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Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#31
post #4

Yes he's a chameleon and yes he's a turncoat and so on, but it's interesting that he's gone all in on this. There's some debate whether wokism is finished for good or if it's merely gone dormant. He seems to be betting that it's gone for good.

That's exactly what confuses me. Yes, I would expect some easing on that, but it's so 180° that I find myself wondering, what exactly is that force that defines the direction. Like, who dictates the agenda. I mean, I would always assume that any 4chan-level explanations that have an actual person making the order of how this will go are not exactly true and things must be a little more complicated than that. But how something "a little more complicated" can lead to this? Why yesterday Zuckerberg felt that he must, and today he is totally convinced he must not? Surely he has a better grasp of that than me, but how the fuck does it work? Who decides that one day we are woke, and the next day we aren't?

After all, nobody assumed that wokism is dead the last time Trump was elected. If anything, it was harsher than ever. Why today major supporters of it suddenly say "fuck that"? Please don't tell me that it has anything with Zuckerberg becoming BJJ aficionado, because I won't buy that shit.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should expect 50% men in elementary schools? How about lumberjacks? Should those be 50% women too? A non discriminatory hiring process should reflect the demographics of the workers in the given field (other factors like geography matter too). Why would we expect, say, pediatricians (80% female) to have 50% men? Achieving a 50/50 split between men and women in a field that's 80% one gender requires hiring one g…

One question we should ask ourselves is why a field would be dominated by men and not evenly split, or mostly women, etc. Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other?

Because men and women have different interests. Even if you think that socialization is the cause, the law mandates that all applicants are treated equally with respect to gender. If gender discrimination is carried out in pursuit of a 50/50 gender split, that does not make it legal.

> Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other?

What people feel is hard to quantify. But what we can quantify is the call back rates of male and female applicants. Tech companies are more likely to call back women: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484

HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#33
post #21

People for some reason have an inability to separate the goals of DEI/EDI from the practice. It's possible that the goals are important and correct, but the implementation sucks. I am of this belief for many DEI programs I've seen. But I'm still pro-DEI. It just gets implemented often too simplistically and naively, enabling the creation of more controversy and also likely many poor outcomes in organizations. As for…

furthermore, he is blaming the company's decision on his COO and not on himself as CEO. more than almost any other founder, he maintained control over his company and for better or worse it is clear that he alone bears the responsibility for what the company does as a result of that control. blaming one of his most trusted, respected, and successful deputies for what he now describes as a failure does not reflect wel…

I think he did her dirty. Don't think he is where he is today without her being by his side back then. She was and remains a fantastic operator.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#34
post #21

People for some reason have an inability to separate the goals of DEI/EDI from the practice. It's possible that the goals are important and correct, but the implementation sucks. I am of this belief for many DEI programs I've seen. But I'm still pro-DEI. It just gets implemented often too simplistically and naively, enabling the creation of more controversy and also likely many poor outcomes in organizations. As for…

The goals of most DEI programs can't be achieved without discrimination on the basis of protected class. If software developers are 18% women how can a company achieve 40% women software developers without discrimination? And that was a DEI goal a previous employer used. In fact they had the same goal for electrical engineer too despite being 10% women. Ambiguous goals like "make people feel welcome" doesn't require…

I'd argue if you're looking to achieve DEI goals in the short-term rather than over decades, you're going to fail because the backlash and other consequences will destroy any progress you think you made. And I think that's what we're seeing. You can work towards DEI goals without achieving them in the short-term and still look to make good changes over the long run. But it requires a systems view of everything, including helping kids from various backgrounds to get access to the education they need and then helping them to be in an environment where they can actually successfully learn stuff. That's a multi-generational multi-decade problem, not a corporate fiscal year problem.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#35

To be clear, Meta's "Diverse Slate Approach" was explicitly discriminatory with regards to protected class. It prohibited hiring managers from proceeding with an offer until at least one of the on-site interviews contained an "underrepresented group", meaning women and URM males. In practice this meant that white and Asian men had to wait a long time to get an offer even after they passed the interview rounds. But wo…

> NNNNNNNNNNNNDNNNNNNNNNNND If the pattern resembles this for a group that represents over 50% of the broader population (women and some subset of males), I'd argue that it's highly possible there are other, possibly discriminatory, factors at play.

Over 60% of the U.S. population don't have college degrees, but you obviously wouldn't expect Facebook's hiring to be proportional to that. The demographics of CS graduates is much closer to what you'd expect the hiring percentages to reflect (and they do)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School integration was woke. Women voting was woke. Interracial marriage was woke. Gay marriage was woke. Over the long run, progress only goes in the right direction. There's no debate, just noise. The year to year skirmishes aren't terribly important in the big picture.

Moving away from color and race blind hiring to discriminatory hiring was not woke, by your definition.

You think hiring was previously not discriminatory? Wanna explain this one: https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-racial-n...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#37

To be clear, Meta's "Diverse Slate Approach" was explicitly discriminatory with regards to protected class. It prohibited hiring managers from proceeding with an offer until at least one of the on-site interviews contained an "underrepresented group", meaning women and URM males. In practice this meant that white and Asian men had to wait a long time to get an offer even after they passed the interview rounds. But wo…

Had to look up URM https://diversity.ucsf.edu/programs-resources/urm-definition

Thanks for the link. A bit of clarification: in this context Asian was not in the category of URM since Asians are overrepresented in tech roles at Meta. So URM meant Black, Latin, and American native.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should expect 50% men in elementary schools? How about lumberjacks? Should those be 50% women too? A non discriminatory hiring process should reflect the demographics of the workers in the given field (other factors like geography matter too). Why would we expect, say, pediatricians (80% female) to have 50% men? Achieving a 50/50 split between men and women in a field that's 80% one gender requires hiring one g…

One question we should ask ourselves is why a field would be dominated by men and not evenly split, or mostly women, etc. Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other?

This question only ever seems to be asked about "desirable" fields. There doesn't seem to be as much of a push to achieve gender parity in sanitation work[1], for example.

The whole exercise feels like an effort to take attention off of the problem of income inequality by instead framing it as an issue of identity. Under this framing, "fair" means we have parity in male and female CEOs - never mind that those CEOs are still making 300x or more of what "frontline" workers make. Why not focus on pushing for higher wages in female dominated fields like teaching or nursing?

[1] https://www.zippia.com/sanitation-worker-jobs/demographics/

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#39
post #31
post #4

Yes he's a chameleon and yes he's a turncoat and so on, but it's interesting that he's gone all in on this. There's some debate whether wokism is finished for good or if it's merely gone dormant. He seems to be betting that it's gone for good.

That's exactly what confuses me. Yes, I would expect some easing on that, but it's so 180° that I find myself wondering, what exactly is that force that defines the direction. Like, who dictates the agenda. I mean, I would always assume that any 4chan-level explanations that have an actual person making the order of how this will go are not exactly true and things must be a little more complicated than that . But how…

Intellectual fads—memeplexes, if you will—burn through populations. There’s a whole lifecycle to a memeplex taking up residence in a host, then eventually getting ejected. Once you’ve ejected a particular memeplex from your mind, it’ll probably never make it back in. You have antibodies. Repeat that for enough people and the tide can permanently turn on a memeplex. Or at least for several decades, until there is a whole new generation of hosts who don’t have immunity.

It’s seemed pretty clear to me that this would eventually happen for wokism (or whatever you want to call it). It’s simply not sustainable to tell the majority of your potential hosts that, because of their inborn, unchangeable attributes (being white and/or male), they are the problem. And people really do not like feeling physically unsafe, which they do in most coastal blue cities, and which almost all women do when there is a man in the bathroom with them.

So the difference between 2024 and 2016 is that the memeplex was just getting rolling in 2016, but today enough people have antibodies that, to any keen observer, it’s days are clearly numbered.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#40
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goals of most DEI programs can't be achieved without discrimination on the basis of protected class. If software developers are 18% women how can a company achieve 40% women software developers without discrimination? And that was a DEI goal a previous employer used. In fact they had the same goal for electrical engineer too despite being 10% women. Ambiguous goals like "make people feel welcome" doesn't require…

I'd argue if you're looking to achieve DEI goals in the short-term rather than over decades, you're going to fail because the backlash and other consequences will destroy any progress you think you made. And I think that's what we're seeing. You can work towards DEI goals without achieving them in the short-term and still look to make good changes over the long run. But it requires a systems view of everything, inclu…

This is sort of no-true-scotsman argument. Sure, there is "DEI" that doesn't amount to a dog whistle for discrimination. That was the case at 1 out of the 4 companies I've worked at. But it's the exception to the norm in my experience, and in that of my peers. It sounds like Meta has reached the same conclusion.
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