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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

#471

Post by ericmcer »

tjpnz wrote: post #14

Tangential to the current discussion but why do I always sense a reluctance to include matters relating to social class in these programs? When I bring it up during D&I discussions I'll usually get blank stares, and in one instance there were crude comments made about needing to beef up building security first.

Social class, attractiveness, intelligence, charisma, mental health, physical health, luck, etc. all play a big role in your success in life but we don't try to equalize those at all.

Race and gender are probably just really easy to quantify vs "we have a program to make sure we hire people who are dumb, ugly and socially awkward".

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

#472

Post by willcipriano »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #375
willcipriano wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some places are targeting percentages of certain races that exceed that races representation in the general population, let alone the population within a given field. It may be that the demand exceeds the supply.

As an under credentialed, relative to the general population very smart white guy, I doubt the demand for any group exceeds the supply. It just might involve searching outside of the range of the lamppost. Gasp, horror, it might involve internal training as opposed to expecting people to hit all the marks for a position on their prior labor and education. It might involve hiring a lot more entry level positions than…

Let's say green people are 10% of the population to make the numbers easy and not call out anyone in particular. You have company A and they are killing it on their diversity goals, 20 percent of its employees are green people. Now you have company B, same size and industry as company A, they want to hire green people but their "share" of greens is already working at company A, perhaps they can pull greens from other industries but ultimately someone is going to be left holding the "you don't hire enough green people" bag.

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

#474

Post by ParetoOptimal »

dbrueck wrote: post #447
John23832 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) So the opportunity to make many different people feel excluded is better? I'm not sure what you're getting at?

The point was an answer to this question: > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. The answer is: "in a somewhat limited way, yes, yes I do". I can't know exactly what it was (and is) like, but the diversity of awfulness in some of those communities allowed me to experience meanness on a level I had never experienced before, which in turn has helped…

> The answer is: "in a somewhat limited way, yes, yes I do".

Prefacing "I know your experience" with "In a (very|somewhat) limited way" is vitally important.

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

#476

Post by marknutter »

CharlesW wrote: post #361
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh heck, let's not even address that saying "people of color" is respectful, but "colored people" is racist.

I'm assuming good faith, and that you truly don't understand the difference. I'd be curious to know if it's because you're old enough to remember when "colored" was "fine", or too young to have an understanding of the racist usage of "colored". https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-da... "While the distinctions can be complicated, the information is readily available for anyone willing to seek it…

Yet the NAACP...

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

#477

Post by dcow »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #466
naasking wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think you'll find that the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived experience Pointing out that those venues were full of anti-everything hate is not dismissing a black person's experience, it's validating it, while pointing out that he's not alone.

> Pointing out that those venues were full of anti-everything hate is not dismissing a black person's experience, it's validating it, while pointing out that he's not alone. But it implicitly implies the negative experiences were similar in scale unless otherwise noted. It downplays the very large weight that racism adds to the negativity of that experience even if the intent is a noble one of making that person not…

Or, maybe you’re the one projecting negativity for assuming that the existence of another anecdote downplays the black one in play? I give it no such credence.

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

#478

Post by chrisrhoden »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #450
The5thElephant wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know for a fact a lot of the people participating in these communities were fully adults, and the age of the people being racist does little to mitigate the impact it has on the people on the receiving end of it. I find it really bizarre how many people here are insistent on diminishing or excusing the experience the original commenter had.

I find it bizarre you're diminishing mine. I got roasted by leetcode pros and othered by turbonerds too. That's humanity. I bet they haven't gotten as far as me since then, and that's an attitude that anyone who has faced pointless discrimination should keep in mind.

Nobody diminished your experience since you didn't relate your experience - you simply said that someone else was taking their own too personally.

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

#479

Post by etchalon »

As someone who hires people, I think this is a double-edge sword.

Bluntly, without a sustained effort by managers, teams will default to hiring people who are as most "like them" as possible. Shared interests, vernacular, professional personas, etc.

That's generally going to mean a lot of very homogenous teams, and in tech, that means very white, potentially very male.

On the other side, I have a distaste for DEI being made so prominent as to make anyone feel their job wasn't earned. Which is never, ever the case. Unqualified people don't hired. Poor performers get let go. But given the subjectivity of the hiring process – there exist no objective metrics for the vast majority of jobs – you just HAVE to tip the scales sometimes.

But it seems an impossible line to walk. If you keep it quiet, staff isn't aware of what you're doing, and may think you're doing nothing at all. That has a cost too.

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

#480

Post by hnuser123456 »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #470
hnuser123456 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it bizarre you're diminishing mine. I got roasted by leetcode pros and othered by turbonerds too. That's humanity. I bet they haven't gotten as far as me since then, and that's an attitude that anyone who has faced pointless discrimination should keep in mind.

I think it's nuanced. Women experience way more sexual harassment and being stalked than men online, even though men as slightly more likely to experience any online harassment in general. I can totally understand being specifically stalked or sexually harassed is on a totally different field than being called a retard for a suboptimal leetcode answer.

I had someone pay money, like $10 to attach a banner to my name on a forum, denying that I had a certification that I revealed I had to back up my claims of knowing a superior answer to some pointless argument. It was unsettling and aggravating for about a month before I found humor in it all. It's still one of my favorite communities and overall far more mature than when that happened ~10 years ago. Most people there are within a few years of my age, currently 30.
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