Not something that's happening. Just remembered a debate I had with a coworker from a long time ago regarding hiring and diversity.

Assuming there are two candidates.

Objectively one is slightly worse than the other (let's say 10%)

but the objectively better candidate is more of the same as your team (In terms of stack, gender, ethnicity)

Obviously if one is a lot better (say 30%) I'd hire the one that scores higher.

However, in this scenario (~10%). I think I'd hire the person that offers a different perspective even though they may be less talented.

My reasoning is the team needs someone that thinks differently and looks at a problem from a different box. Otherwise it becomes too easy for my team to go down a path that we like but isn't necessarily better.

What say you?

Indulding in racism and sexism won't provide new perspectives. And yes, choosing the worse candidate because of race or sex is the textbook definition of racism and sexism.

@Fast-Nop Okay I accept this is the definition of racism or sexism. But you can't discount the fact that your cultural upbringing (which also has affect a person differently depending on sex) changes how a person thinks or behaves.

Now with legal and PR problems out of the way. I assume you'd still go with the person that's 10% better in this hypothetical scenario?

It's unfortunate I used the word hiring. But the main point is about building a team in a hypothetical world

@iceb Race and sex are no suitable indicators in any way. Also, diversity isn't a useful goal in itself.

The actual background of the whole diversity fad is low-performers riding on guilt-tripping for the purpose of leeching money. The only low-performers who can't do that are those who happen to be white men.

Because white men are not "diverse", no matter their social and cultural background. It's simply anti-white racism and anti-male sexism. Fuck this shit.

@Fast-Nop you are missing the other parts of the problem and bringing real world issues into this hypothetical problem.

I'm not talking white vs non-white. I'm talking about someone different from the makeup of your *current* team, regardless of what that might be.

And I'm not talking about choosing an incompetent buffoon. It's two individual that are comparable with one being slightly better *as an individual*

@iceb Yeah, and there's no reason to choose the worse candidate. "Diversity" in itself brings nothing to the table, which is why you hear claims, but don't see hugely successful companies coming out of that.

@Fast-Nop Ah gotcha. I see where you are coming from.

FWIW. I do believe diversity helps with building a product. But there are obviously many different variables in play

@iceb I don't think diversity of skin colours, sexes, sexual orientation and shit helps in developing products.

What can ofc help is diversity in terms of actually relevant skillsets, but that's nothing new, that's how workshare societies have been operating for millennia.

As in, a successful village needs farmers for the food, but it's certainly better if there are also e.g. carpenters, a blacksmith, and a doctor.

1. For a pilot I want to hire retired military pilot, and I want the best with lots of hours.

2. For a secretary I want a pleasing communicator with a work ethic.

3. For an surgeon I want the top best dude I can find. Preferably fit and mentally sharp.

4. For a basketball team I want the tallest brother I can find.

5. For a lawyer I want a Jew. They are statistically better at the job.

1. and 3. I can kill people if I choose wrong.

2. not so much risk, other than reputation. Which could be a huge factor for a public facing industry.

4. cause they are better athletes.

5. middle eastern princes (even Muslim ones) literally brag about how good their Jew lawyers are. I probably can't afford one.

It depends upon the impact of failure and how much public positivity I can buy. But none of this is based on some cultural metric for increased gain. It is only for show.

I dunno, I think being honest and choosing best fit has a lot more criteria than any diversity quotient.

It's funny how you assume you can quantitatively (!) measure how "good" people are at their hypothetical (!) job at your company, without onboarding, without them being familiar with your team in any way. Turning skills into accurate percentages is borderline unsolvable, even when you have a lot of historical data on a person's performance. You're boldly throwing percentages like it's no big deal.

You can't compare people like that. In our company, we can afford not to interview multiple people in parallel. We assess one person at a time. If we see fit, we hire, and all the others in the queue are being told that some other candidate was hired just because they were there first. Immediately acquits us of coming up with inoffensive reasons as to why a given candidate wasn't hired.

if the job is marketing or something, maybe. if the job is programming, i want the most competent programmer because computers are the same regardless of gender or skin colour.

If they are similar in term of skills +-10% (whatever it even means). I want someone that will integrate well into the team.

I'm not sure that's really in favor of diversity, but it depends of the team.

For example, in my previous (french) team, they hired an indian dev. And culturally it was just a missmatch. The habit of always saying "yes" even when the response should be "no" is excessively annoying!

The issue is present in every other teams with indian dev in the company.

@kiki Well that wasn't the intention. But it was the only way I could think about how to frame the problem.

It's mainly that one person is slightly better than the other. (We may have been talking exclusively about their technical skill but I can't remember)

Setting it up to never compare so think is a good idea but it doesn't really address the spirit of my hypothetical scenario.

Like what @Jabb03 pointed out, it's about the fit and how someone would integrate to the team.

And yes I agree that is an excellent example where my approach would be bad.

I've benefited from someone with less than sound skill but really brought the team together. They helped everyone on the team like each other and would challenge each other to grow.