I generally consider myself pretty liberal and am a strong proponent of diversity, but there’s one policy in the name of diversity that really does not sit well with me. Several companies in the Bay Area have special referral bonuses for referring underrepresented minorities, i.e. If you refer an engineer and they get hired you get a $5,000 referral bonus, but if you refer an underrepresented minority you will get a $10,000 bonus. Whereas other diversity programs seem to target reducing barriers to entry within the market and reducing biases within the interview process (which I 100% support), increasing referral bonuses doesn’t seem to do either. And maybe this is just me being naive, but I don’t see how it even gets additional minorities into the funnel. Are there really people out there thinking “Oh, I wouldn’t even think about referring this person for $5000, but for $10,000 I’ll sing to a different tune”? So to me it just seems like racist virtue signaling. Like, if Spotify noticed that its user base was prominently of one race, and they decided to target advertising and billboards towards underrepresented areas, that would be a-okay in my book. But if they all of the sudden started saying “Refer a friend, get a free month of premium. Refer a minority friend, get three free months of premium”, that wouldn’t sit well with me. It just feels wrong. And that’s kind of how I feel about these referral bonus structures. I’m open to hearing other view points and evolving my own opinion, but I’m afraid if I were to start a dialogue in person I would be immediately labelled a bigot. So I turn to you Blind. Do you work at a company with these sort of policies? And do you feel they are moral and justified? If there’s a policy you don’t agree with, do you usually just keep quiet and nod along?
No this is not a problem because it is righting a wrong. Most developers are from India in specific areas and they strongly only recommend other Indians for jobs. This causes and imbalance and giving a bigger bonus for others try’s to resolve this imbalance
At the same time, I wonder if having two tiers of referral bonuses actually addresses this issue. Often developers have friends/colleagues from similar backgrounds, as you mentioned. But increasing the referral bonus wouldn’t have any affect on broadening their social network. And those who do have a diverse social network I’d imagine are already willing to refer quality candidates for $5,000, since no matter how you slice it, that’s still a lot of “free” money to be had
I suspect companies are still trying to figure out something that works. Referral $$ is just one tool, no different thank other kind of incentives like tax refund for electric cars.
They needly do the kindful.
~$350k TC, not relevant to the conversation though
Oh yeah, these things are going too far now. My favorite is featuring people who don’t do shit on a project over the people who did all the work because they are “minorities”. Apple pushes the fuck out of that one
Maybe it will help you to think about it this way: a company needs diversity in roles just like in nationalities. So, if a company was short on SREs, they might offer a higher referral bonus in order to balance that out. It doesn't happen in my company, but I'm pretty sure the motivation is to create a balance that didn't happen organically.
Eh, I’m not sure that logic helps. By that logic it would also be okay to pay minorities a higher base salary as well, in the same way that an SRE might be paid a higher base salary than a customer service rep, which would be outright racist in my mind
Money is a very common method of incentivsing people, regarding pay by nationality, it's possible that to attract certain talent, you would need to pay higher to make a competitive offer i.e. S person coming from a rich country relative to a person coming from a poor country. This is part of the negotiation power one has. It doesn't mean I agree with it, and nor the way salaries are negotiated/determined, but it is supply vs demand.
Intel pioneered these increased (double normal referrals) URM referral bonuses a few years back with the Diversity VP that we sent to Google. We also tied minority headcount target to manager performance -- how you you like Dem apples?
Did Intel release data on whether the URM referral bonuses were effective in getting additional minorities in the door? It just seems so weird to me that someone would be willing to refer a minority they know for $10,000 but not for $5,000. Either way, you stand to get a bunch of “free money”. But obviously that’s just how I think, and to think everyone thinks the same way as me would be naive.
You think that Intel will release any data that would suggest that the Diversity initiatives were not or less than effective? Intel achieving "full representation" a few months back and hitting Diversity targets ahead of schedule is a point of pride for the company (we get blasted company wide emails on this every so often). Just go to SJSU and back up the truck at the Hispanic and Black Engineering societies and make some $$$. Let's just say when these Diversity policies was implemented a few years ago, all my team's new hires were Asian/Indian women. My group VP emphasized that all our hires were women was an accomplishment in of itself (that is how bad Intel Execs drilled Diversity into the brains of lower managers). Those hires also told me Intel's interviews were among the easiest they went through for tech companies in the Bay Area.
OP look at it this way. Simply referring someone of minority status does not guarantee the you will receive any money. That person still has to do the work of getting the job. So the policy is not virtue signalling or racist. The fact of the matter is that people tend to have more colleagues and connections from a similar background so that is where most recommendations come from. Setting up a way to incentivise recommending minority candidates is just expanding the same opportunity to other that might not have as many connections. I do understand where you are coming from though. At first glance it can seem like preferential treatment, but it really isn’t at all.
I disagree with this tactic. Rewarding higher bonuses for URM referral hires is useless. Same goes for any referral campaign for a specific group beyond your standard bonus. It’s about knowing your audience and effective campaigning. I agree that people refer their best, despite race gender religion etc. I like to think that if I know my company is looking for SWEs or AEs, I’ll search my LinkedIn network and refer the most qualified so I get that bonus - I don’t need a ‘special’ reward to categorize my network by race or gender. I’ll refer everyone I know who’s qualified. It’s up to the hiring manager to decide who’s most qualified to hire. Period. I also agree that birds of a feather flock together so rather than offer more money, make sure you’re campaigning at relevant channels if you’re looking to increase your pipeline of URM candidates. For example, does your company have ERGs? Ask for 5 mins at their next team meeting to promote your STANDARD referral program and throw in a few ‘hot jobs’ to get them thinking about specific roles. Adding more money for URM hires doesn’t do anything.
Which companies are doing this? At Google, as a "diverse" candidate, a recruiter once reached out to me, went through my LinkedIn and asked me to refer candidates. It turns out it was a strategy to get more diverse candidates to apply. The assumption seems to be "diverse" people will know more "diverse" people, so let's give them a nudge.
In terms of the big companies that people have heard of, Intel does. Square does I think (might be confusing them with another company), and there were talks floating around about it happening at Airbnb a long time ago but it never materialized
Try reading this and tell me what you think: https://hbr.org/2018/03/how-to-use-employee-referrals-without-giving-up-workplace-diversity