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Comment by quicklime | Hacker News Reader

> Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important to us. We know that diverse teams are more successful, and we work hard to ensure everyone is treated fairly and respectfully. That’s a bit about what these values mean to us; what do diversity, equity, and inclusion mean to you?

Ugh, this question really made me cringe.

Interviewers are in a position of power over interviewees, and the whole point of a job interview is to assess a candidate. The fact is that if an interviewer doesn't like the answer, it will reflect negatively on the interviewee.

If you're in a majority group, I'd suggest seriously re-thinking whether to ask this question to a candidate from a minority group, at least during an assessment.

After they've been onboarded? Sure. But not while you're in a position of power over them.

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You should absolutely ask the diversity question to members of minority groups because they are not immune to having strange ideas about diversity, inclusion and especially equity.

When your interviewer is a genderqueer woman, and she tells you that she has trouble working with men (that really happened) you appreciate the honesty, and then you run as fast as you can. That was a bridge-burning move from that company.

I would hear that question as a political filter: "We only hire leftists".

you don't have to be a leftist to know diversity is a good thing

Words can be loaded with political affiliation. The way you choose to say "we want everyone to feel welcome" might (unintentionally) make some people feel that they're not actually welcome.

There is nothing inherently good or bad ethnic diversity. What is inherently good is to not treat people any differently because of their ethnic/gender/sexuality... group membership. But that’s not the objective of HR diversity programs. Those programs are designed to introduce race based (or gender based, or sexuality based...) decisions into the hiring and promotion processes. You can form your own opinion on whether that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s certainly not universally agreed upon as a good thing (in fact it’s quite controversial), and it certainly is a common element in “progressive left” ideologies.

However, I would also very much appreciate knowing whether a company has such policies as early in the hiring process as possible.

> There is nothing inherently good or bad ethnic diversity.

Depends on the context. For example, if your user base is diverse, it can be larger than if it wasn't - the total potential market is larger. So, diversity is profitable in that context.

Serving a diverse user base well is potentially easier with diverse staff. Remember those "Falsehoods programmers believe about X" articles? With a diverse team, chances are higher that those falsehoods are caught early, because the team covers a broader range of life experiences. So, diversity is good in that context.

How much of an impact this argument has depends on the concrete role, of course. My work tends to be very low on the overall software stack, and the notion that diversity helps seems very weak there. At the very least, I expect that diversity of thought or actual neurodiversity matters more than ethnic or gender diversity.

I don’t think your first point is particularly relevant to the topic. If you were to continue growing a customer base forever, you’d presume that it would increasingly become more diverse forever. But the point you’re making seems to be that having more customers is good, not that having a more diverse set of customers is good.

I think your second point is completely valid. Having a greater diversity of skills, perspectives, experience, ideas... on a team seems to be obviously beneficial. But that’s not at all relevant to the types of diversity HR programs aim to implement. Those programs are generally concerned with factors like ethnicity, gender, and sexuality... which are not at all related to the factors you mentioned.

Yeah, the first point is more of a lemma that supports the second point.

> At the very least, I expect that diversity of thought or actual neurodiversity matters more than ethnic or gender diversity.

The interview questions like this are usually designed to eliminate neurodiversity. I mean, how many people on autistic spectrum could successfully navigate them without triggering at least one "red flag"?

(When even things like "correctly answers part of the question, forgets there was a second part" are considered red flags.)

Those questions are probably not intentionally designed to eliminate neurodiversity, but I agree that that's a side effect.

The set of categories that diversity advocates typically care about is itself not diverse.

Are you pro life or against life? See how an innocent looking question can be a disguised trap. As an anon user, you can ignore the question and move on. However imagine this is asked by your interviewer or by someone who has power over your career, and asks this on a stage in front of a large audience.

“We emphasize equity” instead of “we emphasize equality” or “we reward merit” means there is going to need to be a lot of extra justification to promote/reward you if you are competing with someone from a disadvantaged background.

Sure. And you don't have to be a Trumpist to want to make America great.

But both those phrases are strong tribal markers.

Hm. Is political ideology a good predictor of performance? (Are there studies measuring this?)

This is an excellent question but I don’t think I would trust anyone to measure it accurately.

> If you're in a majority group, I'd suggest seriously re-thinking whether to ask this question to a candidate from a minority group, at least during an assessment.

Running the interview differently because of which (presumably protected) classes you judge the interviewee to be in is a big red flag. If you're not comfortable asking the question to some people, you shouldn't ask it.

Anyway, this question feels like a gotcha more than anything. You're supposed to say the right thing, not demonstrate it. Hiring people because they said the right thing rather than because they demonstrated the thing is a great way to get bamboozled.

If your company is doing well with diversity, inclusion, and equity, your interview team will likely be diverse. If a candidate won't work well in that environment, they'll likely make it known during the interview, or self select out.

If your company is not very diverse, or at least if the interviewers aren't, the question feels even more sketch.

If it's an important pillar of the company, by all means spend a few minutes telling candidates about it and if the candidate says or does something that raises a flag, handle it.

> the whole point of a job interview is to assess a candidate. The fact is that if an interviewer doesn't like the answer, it will reflect negatively on the interviewee.

Yeah, they don't ask this question just for fun. They write in the background section that the purpose is "It selects for candidates who share these values [...] if they believe that this is all just political correctness gone wrong, or that white people are really the oppressed ones, they aren’t going to be able to work well with me and my teams."

So I'm not sure why they'd wait to do this evaluation until after onboarding.

You also seem to think that the only time the company has a position of power over the employee is during the interview process. But generally the boss/HR has power over the worker even after onboarding (a different kind -- to fire rather than hire), so I'm not sure where your power analysis is grounded...

I agree that it is definitely something they should bring up as early in the interview process as possible. If a company strongly identifies with neoracism[1], I'd like to avoid wasting my time interviewing with them. And I'm a POC!

[1] https://www.persuasion.community/p/john-mcwhorter-the-neorac...

>But generally the boss/HR has power over the worker even after onboarding (a different kind -- to fire rather than hire)

I agree, but it's a matter of degree. In practice, it's significantly easier to reject a candidate than it is to fire an employee.

Agreed, even as somebody liberal-leaning, I think overtly politic-checking somebody like this is tacky and a red-flag. It says to me that this employer can't separate work and politics.

I can't believe they have the balls to ask that. It's too easy to accidentally imply that the company discriminates against a protected class.

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