throwaway120398

> That practice, where the person hiring always defaults to the white person, even in a mixed group of people with equal skill, is what's problematic, and what needs to be tackled.

Yes, I agree this needs to be tackled (an understatement I know). We need to stamp out the racism that non-white people routinely face. As far as hiring goes, I feel a lot of progress has been made on this front, but I don't have any idea if that feeling is correct.

> Yet people have already begun imagining the most extreme fantasy scenario possible... bad thing is that when you start imagining that, some people actually start doing it because they think they have to. Repeat a lie enough, and people will start thinking it's the truth.

I'm not certain exactly what you are referring to here. I was going to comment on it but then realised maybe I have completely misunderstood. What fantasy scenario and lie are you referring to here? And what is it that people start actually doing?

So if I understand your point correctly, you're suggesting that all forms of discrimination based on innate characteristics are acceptable, as long as there is advantage to the business?

Somehow many people in this thread are jumping to rebut the idea of meritocratic hiring. I'm with you on that. I think meritocracy is a naive idea and it's actively damaging when hiring teams think they can boil the talent of candidates, and their effectiveness to do a job, down to some objective and comparable score of merit.

I also don't give a shit about making my page loads quicker. That's rarely what the world, or the business for that matter, needs.

What I'm talking about is the specific phenomenon of discriminating against a candidate based on their gender or race, and whether people think this is okay.

I'm concerned with the process of hiring software engineers because it's something I have to do daily, and have done for a very long time. I'm coming here to talk about it (rather than other social issues) because I think others here have experience in the same area.

Does anyone have any idea where to actually have this discussion?

I'm afraid that, to my mind, it doesn't matter whether the goal is to discriminate or not. The discrimination itself is a problem, and we'd be better agreeing that this is a place we will not go to, no matter the end.