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Comment by dcyr | Hacker News Reader

anti-White, misandry, be sure I would not hire you

Please elaborate. what do you mean by "anti-white" and "misandry"?

"[..]If it’s plastered with pictures of white guys in flannel with beards, that’s a red flag. If the exec team is all white men who [...]"

That's neither anti-White nor misandry; its not saying there is a problem with either whites or men, but that there is a problem if your careers page and/or exec team bio seem to indicate both that its all white men and also there is no signal of recognition that diversity matter.

Note that the end of the paragraph containing those two sentences is this: When you’re a small team and those are the cards you’re dealt, it’s harder to get around that. But you can always put a statement on this page explaining the fact you want to diversify your team and why. Another trick I’ve seen is having a clearly female silhouette saying “This could be you!”.

i.e., if you want to attract people that aren't white men, you need to show that you want to attract people that aren't white men, rather than showing signals that you are a bunch of white men looking for more white men.

> there is no signal of recognition that diversity matter.

It's a company though, I don't see how diversity is important. The goal is to make money and they should hire the best people that apply, unrelated to the color of their skin.

I work for a company which is very diverse and I like it, I just don't see how it matters as a company goal (assuming that having "only white men" works for them currently).

> It's a company though, I don't see how diversity is important.

Sure, lots of people don't. And that's why they do the kind of things that the author talks about that signal "we're all like this here and we're looking for people just like us".

But, when you do that, you should be aware that that is exactly what you are signalling.

That is only what you are signaling to Leftist ideologues who take any departure from Social Justice doctrine as an excuse to construct straw man caricatures.

And that's OK, because these people are toxic.

it's a competitive advantage in hiring.

say there's five companies attracting just men, and there's one company attracting both men and women, all six are competing for the men, but only one gets the best women

There might very well a 10 men to 1 women ratio. The first company is not missing out much by missing 10% of the candidates.

The second company might however have a really hard time hiring if it's limiting itself to a small subset of the hiring pool.

I believe having employees who understand the cultural norms, beliefs, psychology and expectations of different ethnic/gender groups will definitely get you much farther with expansion and acceptance as opposed to simply having all of your employees in one gender/ethnic group. It's not an issue to start out with all team members in one category, but eventually hiring a diverse group may very well be in your best interest.

Diversity of ideas, abilities/skills and experience are what matters. Skin color, sex and gender only matter if you acknowledge there are differences in abilities based on those criteria, which would defy the premise of non-discrimination.

Maybe the most qualified people were all white men. Maybe hiring a woman or minority simply for the sake of having a woman or minority is just racist or sexist.

As an old white guy with a beard, let me say that I also like to see diversity in the pictures of the current leadership and staff. I wear Hawaiian shirts -- not flannel, but otherwise I share many of the same red flags as the OP. Unfortunately, I also set off many of the same red flags.

why do you like to see diversity?

So you are basically saying that if I see a Ford TV ad featuring a black male with a white woman, I'm justified not to buy a Ford because it signals they just want black males and white women as customers.

that's a weird extrapolation, considering both "white" and "men" are represented in your commercial.

If a company was showing off that their engineers quit within their first week, would you consider that a justification against taking a job there?

There's information provided in promotional material lacking in women: the company isn't good at attracting and keeping women. If you're a woman then, it's reasonable to think that this might not be the right job.

it's not a weird extrapolation given she is White. Btw, how do you explain that she complains about "white men" instead of complaining about "men"?

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