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

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791 points 317070 | 6 comments | 14 Aug 17 16:11 UTC | HN request time: 1.039s | source | bottom
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okreallywtf ◴[14 Aug 17 19:21 UTC] No.15011848[source]▶
I see some good points on both sides of the discussion here but one thing occurs to me about the current diversity-pushback that I'm seeing(I'm not going to call it anti-diversity because I think a fair amount of it is well-meaning or at least not explicitly hateful).

We've surprisingly quickly moved from periods where it was common to simply refuse to even consider minorities or women in many fields to a time when many people see political correctness and reverse-racism/sexism as a greater problem than sexism and racism themselves.

I'm glad to see people being very thoughtful about fairness and equality, but I have an honest question: Before quotas and social justice warriors, were you thinking about fairness and equality when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded others not on their merit but race and gender? I'm asking honestly, not trying to point fingers but I would like to know because this community, while left-leaning on many issues (I think) tends more towards libertarian on issues of race and gender and seems especially defensive when it comes to the tech industry (especially when the term "privilege" is used, it turns downright hostile).

If you were active in supporting equality and diversity (by resisting arbitrarily exclusionary practices) when it wasn't popular to do so and now you are seeing the negative aspects of a push for artificial diversity I would like to know that.

If you have never even considered diversity issues until recently when seeing hiring practices that could negatively affect you I would like to know that too. Do you believe any specific action needs to be taken to promote diversity or will the problem solve itself, or does the problem even exist at all?

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Lon7 ◴[14 Aug 17 19:58 UTC] No.15012253[source]▶
> Before quotas and social justice warriors, were you thinking about fairness and equality when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded others not on their merit but race and gender?

I was not thinking about that. And when I started being exposed to it, my immediate reaction was like you described: seeing political correctness and reverse-racism/sexism as a greater problem than sexism and racism themselves.

It took a while, but I now realize how silly that reaction was. I felt somewhat attacked by these 'social justice warriors and quotas'. And my reaction was in self defense to this perceived attack. I spent so much time reading about it on the internet. There were so many smart people applying logic and engineering skills to these social problems. I identified with these people and I agreed with most of it. They made it sound like these are all easy problems to solve and if everyone had read the same scientific studies as them and applied the same logical thinking then we would have a solution.

My view wasn't changed until I had much more experience in the real world. All these women that are being talked about as statistics are real people. They're become my friends and coworkers. I've learned to sympathize with them. I've learned that it's not us vs them. We are working together is this. I've learned that political correctness and reverse-racism/sexism are definitely not a greater problem than sexism and racism themselves.

I think the human aspect of all this is sorely missing on HN. At least it was for me.

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leereeves ◴[15 Aug 17 00:00 UTC] No.15014169[source]▶
How many people here were alive "when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded others not on their merit but race and gender?"

Preferences (quotas, lower standards, financial incentives, etc) for women and minorities in hiring and admissions have existed for a long time.

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Lon7 ◴[15 Aug 17 00:36 UTC] No.15014366[source]▶
I'm still pretty young yet I've experienced benefits solely from my gender.

My sister is smarter than me and better at math and physics than me. I was invited by my grade school to go to robotics camps over the summer, she wasn't. I was given special permission to take computer science courses not offered by our highschool, she wasn't. I was encouraged to to go into engineering by our guidance Councillor, she wasn't. My dad wanted me to go into engineering, he didn't really want her to. I didn't realize that any of this was happening at the time. It wasn't until years later that I was talking to my sister that she explained the countless opportunities and support that I had and she didn't. This all happened in a well off neighborhood in Canada.

So is it really any surprise that I'm the highly paid engineer while she is a school teacher barely scraping by? The status quo still benefits people based on race and gender.

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leereeves ◴[15 Aug 17 01:04 UTC] No.15014498[source]▶
I can't speak about Canada, but in the US, personal anecdotes aside, 60% of college graduates are women.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/...

And young women earn more than young men, on average.

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274...

I'm sorry about what happened to your sister, but that's not the norm.

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unityByFreedom ◴[15 Aug 17 01:37 UTC] No.15014636[source]▶
> I can't speak about Canada, but in the US, personal anecdotes aside, 60% of college graduates are women.

The gender gaps under discussion are specific to computer science [1]. That more and more women have been (a) going to college and (b) getting into STEM with the exception of computer science is why this is so interesting to debate.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

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leereeves ◴[15 Aug 17 01:38 UTC] No.15014642[source]▶
I'm aware that some people are trying to limit the scope of the discussion, and yet, I wonder why no one cares about the young men who are now at a disadvantage.
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malyk ◴[15 Aug 17 02:31 UTC] No.15014872[source]▶
Young men aren't at a disadvantage at all. They are still greatly advantaged, just to a very slightly lesser degree than before.

It's like a basketball game where a team was ahead by 45 points at the half. Now they are ahead by "only" 25 points, but somehow they are now at a disadvantage? Certainly they aren't winning by as much, but they are still winning by a significant margin.

That's the situation we are in in the tech world.

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leereeves ◴[15 Aug 17 03:04 UTC] No.15015036[source]▶
And in the larger world?

What data are you relying on that suggests young men are advantaged?

I've just cited two very significant statistics that suggest otherwise.

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1. unityByFreedom ◴[15 Aug 17 05:29 UTC] No.15015765[source]▶
Leadership positions are dominated by men. Young men have a higher likelihood of landing those roles.

That could also explain why fewer men attend college. They don't need as many credentials to land higher ranked positions.

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2. manfredo ◴[15 Aug 17 06:26 UTC] No.15015981[source]▶
Elite positions are disproportionately occupied by men, but so are the positions at the lowest rungs on the social ladder. Men make up 93% of chief executive officers at large companies[1], but they also make up about the same percentage of the prison population (91%) [2]. Men disproportionately occupy both ends of success and failure.

On the note of education, men may not need credentials to achieve comparatively well paying jobs, but this comes with other trade-offs. For instance men make up 93% of occupational deaths[3] in the U.S. The tendency for to reach better paying jobs without the same educational attainment may not necessarily a sign of privilege so much as social pressure to take high-risk jobs for more pay.

Ultimately, things like privilege are subjective and heavily based on moral weightings. Does being more likely to be killed on the job offset a higher pay? Is being more likely to end up as a CEO offset being more likely to end up behind bars? These are moral - not factual - questions, so there's as many right answers are there are people on this planet.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/women-in-leadership-fort...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality#Gender

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3. dragonwriter ◴[15 Aug 17 06:32 UTC] No.15016009[source]▶
> Elite positions are disproportionately occupied by men, but so are the positions at the lowest run on the social ladder. Men make up 93% of chief executive officers at large companies[1], but they also make up about the same percentage of the prison population (91%) [2]

It's not unknown for destitute people in America to deliberately try to get sent to prison for better support; it's not the lowest rung on the ladder, counterintuitive—and perverse—as that may be.

4. unityByFreedom ◴[15 Aug 17 06:56 UTC] No.15016085[source]▶
Were these rates very different before women worked, or before they voted? I have a feeling men have always made up a significant portion of the prison population.

This isn't a zero-sum game. Helping women get placement in the workplace doesn't mean men won't get jobs. And, it certainly doesn't mean that we will stop supporting young men stay out of prison.

The idea is that as we become a more inclusive society we can all have more freedom to do what we want to do.

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5. manfredo ◴[15 Aug 17 07:15 UTC] No.15016154{3}[source]▶
I don't disagree with anything you write here. I'm not sure how this comment is relevant to the point I'm making: that privilege and advantage is a subjective measure that depends on each person's individual values.

To re-use the analogy from one of the parent[1] comments in this chain, if societal advancement is a non-competitive game of basketball it's not a zero sum game, just as you say. One group's advancement does not come at the expense of another's. The point is, one person can see that one group is behind compared to another while a different person sees the opposite. For instance someone can place a greater emphasis on wage differences, while a different person more heavily values disparities in occupational deaths. Both reach a opposite conclusion, and neither is wrong since these are claims made based on values as much as data - and values differ from person to person.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15014872

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6. unityByFreedom ◴[15 Aug 17 09:49 UTC] No.15016764{4}[source]▶
> I'm not sure how this comment is relevant to the point I'm making: that privilege and advantage is a subjective measure that depends on each person's individual values.

> one person can see that one group is behind compared to another while a different person sees the opposite

Okay, I see.

I thought, when you started talking about men in prison, that you were tacitly supporting leereeves' statement that young men are disadvantaged compared to young women.

In fact, you just wanted to say that people's perceptions of "advantage" are subjective; therefore, one person could easily view men as advantaged in today's society, while another views women as advantaged.

To that, I would say, duh =). We're here debating how men and women experience the world in order to both present our own knowledge, and hear about others'. This helps us shape our future values by including more data than we have directly observed ourselves.