Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts
medium.com
medium.com
For that reason, I think remote-only companies are probably easier to run than companies with a mix of remote and onsite workers -- at remote-only companies, it's not possible to intentionally or accidentally exclude the remote workers from things they ought to be involved in.
Also for that reason, adding a culture of remote work to the kind of company where any onsite employees can grab a room and start whiteboarding stuff is going to be very difficult.
That also assumes that everyone is in the same time zone (+/- a few hours). How would that work when someone in Europe / Asia is working with colleagues in the USA? Even collaborating between east coast and west coast colleagues get harder because you only have 9-9:30 - 2:30-3 PST window, which is then consumed by lunch etc.
> Also for that reason, adding a culture of remote work to the kind of company where any onsite employees can grab a room and start whiteboarding stuff is going to be very difficult.
Absolutely agree with this one.
Obviously, this isn't true for everyone and all situations... It's just like, my opinion... man.
I'd love to hear your argument for "progress", whatever that is.
Unless you're working on research, it's hard to buy physical proximity reducing throughput; just latency.
In the end it comes down to people. Either people are innovative or not.
To be truly successful, you have to build a remote culture. That means hallway conversations move somewhere else. It doesn't matter if you sit down the hall or around the world: the experience is the same. Remote people don't miss hallways conversations because hallway conversations don't happen (or aren't as important).
The best solution to this is that if you've got something non-urgent that you'd like a colleague to think about at some point, use a truly asynchronous medium (e.g. e-mail, so long as you're not in an organisation which uses it as a de facto IM platform).
This is true whether or not the people you're trying to communicate with are in the same building.
but in the absence of a working culture remote just can be a compounding factor for dysfunction. its also more difficult to enculturate someone remotely. i think thats why 'senior contributor moves to montana and continues to be really effective' is such an unsurprising atory.
E.g. open source project like Linux kernel where volunteers choose what they want to work on, with little or zero effects on careers for missing deadlines has different dynamics than businesses.
If we want to convince businesses to adopt remote work, the Linux kernel is not a relevant example. Businesses have:
1) finite budget
2) deadlines
3) pressure to innovate for marketplace acceptance or go bankrupt
We need a better explanation for why business-related success of Google Pagerank/Bigtable, Apple iPhone, Facebook, etc comes more from teams in the office rather than remote workers on Skype. The Linux project -- even though it is "successful" -- is not that explanation.
But AFAICT, the tech industry is generally hostile to the notion of having children, or aging past thirty-five.
It is at least much less hostile than most of the rest of America.
Frankly I've worked with many engineers and I've never seen any correlation, positive or negative, between overall engineering productivity and whether the engineer had children.
So while the idea that meeting and working "with folks from all over the world—Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, South Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, and others" is appealing, for me it sidesteps the major issues diversity efforts should be addressing. And as an outsourcing mechanism, it can serve as a means of wage suppression, which has also exacerbated social divisions in this country.
If we look at something like nations, its not immediately clear that diversity is a benefit: sure, it brings a plethora of perspectives and components from which the nation can draw, but it also makes it harder to develop a unified identity from which cooperative actions can extend and is a frequent source of internal conflict. At first blush, both of these factors are present in companies as well.
I'm not "anti-diversity" or whatever pejorative people are going to trot out to ignore the question, I just don't know that we should be basing pro-diversity arguments on dubious claims.
The thing is, we all have in common these universal skills of kindness, goodness, neighborliness, hard work, love of family, value of education for children, value of opportunities, etc.
Looking in a place like Canada, while not perfect, it is a lot better, and it starts with not as much overt righteousness.
You seem to have a very strawman version of what a monoculture means: you don't have to be putting down other cultures, but taking advantage of in-group feeling by, eg, dressing alike can confer a greater sense of community, which can benefit the organization as a whole.
Similarly, the things you listed are empty platitudes -- where cultures vary is how they implement those ideals and the trade-offs between ideals that they settle on in that implementation.
To use an exaggeration: pointing out to sheep that wolves just want a happy life too doesn't do anything to alleviate the problem that for the wolves, that means eating sheep and for the sheep, that means not being eaten.
In the interest of a productive conversation, it would be nice if we can talk about diversity first as it's the topic at hand.
I'll try my best to not trivialize or presumptively interpret your words and the motivation behind them, especially where it seems holes are being poked to lessen the relevance of having a conversation about openly entertaining a viewpoint that may not align with your own as may be happening.
It's not clear to me what's giving the presumption or perception of authority to be tell anyone how their experience is or is not valid and how it may be trivialized into an empty platitude.
A two way street of respect isn't easy and participating in it requires both parties to do work, even if one finds it a chore and wishes everyone should just be like them.
I believe deeply in, and practice meaningful intercultural exchange to bring societies together, beyond entry level introductions of sipping chai lattes and yoga. This isn't easy, of course as every group has it's idiot fringe.
Not being sure what your perspective or experience is. I'm a visible minority in both numbers and other ways. From that experience, I can share a bit more.
This experience includes being part of a monoculture that can require perceived outsiders to be twice as monocultural as native monoculturalists to be monocultural enough from the monocultural authorities.
Diversity requires being open minded to find commonalities from all citizens participating in it, reluctantly or not. Some may say that form of diversity may be a universal monocultural.
My points are based on direct experiences that shouldn't be trivialized or summed up nicely in a few sentences to fit another's mental model.
Happy to hop on a skype call if you want to chat. I excel in environments where two people are willing to look at themselves as much as wanting others to only look at themselves, and totally open to learning more about monoculture.
I hear this line of logic quite a bit, that "white middle-class people" can only think within their demographic. It seems like a rather regressive kind of logic, that someone's perception, ability to empathize and problem solve, is limited by stereotypes about the demographic they belong to.
There seems to be a lot about learners, evolution, and theory on that page, but actual measurements seem sparse. (Only 2 in the first 10 are even on this topic.)
One of the relevant links mentions:
> Empirical research on whether and how diversity is actually related to work group functioning is limited, however, and the evidence is mixed, depending in part on what kinds of differences constitute the "diversity" in question (see Milliken and Martins, 1996; Pelled, 1996, for reviews). Researchers have examined the impact of diversity in identity group memberships, such as race and sex (e.g., Cox, 1993; Jackson and Ruderman, 1995); organizational group memberships, such as hierarchical position or organizational function (e.g., Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Ancona and Caldwell, 1992); and individual characteristics, such as idiosyncratic attitudes, values, and preferences (e.g., Hoffman, 1959; Meglino, Ravlin, and Adkins, 1989; Bochner and Hesketh, 1994). Although certain types of diversity appear to be beneficial, studies focused on race and gender have demonstrated both positive and negative outcomes (see Williams and O'Reilly, 1998, for review), suggesting that certain conditions may moderate these outcomes. To date, however, most scholars have only speculated as to what these conditions might be. As a result, consultants and managers interested in diversity have had to rely largely on some combination of common sense and good faith for the rationales they advance about why and how companies should address the issue.
(The other relevant link is a book, which doesn't have an abstract in the same sense.)
Diversity does increase innovation, but its a diversity of experience and a diversity of thought and not based on skin color and gender.
With gender diversity, and all other types of diversity, the goals of diversity would be ironic if they want to cut visible minorities (by percentage of population and representation).
Additionally, of course, a system that even implicitly excludes people on the basis of gender or race is inherently unjust, whereas experience can reasonably be a requirement for a particular position when it results in necessary skills.
I think devmunchies' point is that if you have a finite set of job positions... e.g. 3 jobs, you might have the following situations:
Group 1:
1) white man (Democrat Stanford grad)
2) white woman (Democrat Stanford grad)
3) black man (Democrat Stanford grad)
1) white man (Democrat Stanford grad)
3) white man (Libertarian Kansas kid self-taught)
2) white man (South Africa bootcamp grad)
Assuming the US, I'm also regularly amused that Americans think they invented racism.
There will be no diversity regarding introverts, shy, disabled, fat, ugly or other types of people.
Ugly and socially-unskilled people are not protected/victim groups even though their lives are harder.
My current hypothesis is that the main reason that a group gets that status is that they have an emotionally compelling victim-story (although I think there's some randomness due to political movements).
Under this hypothesis, the struggles of the ugly and socially-unskilled may be less emotionally compelling because they are less likable and so we have less empathy for them.
Disclaimer: All of this is just descriptive speculation. I don't very well understand the relative struggles of different groups and don't endorse poor treatment of anyone. And I'd love for anyone to show flaws in my hypothesis or present a better one.
Also, appearance and social skills are gradients which don't fit neatly into groups, and many people who might widely be considered to sit at the ugly/unskilled end of the spectrum have absolutely no desire to identify as such.
No, instead you get barbs about "creepiness" or "weirdness". Our society generally treats introverts poorly outside of very specific niches.
So perhaps such discrimination has existed, but too few have worked to add it to the common knowledge of our society. For example, maybe ugly people get significantly lower pay and longer prison sentences (all else being equal), but no one has spent the time researching such data? Should laws against sexual harassment end up being considered, to some extent, laws against the unattractive and socially awkward since the same interaction may or may not be considered harassment? Maybe treatment of socially awkward children (which can get very brutal and lead to suicide) hasn't been considered an issue of a group because no one has yet made the emotional argument it should be discrimination of a group.
>and many people who might widely be considered to sit at the ugly/unskilled end of the spectrum have absolutely no desire to identify as such.
There is a lot of history of who was considered black and who wasn't that might be of note.
But social awkwardness isn't something which was only decriminalised 14 years ago in the US and still illegal in 72 countries. Influential religious leaders do not deliver sermons on the duty of ugly people to subordinate themselves to their partners. Beautiful, socially adept people don't hold tiki-torch-lit rallies to venerate people that lead the fight to keep ugly or socially awkward people as property.
Maybe nobody influential is making the emotional argument that kids bullied for their individual awkwardnesses should be protected as a group because nobody influential is making the emotional argument for discriminating against socially awkward children as a group...
Protected discrimination classes haven't emerged as a consequence of extensive research to find hints of systematic discrimination, they've arisen as a response to obvious, organised and usually very open attempts to encourage and enforce systematic discrimination. If you're inclined to make the mistake of assuming that discrimination against protected classes is historic or the result of statistical fishing expeditions, it's probably because - whatever other mistreatment or misfortunes you might have suffered in your life - you're not in a group that is subject to organised and systematic attempts to suppress it.
Why is the metric about who is making the argument, instead of what is actually happening?
Also, many influential people make arguments such as 'kids being kids' that open tolerate bullying. Especially people directly involved in the school system that should be protecting these kids. There is no one in the national spotlight for it because it isn't outrageous enough for our society to put it in the national spotlight.
>Influential religious leaders do not deliver sermons on the duty of ugly people to subordinate themselves to their partners.
Writers at major news organizations, who have audiences that would make most pastors jealous, have written such things. Especially if we talk about people who openly support discrimination against short men. And the attack on men's sexuality is pretty brutal as well, yet openly tolerated (just look at how often virgin is equated to someones who hates women and wants to enslave/kill them).
> they've arisen as a response to obvious, organised and usually very open attempts to encourage and enforce systematic discrimination
And there are still groups who have experienced such who haven't yet been made into a protected class. For an example I think we can both agree on, sexual orientation hasn't yet been made (federal level in the US at least) into a protected class.
Also, this doesn't explain why the majorities are also protected. Race is a protected class, not just being a minority. (Age is a weird one where being old is protected but being young isn't, despite massive historic discrimination against young people, namely the forcing of young men to die in wars on behalf of old people.)
The ends up being the reason they should be considered for protective group status ends up being the same reason they would not pass any such consideration.
As an example, a lot of effort goes into a good interview process. When you work hard to minimize unconscious bias in interviews, you're making the interview process and criteria fit the actual job better. Bad interview processes select for people just like the interviewer, good interview processes select for the actual job and don't filter on tangential stuff.
I understand the cynicism, but the actual work people are putting in is much more nuanced than you'd expect from reading twitter or hn or the news.
There's a reason that diversity appeals to companies, and it's not 100% morality. It's because diversity is an indicator that companies are doing better with HR.
Fwiw, I'm actually someone working on this problem, and the changes we implemented improved the chances for every group you listed. That was not an accident, people who care about team performance worry about homogenous groups: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-boss-doesnt-want-your-resum...
A positive sum game can still result in losers. Imagine two players, both starting with 2 and 2 and ended up with -2 and 10. Not a zero sum game, but there is still a loser. Even if it makes things better on average, it can still be worse for select individuals.
One example, as tech work places become more diverse, socially awkward people end up facing more trouble due to having to interact with a more diverse cast of individuals which involves an increasing scope of understanding of social interactions. If their own disadvantages are given no consideration, they end up worse off, and this can be even worse since their social awkwardness leads to a vastly smaller social support network to help them.
See[1] for a list of the protected classes
One would assume a hiring manager would have a familiarity with the laws around hiring. Especially since many states (and maybe the US?) are required to post information about those sorts of laws in a visible place in places of employment.
People wonder where he's finding all these great people, but the reality is he was able to connect with introverts, and drilling down into people's capabilities beyond surface impressions.