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Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

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Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#291

Post by jonathanlb »

_fat_santa wrote: post #68
xienze wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actually hire some folks from diverse backgrounds Because you’re trying to hire from a small pool of candidates (minority software developer or whatever) that EVERY OTHER tech company is trying to get in a desperate attempt to not look bad (because not having a sufficient number of minorities on staff is a sin). It’s simply a question of numbers. There’s only so many minorities, and only a fraction of them are suff…

Yeah I look at it from a top level. Say that in the tech industry, 20% (totally made up number BTW) of your workers are black. It would be possible for some companies to have >20% of their workforce be black, but if you look at the top employers (GOOG, AMZN, MSFT, AAPL, etc), there would be physically impossible for them to hire >20% black workers because there are simply not enough of them out there in the broader w…

Agreed that DEI initiatives are hard, but the picture is a bit incomplete.

Quotas are the boogey/strawman that get trotted out when DEI initiatives are mentioned.

Quotas _must_ be filled, and this serves no one, not the companies doing the hiring (because there aren't enough qualified candidates, and hiring unqualified candidates is bad for business), nor the candidates themselves (because they didn't get hired on their own merits, and imposter syndrome).

Hiring _targets_, on the other hand, should be attained but can be missed due to lack of qualified candidates. When these misses occur, if the company is serious and capable about DEI initiatives, there's an investigation into why that is and if there's anything that can be done to remedy it, e.g. supporting educational/industrial pipelines, creating internship/apprenticeship programs or training opportunities for those changing careers, and so on.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#292

Post by colpabar »

oh_sigh wrote: post #245
version_five wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PoC > White folks I just want to mention that one of the worst aspects of all this is trying to sort people according to (here apparently a binary) label. There is not really such thing as either of these categories - it's stereotyping of the worst kind, and takes us back many generations

It gets even worse, where people are pushing for BIPoC instead of just people of color, indicating that black and indigenous are of primary import, and the rest of the non whites are relegated to "other people of color"

The goal of the bipoc label is to exclude asians from diversity stuff.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#293

Post by gautamdivgi »

John23832 wrote: post #90

(Black man here) Two things can be true at once. I have built great things. I can stand on my own. My merits are great. I do not want to be the token employee that is trotted around for Diversity Points (tm). I do not like the diversity porn that a lot of these DEI groups get off on. That being said, I do recognize that I have benefited from these groups (at least at their most genuine). There are groups that are aim…

This is true. Here is the other thing. Promotions in corporate America are based on how well you know the hiring manager chain of command. Golf buddy? Oh he’s a great guy for a promotion. Church person - yup very ethical, let’s promote him. Know him personally - maybe went to the same college or support the same college football team, oh yes they’re a candidate for promotion.

Corporate America needs to get promotions out of the hands of the hiring manager chain of command. Create a board that’s independent and can deal with promotions impartially.

In absence of and independent entity handling promotions DEI is needed and necessary. Otherwise a lot of promotions are just plain nepotism.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#294

Post by jakelazaroff »

drstewart wrote: post #287
grogenaut wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the n-bomb, gay and b*tch and other words as a universal slur and negative adjective were everywhere on irc. Casual rape references were constant, it was about as bad as Xbox voice chat. I have trouble going back and reading much of bash.org's top 100 due to the things you're claiming didn't exist. http://bash.org/?99060 http://bash.org/?5775 http://bash.org/?23601 Just because you didn't mean it or it didn't bot…

Wow, solid resource: http://bash.org/?121764 > why do you crackers steal everything from us? http://bash.org/?51331 >(@virt) cracker barrel is the most hilarious name for a place where a bunch of white people go http://bash.org/?86009 > It's sad when white people try to talk like black inner city people. It's doubly sad when those white people are European. :P Incredibly virulent anti-whiteness. Thank you for posting…

The fact that these are so low-ranking compared to the top quotes is instructive. Also, the third one is definitely an example of anti-Blackness, not anti-whiteness.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#295

Post by tablespoon »

JCM9 wrote: post #74

This is a challenging subject, but there’s a lot of valid criticism of DEI efforts of many large companies. For one, these programs tend to be led by teams that are, ironically, not very diverse. They tend to focus too much on box checking while ignoring broad swaths of underrepresented populations. “Asia” is a big complex region of the world with those from this region often very underrepresented in the US and subje…

> They also tend to push messaging that is not broadly accepted, even by the communities they claim to be helping. For example DEI had a big push on saying the word “Latino” was offensive and insisted people must say “Latinx.” Many Lantinos in companies were outraged and pointed out that in fact this concept of “Latinx” can in fact be extremely offensive to those it’s attempting to describe. For one, it’s suggesting that a gendered language is somehow inferior and must be corrected.

IMHO, in almost all cases, DEI isn't about helping anyone, except white liberals who feel guilt they want assuaged.

The Latinx example you cite is nice example of the contradictions of DEI: you can't actually "include" everyone without dominating them (colonizing?) and forcing a new identity on them, because different groups have mutually exclusive aspects of their identities.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#296

Post by kenjackson »

lettergram wrote: post #88
giantg2 wrote: post #8

"...it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company." "...is nothing short of corporate virtue signaling." It might be most beneficial for individuals if it's kept-low key. It's best for the company to scream it to the world. Or at least that's what the leaders think right now. Personally, I think any medium to large company that talks about DEI and isn't addressing t…

> It's best for the company to scream it to the world. Or at least that's what the leaders think right now. After sitting in a room where we were told we needed to increase our “minority representation in upper management” (and I’m a mostly white manager). There were already 20% apparently, they wanted 40%. I asked my boss, “so what does that mean to me? To me it seems like you don’t want me” Boss: “oh no, you’re fin…

Honestly your take seems a bit childish. I coach basketball and I say “we need more bigs”. Should my smaller lightening quick point guard quit? No. I want a diverse team. The fact that you didn’t get that would make me question if I wanted you on the team. Not your race/gender.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#297

Post by cycrutchfield »

jablongo wrote: post #282
cycrutchfield wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is talking about hiring preferences? Why are you mischaracterizing diversity programs?

Literally the OP

Where in the OP do they talk about hiring preferences?

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#298

Post by jonathanlb »

benj111 wrote: post #239
_fat_santa wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I look at it from a top level. Say that in the tech industry, 20% (totally made up number BTW) of your workers are black. It would be possible for some companies to have >20% of their workforce be black, but if you look at the top employers (GOOG, AMZN, MSFT, AAPL, etc), there would be physically impossible for them to hire >20% black workers because there are simply not enough of them out there in the broader w…

>TL;DR: Diversity quotas are hard Diversity quotas are wrong. If you hire the black candidate because you have a quota to fill. How is that morally different to hiring a white person just because they're white? The only situation where I can think of quotas being a 'good' is to rectify a past self sustaining imbalance. If you made the case that the police are racist, because they're all white, therefore black people…

Quotas are a straw/boogeyman. Most companies have hiring targets. The difference is that quotas must be filled (which doesn't make business or social sense) whereas hiring targets are goals (which aren't required to be attained).

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#299

Post by koops »

HideousKojima wrote: post #115
monero-xmr wrote: post #25

It boils down to a core philosophical difference - do you want to emphasize equal access to opportunity, or do you want to emphasize equal outcomes? Some would argue it isn't an either-or thing, and we can do both at once, but I argue mandated equality of outcomes is insidious and causes social strife. If you are a minority and get hired, and the company has an explicit policy of hiring N% of minorities, then you wil…

>I think the UC university system has it right because they ban racial preferences for admitting students. The UC system only did so because they were mandated to by law (specifically a voter initiative), and they still try to use as many proxies for race as possible in order to try and be racist in their admissions policies.

This is true. If you are from a bad class background, as a Maoist would put it, you are at a significant disadvantage when applying to the UC system.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#300

Post by busterarm »

grogenaut wrote: post #193
catiopatio wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking? We were absolutely not “virulently” anti- anyone on early IRC. We didn’t even have real names or photos. Nobody had any idea who was behind the keyboard, and that was okay.

Yet the n-bomb, gay and b*tch and other words as a universal slur and negative adjective were everywhere on irc. Casual rape references were constant, it was about as bad as Xbox voice chat. I have trouble going back and reading much of bash.org's top 100 due to the things you're claiming didn't exist. http://bash.org/?99060 http://bash.org/?5775 http://bash.org/?23601 Just because you didn't mean it or it didn't bot…

anything on bash.org is pretty solidly mid->late era IRC, not "early IRC" as was discussed above.

"Early IRC" ends with The Great Split (ircnet fork). Heck, most of Early IRC is extremely Euro-centric even.

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