There is a saying that you can only manage what you can measure, but the problem is then, you only manage what you can easily measure. It's easy to tick boxes for gender, sexuality, race etc - but if everyone you hire is a 20-something graduate of the same top 10 universities, from the same socio-economic class, having sat in the same lectures, read the same books, been exposed to all the same ideas, buys the same brands, has the same hobbies, then how can the benefits of diversity be realized? I believe nearly every high-profile product flop from major tech firms can be attributed to this.
Most of modern science and technology has been discovered/invented by white males - an incredibly uniform group in the eyes of today's diversity police. Clearly the lack of diversity was not that big of a problem for them.
Monocultures, almost by definition, encourage groups to think alike. That means the group doesn't invent anything new, and has a strong tendency to work towards the lowest denominator. While that's sometimes valuable -- not everything needs to be revolutionary -- it does mean that true innovation is harder to achieve, because nobody is thinking outside the box. In fact, most of the team isn't even aware of the box.
Step back from the color- and gender-counting varieties of diversity for a moment, and just think of the notion of diversity itself: a variation of backgrounds and viewpoints, which can contribute to a wider view and, when done mindfully, more opportunities to serve the community (the same community that buys your products).
Surely you've had that wonderful feeling when a teammate comes up with an idea, and you respond, "Wow, what a great suggestion! I'd never have thought of that!" With attention to diversity (by which I mean, "attracting people of different viewpoints"), you encounter that sense of discovery far more often.
I make software for everyone, not just white males. Why? Well, consider if nothing else, that white males are not a majority of the world population! There is a lot of money being left on the table!
As an example, let's say you are productizing a consumer UV monitor. For the American market, you sell it to 20 something white men in Cali as a way to work on their tan.
Hey, maybe you succeed! But you are a fraction of the size you should be.
If that team had a parent on it, he or she would ask about using it for babies.
A woman from the south east part of Asia may ask about develop it for use in avoiding UV exposure! A completely opposite use case from the target audience!
As I said, if you consider nothing else, money left on the table.
We have proven studies that the c-factor of a group (think of it as an IQ test for groups of people, it measures the ability to solve problems) increases with the ratio of women.
As for nationalities, I have discovered that companies who look for specific technical skills worldwide usually very naturally become diverse.
Imo it's better because you have a different set of eyes and perspectives looking at a problem so you don't have issues the Kodak issue of the 70s or the recent google image search issues. A more diverse workforce may have caught these issues before they hit production. You can't see problems if you don't know they exist.
http://petapixel.com/2015/09/19/heres-a-look-at-how-color-fi...
A real-world example: we were in negotiations about a big project with a vendor. We - a team of guys about the same age - had a lot of issues with the technical solution the vendor proposed. The next day they brought in a very attractive blonde engineer, and my useless straight colleagues would be gazing at her legs rather than asking tough technical questions. The vendor wouldn't have tried this if we had some women on the team.
[+] [-] koder2016|9 years ago|reply
"Cool, you hired a dynamic Python dev, a static functional Haskel dev and a UX inclined HTML/C# dev?"
"Err... No, we hired a cartesian product of races and genders within Java skillset... But they sure have different worldviews!"
[+] [-] gaius|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hprotagonist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donatj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sattoshi|9 years ago|reply
I'm not arguing it's a bad thing.. but why is it a bad thing?
The most notable thing I see in diversity are additional language and cultural barriers that will slow down productivity.
[+] [-] maverick_iceman|9 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: I'm a non-white male.
[+] [-] ohjeez|9 years ago|reply
Step back from the color- and gender-counting varieties of diversity for a moment, and just think of the notion of diversity itself: a variation of backgrounds and viewpoints, which can contribute to a wider view and, when done mindfully, more opportunities to serve the community (the same community that buys your products).
Surely you've had that wonderful feeling when a teammate comes up with an idea, and you respond, "Wow, what a great suggestion! I'd never have thought of that!" With attention to diversity (by which I mean, "attracting people of different viewpoints"), you encounter that sense of discovery far more often.
[+] [-] com2kid|9 years ago|reply
As an example, let's say you are productizing a consumer UV monitor. For the American market, you sell it to 20 something white men in Cali as a way to work on their tan.
Hey, maybe you succeed! But you are a fraction of the size you should be.
If that team had a parent on it, he or she would ask about using it for babies.
A woman from the south east part of Asia may ask about develop it for use in avoiding UV exposure! A completely opposite use case from the target audience!
As I said, if you consider nothing else, money left on the table.
[+] [-] Iv|9 years ago|reply
As for nationalities, I have discovered that companies who look for specific technical skills worldwide usually very naturally become diverse.
[+] [-] thescribe|9 years ago|reply
Why? What makes this inherently better than say, a monocultural group like Japan.
[+] [-] fatalogic|9 years ago|reply
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/1...
[+] [-] jdale27|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bewo001|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingmanaz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] aboonaboo|9 years ago|reply
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