So you're basically saying that some immeasurable and abstract bias in one direction should be countered by deliberate bias in the other direction? When those people hired thanks to this bias move forwards in their career, won't they then begin to favor people representing their ethnicity when they start to hire people?
That's not what I'm saying at all. My quote was addressing your assertion that equality was achieved decades ago. The first and last sentences in my full quote say just that.
I'm not denying your assertion that managers are subconsciously more likely to hire people who are closer to being like them. They've done psychological research on this and concluded that people are in general more likely to trust people who look like them. It's not even just white people, it's all races and most probably goes back to our tribal stage of societal development. However what I am saying this is so abstract and hard to put into numbers it's not strong enough to put into a justification for deliberate favoritism based on gender or race.
Employment figures aren't abstract. There are hard numbers that show the make up of companies: race, gender, salary, and position are all accessible. It may not be the case in Finland, but in America discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexual preference is not just an abstract. Hell, we can't even agree to allow gay marriage. Totally unrelated to this topic except as an example of discrimination still existing in America.
In essence you're basically arguing for trying to fight fire with fire, which in my opinion is just a bad idea all around. There aren't any simple solutions to a problem as abstract and difficult to measure as people hiring people like them. One way would be to have human resources departments screen and interview people and let managers make hiring decisions based on resumes and assessments with data relating to gender and ethnicity stripped out. Another one would be to have a diverse human resources department and let the biases cancel each other out.
Again, not sure what you think my quote says, but it doesn't say what you think it does. If I was to render an opinion on this part of your quote it would be this: It's not about fighting fire with fire. It's about opening the candidate pool to
include all qualified candidates. Through the scholarship programs and an emphasis on STEM in younger kids, the candidate pool will grow. That candidate pool can be judged on it's merit, which hasn't historically been the case.
A fairly serious flaw in your argument I'm going to have to point out that these days in big companies hiring decisions are not done by managers, but by human resources departments and those generally have a female majority. Thus your assessment that hiring in the tech sector is biased in favor of men because of people being biased towards people who look more like them is something of an oxymoron. Hiring should actually be biased in favor of women, not men, because hiring decisions are mostly done by other women.
What? Find anywhere in my quote where I said hiring in the
tech sector was biased in favor of men. I did say this: "The problem is, for multiple generations those hires weren't based on merit only. They were based on the merit of the best white male candidate. There is a difference."
That quote is in reference to your assertion that equality was achieved decades ago. You're finding things in my quote that aren't there.
I've never worked for a company where HR made a hiring decision. I've worked for companies with as few as 100 employes and as many as 75,000. HR's function has always been to screen resumes and forward them to the hiring manager, and after my interview with the manager and subsequent hire, make sure my paperwork was complete. The person I work for has always made the decision. I have a team of 10 that work for me. They all interviewed with me. I made the decision who to hire.
