> Facebook started incentivizing recruiters in 2015 to find engineering candidates who weren't already well represented at the company – women, black and Latino workers.
Isn't this unfair to White or Asian men who might be equally(or more) qualified for working at Facebook? Why Diversity should ever be a goal of a private entity?
No, it's still fair to currently represented classes (whites and asians). In practice this means exploring different networks, using different sourcing techniques, creating mentoring environments, etc.
No, it isn't. White and asian men are likely to be more qualified because they have had more opportunities to gain experience. The race and gender gap won't close without concerted effort to give similar opportunities to women and people of color.
Edit: I recently read that when women were first granted the vote in Denmark, they immediately introduced quotas to help more women become politicians so there would be equal representation of both sexes. A few decades after that, it was found that gender parity existed and the quotas weren't needed anymore, so now they're talking about repealing them. I hope for a similar future where affirmative action in college admissions, or gender-inclusion hiring policies aren't needed anymore because they worked.
Shouldn't the goal then be to create an environment where white and Asian men are not more qualified? Through education, etc as opposed to giving a job to someone less qualified because another applicant because they happen to check different boxes on the Census.
Depends. It's been shown that one of the most effective ways of creating an environment is by offering role models.
The real purpose of affirmative action is not to benefit a minority at the expense of a non-minority, those are just side-effects. It's to create role models for kids 15-30 years down the line.
Yeah that kind of my point is. If you're giving a job to someone(at the expense of someone more qualified) because of his/her/their race/ethnicity, thats special treatment.
More women and people of color will pursue the necessary education under their own power when it becomes obvious that they can get jobs with it without having to worry about unemployment due to discrimination. At the moment computer science is often considered a bad bet for women (for example) because they see so few women in the industry that they know it will be an uphill battle to pay off their very expensive degree.
You are somewhat correct, as it applies to me. I didn't wait for magical liberal policies to fix everything. I pursued this path knowing I was at a disadvantage so I became so good at what I do they can't possibly ignore me.
So "give less qualified people jobs because of arbitrary characteristics and people who look like them will become qualified" rather than "hire the most qualified person regardless of any arbitrary characteristics, and people will try to be the most qualified."
> At the moment computer science is often considered a bad bet for women (for example) because they see so few women in the industry that they know it will be an uphill battle to pay off their very expensive degree.
Nonsense. Things like your comment show that as long as you can pass the bar of "not unqualified" you're more likely to get a job if you're a woman, or a person of color, or whatever random immutable attribute someone is trying to pump up.
I work with a bunch of white and Indian dudes. I'd love for the pool of my colleagues to be more diverse. But I'd rather work with 100% qualified Indian men than a group of less qualified people who perfectly match the gender and racial makeup of the US.
Sadly, so often 'qualified' is a subjective thing. And folks just love to imagine that people who are just like themselves seem more qualified. So we get cliques. And its hard to break into one.
Also, no need for the strawman of "perfectly match". We could all start with making the effort to find actual, qualified people who help diversify. They're out there.
The gaps are due to different genetic backgrounds. It's time for the left to drop these massively wasteful and misguided social engineering experiments.
This is a false narrative, and does more harm than good.
In this industry anyone can gain experience. The amount of self taught developers is evidence of it. The onus is on YOU to go out and make it happen.
By saying minorities and women need this help is racist/sexist itself. The only way they can succeed is by handouts? Thanks but no thanks.
I'm a mixed race woman who is an engineer and I'm offended by this notion. I didn't get to my position by handouts, I earned it. And because of that I'm not making 70% of what my male cohorts are either, trust me.
I think that's oversimplifying. I'm self-taught and I took it on myself to learn rather than go to an expensive school, and I've had a successful career. It wasn't handed to me and I totally get that you should take responsibility for your own success.
But there's more than one factor. I grew up white and not poor, my family had enough money for a computer and internet access. My father was an engineer and took me to science museums. I had enough money to buy expensive books about programming.
I may be responsible for my own success but I was also completely set up for it, and that matters too. If I'd grown up poor, I doubt I'd have dragged myself to the library every day to use their free computers. I've worked hard and I believe I deserve my success, but I've also been privileged.
Maybe it's not so much that I'm oversimplifying as others are over complicating the issue.
It's funny you bring up dragging yourself to a library, because that's exactly what I did in the early 2000s. My family did not have a computer. I'm not as unusual as you might think. My social circle is full of successful minorities, with similar stories.
When we go out downtown for drinks if we talk about work we're usually talking about opportunities and things we're working on, not making excuses and blaming white men for things. That's why this stuff bewilders me.
I know that certain white people being "tolerant" and "helping" us makes them feel good inside, and gives them a feeling of empowerment. That's fine. Just know that not all people of color are thrilled about it. It's condescending and counter productive. Of course there is discrimination in business, but if that's all you focus on you will fail. The rules apply to all races, nationalities, and genders: if you focus on why you can't do something, you'll fail. If you focus on why you CAN magic things happen.
For what it's worth, when I think of people who had to work harder than I did to get to the same place, I don't assume they're bitter and blame white men. I don't assume they need hand-holding in order to succeed and I don't think they should be given jobs they don't deserve. I've passed on women of color in job interviews before without feeling guilty.
But there are people who lack the opportunity they do deserve, whether it's conscious bias or unconscious bias or just circumstances in life. We can try to do something to adjust the playing field instead of ignore that. I've worked with a lot of mediocre white dudes. There's plenty of opportunity to start displacing those types based on merit and not charity or guilt.
Fair enough, I can respect that and it sounds like we mostly agree. I think some adjustment may be needed, but since this has become so political I fear things will be taken so far in one direction that the backlash will come back and punish us all.
> is like "affirmative action" version of pressure on a private entity, isn't it?
Yes it is.
> Why Diversity should ever be a goal?
Diversity of expertise makes for better decisions, but that's not what's happening here.
Putting priority on ethnic, cultural, diversity would make sense if these marked collectives have worse interview performance for the same work performance. I don't know if this is true and I don't want to discuss whether it is.
It's one thing to say "I don't want to discuss this topic," even though that will inevitably leave you intellectually weaker for having not discussed your opinions or interacted with those who disagree. It's something else entirely to say "I don't know ______ but refuse to discuss it because reasons," which is what the GP did. That's what I took issue with.
And people on both sides feel passionately. People can disagree passionately, that doesn't mean it's toxic. HN is very rarely, almost never toxic. If you want toxicity, try discussing this topic... literally anywhere else on the internet, or a lot of places offline. HN is actually the perfect place for this type of discourse because the community is largely not toxic. Unless you're referring to someone just getting downvoted for having an unpopular opinion, which I don't think you are.
I cannot disagree more on the idea that HN is "rarely toxic". Especially when it comes to the topics of discrimination and sexism. When those topics come up, the place is filled with "I didn't see it, so it doesn't exist," and "But... but what about white males? They're clearly the most discriminated against."
So I'm not going to fault anyone for not wanting to discuss those topics on a place that routinely becomes toxic when discussing them.
This generic objection is off-topic on HN because we've heard it a million times and the guidelines ask us not to introduce classic flamewar topics without anything new to say.
The idea, as I understand it, for a lot of these diversity programs is: a) get more candidates of underrepresented groups to apply, b) if they lack some preparation other candidates are expected to have, help them get it, c) apply the same strict hiring standard to these candidates as to anyone else. Applying a different standard would be a disservice to the company, to the already represented group and to the underrepresented group as well (it is never a good thing to be at a role where you lack the ability to perform or learn to perform in said role).
The best companies don't and shouldn't have two standards. But point a) and b) are important.
As an example of a), a company can make an effort to reach out to graduates of traditionally black colleges, or expand their international recruiting efforts to countries that don't traditionally have a strong pipeline of sending candidates to US. Underrepresented groups also likely won't know other people working at those companies who can reefer them, since white and asian men already employed there will mostly have white and asian men in their circles. Keep in mind many hires come in through some form of networking, where represented groups already have a huge advantage in terms of getting the foot in the door, unrelated to skill.
As an example of b), most people graduating from Stanford and the like know to read Cracking the Coding Interview or similar before doing a software interview and know how software interviews work, graduates from other schools (places like my undergrad college) might need to be told about those resources. People not facing an stereotype threat might also be calmer during interviews, which helps. Now, the fix for the later is not to make the interview easier, but maybe providing or recommending mock interviews for people who haven't interviewed at similar companies before?
The idea is not to create two hiring pipelines: a hard one and an easy one. The idea is to get people to show at the start of the normal pipeline who would normally not even know that was an option.
The article points out that Facebook recruiters seem to be able to bring in people through the funnel (tackling the supply-side) only to have candidates rejected in the latter half of the process when these candidates don't fit within the mold of senior engineers tasked with approving candidates.
True, but I think the issue is that quality engineers of color are few. When I say supply side, I mean, there are far fewer graduates of color in STEM from top universities, etc.
I'm shocked you're not grayed out already, despite being correct as far as I can tell. Minorities are highly sought after everywhere I work, yet I've seen extremely few. Most of my teams have wanted some diversity because we grow tired of the same kind of people, just on a personal level it's fun to have new dynamics and to stir things up. I just don't think you can force people to want particular kinds of careers. No one could have encouraged me enough to get me to sign up for mental health, or communications.
I'll reiterate my comment above : the view that those candidates were absolutely fit for purpose and got rejected only because they didn't fit some mold, is the disgruntled recruiters' opinion (the people that missed out on a doubled bonus for these candidates), and theirs alone until further proof.
Why would you trust their judgment more than the seniors engineers' verdict ? Have you ever met an engineering manager who would miss out on an awesomely impressive team member simply because of their color or gender ?
Depends how they did it. If they're trolling the bus station for minorities to compete against seasoned engineers then the hiring numbers are not going to look good.
It might be sexist and racist to imply that there are not sufficient number of blacks, Latinos and women who might cross Facebook's bar compared to their proportion of the US population. You must adjust your eyes to see the possibilities than reality! :sarcasm
> getting “diversity candidates” hired at Facebook proved to be such a struggle than many recruiters stopped trying, even with the double point system, and went back to their usual strategies
> From 2015 to 2016, Facebook’s proportion of women in tech grew from 16 percent to 17 percent, and its proportion of black and Latino U.S. tech workers stayed flat at 1 and 3 percent, respectively.
> Facebook has portrayed itself as a leader in the effort, with executives giving public speeches on benefits and best practices.
Facebook acknowledged another problem with its metrics reporting and apologized for the inconvenience.
> Despite incentivizing recruiters to prioritize women, black and Latino engineering candidates, the department’s demographics have not changed much in the past few years.
This is why it is important for companies to emphasize diversity from the beginning, so that it becomes embedded into the company's culture, rather than the same platitudes repeated year after year.
I don't think that's the lesson at all. The reality is Facebook is just way too late in the pipeline -- you can't just will more talented minority engineers into existence. It starts with education. Get more women/PoC introduced to CS and make sure the ones that show interest have tools to succeed.
Hiring should be done by the team, not by these ridiculous "committees". The metrics and data have clearly shown them to be ineffective at both preventing bad hires as well as the prediction of future employee performance, time and time again.
They are still around in companies because it gives "senior" engineers something to do, and it makes them feel good about themselves. From the people I know who work at Facebook, there is a marked lack of work at the higher levels of technical leadership; thus you get these kinds of "committees" that serve no business purpose and actively harm the hiring process.
Like I said, the people best suited to do hiring are the people whom will work directly with the person. They need to be able to get along, "like" the other person, respect them, and they need to be smart. There is so much more to hiring and team building than checking off the technical checkboxes, whatever those are. You're dealing with intellectual people (knowledge workers) and an intricate social dynamic.
Of course, Facebook's goal is to likely not build great teams. They already have the teams built and self-sustaining that run the actual business. This dog and pony show exists purely to placate to existing mediocre senior engineers who have attained that position through some sort of osmosis effect but who lack talent or real power in the organization.
Is there much internal mobility at Facebook? My understanding is that the point of a single hiring committee is to ensure that every individual at the company has met a similar standard, which reduces the barrier to switching teams.
I've heard of companies without a common standard where switching teams is as hard as quitting and reapplying for the new job (complete with the beloved algorithms-on-a-whiteboard process), which seems silly.
If each team controls hiring you will end up with teams that have different standards for hiring. That implies that internal transfers will also need "re-hiring". It also implies that compensation may need to vary between teams.
I think it promotes fairness to have a committee of people who haven't met the candidate to decide on them from the details given by interviewers. This should be increasing diversity if anything as it relies on objective metrics rather than any hidden bias. The problems cited in the article are that committee members are focusing on where the candidate went to school, and who at FB can vouch for them. By trying to make sure new candidates resemble existing employees they will of course have trouble diversifying their workforce.
This provides an incentive for hiring managers who are under pressure to deliver to throw away all corporate hiring standards and sign up anyone with a pulse.
That's just short-term.
Long-term this leads to divisions within the company where some teams are deemed "significantly below average" because of that one crunch time a few years back, causing cultural tension, which eventually forces good people out.
They are also extremely hesitant to hire international candidates (unless they come with an OPT from an US university).
If they are rejecting (without interview) a candidate with offers from Google, Microsoft (and several others) who was referred by a high ranking employee, just to avoid sponsoring a visa, the hiring system is extremely out of touch with the engineers.
The theory is that there's vast, intentional, discrimination against non-white candidates in technology. So the argument is that to counter that discrimination, companies such as Facebook must act to aggressively and intentionally recruit non-white candidates. Why? The argument is that it's to promote greater equality and fairness in terms of opportunities. The other common argument, which has been made frequently for at least several decades, is that increased diversity leads to greater innovation due to an increased diversity of backgrounds. In the several decades I've been reading about it, I've yet to see this last claim substantially proven in any manner (it would imply great leaps in innovation can't regularly derive from homogeneous situations (when in fact history constantly says otherwise), which would imply countries as different as Finland, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, China and Japan are nearly incapable of innovation due to their low diversity).
I understand the value of positive discrimination, it is important in politics to give voice to minorities ... but, I am a bit skeptical, that it has a place in a commercial environment .. specially in a technical field
In a non technical field, maybe it will promote tolerance and acceptance in communities .. and specially in communities with a lot of immigrants ..
But again .. and I agree with you, I am very skeptical that it adds value in a highly technical, commercial environment
I think the idea is that an artificial means of creating a diverse workforce will allow people in traditionally disadvantaged populations earn decent salaries so that they can live in decent neighborhoods, and therefore send their kids to decent schools, then to decent colleges, then to decent jobs, where they can have kids and send them to decent schools ... eventually leading to the point to where that population does not need artificial means of creating a diverse workforce anymore.
Having grown up in an incredibly heterogeneous global environment, I personally believe diversity is good to have just because it helps break down the innate (my opinion) desire to stick to ones own group/type, which is often the source of much conflict in the world. I can't back that up with facts, just my opinion. I genuinely feel that I am a kinder/more productive/more flexible human being for having grown up in a very diverse environment. It's hard for me to explain why I think diversity just for the sake of diversity is absolutely a positive thing. At some point I'll have to hash it out and do some research.
Note, that your argument has nothing to do with software development or even any particular skill/ability to do an abstracted task or job.
If we are artificially creating a diverse workplace in order to pay someone a higher salary than they otherwise command at market rates, why not skip this entirely and just give them money so they can "live in decent neighborhoods, and therefore send their kids to decent schools, then to decent colleges, then to decent jobs, where they can have kids and send them to decent schools" ?
In other words, if the only obstacle is money, why bother with all the intermediate steps and involve voodoo social science, PC dogmatism and other murky aspects?
Giving people money for all those things wouldn't be socially digestible, especially in the U.S. Hence why I don't think the idea of basic income would ever really take off here, even if there were evidence that it would be sustainable and the population were starving/rioting because of job automation (not commenting either way on that).
I don't think that putting extra-effort into hiring from traditionally disadvantaged populations is comparable to simply handing out money. It's not black or white IMO, there is some gray there. I think it's been shown that - all things being equal including education, resume, etc. - some populations are disadvantaged, and putting a modicum amount of effort to help them (even if it were at the expense of my own prospects - which is ludicrous to say the least, since I have it very good) - is probably OK. Clearly nothing more than an opinion.
I think if there are alternative methods, they need to be brought more to the forefront in these threads. Maybe I missed the more thought out answers, but I usually don't see any alternatives to solving this problem.
This is all under the assumption that a) you believe some populations are indeed disadvantaged because of systemic issues, and b) you believe it is in the best interests of society or simply the right thing to do, to try get everybody on an even ground.
If you don't believe a) or b), then there's really not much common ground when it comes to these issues.
> Facebook started incentivizing recruiters in 2015 to find engineering candidates who weren't already well represented at the company – women, black and Latino workers.
Giving different bonuses based on protected classes is erring very close to the line of racial/gender discrimination.
Referral bonuses for regular employees are higher for females and POC too.
TL;DR distinguish yourself on your capabilities, not your race/gender/ethnicity etc...
I'm a white American male that went to a CUNY college (city university of NY), which is not so highly regarded by the big 4.
I graduated with a 4.0, summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, with distinguished honors in CS and psychology.
In 2012 a close friend of mine was a hiring manager in Google, and he passed my resume to a recruiter. When he went back to check on the status of it later, he found that the recruiter had thrown out the resume.
After some arm twisting he got me an interview. I answered everything correctly, but was told I would not be getting the job.
Since that time I've been with a few startups as an Android engineer. I love my jobs, and work my butt off. On 3 occasions I've been at Google's NYC office consulting with members of the Android team. I've made sure to make an impression on the community.
For the past 3 years I've been getting a bi-monthly email from Google and Facebook recruiters asking me to come interview. I haven't, and probably never will; I like the startup scene way to much.
I don't think the decision makers are racist or sexist. Their job is to get the best engineer for the job. Initial impressions are hard to gauge, and without validation (education, trusted references, etc...) you can end up making a big mistake (I would know, having hired quite a few duds over the years).
I understand that not all people are in a position to distinguish themselves initially. Life isn't fair. Trying to make it fair for one demographic will likely end up making things unfair for another.
There's nothing wrong with not getting your first job at a big 4. Hit the pavement running, do a kick ass job wherever you are, and you'll get noticed.
Respectfully, I think you may have missed the point of the article. In the committee hiring process that Facebook uses, it would seem that every candidate was actually not being judged purely on their capabilities. So telling folks to "distinguish yourself on your capabilities," while generally good advice, doesn't actually help if the process doesn't reward that.
If instead, as the recruiters in the article suggest, pedigree of college and other factors are being prioritized, then that's a problem. Criteria like this disproportionately disadvantages URM candidates in particular, which is how Facebook ends up with only 1% black and 3% latino tech workers, even after prioritizing diversity at the recruiter level.
> I don't think the decision makers are racist or sexist.
I recommend you read up a bit on [individual vs. systemic racism](1). An important point to note is that even if individual actors don't exhibit what you consider to be racism, the system that they make up can itself be racist. This is a really important point that often gets lost in discussions like this on HN, especially since the largely-white largely-male population here is unlikely to ever directly feel the effects of systemic racism.
> Trying to make it fair for one demographic will likely end up making things unfair for another.
Just to be clear, I think what you are trying to say is that adjusting for bias against URM candidates will inherently lead to bias or disadvantages to white folks. I would question any notion of "fairness" that relies on another group being treated unfairly. To borrow a common expression, when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
The biggest problem with this is the lack of any real supporting evidence for it's claim. As far as I can tell, it relies purely on anecdotal evidence from recruiters presented as fact, rather than any actual numbers. What was the percentage of diversity candidates before and after the program started? What % of those candidates made it through the initial interview phase in relation to white and asian men? What % of diversity candidates were rejected by these committees compared to other candidates? Without this information, all this article does is to re-affirm that Facebook has a diversity problem, but fails to make a credible argument that these committees are responsible for it.
Serious question: why is this sort of diversity important? As an Asian American man, I can't help but feel slighted when reading articles like this. Why is my status as an Asian any different from other minorities? Why even take race and gender into account in the hiring process for ENGINEERING roles?
As a minority I fully understand how race can affect one's perception on oneself, and how societal pressures can make one feel like they don't belong in a certain field. But in this light, shouldn't companies focus more on encouraging women and URM to enter in the field of engineering, and not at the point of hiring? CMV.
For the last bit this is a very commonly talked about idea, often referred to as "the pipeline problem". There is evidence that the level of which minorities graduate with CS degrees outpaces hiring though, suggesting that the pipeline can't be blamed alone.
The first part about why diversity is important has been covered ad nauseum so you can find those arguments and agree with them or not.
Maybe you're misunderstanding these policies. Not only do these companies often discuss the pipeline problem publicly (and sometimes offer corporate support to address it), but as rhcom2 pointed out, it's not the only factor.
If it's not the only factor, then there's a chance diverse candidates simply aren't being reached by the typical recruiter strategy. So companies take that hypothesis and incentivize recruiters to diversify their search. Only time will tell if that hypothesis is correct, and this is the only point in the system where race/gender are under consideration. It has no impact on those that apply to FB through a college career fair, or through facebook.com/careers.
With that said, their survey includes companies across all industries, including those with a lot of customer face-to-face interactions (retail, banking, airlines, hospitality, healthcare). I am not aware of anyone narrowing down the research to tech/engineering field, so in absence of that the public just assumes that similar findings would apply to every industry, and diverse high-tech companies will outperform non-diverse ones.
IMO first fix the hiring process for engineers. Asking someone to implement a splay tree, B+ Tree and other obscure algorithms (which is usually Googled 15 mins before the interview or is a pet interview question) in 45 mins is pointless. It has absolutely no corelation to how the potential employee will perform in his/her job. Asking reasonable design questions followed by a simple implmentation is more preferable than a textbook implementation of a typical coding interview question.
The other beef I have with hiring is the attitude "we only hire A players". Really? If you are doing work worthy of "A players" then that's fine. But if you aren't (and this is true in most cases), please don't pretend that you do cutting edge work and drop the attitude.
Diversity is harder problem to solve. How do you integrate potential employees who aren't from a "privileged" background (I say that in quotes, because I don't mean money)? It has to be trial and error...
> The other beef I have with hiring is the attitude "we only hire A players". Really? If you are doing work worthy of "A players" then that's fine. But if you aren't (and this is true in most cases), please don't pretend that you do cutting edge work and drop the attitude.
That's the thing, this is Facebook, arguably the A-player requirement is sound.
The issue is that departments have misaligned incentives, and each work to optimize their own : diversity figures is a major yardstick for HR, and the one by which they're judged. Technical managers optimize for teams that work and have exceptional problem-solvers in its ranks, which leaves no place at Facebook's level for other considerations.
> That's the thing, this is Facebook, arguably the A-player requirement is sound.
I would argue otherwise, not all roles in FB require A players. Not everyone in FB is working on AI, machine learning, ad optimization etc. There are a bunch of people working in maintaining legacy code bases, tools, IT, and other positions which doesn't necessarily not require A players.
The entire article is based upon former recruiters' frustration that the diversity candidates they brought (the ones that gave them "double points") often did not make it through final scrutiny.
They blame "risk-averse white/asian decision makers", but how would they really know that there were no legitimate technical or team-fit reasons behind the rejections ? And how much is confirmation bias helping create that suspicion, when you're financially incentivized to favor these candidates ?
Especially at a company with such a high hiring bar, there's a world between scanning keywords on a resume + asking multiple-choice questions in a phone screen, and assessing the depth of a candidate's technical aptness : if sourcers were in a position to make that call, well wouldn't they be called technical managers ?
While there might be some truth in that report, it's also not hard to imagine that "losing double points candidates + a pinch of ideology + lack of technical background to deeply assess candidates" might have fuelled enough frustration in disgruntled former employees to take this to the journalists.
Is there a reason interviews with these large companies are not completely anonymous? Given the nature of these interviews, I've yet to see a good argument for why you actually need to know who the interviewee is.
1) If only pedigree matters (e.g. MIT/Stanford) then why have an interview?
2) If only intelligence matters why not just give candidates an IQ test and be done with it (if you're skeptical of IQ tests there are many proxies: SAT scores, grades in certain subjects, etc)?
3) If only algorithmic problem solving matters (this what big companies currently are doing, AFAIK they used to do the last two, with not success) why do you need to even know who the candidate is?
---
For startups and other smaller companies I see the value of knowing who you're interviewing. However, an argument could be made there, as well. As long as you can properly articulate the qualities you want in a candidate, and have a way of measuring said qualities* there shouldn't be any need to "know" who the candidate is.
[*]If you don't have any way of measuring the magnitude of the qualities then you're just going off a "gut feeling", the same gut feeling that will likely be biased in one or more dimensions, IMO.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadIsn't this unfair to White or Asian men who might be equally(or more) qualified for working at Facebook? Why Diversity should ever be a goal of a private entity?
Edit: I recently read that when women were first granted the vote in Denmark, they immediately introduced quotas to help more women become politicians so there would be equal representation of both sexes. A few decades after that, it was found that gender parity existed and the quotas weren't needed anymore, so now they're talking about repealing them. I hope for a similar future where affirmative action in college admissions, or gender-inclusion hiring policies aren't needed anymore because they worked.
The real purpose of affirmative action is not to benefit a minority at the expense of a non-minority, those are just side-effects. It's to create role models for kids 15-30 years down the line.
It worked.
> At the moment computer science is often considered a bad bet for women (for example) because they see so few women in the industry that they know it will be an uphill battle to pay off their very expensive degree.
Nonsense. Things like your comment show that as long as you can pass the bar of "not unqualified" you're more likely to get a job if you're a woman, or a person of color, or whatever random immutable attribute someone is trying to pump up.
I work with a bunch of white and Indian dudes. I'd love for the pool of my colleagues to be more diverse. But I'd rather work with 100% qualified Indian men than a group of less qualified people who perfectly match the gender and racial makeup of the US.
Also, no need for the strawman of "perfectly match". We could all start with making the effort to find actual, qualified people who help diversify. They're out there.
How do you make that conclusion ? And isn't it unfair to them that they are denied the benefit despite being more qualified ?
In this industry anyone can gain experience. The amount of self taught developers is evidence of it. The onus is on YOU to go out and make it happen.
By saying minorities and women need this help is racist/sexist itself. The only way they can succeed is by handouts? Thanks but no thanks.
I'm a mixed race woman who is an engineer and I'm offended by this notion. I didn't get to my position by handouts, I earned it. And because of that I'm not making 70% of what my male cohorts are either, trust me.
But there's more than one factor. I grew up white and not poor, my family had enough money for a computer and internet access. My father was an engineer and took me to science museums. I had enough money to buy expensive books about programming.
I may be responsible for my own success but I was also completely set up for it, and that matters too. If I'd grown up poor, I doubt I'd have dragged myself to the library every day to use their free computers. I've worked hard and I believe I deserve my success, but I've also been privileged.
It's funny you bring up dragging yourself to a library, because that's exactly what I did in the early 2000s. My family did not have a computer. I'm not as unusual as you might think. My social circle is full of successful minorities, with similar stories.
When we go out downtown for drinks if we talk about work we're usually talking about opportunities and things we're working on, not making excuses and blaming white men for things. That's why this stuff bewilders me.
I know that certain white people being "tolerant" and "helping" us makes them feel good inside, and gives them a feeling of empowerment. That's fine. Just know that not all people of color are thrilled about it. It's condescending and counter productive. Of course there is discrimination in business, but if that's all you focus on you will fail. The rules apply to all races, nationalities, and genders: if you focus on why you can't do something, you'll fail. If you focus on why you CAN magic things happen.
But there are people who lack the opportunity they do deserve, whether it's conscious bias or unconscious bias or just circumstances in life. We can try to do something to adjust the playing field instead of ignore that. I've worked with a lot of mediocre white dudes. There's plenty of opportunity to start displacing those types based on merit and not charity or guilt.
Yes it is.
> Why Diversity should ever be a goal?
Diversity of expertise makes for better decisions, but that's not what's happening here.
Putting priority on ethnic, cultural, diversity would make sense if these marked collectives have worse interview performance for the same work performance. I don't know if this is true and I don't want to discuss whether it is.
That's healthy.
And people on both sides feel passionately. People can disagree passionately, that doesn't mean it's toxic. HN is very rarely, almost never toxic. If you want toxicity, try discussing this topic... literally anywhere else on the internet, or a lot of places offline. HN is actually the perfect place for this type of discourse because the community is largely not toxic. Unless you're referring to someone just getting downvoted for having an unpopular opinion, which I don't think you are.
So I'm not going to fault anyone for not wanting to discuss those topics on a place that routinely becomes toxic when discussing them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The best companies don't and shouldn't have two standards. But point a) and b) are important.
As an example of a), a company can make an effort to reach out to graduates of traditionally black colleges, or expand their international recruiting efforts to countries that don't traditionally have a strong pipeline of sending candidates to US. Underrepresented groups also likely won't know other people working at those companies who can reefer them, since white and asian men already employed there will mostly have white and asian men in their circles. Keep in mind many hires come in through some form of networking, where represented groups already have a huge advantage in terms of getting the foot in the door, unrelated to skill.
As an example of b), most people graduating from Stanford and the like know to read Cracking the Coding Interview or similar before doing a software interview and know how software interviews work, graduates from other schools (places like my undergrad college) might need to be told about those resources. People not facing an stereotype threat might also be calmer during interviews, which helps. Now, the fix for the later is not to make the interview easier, but maybe providing or recommending mock interviews for people who haven't interviewed at similar companies before?
The idea is not to create two hiring pipelines: a hard one and an easy one. The idea is to get people to show at the start of the normal pipeline who would normally not even know that was an option.
Why would you trust their judgment more than the seniors engineers' verdict ? Have you ever met an engineering manager who would miss out on an awesomely impressive team member simply because of their color or gender ?
Triple them! Quadruple them! Why not?
> Facebook has portrayed itself as a leader in the effort, with executives giving public speeches on benefits and best practices.
Facebook acknowledged another problem with its metrics reporting and apologized for the inconvenience.
This is a political article.
But for the few that actually do care about diversity (and not the ones that just talk about it for show), I agree with you.
They are still around in companies because it gives "senior" engineers something to do, and it makes them feel good about themselves. From the people I know who work at Facebook, there is a marked lack of work at the higher levels of technical leadership; thus you get these kinds of "committees" that serve no business purpose and actively harm the hiring process.
Like I said, the people best suited to do hiring are the people whom will work directly with the person. They need to be able to get along, "like" the other person, respect them, and they need to be smart. There is so much more to hiring and team building than checking off the technical checkboxes, whatever those are. You're dealing with intellectual people (knowledge workers) and an intricate social dynamic.
Of course, Facebook's goal is to likely not build great teams. They already have the teams built and self-sustaining that run the actual business. This dog and pony show exists purely to placate to existing mediocre senior engineers who have attained that position through some sort of osmosis effect but who lack talent or real power in the organization.
I've heard of companies without a common standard where switching teams is as hard as quitting and reapplying for the new job (complete with the beloved algorithms-on-a-whiteboard process), which seems silly.
I think it promotes fairness to have a committee of people who haven't met the candidate to decide on them from the details given by interviewers. This should be increasing diversity if anything as it relies on objective metrics rather than any hidden bias. The problems cited in the article are that committee members are focusing on where the candidate went to school, and who at FB can vouch for them. By trying to make sure new candidates resemble existing employees they will of course have trouble diversifying their workforce.
And that's good.
This provides an incentive for hiring managers who are under pressure to deliver to throw away all corporate hiring standards and sign up anyone with a pulse.
That's just short-term.
Long-term this leads to divisions within the company where some teams are deemed "significantly below average" because of that one crunch time a few years back, causing cultural tension, which eventually forces good people out.
If they are rejecting (without interview) a candidate with offers from Google, Microsoft (and several others) who was referred by a high ranking employee, just to avoid sponsoring a visa, the hiring system is extremely out of touch with the engineers.
In a non technical field, maybe it will promote tolerance and acceptance in communities .. and specially in communities with a lot of immigrants ..
But again .. and I agree with you, I am very skeptical that it adds value in a highly technical, commercial environment
Having grown up in an incredibly heterogeneous global environment, I personally believe diversity is good to have just because it helps break down the innate (my opinion) desire to stick to ones own group/type, which is often the source of much conflict in the world. I can't back that up with facts, just my opinion. I genuinely feel that I am a kinder/more productive/more flexible human being for having grown up in a very diverse environment. It's hard for me to explain why I think diversity just for the sake of diversity is absolutely a positive thing. At some point I'll have to hash it out and do some research.
If we are artificially creating a diverse workplace in order to pay someone a higher salary than they otherwise command at market rates, why not skip this entirely and just give them money so they can "live in decent neighborhoods, and therefore send their kids to decent schools, then to decent colleges, then to decent jobs, where they can have kids and send them to decent schools" ?
In other words, if the only obstacle is money, why bother with all the intermediate steps and involve voodoo social science, PC dogmatism and other murky aspects?
I don't think that putting extra-effort into hiring from traditionally disadvantaged populations is comparable to simply handing out money. It's not black or white IMO, there is some gray there. I think it's been shown that - all things being equal including education, resume, etc. - some populations are disadvantaged, and putting a modicum amount of effort to help them (even if it were at the expense of my own prospects - which is ludicrous to say the least, since I have it very good) - is probably OK. Clearly nothing more than an opinion.
I think if there are alternative methods, they need to be brought more to the forefront in these threads. Maybe I missed the more thought out answers, but I usually don't see any alternatives to solving this problem.
This is all under the assumption that a) you believe some populations are indeed disadvantaged because of systemic issues, and b) you believe it is in the best interests of society or simply the right thing to do, to try get everybody on an even ground.
If you don't believe a) or b), then there's really not much common ground when it comes to these issues.
Giving different bonuses based on protected classes is erring very close to the line of racial/gender discrimination.
Referral bonuses for regular employees are higher for females and POC too.
I'm a white American male that went to a CUNY college (city university of NY), which is not so highly regarded by the big 4.
I graduated with a 4.0, summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, with distinguished honors in CS and psychology.
In 2012 a close friend of mine was a hiring manager in Google, and he passed my resume to a recruiter. When he went back to check on the status of it later, he found that the recruiter had thrown out the resume.
After some arm twisting he got me an interview. I answered everything correctly, but was told I would not be getting the job.
Since that time I've been with a few startups as an Android engineer. I love my jobs, and work my butt off. On 3 occasions I've been at Google's NYC office consulting with members of the Android team. I've made sure to make an impression on the community.
For the past 3 years I've been getting a bi-monthly email from Google and Facebook recruiters asking me to come interview. I haven't, and probably never will; I like the startup scene way to much.
I don't think the decision makers are racist or sexist. Their job is to get the best engineer for the job. Initial impressions are hard to gauge, and without validation (education, trusted references, etc...) you can end up making a big mistake (I would know, having hired quite a few duds over the years).
I understand that not all people are in a position to distinguish themselves initially. Life isn't fair. Trying to make it fair for one demographic will likely end up making things unfair for another.
There's nothing wrong with not getting your first job at a big 4. Hit the pavement running, do a kick ass job wherever you are, and you'll get noticed.
If instead, as the recruiters in the article suggest, pedigree of college and other factors are being prioritized, then that's a problem. Criteria like this disproportionately disadvantages URM candidates in particular, which is how Facebook ends up with only 1% black and 3% latino tech workers, even after prioritizing diversity at the recruiter level.
> I don't think the decision makers are racist or sexist.
I recommend you read up a bit on [individual vs. systemic racism](1). An important point to note is that even if individual actors don't exhibit what you consider to be racism, the system that they make up can itself be racist. This is a really important point that often gets lost in discussions like this on HN, especially since the largely-white largely-male population here is unlikely to ever directly feel the effects of systemic racism.
> Trying to make it fair for one demographic will likely end up making things unfair for another.
Just to be clear, I think what you are trying to say is that adjusting for bias against URM candidates will inherently lead to bias or disadvantages to white folks. I would question any notion of "fairness" that relies on another group being treated unfairly. To borrow a common expression, when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
(1): http://www.ucalgary.ca/cared/formsofracism
As a minority I fully understand how race can affect one's perception on oneself, and how societal pressures can make one feel like they don't belong in a certain field. But in this light, shouldn't companies focus more on encouraging women and URM to enter in the field of engineering, and not at the point of hiring? CMV.
The first part about why diversity is important has been covered ad nauseum so you can find those arguments and agree with them or not.
If it's not the only factor, then there's a chance diverse candidates simply aren't being reached by the typical recruiter strategy. So companies take that hypothesis and incentivize recruiters to diversify their search. Only time will tell if that hypothesis is correct, and this is the only point in the system where race/gender are under consideration. It has no impact on those that apply to FB through a college career fair, or through facebook.com/careers.
With that said, their survey includes companies across all industries, including those with a lot of customer face-to-face interactions (retail, banking, airlines, hospitality, healthcare). I am not aware of anyone narrowing down the research to tech/engineering field, so in absence of that the public just assumes that similar findings would apply to every industry, and diverse high-tech companies will outperform non-diverse ones.
The other beef I have with hiring is the attitude "we only hire A players". Really? If you are doing work worthy of "A players" then that's fine. But if you aren't (and this is true in most cases), please don't pretend that you do cutting edge work and drop the attitude.
Diversity is harder problem to solve. How do you integrate potential employees who aren't from a "privileged" background (I say that in quotes, because I don't mean money)? It has to be trial and error...
That's the thing, this is Facebook, arguably the A-player requirement is sound.
The issue is that departments have misaligned incentives, and each work to optimize their own : diversity figures is a major yardstick for HR, and the one by which they're judged. Technical managers optimize for teams that work and have exceptional problem-solvers in its ranks, which leaves no place at Facebook's level for other considerations.
I would argue otherwise, not all roles in FB require A players. Not everyone in FB is working on AI, machine learning, ad optimization etc. There are a bunch of people working in maintaining legacy code bases, tools, IT, and other positions which doesn't necessarily not require A players.
They blame "risk-averse white/asian decision makers", but how would they really know that there were no legitimate technical or team-fit reasons behind the rejections ? And how much is confirmation bias helping create that suspicion, when you're financially incentivized to favor these candidates ?
Especially at a company with such a high hiring bar, there's a world between scanning keywords on a resume + asking multiple-choice questions in a phone screen, and assessing the depth of a candidate's technical aptness : if sourcers were in a position to make that call, well wouldn't they be called technical managers ?
While there might be some truth in that report, it's also not hard to imagine that "losing double points candidates + a pinch of ideology + lack of technical background to deeply assess candidates" might have fuelled enough frustration in disgruntled former employees to take this to the journalists.
1) If only pedigree matters (e.g. MIT/Stanford) then why have an interview?
2) If only intelligence matters why not just give candidates an IQ test and be done with it (if you're skeptical of IQ tests there are many proxies: SAT scores, grades in certain subjects, etc)?
3) If only algorithmic problem solving matters (this what big companies currently are doing, AFAIK they used to do the last two, with not success) why do you need to even know who the candidate is?
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For startups and other smaller companies I see the value of knowing who you're interviewing. However, an argument could be made there, as well. As long as you can properly articulate the qualities you want in a candidate, and have a way of measuring said qualities* there shouldn't be any need to "know" who the candidate is.
[*]If you don't have any way of measuring the magnitude of the qualities then you're just going off a "gut feeling", the same gut feeling that will likely be biased in one or more dimensions, IMO.