Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

With small exceptions it very much is. And beyond the CEOs you have to take into account stats on VCs and Executive Boards...

[Added]:

And I'd take it one step further to see if there's real diversity or just the appereance of: how many of the women/blacks/asians etc are there with the exact same criteria as the others and not because somebody (always a white male) thought "hey, we have too many white men, let's put a woman/minority on this position, it will look good".

While that might still increase diversity, I see it as hypocrisy for 2 reasons:

1) If the straight white man put aside was better for the job.

2) Token diversity just hides the prejudices under the carpet.

3) Token diversity doesn't help with the underlying reasons behind the inequality (e.g. being poor with less schooling opportunities prevent many blacks to be able to get MBAs and CS education, and instead of helping change that for all, they make a mockery of diversity with random exceptions).

4) Isn't it still white males making those decisions about which token people to include?

To your token diversity point:

That depends on what your goal with diversity is. One reason to prefer diversity is simply that a diverse team would naturally have more perspectives to a problem, more insights into more markets, etc. If this is your goal that simply being an underrepresented minority in tech is itself a qualification with legitimate business value [0]. If you goal is to reduce prejudiced, that token diversity could still be a good step, under the theory that it provides role models to inspire social change to improve the underlying causes.

[0] It is worth noting that this was the original argument in favor of affirmative action in colleges: a more diverse student population increases the quality of education for all students.

>That depends on what your goal with diversity is. One reason to prefer diversity is simply that a diverse team would naturally have more perspectives to a problem, more insights into more markets, etc.

If that's your goal then you don't want to overdo it. E.g. if blacks are generally a poorer demographic so don't buy your expensive products, you shouldn't get that many blacks into the team, because you don't need their insights. And if you sell only to women then you don't want many if any men in your team.

I don't find that a satisfactory stance -- the "I'll only hire X demographic to get their perspectives and insight into the market".

So which of the aforementioned ceos do you believe is the token? Tim cook? Satya nadella?

Obviously I DON'T believe CEOs are appointed as token minorities.

First of all because the "non white straight male" CEOs are few and far between anyway, so it wouldn't give much advantage for your company to tout one when nobody expects you to (not to mention it could hurt in some bigoted demographics).

But second, and most importantly, because those doing the appointing care very much for the actual performance of the CEO (which affects their bottom line) to just put a token person in its place. Whereas for lower positions, even managerial ones, they can appoint the token person here and there much more easily.

I also don't believe a listing of 10 companies, especially without also enumerating also their whole boards, VCs, etc, is enough to make a point.

Besides Asians/Indians are taken as non-threatening and a "safe choice" even by bigots in these days (there's a reverse stereotype associating them with IT). I'd like to see some blacks, latinos, etc into that list (which IIRC make for a huge percentage of the Californian population, but are totally missing even from the "top 10" list).

So what should we do?

Well:

1) If some candidates don't make it for real reasons, solve the real reasons first. For poor blacks, latinos etc for example, stop racial prejudice, invest in education and social support for their communities, etc, and help them reach middle class status. This includes lowering the towering college/university costs.

2) When hiring, don't hire because of token sensibility. That just helps a person here and there, who might not even deserve it (aside from their minority status). I guess hire blindly (based on CV, without even the name attached to it) is one way.

good point, it's not representative at the top. but, I think it's a step in the right direction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com