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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Once upon a time, social justice types supported meritocracy. That was in the era when having classical musicians audition behind a screen increased the % of women.

Unfortunately, the technology world has not had the same experience. When technology becomes more meritocratic (e.g., audition via github/coding tests/open source contributions rather than interviews), we get more Asians, fewer non-Asian minorities and fewer women.

Because meritocracy in technology fails to achieve the goal of "gotta catch them all", it must be opposed.

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That's a straw man. "Audition via github/coding tests/open source contributions" is not equivalent to a "blind audition" for musicians. GitHub/OSS already have lower participation rates from women and minorities than the technology industry as a whole precisely because the OSS "meritocracy" fails to address discriminatory behavior and is not blind: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-con...

Blind coding tests would come the closest to the equivalent of a blind audition, but coding tests as hiring criteria have their own problems in general.

The conclusions of the actual study don't support your claims. From Scott Alexander's review of it:

A non-peer-reviewed paper shows that women get more requests accepted than men. In one subgroup, unblinding gender gives women a bigger advantage; in another subgroup, unblinding gender gives men a bigger advantage. When gender is unblinded, both men and women do worse; it’s unclear if there are statistically significant differences in this regard. Only one of the study’s subgroups showed lower acceptance for women than men, and the size of the difference was 63% vs. 64%, which may or may not be statistically significant. This may or may not be related to the fact, demonstrated in the study, that women propose bigger and less-immediately-useful changes on average; no attempt was made to control for this. This tiny amount of discrimination against women seems to be mostly from other women, not from men.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-exci...

Most of the results of that study suggest open source is friendlier to women than to men. But the study isn't really that high quality, and the results aren't that strong, so I wouldn't draw a very strong conclusion from this.

When that study came out I asked the authors for their data set and analysis scripts. They categorically refused. Also not a strong indication of quality.

Google and Facebook have both claimed that women and minorities tend to outperform hiring scores, which is why they hire them more aggressively.

I think there are two factors at play:

* Generation and exchange of ideas and approaches is the most important part of software engineering on a team. Diversity of gender and background probably gives this factor a bump.

* People are biased, both consciously and unconsciously, against certain minorities. This means lower evaluation scores and weaker resumes (since the world shares the bias).

But whatever the reasons, Google and Facebook are pretty good at this whole data analysis thing, so I wouldn't discount their experiences.

I'd be curious to see this analysis. Can you link to it?

Here's a hypothetical. Imagine google made an error and it turns out that their analysis has a sign error. Blacks/women actually underperform. Would you favor flipping the sign on whatever action you propose? If not, why not?

I ask this because in a number of other contexts, the sign is actually flipped. Blacks drastically underperform what would be predicted from college entrance scores, they are less likely to pay back loans (holding other things constant), and more likely to commit crime.

Generation and exchange of ideas and approaches is the most important part of software engineering on a team. Diversity of gender and background probably gives this factor a bump.

I'm the only person of my race/nationality at my current company, but I've never really observed this effect. Can you tell me how to tap into these powers?

I admit, I do sometimes provide ideas that no one else has, mainly in the area of bayesian stats, low level performance hacking and probabilistic data structures. Is that what you mean? Are these the secret powers unavailable if you don't have someone of my race?

> Imagine google made an error and it turns out that their analysis has a sign error. Blacks/women actually underperform. Would you favor flipping the sign on whatever action you propose? If not, why not?

No, because of the above point about diversity. It has an effect on more than just the individual. I don't know if Google has made any claims about the following, but it's been noted that, for example, diverse management teams tend to outperform nondiverse ones.

> I admit, I do sometimes provide ideas that no one else has, mainly in the area of bayesian stats, low level performance hacking and probabilistic data structures. Is that what you mean? Are these the secret powers unavailable if you don't have someone of my race?

You are being intentionally facetious. I know you're a smart person, that you're very probably aware of what diversity arguments are about, and this reply is thoughtless in a disrespectful way. I'm only spelling it out to avoid downvoters: the idea is that different approaches and attitudes are informed by race, culture, background and gender in ways that are difficult to measure in the interview process.

For the record, I would consider a white hillbilly or southerner as 'diverse' in most computer workplaces.

No, because of the above point about diversity.

That point does not apply to lending or crime prediction. There is no collective decisionmaking on the part of parolees or borrowers.

Do you have any objection to using your same solutions, but with the opposite direction, in this areas? E.g., if google should try and hire more blacks (due to them overperforming), should BofA try to lend less money to them (because they underperform)?

Similarly, since we know diversity harms group cohesion, should companies which value group cohesion avoid it?

I don't know why you find this disrespectful. Could you clarify?

I'm simply asking, concretely, how "race, culture, background and gender" inform different approaches and attitudes to detecting systematic failures in a sensor network? Or similarly, how does this inform different approaches to querying a dataset consisting of a normalized SQL schema together with a collection of very large structured files?

I'm being facetious because I consider this idea to be patently ridiculous. In most of my jobs I've been the only person of my race present, and it's literally never affected any professional task.

That's also why I'm asking for specifics, rather than vague allusions to some study you kind of remember reading.

I do of course know what the real argument is about. Diversity is a sacred value and all the arguments you've brought up are actually just post-hoc justifications for a behavior you virtuous. I'm just arguing that there is little more than that.

Well, I'll give you an example.

It's popular among computer nerds to dismiss other peoples' ideas. They might do something like attack someone's ideas with intentional misunderstanding, lazy thinking, and facetious reasoning. In short, they do not show the bare minimum of consideration for others' ideas, instead looking first for avenues of attack. Having ignored and attacked the other person, they then claim no disrespect was meant. They might say something like "I don't know why you find this disrespectful. Could you clarify?"

It does not occur to them that being able to attack peoples' ideas in this pompous way is actually a position of privilege. Anyone can do it, but people born a step ahead are more likely to not reflect on their position, or even feel entitled to it.

In my experience, women and people from disadvantaged backgrounds--people who were not praised to the moon for writing "Hello World" in eighth grade--are less likely to behave in this way.

This is self-evidently an enormous advantage on engineering teams.

Usual disclaimer: personal experience, your mileage may vary, this is just one example, privileged backgrounds have advantages too, yada yada yada.

I did not attack you or ignore you. I directly addressed one of your arguments and attempted to determine whether the other argument is your "true rejection" [1].

On the contrary, the only person ignoring the other's points and making anything close to an attack is you. You've accused me of being disrespectful, called me lazy and accused me of intentional misunderstanding, while simultaneously NOT addressing any of my core arguments.

Quite entertaining, I must admit.

[1] Specifically, I think even if that argument could be proven false, it would not change your conclusion at all. So bringing it up is merely a distraction. See also: http://lesswrong.com/lw/wj/is_that_your_true_rejection/

The question was if diversity is valuable in engineering. I gave a specific example of a specific kind of diversity that is valuable to engineering teams.

If you're interested in Google's data, they make an excellent search engine that you can use to find that kind of stuff. I encourage you to do your own research, in part because I think I've done enough work leading you to the proverbial water.

'Diversity' is usually code for blacks and women. True diversity of thought and experiences are what bring the benefits, which means that a team of 100% males could be highly diverse.

In general I would agree that woman and blacks do have different experiences in life to most people in Silicon Valley. I fear that the push to improve 'diversity' will actually reduce true diversity. Companies in Silicon Valley usually hires people from the same universities who all have similar experiences. This crowds out the hiring from less famous universities, overseas students and other parties. There are no vocal activists to push that kind of diversity.

I still think we as a community should be open to all to participate. But we shouldn't have to lose what makes our community great in the process.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't care about the race, religion or sex of the other parties I work with. I only care about the quality of their work and that they aren't arseholes to be around.

So what you're saying is, you want to hire people based on their gender and race rather than their skill set and experience.

skills can be learned.

Then learn them before you apply for a job so that you can be competitive.

Yes, clearly "audition via github/coding tests/open source contributions" is a code word for race/gender.

I'm confused now. Which stance are you taking?

> When technology becomes more meritocratic (e.g., audition via github/coding tests/open source contributions rather than interviews), we get more Asians, fewer non-Asian minorities and fewer women. Because meritocracy in technology fails to achieve the goal of "gotta catch them all", it must be opposed.

This seems to suggest that you don't want meritocracy. Was that sarcasm?

I want meritocracy.

I don't think meritocracy (at least in tech) helps promote "diversity" (where diversity is a code word for "women and non-Asian minorities"). (The latter claim is broadly supported, albeit in convoluted language, by the social justice types who oppose meritocracy.)

I'm perfectly fine with this; "gotta catch em all" is not one of my goals. It is, however, the goal of many social justice types, so they necessarily oppose meritocracy.

My mistake, thanks for the clarification.

I think you are conflating fajitas position and that of the "social justice types".

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