Gabriele Bonetti
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

Here is what I get from the manifesto, I consider this a pretty understandable idea but I’d be happy to have feedback.

What the author is trying to say is that forcing equality in companies before it happens physiologically in society is wrong and can create its own kind of discrimination.

Let’s say there are 10 software engineer positions and 100 candidates 90 of which are male and 10 female, I don’t think it correct to have a policy saying “we must hire 5 males and 5 females for equality”.

A private company should be free to hire the best they find, male, female, black, white, young, old, doesn’t matter. The problem is that there shouldn’t be 90 guys and 10 girls to begin with.

But that is another kind of problem, a society and education problem.

It shouldn’t be a company policy to enforce that, If woman are under represented in tech, which is a reality, they should be encouraged to pursue that path since a young age, in school, in their family, so that in 10 years many more candidates will be women and many more will be hired.

Otherwise you might end up with a paradoxical situation where you can here something like “sorry, you are the best candidate we interviewed but you are young asian straight guy and that’s over represented in the company”. I know we are far from that, but bringing this kind of policies to an extreme helps understanding the issue.

I think it’s an interesting discussion and a good point to discuss, but now it all looks like a giant PR operation instead of a healthy discussion.

    Gabriele Bonetti

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    Pythonist, automation freak, mountain lover.