I've sat at company hiring panels, and have taken part in discriminatory policies first hand. At career fairs, Dropbox recruiters had us mark candidate resumes with a star for diverse candidates, two starts for "double diverse" candidates (female + URM), and "ND" for Asian male candidates. It turns out "ND" stands for "negative diversity". Literally the first thing we did was bucket candidates by the desirability of their demographics. Recruiters also got higher bonuses for recruiting diverse candidates, along with bonuses for more experienced candidates. The diverse bonus was equal to the difference between hiring an entry level IC1 and an IC6 (senior staff engineer).
Usually discrimination doesn't take place in the hiring panels. Rather it's done by the people given incentives to discriminate, usually recruiters. Recruiters can infer candidates' race and gender with census data on names, and advance diverse candidates to phone screens more often than non-diverse candidates.
I can also detail the company's "opportunistic hiring" plans if you want to hear more.
I would like to hear more, but maybe HN doesn't want to. If you don't care about the risk of downvoting and this being on HN, please write so. But if not, it is ok.
This is the part of the document that described the motivation:
> The Problem Statement
> Based on 177 like tech companies in Silicon Valley (market research and EOO-1 Diversity Statistics data), the percentage of diverse engineering talent is sparse. In short, 4.7% are latino, 2.1% are African American, and 19.2% are female. These candidates are being targeted with all of our top competitors with white gloves tactics, strategic outreach, and engagement strategies, while Dropbox has yet to systematically establish any of these practices to compete for this top talent and showcase our uniquely inclusive, dynamic, and thoughtful culture.
> Opportunity to market DBX [Dropbox] more broadly:
> Moreover, diverse engineers are the most sought after group of individuals on the market today. While the average response rate to engage is high (37%) the rate at which they are interested in moving forwards is quite low (11%). We interpret this in two ways:
> First, due to the small pool and scarcity of diverse talent, companies are motivated to keep their diverse talent happy, well-compensated, and engaged; prospects are rarely on the market, and when they are, it is a highly calculated and careful search based on existing relationships.
> Second, traditional sourcing engagement methods (email, LinkedIn) do not adequately showcase what makes Dropbox special, and because these candidates are so highly sought-after, it would serve us to highlight our culture early on, and to take a more long term approach to courting them.
And here's the proposed solution
> Opportunistic Hiring
> As the business needs shift and open roles become more narrow, it will become difficult to find a home for diverse candidates that we're able to engage and who pass our bar. Wee feel like it would be a disservice to use in the long-term if we miss out on hiring critical talent for Dropbox because of current headcount constraints. To this end, we propose that Eng VP's withhold 20 heads to hire opportunistically.
> When a diverse/URM candidate is interested in interviewing, regardless of headcount, we will put them through the process. If they pass the TPS [technical phone screen] we will bring them onsite and evaluate based on their skillset.
* If the candidate goes to HC [hiring committee], we will proactively find a sponsor/team home for the candidate, and that team would receive a preciously withheld headcount for that hire.
This was announced April of 2019. I've transcribed parts of the document that announced this policy above. I can't speak as to whether or not this is still in place as I have since left Dropbox.
Interestingly, Dropbox already 23% women in tech roles[1] at the time that this was announced - larger than the figure of 19% shown above.
I used to think naively that checking these boxes does nothing:
- "I prefer not to disclose my sexual preference"
- "I prefer not to disclose my race/ethnicity"
- "I prefer not to disclose whether I'm a veteran or not"
Anyway, it is a sad read for people like me who don't get preferential treatment. It seems like I'm being salty, but it is just the reality. People like me studied hours and hours doing Leetcode and sacrificing other things, even sacrificing things that should have helped our career better, such as learning relevant skills like techniques, libraries, etc. It is what it is. Naively think about meritocracies.
If I can just write a huge *sigh here, it is what I'm currently doing right now.
I don't care about downvotes. I just need to rant.
Anyway thank you for the replies! I really appreciate it.
Well that's generalizing isn't it? Not every Asian male sounding name person actually have a good track record in their family, free of abuse, loving both dad and mom, good education, know how to do math to the point of memorizing the entire Pi numbers.
There are people who are outside of the normal as well. Why not give them privilege by hearing their stories as well?
Or better, why not discard the preferential treatment and do it based on meritocracy? I know this can't be done in today's world, just hoping.
Not every white person comes from a rich, educated family either. I'm very familiar with this being a white, uneducated, disabled female from the Midwest US with an uneducated, abusive, lower-middle class family.
Meritocracy does literally nothing to aid less privileged people to get ahead. It primarily helps those who started with privilege in the first place which is mostly limited to select groups.
I'm not sure why pointing out the fact that this forces members of the same race or gender to compete against each other for a limited number of spots is justification. The fact that we're allocating some hiring slots for certain races and genders, while others have to compete for a more limited number of slots is the problem.
Furthermore, this policy announced when the company's tech workforce was already higher than the industry's representation in the metro area. So they were using discrimination to increase an already existing overrepresentation.
Were you required to remove stars already on the resume? If not, then I know just what to do.
Where on my resume should I put the two stars? Are those the traditional hand-written style, with the lines crossing to make a pentagon in the middle? What sort of pen or pencil should I use?
We wrote the stars ourselves - normal 5 point star style. If you wrote the stars yourself recruiters would probably cross them out and write in the stars that correctly reflect your diversity status.
Usually discrimination doesn't take place in the hiring panels. Rather it's done by the people given incentives to discriminate, usually recruiters. Recruiters can infer candidates' race and gender with census data on names, and advance diverse candidates to phone screens more often than non-diverse candidates.
I can also detail the company's "opportunistic hiring" plans if you want to hear more.