I always found the idea of DEI positions underwhelming. It's as if company had a VP of Tech Debt, or a Chief Accessibility Officer. My conclusion would be that code quality and accessibility aren't actually that important to such a company.
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
#52https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our... > Gender diversity is correlated with both profitability and value creation. In our 2017 data set, we found a positive correlation between gender diversity on executive teams and both our measures of financial performance: top-quartile companies on executive-level gender diversity worldwide had a 21 percent likelihood of outperforming their fourth-quarti…
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-at-work/2...
> Inclusion programs often trigger an “us versus them” mindset.
> Although diversity and inclusion training is prevalent in corporate America, its impact is inconsistent. According to the evidence, sometimes the programs even have the opposite effect of what they intend.
> One 2016 study of 830 mandatory diversity training programs found that they often triggered a strong backlash against the ideas they promoted. “Trainers tell us that people often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance,” wrote sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in the Harvard Business Review, “and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward.”
Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard
#53https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our... > Gender diversity is correlated with both profitability and value creation. In our 2017 data set, we found a positive correlation between gender diversity on executive teams and both our measures of financial performance: top-quartile companies on executive-level gender diversity worldwide had a 21 percent likelihood of outperforming their fourth-quarti…
Do you believe those statistics enough to get rid of the laws that prevent discrimination? If the stats are true, then surely companies, who are known to value monetary gains above all else, would take care of the problem of lack of diversity based solely on their market performance.
Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard
#54I 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 worry that this is just messaging to build towards 'make DEI jobs immune from layoffs'
A job that's immune to layoffs, sign me up! /s
Seriously however, it seems to me that DEI positions are mainly about virtue signaling. The positions certainly don't have anything to do with a companies core competencies or products (you know, their actual business). So it's pure overhead. Wasn't this stuff traditionally handled by HR? As other's have pointed out, there are already laws on the books that must be followed, and plenty of precedent showing large $$$ payouts when the rules aren't being followed.
If/when jobs like this become mandatory, then a new bureaucracy will emerge and spread like a cancer, the overhead hanging like a millstone around a companies ability to stay competitive. You're seeing this happen on universities, where the staff/student ratio continues to grow, raising tuition and reducing the value of the education. I worry about the future competitive value American companies will bring to the global economy.
Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard
#55The 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"?
> Should corporations be accountable to society in some way, or do we trust them to "do the right thing"?
This strawman. you jumping to big conclusion by asking aggressive question.
im minority person. dei things me saw at big tech massive grift. usually run by people without real skill..people who simply there for crusade if they personal social beliefs.
in one org person responsible for daily long email on trans issues. not single trans person on team or on org. so let maybe discuss ukraine..libya..palestine?
at another big tech company..small army of engineers to scan entire company code base and flag word like “whitelist”. Highly paid engineer and managers $300k+ comp to change “whitelist” to “allowlist”
Me minority. none of this nonsense helpful. it actually insult. most stuff corporate entitlement program to create fake job for people without useful skill. pandering to often white people with savior complex who seem to hate other white people.
Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard
#56Earlier 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.
People in charge of compliance are commonplace when it comes to regulations. It's a huge part of HRs job for example. Some regulations even require a specific compliance officer, such as the GDPR. "There is a law" is a pretty weak argument for why a position shouldn't exist. If anything it's an argument for why one should.
Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard
#57The 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"?
The actual practice of DEI typically is to discriminate based on age/gender/sexual orientation/race/disability/religion/etc.
Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard
#58I predicted this would likely happen at the start of the year. I don't think it was an accident that tech become one of the main industries pushing D&I over the last several years. Whatever your opinion is on D&I it's arguably not something a company would put significant investment or time into unless they had spare margin and cashflows. This isn't a political comment, just an observation as someone who works for a…
My, perhaps bitter, opinion is that D&I was pushed heavily by tech to get more workers in so that wages could be suppressed.
The layoffs happening across all tech companies (including the ones recording record profits and that have extremely large cash reserves) also strikes me as another way of depressing tech salaries.
Maybe this perspective doesn't hold much weight, because why then get rid of D&I?
Maybe because keeping the lights on is more important, or D&I has already done as much as it could do, if that was the ambition.
Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard
#59https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our... > Gender diversity is correlated with both profitability and value creation. In our 2017 data set, we found a positive correlation between gender diversity on executive teams and both our measures of financial performance: top-quartile companies on executive-level gender diversity worldwide had a 21 percent likelihood of outperforming their fourth-quarti…
> In the original research, using 2014 diversity data, we found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 15 percent more likely to experience above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. In our expanded 2017 data set this number rose to 21 percent and continued to be statistically significant. For ethnic and cultural diversity, the 2014 finding was a 35 percent likelihood of outperformance, comparable to the 2017 finding of a 33 percent likelihood of outperformance on EBIT margin; both were also statistically significant (Exhibit 1).
Correlation does not imply causality, as you know. Possibly the more successful companies face more social pressure to improve their DEI numbers, whereas no social justice advocates push on the ones who are struggling. Sampling matters.
McKinsey is merely picking some data that supports their case. If you actually want to show something, do a longitudinal study: first of all, pick cohorts that match up in most other respects, then compare their relative performance within the cohort after increasing their DEI numbers. Or not doing so.
Re: Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It reminds me of that episode in the IT Crowd where Jen gets the employee of the month award, lets it go to her head, but its revealed that the CEO literally pulled her name out of a large box