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0 pointschipotle_coyote3y ago0 comments

The apparent Microsoft policy is that every interview pool “must include at least one external African-American, Black, Hispanic, or Latina/o and one external female candidate”. Your counterexample is “every interview pool has to be entirely white.”

I was originally going to write that you’re playing the “I’m technically correct” trick here, but I don’t think your argument actually rises to the level of technical correctness. Setting aside the debate over whether the former policy is desirable, it is clearly not the same as the latter policy. If Microsoft had said “everyone interviewed cannot be a white male,” or even “most people interviewed cannot be white males,” then you could more credibly try to make the case you’re aiming for. But they simply didn’t.

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Manuel_D3y ago

How big is said interview pool? With a pool of four people, which isn't uncommon in my experience, that means that 50% of the interviews are locked behind racial and gender requirements.

My example just made it bluntly obvious that discrimination in the interview stage is still discrimination, there's no "technically correct trick here". Mandating that X% of your interviews be of a particular race or gender is discrimination, no matter the value of X. Setting X to 100 just makes it very clear.

chipotle_coyoteOP3y ago

> Mandating that X% of your interviews

“2 of the candidates you interview must meet these gender/racial requirements” is a mandate, but it’s not a percentage mandate. I know that’s a little pedantic, but I think it’s important pedantry, because you keep using percentages:

> With a pool of four people, which isn’t uncommon in my experience, that means 50% of the interviews are locked behind racial and gender requirements.

That’s only true if you are limited to just four people, which obviously you are not. You may feel it’s an unfair burden on the hiring manager to expand the candidate pool if necessary to meet the racial and gender requirements, but that’s not an argument about discrimination.

> Setting X to 100 just makes it very clear.

I sincerely believe setting X to 100 makes it a different argument. :) “All of your candidates must be X” is manifestly not the same as “some of your candidates must be X”. (The former may require you to leave out candidates you think are qualified, the latter does not, for a start, which strikes me as an extremely important distinction in this context.)

Manuel_D3y ago

> The former may require you to leave out candidates you think are qualified, the latter does not, for a start, which strikes me as an extremely important distinction in this context.)?

Incorrect. If you mandate that 20% of candidates be Y, but only 10% of candidates in the applicant pool are Y and 90% are X then on average you need to exclude 50% of qualified non-X candidates. If I have a pool of 90 X and 10 Y candidates and I have a quota of 80,20 then even if I include all 10 Y candidates I can only include 40 of the 90 X candidates. Sure, if I said that 100% have to be Y then all of the X candidates would be excluded. But even lower quota values still result in the out-group being limited.

> “2 of the candidates you interview must meet these gender/racial requirements” is a mandate, but it’s not a percentage mandate. I know that’s a little pedantic, but I think it’s important pedantry, because you keep using percentages:

Since there's a finite number of candidates it's still ultimately a percentage. The percentage is variable based on the total number of candidates, but it's still a percentage in the end.

Quotas and caps are two sides of the same coin. Instituting a minimum representation of one group, is fundamentally the same thing as capping the representation of those who don't belong to said group.

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Manuel_D3y ago

How big is said interview pool? With a pool of four people, which isn't uncommon in my experience, that means that 50% of the interviews are locked behind racial and gender requirements.

chipotle_coyoteOP3y ago

> Mandating that X% of your interviews

> With a pool of four people, which isn’t uncommon in my experience, that means 50% of the interviews are locked behind racial and gender requirements.

> Setting X to 100 just makes it very clear.

Manuel_D3y ago

> The former may require you to leave out candidates you think are qualified, the latter does not, for a start, which strikes me as an extremely important distinction in this context.)?

Since there's a finite number of candidates it's still ultimately a percentage. The percentage is variable based on the total number of candidates, but it's still a percentage in the end.

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