[sriram_sun]

Here is my own experience of getting hired into a startup. The day I got hired the manager took the team out to lunch and I asked them how each one got hired. So results:

White male - Room mate of employee

White male - Room mate of employee

White male - Knew early employee from college in Switzerland

White female - Recruited off of LinkedIn

Indian American - Recruited off of LinkedIn

Immigrant Indian American - Recruited off of LinkedIn.

There is a lot of favoritism that goes on in industry as well. However, it is so large that it can accommodate both merit-based and network based hiring. Hiring is a total crap shoot anyway and this is not to say that just because someone comes recommended by someone else they are automatically bad. They just look better in comparison because mentally we automatically lower the hiring bar as this person comes "recommended" from a known source.

[laeri]

If you are going to build a team you will probably select for people you know and trust first, so choosing from people in your network is a natural way of doing this. This is literally called 'networking'. If it isn't a startup this can become a problem as the hiring process should be more open for everyone otherwise you won't be able to get a job anywhere without knowing someone from there first.

[robinbobbin]

> There is a lot of favoritism that goes on in industry as well.

There sure is, but I don't think your example is evidence for that. People just like to hire based on recommendations and through friends. Several times now I've been interested in some startup, and when I looked at their team page, they were all from the same group: either all Indian, or all russian speakers, or something else. I bet most startups are like this, just that some cases are more apparent than others.

[poszlem]

I am struggling to see what you are trying to say here, especially since you use somewhat arbitrary way to group people by race and sex. Can you clarify?

Is the founder white? Does he/did he live in a majority white country (you mentioned a college in Switzerland, a country which is most likely 90% white)? If so, why is that weird and why does that matter? Unless you think that "white men" are fungible, using this category makes no sense.

[wccrawford]

My impression was that they think they've discovered nepotism, but what they've actually discovered is networking.

[sriram_sun]

It was shocking to me that room mates could get hired that easily.

This was the bay area.

My comment is highlighting structural imbalances as they exist in society right now.

Even though networking as a way to grow, it is not an option for a lot of people until much later in their careers. That is because of social conditioning.

[sriram_sun]

There is another dynamic that helps the recommended hire succeed in the workplace environment. They initially get help navigating the workplace. This is extremely important for career development. For e.g. If you know what to look for in a code base that might make a difference between a commit on day one versus messing around the code base for a week and trying to be really careful.