I actually have constant fears about this, I always wonder because of programs like this if I am good enough or am I just a diversity hire.

The discrimination problem is very real, and our current solution is just a hack which works as long as you agree that perfect is the enemy of good. The weird thing about this particular situation is most pro and anti positive-discrimination comments are made by idealists who should be more or less perfectionists in their subject by definition. One side complains about society not being perfect and the other complains that the solution to fixing it is not perfect.

Meanwhile normal people deal with more practical problems like yours.

> due to systemic discrimination in hiring.

It's ridiculous how many times I see this dropped out of nowhere in this thread without any sources or proof.

This is a very contentious statement on a two sided issue.

It is similar to proclaiming that minimum wage increases will always lower job opportunities without any proof.

The proof is probably too obvious so nobody bothers to explain it to you. I will make an attempt.

At the current rate of $X / hour, there are a number of economically viable jobs (jobs where the employer considers it valuable to hire someone instead of doing the job themselves or doing without, because they are worth at least $Y / hour to the employer, with Y > X).

At an increased rate of $Z / hour, Z > X, some of those jobs are no longer economically viable - they only generate $Y / hour, with Z > Y > X; while they were viable at $X / hour, they are no longer viable at $Z / hour so they disappear. For an obvious example, making the minimum wage $1000 / hour would destroy the viability of most jobs.

This proof assumes, of course, that nothing else changes - the government simply mandates "the minimum wage will change from $X / hour to $Z / hour" and doesn't add other changes like "all taxes are halved" or "all employers get free Bahamas holidays". With that caveat, also known as "ceteris paribus", the proof is (as I said) obvious.

How does a minimum wage argument relate to systemic discrimination? Inject more persons into a workforce increases supply and depresses wages, it doesn't inflate hourly costs.

It doesn't. He just wanted to argue about minimum wage lol

>systematic discrimination in hiring

That's a funny term for merit-based.

I have trouble believing only white men can come up with enough merit to be hired for a normal entry level job.

Without digging too deep into the rest of this issue, do you consider Asian men white? Or is the situation a little more complicated than white men only choosing their own?

Just to clarify, my comment is not meant to defend poor hiring practices in any way, I'm very much in favor of agressive efforts to improve diversity numbers (including heavy affirmative action). I just get bothered by the use of the term "white" to refer to groups with heavy Asian representation; these groups have vastly different experiences than whites do, and lumping them all together just because they're present in tech and tend to be financially successful is a dangerous oversimplification. The systematic problems go much deeper than people just hiring people that look like they do, if that was the whole problem we'd have achieved parity a long time ago.

As a non-white man, please show me where I can find these normal entry level jobs that pay six-figures out of college. Please, I have student loans and my mother is sick.

I would look in the same places as white men look for these jobs. I am in a country where six figure salaries aren't the norm for Engineers.

...what?

I believe he was agreeing with your point.

Merit, most of time has nothing to do with one ends up, especially in the US.

Are companies more interested in messing with minorities than they are in maximizing profits? Someone should tell the shareholders.

I think that if you have skills you will find something. if you don't have them then it might be more difficult than for men. Why do you think women cannot find ANY job in tech because of the systematic discrimination? I don't think everybody in the world is like that (maybe few as for everything in life)

Would you rather get a job on the merits at an insurance agency's IT department, or be a diversity hire at Google?

It's nice to say "I'd prefer to be hired at Google on my merits", but few individuals from disadvantaged groups go into job seeking expecting that ideal situation to occur, and they're forced to make suboptimal tradeoffs just because they're disadvantaged.

I don't like big companies, I prefer startups. I am happier.

I once left a company because of the internal culture, they were not listening to the people from other countries. I didn't agree with the culture and left telling them the reason. After me more people followed. I have also left other things for similar reasons, even when everybody were telling i was doing a mistake. I just prefer to be somewhere I am happy even if it involves less money or status.

"not to get the opportunity at all due to systemic discrimination in hiring" - this is not reality but only your imagination.

Your denial of reality is noted. Systemic discrimination against women in hiring has been exhaustively documented and studied, including in the tech industry.

I think you should cite references. It will make your point stronger and I want to read them!

I don't have a pile of references at hand since this isn't my area of study, but here's what I was able to google up:

1. http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Bertrand&Mullainathan.pdf This study was primarily aimed at identifying the impact of race, but incidentally showed that resumes with females names received a lower number of callbacks, in addition to the race based effect.

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970474/ "Without provision of information about candidates other than their appearance, men are twice more likely to be hired for a mathematical task than women."

3. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract "Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant."

4. http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilrreview/vol65/iss1/5... "the authors show that [anonymous application procedure] increased the chances of both women and individuals of non-Western origin of advancing to the interview stage."

5. http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903 Anonymization in orchestra additions (blind screening) led to women advancing out of preliminary rounds 50% more often.

#1: I don't see any support for your summary. It says instead "Interestingly, females in sales jobs appear to receive more callbacks than males; however, this (reverse) gender gap is statistically insignificant and economically much smaller than any of the racial gaps discussed above."

I can easily dig up studies showing opposite results:

"Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. " http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract

"We found that the public servants engaged in positive (not negative) discrimination towards female and minority candidates: • Participants were 2.9% more likely to shortlist female candidates and 3.2% less likely to shortlist male applicants when they were identifiable, compared with when they were de-identified." https://pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/beta-unc...

"Teaching accreditation exams reveal grading biases favor women in male-dominated disciplines in France" http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/474

Those studies have tiny sample sizes, and aren't even in the tech industry.

I was making a counterpoint to the parent post. Note the links there, nothing much to do with tech. And you're completely wrong about sample sizes:

"Comparisons of oral non–gender-blind tests with written gender-blind tests for about 100,000 individuals "

"Over 2,100 public servants"

"validation studies were conducted on 873 tenure-track faculty"

But consider http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

I would like to see a similar study done in IT, though I suspect the outcome will be similar.

I personally would like to have more women in tech, but it seems implausible that the current dearth is because of any systemic discrimination against women.

I wonder why people are claiming that this is a reason for the problem?

So you lack basic reading skills. I quote "not to get the opportunity at all due to systemic discrimination in hiring", you read "systemic discrimination in hiring". Apparently, you lost "not to get the opportunity at all" and "due to". Don't you see that?