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Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

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Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#391

Post by fche »

exolymph wrote: post #377
NeverFade wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely illegal. It violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which: > outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 Yes, that's the same act that makes it illegal to discriminate against racial minorities, women, religions, etc. Discrimination based on race is illegal, pure and simple. Hiding it under nice names like "aff…

De jure illegal, sure, but we all know it's de facto required for institutions of a certain size. Laws are only as good as the enforcement.

praying for an appropriate opinion from the SCOTUS on the asians/harvard case

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#392

Post by peter422 »

yibg wrote: post #388
peter422 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ignoring it altogether is better? I don't have a magical solution, but I also am not going to flip out everytime a private company chooses to give some type of minor preferential treatment to historically underprivileged groups to attempt to balance out systemic inequities. I can't say with complete confidence one way or the other if Twilio's policy is right or wrong but I can say with confidence a lot of the cri…

If there is an unfairness in obtaining opportunity, either lack of education opportunity or whatever, that seems like the right thing to address. Not at the end of the process and then trying to tilt things.

That reminds me of what happens when we see a house on fire: We let it burn to the ground (don't want to upset the status quo of the house on fire), then say we'll make a few small tweaks to the building codes to prevent any house fires in the future.

A major problem should be tackled in all of the areas where there is injustice. The beginning, the end and the middle.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#393

Post by OJFord »

lr1970 wrote: post #209
crackercrews wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This creates three problems. The first is that some white people who were affected will believe it was because of their race. The second is that minorities who were not affected may be assumed to have been kept because of their minority status. But the most harmful is for minorities who were laid off. That signals that they were really subpar, even more than the average laid off person. It seems like this policy has…

But is it plain illegal. For employment purposes Race is a protected class (at least in USA) and racial discrimination while hiring or firing violates federal law. How would they get away with this?

It's so vague and weasel-wordy - if it's genuinely 'anti-racist' then (why mention it‽ and) it doesn't disproportionately affect white people, or anyone (race-based).

I agree the implication seems very much like an intended 'affirmative'/'positive' action role-selection policy though. (I think such things are stupid - whether hiring/firing/anything - and bad for everybody, but I am white, so I try to keep that a 'lightly held' opinion.)

In the UK the law is similar to your description, but large companies also have to publish stats, and the implication seems pretty much like quotas are good/the law, it's hard to imagine anyone/entity being found guilty of (as-written) illegal discrimination on the 'positive' side that tilts you more towards balance, IMO. (IANAL.)

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#394

Post by caeril »

John23832 wrote: post #60
LegitShady wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're affected by layoffs described this way, you then question whether that was because of who you are. I mean, this isn't a question. They're saying it outright. When picking who to layoff, race was a factor. If you don't like it, take it up with people making those decisions.

It is still a question. There could people who are clearly not performing and then are let go that just so happen to not be a part of the "protected group". People are not being let go because of who they are, it's just a part of the calculus. It may not be the significant factor.

> it's just a part of the calculus

The argument seems to be "a little discrimination is okay". So, I guess the question would be, what is an acceptable coefficient for the race variable, for it to be okay?

"Part of the calculus" implies there is a specific point at which racial discrimination stepwise goes from bad to not-bad, and I'm curious what that weighting value is.

Obviously if I institute a total no-blacks policy, that's a problem. But what if I only mark down black people, say, 20%? Are EEOC investigators going to rubber-stamp my racist employment decisions then?

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#395

Post by Manuel_D »

Ensorceled wrote: post #205
jballer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We avoided firing people who aren’t white” vs “we preferred firing people who are white.” This school of thought purports to agree that harmful impact supersedes good intent. They just refuse to recognize the individual as the ultimate minority.

Or, more charitably, "We avoided laying off racial/oppressed minorities for racist/bigoted reasons"

Why not say "we ensured our layoffs were not affected by racist or gendered bias."? Why exclude non-minorities from the policy of non-discrimination?

Imagine a company writes, "We avoided laying off Latino men for racist or bigoted reasons." But not Latino women? But not African Americans? What is the message behind limiting this assurance of non-discrimination to a particular group?

I agree that people interpreting this as Twilio announcing that it explicitly discriminated against non-oppressed groups are reading way too deep into it. But it was a pretty dumb thing to put in a layoff note.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#396

Post by jgil »

NeverFade wrote: post #300
crackercrews wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't affirmative action in hiring legal? Seems like this is just the same thing but for layoffs.

It is absolutely illegal. It violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which: > outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 Yes, that's the same act that makes it illegal to discriminate against racial minorities, women, religions, etc. Discrimination based on race is illegal, pure and simple. Hiding it under nice names like "aff…

Affirmative action is not illegal. If you take action to prevent adverse impact to any protected class, that is not discrimination. If a company hires only white men and rejects every Asian candidate they have ever interviewed, or only fires Asian employees, what is your proposed remedy? Status quo?

Check out the section Discrimination v. Affirmative Action [1] and a sample of significant discrimination case outcomes.[3]

[1] https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/cm-607-affirmative-action

[2] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/practical-significan...

[3] https://www.eeoc.gov/initiatives/e-race/significant-eeoc-rac...

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#397

Post by pyuser583 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #381
vondur wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure if you are white and laid off, you will have a pretty strong case for a lawsuit. I can't believe someone in legal wouldn't warn the leadership that putting out a press release stating this was a good idea.

This is San Francisco. When I worked there (2015-2020), most of my co-workers openly endorsed hiring bias against demographics that aren't considered "diverse". I'd be highly skeptical that a jury would side with a plaintiff alleging anti-white discrimination, no matter how solid the proof. If a community widely thinks activity that is de jure illegal should be allowed then it becomes de facto permitted because even…

I worked in SF during the same time period, at a small startup. There would have extreme fury at the idea of hiring/firing based on anything but ability.

Again, this was a small company. Every person mattered. Every talented hire advanced the company, and every talented departure put us at risk.

Even now at the big company I work for, the small team sizes mean each dev either contributes or drains. We even have an informal budget of how much we expect contributors go drain/gain (junior devs can drain for a while, senior devs make up for it, etc).

The sort of “anti-racist” methodology suggests a mindset I don’t quite get.

Every company I know of has an extemee backlog. Product isn’t getting shipped because there aren’t enough devs.

Are people seriously saying it’s ok their company doesn’t ship as much product if it benefits historically oppressed devs?

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#398

Post by pyuser583 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #379
code_biologist wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the layoff will disproportionately affect protected groups. Engineering is disproportionately male, east asian, south asian, and white. Companies with explicit diversity targets make up for this by compensating in other company orgs (HR, marketing, sales, admin) making them disproportionately female, black, and hispanic. This means when you keep good engineers but lay off HR, marketing, sales, and a…

Obviously the answer is to fire the expensive engineers (keep a skeleton crew for maintenance and bugfixes) and keep the sales & marketing folks. If 20 years working in engineering has taught me anything it's that sales and marketing is where the real money is made.

From what I’ve seen sales works off commission.

For the company, this is a curse in good times, and a blessing in bad times.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#399

Post by Manuel_D »

pyuser583 wrote: post #397
Manuel_D wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is San Francisco. When I worked there (2015-2020), most of my co-workers openly endorsed hiring bias against demographics that aren't considered "diverse". I'd be highly skeptical that a jury would side with a plaintiff alleging anti-white discrimination, no matter how solid the proof. If a community widely thinks activity that is de jure illegal should be allowed then it becomes de facto permitted because even…

I worked in SF during the same time period, at a small startup. There would have extreme fury at the idea of hiring/firing based on anything but ability. Again, this was a small company. Every person mattered. Every talented hire advanced the company, and every talented departure put us at risk. Even now at the big company I work for, the small team sizes mean each dev either contributes or drains. We even have an in…

By contrast, I was at two successful unicorns. They were both large (1,000 and 2-3,000 employees). We had the luxury of having significantly more applicants than headcount. I think the mentality is more that the product is already successful, and we have a responsibility to ensure that that oppressed people don't miss out on that success.

The irony is that most "oppressed" people hired at the companies we very well off. I'm Latin myself (a fact I don't advertise in my workplace precisely because of this discrimination) and I had a very privileged upbringing. Same with another Trinidadian engineer I spoke with. So in the end, it was a bunch of privileged white people patting themselves on the back for hiring privileged Latin and Black people.

Re: Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

#400

Post by testfoobar »

rglover wrote: post #301
testfoobar wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, where exactly are you on the RGB scale? This a strict 8 bit operation. If you expect HDR level fidelity here, just move along.

Depends on the time of year. During the winter I trend toward toasted marshmallow but during the summer with ample sun I'm somewhere between Obama and Denzel.

Sounds like you may have Seasonal Privilege Disorder - a strange, recently observed, condition where privilege waxes and wanes.

But seriously since we're talking about skin color, all kidding aside, (and you're probably already aware of this) skin cancer rates vary dramatically by race:

https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/uscs/about/data-briefs/no9-melano...

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