Reddit CEO Ellen Pao “passed on hiring candidates”
archive.today
archive.today
> Ms. Pao, who said she wants to stay long-term as Reddit’s CEO when a one-year interim period ends, said she has removed salary negotiations from the hiring process because studies show women don’t fare as well as men. She has brought in well-known Silicon Valley diversity consultant Freada Kapor Klein to advise the company. And she has passed on hiring candidates who don’t embrace her priority of building a gender-balanced and multiracial team. “We ask people what they think about diversity, and we did weed people out because of that,” she said.
It's eminently clear from the rest of the quote that she is not doing anything untoward or illegal, or even particularly unethical; a headline that paints her actions in that way seems misleading.
I'd suggest instead: "Reddit CEO Ellen Pao: “We ask people what they think about diversity, and we did weed people out because of that,”"
Or, to use the original quote, and simply replace the rephrasing with the original content: "Reddit CEO Ellen Pao "passed on hiring candidates who don’t embrace her priority of building a gender-balanced and multiracial team"".
The title should just be the title of the article, and the link should just be to the regular article. This attempt to deceive/slant the conversation is dishonest.
Is that kind of questioning even legal during an interview?
Or is it done after hours, at a drink to get to know the candidate better? Does the interviewer pretend to be a bigot just to see what the candidate's reaction is?
What happened to just hiring the best people for a job rather than trying to create a corporate utopia?
Hiring standards cannot create an "artificial, arbitrary, or unnecessary barrier to employment" ... "which adversely affects equal employment opportunity for a protected class of persons." So e.g. weightlifting requirement, if not central to the job at hand (as in the case I quoted) would not be allowed because it's an artificial barrier which excludes women.
This standard is arguably artificial and unnecessary, but it would be hard to show it adversely affects employment opportunity of a protected class.
What makes you think someone's level of bigotry does not have an effect on whether they're the best person for a job?
Diversity, meaning racial and gender diversity, has been repeatedly shown to be an advantage for a company. So has some degree of cultural fit, meaning having similar values. When M&As fail (and they often do), it's almost always because of cultural mismatch.
So I, and the research, would argue that asking people if they believe in and value diversity is an important indicator of their success at a company like Reddit, or any other company striving to be a diverse and equal workplace.
Perhaps Ms. Pao feels that pro-diversity attitudes make the best hires, even if it means a small compromise on coding quality.
It's Reddit after all: users are already tolerant and accepting of horrid site performance ;)
When hiring one candidate severely restricts hiring others (e.g. because that first candidate would make them feel uncomfortable and/or not welcome), then this has nothing to do with a "corporate utopia" and everything with hiring the best people for a job.
1. I wonder if she negotiated her pay?
2. How can she be a champion of equality if she formalizes a process that prohibits workers from negotiating their market value? It's one step forward and two steps back.
This reminds me (in reverse) of travels in 3rd world countries, where every item's price becomes negotiable. I had grown up accustomed to shops where everything had a marked price, and was not prepared to haggle over the cost of toothpaste.
It seems totally legit for a company to do the same/similar with salaries. No one is forced to take the job, they're just eliminating the negotiation part.
As long as I knew this policy followed for everyone in a company, I'd actually prefer it.
Similarly vague is the idea of filtering "anti-diversity" people out: how do you do it, without simply making it a test of "can you tell us what we want to hear?"