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Comment by sriram_sun | Hacker News Reader

Here is my own experience of getting hired into a startup. The day I got hired the manager took the team out to lunch and I asked them how each one got hired. So results:

White male - Room mate of employee

White male - Knew early employee from college in Switzerland

White female - Recruited off of LinkedIn

Indian American - Recruited off of LinkedIn

Immigrant Indian American - Recruited off of LinkedIn.

There is a lot of favoritism that goes on in industry as well. However, it is so large that it can accommodate both merit-based and network based hiring. Hiring is a total crap shoot anyway and this is not to say that just because someone comes recommended by someone else they are automatically bad. They just look better in comparison because mentally we automatically lower the hiring bar as this person comes "recommended" from a known source.

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If you are going to build a team you will probably select for people you know and trust first, so choosing from people in your network is a natural way of doing this. This is literally called 'networking'. If it isn't a startup this can become a problem as the hiring process should be more open for everyone otherwise you won't be able to get a job anywhere without knowing someone from there first.

> There is a lot of favoritism that goes on in industry as well.

There sure is, but I don't think your example is evidence for that. People just like to hire based on recommendations and through friends. Several times now I've been interested in some startup, and when I looked at their team page, they were all from the same group: either all Indian, or all russian speakers, or something else. I bet most startups are like this, just that some cases are more apparent than others.

I am struggling to see what you are trying to say here, especially since you use somewhat arbitrary way to group people by race and sex. Can you clarify?

Is the founder white? Does he/did he live in a majority white country (you mentioned a college in Switzerland, a country which is most likely 90% white)? If so, why is that weird and why does that matter? Unless you think that "white men" are fungible, using this category makes no sense.

My impression was that they think they've discovered nepotism, but what they've actually discovered is networking.

I'm a bit perplexed by the notion that it's somehow a problem when the founder hires his friends and former colleagues when starting a company with just 6 employees.

Noone within the team was a founder.

The "room mate" network is pretty exclusionary and self selecting.

Networking inherently excludes anybody that isn't in the relevant network, what are you expecting?

It's a razor thin line and we can't really tell unless the roommates were horribly unqualified for the job.

But I'd probably hire in a similar way for a startup. Not because of nepotism, but because I know the kinds of peope I want to hire are massively productive and good at their respective fields, I'd be honored if they could do that work under me.

(note: no real plan to do this and half my friends aren't in my specific domain regardless).

For heaven's sake, think a little. This is an empirical discussion of hiring heuristics that result in a certain system. It's not just networking (generally used to refer to development of professional connections, though yes people use it to refer to smoking weed together or engaging in the same sport) and the poster didn't say nepotism either. It is certainly favoritism (hiring people you already know and like without necessarily casting a wider net) and it's clear that there are structural effects from it that develop on gender and race lines (you're in the men's hockey team together, you're in a fraternity or sorority, you're in an ethnic club).

What sriram_sun said is entirely factual, and a lot of us get left out of the networks for various reasons. That's also just factual. The fact that folks here are all "oh you're just jealous, you're calling it nepotism" -- nah, it's just facts, and there is no need to get emotional about it. There is nothing inherently wrong about hiring people you know -- like any move in a game, it has knock-on effects. If you'd like to help broaden networks, just do it. And for those who feel defensive about it, consider the phrase "hit dogs holler".

It was shocking to me that room mates could get hired that easily.

This was the bay area.

My comment is highlighting structural imbalances as they exist in society right now.

Even though networking as a way to grow, it is not an option for a lot of people until much later in their careers. That is because of social conditioning.

You're really grasping at straws here.

You sound like you'll be a problematic employee for the totally bizarre reason that you're jealous of how other people got hired before you.

That sounds like plain envy to me, and it's not bizarre (although it might well be unhealthy) to be envious of those with better opportunities than you. As for whether that is associated with being a problematic employee, well, problematic can also mean profitable when envy is a powerful motivator.

Like I said above, it made me more empathetic, not envious. However, I'm pointing at instances like this so that hiring managers with a enough resources also consider other pipelines.

Oh quite! I myself am outside of the networks of industries I want to be in. There is an altruistic side to getting the job you really want - you'll be more motivated and probably better able to do well in it. Industries that operate exclusively with networking lose out on most of that altruism.

Startups are an inherently risky venture that lacks the money and management to hire everyone they want. It's a horrible example.

Consider the empathy from the other side: I'm working in a stable job and my friend approached me saying he's got this big idea. May not even be funded yet. Do I use my part time to help on his dream in hopes that we get funding and maybe expand on the idea? That's a lot of trust and energy being put into another person.

On the end of the "nepotee" it really depends on the person and what you know. And it takes a certain style of mind to get on board that idea. That isn't the same in getting fast tracked to some cushy Google job.

If I was allowed, I'd consider an alternate hiring pipeline looking at IQ scores and doing anonymous interviews in air gapped rooms so we could blind hire.

But hey, government doesn't let me. So instead I'm going to assume experience by minorities is suspect due to discriminatory hiring practices like AA and DEI, and continue to hire mostly white and asian males because they're the most disenfranchised groups atm, especially in South Africa.

Not envy. Empathy.

I'm surprised (or maybe not that surprised) no one has countered the "This is just how networking works" argument with: Yes, but if the network you're pulling from is mostly white guys, doesn't that signal a problem in itself?

No it does not. This is a bizarre way to look at things, that is all to common in the US but very much alien in most of the world. Why are those two dimensions important to you (white and male)? What about affluent/poor, educated/uneducated, ginger/blonde, immigrant/native, enthusiastic/bored, religious/atheist, left-wing/right-wing.

The only problem here is the insistence on seeing things through the clownish lens of the "race-sex" combo. It makes it sounds like you can pretty much interchange "white males", like - "I guess I've already got a white guy friend, now I need an asian, and a black one". Nobody sane makes friends like that.

I would be really surprised if you didn't have a: "Indian guy - Room mate of employee" "Indian guy - Room mate of employee" "Indian guy - Room mate of employee" network in many Indian startups. Except each of those dudes would be a different person, with different experience, differente world view, different likes and dislikes, so what does it matter that they are Indian?

Are ginger and blonde the only two options here?

Is that the most important thing you read from my comment?

I mean, it jumped out me because ginger and blonde are both the two rarest hair colors and the ones more or less exclusive to people of European descent, but I also don't really want to waste energy debating someone who thinks it's "clownish" to note someone's race and gender in tandem, because we're clearly never gonna see eye-to-eye on this.

So yeah, I guess it was the most important thing.

It is kinda clownish to note that the coworkers are white males when it's followed by the fact that they're all room mates. What is the comment trying to draw attention to? Are they trying to highlight the fact that hiring is biased toward recommendations from employees? Then why mention the sex/race? Is it evidence of "structural imbalances as they exist in society right now" that three white males live in the same apartment in bay area?

> I would be really surprised if you didn't have a: "Indian guy - Room mate of employee" "Indian guy - Room mate of employee" "Indian guy - Room mate of employee" network in many Indian startups.

Don't forget caste details of each one in that list.

There is another dynamic that helps the recommended hire succeed in the workplace environment. They initially get help navigating the workplace. This is extremely important for career development. For e.g. If you know what to look for in a code base that might make a difference between a commit on day one versus messing around the code base for a week and trying to be really careful.

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