[bmelton]

I have a hard time imagining that there are many companies who benefit from a monoculture. Diversity equals truth, or more accurately, increases the likelihood of finding truth.

If your business makes any decisions, like "how do we capture this market," or "what sort of features should we add," or "how should this thing work," then you are embarking on a truth-seeking endeavor.

Unless your product aims to solve a problem that only affects white guys in the city (which, to be fair, is certainly a non-negligible number of products), then you're going to have a hard time expanding your base beyond white guys in the city if your team consists of only white guys in the city.

[ameister14]

I don't think that is necessarily true; it implies that we cannot empathize with people that do not share at least racial and location characteristics with us.

I think a white man can make a product for black women, and I think a black woman can make products for white men. For me, it's more about acknowledging that the world exists outside of white men in the city and less about making sure your team is made up of every racial and socio-economic variable you aim to market to.

[bmelton]

I do not disagree with that at all, and clearly, we've seen monocultures succeed at doing exactly that. I wasn't attempting to decry the methodology of every company with a monoculture, as much as to point out that it's just easier with actual diversity.

As Vezzy-Fnord points out, a single individual is able to empathize with other types of people, but that empathy is finite, and also, empathy does not equal understanding.

[vezzy-fnord]

My main problem with the way many people handle the diversity issue has been exactly this: their major insistence on phenotypes as the pinnacle of diversity.

It turns out that "white guys" are not a homogenous group. In fact, chances are that white guys from (e.g.) Finland, Serbia and Nebraska will have little in common besides their skin color and sex. Their opinions and worldviews will differ greatly.

Diversity of opinion is just as important, if not more so. Sure, on the outside everyone looks like a pasty-faced white dude, but jumping to conclusions based solely on that, is... misguided, to put it euphemistically.

I'm not saying we can't benefit from having a wide variety of phenotypes as well, after all different phenotypes equal different experiences. But not every white guy is a Bay Area caricature.