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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

It is an interesting list, some of the questions seem good, I like the ones that basically get at “are you learning from experienced employees.”

On the other hand,

> Does your company care about diversity? If so are they hiring conservatives, the religious, or people with unrelated degrees? Hell are they hiring people without degrees or from places with no major metro around?

This seems like kind of an annoying political gotcha question. If asked this question, I’d probably say “I don’t really like to talk politics and religion at work” and I’d be a little worried that the person who asked it might like to talk politics and religion at work.

Edit: I mean I’m not a robot, I know the political alignment of some of my close colleagues, but obviously no company in their right minds is collecting the data required to answer this question on a company-wide statistical level.

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The questions are meant to be asked of yourself, unless I'm mistaken. So I'm not really sure what you mean about "the person who asked it".

I would speculate that the point of the question is that "diversity", in the corporate world, has some very specific meaning, and in my experience, it doesn't include these categories. My own employer does a lot of lip service to how important it is to have people from diverse backgrounds, and yet, somehow that seems to translate to "young people from many different ethnic groups who all lean liberal, have never mentioned their faith in the time I've known them, and have degrees".

I think you are right. I was looking at it through the lens of potential “now do you have any questions” type questions, like in an interview, as some of the other comments here have mentioned. But that isn’t mentioned in the article. They are probably just for introspection that sort of question makes more sense.

(OP) Correct. The first couple sentences stress this, the questions are just mini thought experiments. Not an assertion of anything. Have fun with them, don't belabor them. If all or none of the questions aren't your cup of tea, who cares.

Yeah right. Your concern that massively overrepresented groups might be overlooked while underrepresented groups are emphasized is just a bit of fun.

It's a fun position to be in where whether you get a job or not is just a thought experiment.

You're still not getting it.

The thought experiment regarding diversity challenges the (typically) inconsistent implementation of it where it's more like a candy story where you pick what you like (or deem socially acceptable) and dismiss or even discourage anything else. That's not true diversity. It's equity.

Similarly, as you suggest that representation matters, and if you'd consistently believe that, then we should immediately reallocate a huge amount of women to do the shittiest, riskiest, lowest paid jobs that men currently do. Likewise, we should immediately deploy a huge amount of men in female-dominated professions, like HR, psychology, the like.

I bet quite a few would now lose their appetite for "representation". We might as well just stop pretending and admit that we have no principles or beliefs, we just want whatever is best for us or our "group", whatever that means.

You're not getting it. There was no thought experiment. You are arguing for stupidity.

Part of that is a reflection of the American population! America is increasingly ethnically diverse and irreligious.

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