Tech's DEI backlash is here

>> Things that are considered normal in society like women not being interested in it and engineering are self reinforcing.

I'm sorry, but I guess can't follow your logic at all. I haven't used the word normal anywhere. To me it seems you find it normal that everyone should be thrilled to become an engineer. Women themself at large find it more normal to choose other professions when they have an option.

>> I don't know of any studies that indicate they shouldn't be doing those jobs

Me neither. Still if they would exist, they would be about women as group and not about what a single woman can do.

>> This robs women of higher paying stem jobs and society of more people to do those jobs.

Believe it or not some people (men or women) care more about what they do then how much money they make doing it.

What I've seen and hate in recent years is HR taking control of pipeline and interview panels so that individual interviewers or hiring managers don't see all applicants or interview feedback. They don't want teams recruiting from their network or discussing openly.

This basically results in a lot of mediocre "diverse" candidates, and many hiring objections being ignored or not shared with others.

It’s ironic, because my teams typically were the most diverse when you look at their economic backgrounds, graduating from state schools, older people, veterans, etc. - while other teams I worked with were very frequently monocultures of young attractive people from good schools and backgrounds. But somehow skin color makes things “diverse“.

It's illegal in the US too, but by giving it a special name and playing on peoples' guilt it slipped under the radar for decades. It's a bit of a relief to finally see so many people saying what I've seen for most of my life.

> It's not controversial to say that women have largely different life experience/background than men. It's not controversial to say those of different races/cultures have largely different life experiences/background than a young white suburban software engineer (which has historically been the majority of the industry).

OK. That is true. And? Your point being?

> But really that means I'm just going to hire the person I get along with best that answers the questions I happen to have, biases included.

Yes, that happens very often. What's the problem? Are you really having the goal of being able to get inside any company out there and tell them you know better who's a better fit for their specific team? If not, what's your angle / point / goal?

> Does it feel good that I am not focused on in DEI as a young white man? No, it sucks to be reduced to something I can't change. But I'm not arrogant enough to pretend that I'm not commonly represented at all levels of tech.

Sounds like you're looking what to be outraged at, I am saying this genuinely and apologies if it comes across as blunt but I am old enough to stop caring about sugar-coating stuff.

Point me at the exact problem in your quote above and tell me what you want changed?

> Asking for an "irrefutable numerical proof" isn't an invitation for debate or speaking from curiosity.

Indeed, I am not at all curious about what do privileged people are looking to feel guilty about this week. (And yes you and I are privileged, there are no two ways about it.)

It is not your fault that a potential next John von Neumann happened to be born in Bangladesh and only used his wits to steal fruit and bread so as not to starve, for his entire life, and never managed to get educated enough to rise above such life circumstances. You can't be everywhere. Hell, you can't even be at 0.00001% of places. Let go and stop looking for injustices. If anything, our world is 99.9% injustice, if one bothers to look carefully enough just for a few months of their entire life spans.

> You're blowing by that I was responding to

OK, then I didn't understand your point there, which is the case for most of your comment anyway.

---

In general, I found your entire original comment super puzzling. It sounded like you are looking for problems where there might be none or they are impossible to fix (yet). OK, women are different and have different lives than you and me... and?

Yes people out there discriminate black people. I'd like that to stop as well. What are you doing to stop it, exactly? Surely you realize talking on a very niche forum like HN isn't going to achieve that, right?

Modern DEI got warped into an unrecognizable mess and nowadays it's mostly weaponized against white males by trying to play on their guilt (kill me if I know where does that guilt even comes from...) in order to gain convenient shortcuts to lucrative positions.

As such, I am neither impressed by modern DEI, nor do I support it. When its proponents chase away the leeches I'll be one of the first people to get on the line to donate and try to help. Until then, I'll just shake my head in disgust at what DEI has become.

> I don’t see how DEI initiatives address any of that. It may actually be regressive in that regard.

I don't understand DEI initiatives enough to agree or disagree. The poster I was responding to seemed to be speaking of diversity in general so that was what I was intending to address.

> I think we agree on that part. But forcing a DEI model on hiring will take on the biases in the model itself. It’s like delegating an individual’s bias to a group of people, who have their own bias. And it seems fruitless to me.

I view diversity in general as shifting biases, not eliminating them. It's just not possible to eliminate them.

We already know that certain groups are underrepresented based on historical selection criteria so we're going in with the assumption that they are capable of doing the job but are not given the opportunity.

To make it less open to misunderstanding I'll just use self-taught software engineer as an example. We can all imagine there is a 100x engineer that is self taught. But due to hiring practices (requires college degree, requires unrelated computer science fundamentals, etc) is never hired and given a chance to reach their potential.

Maybe we're not quite sure how to evaluate self taught engineers like we are with engineers that take a more traditional path, it's likely they work and learn differently. All we know is some part of our process is selecting them out.

I view the idealized vision of DEI sort of in those ways. We know there are some set of biases that are leading certain groups to be underrepresented in tech. We also know that our interview process isn't some grand objective measure of engineer competence.

DEI to me is accepting the existence of biases. While you try to address the ones you can, you cannot eliminate them all so you design processes with assumptions of bias.

I don't pretend to know what companies do specifically in their DEI to shift those weights. But let me pretend my company gives everyone score on 100 point scale. Now I'll shift to a genuinely controversial case.

The info I have:

A black woman received a score of 80 and a white man received a score of 85. My company views anyone that receives a score above 70 as "acceptable to hire". Who do I hire? If I view my measure as completely objective, I should take the higher score. There is even fairness to doing so.

But if I think they both can do the job reasonably well, is it right to tip the scales? Do I think my company can benefit from underrepresented people in tech? Is there some bias that caused her to get the lower score in the first place such that she is the better engineer? Etc etc.

Sorry that is unorganized stream of consciousness