It's telling of the environment we're in that the author has to make such a heavy disclaimer about not doing things for diversity's sake. What would be so bad about admitting one cares about diversity? I think there's room in business to pursue one's values.
I said "we're not doing this for diversity's sake alone." It'd be terribly unfair to the super qualified people we work with to imply that we were working with them just because we wanted diversity.
That's a good point, that it is about diversity but that it's only part of the entire picture.
I think people will complain about fairness even when they're not affected, because the tech community tends to have a strong knee-jerk reaction to this sort of thing. But it would be foolish to not consider diversity as one of many metrics to gauge how effectively one is avoiding costly biases.
I'd wager he said that because diversity for the sake of diversity would probably damage the micro climate and would be quite difficult to deal with politically(among participants and employees).
The entire campaign is centered around encouraging women to apply more BECAUSE they can be good founders, not because they are women, and men feel bad for not including them.
Because it's a canard that diversity can only be achieved by compromising on the quality of applicants accepted.
Competence knows no race, color, creed, gender, or nationality. It may be found in anyone. I'm greedy too, and want to receive the benefit of competent people of all kinds who are allowed to flourish and succeed. Here's Sam:
> We want to fund more women because we are greedy in the good way--we want to fund the most successful startups, and many of those are going to be founded by women.
and
> Again, we don't do this for the sake of diversity. We do it because we want to get the best people, whatever they're like.
The reason why I said this is telling is because people scream and rant against attempting to correct biases as if it is about compromising on quality.
