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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

#301

Post by domain8543 »

throwawaydei wrote: post #261
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…

[dead]

In other words, if you received hate it was probably something you did. I literally cannot fathom the idea that something was wrong was us.

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

#302

Post by [deleted] »

domain8543 wrote: post #289
moomoo11 wrote: post #176

I wish we would transcend to a point where we look up to people based on their achievements and separate their race from it. I’m Asian btw. I can relate to Lebron just as much as I can relate to Neil Armstrong or Satya or Matz or Woz or Marie Curie because they are all excellent at what they did/do. I want to be excellent like them. Because we all are humans.

Lebron's struggles as a black man in America are a huge part of his success story. Not just that he's excellent at what he does. Pretending that race doesn't exist does not actually work in practice. LeBron himself will tell you that.

[deleted]

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

#303

Post by seneca »

backzerman wrote: post #129

I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to change the demographics of the company. I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota. The DEI sessions I've sat through have focused heavily on the I--inclusion.…

> I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota.

That's because it's often illegal, and most people find it immoral. It's the "quiet part", if you will. I've been in a hiring role for a decade, and I can tell you that it happens at every company I've been at that has a DEI program.

Many of the larger companies even have manager bonuses dependent on diversity metrics of their teams. That's about the biggest weight you can possibly put on the scale.

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

#305

Post by mst »

voxic11 wrote: post #200
backzerman wrote: post #129

I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to change the demographics of the company. I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota. The DEI sessions I've sat through have focused heavily on the I--inclusion.…

Well hiring under-qualified candidates purely for the sake of a quota (relating to a protected class) would be illegal in the United States. So its unlikely you will hear anyone explicitly saying that is what they intend to do. https://www.aclusocal.org/en/inclusion-targets-whats-legal

I've heard anecdotes from nonwhite Intel employees who claimed that that was definitely happening there and it meant they could basically only bother to do any work when they felt like it because nobody expected decent productivity out of them anyway.

I don't claim to have remotely enough knowledge of the situation to know whether they were right or not, mind.

It strikes me that your colleagues being acceptable, you being better but having high enough standards for yourself that they don't seem acceptable, plus a moderately apathetic manager could produce pretty much precisely the same observable results and then if you're already primed to expect diversity stuff to be stupidly implemented it'd be easy enough to draw an incorrect conclusion.

It also strikes me that under the previous leadership Intel was kind of a shitshow in general so given that both possibilities seem depressingly plausible.

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

#306

Post by mostly_lurks »

dbrueck wrote: post #243
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…

Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) Speaking of 2 things being true at once, what's amazing about BBSs/USENET/IRC/etc. especially in the early years was that they had: - online discussions where a lot of things just didn't matter. Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged on the merit of your ideas, not what you looked…

I think you might want to reflect for a minute on why you thought "but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone?" was an appropriate response to a black person talking about their experience of racism. I recognize you believed yourself to be mitigating the effect of your statement by prefacing it with "Not disputing your bad experiences," but I think you'll find that the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived experience, or at least pulling focus away from it in an unhelpful way.

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

#307

Post by taude »

alphabettsy wrote: post #241
pnutjam wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another angle, are you certain this person was comfortable having a real conversation with you? PoC are very accustomed to bending with the wind and playing their cards close to their chest. I know it's only caused me grief to speak out.

[flagged]

Not claiming to be good. But I will say most my white friends don't actually engage with this conversations, nor do they even have friends of color, so....whatever.

EDIT: BTW, I was only offering opinion to support what the OP was feeling and saying.

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

#308

Post by trogdor »

John23832 wrote: post #143
catiopatio wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We focused on technical discussions on technical channels. I’m sorry if you had a bad time on IRC, but as someone who cut their teeth on IRC in the early 90s, and got their career started through contacts made on IRC, what you describe couldn’t be further from the kind of technical communities I participated in.

Great, that's your experience. But I was sharing mine, and those of the other minorities I know very well.

How do you know the experience of other categories of people very well?

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

#309

Post by oytis »

bradlys wrote: post #187
backzerman wrote: post #129

I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to change the demographics of the company. I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota. The DEI sessions I've sat through have focused heavily on the I--inclusion.…

We’ve hired people at my jobs (big tech to startups in SV) that were underqualified because of diversity measures. If we had ran them through the typical interview gauntlet with the same rubric, they wouldn’t pass. We often changed the interview format or the rubric when presented with someone who was URT pool. I’ve talked to enough managers who complain about lackluster employees and how they’re not fireable because…

IMO the right way to implement diversity is to get more underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the bar. But it requires resources that startups might not have/might be unwilling to allocate.

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

#310

Post by spoiler »

darkwater wrote: post #259
spoiler wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is different, too. I've never experienced these racist/sexists IRC communities in the past either. Sure, there'd be the occasional asshole like everywhere else online, but they'd get warned (and banned eventually). Why is your comment so passive aggressive, though? While the counter claim hasn't presented any proof, the same holds true for the original claim. You seem to be only thinking critically of t…

> My experience is different, too. I've never experienced these racist/sexists IRC communities in the past either. Sure, there'd be the occasional asshole like everywhere else online, but they'd get warned (and banned eventually). Would you be part of the target audience, back then? Or you were part of the main group and just remember that "nobody was harassing nobody"?

Disclaimer: White gay man here.

So, I experienced homophobia first hand at least.

I've never felt like the communities (any of the tech related ones) were anything but wholesome, though.

Bullshit was immediately called out, and in more severe cases handled by ops (as was I in a few channels).

Again, we are talking about COMMUNITIES. Not INDIVIDUALS.

So, I guess I was (somewhat) in the privileged white male group, but that doesn't mean I'm illiterate or can't reason and feel empathy.

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