Comment by mjsir911 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjsir911 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think this is a complicated question to answer, but I'll give it a shot:

Within the tech industry, the correct proportion of minorities should be representative of your hiring pool (which is why I think they ask you to self report), or maybe even proportionally to "all qualified potential candidates", not sure how you'd measure that out.

The problem is even within qualified potential candidates, many minorities are still under-represented. This is a societal problem outside of the tech industry, but one that leaks into it.

More opportunities for these minorities to get a leg up to enter the field would bring the proportions closer to normal, stuff like affirmative action for schools.

It's a tough answer and nobody wants anyone in the chain to take responsibility for lifting up those that have been put down, it's definitely a flawed approach but I'm glad to see businesses attempt it.

I don't think it's fair to assume that genders and ethnicities should match either the general population or the hiring pool. Geography plays a huge role: if you have a company in a city with a substantially higher asian population (like Seattle or the Bay Area) that geographic distribution is going to have a significant influence. Likewise, a product used primarily by women might have higher representation of women because of the userbase. Pinterest is a good example here.

I think the solution is to realize that it's wrong to pick outcomes a priori, that we shouldn't trying to find the "correct proportion". Instead, focus on eliminating discrimination and biases in the hiring pipeline. Anonymize the gender and ethnicity of applicants. Use voice altering software to prevent the ability to discern between genders when interviewing. If the goal is to eliminate discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics, create a hiring process that isn't able to distinguish between these characteristics in the first place. Then, whatever proportion that results is the "correct proportion".

> Within the tech industry, the correct proportion of minorities should be representative of your hiring pool

How do you know all your hiring pools should produce evenly like that? There’s a lot of factors (cultural, genetic) that need to be understood. It would be very strange for interest in any industry to be even across racial groups.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com