[hypersoar]

Which policies don't help? There have been a broad array of diversity policies attempted over the years. Do you have any evidence suggesting that they all fail?

Here's [1] an overview of a bunch of programs. It includes data on how they've affected employee composition and discusses why certain things fail or succeed. The first success it cites is voluntary diversity training. The sort Google has. The sort that James Damore attended and then got angry about.

[1]https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

[manigandham]

Policies to force diversity based on outward appearance and other unchangeable and meaningless physical traits do not help.

As said before: remove any selection bias, then hire those who can do the work, want to do the work, and have shown to do the work well before. Then measure performance and promote using the same objective processes. That's it.

Perhaps we can boil down the issue as the difference between making hiring as fair as possible, or making hiring ensure a certain outcome. The first option is good since it produces fair results, but the latter is actually what's happening in most places.

[hypersoar]

They don't help what? You haven't really responded to my point. And how to you plan to "remove any selection bias"? These efforts are there to counteract the selection bias that already exists. You say we should make hiring as fair as possible, but that, right there, is a big part of the goal of diversity policies.

[manigandham]

We're miscommunicating. We both agree that hiring practices should be fair and objective as possible... what I'm saying is that is the goal itself, and a racial/ethnic/skintone/appearance-based diverse group may or may not be the outcome, but the outcome will be fair if the process is.

Diversity-based policies currently are only focused on the outcome, but the outcome is not what should be designed for. The outcome should just be what it will naturally be (whether it's "diverse" or not) and we should only control for selection and opportunity. This is what diversity-based policies do not help since you cannot work backwards from the outcome, you must start with making a fair process and just let people do what they want do beyond that.