I do a lot of hiring, and co-hired a lot of my colleagues. I would never hire for diversity, and would explicitly refuse to do so.
Why? Everyone in my team is hired for 1 thing: excellent developers.
Nobody is questioning why they are there, and I would never put those people in a position where project managers have to question why anyone in my team is there, because of being a good developer or to fill up some statistics.
Hiring for diversity has the opposite effect: it puts doubt why a person of a certain minority is there.
But hey, once the world starts doing that bullshit, it's excellent for me. I'm a hetro white male, so there can be ony 1 reason why I was hired.
I was at a a highprofile tech company that everyone on HN knows about. Since I highly dislike bullshit, I straightup asked the hiring manager "does this mean the technical bar is lower for diversity?" Answer: "Yes."
Now, there is some possible justification, in the sense that diversity may bring value to the team. After all, hires are holistic (communication skills, etc.). Especially if diversity of {race, sexuality, gender, etc} meant a diversity of ideas. But without evidence for this (please correct me as needed), and with seemingly less-than-well-justified reasons, it was quite upsetting to me. Something to think about: if we value diversity of ideas, why not value diversity of religion? Beyond the fact that it's a legally protected class, of course (i.e. ethics/value prop, not legality). Or would that somehow be less than ideal?
As an Asian, I feel the issue of "reverse" affirmative action well.
I'm a hetro white male, so there can be ony 1 reason why I was hired
This is constraining the definition of protected class.
For example, if you're over 40 or a veteran, there could be the same doubt regardless if you are hetero and white. And that says nothing of non-visible disability status. The list is surprising long of protected classes so we'd probably do our organizations a service to not presume we know if someone belongs to one.
Given eight person teams, one in ten will have no women on it purely by chance, given that only a quarter of software engineers in the US are women. Questions may be asked, but I hope the questioners listen to reason.
That is true. Surprisingly we have a pretty diverse team, so no questions there :).
But let's assume that wasn't the case and questions are asked. I think I would move a big part of the interview process to a standardised written test, so you have the results on paper of everyone that was screened.
Why? Everyone in my team is hired for 1 thing: excellent developers.
Nobody is questioning why they are there, and I would never put those people in a position where project managers have to question why anyone in my team is there, because of being a good developer or to fill up some statistics.
Hiring for diversity has the opposite effect: it puts doubt why a person of a certain minority is there.
But hey, once the world starts doing that bullshit, it's excellent for me. I'm a hetro white male, so there can be ony 1 reason why I was hired.