[const_cast]

Right, it's not a disadvantage because this isn't happening.

If you look at the statistics, black individuals and women make up an extremely small proportion of software developers. White men are not disadvantaged, I'm sorry to say.

For the record, I myself am a white man. The reality is that simply having a white-sounding name makes your likely hood of getting hired go up by over 50%. I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm some sort of victim because some people got together and made an ERG for black engineers. Who cares.

[curtisblaine]

Again, this is happening. There are organizations that do black women boot camps, or training for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Big firms have contracts with those orgs, and they freeze all junior hiring except from those sources. Hiring managers can of course interview and select candidates, but can't select where those candidates come from.

[const_cast]

Giving black people and women more resources and outreach, and programs to specifically address some of the challenges they will face, is not discrimination.

We don't have ERGs for white engineers because, simply put, white engineers do not face any structured disadvantages in the work place. There's just nothing to talk about there. That's why we have ERGs for gay individuals, and women engineers, and black engineers. Because they face unique challenges in the workplace and education and those spaces give them the opportunity to talk about that.

If you want those programs for white people, that already exists - that's called the workplace. It's very hard to claim a minority position when you're so obviously in the vast majority.

[curtisblaine]

I never said there shouldn't be programs for minorities as an option. I said that when you mandate hiring from these programs, you effectively hire worse (not because these people are inherently worse, but because you're not exposed to the full pool) and build up resentment in the team (this guy was hired only because of his/her skin color etc.)