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Comment by gburt | Hacker News Reader

> Recruiters at my company aren't explicitly told to hit certain quotas, but they are given larger bonuses for diverse hires and they do have targets for certain percentages of diverse candidate.

I'm definitely not a lawyer and I live nowhere near the Bay Area, but by my reading of most of these laws, this is illegal. I realize we often interpret these issues differently depending on who they effect, but this sounds like an open-and-shut case of discrimination to me.

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It most definitely is not illegal. Many colleges have race and gender based quota systems. Governments have race and gender quota systems. Many federal, state and local governments set aside X percentage of their contracts solely for minority or female owned businesses.

Whether this is right or wrong is another debate. But race, gender or "diversity" hiring or recruiting certainly isn't illegal. It happens all the time.

> It most definitely is not illegal.

Yes it is.

> Many colleges have race and gender based quota systems.

Quota systems have been repeatedly struck down in college admissions as illegal.

> Governments have race and gender quota systems.

Quota systems for public education (including higher education) and employment have also repeatedly been ruled illegal.

The distinction between quotas and "outcome based goals" is kind of hazy. To be clear, recruiters aren't required to hit certain targets. Leadership does tell recruiters that they're aiming for a a certain targets but as far as I know recruiters don't receive any penalty if they fall below that target.

Even telling recruiters to hire a certain demographic is discrimination. The parent post said that recruiters had large bonuses for certain demographics.

I am the root commenter. Bonuses are given regardless of the candidates' divery status, it's just that diverse candidate get a slightly higher bonus. The difference between the bonus of a non-diverse and diverse candidate is about 20%. That difference is not constant because bonuses vary based on other things like the role being hired and the amount of experience. Experienced hires have a bigger bonus than new grads - this is to counteract a past tendency to hire younger employees which led to a skewed age and experience distribution. We also have bigger bonuses to hire managers because we have a chronic shortage of them.

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