That point you&#x27;ve apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. There are hiring managers out there who won&#x27;t hire a female developer because they&#x27;re just outright sexist. Quotas get introduced <i>because there are brilliant minority developers who get passed over because they&#x27;re in the minority.</i><p>All that said though, I don&#x27;t believe there&#x27;s any actual evidence that people end up hiring less-than-competent people because of quotas. It&#x27;s only a theoretic possibility that could be true if the available candidates only included one incompetent person from the minority group, but I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s ever going to be the case in practise. The choice always comes down to two or three competent people, and the quota system then pushes the decision on one direction. White male programmers don&#x27;t like it because it&#x27;s not in their favour, but the reality is that they could be passed over even if there wasn&#x27;t a quota system. While people continue to discriminate quotas will be necessary.