&gt; If that&#x27;s the case then I&#x27;d call out what I think is an incorrect assumption; that technical ability is perfectly correlated with either productivity (as an employee) or interestingness (as a speaker).<p>OK, that&#x27;s interesting and a good point.<p>&gt; While it&#x27;s not conclusive, there are studies that show that diversity in the workplace correlates with increased performance<p>But how should that affect a hiring manager?  Should they round-robin through categories of people for each hire?  Isn&#x27;t that just reverse-discrimination?  (Or &quot;regular discrimination&quot; if it&#x27;s the WASP straight male&#x27;s turn to get hired.)  Doing one&#x27;s best to look past those labels seems to make sense, but the article seems to say we need to consciously label and balance the representation.