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Comment by mock-possum | Hacker News Reader

If your goal is to hire for attribute "no disability" and I decline to say whether I possess that, then it's illegal to pass me over - same with attribute "is not a woman" or "is white." So unless you're suggesting that they ask these questions to enable them to practice illegal hiring discrimination, I'm not really sure this applies to my question.

Military service is the only one I can think of that's legal to take into consideration.

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Illegal hiring discrimination is the norm from my perspective. There are departments that set targets for what they want the makeup of the company to look like. Hard if not impossible to enforce.

well that's fair, that is the sort of inside info that I'd like to know.

And actually, that means I was unfair about your first comment - I wouldn't want to work for a place that operates that way anyway, as another top level comment notes. I think I can safely discard secret illegal hiring practices as a concern when interviewing, which does solve my issue of whether to answer truthfully or simply opt-out of those questions.

One man's "illegal hiring discrimination" is another man's "social justice" /s

I was indoctrinated at Very Big Corporation back in the 80's that given a white and a black job applicant, the company's policy was to prefer the black one as long as they meet the minimal requirements for the job. This was presented in annual mandatory Affirmative Action training as offical company policy, and was supposedly a requirement for government contracts.

Never mind that it was a blatant violation not only of the Constitution, but of the letter of the very government policy that initiated Affirmative Action to begin with.

What was the racial make-up of the company prior to the policy?

I try to think of it in the most charitable way possible: "in what ways can we accommodate this person's needs". Sometimes the ideal candidate can be unique in ways you'd not considered at first. It shows care to pay attention to those details and make them feel welcomed.

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