Comment by adamlett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adamlett | Hacker News Reader

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More importantly: who cares?

There are many good reasons to care. Off the top of my head:

* Having a diverse work force makes it less likely that you will be blind to problems caused by unintended side effects of your product that only affect certain groups.

* Having no women (or people of color, or people with disabilities, or...) on the workforce, will make you less attractive as an employer to talented people in these groups. Ultimately, you get to hire from a larger talent pool, if you make an effort to cultivate diversity.

* Making an effort to attract a diversity of people will make you uncover barriers of entry, that you might not have been aware of, and removing those has the potential to benefit everyone.

And finally, even if you believe strongly that your hiring practices are not the cause of the lack of diversity, and that the real problem is elsewhere (in the education system for instance), you can still choose to be part of the solution by providing proof that there is a desirable future to be had for a woman who chooses to go in to a STEM field.

Generally talented people enjoy working with other talented people, and prefer to be hired and rewarded only for that reason.

The social justice diversity, equity and inclusion is a political stance that instead of seeing individuals see groups of "oppressed" and "oppressors" which is a recipe for a less productive work environment. These unchosen group identities are political tools and not descriptive of an individual.

Moreover, social justice uses activism to take over the organization to the point where it use as many resources as possible for activism. It is not unusual at this point for activist employees to ask a company to make bad business decisions for political reasons, so a policy putting political activism into the private sphere makes it clear that you are at work to create a long-term sustainable and healthy business.

Generally talented people enjoy working with other talented people

Everything else being equal, sure.

and prefer to be hired and rewarded only for that reason.

Why would anybody who knew they were talented and got hired or promoted, assume it had to do with anything other than their talent?

The social justice diversity, equity and inclusion is a political stance that instead of seeing individuals see groups of "oppressed" and "oppressors" which is a recipe for a less productive work environment. These unchosen group identities are political tools and not descriptive of an individual.

It is possible to recognize that a certain groups of people on average face more obstacles and barriers, without equating individuals with the groups they belong to or vice versa.

> Why would anybody who knew they were talented and got hired or promoted, assume it had to do with anything other than their talent?

Affirmative hiring, diversity quotas etc are actively aimed at identity based hiring and promotion. In addition to this a candidate in a favored identity group often go through different hiring and promotion procedures with involvement from the DEI officer.

> It is possible to recognize that a certain groups of people on average face more obstacles and barriers, without equating individuals with the groups they belong to or vice versa.

In a different working environment this may have been the case, but according to the silicon valley index more than 2/3[1] of silicon valley workers 20-45 are immigrants of asian descent so the woke assertion that its a white mans business is not accurate.

In addition to this there are official company policies that discriminate against white men, and there are policies actively working to give special consideration in hiring and promotion to BIPOC. Their aim is to create asymmetry between groups.

[1] https://jointventure.org/download-the-2020-index

Gender and disability ratios at companies already match that of most CS program graduates every year. There isn't a hidden pool of people that are being ignored.

The talent pool extends a lot further than people with CS degrees. And even if your statement narrowly is true for the industry as a whole (I’m skeptical that it is – from what I’m told more women than men leave the industry), it isn’t necessarily true for individual companies.

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