Duolingo has a policy of only recruiting from schools that have an above-average percent of women in their CS program. How do you feel about that?
But this feels like a blunt instrument for a highly-nuanced issue. If diversity of experience is a core value at Duolingo, why not recruit everywhere and tailor the interviewing process to favor candidates from non-traditional backgrounds?
While they've achieved an important milestone, I'd be very worried about the line of thinking that led to this decision if I were a Duolingo investor. All the diversity in the world doesn't mean much if they can't find a way to keep the lights on.
Thats a misleading statement.
IMO, The main reason why they did that is because Carnegie Mellon University has more woman than men in its incoming CS classes, and Duolingo wanted an excuse to exclusively recruit from CMU (Which one of the founders teach at, and is strongly associated with).
Something like this must do ugly things to one's mind and one's perception of self-worth.
And in what way is this special treatment?
Companies use a variety of different metrics by which to determine which schools they should recruit from. "We want to increase our diversity" is a reasonable metric to use, and "recruit from colleges with an above-average percentage of people in a minority group we've chosen to view as important" is a reasonable way to accomplish that.
I shouldn't have to point this out, but diversity is more than just a buzzword. Increasing diversity on the development side improves the final product, for a variety of reasons.