Even if it isn't illegal it is unethical.
Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
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Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#22Might be worth asking Reddit's r/legaladvice (but take what they say with a grain of salt). In the UK this would be illegal afaik - you are only allowed to favour one sex over the other if there are two equivalent applicants for a position and you are trying to counteract an existing imbalance in your team. But you can't outright reject one sex from the start.
Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#23IMO the right way to improve DEI outcomes is to reach outside traditional recruitment pools. My last job spent months talking about DEI only to have a similar outcome to yours, just telling HR to hire more women and POC to senior roles. But it doesn't do anything for representation to scramble over the handful of "diverse" senior+ candidates that already exist. Ultimately improving diversity in tech is going to requi…
In a real world organization it can be hard to get individual managers and teams to do this. Even when they want to, time pressure often means they just do the easy things.
Setting aside even a handful of slots forces the issue, and this can lead to orgs figuring out how to find people.
Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#24Contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or file a complaint depending on what your situation is:
https://www.eeoc.gov/contact-eeoc
Sex and gender are protected classes, an employer cannot discriminate based on a protected class.
The law forbids the company from retaliating against you in any way as a result of an EEOC complaint investigation.
If you have signed a waiver or arbitration aggreement, you should take a look at that and talk to a lawyer.
Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#25Quoted post unavailable.
What do you gain from being so intentionally offensive and hurtful to people who have done nothing to you?
Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#26Legality aside, this is a terrible and naive way to think of DEI. Candidates recruited this way will have a stigma attached to them (“they were recruited because they were X”).
A better way is to enforce DSA - Diverse Slate Approach - which ensure that you don’t recruit anybody without having considered multiple genders and/or ethnicity before making the offer.
The goal of DSA is to recruit the best candidate for the role, but ensure a broad set of candidates has been considered. It’s a win win for all and it works.
Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#27If your company is large enough, you should have an HR department and HR person working with you directly as a hiring manager. Reach out to them. Do everything in writing (emails), refuse to get any guidance on the phone. Get approval from them. If you are still unsure - ask to involve company’s legal department. Print the finished email threads, store outside your place of work.
Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#28Decisions like these from companies just lead to resentment. Engineers start to feel like minority engineers are just diversity hires. In this case they are right which leads to animosity by the established engineers and a feeling of being disliked because of their minority status by the new hire. In most cases the minority engineer does not even know they had an advantage and will likely take a massive confidence hit when they find out. If the new engineer is also not as good an engineer as could have been hired had the hiring pool been larger the animosity will compound, established engineers will feel like they have to work more to compensate for the weak new hire and even though they complain, management will insist that they remain, further inciting negativity. Eventually the older engineers will leave as they feel they are now being unfairly discriminated against themselves. The insane thing is that all parties in this are correct. All of them are being discriminated against, both new and established engineers but its because of the probably well meaning actions of the HR / Diversity department.
IMO limiting hiring pools based on race or gender is not a good thing and can only lead to animosity and eventually employee churn.
Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#29Assuming you have one, it might be worth talking to your HR department to clarify these instructions. Maybe there is something you aren't getting, or this is something setup by clueless management and they are unaware and would want to intervene.
Beyond that when in doubt, talk to a lawyer. At first glance to me (I am not a lawyer) this seems like it's probably illegal, but it's entirely possible there are nuances to which I'm not privy both in terms of legality and in terms of what's actually happening. A quick consult with an employment lawyer isn't that expensive and will give you a much better idea on how to proceed than HN ever can.
If you don't mind skipping straight to whistle-blowing, you can also talk to your State's department of labor, or the US Department of Labor. They tend to take such things seriously and will no doubt investigate.
Re: Ask HN: Am I being instructed to do something illegal? (DEI hiring practices)
#30A quick web search finds some answers. eg https://www.spigglelaw.com/employment-blog/employers-affirma... """ Title VII prohibits employers from making employment decisions because of an individual’s skin color, national origin, sex, religion, or race. Therefore, it is illegal to give an applicant an advantage solely because of the applicant’s race. However, this is not always the case. Under United Steelworkers of A…
To me that sounds like sexist hiring is indeed perfectly legal (towards men).