Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#221

Post by spoiler » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #142

catiopatio wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s completely, totally, and absolutely incorrect. I spent decades on IRC starting in the early 90s, and this is a politically-driven contemporary re-imagination of what existed at the time. We were open to all because we ourselves didn’t fit in elsewhere.

Some communities did have a lot of virulently racist and male-chauvinist trolling. The infamous 4chan forum culture didn't just spring up out of thin air, after all. It's a bit harder to tell whether that was anywhere close to representative, of course.

I think 4chan can hardly be put in the same category as freenode channels. It's just an incredible leap in reasoning in my experience with both (albeit not much experience with 4chan, others than the occasional snippet I've seen online)

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#222

Post by avip » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

DEI can mean 2 orthogonal things:

1. Affirmative action. I'll be mostly "against" this vague concept, as it seems incompatible with meritocracy.

2. Making sure workspace is a safe and pleasant place to work in, where people can generally be heard. This is almost unconditionally "a good thing" which should be actively encouraged.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#223

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #180

Forgeties79 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe people are promoted one over another strictly due to performance, even when DEI isn't a consideration. I wish I could find the study but this one fascinating read pointed out that the greatest predictor of whether you'd get promotions/raises/etc. was whether or not you were 1) white, 2) male... Those 2 aren't surprising but then it continued: ...3) 6ft tall or taller, 4) "conventionally handsome" (v…

The bias is toward looking like a better version of your boss. Match him in everything culturally, but be cooler than him, better looking that him, taller than him. As a black man, I'm pretty sure I got more than one programming job because I played in punk bands in the 90s. This would be bad if the demographics of the people hiring were representative of the general population. They're not, so it makes it worse for…

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Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#224

Post by jablongo » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

John23832 wrote: post #90

(Black man here) Two things can be true at once. I have built great things. I can stand on my own. My merits are great. I do not want to be the token employee that is trotted around for Diversity Points (tm). I do not like the diversity porn that a lot of these DEI groups get off on. That being said, I do recognize that I have benefited from these groups (at least at their most genuine). There are groups that are aim…

To be clear, do you think race-based diversity hiring is good? I can agree that having good role models and educational opportunities is important but I'm not so sure race-aware hiring is a good thing, for the reasons stated by OP and others.

At what point do you think DEI should stop? Is there any metric or threshold at which these programs/events should end? One of the biggest issues for me is that these measures are either argued as good because "diversity is intrinsically good" or because "we are righting historical wrongs", meaning reparations. While one could argue for or against either of these justifications, it would seem that the former would terminate once some ideal demographic composition is achieved, while the latter would end once some calculated total sum of restitution is reached. To me, these details are very important, since race-based hiring is an intrinsically bad thing that should be avoided. After all, it is part of the reason people of color got so screwed over in the 20th century in the first place.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#225

Post by hedgehog » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

cabbagesauce wrote: post #110

As a white european dude, who's ancestors never oppressed anyone, rather were oppressed by other white dudes through history. Can you ELI5 why the DEI exists and what problems does it solve, from but from a perspective of someone of my position? Not a troll-bait question, but I sincerely try to comprehend this as to me the mere term people of color is the uttermost racist label imaginable. Also, that presumes I'm fro…

In the US discrimination based on skin color is widespread and goes back to before the country's founding, and access to opportunities is very uneven based on wealth. The PoC term is a reflection of the general pattern of discrimination as practiced here. This situation both has strong inertia (easier to get access to opportunity if you have relatively wealthy parents and/or blend in with wealthier people who tend to be white) and is also reinforced by vested interests (demonizing Latinos and Asian immigration for taking jobs helps keep immigration regulations tight and labor costs down). DEI initiatives are one take on how to get the system to correct towards giving everyone a fair shot.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#226

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #78

monero-xmr wrote: post #25

It boils down to a core philosophical difference - do you want to emphasize equal access to opportunity, or do you want to emphasize equal outcomes? Some would argue it isn't an either-or thing, and we can do both at once, but I argue mandated equality of outcomes is insidious and causes social strife. If you are a minority and get hired, and the company has an explicit policy of hiring N% of minorities, then you wil…

On the other hand, if you only emphasize equal access of opportunity you will never reach equal outcomes. White men have centuries of cultural expectations, family wealth, and other advantages, and minorities have none of those advantages, and may be only a few decades (if that) removed from illiterate, impoverished inequality. Give those groups equal opportunity and it's unsurprising when an inequality of outcomes i…

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Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#227

Post by HideousKojima » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:21 PM UTC

catiopatio wrote: post #131

John23832 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about telling people your ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, it's about WHAT IS SAID about your ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. The beauty of the internet is anonymity (to a certain extent), but that doesn't mean that you can't see or hear things that exclude you.

We focused on technical discussions on technical channels. I’m sorry if you had a bad time on IRC, but as someone who cut their teeth on IRC in the early 90s, and got their career started through contacts made on IRC, what you describe couldn’t be further from the kind of technical communities I participated in.

My experience was a lot of petty interpersonal drama instead of technical discussions, but very little about race.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#228

Post by jakelazaroff » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:21 PM UTC

grogenaut wrote: post #193

catiopatio wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking? We were absolutely not “virulently” anti- anyone on early IRC. We didn’t even have real names or photos. Nobody had any idea who was behind the keyboard, and that was okay.

Yet the n-bomb, gay and b*tch and other words as a universal slur and negative adjective were everywhere on irc. Casual rape references were constant, it was about as bad as Xbox voice chat. I have trouble going back and reading much of bash.org's top 100 due to the things you're claiming didn't exist. http://bash.org/?99060 http://bash.org/?5775 http://bash.org/?23601 Just because you didn't mean it or it didn't bot…

Wow, forgot about bash.org but that's a good reference to pull. Definitely a microcosm of IRC culture at the time.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#229

Post by willcipriano » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:22 PM UTC

John23832 wrote: post #213

bradlys wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve hired people at my jobs (big tech to startups in SV) that were underqualified because of diversity measures. If we had ran them through the typical interview gauntlet with the same rubric, they wouldn’t pass. We often changed the interview format or the rubric when presented with someone who was URT pool. I’ve talked to enough managers who complain about lackluster employees and how they’re not fireable because…

The solution is simple, hire better minority candidates. There are minority candidates who can thrive at all levels of tech. Nobody is telling your to hire subpar candidates. That's on your company's lazy implementation of their inclusion efforts, not on DEI.

Some places are targeting percentages of certain races that exceed that races representation in the general population, let alone the population within a given field. It may be that the demand exceeds the supply.

Re: Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

#230

Post by busterarm » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 3:22 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #187

backzerman wrote: post #129

I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to change the demographics of the company. I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota. The DEI sessions I've sat through have focused heavily on the I--inclusion.…

We’ve hired people at my jobs (big tech to startups in SV) that were underqualified because of diversity measures. If we had ran them through the typical interview gauntlet with the same rubric, they wouldn’t pass. We often changed the interview format or the rubric when presented with someone who was URT pool. I’ve talked to enough managers who complain about lackluster employees and how they’re not fireable because…

I've had HR force under-qualified people into my interview pipeline completely bypassing our technical pre-screen phone call.

We even had an interviewee who only spoke an obscure language not spoken by anyone on our team _and_ had no work experience. This was for a staff engineer position!

We hired someone despite some misgivings in the interview phase who turned out to be a pathological liar (and identity thief) and they proceeded to torment the entire company with insane false allegations for two years and did zero work while we couldn't get rid of them. Finally they quit on their own and this person just made the news recently for stripping down naked and violently attacking a convenience store's workers with a knife.