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Comment by dagmx | Hacker News Reader

This has to be one of the most outright bigoted posts I've seen on HN.

It implies that only outright homogeneous cultures are good. So a white woman is a negative to be in a work culture with a white man, because she cannot relate to being a man?

Or a black man can't work with a white man because he can't relate to being white?

Or do you mean if I'm from a foreign country, legally allowed to work in America, that I am a negative because I don't share a common upbringing story?

Should people from different states not work together?

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Asking rhetorical questions of this nature is not achieving anything except airing your hurt sensibilities. People can have opinions other than the ones you hold and I already outlined fairly clearly in my original post what I think.

Heterogeneity is bad for startups because of the need to have no friction communication and shared goals/ideals/experiences. It does _not_ mean that diversity is bad in a big company or overall.

You haven't outlined where you consider the extents of "being homogeneous".

Otherwise homogeneous is whatever demographic you prescribe to and is entirely a self serving concept.

> Otherwise homogeneous is whatever demographic you prescribe to and is entirely a self serving concept

Whats wrong with this? I like working closely with people that understand me just by body language and completely frictionless communication. You'd be surprised how valuable that is when you're solving a P0 breakage at 3am.

So you're saying you can't get on equally well with people outside your demographic? You wouldn't even give them a chance based on not being part of your demographics?

There's also a difference between how you pick your friends and how you hire employees. You were advocating that hiring homogeneously is beneficial. In and off itself, that's discriminatory.

And still you refuse to commit to what is the extents of "homogeneous". Is it ethnicity? Language? Gender? Sexuality? Nationality?

Your post also suggested that heterogeneous work forces , even if you qualify it as applying only to startups, work at an interior level to homogeneous ones. Again, that's implying that different demographics can't work well together. But clearly that can't apply across the board. Or women and men could never work together. So what's the extents of your statement?

To be perfectly fair with the parent; It _is_ a very western ideal about heterogeneity being highly valued.

I think tying emotions to it does us little favours - a prominent successful country that does not value heterogenity at all is Japan.

Does Japan outcompete per capita?

(The answer is no).

Not sure if there are other examples of note here.

There's a difference between not valuing heterogeneous work forces versus valuing homogenous ones. The parents comment is the latter.

Also you have to view the concept of heterogeneous work forces relative to the make up of the countries demographics makeup.

A diverse country having a non diverse work force make up is odd statistically.

> A diverse country having a non diverse work force make up is odd statistically.

I agree, but I would also add that a company exhibiting the exact diversity representation as the surrounding country is also very odd, statistically.

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