> But what if there are still biases in hiring? That someone sees a woman and assumes this or that about her based on gender alone?
Quotas are not the answer, period. It's not okay to deny someone a job to correct for some possible, unmeasured, inaccurate judgement call on another person based on a stereotype whether or not that stereotype is accurate across populations. All you're doing is transferring the injustice to another person. What you're doing is preferring certain victims of injustice based on race/gender/whatever, and transferring their injustice to some other race/gender/whatever.
Find another solution. Get creative. But subverting explicit meritocratic hiring to correct for unconfirmed but suspected implicit non-meritocratic hiring is unjust. And stupid.
There is an argument I'm not sure I support that diversity has value on its own - that 5 people with different backgrounds is worth more than 5 with the same background.
But that being said - questioning biases, and correcting them at every point you spot them (not just interviewing!) is vital.
Whether or not it has value on it's own (which I'm not convinced of in coding). It doesn't matter.
Meritocratic hiring has value on its own. The best person getting the job has value on its own. Not including OR discluding someone from a job based on their skin color or genitals has value on its own.
Insisting that having people with different skin color program a piece of software makes that software better is one thing, actually playing god with people's careers on the basis of their skin color or genitals because you, personally, value that more than meritocracy is an irresponsible and highly unethical course of action.
Well, right, but there are biases that are hard to account for; and saying "I know I am probably biased, so I will act on the margins to try to correct that" is in no way irresponsible.
Choosing the best team for the job is always the goal.
And once again, the hard work isn't just the interviewing - it's managing the ongoing workplace environment, day to day.
> Saying "I know I am probably biased, so I will act on the margins to try to correct that" is in no way irresponsible.
Whether this is true depends on your methods of correction. That's what this whole conversation is about. If you don't KNOW you are biased (you don't), but suspect you are, and further, if you are, but don't know the extent to which you are biased or what the outcome would have been if you weren't biased (you don't; shit, the outcome may have even been the same), adding explicit discrimination that you do know is happening is stupid, unethical, and unjust.
Now, if you solution is instead to, say, "I'll do blind resume reviews, score candidates based on those, then do separate scores based on interviews, and compare them after a few dozen hires. If I see a significant and meaningful drop in acceptance rates for ANY group moving from blind resume reviews to in-person interviews, I'll do further review to see if there is good reason to believe the cause is, in fact, discrimination, rather than some benign issue like candidates of specific groups being legitimately worse at things that only come out in interviews. Then, if I don't find clear evidence of non-benign cause, I won't change anything, but if I do, I will attack those specific causes - even if we happen to find that it's actually white men that are being discriminated against, however unintuitive that is." then you'd be fine.
The response to the suspicion of injustice is key, here. Simply assuming your suspicions are correct and attacking perceived symptoms by doing exactly what you're trying to prevent, while qualifying as "trying to correct that," is not okay.
Quotas are not the answer, period. It's not okay to deny someone a job to correct for some possible, unmeasured, inaccurate judgement call on another person based on a stereotype whether or not that stereotype is accurate across populations. All you're doing is transferring the injustice to another person. What you're doing is preferring certain victims of injustice based on race/gender/whatever, and transferring their injustice to some other race/gender/whatever.
Find another solution. Get creative. But subverting explicit meritocratic hiring to correct for unconfirmed but suspected implicit non-meritocratic hiring is unjust. And stupid.