child I can't think of anything that would make you more of a social paraih than an interest that is considered "nerdy", from my experience boys get it a bit easier with such interests and attract a bit less derision. Girls seem to be even less understanding when it comes to that kind of interest, especially from other girls. I can very easily see how that kind of social feedback would make you think twice about pursuing certain interests. I didn't really have that many friends growing up, and largely didn't give a shit about what other people thought of me, so I pursued whatever I found interesting and useful. I think that Google does try to do this. This is why we have many programs encouraging women to get into CS majors and the such, because like you say, it's difficult to get more diverse hires if the application pool is not diverse. |