Comment by lamuerteflaca | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lamuerteflaca | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Just to be contrarian here is an answer that I stole from somebody: thaumasiotes says: Technically the answer is yes, unless there is a "compelling governmental interest". The supreme court once ruled that selecting college students so as to increase the diversity of viewpoints in a class satisfied this test, which is basically how diversity got to be the buzzword that it is today. Note that the rationale goes like so: "increased diversity among the students leads to higher-quality education, and therefore this diversity may be sought through the otherwise forbidden means of racial preferences". Where the goal is to benefit certain groups because you like those groups, the same process is notionally illegal. You have to say you're doing it to help everybody.<<

So I guess is OK if Hardvard does not become homogeneous all in the name of diversity. I'll swallow it.

Edit: Yes, I know it is legal. I cannot comment about peoples motives since I don't know them.

This is done in the name of diversity because it's officially legal that way. Nobody's doing it because they believe in diversity.

Compare what happened to my roommate's dad: a sensitivity training guy came to give a lecture at his company, and was easily prodded into saying that workplace diversity increased along with the share of women. 40% women is more diverse than 30% women (sure). 70% women is more diverse than 60% women (hmmm). In the college context, "diverse" is more likely to be a code word for "black" than for "female", but the semantic drift is just as real; it's quite possible to describe a class as, oh, "40% diverse".

An acquaintance of your roommate's dad didn't understand the meaning of diversity so therefore Harvard doesn't either?

I don't follow.

No, the guy your company brings in to give diversity pep talks doesn't rise to the level of "acquaintance".

Fine, now how about answering my question?

In particular,

> Nobody's doing it because they believe in diversity.

strikes me as incorrect. They made a much more convincing case than you did.

Did the person (being quoted from three steps away, I'll note) actually say that "70% women is more diverse than 60% women" or are you just assuming that's what was meant because the person agreed with the general statement that more women would improve diversity? In most workplaces that is true.

As the story was told to me, the question was specifically probed of passing 50% women, which is obviously the tipping point at which additional women make you less "diverse" in the dictionary sense. I provided the particular numbers 70% and 60% so my comment would read better, since I can't recall the exact wording as it was told to me. Very true that I can't personally attest to this. You'll have to judge for yourself whether it's more likely that my roommate's dad (an engineer at Raytheon, if it helps you one way or the other) made it up to have something to complain about to his family, or whether he noticed something ridiculous, tested it, and complained to his family.

> the question was specifically probed of passing 50% women

Over what organizational unit? It makes a crucial difference: diversity within a team (more generally: a gerrymeandered division of the company) can fall at the same time as the total diversity across the encompassing company rises.

> You'll have to judge for yourself whether it's more likely that my roommate's dad made it up... or whether he noticed something ridiculous

3rd possibility: something seemed ridiculous because he didn't understand it.

Some colleges are now actually giving men a diversity boost so that their schools aren't 65% female.

Reminds me of a kerfluffle that happened a couple months back, mentioned on Volokh:

All the newspaper headlines were proclaiming that the startup world was getting less diverse, and people were very upset at the racism of the tech community. But as it turned out, white representation in the tech sector had actually decreased. The only reason that the numbers said it was becoming less diverse was that Asian people weren't being classed as a non-white minority.

This is actually going to be a big change going forward. Asian, Indian, South American, middle eastern, etc will be totally assimilated into white culture. Just like Italians and Irish were, despite initial discrimination.

Take a step back and put this identity politics madness into context. Basically you get penalized for working hard and following the rules. Imagine you're a working-class White or Asian family, not eligible for state aid, and your child is trying their best to get into college. How would you feel if you also found out:

> "Apply only for California state aid through the California Dream Act of 2011. Several state financial aid programs and many private scholarships are open to AB 540 students. Other undocumented students are encouraged to apply as there are often campus based aid and private scholarships available to them.

There are two types of grants available as Cal Grants: the entitlement grants and the competitive grants... Under entitlement grants, eligible student are guaranteed a Cal Grant A if they have at least a 3.0 grade point average... Cal Grant A and B Competitive Awards are available for students who do not qualify for the entitlement grants. The competitive grants are not guaranteed. Each year 22,500 competitive grants are awarded. "

[1] LATimes comment via http://web.csulb.edu/president/government-community/ab540/pd...

I don't understand this comment: why would a working-class white or Asian-American family not be eligible for state aid? I assume it would be because their income is too high or the kid's GPA is too low. Wouldn't those same regulations apply to the Dream Act kids too? If you're rich and undocumented you still don't get aid, and if you're undocumented with a crappy GPA you don't get anything either.

So do you feel that poor US citizens are actually getting a worse deal? How?

(I can see the argument that people who go back to, say, Mexico, and wait for a legal family visa to come to the US, are getting a raw deal. That's certainly true: as of January 2015 the US govt has finally gotten around to dealing with people who submitted their paperwork in 1994. http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy... )

Yes, I'm hearing a lot of this kind of chatter in the asian american community. In the Korean and Chinese communities(where I live anyways), a lot of people are paying very very close attention to this. A lot of anger is rising, and it crosses age groups in their community. At my old college(ivy league, so big school), there was a large undercurrent of racial tension. A lot of students, even 2nd generations asian americans, mostly hung out with groups drawn along racial lines. I honestly fear these attempts to curb racism/discrimination are increasing it significantly.

Which start-up would you rather work at?

The one which hires the best developers they can find without any regard to race or gender?

Or the one that turns away good developers because they have diversity quotas in hiring?

The one that "turns away good developers", since you put it that way.

Because good developers aren't all going to look like me, but people's hiring practices tend to make them hire people that look like them under the phony guise of "these are the good people".

(And what makes you think they're turning away good developers for diversity quota reasons, and getting crap instead?)

I don't think the two are comparable. At work your goal is to grow and make money as a company. At elite schools they aim to educate their students to better their futures. Colleges are attempting to shape people not make a billion dollars. And I love that here on HN, where from working in the tech industry I can only assume the posters are mostly white and Asian, no one questions whether the metrics are of any quality. Is SAT really a good measure of your talents as a human being? Are high school grades? Two things that vary based on your education before the moment of the test and the grades. The grades themselves being subjective evaluations from thousands of people with different standards. If the quotas were swapped and whites and Asians were getting the "bonus", how quickly would the arguments shift to the idea that the metrics aren't any good in the first place?

Not to mention if you approach the admissions officers at Ivies, particularly at Harvard, Princeton & Yale, they say that they easily could fill 3 freshman classes or more with the applicants they receive. That even most of the rejected applicants could succeed academically at their schools. So yes, I think it's okay to select for diversity.

Has any company actually figured a way to implement the first choice? Hiring is highly subjective. We don't have any foolproof way of figuring out who the best developers are (it's not a well-defined question) and no one has yet come up with a practical way to avoid unconscious bias.

The closest thing I've heard is asking someone to remove identifying information from resumes before screening them. (Blinding the screener.) That should at least help you get a diverse set of candidates coming in. I would think positively of a company that does that.

But the interviews themselves will still be biased and the only question is whether you realize this or you're fooling yourself.

Here's the thing: it doesn't actually matter how many blacks, gays or women you hire, if they are all 20-something graduates of the same few CS programmes, then you have not achieved diversity in any meaningful way. The point of diversity in a business sense, is a strategy to avoid getting caught in an echo chamber. Any organization that is forcing it with quotas, has missed the point.

So basically it's OK b/c harvard did it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com