Diversity bonus
spectrum.ieee.orgTwo things:
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When most people talk diversity these days they're talking about skin colour or gender or some other arbitrary division. I'm really happy with how the author handles this - he emphasises that he's talking about experiential diversity.
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I feel that the article doesn't emphasise enough the requirement for an open environment.
Diversity of viewpoints and opinions is required to create the best outcome. It's pointless to have differing views if you can't express them though.
This is what's needed:
- A team of diverse opinions
- Each member must feel open to express those opinions
- The team should constructively evaluate that outside opinion. This means confronting your own biases, conflicting opinions etc.
As a result all members should grow and the team can achieve a better result.
Couldn't agree with you more. My team is mixed race, mixed nationality, everything mixed. But experiential diversity is mostly from what and where people studied. There are some very diverse white people on the team, because they have different educational background.
So, if you are hiring for diversity, does that mean you should hire whoever solves the interview problem in the most unique way?
Absolutely! If you have 10 people on your team that all solve a problem one way, and you interview a candidate that solves it a completely different way, that's an enormous asset in future problem solving.
Diversity of experiences makes for better solutions. Leslie Lamport said the only reason he came up with such a novel way of modeling distributed systems was because he was the only person looking at the problem with a background in mathematical physics.
Once he viewed it through the lens of general relatively, spacetime and causality it was trivial - and he admits this. An ACM hall of fame paper. "Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System." And was the birth of modern distributed systems understanding.
1. http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#time-clocks
Yes or you populate your team with people who think alike. This does nothing for creativity or problem solving if everyone sees everything from the same viewpoint.
Think of it this way, when you hire someone...are you looking for a yes person or someone who challenges the way you see things or the way you solve problems?
Our differences make teams stronger when the team respects the opinions of all teammates and are given a safe environment in which to operate. This does not mean we have to always agree with differing viewpoints but we learn from them and come together to create and build the best products and company.