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	by mbrumlow 2819 days ago
	> This means we base employment decisions exclusively on our current business needs and the given merit of a candidate. We encourage excellence at all levels in our organization, and are not influenced by race, color, gender, sexual orientation, age, handicap, religion, or any other factor irrelevant to doing a great job. Not anymore eh?

3 comments

learnstats2 2819 days ago

I suggest they were incorrect in their claim not to be influenced by those things - that's why they have a diversity problem now.

Edited to add: In 1998 I probably would have read this and cheered it as a place where diversity was recognised and welcomed; in 2018 I read it as "we don't feel we have to do anything about our unconscious biases, which we're satisfied with"

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mbrumlow 2819 days ago

(warning typing on bumppy airplane ride on tiny phone, where is my emacs again ?)

Given how successful how successful they are and how right they were on so many other things it is hard to tell if they were incorrect or not.

But while we are at it let's talk about unconscious bias. This is brought up a lot. If it does exist and is affecting people's decisions why do we always talk about it in thr manner you just have.

Could women not have unconscious bias to men and wanting to work with them? Maybe. I see a lot of hate spouting out of "Diversity Warriors". Just the other day a lady from glitch was so happy about diversity she had to talk disparaging about men -- making a very very welcoming presentation.

Could blacks have unconscious bias to whites? Maybe. I often hear the problem is "I see to many white faces" - while living in a majority white nation. Just watched a video where that was sighed as a major problem at Evergreen. But this dotey has been told many times befor. Nobody does the math to realize that in a majority white nation the only way to fix the "problem" is to active limit reproduction or inclusion of white people. You could also attempt to reproduce no whites at a higher rate or import more non whites. With way the peoblem translate in to "white".

Could gay or trans people have unconscious bias twars cis gender people? Maybe. Given the distain all over social media for srait people, even more so for white men.

Could it be that these groups of people also too have unconscious bais and don't want to work with white men and found employment elsewhere?

I don't bring this up because I don't want diversity. Or that I have a problem with any of these groups. I bring it up because it is awfully shitty thing to constantly blame a single group of people every time somebody feels the outcome is unjust.

Why don't I see marches of women demanding to work in trash pickup? Or people demanding more men veterinarians? Or having better quotas of who gets to die doing their job today (80% men today, women have it safe).

Doninreally want these things? No. I think people while chose to do what they want do in the long run. But you cant make the "why" people don't chose a given job because of a single group for purly being that group.

Also. When working with code nobody gives a fuck who you are. They give 10 fucks about how awesome your code is and 100 fucks if they learn something from your work.

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paganel 2819 days ago

> Or people demanding more men veterinarians?

I was curious about this and it turns out that in the United States and Canada women have indeed become the predominant gender by far in this line of work, at least according to what I could find in this study (which is quite old, back from 2003): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC340187/

> Veterinary medicine, previously a male-dominated profession, has experienced a significant increase in the number of women studying at veterinary colleges and practising in all fields of the profession. In Canada, and in the United States, women constitute approximately 80% of the veterinary college student population. Forty-three percent of practising veterinarians in Canada are now female, and women are predicted to represent the majority of the veterinary profession by 2007

It's curious because over here in (Eastern) Europe I'd say that men are at least as equally represented as women when it comes to being a veterinarian, I wasn't aware that in Northern America things had changed.

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mbrumlow 2819 days ago

So so so sorry for zero peoof reading. So many typos. I just really wanted to get my thought out .

It's too late to edit and fix the issues :(

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learnstats2 2818 days ago

Yes, it's racist to make this about how white people are always blamed. It's not about that.

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mbrumlow 2816 days ago

Is that what you have to fall back on?

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tinkerteller 2819 days ago