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A comment on Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts. Parent comment

Re:Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “ille... by macintux on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:01AM (#16502578)
Good luck defining and hiring purely on merit. Good luck separating merit from unconscious biases related to where you've seen merit previously. And typically most of what you've seen previously is people like you.

I've seen plenty of excellent computer engineers who started out as physics majors, or astronomers, or music majors...but they were universally white men (mostly because I've only ever been around white men in this business).

If a black woman came to me with a background in East Asian linguistics, would I naturally associate her with the success stories I've seen, or would I think she's unqualified and needs to get more experience elsewhere?

I suspect the latter.

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Re:Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “ille... by jnbiche on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:22PM (#16507656)
> If a black woman came to me with a background in East Asian linguistics, would I naturally associate her with the success stories I've seen, or would I think she's unqualified and needs to get more experience elsewhere? > I suspect the latter.

Really? And you would not think that of a white candidate?

Frankly, I would be intrigued by anyone with a background in East Asian linguistics who taught themselves programming, and would be very careful not to quickly discount them.

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