Posts by Gamorra

Does Big Tech hire white boys ahead of more skilled black people and/or women?

Re: 20 years, near enough...

I agree that I have seen much more of the positive bias than the negative. In fact, since I hire people, I'm subject to it myself.

The reason we have no women in the team currently is because none applied in the latest hiring round. Not that none were suitable, but none applied. The last time one did apply, she was hired almost before she got out of the room. Not because she had certain bits I lacked, but because she was (or seemed to be, based on the interview and later proved by performance) really, really good (thanks, Valentina).

If a white guy had applied who seemed as good - I mean exactly equally as good - I would still have hired the lady as it meant the team would be more diverse. That's bias. I can live with it. The only other way of differentiating would be to toss a coin. That's not generally accepted as solid business practice. Except if you're a trader.

As for colour - something I have gone through various iterations of describing and find most of them ridiculous and prejudiced when Eddie Murphy can use a term which, from me, would be considered insulting - we don't have any Chinese people. Now, that is one of the largest groups on the planet. Am I being discriminatory? Not if no-one applies. I can't hire people who aren't there.

The Shock of the New: The Register redesign update 4

Too much white to too much grey and white. An improvement?

The simplest thing here is to make the text proportional instead of absolute. It was silly before, it's silly now. We have bigger screens, let us make use of them.

On a different tack, why not have the facility of duckduckgo and allow for changes in background and foreground, Even if you did take the sensible route of proportional columns, it would still be welcome.

But big pictures taking up most of the first page of a story are still annoying, as is the large text.