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Tech's DEI backlash is here

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Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#101

Post by OkayPhysicist »

blondie9x wrote: post #16

DEI is truly division and exclusion. It is a euphemism for new types of discrimination. Hopefully Supreme Court rules on this soon as they did on affirmative action. You cannot fix the world by implementing new types of bias and discrimination, even if it is being wrapped up and sold as diversity and inclusion or however else it is pitched. This should be unconstitutional and against the Equal Protection Clause in th…

How many centuries do you think is an acceptable timeframe to quote people when they want a problem solved? Right now, we're about a century and half out from when Black Americans were first recognized as people, about 3/4 of a century out from when the last slaves were freed, and less than half a century past living in an overt Apartheid state. If you look at the rich and powerful, the vast majority of them started from a position that was simply impossible for POC at the time.

Each generation benefits from the prosperity of the last, giving them a leg up over those without that advantage. Over time, random chance may reduce the resulting advantage to below the noise floor, but how long should those affected be expected to wait?

Or maybe we can try to remedy the situation, now, for the living. Overt diversity initiatives try to solve the problem that someone from a marginalized group is likely to be less qualified than their unmarginalized peers because they've had fewer opportunities to become qualified exactly because of that marginalization. If you don't take corrective action, then you just perpetuate the problem.

So, if you still are opposed to corrective action: How many centuries is enough?

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#102

Post by OkayPhysicist »

Manuel_D wrote: post #97
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shit, I was talking about software developers. I've never known a busy manager. Not a gendered thing at all, it's just a bloated class of employee.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#103

Post by MyShawdowySelf »

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…

> it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women

This is sadly a reality that is difficult to talk about.

I would even go further and say that we have a tendency to benefit the "least" minority of the minority. Hiring a black or Hispanic or women from MIT is from my perspectives not really what this work should be about. Those outliers already have enough opportunity, but tend to be the one benefiting from most efforts. I would love to see deeper investment like 3 or 4 year before college in more at risk communities.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#104

Post by Manuel_D »

MyShawdowySelf wrote: post #103
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…

> it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women This is sadly a reality that is difficult to talk about. I would even go further and say that we have a tendency to benefit the "least" minority of the minority. Hiring a black or Hispanic or women from MIT is from my perspectives not really what this work should be about. Those outliers already have enough opportunity, but tend to be the one benefiting from most efforts.…

I agree wholeheartedly. I'm a Latin Stanford graduate, from a wealthy two parent household. I'm sure there were some people who escaped genuine poverty among my classmates, but for the most part anyone at Stanford is privileged regardless of background.

I find that companies only care about improving their annual diversity report pie chart, and have adopted a cynical attitude along the lines of "the diverse talent pool is limited so we need to make sure we get more of them than our competitors". Nobody is actually trying to get more underprivileged people into tech as a whole.

A company instituting a DEI initiative where employees take one day a week mentoring students at a less affluent high school would do way more good than a percentage quota. The former actually makes the world have more software developers of underrepresented backgrounds. The latter just increase the share of "diverse" devs at that particular company, doesn't actually shift the needle in the industry as a whole.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#105

Post by Manuel_D »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #102
Manuel_D wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shit, I was talking about software developers. I've never known a busy manager. Not a gendered thing at all, it's just a bloated class of employee.

Not managers, product managers. They didn't have any reports, they were still ICs.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#106

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

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…

The illusion you refer to is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCller-Lyer_illusion but the "Variations in perception" section mentions the African tribesmen finding that you are using to support your point was contradicted by later research.

(This sort of thing is why I distrust many statements asserted as fact without citations by posters on HN; too often they turn out to be incorrect, incomplete, or out of date.)

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#107

Post by local_crmdgeon »

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.

SCOTUS ruling changed a lot

So have the lawsuits, and the IBM lawsuit will change even more

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#108

Post by asadotzler »

anonporridge wrote: post #58
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the pool of candidates doesn't itself have the race or sex proportions that you're hoping to hire, then you intrinsically have to lower your standards at least for the underrepresented group. Then you end up with a wider range of quality levels among the underrepresented group (because you had to scrape deeper in the barrel to fill your quota, and the overrepresented group ends up being in the higher quality band…

"If the pool of candidates doesn't itself have the race or sex proportions that you're hoping to hire, then you intrinsically have to lower your standards at least for the underrepresented group."

This is uninteresting thinking. If the pool doesn't have enough qualified candidates, you expand the pool. That requires more effort. That's good effort that should be taken. It's lazy to do otherwise.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#109

Post by jnaina »

I support merit based DEI. What worries me is that for "diversity" candidates, the hiring bar is usually set low (at least in my company). And nobody is brave enough to talk about the consequences of these decisions. Have lost lucrative projects due to poor delivery, team mates having to do additional work to cover for the lapses, overall team performance pulled down leading to variable compensation impact, etc.

One other observation. Some of these "diversity" candidates seem to have found a way to leverage this DEI 'movement' to advance their careers (at the risk of generalizing, but I'm only talking about extreme cases here). They put in a maybe 2 years of mediocre work, while spending an inordinate time on LinkedIn on relentless self-promotion to build up their profile for their next DEI entry point into another tech company on the DEI virtue signalling bandwagon.

Re: Tech's DEI backlash is here

#110

Post by crop_rotation »

jnaina wrote: post #109

I support merit based DEI. What worries me is that for "diversity" candidates, the hiring bar is usually set low (at least in my company). And nobody is brave enough to talk about the consequences of these decisions. Have lost lucrative projects due to poor delivery, team mates having to do additional work to cover for the lapses, overall team performance pulled down leading to variable compensation impact, etc. One…

The thing is the hiring bar is never explicitly lowered, but during any such DEI initiative hiring the HR leaders championing the program would informally send wink, wink messages while explicitly saying at public meetings that bar can not and will not be lowered.
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