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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Now do a white guy. Because I'm wondering if companies use a stock photo because it's easier than taking photos of their unphotogenic staff, or if it is because they wish to appear diverse but come photo time they look around the office and..."oh, shit, we really need to quit hiring based on 'cultural fit'".

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Doubt it. I see the same "white" guy in two of google's products. I'm guessing they chose this guy because he's a handsome and prolific model. I don't think trying to slip race into this will make it a better discussion.

As someone who recently worked on my company’s website redesign, I can say it was none of the above.

We’re actually a quite diverse staff. At the risk of saying something non-PC, many of us are quite attractive and photogenic, including those of non-white skin tones and other diverse backgrounds.

I originally fought for taking “real photos” of “real employees”, but was shot down due to:

1. Time and effort involved in getting good shots with good lighting

2. “Decent but not as nice as stock photo” office scenery (cubicles are drab compared to bright white offices with fake plants)

3. My boss let slip that he didn’t want to give visual aids to help poachers in their ability to find and hire us (nope, not joking about that one, and yes, it is a red flag)

> I'm wondering if companies use a stock photo because it's easier than taking photos of their unphotogenic staff, or if it is because they wish to appear diverse but come photo time they look around the office and..."oh, shit, we really need to quit hiring based on 'cultural fit'".

It's just cheaper to use stock photos than to bring-in a photographer. Especially right now with Covid. It's also awkward to ask employees.

And you have to stage the office as well.

There's also a good chance the office looks like something like https://twitter.com/calvinfo/status/1315691567408185346 at launch.

Extra weird to use employees and notice only the attractive ones made it on the careers page… and if they leave and are still there etc etc

Or you end up featured in a video like this

https://youtu.be/dxjtyJSHJF0?t=385

And the company starts to appear in the "red flag list" some engineers share among themselves...

Stock photography because it’s easier to search/filter your way to the perfect photo than it is to try and create it yourself.

I've done you the favour of finding out about these companies, and I think you'll find they all have diverse staff and founders. I think the problem is companies are now forced to jump over themselves to prove how diverse they are because if they don't people like you are all to eager to dogwhistle about how if they aren't "diverse enough" they must secretly be racist.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/roboflow-ai/people/ https://www.experiencewelcome.com/about-us https://www.linkedin.com/company/returnly-technologies-inc/p...

It depends some companies use their own employees, some use photos of their customers, etc.

I wonder what kind of contract they have people sign given clients move to different solutions providers and employees move companies as well.

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