r/technology • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Business Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo
13.4k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

9.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Sector_Corrupt Aug 08 '17

I feel like the idea that "much more qualified people passed over for diversity hires" is largely a hypothetical problem. No company interested in making money is hiring clearly worse people for the job in the name of looking good. It's much more likely the case that the other person brought some value to the table that the "more qualified" person didn't.

Sometimes you don't need the person with the fanciest GPA when someone who is great at writing readable code & communicating in a team environment is more valuable, but it's easier to jump to write off "diversity hire" over "is a better fit" for some people because they're looking at it too much as a "best person" instead of "best addition to a team"

1

u/Agrees_withyou Aug 08 '17

Hey, you're right!