I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support programs), but in it's current state, it seems discriminatory.
There actually are things driving men out of the field. Look at how many head nurses are male. Men in nursing is a problem as well. But this isn't NurseNews, it's HackerNews.
Umm, in the actual example we are talking about, the evidence is on the side of that assumption being false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977751 https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i...
In fact, this depends on the underlying population sizes of tall vs. short people, so this is a faulty argument.
More germane to the situation, however, is your initial assumption, whose analogue is dubious. So much so, in fact, that it is taboo to even allude to it. cf. pg's "What you can't say".
I'm not completely sold on the method, but the problem of subconscious bias in hiring is very well documented:
* Resumes with stereotypically White names receive 50% more callbacks than identical resumes with traditionally black ones. The addition of honors and special skills had a significant effect on the likelihood of White applications being called, but a statistically insignificant effect for the otherwise-identical African-American ones. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf
* Applicants with male names are rated as more competent and offered higher starting salaries than identical applications with female names. Identical resumes with male names are called back more often than female ones. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html, http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf
* Initial subconscious bias is logically justified post-hoc—in the linked experiment, the qualities deemed necessary for a position would actually be redefined by the person reviewing resumes depending on the gender of the applicants so that the male applicant's traits fit the position better. http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%20...
There's quite a few more papers on the subject, it's easy to search for them. Depressing read all around.
1) ask people not include their names on their resume. Or don't use resumes at all. Create a web form application that does not require a name and only asks about the crucial skills you actually need.
2) Create a highly objective hiring process, such as this: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/
I don't really buy that subconscious bias is the problem in tech. I've been part of a lot of hiring, we were actually consciously biased toward hiring women since we wanted better numbers. I had an objective interview process, always giving the same questions, and the hiring was still very disproportionately male whasian (the applicant pool was also very disproportionately male whasian, despite doing active reach out to woman-in-tech events).
2. Also agree that an objective method would be preferable, thanks for the link. Great read. IIRC, in the study I link in the third bullet point, forcing the person reviewing the resume to create a rubric before reading any of them greatly reduced the biased results. Having an objective process goes a long way. The point in the link about confident interviewers performing better in the traditional hiring process is definitely true, and also tied in a roundabout way to gender, funnily enough (women tend to be less confident than men: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/04/the-conf...).
It's definitely not the only problem—the pipeline is obviously skewed dramatically—but I don't see any reason why tech workers would be exempt from the biases of the general population as they've been studied. Maybe the drive to hire more women would counteract it, like in your example—that's the reasoning under which minority quotas are implemented, after all. The problem of subconscious bias is that it's not consciously recognizable by its very nature. It's just gut feeling. I know a site that uses association to try to test it for you, if you're interested: http://implicit.harvard.edu/.
The questions I asked were representative of things we actually had to do on the job, for instance: "write code to spider a web site." Does that unfairly weed out woman?
I personally find tangible monetary value in employees with diverse backgrounds but I don't lower my bar. I just slightly discount sameness and slightly appreciate difference.
Person 1 says that enforcing a 50 people of type A and 50 people of type B when the number of qualified candidates is 20 and 80 will result in either hiring significantly fewer people in general, or hiring under qualified people of type A. People of type B are being passed over because of their race/gender/ethnicity. This is discrimination.
Person 2 says that implying that anyone of type A could be under qualified is itself discrimination, and this possibility should not be addressed or considered. Nothing can change because the issue cannot be discussed.
We have a tendency to assume type A is qualified and type B isn't. That is a natural bias based on evidence. We must actively subdue our biases if we want to overcome them, sometimes with rules.
I think we sometimes forget that the goal isn't to get a qualified employee but a successful employee. Qualifications generally leads to success but not always, so we should constantly question our qualification criteria.
White males have benefited from discrimination for a long time. White males have been discriminated against sometimes.
This article isn't about discrimination or affirmative action. It's about setting a goal to be more diverse, not by lowering the bar, or forced hiring, but through awareness, inclusion, and an opportunity to interview.
BTW, everyone's been given a chance they didn't deserve.
Your interest in the content they host has zero relevance to the technical challenges they face as a platform and heavily trafficked website.
Unfortunately, biases are rarely so blatant. Many are even non-malicious and entirely unconscious, like how people tend to guess older ages for black youth than white youth. http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-ol...
I still say they don't represent the technical community. And it's blatantly obvious they don't represent the HN community, given the downvotes.
I'm not saying there aren't biases, sexism, ageism, or racism in tech, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't point at the obvious troll and say "this right here is the face of tech".
Women and brown people are not lower quality humans, and it has been shown over and over and over that companies who hire for diversity perform better.