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IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

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Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#171

Post by chimpanzee »

Anon1096 wrote: post #148
jmward01 wrote: post #100

The anit-DEI stuff is predicated on an idea that there is a clear known 'best fit' for a position and it shouldn't take into account X, whatever X is. The problem is always this, nobody actually knows what a best fit really is. Nature shows us that one trait leads to longer term survival, diversity. When you think you know the traits that pick most suitable and exclude other traits then you are getting rid of the cha…

The American conception of diversity that looks for race and gender ends up grouping 60% of the world together as "Asian". These are regions of the world with vast cultural differences (the obvious because South VS East Asia) and even within countries someone from Beijing is vastly different from someone from Xinjiang. It's extremely western-biased to look at what's going on in DEI efforts and think that it in any wa…

I agree with what you’re explicitly stating, but I can’t tell if you acknowledge and accept the implications.

As it stands, your statement boils down to “DEI is not diverse enough.”

If one also accepts gp’s point, then it seems DEI should continue, but be applied more carefully and thoughtfully. This would likely mean an increase in resources dedicated to DEI.

I agree and would welcome this (without requiring it legally). But I doubt most others would agree.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#172

Post by Shog9 »

martinald wrote: post #17
tempest_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This often just feels like bad management. They go remote, but don't change a lot of other things or attempt to mitigate the downsides (there are downsides, everything is a trade off) and then claim its a failure when they need a stealth layoff. Also IBM has a long history of "Resource Actions" so this type of thing is not all unexpected from them.

I don't know if it's bad management per se. I think some people are very well suited for remote; some people aren't. Probably a rough extension of introversion/extroversion in the people mix. If you take a bunch of very extroverted people and have them all work remotely they will not have a good time (in general). Equally; if you take a bunch of very introverted people and have them in an office they'll really not li…

Funny you mention fraud... I worked for a company for quite a while that was absolutely dedicated to WFH for engineering - but swore up and down that sales just couldn't work without "bullpen" office setups.

Come to find out at least one entire office was engaged in widespread misreporting and fabrication. Turns out fraud is pretty tempting when you can easily avoid any paper trail.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#173

Post by Finnucane »

freedomben wrote: post #140
Finnucane wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the anti-DEI stuff is predicated on the idea that civil rights are bad and that white (straight dude) rule is good. There's not really any point in sugar-coating it or pretending the idea has any kind of intellectual or legal legitimacy. It is entirely driven by animus and resentment. The folks driving it aren't even hiding it.

This is classic ad hominem fallacy. I don't think I've seen such a great example in a long time

How so? The words and actions of the current administration and its supporters are pretty clear about the intent. One of the first acts of the president was to fire a black man and a white woman from the joint chiefs of staff and replace them with white men. The current secretary of defense claims that women shouldn't be in the military, and rolled back protections for LGBT servicepeople. Records of the black service men are erased from public web pages. I could go on and on and on, it is a nearly endless list.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#174

Post by HelloMcFly »

dingnuts wrote: post #152
Anon1096 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American conception of diversity that looks for race and gender ends up grouping 60% of the world together as "Asian". These are regions of the world with vast cultural differences (the obvious because South VS East Asia) and even within countries someone from Beijing is vastly different from someone from Xinjiang. It's extremely western-biased to look at what's going on in DEI efforts and think that it in any wa…

"AAPI" is truly the epitome of a DEI term that is racist in exactly the way the ideology pretends not to be. Really, you're going to group indigenous New Zealanders with Han Chinese as "one" racial group? Just to pick two very different groups at random. There are many absurd pairings that fit under "AAPI" and it's a parody of itself. It's erasing these cultures to group them all under one constructed postmodern umbr…

A more pragmatic reason for this approach is many subgroups lack sufficient population sizes in relevant candidate pools to realistically attempt such a high-context focus with any sort of evaluation of efficacy.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#175

Post by Timon3 »

achenet wrote: post #94
stego-tech wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...damn, that's a legitimately sick burn that's also a prime example of why "Meritocracies" are a bad thing on their face. "Whose merit? What is merit? Why is X merit but not Y? How come person A's merit is worth less than person B's?" Your response was beautifully eloquent.

counter-example: Most systems that work with standardized tests, while they can systematically fail to capture certain types of talent, are fairly objective - "if you're in the top 10% on this test, then we take you". The format and subject matter of the test is known in advance, people are free to prepare for it in whatever way they want. Of course, being good at passing tests doesn't mean one will be good at other…

> Of course, being good at passing tests doesn't mean one will be good at other things, in much the same way that one can be good at Leetcode problems but not good at building and maintaining large scale software systems in a large corporate environment. Still, it remains a 'credible' example of 'how to do meritocracy right', [...]

It's important not to forget Goodhart's law in this context: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

Unless the tested skill is wholly and directly applicable to the position you're testing for, the results will still be unfairly skewed towards those with more resources - they can afford more time to study for this specific test, and more importantly they have the resources to buy specialized learning material as well as tutoring.

Of course that's not to say that merit doesn't factor into the results at all, but it does mean that even examples of 'how to do meritocracy right' show that merit is never the only thing that matters.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#176

Post by rayiner »

chimpanzee wrote: post #171
Anon1096 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American conception of diversity that looks for race and gender ends up grouping 60% of the world together as "Asian". These are regions of the world with vast cultural differences (the obvious because South VS East Asia) and even within countries someone from Beijing is vastly different from someone from Xinjiang. It's extremely western-biased to look at what's going on in DEI efforts and think that it in any wa…

I agree with what you’re explicitly stating, but I can’t tell if you acknowledge and accept the implications. As it stands, your statement boils down to “DEI is not diverse enough.” If one also accepts gp’s point, then it seems DEI should continue, but be applied more carefully and thoughtfully. This would likely mean an increase in resources dedicated to DEI. I agree and would welcome this (without requiring it lega…

[flagged]

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#177

Post by harimau777 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #167
CharlesW wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That One Time It Powered a Genocide" is just an older example of how IBM is happy to put profit over principles. They have a long history that includes happily selling to authoritarian regimes¹, knowingly selling technology that doesn't work², commercializing biometric data without consent³, age discrimination, and more. ¹ http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.co... ² https://www.healthcaredive.c…

Thank you. I don't have a dog in this fight and if there are recent examples of this kind of crap going on, by all means publicize them. My issue is with people who drag up shit from 100 years ago and they go "see how bad they are?" Go back far enough and everyone's had a skeleton in their closet.

For most people, that skeleton isn't aiding the holocaust though.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#178

Post by skizm »

jmward01 wrote: post #100

The anit-DEI stuff is predicated on an idea that there is a clear known 'best fit' for a position and it shouldn't take into account X, whatever X is. The problem is always this, nobody actually knows what a best fit really is. Nature shows us that one trait leads to longer term survival, diversity. When you think you know the traits that pick most suitable and exclude other traits then you are getting rid of the cha…

The "anit-DEI stuff" is the same as the DEI stuff from before this administration: performative. Originally DEI was because the people demanded it of companies, now the anti-DEI version is because the administration will make your life hell if you don't fall in line.

Personally I fully agree that building a diverse workforce is more profitable in the long run than ignoring diversity (unless your company will die in the short term because of political pressure).

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#179

Post by AnthonyMouse »

harimau777 wrote: post #97
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

I am curious if anyone can find the text for "IBM's Policy Letter #4" written by IBM's chairman in 1953, which is referenced in this article. I did some searching but all the links I found to the full text were broken. I ask because I think it shows what a Rorschach test the arguments over DEI have become. I at least found one quote from the Policy Letter #4 which stated "It is the policy of this organization to hire…

The issue that I have is that I've almost never seen an anti-DEI advocate actually engage with the issues. Even if I ultimately disagreed with them, I could respect someone who was willing to look at the problems the US is having with inequality and present a reasoned argument for alternatives to DEI. However, what I usually see is people either ignoring the issues people are facing, ignoring the arguments put forth…

The anti-DEI argument is that modern racial disparities are predominantly caused by economic circumstances, e.g. black people are more likely to be poor and then less likely to have to startup capital to start their own business or be able to afford to attend a high status university. The same applies to white people who don't have affluent parents. "White people who grew up poor" are under-represented at the top of society.

So the underlying problem here is economic opportunity, not race. To fix it you need to e.g. make it easier for someone without rich parents to start a business by lowering barriers to entry and regulatory overhead on small entities. That allows both poor black people and poor white people to get ahead without discriminating against anyone, but still reduces the racial disparity because black people are disproportionately poor.

It's basically Goodhart's law. Because of the existing correlation between race and poverty, continuing racial disparities are a strong proxy for insufficient upward mobility, but you want to solve the actual problem and not just fudge the metric through race quotas etc.

Re: IBM orders US sales to locate near customers, RTO for cloud staff, DEI purge

#180

Post by [deleted] »

freedomben wrote: post #140
Finnucane wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the anti-DEI stuff is predicated on the idea that civil rights are bad and that white (straight dude) rule is good. There's not really any point in sugar-coating it or pretending the idea has any kind of intellectual or legal legitimacy. It is entirely driven by animus and resentment. The folks driving it aren't even hiding it.

This is classic ad hominem fallacy. I don't think I've seen such a great example in a long time

[deleted]
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