At the risk of somewhat generalizing, a disability puts a person at disadvantage. Just being a women isn't a disadvantage.

Regarding your employer being able to potentially firing you, the point isn't that they can fire you but that hiring you based on a diversity program for women could have excluded a more qualified man (not saying that you could not be the most qualified candidate). Firing you later doesn't fix the missed opportunity for that man or the employer.

From what you've said it is obvious that there is some disadvantage to being a women. There is no such thing as the mythical better qualified man. ALL the people interviewed are qualified, they can ALL do the job. Progressive companies do not want the same old same old weird white male dominated culture. They want to attract people with different life experiences, different perspectives, they need diversity. Not a nice to have, need. If they want to attract the best engineer in the world ever and she looks into their office and sees a whole load of middle aged white men she will think 'Nope I don't fit in here'. She was more important for innovative, disruptive company than all those dudes she spied and we lost her because we couldn't manage our hiring process properly. Ugh, what is so hard to understand here??? Diverse is better. There is no lowering of the bar, get over yourselves!

    ALL the people interviewed are qualified, they can ALL do the job

I've interviewed ~100 people at a top tech company, and I really don't think this is the case: the best candidates are much better than the worst ones, even in on-site interviews. The signal isn't perfect, but it's pretty strong.

I don't think the grandparent quite expressed themselves clearly. If there is a group of applicants who happen to be equally qualified, but one type of person in that group is more likely to actually get hired - it's not reasonable to say that hiring a different type of person is taking an opportunity away from a member of the more popular type of person. A black woman getting hired isn't "taking a job away" from a white man. She's qualified, she gets the job.

> based on a diversity program for women could have excluded a more qualified man

In the case of my employer, all the qualified men who might want the job have already applied for it. The diversity program came about because they are actually struggling to find enough qualified candidates, even with generous pay and benefits. The company. No one has missed an opportunity because of me. The company was majority white and male, and they didn't have enough people, so they decided to tap into the vast universe of people who aren't white or male. In my opinion, that's the best possible reason for having a diversity program.

My point is simple. A person should be hired based on their skills/qualifications and potential ability to do the role (based on the experience/interview) and that should be the main and overriding criteria.

Of course, you can have hypothetical scenarios e.g. you have two candidates who are equally qualified and practically match neck to neck and you can only hire one and you have a lack of diversity in your company, sure, you can hire the person who brings more diversity.

However, if you have, say, white male person who is more qualified than, say a non-white female person, and those are your top two picks, then you should choose the former because it is about being most qualified for the role. If the non-white female is most qualified, than she should be chosen. I'm simply advocating meritocracy.

You mentioned that "The diversity program came about because they are actually struggling to find enough qualified candidates" and "he company was majority white and male, and they didn't have enough people, so they decided to tap into the vast universe of people who aren't white or male". I don't understand the first part - were they excluding non-white/non-male people from applying initially? Isn't that unlawful? Why didn't the "vast universe of people who aren't white or male" didn't apply initially and had to be brought in via diversity program?

What makes a person qualified? Experience, usually. If you find that all the qualified - and therefore experienced - people available are white and male, it shows that only white and male people have been able to get experience. That's not necessarily evidence of discrimination, but it still becomes a problem when you run out of experienced/qualified white men who want jobs, as in the case of my company.

They weren't excluding women or minorities, they just weren't finding any qualified ones. Now they are running short of people who are qualified of any color and gender. White men have already had lots of opportunities to get experience, so now they are giving those opportunities to women and minorities explicitly. At some point in the future they'll be able to reap the results of having more experienced people available of whatever gender or color.

Many companies think that it's not their responsibility to train, that the world is full of qualified people who are ready to step in and do whatever job whenever they're needed. It's not working out in the technology sector though. Some companies are getting the message that they have to take people who don't have experience, and give it to them until they are as qualified as they need to be.

In the past it was simply easier for white, male people to get experience, and that's why many companies now find that it's easier to find qualified, experienced white men to fill jobs. Except when it's not. Then they start diversity programs.

It is not just experience that makes a person qualified. A brilliant greenhorn who has the knowledge but not necessarily years of experience is also qualified. Of course an employer may demand not only knowledge but also experience in which case yes, both are required. But in general, qualified does not universally mean experienced.

Based on you wrote now, I found the piece I was unable to understand. What you are saying is that: they were not able to get anybody (white males or otherwise) so they invested in a diversity programme which results in more non-white/non-male candidates getting experience and skills and increased the overall job pool of available candidates. If that understanding is correct and the goal is to increase the overall pool of qualified candidates, then why a diversity programme? Why not a general internship programme where the most bright of _inexperienced_ candidates are chosen irrespective of their color/gender? Note the stress on inexperience since your argument is based on lack of experience for non-white/non-male population. That takes care of:

1. Companies' responsibility to train 2. Increases the overall pool of candidates 3. Ensures that the brightest are getting into the pool i.e. merit rules instead of skin color/gender (which means that if a non-white/non-male person is the brightest, they get the experience and join the pool)

> If that understanding is correct and the goal is to increase the overall pool of qualified candidates, then why a diversity programme? Why not a general internship programme where the most bright of _inexperienced_ candidates are chosen irrespective of their color/gender?

They have such a program as well, which has been in place much longer than the diversity program. With no specific requirements to pick people who aren't white and male, they ended up getting mostly white males.

> At the risk of somewhat generalizing, a disability puts a person at disadvantage.

It depends on the disability, but still disable people can do things that normal people cannot do. Everybody has skills companies can use, regardless their disability or race or gender.

A blind person wont seem like a good fit for a programming position, but if they prove they can program (as experience in their CV or having passed a test like the rest of candidates) they should be consider as the rest of candidates without any prejudice. And I am sure that blind person has put more effort to achieve the same goals as a non disable candidate and it might be a positive point to hire him as that blind person is showing one more skill than others.

But we shouldn't hire him because he/she is blind but because of his/her skills.

Agreed and I understand that disability is not universally disadvantageous - thats why I said I was generalizing. E.g. a blind person proficient in Braille would actually be great candidate for reviewing production quality of Braille books.

Would it be fine if the diversity program was made into national policy, so that every profession with less than 40% women and 40% men are encouraged to have a affirmative action plan to address it. In particular, government hiring policy should lead by example.

I find that if a decision on morality is made into a general rule, they are much easier to assert if they are good or bad. A gender neutral diversity program on a national level would radically change the discussion, and it would be interesting to see if the proponents of diversity programs would still support it.

I see several problems:

1) what happen if less than 40% want to be in the profession? Are you going to force them to join non-desire careers?

2) does it apply also to bad things? like for example the ratio of men in jail is higher, does it mean we are putting in jail wrong people and leaving women out that should be in jail?

3) will it apply to different minorities? like for example would short people be more selected to play basketball?

1) affirmative action don't force anyone. It could mean that health care and education with several professions with over 90% gender segregation would have to stop all hire of that gender, or hire anyone of the minority gender that show up at the door. The list of gender ration in different professions are publish here in Sweden, so it would be very easy to see where the biggest effect would be (IT, with a about 70-30 ratio is very average profession in regard to gender segregation).

2) & 3), when making law, rules tries to become more general but only to a point. Where that point is is naturally up to debate, but should match the intention of the rule maker. If we want to eliminate gender segregation in the work place, then it naturally ends with gender. If the idea is to eliminate segregation in general then more classification of groups would have to be included.

But the big question I wanted to ask is if we take gender based affirmative action, would that explicit form of action be consider moral when made into a general rule rather than applied locally by specific companies. If it is not, then why is it moral when done in smaller scale.

> I wanted to ask is if we take gender based affirmative action, would that explicit form of action be consider moral when made into a general rule rather than applied locally by specific companies. If it is not, then why is it moral when done in smaller scale.

I see your point now. That is such a good question. But I think in US as in other countries there are laws for gender diversity, like you have to pay more taxes if you don't have gender diversity. And some countries have positive discrimination policies that give money to company who hire minorities.

can you give some link to such law in USA?

> what happen if less than 40% want to be in the profession? Are you going to force them to join non-desire careers?

"Nah, we all know CS is the best, and the only logical possibility is that women are being discouraged to do it, because if I chose an IT career, it's obviously the correct choice of profession." -- Lots of people here.

Would you think it unreasonable then for an able-bodied male who might be hired at the dismantling of such a program because the spot opens up to say he "doesn't give a " if that change of circumstance gave him a similar career advantage, and he intended to work hard once accepted to fill the shoes of the role?

I would expect anyone who needs a job to accept any job they get offered if it's a job they want.

Can you describe the diversity program? I mean was it a program to source candidates from different places and make them enter the normal hiring pipeline, or was something like there are 1% positions reserved for minorities and you fill one?

The normal hiring process goes like this - apply -> short interview -> short (a few weeks) trial period, paid -> a second interview -> hired. It's a good process that leads to quality hires, but it's also a very slow one because not everyone can take a few weeks out of their life for a job trial, if they're currently employed.

The diversity program is an invitation for women, minorities, and disabled people to do an internship. The goal of the internship is to learn, not necessarily to demonstrate ability to do the job. It is paid. It lasts 4-6 months. Interns are invited to go through the normal hiring process afterwards, with the benefit of some experience on the job. There are no full time jobs reserved for any particular type of person. If they choose not to stay with the company, they still get a genuinely useful resume item out of it, moreso than they'd get from a 2 week trial. It can also be used for school credit. Some people might come back and apply again after they finish school.

Around a hundred people go through the normal trial process each year, and it's currently not enough. That's why the diversity program was launched, just to get more people into the pipeline. Only about 8 interns go through the program each year, because so far it's a small experiment, but it's working out so far. A few interns have been hired full time, and a couple of people who couldn't hack it got to at least have a taste of what it's like.

I second your sentiment. Even assuming we live in a perfect world were no-one is biased and hiring is perfectly fair based on skills etc, things like commuting time and accessibility of living spaces restricts what job people with impaired mobility can actually accept and as result they compete in a smaller job market.

This applies to the majority of protected categories one way or another, but people forget it's not "just because people are biased" - while many sadly are, at an explicit or implicit level, even if they weren't there are good reason to keep certain quotas around.

Edit: enlighten me naysayers, why protecting special categories with objective limitations a priory even in absence of cultural bias would be so bad?