Bay Area: Join us next week, 8/17, to talk about diversity (or lack thereof) in tech

Slack engineering director Leslie Miley will talk about problems with diversity in Silicon Valley.

Read the whole story

 

[ZhanMing057]

SteveJobz[/url]":2s7o1wzo]

itdraugr[/url]":2s7o1wzo]

SteveJobz[/url]":2s7o1wzo]

itdraugr[/url]":2s7o1wzo]

SteveJobz[/url]":2s7o1wzo]
Ok, so if the only unqualified people ever hired are straight, white males (not racist at all or anything, of course) and nobody in the history of the universe has ever hired an unqualified minority then how do you explain the fact that Asians and Indians are very much over represented in tech employment? Are we hiring so many unqualified straight, white males whose head is filled with cabbage that they're unable to tell the difference between an Asian or Indian applicant and Bob from Arkansas? Or, is it possible that maybe, just maybe these demographic groups just happen to have the biggest pool of qualified candidates to draw from? I know that such ideas are viewed with utter contempt in SJW-land, but just throwing it out there.

Literally no one said that the only unqualified hires ever are straight, white males. You could just try honesty discussing things people have actually said. You know this, right? It makes having direct, engaging discussions a lot more enjoyable and productive.

Ordinarily I would be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you simply misunderstood, but since you went out of your way to dishonestly misrepresent my claim I'm not feeling that compulsion. You're on the side of the argument that claims that diversity hires take jobs away from qualified applicants. Not only has there been zero proof provided to give that claim legitimacy, but the claim itself assumes that the non-diverse hires - that is, people who are straight, or white, or male, or some combination thereof - are inherently qualified, and that diverse hires are inherently not qualified. If that were true, then none of us would have professional experiences with people who are straight, white, male, or some combination thereof who were clearly incompetent and not qualified for their jobs. But if, as I suspect, we can each muster up at least one story about an incompetent coworker who is either straight, white, male, or the hat trick of being all three, then that means that current, non-diverse hiring practices are not actually hiring the most qualified candidates.

The idea that making diverse hiring decisions automatically means making unqualified hiring decisions is untenable. It's a myth.

No, the claim I'm making it that race and ethnicity do not play a significant role in hiring decisions as illustrated by the fact that Asians and Indians (who also happen to be brown, image that!) make up a significantly higher percentage of tech workers compared to the overall population. Therefore, your argument that tech jobs are heavily biased towards straight (another myth btw as gays are also over represented in the tech field), white males holds no water. What you are REALLY advocating for is for racial quotas in hiring, which would discriminate against other minorities in favor of African Americans and Hispanics. Meritocracy and affirmative action are mutually exclusive concepts that can't co-exist as evidenced by the discrimination faced by Asians in the college admission process.

Wow. You are super, super good at misrepresenting other people's arguments so you don't have to respond to the things they've actually said. I'm not sure if you're a professional liar, but you're really good at it in this informal setting. Kudos.

Meritocracy is an illusion. What you think of as meritocracy is almost always cronyism and nepotism. You just don't see it that way because you benefit from it, so you don't have to think about it.

I notice you're still completely ignoring the problem of incompetent straight/white/male workers. If your meritocracy really existed, they wouldn't be there. If your meritocracy really existed, the only hires would be competent hires. What I am saying - not what you're dishonestly attempting to portray me as saying, mind you - is that there are plenty enough incompetent straight/white/male workers in the workforce to disprove the idea that current hiring practices reliably find qualified candidates and are not susceptible to unconscious racial biases.

If you're saying you've never once worked with a single straight/white/male person who was an incompetent waste of space you're either lying or you haven't been in the workforce for very long. There are plenty of them out there. I've worked with quite a few. Tell me why hiring a non-straight/non-white/non-male person takes away a job from a qualified person any more than hiring one of the many straight/white/male morons we've all worked with.

See, the problem with the complaint that diversity hires take jobs away from qualified straight/white/male workers will always be that it assumes the system that favors straight/white/male people magically always results in rational, qualified hiring decisions. We all have enough experience to know that isn't true. Yet the myth that diverse hiring practices takes jobs away from qualified straight/white/male workers persists, even without any data to support it.

The tl;dr version is that there shouldn't need to be quotas or enforcement for diversity hiring, because if we would all just stop hiring straight/white/male morons, there would be plenty of jobs for all kinds of qualified, competent, and yes, diverse, people. But the idea that they're taking jobs they don't deserve and aren't qualified for? That's a giant, steaming load of horse shit.

Wow, this quite honestly some of the dumbest drivel I have ever had the privilege of reading. Yes, I've worked with dumb white people (not sure if they were straight or not didn't bother to ask), dumb black people, dumb Asian people and dumb Hispanics. Ironically enough, your assertion that every incompetent white male hire would automatically be replaced by a highly qualified, and the right kind (not Asian or Indian) minority, is just conjecture with zero merit. And yes, cronyism and nepotism is a problem, but that has nothing to do with race. For example, African Americans are heavily over represented in government jobs, but I don't see anyone screaming racism about that.

FYI the widely accepted explanation of prevalence of blacks in government is that well-structured retirement benefits and pensions are more attractive if your aggregate family wealth is lower. In other words, that VA career looks better if your parents aren't able to leave you a house when they die. The added benefit is that entering into the government system helps shape consumption decisions for better intergenerational wealth transfers.

As for itdraugr, I wouldn't bother arguing with him since the entirety of his comments have been little more than a sequence of logical fallacies. But then again, I teach at a fairly good school and you would be surprised (or not) at how many students lack the faintest idea that their arguments are logically incoherent. But I digress - people persist in beliefs, even if they get conked repeatedly over the head with evidence to the contrary.

 

[Ser Dood]

Einstein76[/url]":wlmnykmo]

TurboPower[/url]":wlmnykmo]

SteveJobz[/url]":wlmnykmo]

bigstrat2003[/url]":wlmnykmo]On further reflection, I wonder if perhaps the whole controversy on this topic stems from unspoken, but not shared, assumptions on both sides. If you believe that companies (at least most of the time) hire the most qualified applicant, then you are going to look at the resulting employee demographics and conclude a) that the qualified applicant demographics probably look pretty similar, and b) that you can't change the employee demographics without either changing the qualified applicant demographics or relaxing hiring standards. In that case, you're going to see any attempt to increase diversity that targets companies (rather than trying to increase diversity in the candidate pool) as amounting to "companies need to hire on the basis of race, even if they're less qualified".

On the other hand, if you believe that companies are not hiring the most qualified applicant most of the time (due to some form of unconscious prejudice or just outright bigotry), then you have good reason to suspect that the pool of qualified applicants has minorities who aren't being hired. Or if you believe that the pool of qualified applicants is of roughly similar makeup as the population as a whole, seeing the employee demographics not match up gives you good reason to suspect that employers are biased in their hiring (whether consciously or unconsciously). In both of these cases, since you suspect employers aren't currently hiring the most qualified person, diversity initiatives are going to all pretty much amount to attempts to get companies to start hiring the most qualified person (e.g. trying to get rid of unconscious biases that might influence hiring decisions).

But it seems like on either side, there is an unspoken assumption about whether or not companies are currently hiring the best candidates. And because it's unspoken, it means that people will interpret "more diversity in hiring" as "ignore qualifications to hire more minorities", when really it is probably meant as "start hiring purely on qualifications and eliminate current biases".

I can't see how a claim that "minorities are discriminated against in hiring" can hold up when Asians make up a disproportionate number of tech workers. How could this happen when the evil white man is purposely not hiring minorities? Therefore, logic would dictate that the most qualified candidates ARE actually being hired.

RAAAAAACIIIIISSSTTTTTTTT!

He's certainly a troll, he may or may not be a racist.

Edit: Wow! Did Stevejobz register 5 extra accounts or am I really getting that many downvotes for calling out someone who is obviously a troll?

I am going to go with more people agree with him than you. Stop sniffing your own farts, they don't smell good.

 

[Ser Dood]

itdraugr[/url]":20ra5m2f]

TK[/url]":20ra5m2f]

itdraugr[/url]":20ra5m2f]

The problem with invoking straw opponents who supposedly respond to criticism with accusations is that it derails from the actual conversation about whatever is being discussed.

itdraugr[/url]":20ra5m2f] For some reason a certain subset of people really get their wookie in a tangle when others have the temerity to suggest that diversity is a good thing.

Indeed.

But that doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion about why diversity helps businesses by injecting new perspectives into homogeneous business structures...

..and how targeting diversity as a hiring practice reveals the problem with the way social networking is often used to grant jobs to underqualified jobs of the favored in-group of the hiring party.

Finally, something that can be discussed! Perhaps we could begin by discussing why and how these "new perspectives" are worth the time and effort that Silicon Vally seems to spend working itself up over? And why your gender or race is taken as predictive of these valuable perspectives? I mean, I thought the whole point here was that prejudging people by things they can't control is a shitty thing to do.

And speaking of hiring practices granting positions to unqualified workers, that makes sense, I think we can agree here that qualifications should be the most important thing when hiring. But then why is the answer to put *less* stress on qualifications and more on your identity, i.e. things you have no control over?

Quite simply, diverse perspectives are encouraged because they allow businesses to better predict and serve a wider set of customers and their needs. The benefits of having a person with a disability on-staff to tell you how your amazing new product would be useless to a person with mobility problems and provide suggestions for how to serve those needs better seems obvious. The same with developing and marketing products and services for people outside of the "straight white dude" demographic.

You're assuming that practicing diverse hiring practices puts less stress on qualifications. Why? There's no qualitative evidence to support that position.

I am confused, are you saying disabled workers are not capable of communicating effectively with non disabled clients, or they just do it worse than a worker without disabilities?

 

[SteveJobz]

Ser Dood[/url]":2n1aujxh]

Einstein76[/url]":2n1aujxh]

TurboPower[/url]":2n1aujxh]

SteveJobz[/url]":2n1aujxh]

bigstrat2003[/url]":2n1aujxh]On further reflection, I wonder if perhaps the whole controversy on this topic stems from unspoken, but not shared, assumptions on both sides. If you believe that companies (at least most of the time) hire the most qualified applicant, then you are going to look at the resulting employee demographics and conclude a) that the qualified applicant demographics probably look pretty similar, and b) that you can't change the employee demographics without either changing the qualified applicant demographics or relaxing hiring standards. In that case, you're going to see any attempt to increase diversity that targets companies (rather than trying to increase diversity in the candidate pool) as amounting to "companies need to hire on the basis of race, even if they're less qualified".

On the other hand, if you believe that companies are not hiring the most qualified applicant most of the time (due to some form of unconscious prejudice or just outright bigotry), then you have good reason to suspect that the pool of qualified applicants has minorities who aren't being hired. Or if you believe that the pool of qualified applicants is of roughly similar makeup as the population as a whole, seeing the employee demographics not match up gives you good reason to suspect that employers are biased in their hiring (whether consciously or unconsciously). In both of these cases, since you suspect employers aren't currently hiring the most qualified person, diversity initiatives are going to all pretty much amount to attempts to get companies to start hiring the most qualified person (e.g. trying to get rid of unconscious biases that might influence hiring decisions).

But it seems like on either side, there is an unspoken assumption about whether or not companies are currently hiring the best candidates. And because it's unspoken, it means that people will interpret "more diversity in hiring" as "ignore qualifications to hire more minorities", when really it is probably meant as "start hiring purely on qualifications and eliminate current biases".

I can't see how a claim that "minorities are discriminated against in hiring" can hold up when Asians make up a disproportionate number of tech workers. How could this happen when the evil white man is purposely not hiring minorities? Therefore, logic would dictate that the most qualified candidates ARE actually being hired.

RAAAAAACIIIIISSSTTTTTTTT!

He's certainly a troll, he may or may not be a racist.

Edit: Wow! Did Stevejobz register 5 extra accounts or am I really getting that many downvotes for calling out someone who is obviously a troll?

I am going to go with more people agree with him than you. Stop sniffing your own farts, they don't smell good.

This one's for you Einstein:

 

[ApplePaladin]

Ser Dood[/url]":3lr9wc97]

itdraugr[/url]":3lr9wc97]

TK[/url]":3lr9wc97]

itdraugr[/url]":3lr9wc97]

The problem with invoking straw opponents who supposedly respond to criticism with accusations is that it derails from the actual conversation about whatever is being discussed.

itdraugr[/url]":3lr9wc97] For some reason a certain subset of people really get their wookie in a tangle when others have the temerity to suggest that diversity is a good thing.

Indeed.

But that doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion about why diversity helps businesses by injecting new perspectives into homogeneous business structures...

..and how targeting diversity as a hiring practice reveals the problem with the way social networking is often used to grant jobs to underqualified jobs of the favored in-group of the hiring party.

Finally, something that can be discussed! Perhaps we could begin by discussing why and how these "new perspectives" are worth the time and effort that Silicon Vally seems to spend working itself up over? And why your gender or race is taken as predictive of these valuable perspectives? I mean, I thought the whole point here was that prejudging people by things they can't control is a shitty thing to do.

And speaking of hiring practices granting positions to unqualified workers, that makes sense, I think we can agree here that qualifications should be the most important thing when hiring. But then why is the answer to put *less* stress on qualifications and more on your identity, i.e. things you have no control over?

Quite simply, diverse perspectives are encouraged because they allow businesses to better predict and serve a wider set of customers and their needs. The benefits of having a person with a disability on-staff to tell you how your amazing new product would be useless to a person with mobility problems and provide suggestions for how to serve those needs better seems obvious. The same with developing and marketing products and services for people outside of the "straight white dude" demographic.

You're assuming that practicing diverse hiring practices puts less stress on qualifications. Why? There's no qualitative evidence to support that position.

I am confused, are you saying disabled workers are not capable of communicating effectively with non disabled clients, or they just do it worse than a worker without disabilities?

I can see that you're confused, but that doesn't explain how you came to such an outlandish conclusion that doesn't reflect anything that I said whatsoever.

 

[ApplePaladin]

ZhanMing057[/url]":33gnshru]

SteveJobz[/url]":33gnshru]

itdraugr[/url]":33gnshru]

SteveJobz[/url]":33gnshru]

itdraugr[/url]":33gnshru]

SteveJobz[/url]":33gnshru]
Ok, so if the only unqualified people ever hired are straight, white males (not racist at all or anything, of course) and nobody in the history of the universe has ever hired an unqualified minority then how do you explain the fact that Asians and Indians are very much over represented in tech employment? Are we hiring so many unqualified straight, white males whose head is filled with cabbage that they're unable to tell the difference between an Asian or Indian applicant and Bob from Arkansas? Or, is it possible that maybe, just maybe these demographic groups just happen to have the biggest pool of qualified candidates to draw from? I know that such ideas are viewed with utter contempt in SJW-land, but just throwing it out there.

Literally no one said that the only unqualified hires ever are straight, white males. You could just try honesty discussing things people have actually said. You know this, right? It makes having direct, engaging discussions a lot more enjoyable and productive.

Ordinarily I would be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you simply misunderstood, but since you went out of your way to dishonestly misrepresent my claim I'm not feeling that compulsion. You're on the side of the argument that claims that diversity hires take jobs away from qualified applicants. Not only has there been zero proof provided to give that claim legitimacy, but the claim itself assumes that the non-diverse hires - that is, people who are straight, or white, or male, or some combination thereof - are inherently qualified, and that diverse hires are inherently not qualified. If that were true, then none of us would have professional experiences with people who are straight, white, male, or some combination thereof who were clearly incompetent and not qualified for their jobs. But if, as I suspect, we can each muster up at least one story about an incompetent coworker who is either straight, white, male, or the hat trick of being all three, then that means that current, non-diverse hiring practices are not actually hiring the most qualified candidates.

The idea that making diverse hiring decisions automatically means making unqualified hiring decisions is untenable. It's a myth.

No, the claim I'm making it that race and ethnicity do not play a significant role in hiring decisions as illustrated by the fact that Asians and Indians (who also happen to be brown, image that!) make up a significantly higher percentage of tech workers compared to the overall population. Therefore, your argument that tech jobs are heavily biased towards straight (another myth btw as gays are also over represented in the tech field), white males holds no water. What you are REALLY advocating for is for racial quotas in hiring, which would discriminate against other minorities in favor of African Americans and Hispanics. Meritocracy and affirmative action are mutually exclusive concepts that can't co-exist as evidenced by the discrimination faced by Asians in the college admission process.

Wow. You are super, super good at misrepresenting other people's arguments so you don't have to respond to the things they've actually said. I'm not sure if you're a professional liar, but you're really good at it in this informal setting. Kudos.

Meritocracy is an illusion. What you think of as meritocracy is almost always cronyism and nepotism. You just don't see it that way because you benefit from it, so you don't have to think about it.

I notice you're still completely ignoring the problem of incompetent straight/white/male workers. If your meritocracy really existed, they wouldn't be there. If your meritocracy really existed, the only hires would be competent hires. What I am saying - not what you're dishonestly attempting to portray me as saying, mind you - is that there are plenty enough incompetent straight/white/male workers in the workforce to disprove the idea that current hiring practices reliably find qualified candidates and are not susceptible to unconscious racial biases.

If you're saying you've never once worked with a single straight/white/male person who was an incompetent waste of space you're either lying or you haven't been in the workforce for very long. There are plenty of them out there. I've worked with quite a few. Tell me why hiring a non-straight/non-white/non-male person takes away a job from a qualified person any more than hiring one of the many straight/white/male morons we've all worked with.

See, the problem with the complaint that diversity hires take jobs away from qualified straight/white/male workers will always be that it assumes the system that favors straight/white/male people magically always results in rational, qualified hiring decisions. We all have enough experience to know that isn't true. Yet the myth that diverse hiring practices takes jobs away from qualified straight/white/male workers persists, even without any data to support it.

The tl;dr version is that there shouldn't need to be quotas or enforcement for diversity hiring, because if we would all just stop hiring straight/white/male morons, there would be plenty of jobs for all kinds of qualified, competent, and yes, diverse, people. But the idea that they're taking jobs they don't deserve and aren't qualified for? That's a giant, steaming load of horse shit.

Wow, this quite honestly some of the dumbest drivel I have ever had the privilege of reading. Yes, I've worked with dumb white people (not sure if they were straight or not didn't bother to ask), dumb black people, dumb Asian people and dumb Hispanics. Ironically enough, your assertion that every incompetent white male hire would automatically be replaced by a highly qualified, and the right kind (not Asian or Indian) minority, is just conjecture with zero merit. And yes, cronyism and nepotism is a problem, but that has nothing to do with race. For example, African Americans are heavily over represented in government jobs, but I don't see anyone screaming racism about that.

FYI the widely accepted explanation of prevalence of blacks in government is that well-structured retirement benefits and pensions are more attractive if your aggregate family wealth is lower. In other words, that VA career looks better if your parents aren't able to leave you a house when they die. The added benefit is that entering into the government system helps shape consumption decisions for better intergenerational wealth transfers.

As for itdraugr, I wouldn't bother arguing with him since the entirety of his comments have been little more than a sequence of logical fallacies. But then again, I teach at a fairly good school and you would be surprised (or not) at how many students lack the faintest idea that their arguments are logically incoherent. But I digress - people persist in beliefs, even if they get conked repeatedly over the head with evidence to the contrary.

How adorable, you think that claiming "logical fallacies" without being able to point them out is a suitable response instead of providing any constructive criticisms. Hopefully you put more effort and rigor into teaching, because I certainly wouldn't want my kids to have you as a teacher if the drivel you've posted here is any indication.

 

[Ser Dood]

itdraugr[/url]":2v2ovfwq]

Ser Dood[/url]":2v2ovfwq]

itdraugr[/url]":2v2ovfwq]

TK[/url]":2v2ovfwq]

itdraugr[/url]":2v2ovfwq]

The problem with invoking straw opponents who supposedly respond to criticism with accusations is that it derails from the actual conversation about whatever is being discussed.

itdraugr[/url]":2v2ovfwq] For some reason a certain subset of people really get their wookie in a tangle when others have the temerity to suggest that diversity is a good thing.

Indeed.

But that doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion about why diversity helps businesses by injecting new perspectives into homogeneous business structures...

..and how targeting diversity as a hiring practice reveals the problem with the way social networking is often used to grant jobs to underqualified jobs of the favored in-group of the hiring party.

Finally, something that can be discussed! Perhaps we could begin by discussing why and how these "new perspectives" are worth the time and effort that Silicon Vally seems to spend working itself up over? And why your gender or race is taken as predictive of these valuable perspectives? I mean, I thought the whole point here was that prejudging people by things they can't control is a shitty thing to do.

And speaking of hiring practices granting positions to unqualified workers, that makes sense, I think we can agree here that qualifications should be the most important thing when hiring. But then why is the answer to put *less* stress on qualifications and more on your identity, i.e. things you have no control over?

Quite simply, diverse perspectives are encouraged because they allow businesses to better predict and serve a wider set of customers and their needs. The benefits of having a person with a disability on-staff to tell you how your amazing new product would be useless to a person with mobility problems and provide suggestions for how to serve those needs better seems obvious. The same with developing and marketing products and services for people outside of the "straight white dude" demographic.

You're assuming that practicing diverse hiring practices puts less stress on qualifications. Why? There's no qualitative evidence to support that position.

I am confused, are you saying disabled workers are not capable of communicating effectively with non disabled clients, or they just do it worse than a worker without disabilities?

I can see that you're confused, but that doesn't explain how you came to such an outlandish conclusion that doesn't reflect anything that I said whatsoever.

I bolded it for you.

You made a claim that people with disabilities would communicate better with others with disabilities, right? So, if I use that logic, people without disabilities are better at communicating with others without disabilities? Using your logic, White people are not effective at communicating with Black people and vice versa?

The end goal of your logic is essentially segregation. You mention nothing of skills, only physical characteristic's, pretty sickening in my opinion.

 

[ApplePaladin]

Ser Dood[/url]":3fdua73j]
I bolded it for you.

You made a claim that people with disabilities would communicate better with others with disabilities, right? So, if I use that logic, people without disabilities are better at communicating with others without disabilities? Using your logic, White people are not effective at communicating with Black people and vice versa?

The end goal of your logic is essentially segregation. You mention nothing of skills, only physical characteristic's, pretty sickening in my opinion.

Communicate? No, obviously not. Think of use cases that someone without their lived experiences would overlook? Yes. Just look at what AbleGamers is doing in bringing assistive technologies to video games because user interfaces and controllers are often designed by able-bodied people with no experience living as or designing for disabled players. Not having disabled people in game design and hardware design has created an environment in which a section of the market has been ignored. Having the sense to hire more disabled people to help in software and hardware design sooner would have engaged that market much better.

Similarly, hiring or consulting people from a particular ethnic background to target advertising for that particular ethnic background allows for more effective marketing that can be better related to the targeted demographic.

This isn't rocket surgery, and I find it incredibly hard to believe that you find these concepts difficult to grasp. I'm more inclined to believe that you're being intentionally obtuse so you can misrepresent my arguments. That's really poor form, but it fits the fake appearance of righteous indignation you're putting on. Try reacting to the points I'm actually making instead of the bullshit you're making up and you won't be so (fake) offended.

 

[MlautheFilthy]

Oh man, this thread has been a ton of fun

 

[icwhatudidthere]

MlautheFilthy[/url]":3qynr9dh]Oh man, this thread has been a ton of fun

Yeah guys, even the popcorn is stale at this point.

 

[Ser Dood]

itdraugr[/url]":15r72fq9]

Ser Dood[/url]":15r72fq9]
I bolded it for you.

You made a claim that people with disabilities would communicate better with others with disabilities, right? So, if I use that logic, people without disabilities are better at communicating with others without disabilities? Using your logic, White people are not effective at communicating with Black people and vice versa?

The end goal of your logic is essentially segregation. You mention nothing of skills, only physical characteristic's, pretty sickening in my opinion.

Communicate? No, obviously not. Think of use cases that someone with their lived experiences would overlook? Yes. Just look at what AbleGamers is doing in bringing assistive technologies to video games because user interfaces and controllers are often designed by able-bodied people with no experience living as or designing for disabled players. Not having disabled people in game design and hardware design has created an environment in which a section of the market has been ignored. Having the sense to hire more disabled people to help in software and hardware design sooner would engaged that market much better.

Similarly, hiring or consulting people from a particular ethnic background to target advertising for that particular ethnic background allows for more effective marketing that can be better related to the targeted demographic.

This isn't rocket surgery, and I find it incredibly hard to believe that you find these concepts difficult to grasp. I'm more inclined to believe that you're being intentionally obtuse so you can misrepresent my arguments. That's really poor form, but it fits the fake appearance of righteous indignation you're putting on. Try reacting to the points I'm actually making instead of the bullshit you're making up and you won't be so (fake) offended.

What I bolded for you up there, that is a racist comment. You think black workers are better fit to sell or consult to black customers? And white workers are better fit to deal with white customers? You are describing segregation.

I am not being obtuse to your argument, I am using your exact logic to ask you questions which you cant really seem to answer. You don't have sound logic so it is being used against you. Attacking me personally will also not help you win an argument.

 

[BulkyZ]

tayhimself[/url]":11r5tbaq]

Viewer[/url]":11r5tbaq]

Scud[/url]":11r5tbaq]Kind of ironic given the source, no? Aren't Arstechnicas staff mostly white?

But they are the "good whites". They are liberal and they support the Democratic party. They aren't the "bad whites" that vote Trump.

Or the southern whites like Ron Paul that think Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant.

Viewer, do you just sit around waiting to post your racist drivel? I would encourage everyone to down vote his posts into oblivion. See this thread for example or his posting record in general. Terrible.
viewtopic.php?p=31675157#p31675157

Have a down vote. Viewer gets the upvotes. Ya biggot.

 

[ApplePaladin]

Ser Dood[/url]":2v4s65af]

itdraugr[/url]":2v4s65af]

Ser Dood[/url]":2v4s65af]
I bolded it for you.

You made a claim that people with disabilities would communicate better with others with disabilities, right? So, if I use that logic, people without disabilities are better at communicating with others without disabilities? Using your logic, White people are not effective at communicating with Black people and vice versa?

The end goal of your logic is essentially segregation. You mention nothing of skills, only physical characteristic's, pretty sickening in my opinion.

Communicate? No, obviously not. Think of use cases that someone with their lived experiences would overlook? Yes. Just look at what AbleGamers is doing in bringing assistive technologies to video games because user interfaces and controllers are often designed by able-bodied people with no experience living as or designing for disabled players. Not having disabled people in game design and hardware design has created an environment in which a section of the market has been ignored. Having the sense to hire more disabled people to help in software and hardware design sooner would engaged that market much better.

Similarly, hiring or consulting people from a particular ethnic background to target advertising for that particular ethnic background allows for more effective marketing that can be better related to the targeted demographic.

This isn't rocket surgery, and I find it incredibly hard to believe that you find these concepts difficult to grasp. I'm more inclined to believe that you're being intentionally obtuse so you can misrepresent my arguments. That's really poor form, but it fits the fake appearance of righteous indignation you're putting on. Try reacting to the points I'm actually making instead of the bullshit you're making up and you won't be so (fake) offended.

What I bolded for you up there, that is a racist comment. You think black workers are better fit to sell or consult to black customers? And white workers are better fit to deal with white customers? You are describing segregation.

I am not being obtuse to your argument, I am using your exact logic to ask you questions which you cant really seem to answer. You don't have sound logic so it is being used against you. Attacking me personally will also not help you win an argument.

I'm not attacking you personally. Attacking you personally would be calling you names. I'm describing the dishonest and faulty ways in which you are building your argument against a misrepresented straw man you have constructed instead of actually addressing my points.

For example, aside from being morally reprehensible and intellectually dishonest to claim that I'm arguing for segregation when I am obviously not, you're also factually incorrect in your depiction of my argument.

Advertising that is perceived as genuine and in-touch with its targeted audience is generally more successful than advertising that is poorly researched and presented and out-of-touch with its target audience. It's the difference between advertising that is crass and exploitative versus being genuine and representative. Having members of the demographics that a firm wants to target for advertising on-staff to identify what will and won't work for advertising to that demographic is an obvious way to avoid having advertising come off as tone-deaf.

For example, it probably would have helped to have someone of Indian descent on-staff to prevent the debacle of dressing Ashton Kutcher up in brownface to sell chips. Your dishonest attempts to portray diversity hiring as segregation are transparent. This is a real reason - to tailor advertising successfully and make sure it isn't grossly offensive and super racist.

So let's cut the bullshit. Explain why, precisely, it is a bad thing to hire people who understand sets of life experiences that straight/white/male workers don't have. Explain why you call having an integrated workforce that can provide input from more than just a limited set of life experiences segregation. Explain how employing people who intimately understand the demographics businesses want to engage is segregation.

And do it without creating another straw man or pretending to be offended by your willful misrepresentations again.

 

[SteveJobz]

itdraugr[/url]":aqwyy52h]

Ser Dood[/url]":aqwyy52h]

itdraugr[/url]":aqwyy52h]

Ser Dood[/url]":aqwyy52h]
I bolded it for you.

You made a claim that people with disabilities would communicate better with others with disabilities, right? So, if I use that logic, people without disabilities are better at communicating with others without disabilities? Using your logic, White people are not effective at communicating with Black people and vice versa?

The end goal of your logic is essentially segregation. You mention nothing of skills, only physical characteristic's, pretty sickening in my opinion.

Communicate? No, obviously not. Think of use cases that someone with their lived experiences would overlook? Yes. Just look at what AbleGamers is doing in bringing assistive technologies to video games because user interfaces and controllers are often designed by able-bodied people with no experience living as or designing for disabled players. Not having disabled people in game design and hardware design has created an environment in which a section of the market has been ignored. Having the sense to hire more disabled people to help in software and hardware design sooner would engaged that market much better.

Similarly, hiring or consulting people from a particular ethnic background to target advertising for that particular ethnic background allows for more effective marketing that can be better related to the targeted demographic.

This isn't rocket surgery, and I find it incredibly hard to believe that you find these concepts difficult to grasp. I'm more inclined to believe that you're being intentionally obtuse so you can misrepresent my arguments. That's really poor form, but it fits the fake appearance of righteous indignation you're putting on. Try reacting to the points I'm actually making instead of the bullshit you're making up and you won't be so (fake) offended.

What I bolded for you up there, that is a racist comment. You think black workers are better fit to sell or consult to black customers? And white workers are better fit to deal with white customers? You are describing segregation.

I am not being obtuse to your argument, I am using your exact logic to ask you questions which you cant really seem to answer. You don't have sound logic so it is being used against you. Attacking me personally will also not help you win an argument.

I'm not attacking you personally. Attacking you personally would be calling you names. I'm describing the dishonest and faulty ways in which you are building your argument against a misrepresented straw man you have constructed instead of actually addressing my points.

For example, aside from being morally reprehensible and intellectually dishonest to claim that I'm arguing for segregation when I am obviously not, you're also factually incorrect in your depiction of my argument.

Advertising that is perceived as genuine and in-touch with its targeted audience is generally more successful than advertising that is poorly researched and presented and out-of-touch with its target audience. It's the difference between advertising that is crass and exploitative versus being genuine and representative. Having members of the demographics that a firm wants to target for advertising on-staff to identify what will and won't work for advertising to that demographic is an obvious way to avoid having advertising come off as tone-deaf.

For example, it probably would have helped to have someone of Indian descent on-staff to prevent the debacle of dressing Ashton Kutcher up in brownface to sell chips. Your dishonest attempts to portray diversity hiring as segregation are transparent. This is a real reason - to tailor advertising successfully and make sure it isn't grossly offensive and super racist.

So let's cut the bullshit. Explain why, precisely, it is a bad thing to hire people who understand sets of life experiences that straight/white/male workers don't have. Explain why you call having an integrated workforce that can provide input from more than just a limited set of life experiences segregation. Explain how employing people who intimately understand the demographics businesses want to engage is segregation.

And do it without creating another straw man or pretending to be offended by your willful misrepresentations again.

Your entire argument is built on an assumption that all people of a particular race or ethnic group have the same "life experiences". So, following your logic a black person from Senegal and Detroit have the exact same "life experiences" since they're both black.

 

[Ser Dood]

itdraugr[/url]":1j4yvdjp]

Ser Dood[/url]":1j4yvdjp]

itdraugr[/url]":1j4yvdjp]

Ser Dood[/url]":1j4yvdjp]
I bolded it for you.

You made a claim that people with disabilities would communicate better with others with disabilities, right? So, if I use that logic, people without disabilities are better at communicating with others without disabilities? Using your logic, White people are not effective at communicating with Black people and vice versa?

The end goal of your logic is essentially segregation. You mention nothing of skills, only physical characteristic's, pretty sickening in my opinion.

Communicate? No, obviously not. Think of use cases that someone with their lived experiences would overlook? Yes. Just look at what AbleGamers is doing in bringing assistive technologies to video games because user interfaces and controllers are often designed by able-bodied people with no experience living as or designing for disabled players. Not having disabled people in game design and hardware design has created an environment in which a section of the market has been ignored. Having the sense to hire more disabled people to help in software and hardware design sooner would engaged that market much better.

Similarly, hiring or consulting people from a particular ethnic background to target advertising for that particular ethnic background allows for more effective marketing that can be better related to the targeted demographic.

This isn't rocket surgery, and I find it incredibly hard to believe that you find these concepts difficult to grasp. I'm more inclined to believe that you're being intentionally obtuse so you can misrepresent my arguments. That's really poor form, but it fits the fake appearance of righteous indignation you're putting on. Try reacting to the points I'm actually making instead of the bullshit you're making up and you won't be so (fake) offended.

What I bolded for you up there, that is a racist comment. You think black workers are better fit to sell or consult to black customers? And white workers are better fit to deal with white customers? You are describing segregation.

I am not being obtuse to your argument, I am using your exact logic to ask you questions which you cant really seem to answer. You don't have sound logic so it is being used against you. Attacking me personally will also not help you win an argument.

I'm not attacking you personally. Attacking you personally would be calling you names. I'm describing the dishonest and faulty ways in which you are building your argument against a misrepresented straw man you have constructed instead of actually addressing my points.

For example, aside from being morally reprehensible and intellectually dishonest to claim that I'm arguing for segregation when I am obviously not, you're also factually incorrect in your depiction of my argument.

Advertising that is perceived as genuine and in-touch with its targeted audience is generally more successful than advertising that is poorly researched and presented and out-of-touch with its target audience. It's the difference between advertising that is crass and exploitative versus being genuine and representative. Having members of the demographics that a firm wants to target for advertising on-staff to identify what will and won't work for advertising to that demographic is an obvious way to avoid having advertising come off as tone-deaf.

For example, it probably would have helped to have someone of Indian descent on-staff to prevent the debacle of dressing Ashton Kutcher up in brownface to sell chips. Your dishonest attempts to portray diversity hiring as segregation are transparent. This is a real reason - to tailor advertising successfully and make sure it isn't grossly offensive and super racist.

So let's cut the bullshit. Explain why, precisely, it is a bad thing to hire people who understand sets of life experiences that straight/white/male workers don't have. Explain why you call having an integrated workforce that can provide input from more than just a limited set of life experiences segregation. Explain how employing people who intimately understand the demographics businesses want to engage is segregation.

And do it without creating another straw man or pretending to be offended by your willful misrepresentations again.

You do not know the experiences any person on this planet has, regardless of their gender, race, age, or skin pigmentation. You are claiming that straight white males cannot relate to people who are different then them. I went ahead and bolded your own comment, again, to use against you. I also bolded up top higher, where you attacked me for simply challenging your claims.

This article is about diversity in tech, and you are arguing that diversity in advertising has anything to do with tech related job skills? WTF does being gay, black, white, straight, tranny, or Hispanic have to do with job skills related to working in IT?

It really seems like you have something against straight white males, btw.

 

[Ser Dood]

SteveJobz[/url]":dng1qhsu]

itdraugr[/url]":dng1qhsu]

Ser Dood[/url]":dng1qhsu]

itdraugr[/url]":dng1qhsu]

Ser Dood[/url]":dng1qhsu]
I bolded it for you.

You made a claim that people with disabilities would communicate better with others with disabilities, right? So, if I use that logic, people without disabilities are better at communicating with others without disabilities? Using your logic, White people are not effective at communicating with Black people and vice versa?

The end goal of your logic is essentially segregation. You mention nothing of skills, only physical characteristic's, pretty sickening in my opinion.

Communicate? No, obviously not. Think of use cases that someone with their lived experiences would overlook? Yes. Just look at what AbleGamers is doing in bringing assistive technologies to video games because user interfaces and controllers are often designed by able-bodied people with no experience living as or designing for disabled players. Not having disabled people in game design and hardware design has created an environment in which a section of the market has been ignored. Having the sense to hire more disabled people to help in software and hardware design sooner would engaged that market much better.

Similarly, hiring or consulting people from a particular ethnic background to target advertising for that particular ethnic background allows for more effective marketing that can be better related to the targeted demographic.

This isn't rocket surgery, and I find it incredibly hard to believe that you find these concepts difficult to grasp. I'm more inclined to believe that you're being intentionally obtuse so you can misrepresent my arguments. That's really poor form, but it fits the fake appearance of righteous indignation you're putting on. Try reacting to the points I'm actually making instead of the bullshit you're making up and you won't be so (fake) offended.

What I bolded for you up there, that is a racist comment. You think black workers are better fit to sell or consult to black customers? And white workers are better fit to deal with white customers? You are describing segregation.

I am not being obtuse to your argument, I am using your exact logic to ask you questions which you cant really seem to answer. You don't have sound logic so it is being used against you. Attacking me personally will also not help you win an argument.

I'm not attacking you personally. Attacking you personally would be calling you names. I'm describing the dishonest and faulty ways in which you are building your argument against a misrepresented straw man you have constructed instead of actually addressing my points.

For example, aside from being morally reprehensible and intellectually dishonest to claim that I'm arguing for segregation when I am obviously not, you're also factually incorrect in your depiction of my argument.

Advertising that is perceived as genuine and in-touch with its targeted audience is generally more successful than advertising that is poorly researched and presented and out-of-touch with its target audience. It's the difference between advertising that is crass and exploitative versus being genuine and representative. Having members of the demographics that a firm wants to target for advertising on-staff to identify what will and won't work for advertising to that demographic is an obvious way to avoid having advertising come off as tone-deaf.

For example, it probably would have helped to have someone of Indian descent on-staff to prevent the debacle of dressing Ashton Kutcher up in brownface to sell chips. Your dishonest attempts to portray diversity hiring as segregation are transparent. This is a real reason - to tailor advertising successfully and make sure it isn't grossly offensive and super racist.

So let's cut the bullshit. Explain why, precisely, it is a bad thing to hire people who understand sets of life experiences that straight/white/male workers don't have. Explain why you call having an integrated workforce that can provide input from more than just a limited set of life experiences segregation. Explain how employing people who intimately understand the demographics businesses want to engage is segregation.

And do it without creating another straw man or pretending to be offended by your willful misrepresentations again.

Your entire argument is built on an assumption that all people of a particular race or ethnic group have the same "life experiences". So, following your logic a black person from Senegal and Detroit have the exact same "life experiences" since they're both black.

This guy doesn't understand his own argument.

 

[ApplePaladin]

SteveJobz[/url]":czcqd5k1]
Your entire argument is built on an assumption that all people of a particular race or ethnic group have the same "life experiences". So, following your logic a black person from Senegal and Detroit have the exact same "life experiences" since they're both black.

No, that's not true at all. It's based on the assumption that someone from outside of the favored in-group, straight/white/male, is more likely to have a different set of life experiences than a member of that same in-group. If my argument assumed that every person from outside of the in-group had the same life experiences then that would only be an argument for having exactly one diverse hire at any organization. That's a patently stupid interpretation of my argument.

You lot are really persistent with misrepresentation, I'll give you that.

 

[MaximusTech]

The problem so many here ignore is that pursuing diversity is a placeholder for the real value it adds. That is, the pursuit of greater innovation, of greater problem solving ability, of greater adaptability. More variety in how people think is an advantage for a company in the strategic landscape, and several hundred years of scientific research confirms that different groups of people have vastly different ways of seeing and understanding the world. This isn't to say "go hire a native Inuit because we ~need~ more vocabulary related to snow", but rather "let's get people who will be more resistant to group think in meetings, new perspectives for product design, and more background in a variety of topics reflecting our customer base".

 

[ApplePaladin]

Ser Dood[/url]":3s9ipid2]
You do not know the experiences any person on this planet has, regardless of their gender, race, age, or skin pigmentation. You are claiming that straight white males cannot relate to people who are different then them. I went ahead and bolded your own comment, again, to use against you. I also bolded up top higher, where you attacked me for simply challenging your claims.

This article is about diversity in tech, and you are arguing that diversity in advertising has anything to do with tech related job skills? WTF does being gay, black, white, straight, tranny, or Hispanic have to do with job skills related to working in IT?

It really seems like you have something against straight white males, btw.

Yes, I know I don't know other people's life experiences. That's my entire point. That's the point of hiring a diverse set of employees, so you can make use of a diverse set of life experiences instead of simply a set that is statistically likely to resemble your own. It's amazing that in working so goddamned hard to misrepresent what I'm saying you've finally looped around and stumbled on just the merest hint - the tippy-tip of the iceberg - of what I've been trying to elucidate for you. Congratulations. You finally started to almost kind of grasp that different people lead different lives and have different life experiences.

Now instead of trying to continually misrepresent my claims, spend a little time thinking about how bringing a group of people with different life experiences to a table for problem solving, product development, advertising, and other business needs can be more fruitful than simply having a group of people with more similar life experiences. Go on. I'll wait. Well, I won't, I'll go do other things and swing by later, but still.

Sidenote: You do realize that tech jobs include more than just IT, right? Maybe this goes back to the width and breadth of lived experiences thing, but IT is just a slice of the tech jobs pie. And advertising and product development are other slices of that same pie.

And no, I don't have anything against straight, white males. I'm just not convinced that we're so special and fragile that we need to be held up at the expense of everyone else all the time.

 

[SteveJobz]

itdraugr[/url]":42t5orsp]

SteveJobz[/url]":42t5orsp]
Your entire argument is built on an assumption that all people of a particular race or ethnic group have the same "life experiences". So, following your logic a black person from Senegal and Detroit have the exact same "life experiences" since they're both black.

No, that's not true at all. It's based on the assumption that someone from outside of the favored in-group, straight/white/male, is more likely to have a different set of life experiences than a member of that same in-group. If my argument assumed that every person from outside of the in-group had the same life experiences then that would only be an argument for having exactly one diverse hire at any organization. That's a patently stupid interpretation of my argument.

You lot are really persistent with misrepresentation, I'll give you that.

Problem is the straight/white/male in-group only exists in your mind, there are statistics that prove that white people are actually under represented in most of the biggest tech companies while Asians are overly represented. Wouldn't that mean that straight/Asian/male is the favored in-group?

With that being said, what exactly is your end game? If most of the qualified applicants are white and Asian then what are companies supposed to do? The logical conclusion is, they would have to hire less qualified candidates based on their racial or ethnic background. Therefore, you are advocating for racist policies that will disenfranchise highly qualified applicants for no other reason but their race, to fight some perceived injustice. In my book that makes you racist, so good day to you sir.

 

[MaximusTech]

Diversity is a strategic asset, the goal is increased odds of business success. The problem here is also that the techno-obsessed lack business sense.

 

[JustQuestions]

MaximusTech[/url]":1dccvijg] The problem here is also that the techno-obsessed lack business sense.

Hahaha. Trolling, I assume. Yeah, anybody who is "techno-obsessed" automatically "lacks business sense."

Sounds like the kind of bullshit a freshly minted MBA will spew after they glance at their tuition bill.

 

[ApplePaladin]

SteveJobz[/url]":23j1tell]

itdraugr[/url]":23j1tell]

SteveJobz[/url]":23j1tell]
Your entire argument is built on an assumption that all people of a particular race or ethnic group have the same "life experiences". So, following your logic a black person from Senegal and Detroit have the exact same "life experiences" since they're both black.

No, that's not true at all. It's based on the assumption that someone from outside of the favored in-group, straight/white/male, is more likely to have a different set of life experiences than a member of that same in-group. If my argument assumed that every person from outside of the in-group had the same life experiences then that would only be an argument for having exactly one diverse hire at any organization. That's a patently stupid interpretation of my argument.

You lot are really persistent with misrepresentation, I'll give you that.

Problem is the straight/white/male in-group only exists in your mind, there are statistics that prove that white people are actually under represented in most of the biggest tech companies while Asians are overly represented. Wouldn't that mean that straight/Asian/male is the favored in-group?

With that being said, what exactly is your end game? If most of the qualified applicants are white and Asian then what are companies supposed to do? The logical conclusion is, they would have to hire less qualified candidates based on their racial or ethnic background. Therefore, you are advocating for racist policies that will disenfranchise highly qualified applicants for no other reason but their race, to fight some perceived injustice. In my book that makes you racist, so good day to you sir.

When you claim "there are statistics that prove..." without actually providing any statistics that prove anything you sound like Trump making spurious #manypeoplearesaying claims. You're also conveniently ignoring the fact that only some Asian groups have made successful inroads into white collar jobs while others are being overrepresented in lower-paying jobs. Way to lump all members of a varied and diverse set of ethnic and cultural groups into one category. And you're the one calling me racist.

You're still not providing any evidence whatsoever that diverse hiring practices are granting jobs to less qualified candidates. It's the same claim that people like you have been making over and over, but you have zero evidence to support that claim. Come back with evidence instead of strawmen and completely unfounded personal insults.

 

[MaximusTech]

I think rather it is you who is the troll here, if anyone. The topic of the conference is business strategy in technology industry. There is a problem in understanding that simply requires that parties back off from debate club and realize that reality is different from fantasy, and business must operate in reality by developing intelligence about it from every angle available. About education well you're wrong, I studied math and computer science. I know many technology people who are geniuses at tech but utterly incompetent when it comes to social fields which seems to be the case for you, combined with defensive assault against the "other" in business.

 

[JustQuestions]

itdraugr[/url]":15yfpwr8]

Ser Dood[/url]":15yfpwr8]And no, I don't have anything against straight, white males. I'm just not convinced that we're so special and fragile that we need to be held up at the expense of everyone else all the time.

...Do you have any actual evidence that this is happening within the tech industry?

I can easily believe that white men are well represented compared to other demographics, of course.

I'd have a harder time believing that gay white men are particularly underrepresented compared to their overall prevalence within society. If anything I have always had the impression that gay men are well represented within tech, particularly within the software industry.

And to really get to the crux of it, I have a very hard time believing that "straight white men" are being "held up" within the tech industry at the "expense of everybody else." This particular claim would need some hefty backing.

Note that it's not enough to show that white people are statistically over represented. You would also have to show that this is because they're being hired over peers of other ethnic backgrounds, genders, or with differing sexual preferences, specifically because of these other factors.

Personally, I'm more inclined to view the lack of diversity in tech as a broader reflection of our shitty and unfair educational system and society, rather than because of hiring practices.

As an example, it's well known that women seem to be simply less interested in studying (as an example) pure mathematics and hard sciences. If you poll women and men in elementary school and high school and ask them how excited they are about physics, chemistry, and mathematical theorems...Well, the boys are going to be more excited.

This just keeps going on and on into undergraduate school, graduate school, and employment.

You can't hire people who aren't there to hire.

It goes the other way, too. Is it unfair that women want to become nurses more often than men? Why is that? Gender stereotype and cultural reinforcement, I would guess. It's not because men aren't capable of being nurses. It's because they don't want to be nurses as often as women do.

 

[JustQuestions]

MaximusTech[/url]":1bpr50nx]I think rather it is you who is the troll here, if anyone. The topic of the conference is business strategy in technology industry. There is a problem in understanding that simply requires that parties back off from debate club and realize that reality is different from fantasy, and business must operate in reality by developing intelligence about it from every angle available. About education well you're wrong, I studied math and computer science. I know many technology people who are geniuses at tech but utterly incompetent when it comes to social fields which seems to be the case for you, combined with defensive assault against the "other" in business.

I assume you also know that there are many "technology people" who are also prodigiously talented in social fields and business.

Since you supposedly "studied mathematics," you should know that it only takes one counter-example to disprove the theorem.

It's amazing to me that you're talking all pro-diversity like you're some visionary, and yet you're stereotyping "technology people," as if that's even a thing.

 

[SteveJobz]

itdraugr[/url]":1durlfvj]

SteveJobz[/url]":1durlfvj]

itdraugr[/url]":1durlfvj]

SteveJobz[/url]":1durlfvj]
Your entire argument is built on an assumption that all people of a particular race or ethnic group have the same "life experiences". So, following your logic a black person from Senegal and Detroit have the exact same "life experiences" since they're both black.

No, that's not true at all. It's based on the assumption that someone from outside of the favored in-group, straight/white/male, is more likely to have a different set of life experiences than a member of that same in-group. If my argument assumed that every person from outside of the in-group had the same life experiences then that would only be an argument for having exactly one diverse hire at any organization. That's a patently stupid interpretation of my argument.

You lot are really persistent with misrepresentation, I'll give you that.

Problem is the straight/white/male in-group only exists in your mind, there are statistics that prove that white people are actually under represented in most of the biggest tech companies while Asians are overly represented. Wouldn't that mean that straight/Asian/male is the favored in-group?

With that being said, what exactly is your end game? If most of the qualified applicants are white and Asian then what are companies supposed to do? The logical conclusion is, they would have to hire less qualified candidates based on their racial or ethnic background. Therefore, you are advocating for racist policies that will disenfranchise highly qualified applicants for no other reason but their race, to fight some perceived injustice. In my book that makes you racist, so good day to you sir.

When you claim "there are statistics that prove..." without actually providing any statistics that prove anything you sound like Trump making spurious #manypeoplearesaying claims. You're also conveniently ignoring the fact that only some Asian groups have made successful inroads into white collar jobs while others are being overrepresented in lower-paying jobs. Way to lump all members of a varied and diverse set of ethnic and cultural groups into one category. And you're the one calling me racist.

You're still not providing any evidence whatsoever that diverse hiring practices are granting jobs to less qualified candidates. It's the same claim that people like you have been making over and over, but you have zero evidence to support that claim. Come back with evidence instead of strawmen and completely unfounded personal insults.

United States: 61% white (not hispanic or latino)
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00

Google: 59% white
https://www.google.com/diversity/

Apple: 56% white
http://www.apple.com/diversity/

Microsoft: 59% white
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversi ... earch=true

Facebook: 55% white
http://www.recode.net/2015/6/25/1156389 ... -less-male

Twitter: 59% white
https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building- ... e-proud-of

 

[MaximusTech]

Spoken like someone who barely passed real analysis. In math proofs maybe, but in real survey methodology theory is much more complex, and one counter example is inadequate. What matters is the overall performance of the theory, how well it really fits the data collected, and if there is a convincing causal characteristic. Ex. Isolation as explanation for increased depression among the rich, protestant, and urban groups individually then grouped by isolation and lack of larger social belonging. And to the contrary, I don't claim to be visionary - my points are so old in fact that they are standard practice. It is simply bringing them to the attention of the kids here who don't know about anything except a niche.

 

[JustQuestions]

MaximusTech[/url]":3v4zjjhn]Spoken like someone who barely passed real analysis

OK. So you're an undergrad.

Believe me, if taking a couple analysis classes is your claim to fame, you might find yourself outmoded by a substantial amount here on Ars.

As a demographic, we're pretty literate...And if you went to a decent school, analysis is an intro course...

MaximusTech[/url]":3v4zjjhn]In math proofs maybe, but in real survey methodology theory is much more complex, and one counter example is inadequate.

But you're not discussing a survey or anything of the sort. You just stated that "techno people" lack "business sense," which is of course an absurd statement, since many of the most successful businessmen throughout history were also "techno people."

 

[MaximusTech]

It's not, you're assuming way too much. My point is communication not to beat you about the head and shoulders with jargon. My specialty is actually statistical analysis and operations research. I think you'll have to look that up. A survey is any collection of structured data, not questionnaires; again look it up. My points above were regarding the participants in this thread, who display zero comprehension of more complex dynamics than a CPU, which isn't that complicated compared to human capital applied to business operations. I know much more than just undergraduate, but that isn't the point here - you keep bringing out these tangential arguments in effort to dismiss my input, but you need instead to understand it to benefit.

 

[JustQuestions]

MaximusTech[/url]":1weccf4y]It's not, you're assuming way too much.

The irony.

MaximusTech[/url]":1weccf4y]My specialty is actually statistical analysis and operations research.

Cool. My specialty is discrete mathematics, the father of both of those fields.

edit: Actually, my specialty is not discrete mathematics, but is far more specific than that...Like any specialty...It was a tongue in cheek response to you "specializing" in statistics and OR, when the reality is that both of those fields are so ridiculously huge that nobody "specializes in" them. You specialize within them.

If you want to know why I assumed you're an undergrad, it's your continuous blabbering about the courses you have taken, how others would "probably fail" the courses you have taken, your own credentials and "specialties," and the assumption that people around here wouldn't understand them or your jargon.

MaximusTech[/url]":1weccf4y]I think you'll have to look that up.

...Right

MaximusTech[/url]":1weccf4y] My points above were regarding the participants in this thread, who display zero comprehension of more complex dynamics than a CPU, which isn't that complicated compared to human capital applied to business operations. I know much more than just undergraduate, but that isn't the point here - you keep bringing out these tangential arguments in effort to dismiss my input, but you need instead to understand it to benefit.

Your "input" was to join in at page 4 and declare that "technology people" lack "business sense."

Which, in a thread about diversity and harmful stereotypes, is very ironic.

 

[.劉煒]

SteveJobz[/url]":1ze049tr]
United States: 61% white (not hispanic or latino)
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00

Google: 59% white
https://www.google.com/diversity/

Apple: 56% white
http://www.apple.com/diversity/

Microsoft: 59% white
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversi ... earch=true

Facebook: 55% white
http://www.recode.net/2015/6/25/1156389 ... -less-male

Twitter: 59% white
https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building- ... e-proud-of

You mean, increasing any one group decreases the percentage of all other groups? Say it ain't so!

 

[SteveJobz]

.劉煒[/url]":28xgj311]

SteveJobz[/url]":28xgj311]
United States: 61% white (not hispanic or latino)
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00

Google: 59% white
https://www.google.com/diversity/

Apple: 56% white
http://www.apple.com/diversity/

Microsoft: 59% white
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversi ... earch=true

Facebook: 55% white
http://www.recode.net/2015/6/25/1156389 ... -less-male

Twitter: 59% white
https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building- ... e-proud-of

You mean, increasing any one group decreases the percentage of all other groups? Say it ain't so!

Yup, so essentially if racists like itdraugr have their way, companies will fire white and Asian employees, because they were unlucky enough to be born with inadequate skin pigmentation. But I'm sure they will understand that they're making a sacrifice for the greater good of SJW-approved diversity.

 

[ApplePaladin]

SteveJobz[/url]":ua6vjrkf]

itdraugr[/url]":ua6vjrkf]

SteveJobz[/url]":ua6vjrkf]

itdraugr[/url]":ua6vjrkf]

SteveJobz[/url]":ua6vjrkf]
Your entire argument is built on an assumption that all people of a particular race or ethnic group have the same "life experiences". So, following your logic a black person from Senegal and Detroit have the exact same "life experiences" since they're both black.

No, that's not true at all. It's based on the assumption that someone from outside of the favored in-group, straight/white/male, is more likely to have a different set of life experiences than a member of that same in-group. If my argument assumed that every person from outside of the in-group had the same life experiences then that would only be an argument for having exactly one diverse hire at any organization. That's a patently stupid interpretation of my argument.

You lot are really persistent with misrepresentation, I'll give you that.

Problem is the straight/white/male in-group only exists in your mind, there are statistics that prove that white people are actually under represented in most of the biggest tech companies while Asians are overly represented. Wouldn't that mean that straight/Asian/male is the favored in-group?

With that being said, what exactly is your end game? If most of the qualified applicants are white and Asian then what are companies supposed to do? The logical conclusion is, they would have to hire less qualified candidates based on their racial or ethnic background. Therefore, you are advocating for racist policies that will disenfranchise highly qualified applicants for no other reason but their race, to fight some perceived injustice. In my book that makes you racist, so good day to you sir.

When you claim "there are statistics that prove..." without actually providing any statistics that prove anything you sound like Trump making spurious #manypeoplearesaying claims. You're also conveniently ignoring the fact that only some Asian groups have made successful inroads into white collar jobs while others are being overrepresented in lower-paying jobs. Way to lump all members of a varied and diverse set of ethnic and cultural groups into one category. And you're the one calling me racist.

You're still not providing any evidence whatsoever that diverse hiring practices are granting jobs to less qualified candidates. It's the same claim that people like you have been making over and over, but you have zero evidence to support that claim. Come back with evidence instead of strawmen and completely unfounded personal insults.

United States: 61% white (not hispanic or latino)
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00

Google: 59% white
https://www.google.com/diversity/

Apple: 56% white
http://www.apple.com/diversity/

Microsoft: 59% white
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversi ... earch=true

Facebook: 55% white
http://www.recode.net/2015/6/25/1156389 ... -less-male

Twitter: 59% white
https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building- ... e-proud-of

Congratulations, you found an extremely small number of companies that have decent representation among their employees.

That's not what I asked for.

You're still not providing any evidence whatsoever that diverse hiring practices are granting jobs to less qualified candidates. It's the same claim that people like you have been making over and over, but you have zero evidence to support that claim. Come back with evidence instead of strawmen and completely unfounded personal insults.

 

[JustQuestions]

itdraugr[/url]":gjt2neut]Congratulations, you found an extremely small number of companies that have decent representation among their employees.

That's not what I asked for.

Holy shit, you took his bait, hook line and sinker.

Those companies do not show that they have decent representation. They merely show that they have slightly less white people than there exist as the national average. So what? How is that decent?

How does that say anything at all about diversity?

Unless your definition of "diversity" is so completely and utterly superficial and one-dimensional that the only thing you value is having less white people around, then what's the point of diversity at all?

And by the way, those companies are basically all 60% white and 33% asian. Yeah, really diverse!

itdraugr[/url]":gjt2neut]You're still not providing any evidence whatsoever that diverse hiring practices are granting jobs to less qualified candidates. It's the same claim that people like you have been making over and over, but you have zero evidence to support that claim. Come back with evidence instead of strawmen and completely unfounded personal insults.

You're the only one who made this claim, except you're making it in the reverse.

Basically, you are saying that if there are a lot of white people in a company, that it's automatically indicative of preferential hiring for the white people.

The reality is a lot more dull. There's just not a lot of people besides Whites and Asians who are pursuing careers in tech. And, the majority of them are men.

That's reality. If you want to change reality, then that starts with children and their education, not hiring practices.

 

[ApplePaladin]

JustQuestions[/url]":1wzgbdgn]

itdraugr[/url]":1wzgbdgn]

Ser Dood[/url]":1wzgbdgn]And no, I don't have anything against straight, white males. I'm just not convinced that we're so special and fragile that we need to be held up at the expense of everyone else all the time.

...Do you have any actual evidence that this is happening within the tech industry?

I can easily believe that white men are well represented compared to other demographics, of course.

I'd have a harder time believing that gay white men are particularly underrepresented compared to their overall prevalence within society. If anything I have always had the impression that gay men are well represented within tech, particularly within the software industry.

And to really get to the crux of it, I have a very hard time believing that "straight white men" are being "held up" within the tech industry at the "expense of everybody else." This particular claim would need some hefty backing.

Note that it's not enough to show that white people are statistically over represented. You would also have to show that this is because they're being hired over peers of other ethnic backgrounds, genders, or with differing sexual preferences, specifically because of these other factors.

Personally, I'm more inclined to view the lack of diversity in tech as a broader reflection of our shitty and unfair educational system and society, rather than because of hiring practices.

As an example, it's well known that women seem to be simply less interested in studying (as an example) pure mathematics and hard sciences. If you poll women and men in elementary school and high school and ask them how excited they are about physics, chemistry, and mathematical theorems...Well, the boys are going to be more excited.

This just keeps going on and on into undergraduate school, graduate school, and employment.

You can't hire people who aren't there to hire.

It goes the other way, too. Is it unfair that women want to become nurses more often than men? Why is that? Gender stereotype and cultural reinforcement, I would guess. It's not because men aren't capable of being nurses. It's because they don't want to be nurses as often as women do.

JQ, you're right that I'm generalizing society-wide problems down to the tech industry specifically. But even assuming the claim that the tech industry isn't as bad about representation and systematic racism and sexism as the rest of society is true, that doesn't mean the tech industry is perfect or couldn't benefit from more diversity.

There is an immense support structure for straight, white men throughout our society - including in the tech industry. As I explained in earlier posts, it is much easier for straight, white men to take advantage of informal social networks that are heavily populated by straight, white men to get access and favorable treatment from CEO's, CIO's, CTO's, HR directors, and hiring directors, who are also largely straight, white men.

I can't speak to what your impressions are of hiring practices, but that's anecdotal at best. When the EEOC notices that the tech industry is mostly - aside from a handful of outliers - dominated by white and Asian men, that's a problem. Granted, it's a problem that has a lot of roots, and I'm aware that diverse hiring requires diverse candidate pools, and that diverse candidate pools need to be fed by a diverse graduate pool, which means more diversity in academia, which means we as a society need to encourage STEM in a much wider range of kids. I understand all of that, and frankly I would think that at Ars of all places we could take that as a given in discussions like these.

Point of disagreement: young girls typically show as much enthusiasm for STEM as boys in elementary and going into middle school. It's the socialization that girls go through in middle school, both in-school from teachers and peers and out of school from friends and family, that discourages them from continuing to show enthusiasm for STEM. Socialization that reinforces baseless gender stereotypes is the problem, and as long as we keep teaching girls and boys that they're supposed to like different things for no good reason, we'll keep creating more generations of girls who get turned off of STEM and boys who are discouraged from being the kind of nurturing, caring people who become nurses instead of doctors.

Also, thanks for having real, honest questions. It's a refreshing change of pace to engage with someone who wants to express disagreement and pursue discussion in good faith.

 

[MaximusTech]

People in this thread need to read a lot more, an comment less. Just-idiot, you missed my earliest post and mischaracterized all of my efforts here. Go away.

 

[ApplePaladin]

JustQuestions[/url]":13ko63cs]

itdraugr[/url]":13ko63cs]Congratulations, you found an extremely small number of companies that have decent representation among their employees.

That's not what I asked for.

Holy shit, you took his bait, hook line and sinker.

Those companies do not show that they have decent representation. They merely show that they have slightly less white people than there exist as the national average. So what? How is that decent?

How does that say anything at all about diversity?

Unless your definition of "diversity" is so completely and utterly superficial and one-dimensional that the only thing you value is having less white people around, then what's the point of diversity at all?

And by the way, those companies are basically all 60% white and 33% asian. Yeah, really diverse!

itdraugr[/url]":13ko63cs]You're still not providing any evidence whatsoever that diverse hiring practices are granting jobs to less qualified candidates. It's the same claim that people like you have been making over and over, but you have zero evidence to support that claim. Come back with evidence instead of strawmen and completely unfounded personal insults.

You're the only one who made this claim, except you're making it in the reverse.

Basically, you are saying that if there are a lot of white people in a company, that it's automatically indicative of preferential hiring for the white people.

The reality is a lot more dull. There's just not a lot of people besides Whites and Asians who are pursuing careers in tech. And, the majority of them are men.

That's reality. If you want to change reality, then that starts with children and their education, not hiring practices.

Yes, JQ, that would be why I used the word decent and not the word exemplary. That's why I wasn't waving the "mission accomplished" banner and celebrating the end to our diversity woes.

It's also why I specified that those are an extremely small number of companies. We all know that Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter don't represent the entirety of the tech industry.

Again, I agree that this is a problem with solutions at every level. Obviously we need a larger pool of candidates, which means we need better education opportunities and we need to fix socialization problems that exclude women and people of color from STEM interests at an early age.

But for fuck's sake, are we really supposed to believe that it's impossible for Google to find more qualified black people than simply 1% of its tech workforce? This is the company that's basically the end-all, be-all for finding shit. And we're supposed to buy that they can't get qualified black people for even 1% of their leadership?

Come on. There's scarcity and then there's just not looking hard enough.

 

[sylper]

I'll ask my usual question among the straight white male bashing.

Has there ever been any study showing a causative link between enforced diversity and better corporate outcomes?

 

[JustQuestions]

itdraugr[/url]":gev09kem]But for fuck's sake, are we really supposed to believe that it's impossible for Google to find more qualified black people than simply 1% of its tech workforce? This is the company that's basically the end-all, be-all for finding shit. And we're supposed to buy that they can't get qualified black people for even 1% of their leadership?

Is this really that hard to believe? Google is an elite tech company, even when compared to the likes of Microsoft and Apple. Google might be considered the elite, although I have heard it's also nearly impossible to get a job at Facebook.

Let's think about this logically. How talented/skilled/smart/knowledgeable do you have to be to work at Google?

Of course a lot of these traits can't be measured precisely, but we can get a vague idea.

Before we get into that, let's just think about an "average" career software engineer. Not one who works at Google, just an average one, period. Now, the word "average" can be kind of meaningless when talking about people, but let's just ride it out. This average software engineer will have a degree in computer science. They will be probably have a life-long cultivated interest in science, mathematics, and computers. They will be highly intelligent compared to most of their peers over the course of their life. In mid career they will probably be earning upwards of a 6-figure salary or even a healthy amount more than that depending on where they live and what kind of responsibilities they are taking on.

Most parents would be proud to produce even an "average" software engineer. And they should be.

Now, what about the kind of software engineers that work at a place like Google? You're talking about elites. People who often excel to the point of regional or even national recognition at various points in their lives. People who crush their classes at ivy league institutions while making novel contributions. Or the kind of people who are just freakishly smart. Rare people. Rare even among the type of person who has been building up to be something like a software engineer for their entire life.

How many AAs are there majoring in CS at top tier schools? Not many. A quick search showed that Stanford has something like an average of 10 African American CS majors per year. 10. That's it.

So, how's that for an applicant pool? Even with regards to Ivy league applicants, Google does not hire 1 out of 10 people. Not even close. Google gets millions of applications. So, statistics would say that even from Stanford, it's incredibly unlikely that Google would hire any of their African American CS graduates.

I don't know. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that given the current state of affairs, that not many new hires at Google are going to be African American.