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Comment by programmarchy | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a good illustration of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Yes, we should make an effort to be inclusive of all individuals, but when that's done by putting people on a pedestal simply because they're a minority, it's superficial, cringy and embarrassing for everyone involved.

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In my team, where we have a 50-50 target goal, we were told that if we know a potential woman hire we should refer her not to the regular hiring track, but to a special "woman friendly" hiring track.

Is that evidence that there's a "softer" path to employment, or that the regular hiring track sucks?

That's exactly what I'm also wondering. Given that the whole company seems genuinely devoted to increasing diversity, I would tend towards the first possibility, especially since the team manager boasted a lot that his team has one of the highest female to male ratio in the company.

Why would one boast about less diversity? Did you mean "highest ratio"?

You are right, I got the order wrong :) Updated post.

But highest ratio is still less diversity. Only 50-50 is highest diversity, right?

It is, which is my point. Why would you brag about being less diverse? The OP responded and said he made a mistake and got the order wrong.

I believe the point is that separate cannot be equal.

Probably just means "Don't let her be interviewed by the guy we all know is a serial sexual abuser but whom we plan to do nothing about until after at least three women have gone viral with their stories of creepy abuse at his hands".

I would have put it a little less... pessimistically, but that's my concern. I think everyone's worked on a team where it was agreed that certain people shouldn't be part of the interview process, whether it's because of something god-awful like that, or if it's just because they lack social skills, or because they're an asshole.

Was it explained to you why there's a 50-50 target goal, or is the value of such a goal automatically assumed to be known and shared?

What data could one rely on to support anything other than that? No matter what you have, there are too many confounding variables.

I've encountered something similar. Basically two roles were open and I was on the interviewing team. We were told at the start that one of the roles would be for a woman. We got two CVs from women, and about 45 or so from guys. Not fair really but what can you do. It'd be insanity to challenge that, so just keep your head down and nod along.

Is this legal in your country?

What makes it a bit worse is that we are social animals, and expectations matter.

High expectations or low expectations, people often rise to the level expected of them.

Not to mention, whether you got in on the regular track or the alternate track affects people's attitudes about your abilities. People need information about others, and the circumstances of how they joined the organization (whether they are in the group that got assistance or not) is a source of information. Sure, some people have been trained to ignore that for the sake of fairness, but not 100% of everyone.

When a minority isn't being hired, it is probably hard to prove that it was because of discrimination... that's probably why a minimum is sometime required

I'm not sure why you're getting downvotes. A couple of thoughts:

Phrasing such as "a minority" might be seen as unfavourable.

"A minimum is sometimes required" -- if this is about positive discrimination / affirmative action, this is a potentially controversial and complex topic, as other posts in this thread reveal.

However, I do agree with your point that discrimination in employment can indeed be very hard to prove for individual cases, even though broader statistics may illustrate that it occurs.

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