You don't believe me? Good grief, it's been illegal to consider all manner of things when hiring for years, all over the place. Not to mention there are questions you can't even ask.

I didn't do anything of the kind. I substituted an act for an act. I pointed out a general truth that applies across the board. That's all.

Seriously, it's like some of you never made it through English class.

Oh, FFS. Look. No matter *what* I chose, the point, which you completely missed, was that one malfeasance is in no way made less by the existence of others.

By concentrating on the particulars -- which named no one and drew no level of equivalence except withing the example, as without -- you failed.

The example is the same if it is stealing from the cookie jar or shoplifting -- or murder -- or twisting the truth. That's the WHOLE POINT. That's the whooshing sound you heard.

The slashdotter below you screws up and makes some dumb remark about my post, missing the point? Doesn't excuse you doing it at all. How's that? A little closer to home?

No it shouldn't. If gender is a predictor of ability then the probability distributions are BY DEFINITION not independent. If therefore you use the knowledge of gender after evaluating ability then you are treating them as independent variables when you combine them. This is mathematically bogus.

Actually, that's just mathematically simplistic. Here's what your reasoning does not account for: There are leanings, abilities and competencies that do not exist in isolation from other influences. Gender can be one of those. Therefore, to the extent that affect is possible, it is a valid consideration.

It could be a positive for either sex.

For instance, the air force has definitively determined that females are significantly better at maintaining more comprehensive situational awareness in complex aerial situations. This is because of a real world gender-based difference in information processing.

On the other hand, if one was hiring a bouncer, the competencies lean strongly the other way.

There will be outliers, of course, but that's why we need to think about these things rather than operate by rote. The law, unfortunately, but needfully (due to blind prejudice), specifies decision by rote. This is why many parts of the decision making process have gone missing from public view.

See here

What evil is Google perpetrating, exactly?

In this case (there are certainly others), they are using deceptive reporting to mislead people on the current state of affairs. Ask yourself why they would do this. The answer isn't "because they are angels."

What they should do is publish relevant and clear statistics on the issue instead of attempting to obfuscate the relevant issues at hand.

Try to keep up. It's really not that difficult.

Am I right, or am I right?

You seem fringe left to me. But hey, perhaps you're just trolling. Difficult to tell.

Comparing "murder" with "reporting the race of Google employees in a way you don't like" is a little hysterical, don't you think?

Sure it is. Why are you doing it?

Do you simply love the smell of straw in the morning? Is there a crow problem where you live? C'mon, give over. Inquiring minds want to know!

There is an issue of readability that crops up when maintainance is a consideration. Serious regex reads like APL after being put through a shredder.

I'd rather not use a regex if there's something clearer available:

myString.find('searchTerm')

...and...

myString.replace('searchTerm','replacementTerm')

...and so on.

On the other hand, when writing my own language (yeah, I know, shut up), one of the very first things I did was incorporate regex handling, so WTF. :)

Or how about don't use tabs at all because it's dumb?

Yes. Much better to type 4 or 8 spaces when you could have just hit tab once. I totally see your point. You bet.

Can I subscribe to your newsletter?

And with Ruby you don't need a specialized editor to tell me the difference between space and tab characters.

If your editor can't tell you the difference between tabs and spaces, you need a better editor. It's 2015. No need to stick with weak development tools.

Which is not to say that Ruby isn't a fine language. It is. As is Python 2. And 3.

Like Python 3?

Yes. Precisely.

Python 3.x is not Python 2.x by any means. Python 2 code won't work under Python 3, and safe conversion requires complete re-testing and so is unlikely to be a practical or sane option for many installations, regardless of tools that do it automatically. That's not to say that Python 3 might not be a better language than Python 2; just that it isn't the same language, any more than Ruby or Perl is the same as Python 2.

But this is one area where open source comes to the rescue. The ability to keep Python 2.x relevant without breaking everything is readily available to anyone who needs it and can afford the investments in time and effort. Python 3 is an option, not a requirement, just as the new version of Perl is.

what equipment they keep between their legs

Related to that, however, is the question of what hormonal influences may arise. For one example (of many possible), with males, you often see more aggression, and (obviously) with females, less. Pretending there can be no relevant differences WRT job performance is not an optimum approach. Furthermore, interactions between the people of significantly different sexual identity are of inherently different natures. Much as the incoherent would like you not to believe it, the vast majority of us are sexual creatures. We are naturally and unavoidably affected by other concerns than the specifics of today's TPS report.

Same thing goes for age, various cultural influences, parent or not, single or not, personal maintainance, presentation, health, mobility, superstition, depth of education, and means of education (conventional, autodidact, on-the-job, etc.)

Because of these truths, consideration should be given to such factors. And of course it is, and always will be. But mostly because of the law, much of this is now sub-rosa, which is entirely a bad thing -- a bad thing that at least partially offsets the benefits of the law overriding (or at least attempting to override) people who operate using a chain of reasoning that primarily incorporates blind prejudice rather than "how will this affect job performance?"

Politically correct often means "poorly thought out and mostly harmful." When there are differences, there are differences. Pretending otherwise doesn't make such things go away. It just makes them harder to deal with.

TFS blargificates as follows:

To be fair to Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple and Amazon didn't want people to see their EEO-1 numbers, either.

Suppose I said "To be fair to [a murderer], [other murderer1], [other murderer2], [other murderer3] and [other murderer4] didn't [fail to murder], either."

Suddenly it becomes (or should become) obvious that there is nothing relevant whatsoever about the other entity's actions that involves being "fair" to the entity being examined.

Google is being evil here. No slack for this should be contemplated whatsoever. It is irrelevant to our consideration of Google if/that others are being evil as well. The metric shouldn't in any way be "everyone does it", it should be "this company is doing bad things, and they should stop."

You don't get a pass or a better evaluation for being an ass just because others are asses too. If you're an ass, you're an ass. There is no moral or ethical relief to be had, no excuse that arises, no forgiveness earned, by simply being part of some kind of grouping of asses.