> You get the feeling that this was likely due to his race and so you don’t hold it against him.
What would cause someone to get this feeling? Does a candidate just have to indicate that he wanted bigger projects but didn't get them? Seems like the exact same thing that would happen to someone who was not ready for bigger projects.
Would you do the same thing for a dev with a strong southern accent who worked at a company with mostly left leaning employees?
> So no matter what you think, the one from a minority is certainly preferable for hiring?
I think the idea is to include as best as possible what may be hard to assess factors such as difference of experience, culture and upbringing and using that, make a decision as the hirer who you think will benefit the company best, not to choose a person and then override who you think is best just because of one factor.
All this really takes is valuing an outside perspective. An yes, sometimes just the skin color can be enough, if that skin color has affected how people see them or any unique problems it has come with. That does mean it is or must be enough though, just that it may be something worth including.
As a simple example, I'll leave you this: How We Accidentally Made a Racist Videogame.[1] It should be easy to see how a slightly more diverse group of developers and/or QA testers could have avoided that problem. Similar things exist with dealing with other cultures or countries, or people with disabilities, or if you're really unlucky, just people of the other sex if you're unlucky enough to have that much of a homogeneous set of coworkers.
> there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other ones.
Wow this is not at all correct based on my experience.
It is so common for "non-diverse individuals" to have gotten where they are based on things like network that I really don't think you can tell just by looking at someone.
The worst developers I have worked with are often traditional "non-diverse" candidates.
> Software devs in the US are apparently well paid and in high demand - are people that racist they they wouldn't hire black devs? Of all lines of work, I have the impression that IT is one of the most open and socially conscious fields there is.
The problem would be two fold: there are numerically few black developers due to problems with the pipeline for education, which disproportionately affects black people, and in general hiring practices have a bias against black people.
The impression that IT is more open and socially conscious is just that, an impression. There is nothing that demonstrates IT as a profession or as individuals are more socially conscious than any other group of people. In fact, many of the current problems with regards to IT culture mirror the same problems in other aspects of business in society.
> Discrimination in selecting who to interview is absolutely a form of discrimination.
Exactly. That's what the parent comment is saying. But they are thinking about the entire funnel, not just the end of it. By the time a slate of candidates reaches a company's hiring process, there has already been an immense selection bias against minority candidates.
Two people growing up in different places (not different cities, but different neighborhoods within the same city) have lived in completely different worlds. Their schools are different; their health care is different; their safety is different; their opportunities are different; the people they know are different. And much of the time there's a stark racial difference in the makeup of those places. Historically this was very much intentional; but even if it were no longer intentional, the effects won't dissipate for a long time.
So when you get a slate of candidates that all happen to be white, it's not just a random coincidence. Imagine if a slate of candidates were all black. That would seem kind of odd, right?
Now obviously the best thing would be to fix all the other environmental factors that led to an all-white candidate slate. But that's not going to happen any time soon. So a good thing to do is apply some pressure on the funnel to elevate candidates that just barely miss out. In other words, candidates that are strong, but, say, don't know anyone that works at microsoft (no surprise there... two worlds) or perhaps don't think they're good enough.
The article points to a rising black employee population has some kind of evidence of injustice, but, if the company works harder to find qualified black candidates then obviously the percentage would rise. Unless we think that skin-color is a predictor of performance (ugh, I hope no one actually does) then improving a hiring process would result in an employee population that more closely matches the demographics of the population at large.
> Do you see how those two statements strongly contradict one another?
Nope, no contradiction at all. You can have adversity and not have systemic racism. I don’t have the foggiest clue how you can think that is a contradiction.
> people with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a callback for a job interview.[1]
Fair enough, but how is this remotely “systemic”? Do you really think there are company policies that promote this? Or is this individual (I.e. not systemic) biases?
Unless the company policy is to prefer the resumes with white sounding names then I don’t see how this is systemic.
> anecdotal evidence suggests this is not the case.
Ah, and we all know the plural of anecdote is "data". /s Oh wait...
The fact that you said this, suggests to me that you were the odd-person out on a hiring committee, and because the person got hired anyways, you feel like that means all hiring decisions are made on the basis of race. When in reality, you just didn't like the one candidate, and everyone else was fine.
I don't know for sure that this happened, but I've met people who made these cases, and they pretty consistently overvalue their own opinions.
>This might be difficult for you to understand but explicitly hiring someone with a particular skin colour is the fucking definition of racism.
The only difference between what they're doing now and what they did before is the skin color requirement is explicit instead of implicit. Only hire white guys? Meritocracy! Decide you want to hire 1 black guy? Racist!
> I'd hate to work somewhere knowing I was hired because the color of my skin and not my abilities.
Must be tough being a white male in tech, where people see you and don't automatically think you don't know what you're talking about. Imagine, being hired only because someone with equal qualifications missed out due to internal biases. I'd hate that too, good on you.
> Not hiring because somebody because they're not a cultural fit is fine (if for some reason you like monoculture).
No, it is absolutely not fine.
One's livelihood should not be determined by an ability to fit into some monocultural clique based on one hiring manager's subjective view of a culture they are not familiar with. I thought companies were trying to accomplish certain business goals, and not build cultural/ideological echo chambers (unless they build that as a product, which I guess Facebook does).
> Determining they're not a cultural fit because they're black, is most definitely not.
Yes, and culture is most certainly intertwined with ethnicity, or at the very least - by location. Should companies be allowed to screen candidates from, say...Vermont, or Louisiana just because it's not a protected discriminatory attribute. Sorry, people of Vermont. You're just not a great culture fit for us.
I'm honestly struggling with trying to come up for any good reason to hold this opinion in the first place.
> Yes, cultural fit is subjective - but so are interviews.
This isn't a reason to throw out one with the other. Just because interviews are flawed is no excuse to discriminate based on culture. Not to mention there at least exist frameworks for testing skills and ability (no matter how flawed they are). There are no frameworks for testing "cultural fit", and, at least as of now, 99% of hiring managers would not be equipped to be a good judge of culture.
>Race is a social construct that only has any relevance in it's historical context
race plays a role in college admissions, and now in this layoff, and maybe hiring at the same company. so clearly it has relevance today in its current context.
>it would be very difficult to understand the point of the policies.
which policies? making hiring and firing decisions based on race is illegal in the USA.
>Most people are willfully ignorant and like to "play dumb" while making bad faith arguments about issues like this. I was merely trying to inquire if the OC was ignorant and willing to learn or willfully ignorant.
You didn't make any arguments at all, you just started quizzing them on their knowledge.
Again, it just seems like you're trying to legitimize systemic institutional racism on the basis of 'historical context' of a 'social construct'.
> you are less valuable to me as i have lots of your type of voice already
But you didn't wait to hear my voice. You didn't let me open my mouth. You turned me down on how I looked not what I had to say. You don't know anything about what life experience I have and what unique points of view I can bring you.
> And to be clear every issue you have diverse candidates have plus loads more.
Nobody is openly, legally and systematically denying them the opportunity to prove themselves capable of a job based on the color of their skin. If they're denied based on the color of their skin they can challenge that in the courts. I can't.
> I think there are probably enough jobs in tech for everyone though..
What if more companies start banning hiring white men? What if all the Google-tier companies do, so I can't get any job above a certain salary level?
It sounds like the parent thought the dev wouldn’t fit in with the other team members and so didn’t hire him.
> The other is a poorly specified scenario where a black person does not fit in?
It’s hard to fit in when you are a small minority.
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