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Tech's DEI backlash is here

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Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#41

Post by MyShawdowySelf »

xvector wrote: post #4

> DEI [ensures] a firm or company attracts a diverse pool of talent, hires and promotes people without bias, and fosters positive working environments so all individuals can thrive. What an incredibly biased take by the author, who clearly has not worked at one of these companies and seen DEI in action. Having actually worked at big tech companies with DEI initiatives, there have been many instances when we have had…

> Having actually worked at big tech companies with DEI initiatives, there have been many instances when we have had to lower the hiring bar to meet diversity requirements.

Since we are throwing random samples of 1 on the internet, having been involved into some of those initiative at a large big tech company : Not lowering the bar was pretty much always top of mind, and we always made sure to be fair to ALL candidate.

Most of the initiative where around reaching a larger pool of candidate (for example reaching out to more school than we use too) and also addressing what looked to us like information deficiencies : Someone in an IVY league school for example just by osmosis will absorb a lot of the what/why/how companies look for in an employee and therefore can better show the required characteristics.

Every generation of engineer always feels like the engineer after them are somewhat the consequence of lowering the bar... We used to think this when we started recruiting outside of ivy league, then we started lowering the importance of formal education at all ettc... etc...

You would be amazed at the difference good interview preps makes to someone who was never exposed to it.

> What it really fosters in a company is resentment, both due to hiring bar changes and also as the actual DEI job function is mostly useless but gets paid quite a bit

From experience, those type of feeling are usually a consequence of lack of information and exposure of what actually goes on in the meetings. You mentioned you worked at the companies with those initiative, but i am not sure how many time you have actually been involved in the design of those programs.

Tech jobs in large tech companies is very competitive job. Everything is always framed as a competitive advantage and can sometime wrap one's perceptions. Companies spend a bunch of moneys on all kind of weird stuff.

And finally let me be clear, i am a software engineer myself. I do believe that pretty much anything HR does that's not purely the day to day of employee is a grift. Hell the bigger the companies, the more grift around : from management "training" that somewhat requires fancy restaurant. Team building exercise that somewhat require a bunch of very introverted engineer to go to a concert non of them are interested in etc... etc...

DEI is not different, yes grifter gonna grift and some people are just in it for themselve.

So can DEI be better/ more efficient : yes, is there a lot of virtue signaling and fakeness around yes, are we somewhat lowering the bar because we like having diverse people around NO, and for having witness the difference that those program can be in the lives of young and new people in the industry... i think they worth keeping around even if a better more pragmatic form.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#42

Post by brvsft »

One side-effect of DEI is that I take HR even less seriously than ever. Any HR-hosted event is most likely a hard pass for me. Even if it's something I am slightly interested in (say, company event to celebrate Diwali because we do have Indian employees, and despite not being Indian, I have some tangential interest in it partly because I respect and like many of my coworkers and partly just out of curiosity), if it's hosted by HR, I am not going to bother.

We had an All Hands once where they actually spent 20+ minutes talking about the Genderbread Cookie, which I found especially egregious. Not that I have a problem with the Genderbread Cookie, but an All Hands is the most expensive meeting a company can host. Why are we learning about sex and gender identity vocabulary in that meeting?

Of course, this all matters a lot less than hiring and promotion processes. I don't work at a larger company, so I don't think I've seen the worst of it. Smaller businesses still have to take what they can get, and if that means the pipeline is mostly Asian men and white men, that's who gets hired.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#43

Post by Hnrobert42 »

rglover wrote: post #35
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #10

DEI as a philosophy is fundamentally flawed. Its whole premise is alleviating racism in the workplace, yet its practical effect is giving certain races a favorable edge in the hiring process, independent of merit. Is this not in itself inherently racist? I raised this with colleagues on a few separate ocassions and was promptly shunned, yet they didn't have an answer. Most recently when he hired an engineer from one…

> Is this not in itself inherently racist? Yes. It's assuming that the non-white person is in some way incompetent or lesser than (soft bigotry of low expectations) and needs a boost from the feigned-benevolence of the white man (or opportunistic "person of color"). FWIW, I'm mixed-race (white/black) and was mouth-agape at how this got as far as it did the past few years.

I don’t think it assumes that the candidate is in any way not as qualified. It assumes the candidate is not as likely to get hired because of bias in the hiring process.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#44

Post by MightyBuzzard »

zozbot234 wrote: post #9

The pipeline problem in "tech" is absolutely massive. Most DEI efforts inside existing firms are doing very little if anything to address this while introducing toxic and prejudiced attitudes of their own, so that part of the 'backlash' is quite understandable. But denying altogether that a problem exists is not.

Sure. That's a perfectly legit criticism. It's not, however, an excuse for the terrible way things have been done.

If you want to fix a problem, you fix the original cause. You do not come along at the very end and adjust the values to where you think they should be.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#45

Post by AlexandrB »

I like how this debate never changes. 20 years ago everything I see in the comments was being said about "affirmative action". The only thing that's really changed is the terminology.

affirmative action -> DEI

PC (political correctness) -> "woke"

Can't wait to see what the language for the next iteration of this looks like, because I doubt the debate itself is going away anytime soon.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#47

Post by normalaccess »

MyShawdowySelf wrote: post #41
xvector wrote: post #4

> DEI [ensures] a firm or company attracts a diverse pool of talent, hires and promotes people without bias, and fosters positive working environments so all individuals can thrive. What an incredibly biased take by the author, who clearly has not worked at one of these companies and seen DEI in action. Having actually worked at big tech companies with DEI initiatives, there have been many instances when we have had…

> Having actually worked at big tech companies with DEI initiatives, there have been many instances when we have had to lower the hiring bar to meet diversity requirements. Since we are throwing random samples of 1 on the internet, having been involved into some of those initiative at a large big tech company : Not lowering the bar was pretty much always top of mind, and we always made sure to be fair to ALL candidat…

I think this will add context to the discussion. Below are the recently leaked internal Red Hat guidelines.

RED HAT ALLYSHIP COMMANDMENTS

    1. Openly acknowledges PRIVILEGE and SYSTEMIC racism exist in trauma
    2. Never questions the REALITY of our BLACK friends and colleagues
    3. Rejects the idea that race is political
    4. Accepts that WHITE people are responsible for dismantling racism
    5. Only WHITE people are racist
    6. Knows the BLACK community owes us nothing in this work
    7. Requires acknowledgment and repair of inevitable MISTAKES
    8. Is never rooted in WHITE SAVIORISM
    9. Sees the black community as a group of individuals and not a MONOLITH
    10. Does NOT seek recognition or praise for a job well done

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#48

Post by justinclift »

xvector wrote: post #23
giraffe_lady wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you should take some responsibility for your own resentment rather than passively saying another party has "fostered" it. I'm not a fan of corporate and especially tech DEI initiatives either, I don't think they're an effective way to achieve their stated goals. But the hiring bar thing just does not match my experience at all. Some of the worst teams I've been on have been behind some of the most gruelin…

> Some of the worst teams I've been on have been behind some of the most grueling & "selective" interview processes By this process we should just drop hiring bars altogether. But for every team I've worked at, hiring bars clearly worked. We filter out maybe 95% of candidates and none of them would work for our team. Everyone on our team is incredible at what they do. When I had to lower the hiring bar, it was destru…

> They were eager, friendly, and personable, but they required a longer period of extensive coaching get up to a level we would consider adequate.

Did they end up being productive, and hopefully worth the effort?

---

As a data point I'm ok when hiring new people with less-than-desired level of experience (within reason ;>), as long as their general attitude and willingness to learn are solid.

Those last two mean they'll get the hang of things given some appropriate guidance, so it works out ok.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#49

Post by Hnrobert42 »

throaweee123 wrote: post #24

"Due to the current economic situation we don't have new headcount for our org however feel free to reach out if you have a diverse candidate that would be interested in joining" From a director during a all-hands. "We have already selected a male candidate for the internship so it'd be best if the next one was a woman" From my manager's manager. "Your no-hire vote should have more justification since the candidate i…

I don’t see why you need legal protections. A diversity of thought can bring value. If the manager said, “We currently only have staff with public sector experience. We don’t have headcount for more folks. But let me know if you have someone with private sector experience. They are extremely rare, and could really open up the way we solve the problem.”

Would that offend you in the same way?

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