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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

#271

Post by kjellsbells »

ncr100 wrote: post #230
firefoxd wrote: post #184

I wrote about my experience working as a software developer and being black in the industry and I was lucky to have it published on BBC [1]. What immediately followed, every large company reached out to have me work as a consultant for their diversity program. I found it fascinating that they had a team of DEI experts in place already. Like what makes one an expert? In addition to my job, I spent nights developing pr…

This is saying those businesses all used DEI for show, and suggests their efforts were half-hearted, if I read correctly. Their metrics I assume are zero / flat, around 'success' for DEI, derivatively. To me this suggests the next best focus area for increased fairness of societal fiscal (opportunity) performance is regulation, perhaps driven by social change and social pressure. I have next to no influence. Still I…

An alternate take: there are good DEI programs and poor ones. The poor ones fail because the planners dont really know what they are trying to do, but leadership thinks they ought to have one, and so they metric-ize it. And since (again, no clarity of thought) hard numbers in areas like hiring sail perilously close to large legal rocks, they whiff on the metrics and end up measuring something like "engagement". And, concomitantly, deliver a lot of low value chatter that provides ample ammunition to opponents of any kind of DEI programs, even the good ones.

A good DEI program should, IMHO, be indistinguishable from good management culture embedded at every level in an org.

- It should not be controversial to assert, and product management to insist, say, that products designed for humanity should be usable by humanity: men and women, for example - but we still have medicine and cars tested on male models, and software that is unusable if you have low vision or cant operate a mouse and keyboard simultaneously. That doesn't automatically mean one must hire 50:50 men:women, say (see legal rocks, above), but it certainly starts to smell like a missed opportunity if you don't have a single person on your staff or in your network of consultants who can explain what it feels like to wear a seatbelt when you are 1.5m and 50kg not 2m and 85kg. If you want better products, this seems like a no brainer, but it doesnt seem to happen.

- It must absolutely be a mandate for all managers to avoid cliques. All men? All women? All Indians? All Purdue grads? Close watching needed, especially when those groups hire and promote. Doesn't need a mandate, needs better managers of managers.

Tldr is that no amount of DEI will fix bad management culture.

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

#273

Post by miles »

bko wrote: post #246
firefoxd wrote: post #184

I wrote about my experience working as a software developer and being black in the industry and I was lucky to have it published on BBC [1]. What immediately followed, every large company reached out to have me work as a consultant for their diversity program. I found it fascinating that they had a team of DEI experts in place already. Like what makes one an expert? In addition to my job, I spent nights developing pr…

A lot of people say DEI programs were purely performative and just for political points. But these policies did change the corporate landscape and affect hiring decisions. Of 323,092 new jobs added in 2021 by S&P 100 companies, 302,570 (94%) went to people of color This data came from workforce demographic reports submitted to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by 88 S&P 100 companies Hispanic individua…

> Of 323,092 new jobs added in 2021 by S&P 100 companies, 302,570 (94%) went to people of color

Given this July 2024 population estimate by race from census.gov[1], leaving only 6% of new jobs to the majority seems tailor-made to trigger a large-scale backlash:

  75.3% White alone
  13.7% Black alone
  1.3% American Indian and Alaska Native alone
  6.4% Asian alone
  0.3% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone
  3.1% Two or More Races
  19.5% Hispanic or Latino
  58.4% White alone, not Hispanic or Latino
[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045224

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

#274

Post by wbl »

bko wrote: post #246
firefoxd wrote: post #184

I wrote about my experience working as a software developer and being black in the industry and I was lucky to have it published on BBC [1]. What immediately followed, every large company reached out to have me work as a consultant for their diversity program. I found it fascinating that they had a team of DEI experts in place already. Like what makes one an expert? In addition to my job, I spent nights developing pr…

A lot of people say DEI programs were purely performative and just for political points. But these policies did change the corporate landscape and affect hiring decisions. Of 323,092 new jobs added in 2021 by S&P 100 companies, 302,570 (94%) went to people of color This data came from workforce demographic reports submitted to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by 88 S&P 100 companies Hispanic individua…

That data cannot support the conclusion drawn. You don't know what the turnover rate was.

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

#275

Post by UncleMeat »

paxys wrote: post #88

DEI was a song and dance that companies put on for the media, politicians, investors, employees, and the public at large. Now anti-DEI is a song and dance for the exact same reason. If you have been in the business long enough, you will know that the company has NO ONE's interests at heart. Never had and never will. They will discriminate against any race they have to, whether majority or minority, if it leads to an…

Sure, megacorps never had genuine interest in liberation at the very top.

But it is a genuine sign of renewed danger when megacorps are perceiving the general public as valuing reactionary politics instead of valuing diversity.

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

#277

Post by llamaimperative »

AlexandrB wrote: post #218
wussboy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people who say this haven't read the research about our unconscious biases. My personal "hit me on the head" moment was reading about the Cincinnati Orchestra who started auditioning candidates behind a curtain and suddenly found their ratio of male:female went from 3:1 to 1:1. No one at that organization was consciously discriminating. Everyone thought as you did that they were acting without racism/sexi…

This is a funny example because some in the pro-DEI movement advocate for ending blind auditions to enhance diversity[1]. I think if we could somehow do "blind auditions" for any kind of work, that would be the ideal case of non-biased hiring. But if the outcomes of this kind of blind hiring did not result in a "diverse" workforce, I don't think many DEI advocates would be on board. [1] https://archive.is/iH2uh

> if the outcomes of this kind of blind hiring did not result in a "diverse" workforce, I don't think many DEI advocates would be on board.

I really disagree with this. Obviously there are the extremists on the far end of the spectrum which this accurately describes, but the vast majority of people who support these types of programs arrive at it by observing 1) the literal centuries of examples like the one above and 2) the numerous visible day-to-day examples of racism/sexism one sees directly (not talking about silly microaggression shit)

It doesn't take an extreme viewpoint to come to the conclusion there are knobs that might need to be turned a bit more deliberately in our society to bring it closer to the blind evaluation model.

It's a shame how much of our discourse is people in the middle of the bell curve arguing principally against people on the far ends of it (or observing such arguments and wisely choosing to stay out of it).

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

#280

Post by mips_avatar »

My experience with DEI at Microsoft was that the true believers really had their hearts in the right place. Almost all of the negative consequences I saw, came from people who saw DEI as a way to get ahead. I think the biggest problem with DEI initiatives is how much they seem to only benefit cynical people.
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