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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

#61

DEI departments and projects have a fervor to them that is near religious: the core tenets are faith based and impossible to challenge scientifically. Challenge any DEI tenet and your are immediately met with threats of excommunication. Get in line or you're out. The thing is DEI efforts oftentimes mask comical understanding of history and blindingly gross racism. Personal anecdote: How do you deal with people who pr…

> Challenge any DEI tenet and your are immediately met with threats of excommunication. Get in line or you're out.

The one that continually upsets me (as someone who grew up in a predominantly Hispanic community, is married to a Hispanic person, has Hispanic children, and speaks Spanish as a fluent second language and in the home) is the use of the term "LatinX" which has spread through the DEI community and now general HR. I, a white man, despite my involvement in Latin culture cannot push back against this offensive term, which is quite literally colonialistic with white people from other countries (mostly Americans) telling Latin PoC globally what the appropriate term is to self-identify with. I've attempted to do so, and it's gotten me in trouble, despite the truth and cultural basis of my arguments.

DEI would be questionable but not objectionable if it only pushed actual factual truth, but because it's mostly subjective ideological zealotry, it's incredibly objectionable, and actually racist, more racist than those who are in opposition to it, but seems to have been granted a monopoly on determining what is and isn't racist or unacceptable by the Western elites.

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

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If there is no evidence of discrimination - how do you even know that it occurred? Are you saying that we should have people who decide what is and isn't discrimination without evidence? (since those, in your example, are not there).

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So you want to force outcomes according to whichever moral rubric is fashionable at the moment? How well has 'equity' worked for Asian Americans with regards to Ivy League admissions?

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

#64

https://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…

I mean honestly, you can't possibly think that just adding people of other gender / skin colors just magically improves profitability. There's clearly some lurking variables here that McKinsey purposefully ignored in order to draw this specific conclusion.

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

#65

https://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…

> correlation

Not off to a great start, so a few questions:

1. What's the timeline look like for most companies? Were they successful before, after, or all during diversity efforts? At some point it became the socially desired thing to do, so timing matters.

2. Which countries were surveyed? What are the current diversity/cultural influences there?

3. This seems specific to executive teams - is there any more data on regular staff?

4. The data seems a little old, is there newer data?

5. Were the diversity efforts intentional or organic? Meaning: did the company realize it needed more diversity or just by nature of hiring did the successful companies become diverse?

It's important to understand the nuance in studies like this, and the linked article doesn't seem to provide that.

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

#66
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.…

[dead]

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

#67

DEI departments and projects have a fervor to them that is near religious: the core tenets are faith based and impossible to challenge scientifically. Challenge any DEI tenet and your are immediately met with threats of excommunication. Get in line or you're out. The thing is DEI efforts oftentimes mask comical understanding of history and blindingly gross racism. Personal anecdote: How do you deal with people who pr…

You fire them?

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

#68
post #36

Earlier 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.

> 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.

I'm sure this happens, but it's not been my experience working for healthy companies.

Been through a few attrition rounds myself. The process has always been, every single time: identify low performers, find reasons to fight for them to stay (do they have gifts the company isn't properly utilizing, etc.). Those at the bottom of the list need to be let go, essentially pruning unhealthy/unproductive branches from the tree trunk to keep the rest of the tree healthy.

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

#69

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 that companies get special liability rules disgusts me. I think you should be able to hire whoever you want, but you get to carry the entirety of responsibility for your actions. Either the buck stops with you, or you accept conditions.

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

#70

https://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 these studies ever determine causation or do they purely study correlation? I could imagine e.g. that a company with more female executives absent mandates would have a culture of better work-life balance.

In a situation like that, would mandating more female executives push the culture towards more worklife balance or preferentially promote women who care less than average about worklife balance? Absent hard data my money would be on the latter.

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