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Comment by xenonite | Hacker News Reader

Yes, we have a really well recognized Spanish team lead here, yet he’s mostly hiring Spanish people (in Switzerland), oh yes and one Italian is the exception.

Also we had a German team lead hiring Germans, well surprise it is easier being with similar ones.

Diversity back in the day meant Physics, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering working together…

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I’m an American and I just had the thought - if I was working in Japan at a Japanese company and I had the opportunity to hire, would I have a bias to hire other Americans?

Honestly probably, since I understand them the best.

And that seems suboptimal for a Japanese company?

I’d disagree. I’m not American or British but and in my experience Americans or British are the least ethnically biased people on the planet. Any other group, I could believe that they are biased but not Americans, or British. Something in their particular culture right now.

It isn’t just a lack of ethnic bias, it’s a belief in capitalism or professionalism or “enlightened self-interest”: hire the best person for the job, and everyone will be better off.

You’re responding to an American who says he’d be biased towards Americans and telling him he’s wrong.

Maybe Americans are the least biased (though being an American I am not so sure) but that doesn’t mean we aren’t biased (even if sometimes for legitimate reasons like ease of communication).

Or perhaps said American genuinely is unaware of how much more biased other ethnic groups are in their own homelands.

Yes exactly, the American bias level right now is probably as low as it can get humanly.

Now this I disagree with. I expect that you are interacting with a specific subset of Americans. A lot of Americans are deeply racist and xenophobic and I believe that the average could definitely get lower.

I guess I work in tech. Maybe it’s different elsewhere but even there I think it’s probably lower than most of the world among similar classes of society.

So I actually agree with you here. America has a deep, ugly pit of unconstrained racism, and a less deep pit of quiet racism that permeates a lot of society. But so do many (and very possibly most) other nations, where the level of racism is often even worse, just with different targets than Americans. I think in a way America is much more aware of our tendencies than other nations.

Okay, but the conversation was:

Meken: “I would be biased”

Sashank: “I disagree”

Others being more biased doesn’t make Americans unbiased.

Yes that's why country clubs and the Greek system never caught on...

I've actually been in such a situation and I didn't. Or if I did have such a bias it must've been rather small as none of the applicants benefited from it.

And this is why it's in the interest of Japanese people in Japan not to make it easy for you to have an opportunity to hire people for jobs in Japan.

Yes, and that's normal (except for maybe eastern European cultures who better hire an American/west European).

> well surprise it is easier being with similar ones.

It's not easier dealing with people from your own country but it is biased. From someone who has hired hundred+ remote developers in europe for 10 years to lead them and out of those hired a total of 2 people from my country. Wouldn't have been hard either.

At the same time I see some managers doing this, currently in another fully remote company have a manager colleague that has hired 3 brazillians back to back. Go figure. Just shows you that it's a biased person in other respects (we all are) and that they make zero efforts to keep it in check (this is a decision you make).

> that has hired 3 brazillians back to back

I've seen this kind of thing happen not through bias but because good people know good people, where by "good" I mean highly competent. They knew each other through university and other regional connections, so they happened to have the same ethnicity as one might expect from such a regional commonality. One got hired, referred another, and it cascaded. They were great to work with and highly competent, so I don't think there was bias even though it might appear that they're was.

May be each foreigner in mgmt position should pass some exam on diversification and swiss history?

Actually each foreigner to raise or get some state benefits should pass some exam?

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