Of course metrics are not everything, as I stated in my original comment, but it should have nothing to do with gender.
Maybe you want a better cultural fit, and that's 100% acceptable by my book. But leave gender out of it.
Maybe you want a better cultural fit, and that's 100% acceptable by my book. But leave gender out of it.
Or that it's illegal in many jurisdictions to select a candidate because of their gender. Can't speak for others, but if I see evidence of this happening in writing, I have no qualms about forwarding the docs/emails/whatever off to the Dept of Labor and a labor attorney to pursue this discriminatory behavior (discrimination is discrimination, whether "anti" a specific gender or "pro") by an employer.
Culture shifts should be a byproduct of effective, non-discriminatory hiring practices (which includes blinding to protected classes).
Good idea, but nearly nobody does it (removing socioeconomic indicators such as name/gender/address from CVs). It is also difficult to insulate yourself from your network when hiring, as well as controlling for other items on a CV (you want Ivy League? Hello bias!).
Which is why I think some active thought on the subject of diversity is essential when hiring. You will never remove bias completely, so we might as well acknowledge the 800 pound gorilla and deal with it directly.
Maybe start with free catered lunches on Fridays or something.
Knowing that people from group X (be they women, men, minorities, people from poor background without access to networks) on average are going to need bit more help than people from the right background, the right education, the right everything, that is something you can use in order to a) be the change you want to see b) run the risk of fresh ideas in your org. Even if you do not feel inclined towards a), b) is needed in all dynamic companies, and certainly institutes such as CERN.
It was ambiguous whether or not you were advocating for using gender as a proxy for "better culture fit". The GP was just being explicit that that's a bad idea.
> Knowing that people from group X (be they women, men, minorities, people from poor background without access to networks) on average are going to need bit more help than people from the right background, the right education, the right everything, that is something you can use in order to a) be the change you want to see b) run the risk of fresh ideas in your org.
It seems like you're actually arguing for using gender, race, etc as a proxy for "better culture fit" or "fresh ideas". This is illegal in most civilized places as it's immoral and based on dubious assumptions (notably that there is more inter-group intellectual diversity than intra-group diversity, i.e., all men (or women, or whites, or asians, or etc) are the roughly same).
I'm arguing for understanding that most hirers simply hire people with similar backgrounds as their own. That creates the barrier I think we are discussing here. Using indicators such as gender (if your type of org has an extreme disbalance) may help you see that, and correct for it, if you so chose.
'Culture fit' is actually one of those criteria I hate: it usually means hiring similar people.
Yeah, I agree that it seems to imply something like that; I meant it in the sense of "hiring people who will move the culture in the direction you'd like it to move", which I think is what we're discussing, but I'm happy to use any such term.
> Most countries here in Europe have not made positive discrimination illegal.
"positive discrimination" is one of the terms I hate. It seems to imply that it is correcting for something when part of the debate is whether or not there is anything to correct for.
> I'm arguing for understanding that most hirers simply hire people with similar backgrounds as their own
I'm happy to accept this understanding, but not blindly. I'd like to know that it's based on robust evidence and at least the obvious counterpoints have been addressed. If the understanding is correct, it should survive rigorous debate and analysis; however, many proponents of this conclusion/theory seem to fervently oppose any such debate, analysis, etc. Hopefully we can at least agree that it would be reasonable to be skeptical of this theory/conclusion if indeed its proponents are trying to stifle debate/analysis even if we don't agree that the stifling is real.
And if you don't agree that the stifling is real, do you feel like there is rigorous debate and analysis on the topic? Do you see skeptics of the theory raising interesting or legitimate questions/issues? If so, do you believe those issues are being adequately addressed (and how so / give examples?)? If not, what issues do you perceive them as raising and why are those issues not legitimate? Can you provide a steelman argument?