This is a good point, you should expect your diversity numbers to match locally, to local numbers, not some global number or target. If you are creating an unreasonable target, you are only reintroducing bias into the process. Sounds like what OPs company is doing.

So you employ 50 % women? If not, what’s your metric for measuring the local workforce?

Yes. Fully half of the developers at my current employer are women. More than half were women at my previous employer (a large multinational corp). Again, I'm only talking about developers, not the entire company, as the developer pool is the only place I have visibility into.

'we just hire the best applicants for the job' - this irks me everytime I hear it because it is obvious and hard to argue with. Everyone wants to hire the best applicants. The problem to me is that the applicant pool doesn't always represent the best, and is subject to so many variables (time of year, job description language, company reputation, etc.)

I think some of those variables can be tweaked to encourage more e.g. women to apply. I know that women (and probably other minorities) are less likely to apply for a job they don't feel qualified for than men. I've noticed some JD's stating to apply anyway -- I always appreciate that gesture.

The idea that hiring the best person for a position is "indefensible" is absurd. Civilization is built on putting competent people in charge of important resources. This way, good decisions get made. You can't just arbitrarily mix and match people to achieve some utopian ideal without seriously degrading the overall quality of resource allocation decisions that society makes. Fairness is an excellent goal. If you do it right, fairness is compatible with meritocracy.

I misused the word -- it should actually be the opposite, 'defensible.' I will edit my original post.

What I mean is that it can be a copout that hiring managers use and is hard to argue with. Almost everyone will agree that hiring the best for the job is the desirable outcome. It just takes for granted that all qualified applicants were even considered.

> The problem to me is that the applicant pool doesn't always represent the best

True, which is why I made the statement narrow -- we hire the best applicants. I make no claim that the applicants are the best devs available in the industry overall. "Best", after all, is context-dependent. A top notch engineer may not be the best for a given position due to other factors.

The point I was trying to make is that we hire based on ability, not based on unrelated factors such as trying to hit arbitrary diversity goals. For these companies, the diversity comes naturally as a result of not caring what the race/gender/age of the applicant is. I have no idea, and make no claim about, whether or not the experience at these companies is an exception or a norm. It's just what I've personally seen.