[rr-geil-j]

This feels reminiscent of 'diversity hires' where females and/or members of the LGBT+ community are preferred not because of competency/merit but to improve a company's diversity metrics. Disclaimer: I haven't experienced this myself. I only read/heard of these complaints from other people.

[kache_]

This ends up hurting females and L/G/B/T people in our industry because people will have a preconception that they may have been hired for reasons other than merit.

To bring it back to the article, imagine being a black harvard graduate. People may judge you as lesser compared to asian harvard graduates, because they know that you've been held to different standards, even if you had the merit and deserved your placement in that university.

[opportune]

This is one of the things about affirmative action that bothers me the most. If it's known that people in X subset of students are held to lower standards, then in a Bayesian sense it hurts the people in X subset who would have got in if held to the same standards.

Harvard is notorious for glade inflation, but at other institutions the same phenomenon can hurt people's ability to complete harder degrees. I remember reading a paper claiming that affirmative action resulted in lower minority graduation rates/higher transfer rates in STEM because it put people in academic environments that they weren't prepared for; they could have likely had more success completing a STEM degree if they had attended an institution where they fit more of a median student academic profile

[filoleg]

>People may judge you as lesser compared to asian harvard graduates, because they know that you've been held to different standards, even if you had the merit and deserved your placement in that university.

Sure, but that one is difficult to quantify and express in numbers, while the former is very easy, so let's just slap the sticker "solved" on this one and go along, am i right? /s

[adolph]

In the South, even at Holy Cross, Thomas thought that he could force his way into the meritocracy by the power of his intelligence and will. At Yale, his accomplishments felt divested of their authorship. “As much as it had stung to be told I’d done well in [high school] despite my race,” he later wrote, “it was far worse to feel that I was now at Yale because of it.”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/clarence-thomass-rad...

[mywittyname]

> people will have a preconception that they may have been hired for reasons other than merit.

Said people have those perceptions regardless.

[wendyshu]

Is there a study on this?

[pj_mukh]

Who’s actually doing this? In a way that is actually documented? Most evidence I’ve seen of this happening has been hearsay.

Note: Trying to make the applicant pool more diverse is not the same as hiring someone solely because of diversity.

[manfredo]

Intel started to withhold a portion of bonuses unless engineering departments achieved percentages of diverse employees, and other companies have followed suit [1]. Microsoft gives hiring managers incentives to hire people of certain genders and ethnicities, which was brought into question recently [2].

I can personally confirm that this results in discriminatory behavior when my previous company instituted these policies. Diverse candidates that failed 2/3rd of our interviews usually got offers, whereas non-diverse candidates generally had to pass 2/3rds of the interviews or more. This year, the company introduced a policy of withholding 20 positions for diverse candidates. When people know their bonuses are going to be compromised unless they hit N% diversity, do you really expect them to treat diverse candidates and non-diverse candidates the same? The company institutes these policies and then it's speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil.

It might not be as egregious as "hiring someone solely because of diversity" but it's definitely discrimination.

1. https://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2019/03/tie-bonu...

2. https://qz.com/1598345/microsoft-staff-are-openly-questionin...

[growlist]

>Who’s actually doing this? In a way that is actually documented?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Also I think it stretches the bounds of credulity to assert that an industry that bangs on and on about wanting to increase diversity is somehow also a perfect, disinterested and impartial judge.

[dlp211]

OP made a positive claim, it's on them to prove it.