In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now. That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc.
The thing that really must change in order to get society making the best tech possible that really impacts lives in a positive way is that we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas. That can only happen by filling the chamber with more people who aren't privileged white males. And I say that as a privileged white male.
On several occasions I've joined a company and been the only diversity carrier. I can't think of a single advantage beyond PR (I make group photos look more diverse, yay!) that my race has given the company. Any such advantage is miniscule in comparison to the advantages gained by my knowledge of statistical significance, multiple comparisons, regression and the like.
Realistically, if you wanted to add diversity of thought, you'd be far better off hiring a Frequentist of the majority race than a Bayesian of a different one. And if you wanted real (harmful) diversity of thought, you'd hire a magical thinker rather than someone persuaded by evidence.
For instance, in some places (you may be aware of ;) there is a societal bias that heterosexual anglo men are hyper sexual. That they are literally untrustworthy due to it is not an uncommon bias. It is an easy jump from that bias to an implicit (or even explicit) belief that it is better NOT to hire engineers to build streaming event architectures who are constantly thinking about sex and therefore to build a pipeline that biases against heterosexual white men. A company that did this, intentionally or not, is at a disadvantage when hiring because they have removed from the applicant pool people for the wrong reasons.
A company that instead was blind to that bias (or actively worked against it) would therefore have a wider pool to select from.
Even 1 counter example is often enough to change the biases for everyone who encounters them. So the company that hired 'yummyfajitas' and realized either A) he is not hyper sexual or B) he is but it doesn't impact his ability to perform the task is more likely to detach the wrong biases from their hiring pipeline and this has a multiplying effect.
Substitute "women aren't as good at math", "older people learn technologies slower", "black guys don't research as well" or whatever other bias you want.
Also, you know, sometimes we should do things because they are the right thing to do.
I'm hiring a data team. Based on the applicant pool it'll probably be me and 3 Punjabi males assuming I hire purely based on ability [1]. My claim is that I'll get no marginal value out of hiring a Maharashtrian, an African or a westerner over an equally qualified Punjabi. I provide no special western perspective on Kafka.
I also don't know why it would be the "right thing to do" to hire a Maharashtrian relative over a Punjabi - but that might be because I don't believe in group rights. If you do, I'd love to know how you choose which groups are relevant - there are, after all, 2^{6 billion} subgroups of humanity.
[1] I take pains to do exactly that - I skip resumes and look at github, follow scripted interviews with objective criteria, etc.
I'm a fairly loud, direct person. I work with other loud and direct people. We added someone to our team who is a bit quieter and quite frankly thoughtful onto the team. The effect wasn't so much that (s)he changed our technical decisions, but that we as a team started to give people apace for less confrontational disagreement. It improved our individual abilities to communicate and approach a problem from multiple angles.
That is why diversity in personality is important. The hypothesis is then that race/gender/etc is correlated with intellectual diversity.
Anecdotal evidence yes, but something I've found valuable.
No, it's not. Which is my point.
If you want to make the argument that racial/gender/etc groups think differently, be my guest - but that also implies that an unbiased hiring process might have disparate impact. E.g., if onion2k's hypothesis that women are more emotional than men is correct, then a hiring process aiming for rationalism might hire fewer women.
If there were a systematic bias against westerners that meant they were unlikely to apply for, get callbacks for, or be able to work in your environment with Kafka, actively removing those impediments is an opportunity. The larger the population being biased against and the more acute the need for applicants is, the larger the opportunity.
Framing this as a "hire one person over another" or as a "rights" issue is incorrect. Many of the systematic biases can be corrected for in ways that either don't cost the unbiased set anything, or provide advantages to that set as well. Further, this is an issue of courtesy and empathy, not rights. No one has the right to my courtesy or empathy, but providing it broadly is the right thing to do.
I don't see how the work environment is made better by my presence. I'm not going to be any nicer to minorities than my majority coworkers. And quite honestly, if someone of my race considers the environment better because they have a firangi to talk to, I'm unlikely to get along well with them.
For instance, sick child care disproportionally falls on women. So more women (of course not all women) view flexible hours, flexible sick time and flexible work from home options as major benefits. In many instances providing those things is a net improvement for everyone (including the business productivity) but it isn't as obvious in cases that don't experience the problem (like places that don't have as many parents generally or women specifically).
I suppose improving this environmental factor can be viewed as a PR move (which frequently has a pejorative tone, but I assume you are not applying that) but it also can have intrinsic benefits even if it never causes someone to think differently about the company.
In fact, heterogeneous preferences w.r.t in-kind benefits are an argument for workplace homogeneity (and heterogeneity across workplaces). Women who want flexible hours can go work for a company providing flexible hours. Dudebro neckbeards can work for a company providing unlimited redbull, videogames and vodka even after normal working hours. If they work at the same company someone's pay is reduced to cover benefits they don't use.
Your position on this implies that a) we all know our preference around in-kind benefits b) our use of in-kind benefits is static, predetermined, or correlated job moves c) the provision of in kind benefits is zero sum and/or d) in-kind benefit decisions can be optimally designed.
My position is the opposite on all of these cases. There are many in-kind benefits that I didn't realize were great until I received them because someone else wanted them, the utility of these benefits varies over time and is not correlated from employee to employee (and the homogenity required to correlate them would be hugely detrimental in other resource allocation ways), and that the optimal benefit strategy is often emergent rather than designed, and that the more inputs into the system we have the better the emergent behavior is.
Finally, being polite and showing empathy would also follow your rules about zero sum behavior and workplace homogeneity. I'm curious what that implies about your position on general civility and empathetic behavior in the workplace.
...bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now...In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc.
I wasn't responding to this:
...bringing in people who are superficially different but think the same way in order to manipulate the media...
Obviously PR matters and I'm happy to let my company exploit my race for that purpose (though I probably wouldn't have taken the job if I thought that was a significant factor). But that's completely tangential to the original point.
This sort of stereotype probably has the predictive value of a D20 roll.
Phil's an 11, I spit in his lunch. Nancy is a 19, no problems expected.
Having a more diverse team that includes someone with a more emotionally-driven perspective could lead to someone asking the question "Is the way we're manipulating user behavior actually ethical?"
This isn't about finding different technical solutions to problems; it's about finding different problems.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
And most emotionally driven ethical discussions on HN lean towards popularity contests - compare the outcry against online harassment of that gamergate girl to the online harassment of Charles Carreon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carreon), for example.
But even if you are right, what does diversity in the traditional sense of your post above have to do with it? Are you suggesting that women/LGBTQ+ people are more emotional and less rational?
Geez, I really hope that that was just an unfortunate turn of phrase. You can't possibly mean that non-(white-males) have a quote "more emotionally-driven perspective", do you?
There is a big difference and yes, "manipulating the user" is sinister.
That's not a lie or bending the truth. It is manipulating the user.
It sounds like you are decorating the showroom to boost sales... I hope it works out well for you. I was thown by the initial desciption that sure didnt sound like faces and buttons: "I'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior."
But hiring just for the sake of filling some imaginary quota some confused people have in their heads is a bit ridiculous. Want to change it? Start at the point when young people decide which school to pursue, rest will follow
My problem with your post is that you stereotype white males and claim to want to get rid of stereotypes. You, yourself are concentrating on skin color, gender, and sexual preference when we need to be concentrating on the best person for the job regardless of any of these.
"That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc"
Why do we need to single out all of these people and claim they are offering something "different"? Shouldn't we be fighting for equality and not special treatment for individual groups of people?
This isn't the first time I've seen this sort of thinking. I feel like many people are not fighting for equality, but for power and special laws/treatments for their specific group.
"In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now. That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc."
I disagree with most of this. Yes, to improve there needs to be changes, but these can come from anyone. Even though I'm not gay, I can still support gay rights.
We shouldn't require companies to hire anyone that is not qualified for a position. If there aren't enough qualified people of X group applying, then we need to figure out why and improve it (education, culture, etc).
Can you elaborate on the definition of "privileged white male"?
That isn't that sort of background that everyone has, but it is the sort of background that 90% of people in the IT industry had. Consequently IT professionals tend to have somewhat skewed notions of what the world is like. Changing that would make it more likely that people build things that make a positive impact on society because you can't fix a problem if you don't know that it's a problem.
So, by your definition there should be "white non-privileged people" as well, right? This means we shouldn't talk about black, white, etc. people but we should talk about having more non-privileged people in tech?
I like this thinking but I don't understand what should be the mechanisms for making it happen. The only universal (both for privileged and non-privileged) unit of measurement I can think of is talent. Which brings us back to square one - we need more talented people in tech. Which means that people who are responsible for hiring other people should not only look at prior experience, education, etc. but should also be able to discover talent. Which is hard but I think that's the right direction.
Am I right?
Many SF authoritarians would rather support the latter, even if they don't need help, simply based on skin colour, and a limited life experience that equates 'white' to 'middle class American'.
Thats what the discussion about privilege is really useful for. Keeping it in the forefront of your mind (especially if you are successful) that many people have similar capability/potential as you, but they experience different circumstances that can radically alter the outcomes.
My favorite saying to remember is "He thinks he hit a home run in life, when he was born on third base."
Looking beyond experience and education is vital (but very hard).
Why can't this idea of collaborating with outsiders work for the industry as a whole? Why must everyone be able to do everything?
That depends on whether what we are doing now works or not. Change for its own sake rarely does good in the IT industry.
What is the difference in required skill sets, between what we do now and what we should be doing?
I think this can reasonably be split into two basic tasks: find (and sufficiently define) a problem to solve; and given a problem / set of constraints, find a good solution.
Which task is different between "now" and your ideal, and how does that difference require different skills?
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In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now.
This assumes that we're not already changing it. Also needing different ideas on what things to do, is different from needing different skills on doing those things.
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That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment.
Or, by asking or watching those people (all the million-and-one ways that for-profit companies do market research and user research and such).
In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc.
No. It's whoever has problems that need solving. Which has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the fact that "improve society" above seems to mean "moral progress".
Probably the best thing that happening in this regard right now, is the push for police to wear cameras. (So shouldn't that mean that the tech for this has been developed with higher-than-normal participation by non-rich-white-techie-dude people?)
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The thing that really must change in order to get society making the best tech possible that really impacts lives in a positive way is that we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas. That can only happen by filling the chamber with more people who aren't privileged white males.
No. The echo chamber has nothing to do with who's in it, and everything to do with who has enough money to be the target demographic.
Either raise awareness that other people have money too (or can have money if they buy (on credit) what you're trying to sell), or convince people to work for social good instead of a paycheck.
Even when I was a teenager and had a mentor it took me 2 hours by bus in the Miami heat to meet him just 1x per week. Some of my fellow, richer, friends had cars of their own and would drive to meet their mentors or join them for lunch. And it's those small barriers that create the giant hurdle.
At the moment, I'm mentoring my younger siblings, nieces, and nephews who are on their way to college. Being the first in my family to attend university I'm hoping to help them avoid the pitfalls that I encountered when going to university.
Your `you get more black ppl in tech by having black people in tech` sounded exactly like one of those Xzibit memes: a joke!
Secondly, this comment hit the nail on the head. Let kids pursue fields they are interested in, regardless of their race or sex. Don't hijack a person's career to serve your moral crusade.
Second, I'm going to take your comment to point out something I've noticed when talking about sexism/racism. I'm going to call this theory of mine "Calibration". When I hear people say stuff like "What about letting [underrepresented group] choose what they want to do with their lives?", I've come to believe that most are not trolls and they're probably not actually actively racist[1]. It's a difference in calibration. Perhaps you believe by default these kids are at a neutral(zero) level and have the full power of choice right now. But, what I see is that society actually puts them at like a negative 5. You see these efforts as forcing them to go into tech, a +5 if you will. I see it as just bring them up to 0 from the -5 society put them at so they have the same sense of free choice you & I do.
This vid I think is also based on the calibration idea when it comes to "Reverse racism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M . Basically, it talks about the underlying assumption that the current state of things is neutral for everyone so any effort to improve standings for a group is unfair to the groups not getting help. It's like how every year on Google+, when the LifeAtGoogle account posts something like Black Appreciation day during Black history month, someone always asks "When is White appreciation day?". Or when people talk about BlackGirlsCode.com, someone says "I bet everyone would exploded if we had a WhiteMenCode.com event". And of course, from there said comment turns into a multipage thread of madness. I think part of this is because schools(or parents of students) don't teach enough about the negative parts of American history and its lasting effects. So we have a bunch of people saying "Slavery ended years ago, everything is fine now. Stop complaining." Or similar, "Women can vote now and be CEOs of companies. Stop complaining". The assumption being that everything is equal now and the only thing between anyone and their goals is hardwork & discipline. While that is mostly true, some people have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition and reach those goals.
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1. One exception though, I have no idea what is going on with the HN user yummyfajitas. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711
He doesn't fit any model of any logical position I'm familiar with. I'm pretty sure he's __not__ racist/sexist, but he just blows my mind.
My own calibration settings for this is reading a bunch of comments on stormfront.org forums. While I dislike yummyfajitas's comments, they don't give me the same feeling I get from stormfront. I don't know what to think of him. Closest thing is perhaps super-insensitive, but I don't think he's oblivious to how people perceive his comments.... I dunno.
What your anecdote appears to describe is economic inequality, not race inequality.
I live in Ground Zero of identity politics, so I don't get to see people with your opinions often.
Thank you!
And you've just confirmed in your own self-description that you're not adding all that much diversity regardless of what you look like. Remove the "I'm black" bit (and ok, the afro), and the description matches countless devs.
Diversity is not "bullshit", neither from a social-economic perspective, nor from the perspective of the strength of the teams we are a part of.
But in the real world, we need to try different things to get talented people, it is not only white men who have important stuff to offer.
I'm full stack dev living in London, I'm black, huge afro, piercings, english is not my first language, skateboarder, into punk music, etc.