i'll just leave this here...

[BeepBoo]

I am curious what "softer metrics" you are specifically referring to which would not be on said paper and mark you as clearly less qualified and effective.

No one puts dumb shit past basic job history, positions held, role title, etc. on their resume. You really think I'm going to bother putting "single handedly wrote our company's dev-ops by learning puppet on my own"? No. What fucking company wants to see that garbage on a paper? That type of stuff comes out in the actual interview.

The "hard" qualifications for a job are the minimums:

CS bachelors degree from accredited agency.
4 years experience in <x> job.
Use of Java, C++, C#, <insert whatever other programming languages/tools you want>.

Soft qualifications are things you either did really well at your last job that just fall under "did the fucking job I was hired to do" which you wouldn't list on a resume. Things that put you over other candidates are stuff in excess of minimum qualifications. 10 years experience. All those tools listed and more. Things the company would like to see, etc. Being nearly OVER-qualified for a position.

[Biomega]

It is also reductivist to say hey we know these people in the past did bad, and while you didn't, we need to make it up so get shafted.

You're misrepresenting things entirely, as though there was some kind of malicious vindictiveness involved. This is a matter of practicality - not retaliation. It would be nice if we could get on track without overcorrection, but there's not many feasible ways to actually do that. You're basically complaining that we can't get back on a straight road after veering to the right for 100 years without turning left for a long time. Well that's just what you have to do sometimes if you want to get back on track.

You are basically condemning people who have committed no fault because of there race/sex. I strongly disagree we have to overcorrect, because I realize that overcorrecting will not help, it will only piss off people much like it pissed off the people of color/women of the past, and you will have people acting out.

You're free to disagree, of course. I encourage anyone to come up with workable, practicable solutions that could be an alternative for quotas and the likes. In some areas there are some (or at least proposals for some), but in many others there just isn't anything nearly as workable in sight. Nobody WANTS this situation, but until and unless we find some other way to do it as quickly and as effectively (or near enough) that's a bitter pill we'll all have to swallow.

So you are saying it was bad, it was terrible, lets do it to people again, just different people?

No. YOU'RE saying that. I'm saying we went so far in one direction, we're not going to back on track quickly and effectively unless we go hard in another direction for a while. You're painting this as some kind of gleeful retribution - it's not. It's a matter of necessity.

I also disagree that it works towards a more equitable society, I think you get equitable society by idk treating people equally?

That's a nice PRINCIPLE, but the issues is PRACTICALITY. You can't just flip a switch and go "well, we're all equal now, yay!". That's unrealistic, and I'd even call it dangerous - because all it does is lock in an already unfair status quo for even longer. It's easy to SAY "well let's just treat everyone equally", but it's a very difficult thing to actually achieve; and for some people, their situation is not one they simply want to endure for who knows how long until everything magically rights itself.

You don't get to a fair and equal society by simply wishing it were so. You need to implement measures to push things in that direction, and sometimes you need to push really hard because there's tons of inertia involved. It's easy to see why the downtrodden and the oppressed want things to change quickly; I hope you agree it's also easy to see why the privileged and well-positioned are in much less of a hurry to change things. Unless there's pressure, things have a tendency to either dissipate, or move at glacial speeds. And glacial is not a good option for a lot of people.

No one is saying it is that easy, but just because it isn't easy doesn't mean it is wrong. Treating people equally is hard, being lets just call it reverse racist is easy, and that is why people are doing it. It gives quick positive results, but in the long run is going to end badly, it is going to end with anger and probably bloodshed if it doesn't stop.

Again, you're saying nice things in theory but the problem is that the reality of the situation has not only some pressing needs, but also some obstinate hurdles to overcome. If racism was something we could just all resolve to do away with, it wouldn't be a problem. BUT IT'S NOT. And for a white person who isn't suffering from inequality and the legacy of decades of unequal treatment (and that's not to say there aren't many poor white people either, to a degree this applies to wealth as much as it does to race, gender, etc.) to tell a person of color who IS experiencing all that "well just give it time it'll all get better eventually" is a very small comfort. You know why we need some speedy action in the short term? BECAUSE THERE'S PEOPLE WHO SUFFER, RIGHT NOW. It MIGHT go wrong in the long term if we overcorrect; it IS ALREADY going wrong in the short term if we do nothing.

You can say they aren't meant to be long term, but I have little faith they will go away.

If you have a better solution that actually can be effectively implemented and alleviate suffering, I'm all ears. As is the rest of the world. This isn't a static universe. If and when new and better options become available, they'll be used. Until then, just saying "well this might not work so let's do nothing" is a terrible, terrible alternative for the people actually in need. Of course it's easy to say that if you're not affected (not as in you personally, of course) but try telling that to someone who IS affected.

To pretend they will simply go away one day after we get to the magical equality point is naive (honestly believing they will get you there is naive in my opinion, you can't get equality through racism/sexism, you have to get there by treating people equally).

Nobody is saying anything about "magical equality", except maybe you. These are stop-gap measures implemented because we know they work; normalization has a track record in many areas (see e.g. smoking bans) where initial resistance is replaced with acceptance of a new status quo over time. What's YOUR proposed solution? And I mean actual, practicable solutions that produce real gains, because "let's just treat everyone equally" is about as actual and practicable as "let's all be nice to each other for a change" - a sweet sentiment, but far from something that produces actual results.

People SHOULD clamor we need to hire based on merit, because doing otherwise IS racist/sexist, and yes practice has shown that we aren't quite there, but in a lot of places it is there. Do you think that every single job and company and profession needs to have the perfect split of 50/50 62/17/13/whatever the full racial divide is? That is completely impractical, as people have different desires and wants.

This is typical strawman argumentation. Nobody is saying NOT to hire based on merit. The usual wording of things is along the lines of "given equal qualifications, people of color/women/people with disabilities/whatever will be preferred". Nobody is going around saying "eeeey you there black man, come aboard now, and nevermind the Harvard fella next to you". That's silly, and an often intentional misrepresentation of the process. Same with the "perfect split"; those are aspirational targets, not real representational numbers. All quotas do is correct for biases that already exist. How do you think we got to gender imbalance in certain jobs? Because somehow magically all the women were less qualified by all objective metrics? No. Because while there's absolutely differences in qualification, very often those differences are neither clear-cut nor easily measurable, and blind testing has proven VERY convincingly that a lot of the time the deciding factor is NOT qualification. It's done all the time, there's mountains of studies along the lines of send in identical resumes to similar companies, switch out the names so they look like women/people of color/whatever, and well, how about that, somehow magically the white men get hired a lot more EVEN WITH IDENTICAL INFO. If this wasn't a problem we wouldn't be having this conversation. This is "but it should be 'ALL lives matter'...!" all over again - yeah no shit, if all lives ACTUALLY mattered we wouldn't be in this mess.

No one is raising protest that 99% of garbage/sewer workers are men, people only want favorable conditions for the things they want, and I don't like that when it causes people who are equally if not better qualified to get shafted for no other reason than sex/race.

And that's an entirely reasonable argument, for the most part; the unreasonable part being "no one is raising protest" because people DO notice this, and DO care - just not as many people. And that's a problem, to an extent, for sure. The difference, however, is that 99% of waste disposal workers being male is not the same as 90% of CEOs being male, because the mechanisms that lead to those imbalances aren't the same. The latter is biased against women (and PoC etc.) while the former is biased TOWARDS men (and, incidentally, also TOWARDS PoC). In other words, it's not like women can't make it in garbage, it's that men often find themselves in a position where they have little choice but to work in garbage - and that is absolutely a problem, and is connected to a lot of social injustice that should be addressed. But, and this may come as a shock, those problems and quota corrections are not mutually exclusive issues to work on. Doing one doesn't mean the other gets ignored, or at least it shouldn't.

Maybe it stems from my belief that better 10 guilty walk free than 1 innocent hang, but I don't believe in condemning people on past sins just to satisfy a quota/perfect division of sexes/races in a particular work place.

No, and neither do I. But sometimes to get someone out of the mud you have to get dirty - not because you think being dirty is a good thing, but because there's no good alternative to doing so; at least not while someone is stuck in the mud. To sit on the sidelines, mud-free and clean, and go "don't worry, it'll work itself out in the long run" is just so very problematic as an attitude.

Also just because you are a white/male doesn't mean you magically are well off or have a comfortable life, there are a lot of white/males in very shitty places that could use help, could use assistance to get out of the situation that they might not even have gotten themselves into.

Absolutely, and this is another, broader issue that is only tangentially related. Biases exist in all sorts of forms, and economic biases are something that affects all kinds of colors. Poor white people and poor black people have a lot of problems in common; but poor black people also have ADDITIONAL problems that poor white people DON'T have. And in much the same way, poor white people will have some problems that RICH black people don't have; but rich black people will have some problems that poor white people don't have. Race and economic status are complex and interconnected, but they're not always entirely interchangeable; sometimes there's more overlap, sometimes there's less, sometimes there's none. But - and this is crucial - you need to work on all fronts here; and suggesting that because we work on race somehow means we DON'T work on economic status is a strawman. Those are not mutually exclusive dichotomies. In fact they're very much connected, and a lot of things actually DO help both factors (like e.g. lowering student debt).

I think we need to have more programs to help the less fortunate

Absolutely, and many other social improvements as well. But, see above: those are not mutually exclusive issues. We can and we SHOULD work on many fronts at the same time.

Also I feel like you are throwing shade a bit at me by saying I have had a comfortable life and haven't experienced the "bad side", and if so, you know nothing about me, don't do that.

That's not my intent, and when I'm saying "you" I usually mean you as in the position you're representing, not you the person. There's no real good way in English to differentiate that elegantly. As you say I know nothing about you personally, and so I'm not talking about that.

I am not saying "we don't need firefighters", I am saying maybe teach people the dangers of fires/how fires start/how to put out small fires so they don't grow so that everyone can help.

And this is something we should absolutely do. But how does that help people who are currently and violently on fire? We can do BOTH. We SHOULD do both.

You don't think that your reverse racist/sexist programs wont have a backlash, that they wont have some huge negative consequences?

Absolutely they will have some negative consequences, as will most things. But so far, most of the data we have suggests that those consequences are the least worst out of all the options. If there were easier, better solutions we'd take them. This is by no means a perfect answer, but waiting around for perfection while people are suffering is not only impractical, it's immoral. All we have are asymptotic approaches to an ideal, and sometimes the best we can do is try and find a median that sucks least.

[Lolites]

Assuming they are going to somehow not be biased towards women now with this "mandate" is laughable. They are certainly going to be biased now (that isn't to say they were before, we can speculate they were but blizzard as far as tech has been fairly diverse) and they will pass on equally if not better qualified candidates to satisfy a diversity quota. The simple fact is tech at large gets SIGNIFICANTLY more male applications than female, so it is logical they would have more males than females (because it is logical that over the long run the candidates would equal out on skill across their demographics).

very much this

- - - Updated - - -

End of the day I don't give a damn if 100% of the workplace is male, or female, I don't care if it's 100% black, white, hispanic, or Asian, all I care is that every single person in those positions is the most qualified candidate who applied for the position.

thats how it should be but alas, the age we live in, some people need preferential treatment, bcs they dont hired for jobs they are not the best for...

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Where are all those woman to working in mine underground, i didn't hear about female miners.... girls...job waiting for you....

yep somehow only "easy" office jobs are sexist, disgusting or physicaly or dangerous jobs are fine to be done by men only...

[bloodmoth13]

As the saying goes in my country:

"Locked up for having a dog and locked up for not having one either"

Now to my opinion:
Every situation is situational (duh)
If there was discrimination at blizzard...the only way to atone is to do the opposite.

Doing the opposite in this scenario can be perceived as "woman and or minorities need a little bump because they are not as smart"

I mean...can you ever win?

The problem was that blizz employees were assgrabbing women, the solution and opposite to that isnt to hire more women, homosexuals and non-whites, thats completely unrelated and pretty racist when you think that is the solution since none of that had anything to do with anything.

Its just shitheads like kotik caving in to radical leftist demands before they even made them. Anything that is anti white/male/straight is good to these people and that is all this shit is.

[bledgor]

...

I'm going to bed and this conversation is going in circles so I will leave you with this to ponder. You are acting like the issues are people on fire bad, I tend to view them as people have a hole in there roof and no way for them to repair it bad. Does it suck and make life a living hell, sure, but you can survive, and with a little help maybe get things back in order. What I mean is that in society today you can accomplish almost anything as a black/woman (as someone with years in education at a school 90% African American I have seen it). Now is it harder for them than if they had been white/male (which for women in a lot of cases it is already equal if not easier), sure, but it isn't like they are being barred from entering. I think we need to approach the whole situation not from trying to force equal outcome at the expense of others, but rather we need to work from the ground level and build up.

That is we have to treat people equally, everywhere, and you might say that isn't enough, that takes to long, well if you want to get the right outcome in my opinion it is the only way. Look at how much has changed in the last 40 years, last 20 years, hell even last 10 years. As the younger generations that were at least previously shown by adults to treat others equally/properly grew up things got better, kids are always watching, and if they see you treat people of different races exactly the same, women, and men equally, they pick up on that and imprint that. If we had continued this I think in another couple generations things would have still gotten even better. Yet instead people are being spiteful, they aren't treating equally and they are forcing race/sex into the forefront of every problem/conversation, and I think doing a lot of harm to the future generation as kids pick up on this, and think every issue is because of that and thus start to over correct and over react and create new problems instead of working towards a good end. I don't think there is a magic quick solution, I think we had a good solution that was working, was getting us there and we have now deviated sharply from it with initiatives like the one posted.

To be clear I am not saying it was perfect. I think certain areas obviously had problems, but I think a better approach than just brow beating/yelling/condemning (or in this case denying them jobs) people who are racist it to try to engage them in conversations. People who are racist aren't going to change beliefs simply because some random person is screaming they are racist while calling them a piece of shit and trying to get them fired, but someone sitting down, listening to them, maybe trying to find out why they are racist/the problem that made them racist and talk them into realizing there error like a psychiatrist does with a patient? I think that gets you the desired outcome. People don't tend to react well to being told they are wrong/some bad thing, but if you sit down and ask them what went wrong without aggression, you are much more likely to get something, and from there you can work towards the proper end. Again it won't be fast, but it will be at least in my eyes done properly, and in order to have a good house you need a solid foundation.

[Lolites]

nope... just a myth...

not a myth, simple biology, female (and yes, i mean all species not only human) brains are "wired" to be more caring so they dont abandon their ofspring, its biological imperative caused by the fact that in most species one male have multiple female partners and he could not care for all the ofsprings
you can see that very well in monkeys, and think what you will, but from evolutionary standpoint we have BARELY evolved, to paraphrase George Carlin we are monkeys, with automatic weapons and hats, we are still one proverbial leg in the jungle

[Tiwack]

This whole thing is predicated on hiring based on gender like it never happened to unqualified men failing to the top. Change is messy, progress slow albeit chaotic, it's for equality and for the better.

[Aleksej89]

Its a great idea to choose to hire people based on what flesh they got in their pants and/or what is the melanin content of their skin and/or what choice of culture/religion they decide to actively belong to.

/s

[Beastiel]

kind of surprised we're making a big deal out of this.

Wasn't it like less than 2 years ago there was a massive controversy about how blizzard employees are payed barely living wages and expected to work crunch for little to no extra pay and when they speak up about it they're threatened and reminded they're expendable and should just be grateful to work at their dream job of blizzard entertainment? and this was corroborated by other ex-employees and never acknowledged by blizzard?

But hey atleast they're trying meet race and gender quotas now?

[Soikona]

This whole thing is predicated on hiring based on gender like it never happened to unqualified men failing to the top. Change is messy, progress slow albeit chaotic, it's for equality and for the better.

So your solution, is to hire more unqualified women, so it’s equally unqualified? Yep, defo “for the better”.

[bbr]

There really isn't a good solution I would think?

Hire people who are good for the task - and you end up with a mostly make taskforce, because face it - it's a mostly male job.
I went to school for a tech direction - we had ~85 males spread across 3 classes, and 2 females.
2 females!
It's only natural that those getting the eventual job will be mostly male as well - assuming a 100% employment rate.
You can't fill jobs with people who do not exist.

And you can't, when 2 people apply, with equal qualifications - tell 1 of them they aren't picked because they aren't the gender or skin color that you're looking for.
It just doesn't work. It's called discrimination - be it positive of negative - it's still discrimination.
You can't state "we're looking for a female employee with tech education" either, because guess what - again positive discrimination.

Companies can also apply for subsidy when they have a handicapped person (e.g. wheelchair) in employment, so they can take funding from the govt, in order to add extra ramps and special toilets to the work place. But you can't say you have a job opening for someone who is wheelchair bound either.

It's the mentality they need to change, not the crew.
HR needs to implement harsh punishments for anyone creating an acidic workplace environment, and people working there need to feel safe enough to be able to speak up against such situations.

[Th3Scourge]

yeah... that's why children were left in the forest to die if there was something wrong with them or they couldn't afford it... all that nurturing instinct...

should just get rid of cps because women are so caring for kids lol...



lol nope... newly borns were left to die plenty of times because there was something "wrong" with them in the past or it wasn't affordable to the family... it only changed with the introduction of christianity that maintained that humans had an inherent inviolable value...

Lol what an odd example.

It is caring if you've got 9 other children to raise, 5 of which are going to die of disease before they are 4 years old.

[The Stormbringer]

Please. Streamers are the 2000's equivalent of the old cable access broadcasters from the 80's. Any idiot can hook up a camera and some streaming software, throw their videos up on Youtube with their faces plastered all over the thumbnails, grinning like they've just eaten poisonous mushrooms and are waiting for the claw of death to grab them, and make loads of money.

Want proof? Look at all the people eating Tide pods, or doing other dangerous and possibly deadly stunts to "fit in" with the influencers. If half of them put their brain cells together, a redneck from Louisiana would still have more teeth than they have brain cells.

There's a difference between randos throwing up videos of the recent trend, challenge, or stunt, and people who make streaming their livelihood. You know, the sort of people who have a schedule, who put in a serious amount of hours, who actually take it seriously rather than a 'get famous quick' scheme? Those people. But I suppose hours and hours of dedication on a weekly basis means nothing if some of them aren't very smart, huh?

[Viconia]

When the bulk of the talented workforce in a field is male you tend to get male workers. Moving the balance closer to 50/50* requires action elsewhere than in hiring practices. Raising our kids to consider all options, not just those traditionally skewed towards their sex, is where the change happens.

Another thing that must apply, of course, is removing all bias in hiring. If your CV declares you'd be great at the job you're applying for, your sex shouldn't matter. Goes both ways, I very much judge all sorts of quotas in hiring. They make your company's statistics look nice, but don't fix the underlying problem and inevitably harm your company's skill capital.

* this actually shouldn't be the goal so much as a mere reference; the important thing is to allow all aspiring workers equal chance to get hired.

[Lolites]

yeah... that's why children were left in the forest to die if there was something wrong with them or they couldn't afford it... all that nurturing instinct...

should just get rid of cps because women are so caring for kids lol...



lol nope... newly borns were left to die plenty of times because there was something "wrong" with them in the past or it wasn't affordable to the family... it only changed with the introduction of christianity that maintained that humans had an inherent inviolable value...

highlighted part being most important in your scenario, bcs in that case completely different instincts tuned on (survival of the fittest and/or whats best for group as whole), and im sure the mothers were soooo thrilled to abandon their ofspring...

and sorry, but do you realise trying to disprove something by pointing out the 1% (actualy even less) of cases where it doesnt work like that (and for completely different factors on top of that) kinda supports it, as it shows it DOES WORK like that in the 99% cases?

[Chadow]

The problem was that blizz employees were assgrabbing women, the solution and opposite to that isnt to hire more women, homosexuals and non-whites, thats completely unrelated and pretty racist when you think that is the solution since none of that had anything to do with anything.

Its just shitheads like kotik caving in to radical leftist demands before they even made them. Anything that is anti white/male/straight is good to these people and that is all this shit is.

Yeah but...
How would you "atone"...IF you wanted to atone?

Anything you would do, i think, would end up seeming like is forced.

[Utrrabbit]

not a myth, simple biology, female (and yes, i mean all species not only human) brains are "wired" to be more caring so they dont abandon their ofspring, its biological imperative caused by the fact that in most species one male have multiple female partners and he could not care for all the ofsprings
you can see that very well in monkeys, and think what you will, but from evolutionary standpoint we have BARELY evolved, to paraphrase George Carlin we are monkeys, with automatic weapons and hats, we are still one proverbial leg in the jungle

Please do not use an arguement you have no clue what you are talking about. Many species on the planet abandon their young extremely earlier. Certain types of seals will for instance abandon their young only after 12 days.

Many other females of other species will do the same much earlier. The majority of females in the animal kingdom are hardwired to abandom their children since it takes less resources to just have another and not take care of them if something happens.

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When the bulk of the talented workforce in a field is male you tend to get male workers. Moving the balance closer to 50/50* requires action elsewhere than in hiring practices. Raising our kids to consider all options, not just those traditionally skewed towards their sex, is where the change happens.

Another thing that must apply, of course, is removing all bias in hiring. If your CV declares you'd be great at the job you're applying for, your sex shouldn't matter. Goes both ways, I very much judge all sorts of quotas in hiring. They make your company's statistics look nice, but don't fix the underlying problem and inevitably harm your company's skill capital.

* this actually shouldn't be the goal so much as a mere reference; the important thing is to allow all aspiring workers equal chance to get hired.

They never said they are going 50/50. People seem to lack reading comprehension; they said they are increasing the number BY 50%. At the moment blizzard employes 23% woman/nb. They want to increase that number once again BY 50%. This would increase it to around 33.5%, which is above the industry standard of about 24%.

[Edge-]

Closing this down. This didn't start out great and things don't seem to have improved, not to mention much of the discussion is touching on forbidden topics.