I can kind of see what they're getting at. Women are under-represented in the tech industry. I don't think many people would disagree with that.
But this feels like a blunt instrument for a highly-nuanced issue. If diversity of experience is a core value at Duolingo, why not recruit everywhere and tailor the interviewing process to favor candidates from non-traditional backgrounds?
While they've achieved an important milestone, I'd be very worried about the line of thinking that led to this decision if I were a Duolingo investor. All the diversity in the world doesn't mean much if they can't find a way to keep the lights on.
> Duolingo has a policy of only recruiting from schools that have an above-average percent of women in their CS program.
Thats a misleading statement.
IMO, The main reason why they did that is because Carnegie Mellon University has more woman than men in its incoming CS classes, and Duolingo wanted an excuse to exclusively recruit from CMU (Which one of the founders teach at, and is strongly associated with).
So they are more interested in being politically correct than in recruiting the best talent available? My respect for them just went down. This is not a way to fight gender discrimination, but rather to perpetuate it.
It's more like: you're in a certain group, you get hired, and you know that the company that hired you has this policy of prioritizing hiring from your group. You spend your days in that company wondering whether you got are there because you're good at what you do, or merely because you are member of the prioritized group. I wouldn't want to be in such position.
Would you enjoy always wondering whether e.g. people in your team are listening to you because what you're saying is worth saying, or if they are merely humoring you and tolerate you in their team on account of orders from above?
Something like this must do ugly things to one's mind and one's perception of self-worth.
What's fair about perpetuating the systematic discrimination that women in tech face?
And in what way is this special treatment?
Companies use a variety of different metrics by which to determine which schools they should recruit from. "We want to increase our diversity" is a reasonable metric to use, and "recruit from colleges with an above-average percentage of people in a minority group we've chosen to view as important" is a reasonable way to accomplish that.
I shouldn't have to point this out, but diversity is more than just a buzzword. Increasing diversity on the development side improves the final product, for a variety of reasons.
