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Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

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Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#31
My previous company got rid of DEI stuff a couple years back, when the previous CEO left. Only one or two people even noticed, and one had the nerve to complain on an all hands.

The CEO said 'listen, we don't have the time or money for stuff like that right now. We're not profitable. Let's turn this ship around and we'll revisit.'

This gave me the sense that it's just seen as a frivolous expense to most companies, and pretty big respect to the CEO for admitting as much.

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#32
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear what D&I consultants can do in order to conjure more non-Asian computer science students out of thin air to fill that pipeline.

It’s not a pipeline problem https://www.fastcompany.com/90596325/its-time-to-debunk-the-...

[deleted]

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#33

The idea of activists/politicians having any say in who companies hire disgusts me. The average person might thing of them as professional useless people. But as someone who lives in a somewhat corrupt country, I fear it's far more sinister. Here, after every government change, public worker positions and state universities tend to get filled with by the winner with their incompetent cronies. But the private sector i…

The idea of activists/politicians having any say in who companies hire disgusts me But does it disgust you when companies discriminate based on age/gender/sexual orientation/race/disability/religion/etc? Should corporations be accountable to society in some way, or do we trust them to "do the right thing"?

In the US there are already laws against this. The company doesn't need DEI positions to enforce this.

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#34

I worry that this is just messaging to build towards 'make DEI jobs immune from layoffs'. eg the quotes from comments: > "Instead, he said companies should consider race, gender and ethnicity when deciding who to let go." > 'Only software engineering and data science jobs saw larger declines, at 24% and 27%, respectively.' So the "hard" jobs are actually facing larger layoff waves than the DEI jobs.

I don't know if we should read too much into this, it seems like the kind of thing you'd expect in any subspecialty. "Widget polishers are being hit hard by layoffs; we talked to some widget polishers, and they all told us that this is a big problem because it's important for the widgets to be polished."

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#35
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a pipeline problem https://www.fastcompany.com/90596325/its-time-to-debunk-the-...

I didn't listen to the full podcast, but as someone who has spent much of my work time in the past few years trying to hire -- it seems surprising to hear its not a pipeline problem. I advertised and solicited from as many diverse venues as I could find and still found hardly any qualified applicants. In fairness it wasn't easy to find White or Asian qualified applicants too, but still found disproportionately more.…

>I advertised and solicited from as many diverse venues as I could find and still found hardly any qualified applicants.

So if you were e.g. recruiting for SWE roles at an HBCU presumably there are hundreds of CS students there. Are you saying none were qualified? If so isn't that a problem with education/preparation?

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of it more like, if you look at who you're planning to layoff and it is 50% white females -- and your employee population is only 20% white female... then you should probably take a look at why. Has some unintended bias crept into your decision making.

The reverse, however, could also be true---how did you get all those fireable white females in the first place?

Almost everyone is fireable. People who make it through large layoffs like to tell themselves it's because of the value they produce, but in my experience having been close to the decision making process on some of these it has a lot more to do with luck of the draw than anyone would care to admit.

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#37

The idea of activists/politicians having any say in who companies hire disgusts me. The average person might thing of them as professional useless people. But as someone who lives in a somewhat corrupt country, I fear it's far more sinister. Here, after every government change, public worker positions and state universities tend to get filled with by the winner with their incompetent cronies. But the private sector i…

I don't understand why anybody would be against having political commissars at their place of work. Did we not learn from Soviet Russia that those work great?

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of activists/politicians having any say in who companies hire disgusts me But does it disgust you when companies discriminate based on age/gender/sexual orientation/race/disability/religion/etc? Should corporations be accountable to society in some way, or do we trust them to "do the right thing"?

Isn't that already illegal to discriminate based on most of those things?

[dead]

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#39

My previous company got rid of DEI stuff a couple years back, when the previous CEO left. Only one or two people even noticed, and one had the nerve to complain on an all hands. The CEO said 'listen, we don't have the time or money for stuff like that right now. We're not profitable. Let's turn this ship around and we'll revisit.' This gave me the sense that it's just seen as a frivolous expense to most companies, an…

I've always taken a lot of the D&I stuff as a rainbow capitalism and liability thing.

The problem with a lot of the DIE stuff that I've seen is that it is usually targeted at the ICs and first level managers, just like the ethics training, and the sexual harassment training.

Whereas that stuff is very rarely perpetrated by the rank and final, it's usually the execs that need the training. Why is DIE any different, after all if it was really important to the execs there would be easy ways to make it happen, shoving everyone in trainings seems like performative work.

Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of activists/politicians having any say in who companies hire disgusts me But does it disgust you when companies discriminate based on age/gender/sexual orientation/race/disability/religion/etc? Should corporations be accountable to society in some way, or do we trust them to "do the right thing"?

In the US there are already laws against this. The company doesn't need DEI positions to enforce this.

The law punishes overt instances of discrimination.

I can hire all of x gender, x race, x religion, etc. for my 1000 employee work force. You won't legally be able to nail any kind of discrimination on me so long as I take care as to not leave evidence of it.

In this instance, did discrimination occur? Did the law do its job adequately?

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