> I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota.
My experience is the opposite, unfortunately. Big companies know where the legal line is and are careful to not cross it too often, but here are some examples I've encountered first-hand:
1) My org's annual score had a prominent section highlighting the fact that our diversity was deemed low. Your org's score affected your annual budget for raises and bonuses, so I'm embarrassed to say that it was definitely a factor in hiring.
2) We'd have an opening to fill and sometimes would get a stack of resumes of just women. This would otherwise be fine (or even great - see #1, above) if there were some good ones, but honestly if you're a woman who is a great dev you'd almost certainly be able to get stellar offers elsewhere (this was a large-but-not-FAANG company). In one particular case, a guy friend of one of my employees applied for the same position and would have been a perfect fit at least on paper, but somehow his resume didn't make it past HR so he didn't get interviewed. We interviewed several from the pool we got and ended up hiring one who was an ok dev. Not great, but ok - we definitely "settled".
3) One time I needed a dev with a somewhat specific skillset and was soon told that they had found someone and had started the hiring process - even without an interview. I asked to at least see this person's resume (woohoo, it was an Asian woman - checking TWO diversity boxes!!). I pointed out that she didn't have the skill set we needed and nothing indicated that she had a background that would be good for it. I also pointed out that she didn't speak much English (it was literally a caveat listed on her resume), so I asked if we could at least interview her to try to assess if she'd be willing to pick up the skills we needed. Nope, the hiring was already done by then, and there she was in our office two weeks later. I have never felt so bad for anyone who has worked for me; she always seemed sad and lost, and I did a really poor job of figuring out how to help her. I'm still haunted by our extremely awkward 1-on-1 meetings (kinda hard to have much of a conversation when, you know, there's not a shared language).
On the flip side, some of the most talented and brilliant and enjoyable people I've worked with have been people who check lots of the diversity boxes, but weren't hired as part of any sort of push to increase diversity.
My experience is the opposite, unfortunately. Big companies know where the legal line is and are careful to not cross it too often, but here are some examples I've encountered first-hand:
1) My org's annual score had a prominent section highlighting the fact that our diversity was deemed low. Your org's score affected your annual budget for raises and bonuses, so I'm embarrassed to say that it was definitely a factor in hiring.
2) We'd have an opening to fill and sometimes would get a stack of resumes of just women. This would otherwise be fine (or even great - see #1, above) if there were some good ones, but honestly if you're a woman who is a great dev you'd almost certainly be able to get stellar offers elsewhere (this was a large-but-not-FAANG company). In one particular case, a guy friend of one of my employees applied for the same position and would have been a perfect fit at least on paper, but somehow his resume didn't make it past HR so he didn't get interviewed. We interviewed several from the pool we got and ended up hiring one who was an ok dev. Not great, but ok - we definitely "settled".
3) One time I needed a dev with a somewhat specific skillset and was soon told that they had found someone and had started the hiring process - even without an interview. I asked to at least see this person's resume (woohoo, it was an Asian woman - checking TWO diversity boxes!!). I pointed out that she didn't have the skill set we needed and nothing indicated that she had a background that would be good for it. I also pointed out that she didn't speak much English (it was literally a caveat listed on her resume), so I asked if we could at least interview her to try to assess if she'd be willing to pick up the skills we needed. Nope, the hiring was already done by then, and there she was in our office two weeks later. I have never felt so bad for anyone who has worked for me; she always seemed sad and lost, and I did a really poor job of figuring out how to help her. I'm still haunted by our extremely awkward 1-on-1 meetings (kinda hard to have much of a conversation when, you know, there's not a shared language).
On the flip side, some of the most talented and brilliant and enjoyable people I've worked with have been people who check lots of the diversity boxes, but weren't hired as part of any sort of push to increase diversity.