[stretchwithme]

I don't think that's the situation I'm describing. If a company could replace an engineer that is more likely to leave with an equally productive one who is likely to stay, they wouldn't hesitate to wave good bye.

What amazes me is the confidence with which people equate the work of engineers when they actually have no stake in making that judgement correctly.

You see, if you are paying the money and living with the results, you have a much greater incentive to make this call correctly.

And those who are unhappy with these judgements have a much greater incentive to equate engineers who aren't actually comparable. It's called politics.

[stale2002]

The business reason as to why a company would discriminate against certain groups is perfectly rational.

I mean, if a company can get away with paying women 70 cents on the dollar, because women are worse at negotiating or have less negotiation power (ie everyone ELSE is also discriminating against them, therefore they have less counter offers), then of course they would do it.

It has nothing at all to do with "making the correct call". It has to do with making the profit maximizing decision to pay a group of people less because you can get away with it.

That doesn't change the fact that this is still illegal.

[aceon48]

Your argument is irrational. If a company could get away with paying someone 70%, they would only hire the 70 percenters, or at least disproportionality. Google has roughly 20% female engineers, in line with the 20% female CS grad population.

Seriously... if there's some nefarious bias, it would mean a company hiring more women than expected, bc they can "under" pay them. Silly irrational people.

[dasil003]

Well no, Google wants to hire all the best engineers they can find, even if they have to pay more. Obviously they don't want to pay more than they have to, but their primary concern is capturing as much of the top talent as they can.

[TeMPOraL]

Which is how you end up with worker demographics reflecting the grad demographics, as it is expected when there's no bias involved...

[dasil003]

Agreed, I don't think there is overt bias, however it doesn't rule out industry-wide systemic bias which I think is real.

[Spivak]

Bit in the same breath if you can get away with getting an equally talented employee for 70¢ on the dollar then why would you ever hire a man?

[stale2002]

The way that it works is that you hire anyone at all who can pass the hiring bar, and then negotiate salary afterwords.

The problem is quantity. At the end of the day, if only X people that you interview pass your hiring bar, it is impossible to hire more than X. You can't just say "Lets double X!".

Now, would companies do things like try to reach out to women groups, so as to increase the amount that interview with them, and therefore increase the proportion that are hired?

Yes, absolutely they would do that. As has been demonstrated by all the diversity reachout efforts that companies are doing to women and minority groups. Diversity efforts are PROFITABLE.

[mutatedspleen]

Wait, what? How in the world does anything you mentioned relate to that ending protestation written in capital letters?

All diversity efforts that I've ever seen are the exactly opposite of profitable and result in sexist/racist/otherist selection of candidates. The unfortunate end result of worse selection is that worse candidates were hired.. every. time.

[stale2002]

Because it is not worse candidate selection. It is better candidate selection.

Why wouldn't a company want to target groups that other people are missing? It means that you can get good candidates for cheap.

Obviously you don't lower the bar. You kept the hiring bar exactly the same, but get more people from certain groups to apply.

IE, if you can find someone who passes your hiring bar, but no other company has noticed, that means a cheap candidate.

If you target the group that everyone else is going after, they are going to be much more expensive for a given quality level.