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I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

(medium.com)
791 points 317070 | 1 comments | 14 Aug 17 16:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.224s | source
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iainmerrick ◴[14 Aug 17 17:38 UTC] No.15010629[source]▶
This seems to be another version of: "the pipeline of potential talent from colleges has very few women, so if we go out of our way to hire extra women, we'll reduce our overall hiring quality. The college pipeline needs to be fixed first."

Even if you concede that, here's something I don't see discussed often: hiring more women and minorities in big tech companies now could help to fix the college pipeline in future. If tech companies are seen to be diverse, welcoming environments, maybe more kids of all backgrounds will get interested in tech in the first place.

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1. eterm ◴[14 Aug 17 18:31 UTC] No.15011187[source]▶
It can, and it can also harm it.

If you reduce your quality bar to fill a quota for a group, then that group can end up having a lower quality than the majority group, which then works to reinforce bad stereotypes in some of the majority against that minority.

That can then harm those in the minority group who were in fact above the bar and for whom the bar did not need to be lowered.

I'm not against quota systems but they need to be aggressively monitored so you don't get unintended effects.