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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> My response was flippant, which is probably why some people have been downvoting it, but I'm legitimately glad if they're working to make their hiring pool more representative of the population. But at the same time, it's hardly their fault or responsibility to "fix" it if universities just aren't graduating people in those proportions.

If they have reasons to prefer a diverse workforce, whether or not they are at fault for the lack of a sufficiently diverse qualified applicant pool, it is their responsibility to fix it.

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> it is their responsibility to fix it.

This seems to contain two embedded and unexamined assumptions.

1. That this is a problem. If women prefer not to go into sciency fields (other than biology) why is that inherently a problem? Do you think women are too dumb to make their own choices?

2. That it can reasonably be "fixed". Spending more money on education must be the most commonly employed and most universally failed intervention in social policy.

I would also question the premise of the posting, that "diversity" in terms of race and sex is a highly desirable thing. The evidence for this is very thin, and indeed more ethnically diverse communities tend to have lower levels of trust and social capital.

There is some evidence that diversity in terms of viewpoint and skills is useful but just eg having more white women in the office may not be the great boon people assume.

#1 was not an "embedded an unexamined assumption", it was the explicit condition of the stated conditional. ("If they have reasons to prefer a diverse workforce...")

#2 is, insofar as it appears to be an "embedded and unexamined assumption", simply a result of brevity in omitting "...insofar as doing so is practical without costs that make it a net loss" at the end. Obvious qualification is obvious.

> I would also question the premise of the posting, that "diversity" in terms of race and sex is a highly desirable thing.

"Desirable" is subjective. Google expressly claims to value that kind of diversity. Obviously, you might have different values, which, to the extent that the means you choose to pursue them are not themselves illegal, you are free to pursue in your own company.

> The evidence for this is very thin

The evidence is actually very strong that its a thing that some people value independently of whether it contributes to any other thing that they value.

>Obvious qualification is obvious.

Don't form arguments this way. Dumping tautologies into an argument sounds childish.

The quoted bit that you object to wasn't part of an argument in the first place.

I agree with you. But "you are free to do them in your own company" seems to be less and less true, as the amount of shaming hit pieces in the media rise. Whether that's a good thing, I pass no judgements on. It's interesting watching a community's values change in real time.

Freedom to do something doesn't imply freedom from criticism from people who disagree with you doing it.

People choose whether or not to go into a field for both reasons which are intrinsic to the nature of the field and also reasons which are related to the mutable, hmmm, socioeconomic conditions? surrounding the field.

Example: I grew up on a farm and love farming. The moment I had some free cash I bought a couple of acres to engage in hobby farming. I would never, ever consider becoming a farmer professionally, because farming is a terrible job. In bad years you rely on crop insurance and loans to get by, and in good years you make enough money to cover your costs and keep going. You're squeezed in all directions by megafarms who sometimes have legitimately lower costs and sometimes just want to drop prices to drive everyone else out, real estate developers who can pay more than you for new land, and middle men who use their mass to pay producers less and charge consumers more. You'll work eighty, ninety hours a week for the pay of a McDonald's employee, without the chance of a "big score" like a startup founder.

None of these are intrinsic to the actual act of farming.

So what is the reason why the composition of the hiring pool for software engineers does not match the composition of the population as a whole? If it for reasons intrinsic to the nature of the job, that's one thing, but if it's for stupid reasons, like an unappealing culture (eg, white dude-bro culture) or lack of early access to computers and programming, well, we can fix that.

If we can fix that, and bring in all the people who are currently excluded from software engineering for stupid reasons, we could potentially double the number of software engineers.

Doubling the number of software engineers should be an obvious good.

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