[manfredo]

I can confirm your observations. At my company we have a couple policies.

1. We only accept applicstions from candidate from non-traditional backgrounds if they're diverse. Diverse is defined as any of the following: women, black, Hispanic, or native American - maybe also veterans but I'm not sure. Non-traditional background means coming from a coding boot camp, or majoring in a non-computing related field. I think after 3 years industry experience candidates are considered traditional even if they came from one of those two.*

2. Diverse candidates get two attempts to pass the technical phone interview, non diverse get one.*

That said, when it comes to the hiring decision we don't discriminate. No disrespect for those candidates considered diverse, just take what you get. And I'm Cuban myself (but not visibly Latino) so I may have benefitted from that part of my identity myself.

Untimely I think the lower representation of Black and Hispanic people in tech roles is reflective of education rates. I suspect that were incomes and education more equal that would make representation in tech more equal. There also geography. Not many tech companies in the south where most black people live.

As for women thats a more difficult situation. I think that there's strong evidence to back up the claim that women may not choose to enter tech on their own volition. I think the solution to that is to emphasize the value of fields other than tech. Being coder at Google doesn't make a person any more valuable than a lawyer, marketer, salesperson, etc. Sure they may make more money, but that's the product of the labor market. And not to mention the average lawyer probably makes more than the average coder.

I've anecdotally seen a growing portion of coding boot camp that are exclusive to certain demographics. I wonder how much of that is due to policies like these. Especially for boot camps that only charge if the graduates get jobs in tech, I can see how it would be disadvantageous to admit white and Asian men.

* Edit: I just checked and these policies also apply to people with referrals. So one could justify this by saying we treat diverse candidates as though they have a referral.

[pacala]

> Diverse candidates get two attempts to pass the technical phone interview, non diverse get one.

These rhyme with soviet era policies circa 1950-1960 in Eastern Europe. At universities, there was an admission exam for 'healthy origin' people for the majority of the spots, and then another exam where everybody, including those failing the first time, could compete for the scraps. We all know how that turned out economically speaking.

Seeing the same policies in XXI century USA is surreal.

[manfredo]

To be fair, the tech companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The media has been heavily pushing the narrative that women are underrepresented at these tech companies - and they are compared to the general population. But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT, criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers that are women. Same sort of deal with URM.

Ironically, the concern over discrimination in tech is itself the cause of a significant amount of explicit discrimination.

[europsucks]

Maybe tech companies shouldn't let journalists tell them how to run their companies.

[dragonwriter]

> But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT, criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers that are women.

If the industry is systematically unfavorable to women, hiring at the same percentage as the industry as a whole (which is what matching the “percentage of tech workers that are women” is) is indicative of being fully on-line with the average degree to which the industry is systematically unfavorable to women.

It would be inconsistent to criticize the industry but not firms that were dead in the middle of the pack.

[pathseeker]

>If the industry is systematically unfavorable to women

It's not. The CS graduation ratio is just as bad.

[dragonwriter]

> The CS graduation ratio is just as bad.

If the industry were either actually or even merely perceived as systematically unfavorable to women, a natural consequence would be women being less likely to pursue education focussed on the field in preference to other fields that were less unfavorable.

[europsucks]

There are many other factors that can come into play. It is simply incorrect to draw the conclusions you do.

One example is earning prospects, which might matter more for men than for women. Personally, I was torn between studying maths and film making, for example. I decided to go for maths because of the better money making prospects (I thought), thinking I could still go into film making later.

If you don't worry about income prospects, maybe you are more likely to choose English literature of the 16th century over engineering.

Just one example.

[manfredo]

Sure, but everyone seems to be assuming that it's systematically unfavorable towards women solely based on the fact that women make up less than parity.

That claim only works if one assumes that any disparity is the result of systematic bias.

[kyle-rb]

I don't think the person you're replying to is criticizing the industry though. From what I can tell, they're saying it's not the industry's fault that it lacks women.

That's how I see it anyway: mainly based on the fact that women make up only around 20% of CS majors, I don't think the issue lies in the hiring practices of most tech companies.

[dragonwriter]

> I don't think the person you're replying to is criticizing the industry though.

No, but the people they are criticizing for criticizing firms hiring at industrt-average proprotions are also criticizing the industry, which is the issue.

[europsucks]

If hiring was the issue, there would have to be a pool of IT women who can't find a job. I don't think such a pool exists.

[tracker1]

So 40-45% of the population gets the shaft is what you're saying. While I understand a desire to have a more diverse company in general.. the overall population is definitely not 1:1:1:1 for each ethnic/gender group... And every tech hiring study I've seen seems to indicate a bias in favor of women, meaning the issue is either self-selective or generally in education circles, which is driving the issue.

[llama052]

Is it fair to claim equal opportunity when you give more opportunities to other people?

You are ultimately selecting the factors which could affect the outcome of that opportunity.

How is that not discrimination? How do you pick and choose what you consider diverse?

When you select the factors you're ultimately not an equal opportunity employer anymore in my opinion.

[manfredo]

> Is it fair to claim equal opportunity when you give more opportunities to other people?

Googles careers page advertises that they're both in equal opportunity employer and an affirmative action employer:

> Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.

https://careers.google.com/teams/?&src=Online/House%20Ads/BK...

So I guess the answer is yes.

[llama052]

That's so strange to me, how do you define equal opportunity when you directly affect that opportunity based on third party factors out of someones control.

[rosege]

I believe oxymoron is what its called.

[a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction]

[jriot]

As a veteran, it has worked against me.

Next time I apply somewhere I am going to check Cajun or other since we have 'ethnic status'. I am certain we Cajuns aren't well represented in tech.

[jordigh]

If it's any consolation about how we underrepresented but unqualified idiots are getting hired everywhere, I've interviewed with Mozilla a couple of times now, selecting the "yep, I'm Mexican" tickbox, and this hasn't gotten me any more hired there either of the times I've interviewed.

I must be really awful if I can't get hired as a Mexican, eh?

[manfredo]

This misrepresentating my company's approach. We don't hire underqualified applicants if they're diverse. Rather we deliberately make it harder for white and Asian men to get to the on-site.

[llama052]

So the company is openly discriminating then?

[manfredo]

Openly... I'm not so sure. In our all hands meeting our head of HR consistently denies that diverse candidates are treated differently. When the Damore memo was sent out one of our senior VPs of engineering explicitly denied preference for diverse candidates.

But we do have tools for recruiters to cross reference applicant names with the US census bureau's data to infer race and gender. We give recruiter bigger bonuses for diverse hires and we set specific % targets for them in their OKRs (basically quarterly goals. They don't get fired if they go under this, so I hesitate to call it a quota). That, and the aforementioned practices surrounding interviews and non traditional backgrounds.

Looking deeper at the documentation, I think the company maintains plausible deniability by giving recruiters discretionary authority over things like number of phone interviews and initial resume review coupled with hiring targets well above the industry average (current target for women is 33%). So the company does openly discriminate, but it gives recruiters the tools and discretion to discriminate as well as goals that essentially require discrimination to achieve - after that it's "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".

My previous statements about non traditional backgrounds and 2nd phone interviews came from recruiters themselves. I can also confirm that, absent a referral, I've done 2nd phone screens for diverse candidates and have never interviewed a non-diverse candidate from a non-traditional background.

[danielscrubs]

It's like we have given HR an a goal, namely diversity, that's easier to measure and doesn't require the technical knowledge of measuring skill, I can see how that gets very popular, very fast.

[dimgl]

How does anyone see this and not think this is absolutely insane? Surely this is illegal?