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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

#241

Post by grandempire »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #202
grandempire wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even have an interview or evaluate performance if everything is unknowable? You use your best judgment and consider many factors. You make mistakes and get better with experience. What we don’t want to have happen is a conflict between two opposing goals. That’s very different than disagreement about how to meet a common goal.

You've never witnessed a hiring decision that was based on an almost entirely arbitrary tie-breaker? All I want out of DEI/Affirmative Action, apart from maybe some proactive efforts to improve diversity in the initial funnel, is for that arbitrary tie-breaker to skew towards the option that's underrepresented in the field. Does that seem unreasonable or particularly unfair to you?

dei programs in academia and corporations aren’t limited to breaking ties at the end of hiring. But I can consider the possibility in good faith.

I think giving someone who might normally not have the chance is a good tie breaker. I’m opposed to a policy that dictates that must be determined by skin color/gender/religion. If the individuals involved in the hiring felt that was the right tie breaker based on their knowledge of their community, I’m not opposed to that.

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

#242

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

eddieroger wrote: post #84
maerF0x0 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty solid letter given the 1953 date! Consider it predates MLK's and Rosa Park's most famous activism. Not bad.

[flagged]

To people downvoting the above comment - could you explain your reasons? You may feel all arguments have already been said on this issue but the situation is different today. And especially young people, whether white or colored, feel they have more bleak future in front of them than the previous generations and basically refuse to reproduce globally. In this light, it's worth having this discussion again because it is not the same.

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

#243

Post by Timon3 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #240
Timon3 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then who are you arguing against? Is there someone strongly opposed to providing equal access to training materials, e.g. by making them available in school libraries? The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is? > In general the poor kids live in higher density areas and the affluent kids live in the suburbs. Ah, and that means we can ignore poor kids who don't fall into this pattern, as well as p…

> The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is? To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available. They don't all have them because libraries are locally administered and each locality gets to make its own choices, but if that's the case in your locality then you can direct your complaints to the town council rather than the federal government. > Ah, and…

> To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available.

They have some materials available, but often older or less specialized ones. That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact.

> This is the thing where perfect is impossible. If you live in an urban area, having a library within walking distance is feasible because there are enough people there to justify it. If you live in a rural area, it isn't. What do you propose to do about it?

How about introducing DEI programs that help these disadvantaged people access the same materials? Again, you're basically saying that they have to suck it up and accept their position. That's not meritocracy.

> Rich people will pay for things that aren't scalable. If your parents make $20M/year, they can spend $1M/year on their kid. If you spent $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US, the cost would be $74 Trillion, which exceeds the US GDP. And there is a threshold past which additional spending has diminishing returns.

There's obviously an incredibly large gap between "spend $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US" and "poor kids should either have no access at all, or have to walk large distances to public libraries, only have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available". The latter simply isn't meritocracy, yet you keep arguing that it is, and keep arguing against DEI programs.

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

#244

Post by scoofy »

eddieroger wrote: post #84
maerF0x0 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty solid letter given the 1953 date! Consider it predates MLK's and Rosa Park's most famous activism. Not bad.

[flagged]

There is a conflation in the idea behind this comment that drives me crazy. This version of equity based on race is using race as a proxy for outcomes in life that are actually based on a wide variety of factors. Equality based on race is treating peoples race as equal.

The idea that we care about equity is important, but using race as a proxy means we need to care especially about the proxy and making sure the proxy is representative of the outcomes and how the inputs are effecting the outputs. And, if we're being honest, it's kind of an arbitrary proxy beyond the correlation.

We are already seeing huge problems here with men vs women using gender as a proxy for outcomes, where we've basically flip-flopped graduation rates, but since it's a lagging indicator, we've really gotten ourselves into a pickle where we are creating an equity problem while trying to solve an equity problem, because we're so focused on outputs throughout every stage of the life process that we're missing a massive shift in the inputs (like who we're graduating).

Equality is important. Equity is important. They are different things, that should have different attention. Equality uses identity directly. Equity uses identity as a proxy for outcomes. We need to be very careful when we focus too much on one over the other.

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

#245

Post by scoofy »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #242
eddieroger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

To people downvoting the above comment - could you explain your reasons? You may feel all arguments have already been said on this issue but the situation is different today. And especially young people, whether white or colored, feel they have more bleak future in front of them than the previous generations and basically refuse to reproduce globally. In this light, it's worth having this discussion again because it…

I didn't downvote, but I gave a long, good faith response as to why I think it's sub-optimal reasoning at best. I think this divide is a huge problem for the left, and it's actually creating new problems while the left pats itself on the back thinking we're solving them.

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

#246

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Timon3 wrote: post #243
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is? To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available. They don't all have them because libraries are locally administered and each locality gets to make its own choices, but if that's the case in your locality then you can direct your complaints to the town council rather than the federal government. > Ah, and…

> To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available. They have some materials available, but often older or less specialized ones. That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact. > This is the thing where perfect is impossible. If you live in an urban area, having a library within walking distance is feasible because there a…

> That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact.

"Rich people have more money" isn't an interesting fact, it's just the definition of rich people.

> How about introducing DEI programs that help these disadvantaged people access the same materials?

The term "DEI" has been applied to disparate impact rules and other policies that amount to race quotas and correspondingly garner strong opposition. If you want to advance good policies, you should stop using the same term to apply to them as is used to apply to bad policies with strong opposition.

> There's obviously an incredibly large gap between "spend $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".

There is equally obviously a point at which the threshold of diminishing returns is met, and high-quality individualized private tutoring is plausibly beyond that threshold because it is very expensive. It's also still not clear how you expect to feasibly provide a high density of libraries in an area with a low density of people.

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

#247

Post by [deleted] »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #179
harimau777 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#248

Post by Timon3 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #246
Timon3 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available. They have some materials available, but often older or less specialized ones. That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact. > This is the thing where perfect is impossible. If you live in an urban area, having a library within walking distance is feasible because there a…

> That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact. "Rich people have more money" isn't an interesting fact, it's just the definition of rich people. > How about introducing DEI programs that help these disadvantaged people access the same materials? The term "DEI" has been applied to disparate impact rules and other policies that amount to race quotas and correspondingly garn…

> "Rich people have more money" isn't an interesting fact, it's just the definition of rich people.

That's not what I said. This is bordering on bad faith, please don't do that.

> The term "DEI" has been applied to disparate impact rules and other policies that amount to race quotas and correspondingly garner strong opposition. If you want to advance good policies, you should stop using the same term to apply to them as is used to apply to bad policies with strong opposition.

First, what term would you have me use instead? Second, I don't believe it matters what term I choose, because it will get demonized just like DEI did.

> There is equally obviously a point at which the threshold of diminishing returns is met, and high-quality individualized private tutoring is plausibly beyond that threshold because it is very expensive.

There is still a large gap between "high-quality individualized private tutoring" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".

But that's besides the point, which was: objective metrics don't mean you're measuring merit. You've shown wonderfully how those advocating for "meritocracy" often don't care about actual merit. Thank you for the discussion, but I don't think it makes sense to continue, as you seem to simply not care about the issues with your position.

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

#249

Post by BurningFrog »

fazeirony wrote: post #165
BurningFrog wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non conspiracy explanation: It seemed to work at first, but over time it became clear it didn't.

> but over time it became clear it didn't. are profits spiralling downward? are these businesses, overall, making less profit? because of remote workers? or is it closer to the truth to say that no amount of profit - or asserting authority over workers - is ever enough and since companies are in a position of power to squeeze blood from a stone, they will?

If that how advantageous you think running a company is, you should definitely start one!

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

#250

Post by relaxing »

scoofy wrote: post #244
eddieroger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There is a conflation in the idea behind this comment that drives me crazy. This version of equity based on race is using race as a proxy for outcomes in life that are actually based on a wide variety of factors. Equality based on race is treating peoples race as equal. The idea that we care about equity is important , but using race as a proxy means we need to care especially about the proxy and making sure the prox…

> This version of equity based on race is using race as a proxy for outcomes in life

Because racism is ongoing and negatively impacts people of color, it makes sense to focus where harm is being done.

There is a leftist school of thought that agrees with you (focus on class instead of race). But I personally don’t believe that a focus purely on outcomes would be applied equitably while racism still exists.

> we're so focused on outputs throughout every stage of the life process that were missing a massive shift in the inputs

It is a fallacy to think we can’t focus on multiple things at once. Nothing keeps us for helping boys in some sectors and women in others.

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