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Tech's DEI backlash is here

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Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#91

Post by Manuel_D »

dayvid wrote: post #53
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…

DEI != affirmative action Most DEI work I've seen at my company was in reducing HR complaints from women, LGBT and different ethnic groups. When it comes to hiring, it was in showing up at recruiting events and other areas to encourage people to apply. I've done interviews and I think they're more fair/merit-based than other places. I view it as a positive. Also barely any minority applicants. A lot of DEI was to cou…

And at two of the three companies I've worked at, diversity initiatives came in the form of explicit discrimination. Both instituted explicit percentage quotas, and at Dropbox we straight up reserved a segment of our headcount for women and URM candidates. Ostensibly, these quotas were for both URM of any gender, and women of any race. In practice, nearly 100% of people benefitting from these policies were non-URM women.

So at least in my experience, DEI == affirmative action for white and Asian women.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#92

Post by [deleted] »

hightrix wrote: post #88
Manuel_D wrote: post #87

One thing that's irked me about Tech DEI is that it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women, while I really only see the justifications for benefitting racial minorities on Dei grounds. The justifications for benefitting underrepresented racial minorities seem way, way stronger than gender. Black and Latin students are less likely to go to college, while women are more likely to go to college than men. Some try to j…

Pardon my ignorance, what does URM refer to in this context?

[deleted]

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#93

Post by OkayPhysicist »

Manuel_D wrote: post #89
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…

> 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" This is largely analogous to the "Opportunistic Hiring" policies Dropbox introduced in April 2019. We set aside reserved headcount for "diverse" candidates (ostensibly this includes women of any race, and URM men. In practice, almost entire…

To be fair, I've got plenty of white (or white passing) male friends who also ended up in roles with a shortage of work to do. There's this awkward period between someone being hired, and them being familiar enough with the workplace to actively seek out stuff that needs to be done that leaves a lot of people with very little to do.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#94

Post by Manuel_D »

hightrix wrote: post #88
Manuel_D wrote: post #87

One thing that's irked me about Tech DEI is that it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women, while I really only see the justifications for benefitting racial minorities on Dei grounds. The justifications for benefitting underrepresented racial minorities seem way, way stronger than gender. Black and Latin students are less likely to go to college, while women are more likely to go to college than men. Some try to j…

Pardon my ignorance, what does URM refer to in this context?

Underrepresented Racial Minority. Basically Black, Latin, or Native American. The last is a bit hand-wavy because there's huge rates of intermarriage in Native families, and many ethnically identify as white.

Ideally I'd prefer if there was some mechanism to actually examine people's backgrounds. I'm Latin myself, but had educated parents, went to a top 10 school, and basically not disadvantaged in any way. But aggregate disparities do exist and I see reason to take action on them.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#95

Post by [deleted] »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #73
throaweee123 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

[deleted]

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#97

Post by Manuel_D »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #93
Manuel_D wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" This is largely analogous to the "Opportunistic Hiring" policies Dropbox introduced in April 2019. We set aside reserved headcount for "diverse" candidates (ostensibly this includes women of any race, and URM men. In practice, almost entire…

To be fair, I've got plenty of white (or white passing) male friends who also ended up in roles with a shortage of work to do. There's this awkward period between someone being hired, and them being familiar enough with the workplace to actively seek out stuff that needs to be done that leaves a lot of people with very little to do.

My sister, though, had been in her role for 2+ years but still only had work to keep her busy maybe 30% of the time. Similar situation with one of my past girlfriends. These were both Product Managers - I think it's less of an issue for software developers, since there's always a backlog to hack away at.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#98

Post by MyShawdowySelf »

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…

> This is a disingeuous point of comparison, because this is a behavior that can easily be corrected.

As someone commented bellow, that's incorrect. Modern sleep science seems to indicate that people have different circadian rhythm, which correlate with different energy and alertness level at different time of the days. Sure it's easy to set an alarm at 8 AM, but it's not easy to be at 100 % for some people at that time. I think there is even a movement to make school start later to combat those effects.

> How is it in any way fair for me to be disadvantaged in the hiring process for something I cannot control?

I can't pretend to understand your experience on DIE but at the risk of repeating myself... this is not what DIE is about... you don't get browny point because your are a minority or get point taken away because you not a minority. It's about providing the best condition for EVERYONE to express their best potential and then select the best one.

> This sounds like a question asked in bad faith. Rather than analyzing hiring outcomes by background, does it not make a lot more sense to analyze hiring decisions based on interview performance, totally independent of race/language/gender/etc.

I do not follow your reasoning here. You mentioned that you witnessed "ONE" case where a candidate was accepted despite having "HALF" of the reviewers no hire decision.

Where i work, those case go to deliberation and usually we would have the candidate come back for a second round of interview, or even depending on the seniority level send him to specialist reviewer. Generally, those case are a result of miss-calibration of the interview loop : like for example having an experience network/kernel specialist ending up in a generalist loop designed for entry level.

I do not know how things work in your company : You are making the case that one experience is an example of DEI gone bad... My point is that if you want to make that point, a statistical analysis of similar case is the only way to know for sure. Just saying that someone with so so performance on half reviewer got in is simply not enough...

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#99

Post by Always_Anon »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #73
throaweee123 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

>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.

That was disproven. This is scientific racism/bio-essentialism. Let's not go there, it's an evil path.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#100

Post by Tommstein »

sdsd wrote: post #11

Oof. I bet people are reticent to post any comments here. That's good - it's hard to post about this topic in a way that doesn't detract from the overall tone and quality of HN. No one wants to post some James Damore screed decrying the longhouse, nor some 2010s style social justice screed. No matter which side you argue, you'll get a 1,000 very uninteresting comments from uncurious ideologues doing their duty to def…

> No one wants to post some James Damore screed decrying the longhouse . . . .

Did you read what he actually wrote, instead of just the whines of Googlers and the journalists who amplified them? I ignored the whole thing for a long time, but when I finally read it word for word out of curiosity well after the shitstorm, I thought it was one of the most reasonable and blatantly obvious things I had ever read.

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