Rollback memo last year, 'business critical' this year. What does the diversity data actually say?

General
1

I run a 40-person engineering org. Last year leadership forwarded the rollback news from Meta, Amazon, Ford and the rest and told us to strip diversity language from hiring docs. This month a new memo calls that same stuff business critical again. Before I touch our interview process I want data. McKinsey 2023 claims diverse top-quartile firms are 39% more likely to outperform. Then Green and Hand failed to replicate it on S&P 500 data in 2024. Which study should a hiring manager trust?

2

Which study should a hiring manager trust?

Neither, for hiring decisions. McKinsey tracked correlation across 1,265 firms, and causation could run the other way since profitable firms can afford diverse hiring. Green and Hand failing to replicate kills the 39% headline. Demand real causal evidence like experiments or discontinuities before rewriting interviews.

3

Our ID check failed dark-skinned users, none of us had that skin, caught it in beta.