[tolbish]

People take issue with the following, but I don't recall Google confirming/denying if it is true:

I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:

● Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race

● A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates

● Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

● Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)

● Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination

[kbelder]

I don't get it. He's pointing out five problems with Google's efforts. I don't know whether they're correct or not, but I don't see anything here to criticize. If these are true, and they seem plausible, they do need to be fixed.

[sanity31415]

To my knowledge Google has never challenge the accuracy of those claims, and such practices are commonplace in many tech companies in the name of "diversity".

[jms55]

Do you think purposely hiring X group is a bad practice? From what I understand, it's not enough to say "we'll hire X if they're better than Y". When you don't actually have any X at the moment, your company might not be very welcoming to X, and so they won't join. So you purposely go out of your way to hire extra X, to account for the lower acceptance rate.

The common response is "that's not fair to Y, you should be hiring only based on quality, not on X or Y". But the issue is if you only hire on quality, but the quality X candidates don't join, then you're actually losing out on quality. So instead, you lower quality requirements, with the goal that overall you're actually promoting quality in the end, by working towards an environment where quality _is_ the only determining factor, and removing the current factors that work against X candidates.

What about this do you disagree with?

Note: This kind of handwaves over what "X won't join is". There's a lot of nuance to this. It may be that X grows up thinking the job isn't for them, because they always see Y in those types of jobs, and never bothers to try that job. It may be that X tries to join, but the people hiring them all Y, and favor Y instead because it's familiar to them, and the rest of the company is Y. It may be that X joins, but they feel uncomfortable that everyone is Y, and quits. There's a lot of different factors that goes into what discrimination looks like, which is why affirmative action is a lot more than just company policies.

[sanity31415]

I believe that people should be treated as individuals, not collectivized into groups based on immutable characteristics like ethnicity.

I believe that while "reverse-discrimination" has become commonplace in the name of diversity, it is unfair, divisive, counterproductive, and illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I'm not accusing you of making this argument, but the assumption that a particular ethnic group can't compete on a level playing field is deeply condescending towards those groups. It's "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

[jms55]

I don't entirely disagree with you. But by the same token, trying to treat everyone as an individual without acknowledging disadvantages due to race, gender, etc isn't a good idea either.

For instance, I'm trans. I'm not openly out when searching for jobs / at work, because I fear I will be discriminated for it. If I saw a company already had several trans people, and they were seeking trans people out and asking them to apply, I would maybe change my mind.

Should companies treat everyone as individuals, and say "if trans people wanted to work here, they need to apply"? Because that's how you get no trans people applying, and that perpetuates the cycle of "I can't come out, no one else in the world is trans". Sure, it would be better if companies didn't have to advocate for diversity, but until society doesn't have stigmitism, real or imagined, against minorities, then I don't think it's wrong to help them on the basis of their identity.

[sanity31415]

I'm sorry to hear that you are fearful of discrimination and it has discouraged you from seeking employment. That's wrong and unfair.

I have no problem with companies going out of their way to advertise that they are welcoming to all, whether black, trans, white, gay, young, old, etc, and that candidates will be judged on merit.

But I do have a problem with holding people to a different standard because of their ethnicity, gender, gender identity, or any other inborn characteristic that's irrelevant to their ability to do the job.

[shadowgovt]

The issue is the statistics show fairly consistently that the playing field starts non-level, at multiple points.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-06-24...

[sanity31415]

As Damore explains at length in his memo, statistical disparities in representation don't prove discrimination.

For example, 74% of NBA players are black - compared to just 13% of the US population.

Is this disparity evidence that the NBA is discriminating against non-black players?

[tolbish]

If that is the line of thinking, that certain races are naturally predisposed to playing basketball, then I could see why Google took issue with insiuating that certain genders are naturally predisposed to be engineers.

[jaywalk]

Beyond your handwaving absurdity, is there any empirical evidence at all that lowering the quality bar for X ends up actually raising quality in the end? Because it sounds like a bunch of unicorn fairytale nonsense to me.

[shadowgovt]

This may be of value.

https://blog.capterra.com/7-studies-that-prove-the-value-of-...