Wait... they tried to hide their own hiring practices?
I'll say it: If HR is doing technical recruiting and has anything to say regarding who to hire at an engineering company they are doing it wrong.
And yeah it was really awkward seeing HR trying to deny the existence of these practices. You could see publicly accessible Dropbox Paper docs titled "diversity hiring tips" and it'd link to census days on female and URM names, spreadsheets of ethnic fraternities and sororities, and so forth. Recruiter bonus policies, which included a diversity bonus for each diverse hire was also publicly accessible. When we did campus recruiting recruiters told us (the alumni engineers) to mark candidates resumes with a star for women or URM, two stars for women + URM, and "ND" for asian males - "Negative Diversity".
The idea that this was a secret was a joke - and the polls proved it. The reality was probably that for liability reasons HR didn't want us talking about this openly. So this talk about how it was offensive was probably more about instilling a chilling effect.
That was my biggest gripe. They talk about how offensive and hurtful it is to say we offer more or less opportunity based on race and gender. But they have no qualms actually doing those things.
Here in America that's completely illegal.
> The reality was probably that for liability reasons HR didn't want us talking about this openly.
That's a very polite way of saying they knew what they were doing was illegal and they didn't want to get caught.
> Recruiter bonus policies, which included a diversity bonus for each diverse hire was also publicly accessible.
So at the end of the year, there was absolutely no incentive for HR to pressure someone into hiring a lesser but diverse candidate to reach their quotas and cash that bonus. Totally unbiased.
Wow, that just feels kind of offensive, and like a big lawsuit waiting to happen.
It didn't really affect engineering quality because like most workplaces pretty much everyone was nice enough and qualified enough.
The interesting effect the hiring pipeline did have was that it acted like a dragnet catching a broader cross section of the population. The end result that the group of women working there was much more diverse in background the group of men working there and I think there is a lot of merit in that.
I am very much in favor of giving the job to the candidate who has less going for them, all else being equal and creating hiring pipelines to increase the ratio of their resumes that cross hiring managers' desks. But having race, gender or other things people don't get to choose as part of your first pass filter on applicants seems like it's likely to further the problem it's attempting to solve if applied widely enough and on a long enough timeline.
Depending where you are from, those practices are illegal
What this meant in practice was that White and Asian men were only interviewed of they already had industry experience or went to a top 20 college if they were a new grad, and majored into computer science, EE, math, or something akin to that. For diverse candidates we also interviewed candidates from boot camps, less selective universities, and people who changed interests late in their studies and minored in a tech major. Diverse candidates also got two chances to pass the phone interview. The on-sites were mostly fair, though a handful of hiring managers were known for being particularly lenient towards diverse candidates. I wouldn't say that we ever hired anyone who wasn't capable of doing the job but it was clear that some candidates were more desirable than others.
I don't think it manifested in much in the way of people having their capabilities doubted for their race or gender. At the end of the day people's abilities are demonstrated through their work. When you're trying to fix shit you're not going to stop and wonder whether someone got a second chance at the phone screen. I'm Latin myself and I never felt judged for it (though to be transparent I'm of almost entirely Iberian descent and don't have an accent).
But there was definitely friction with HR. Our head of HR (or people ops) was very against any mentioning of these practices, and repeatedly said that saying our hiring process is favorable to some people is offensive and could fall afoul of our code of conduct. We held a poll on whether or not employees thought our hiring process was unfair to men. 83% of men responded that it was. Curiously she refused to share the results from women (rumor has it it was just as high). And to put the cherry on top, HR had the worst gender diversity of any org in the company, >90% women.
The fact that the same org that was responsible for resolving harassment allegations and other such disputes had goals aimed at increasing the share of women and URM also caused friction. Some suspected that this would lead to impartial investigation.
In the end it wasn't something people spent much time thinking about. I was pretty irked about leadership's dishonesty and hypocrisy. But I, and probably most people, didn't resent diverse coworkers for it. They didn't choose this, and many didn't approve of these practices either. It was mostly HR that was a laughing stock in private throughout much of the company.
Personally, I think it's fine to see more potential in a underprivileged candidate who came from a poor background vs a candidate with better interview performance but great education. But percentage targets aren't the way to go about it.