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Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

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Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#231
Why does the skin color or gender matter if in the end they pick candidates that all went to the same top schools or have previously worked at the same top companies?

Diversity in training, education and work history vastly outweighs diversity in superficial physical features.

Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#232
post #28
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only seems bizarre if you didn't consider DEI programs to be largely symbolic corporate puffery in the first place. For all of the hate they received from some political spheres they were largely just PR initiatives right from the start, especially in larger companies.

[flagged]

> Well for one there sure were a lot of anecdotes on X from people claiming their companies literally refused to hire white people.

The existence of a large propaganda campaign on X is not itself proof of the claims of that campaign, and in any case that if there were firms doing that it is both already explicitly and unambiguously illegal and is also very much not what DEI proponents advocate for.

Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#233

I'm a PoC, and stuff like this reads extremely bizarre to me. On the one hand, you're acknowledging rolling back DEI initiatives in part because of the "political landscape," and that you were already committed to diversity on your teams. That's all well and good, but then, why the initiative in the first place? It seems to me you're doing at least 1 thing here, and acknowledging that such DEI program was performativ…

I think that's the point. DEI is performative. A business cannot survive unless it hires the best person for the job.

Regardless of the first points you make, companies objectively do not need to hire the best person for the job. Lots of companies need programmers. 99% of them do not need world class software engineers.

There are plenty of jobs where "can type JS into a computer for 30 hours a week and go to a couple meetings" is plenty to keep the business moving forward.

Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#234

I'm a PoC, and stuff like this reads extremely bizarre to me. On the one hand, you're acknowledging rolling back DEI initiatives in part because of the "political landscape," and that you were already committed to diversity on your teams. That's all well and good, but then, why the initiative in the first place? It seems to me you're doing at least 1 thing here, and acknowledging that such DEI program was performativ…

> acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the first place. That's exactly what they're doing and I don't think that's a secret. > This kind of announcement seems extremely self defeating and unlikely to please anyone and piss off just about anyone that cares about this in any way shape or form, on either side. It's not about making users or bloggers happy. They don't care whether those people are "pis…

Aside: It appears the modern world is inflecting to OVERT (subversive) insular, erosion of fundamental values, with recent leveraging of power-structures to facilitate authoritarian thinking.

Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#236
post #125

Diversity should never be a goal or initiative. It’s a value. You wake up every day and practice diverse hiring practices. The moment you put a tangible target to hit, is when you gamify diversity into something bad.

How do you make it happen? Relying on people to "wake up every day and practice diverse hiring practices" wasn't working.

It starts by hiring people who share your values. Don’t hire scumbags, liars, racists, Neo-Nazis, etc.

If someone demonstrates they don’t represent your company’s values, get rid of them or put them in non-decision making roles and keep an eye on them.

Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#237
post #73

I started a new account on Twitter just to see what it's like. It's completely unusable. The place is filled with shit content that a I don't want to see and bots. Not sure what competitive advantage you are talking about.

You have to follow people you’re interested in, and continually curate that list. X is garbage in the same way /r/all is - you have to find the subreddits you like and aren’t too large

Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#238
This deluge of terrible things from Zuck over the past few days is so clearly 100% in deference to Trump. The fact that Zuck name-checked Twitter when explaining the change to Community Notes was also such an obvious tell. If he viewed Twitter as a competitor, he would have framed this shift in policy as something better than what Twitter does. But instead, "we're doing what they're doing" is a message that he is essentially collaborating with Musk on shared goals.

Gee, what goals might those be.

I had deleted Facebook years ago, but this has convinced to also delete my Instagram. Sincerely hoping an Instagram alternative starts to take shape, like what Bluesky is to Twitter.

Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#239
I am a Black male and worked as a developer for mostly small unknown companies from 1996-2020.

I then pivoted to cloud+app dev strategic consulting when a job at AWS (Professional Services) fell into my lap. I now work for a third party consulting company as a staff software architect.

For the last 5 years, I have had customer facing jobs where I am either on video calls or flying out to customer sites working with sales.

When I first encountered the DE&I programs at Amazon, I couldn’t help but groan. The entire “allies” thing felt like bullshit.

The only thing that concerns me is that I hope companies still do outreach to colleges outside of the major universities and start partnering with them to widen the funnel and partnering with smaller colleges to help students learn what is necessary to be competitive and to pass interviews

Re: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

#240
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only seems bizarre if you didn't consider DEI programs to be largely symbolic corporate puffery in the first place. For all of the hate they received from some political spheres they were largely just PR initiatives right from the start, especially in larger companies.

Do you actually have experience with those programs? Here's what DEI programs actually do in practice, in my experience. As a simple example, let's say there is an opening for a somewhat senior position, like a director. Your team does some interviews and wants to make an offer. DEI vetos it because every single candidate they interviewed was a white male. They don't tell you who to hire or not to hire, they just say…

The memo sent from on high (multiple years):

You must put up for dismissal 15% of your reports, of those 10% will be dismissed. You may not select any female, ethnic minority, lgbtq or disabled employees.

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