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Tech's DEI backlash is here

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Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#71

Post by xracy »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #64
MyShawdowySelf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its whole premise is alleviating racism in the workplace No, as a non american living in the US i find american obsession with race fascinating. DEI is about every characteristic on which human can differ and how those difference play a role in the work place. Race is of course a factor , but so are neuro divergence, language, culture, gender and sexuality. Hell even things like "Don't schedule a meeting before 9 A…

> However the other side of the equation, if there some aspect of the workplace ( such as say every important meeting are at 8 AM) are needlessly preventing certain people of expressing their talent... we should also look into it. This is a disingeuous point of comparison, because this is a behavior that can easily be corrected. Just set an alarm clock like everyone else. On the other hand, I cannot correct the fact…

> anecdotal evidence suggests this is not the case.

Ah, and we all know the plural of anecdote is "data". /s Oh wait...

The fact that you said this, suggests to me that you were the odd-person out on a hiring committee, and because the person got hired anyways, you feel like that means all hiring decisions are made on the basis of race. When in reality, you just didn't like the one candidate, and everyone else was fine.

I don't know for sure that this happened, but I've met people who made these cases, and they pretty consistently overvalue their own opinions.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#72

Post by rurp »

justinclift wrote: post #34

This article submission has already been flagged. :( Seems like it's a valid thing to discuss though, as it affects a lot of people.

This seems to be happening more often on HN. I wish there were a way to vouch for stories that get flagged, like how we can for comments. As it stands, a small group of passionate flaggers can shut down a lot of articles on a topic they want to block.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#73

Post by Hnrobert42 »

throaweee123 wrote: post #65
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No because the would be competency based. If we need a senior Go programmer and the candidate is only experienced in Python it makes sense to pass. Interviewing someone who is male and getting told that we can't hire them because they are male is gender-based discrimination.

Hmm. I see what you are saying, but it totally discounts the value of diversity of thought.

For example, there is an optical illusion where people see the top line as shorter:

   

   >—-
However, they are the same length. (The illusion is more pronounced with hand drawn lines.)

Everyone falls for this illusion across all countries and cultures, so much so that folks hypothesized it is affected by our biology. Well, until some anthropologist showed it to some African tribesman. It turns out they were not susceptible to that form of illusion at all. It is unclear why.

My point is that if something as simple estimates of a length of line can benefit from diversity of thought, imagine how many other “obvious” yet wrong assumptions people make. And that is why it is valuable to include people of different genders, races, abilities.

Just like it is okay to pass on a yet another Python developer, maybe it is okay to pass on yet another person who assumes the top line is shorter.

Look, I don’t like the idea of quotas, either. But I also don’t like working at place where everyone is the same.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#74

Post by yieldcrv »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #64
MyShawdowySelf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its whole premise is alleviating racism in the workplace No, as a non american living in the US i find american obsession with race fascinating. DEI is about every characteristic on which human can differ and how those difference play a role in the work place. Race is of course a factor , but so are neuro divergence, language, culture, gender and sexuality. Hell even things like "Don't schedule a meeting before 9 A…

> However the other side of the equation, if there some aspect of the workplace ( such as say every important meeting are at 8 AM) are needlessly preventing certain people of expressing their talent... we should also look into it. This is a disingeuous point of comparison, because this is a behavior that can easily be corrected. Just set an alarm clock like everyone else. On the other hand, I cannot correct the fact…

to strengthen your argument, you can acknowledge that no system we had was doing what you wish

there are magical criteria like culture fit which is inherently discretionary and biased which should be penalized too

DEI as you have experienced isnt a solution for that either

one reality is that companies dont always need most the cognitively/physically qualified person. they need to tap into markets and revenue, companies that have already reached the peak of their primary market gain perspective by having people of backgrounds more in align with markets they aspire to be in. Many large companies are in that position and should be ignoring employee reindeer games about pedigree and performance.

although one most complaint alteration of DEI is just recruiting from different sources that might have more minorities, like different schools, or even creating the pipeline in those schools, where the goal is more talent that happens to perform as well as existing talent, there is a parallel effort where none of that matters if the organization’s expansion into markets simply relies more on familiarity with that market. Do both, I say

but other organizations that are just metoo-ing DEI should absolutely be called out

all organizations that implemented it for arbitrary reasons should be called out

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#76

Post by taeric »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #49
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?

A thing that scares me in the current environment is that I agree with the idea, but I've seen it fail rather comically.

I think the catch is that diversity of thought itself, tells you nothing. You have to be accepting of different viewpoints. This sounds obvious, of course, but a lot of people seem to be weaponizing their being different as a way to overrule previous thoughts. This isn't diversity of viewpoints, this is replacing viewpoints.

This is most easily seen when a crowd is constantly correcting another. Not seeking to understand. Not adding details. Correcting and admonishing.

To directly answer your question, yes, that phrasing would likely bother me. "Let me know if you have someone that you are convinced could help us." That alone should be good enough. If there is a specific skillset, that is a different matter. (Note, I don't think I'd be bothered to the point of offense.)

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#77

Post by refulgentis »

brvsft wrote: post #42

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…

It's sort of weird, I (used to) work at a very large company and saw pretty much none of this, at all, over last 3 years.

Even people ranting anonymously in Blind would admit we had ~nothing extreme like this. Nothing even close. Yet we were famous for it.

For them, the issue was feeling they couldn't share their politic opinions without derision because their coworkers were uniformly liberal.

If you tweeted this and tweeted about DEI a lot I'd say you were making it up completely. You aren't. That's very very very strange. I've never even heard of the Genderbread Cookie.

I've been wondering if maybe mid-small corporation try-hards were ending up doing some distorted funhouse mirror version of "let's try to interview more minorities and champion them more publicly?" and ended up doing crazy stuff.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#78

Post by zozbot234 »

ryandv wrote: post #75

[self-censoring for wrongthink]

Very good point. "DEI" as commonly practiced is nothing more than the soft bigotry of low expectations, enshrined as official company policy. The outcomes are pretty much what you'd expect: Divisive, Exclusionary and Inequitable.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#79

Post by NewsyHacker »

AlexandrB wrote: post #45

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.

1990s-era affirmative action in the US was purely a decision made by company management and HR when hiring though, wasn’t it? That is, it wasn’t something that involved the average employee. So much of the frustration about DEI that I have seen on HN and elsewhere, is about all employees having to attend boring meetings or events.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#80

Post by adharmad »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #69
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If the goal is diversity of thought, why select based on physical characteristics instead of asking question about areas of thought that are underrepresented in the company? If the company has no communists, shouldn't you look for communists instead trying to link that thought pattern with a physical attribute? And does this purported desire for diversity of thought extend to all types of thoughts or just a narrow ra…

Because the goal of DEI is not to hire based on diversity of thoughts. Else the places in the world where DEI was the dominant philosophy (university professors especially in the humanities) would have the highest diversity of thought. But in reality they are simply echo chambers.
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