Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)

What good is diversity when everyone thinks alike and they just look different (skin pigmentation)? IMO diversity is about diversity of thought. If they happen to look different, fine. If I were to grow our team, I would want people with diverse range of convictions and opinions.

DEI crowd in silicon valley has no diversity of thought. It is a monoculture.

Also, depending on industry or company objectives, sometimes you don't want diversity of thought at all. You want coworkers that are aligned on a particular niche objective and have similar opinions especially if the company is trying to do something unconventional. Diversity hurts there and having people with various backgrounds is a disadvantage.

"must be female"

Yes? It's illegal. This instruction removes the chance of any other member type of that protected class from being hired.

You can report it to the NLRB, FBI/DOJ, or your state AG. You'll have to document everything while being careful not to break any recording/privacy laws. Not sure anything will really be done. Probably just bring hardship on yourself.

> this is a terrible and naive way to think of DEI

No, it isn’t. OP is describing the intended use of DEI. A proper merit based approach would have 0 knowledge of race, gender, etc. DSA as well requires prior knowledge of irrelevant attributes of a candidate because its goal is to increase the representation of people with those attributes, not hire the best candidates.

Any process trying to select for the best developer does not need to know about race, gender, etc. Any process that asks for those is not looking for the best developers.

This is just what OP is experiencing with extra steps. Here's why:

1. Find merit based, good, but (unfortunately) majority candidate. 2. Position is held open, the meritorious engineer is waiting for an offer. 3. A few minority position trickle in that are nearly as good but not quite. 4. DEI argues you should choose the minority and uses an excuse like "they're trainable" to justify racist hiring practices.

In both these systems you really only wanted to use racist recruiting practices to hire non-white non-males. But to get around the legal concern step (4) gives you plausible deniability.

It is no surprise that your average person thinks these hiring practices are racist and they lead to tokenization of the very group you're trying to protect. Consequently all the "hidden bias" DEI bleets on about is brought on by them. Things like "they were only hired/promoted because they fit in X category" where X is something innate and uncontrollable. It is not "racist" to look at a minority coworker differently if you know for the fact they weren't hired on merit. No different than the CEO's son getting a promotion to VP. Both people are undeserving.

I am in the "majority" and have been passed up on promotions and probably not hired in several jobs because of things like this. Thanks to step (4) it is difficult to sue, but it would bring me great pleasure to take a company to court because of this.

DEI should be renamed DIE to reflect it's true nature at a company. The extremist, racist, wing of HR.

No, unless women are not a minority in that job bucket at your employer. Remediation for insufficient diversity is acceptable. Gratuitous hiring of “do nothing” / “under spec” employees is not, but that’s not in play in your case. I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.