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Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

bloomberg.com

141–150 of 158 posts

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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Hispanic PoC person, I agree 100% with you about LatinX. It's the result of white people with a high school understanding of Spanish trying to fix a language they really don't understand. The Spanish language is not broken and does not need to be fixed.

Not broken? La mano??? Seriously, I would be surprised if there is not a broken spoken language. English is completely messed up. I don't know how anyone learns it.

I was going to say. Americans should be focused on fixing English first. Lol.

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

#142
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gene…

It's sad how many Americans don't realize how many white people live in Latin America - they've lived all their lives in Latin America and their families have been in Latin America for centuries. We definitely have a stereotype for those living in Latin America. That and not everybody in Latin America speaks Spanish, either. But hey, I'm a white guy! What do I know about other people and cultures?!

I don't think it's just people from the states with these assumptions about South American racial heritage. Anyway, it is by and large non-white, even if there is much more purely-Spanish Euro etc descent ancestry there than people assume.

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

#143

"Instead, he said companies should consider race, gender and ethnicity when deciding who to let go." I understand what this meant in the context of the article, but without context, this seems like a potentially dangerous statement.

I think even in context its a bit dangerous. Who counts as diverse, and who gets cut in that consideration? Imagine there are three employees, and one of them has to go due to budget cuts. One is a straight African American male, one is a white homosexual male, and one is a white straight female. All of these might be considered diverse because they are all minorities in the tech industry in some way. However, taking…

It's obvious, you hire 2 diversity consultants to figure it all out, and then since you only have budget for 2 employees, fire all 3 of the original ones.

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

#144
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gene…

As a Hispanic PoC person, I agree 100% with you about LatinX. It's the result of white people with a high school understanding of Spanish trying to fix a language they really don't understand. The Spanish language is not broken and does not need to be fixed.

the funny thing is that while Spanish is very gendered, Latina women will say that they are Latina just as easily as I can say I am Latino.

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

#146
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gene…

I don't know any Latinos who actually use the term "Latinx." Spanish is an inherently gendered language; using the term "Latinx" is perceived by most as an attack on their culture. If LGBTQ+ people want to use the term Latinx to refer to themselves, that's fine. But they don't get to make that decision for the 98% who are fine with "Latino" or "Latina."

There is still quite a bit of controversy around the inclusive non-gendered form, because it is non-standard and not approved by the Real Academia Española (rae.es). In Spain, where I come from, the most common non-gendered form is to use the suffix -e, instead of -a or -o. However, in practice, this is mostly use by the LGBTQ+ community and not the general public. It will take a while (if ever) to spread around society.

IMO, genders on objects without a sex are just non sensical and a legacy product of Roman Latin evolution. A simple -e suffix could potentially fix this, but it's incredibly hard to change without a generational change, cause language and habits are sticky. However if you are triggered by a table being female gendered or a car being male gendered, maybe you are overthinking it.

When it comes to human related words, another potential approach is to always use the female form, because you refer to the word person (la persona) and not the particular gender of the individual in question. This applies to groups too, the rule in Spanish is that if a group has females and males, you should use the "male" plural form. Why not just use the female form and everyone is happy?

Just remark that this is a hot topic and conservative and older people usually oppose this aggressively and openly. New generations understand the arbitrary split of society in two based on the presence of a penis more intrinsically though.

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

#147
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gene…

As a Hispanic PoC person, I agree 100% with you about LatinX. It's the result of white people with a high school understanding of Spanish trying to fix a language they really don't understand. The Spanish language is not broken and does not need to be fixed.

After learning the term was unpopular I paid closer attention to its users and found many were white latin American public figures.

Why do you think they may have adopted it?

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

#148
post #103
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 k…

The reason I thought D&I teams would get cut is because I believe in a lot of companies today these departments are reducing productivity and workplace satisfaction. No one wants to work for a company where you're likelihood of being promoted is, in part, dependant on having the right immutable characteristics. The issue is when times are good and companies are expanding it's hard to justify why you're suddenly cutti…

>The reason I thought D&I teams would get cut is because I believe in a lot of companies today these departments are reducing productivity and workplace satisfaction.

Or it could simply be the standard "last in, first out" approach that most businesses take when hiring and firing going into an economic downturn.

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

#149

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, af…

> 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.

Which makes perfect sense as these are the people who making hiring decisions and are in places to take bribes and blackmail others for sexual favors; the CEO of a large org isn't doing interviews for rank and file.

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

#150
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After writing this I figured I'd check our Yammer just to see what's happen today... The top post is someone who's upset because they believe an employee has intentionally moved all the books about feminism and race in the office library to the top shelf where they are out of sight. They also suspect the same person has likely moved a Piers Morgan book down to eye level. After some angry words they finish their post…

They are just working that dominance hierarchy! University taught them well. For their next trick, objecting to clapping emojis in Slack.

Only if the hands are not the correct color
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