[leetcrew]

that's not quite an answer to the question I asked. people don't always behave in a way that's consistent with the privately or publicly held beliefs, and I think it would be foolish to expect them to.

suppose you have a hiring manager that's secretly a racist, but nevertheless hires a diverse group of talented engineers because that's what's in their job description. doesn't it only become a problem if people find out?

[notahacker]

In the real world - and even more so in a super privacy-conscious version of the real world - nobody has perfect information about how the other person acts towards others. Politicians renege on public commitments and racists hire minorities to bully all the time.

Suppose you have a hiring manager that expresses racist views about minority engineers but then tells you not to tell anyone. Why on earth should their plea for secrecy and some nonwhite faces in the office lead you to assume that they're scrupulously fair in their decision making?

[postlamper]

it becomes a problem the minute there's divergence because lack of integrity undermines trust. of course, the seriousness of the problem correlates with the size of the divergence. and given that, as you rightly note, there is always going to be some degree of divergence, social responses should be informed by the degree of the divergence, and should forgive relatively trivial ones.