In my opinion skill should be the only deciding factor when hiring employees. Gender and race should not play a role when hiring, whether it be that the company simply faces a problem with being bias or in response being bias the company starts hiring more women and more diverse ethnic groups not based on skill but solely because they feel like they need more diversity in the company. in any case I feel like Google made the right decision when it put its employees through training.
There is evidence that the training is working. Mr. Bock says "suddenly you go from being completely oblivious to going, 'Oh my god, it's everywhere,' ". In a new building, someone pointed out that all of the buildings were named after male scientists, in the past this may have gone unmentioned, but this time the names were changed (nytimes.com).
All though the hidden bias problem seems to be getting better inside Google. Even Google does not know if this will lead to long term change for the company and even the tech industry as a whole (nytimes.com).
There is evidence that the training is working. Mr. Bock says "suddenly you go from being completely oblivious to going, 'Oh my god, it's everywhere,' ". In a new building, someone pointed out that all of the buildings were named after male scientists, in the past this may have gone unmentioned, but this time the names were changed (nytimes.com).
All though the hidden bias problem seems to be getting better inside Google. Even Google does not know if this will lead to long term change for the company and even the tech industry as a whole (nytimes.com).
I really enjoyed your response, and thought your perspective was interesting. I agree with the fact that hiring should be based off skill. However, if a company was hiring based on skill, and (regardless of gender or race) 90% of people selected were male, what would be the right approach to this: Go with the 90%, or "change" the people hired (but achieve diversity). I thought your article was creative, and look forward to reading your future posts.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post for two main reasons, one being the statistics and evidence, the other being your point of view on this problem. I agree with you that skill should be the only deciding factor when it comes to hiring someone, and if the people who are more skilled for a job are mostly from the same gender, then so be it. However, it is a problem if employers look at two equally skilled people of different genders, and consistently choose one gender over the other in these situations. I enjoyed reading this and look forward to your future posts.
ReplyDeleteI respect your opinion that skill should be the only deciding factor when hiring employees. After all, isn't it logical that the most qualified people be given the jobs that require a high skill level? But, do you think assessing applicants solely on skill level will lead to a more diverse work force?
ReplyDeleteLike the rest of the comments i also agree wight the idea that skill should be the one thing that is looked at when picking an applicant for a job. I believe that there is a problem however with our thinking. Everyone one hired will need to learn the job, its not like some most people who look better on a piece of paper will obviously be better at the job. When do we stop? When do we decide that a high male majority is too much? Will you still believe that supposed "skill" is the only factor in hiring when there are no women in the work place, and they just stop applying? I still believe that skill is the main factor but at some point we can't just let diversity fall. I do not mean to say that men are superior, not at all but the discrimination of the past and the views of the world can't be ignored and just start hiring based on the best looking numbers someone has written on their resume because it may mean nothing.
ReplyDeleteSorry for errors, posted from phone.
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