Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

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>I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another.

You're assuming women aren't currently at a disadvantage in that selection process. Which, evidence indicates they are. So...leveling the playing field is not disadvantaging others at the expense of women. It is recognizing that our current culture has biases that need to be corrected for.

Your argument is essentially that there are almost no women talented enough to be in leadership roles in tech, if they were chosen fairly; because that's the situation we are currently in. I'm not suggesting quotas here, and I don't think Pike is either, but there's clearly a bunch of broken segments in the path to advancement for women in tech. We're chasing off talented people because they're women (and minorities), whether we mean to or not. Acknowledging that deficit (on our part, as members of the tech community who aren't subject to those biases) is not unfair or a zero sum game.

>Your argument is essentially that there are almost no women talented enough to be in leadership roles in tech

This is wrong. There are plenty. My point is that these people should not be given special treatment and more opportunities if they come at the expense of other demographics.

>I'm not suggesting quotas here, and I don't think Pike is either

He didn't mention quotas, but he did mention preferential hiring.

"It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely."

How would you feel if you applied for a job and it was given to someone else because they were a woman? Would that not be unfair? Would this practice applied in aggregate not chase off even more talented people? I can only imagine most people would not want to stick around in a situation like that.

Given the current bias our industry holds toward men, it will require people to give women (and people of color) the benefit of the doubt more often when making hiring or promoting decisions. If our biases favor some kinds of people, our "objective" assessment of people's abilities will not actually be objective, and we have to self-correct in some way. Intentionally giving a female candidate another look, or giving her a chance in the role, is likely a necessary step toward correcting those biases.

How would you feel if you applied for a job and it was given to someone else because they were a woman?

Probably not much different than women feel every day when passed over for a job they're similarly or better qualified for by a man. It sucks to lose an opportunity that you wanted, but the industry will be healthier for it.

Would this practice applied in aggregate not chase off even more talented people?

Our industry chases off, or under-utilizes by not promoting to their level of greatest impact, talented women every day. Evening that imbalance out is not unfair to men.

You're making the standard arguments in favor of affirmative action. Those are reasonable arguments. But the counter-arguments are valid, as well:

1. You are suggesting applying explicit, intentional action: "self-correction" as you said. This is meant to counter presumed implicit, unintentional action. The big difference is that the former is noticeable and measurable, while the latter is inferred indirectly. As a result, it is hard to know how much correction to apply. Over-correction has the obvious dangers and downsides.

2. Aside from having the right amount of correction, the intentional action will, by itself, strengthen the problem in that it makes us take gender into the hiring process more strongly. When what we want is to reduce the effect of gender. (Compare this, to, say, the screens that solved the gender problem in orchestras - they had no such risk or downside.) Now, you might argue that we need to make things worse in the short term for a long-term gain, and that's reasonable, but highly debatable.

3. As other posters mentioned, explicit action also has direct effects: women will know that they were preferred based on their gender. Yes, this is meant to counter implicit, unconscious bias, but you never know when the former exists, while the latter is right in front of you, so you can't ignore it. This can increase the existing self-confidence problem that many studies point to.

Medicine and the law both overtly "self-corrected" successfully, creating marked and durable improvements to gender parity that benefited the fields.

There is no way to measure (or even define?) "benefiting the field".

For example, women leave the workforce earlier and more often. So we now get less work years per education year in these fields. Benefit? Not from the POV of the person paying for all this education and these services.

It inevitably comes down to a choice between institutionalized discrimination and latent discrimination.

You could weigh it based on which drives more talent away, but I don't care if Silicon Valley can keep wages low for another five years. I care more about individual choices.

We can assume our behavior is wrong for reasons we can't understand and try to correct for effects we can't measure, but I see this as missing the point. The entire reason discriminating by sex or race is bad is because it creates unnecessary suffering. The bigot lets his emotions and gut feelings drive his decisions and the result is that all parties suffer. If racism is fueled by subjective feelings choking out objective truths, then why would we ignore our own judgement based on how we feel about ourselves? We should try to make better decisions, not give up on making good ones.

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