Long time HN lurker here - some of the comments are being blown out of proportion.
Statistically speaking, these are called “minorities” for a reason, there simply aren’t enough of them in STEM related fields.
Diversifying your team/group with one or two female or foreign born individuals won’t dramatically impact the overall productivity of your team - assuming this person is not already a very hard working and/or bright individual, which many/most are.
The fact that this person made it to the interview phase and passed the initial filters (which are typically gender/race blind) indicates that they are potentially qualified for the role.
Keep in mind, interviewing is hard - for both parties involved, for different reasons but especially hard for candidates.
There is a significant “luck” component involved.
Many interviewers are inexperienced and focus solely on finding ways to disqualify candidates as opposed to figuring out how a given person could “fit in” and contribute/help level up the team.
I ask that you have an open mind and show some empathy. We still have a lot of work to do to create a more diverse and inclusive society.
This is not how it works dude. Right now, in big tech, teams have target of 30% diversity, i.e., 1/3rd of the team. There is literally not that many "diverse" people available to hire. You would be lucky to even fill these positions with competent non-diverse candidates. If your team works on networking stack, how many well qualified female/black/latino folks are out there who will apply to your post at that point in time? VPs then come to you and tell you to hire "diverse" candidate any way with no experience in networking and ask you to train them later. They do this to protect their bonuses. Now your 30% of the team is filled with people who have no business of being there. Besides experience, most don't even have any passion for the field. They just walk-in flashing their diversity cards. This is massive drain on teams productivity. How does this team would compete with lean and mean startups? The truth is they won't. The DEI is great initiative to sunset aging big tech and replace them with new blood.
Statistically speaking, these are called “minorities” for a reason, there simply aren’t enough of them in STEM related fields.
Diversifying your team/group with one or two female or foreign born individuals won’t dramatically impact the overall productivity of your team - assuming this person is not already a very hard working and/or bright individual, which many/most are.
The fact that this person made it to the interview phase and passed the initial filters (which are typically gender/race blind) indicates that they are potentially qualified for the role.
Keep in mind, interviewing is hard - for both parties involved, for different reasons but especially hard for candidates. There is a significant “luck” component involved.
Many interviewers are inexperienced and focus solely on finding ways to disqualify candidates as opposed to figuring out how a given person could “fit in” and contribute/help level up the team.
I ask that you have an open mind and show some empathy. We still have a lot of work to do to create a more diverse and inclusive society.