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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

#311

Post by antics »

I am Wasq'u (a tribe in the PNW), I am connected to my tribe, and I am one of a handful of remaining speakers of the language. I am really tired of being caught in the maw of people fighting about my identity, what I am owed, and to some extent what place my identity has in society.

To the pro-DEI crowd: I have some hard truths for you. Actual change requires commitment and focus over an extremely long period of time. That means you have to choose probably 1 cause among the many worthy causes, and then invest in it instead of the others. You can't do everything. The problems that afflict my community are running water, drug addiction, lack of educational resources, and secular trends have have made our traditional industries obsolete. I am not saying that land acknowledgements and sports teams changing their names from racial slurs are negative developments, but these things are not even in my list of top 100 things to get done.

We all want to help, but to have an impact you must have courage to say no to the vast majority of social issues you could care about, and then commit deeply to the ones you decide to work on. Do not be a tourist. I don't expect everyone to get involved in Indian affairs, but I do expect you to be honest with me about whether you really care. Don't play house or go through motions to make yourself feel better.

When you do commit to some issue, understand that the biggest contributions you can make are virtually always not be marketable or popular—if they are, you take that as a sign that you need to evaluate whether they really are impactful. Have the courage to make an assessment about what will actually have an impact on the things you care about, and then follow through with them.

To the anti-DEI crowd: focus on what you can build together instead of fighting on ideological lines. The way out for many minority communities in America is substantial economic development. In my own communities, I have seen economic development that has given people the ability to own their own destiny. It has changed the conversation from a zero sum game to one where shared interests makes compromise possible. If you want to succeed you need to understand that your fate is shared with those around you. In-fighting between us is going to make us less competitive on the world stage, which hurts all of us.

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

#312

Post by IncreasePosts »

jlhawn wrote: post #257
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…

> ... who owned the land ... they didn't use the word "owned", only "occupied". The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concept of land "ownership" and would think of it more like land alienation. As a Georgist, I'm personally very annoyed by these sort of empty indigenous land acknowledgements. I'm more excited about stuff like this Squamish Nation housing development in Vancouver, B…

Well, I feel like the "traditional way of life" argument is okay for why they should get special treatment. But why should anyone get special treatment if they are going to just, essentially, treat it as way to siphon tax revenue from the larger society?

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

#313

Post by [deleted] »

kevinh wrote: post #297
gorgoiler wrote: post #124

Diversity in tech hiring never felt like the right end of the funnel. It’s why I went into teaching and I’m proud to say after what seems like a ridiculously short amount of time (“they grow up so fast” etc.) the girls from my classes are now entering the work force as SWE and ML interns. Not many, but more than none. When we focus diversity efforts on high school kids then we get a turnaround at the funnel entrypoin…

People oppose efforts to make changes at the other end of the funnel too. This is the most popular post about Girls Who Code (the first organization that comes to mind, why I searched it): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980431 You get similar complaints there.

[deleted]

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

#314

Post by nemo44x »

epicureanideal wrote: post #301

[flagged]

It will be seriously real when the NYT abandons it. Washington Post has started to and writers are fleeing to lesser publications. Need to continue to marginalize the wokes and push them to irrelevant spaces where they can do their thing and no one listens.

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

#315

Post by [deleted] »

miles wrote: post #273
bko wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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% T…

[deleted]

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

#316

Post by thepasswordis »

triceratops wrote: post #169
baq wrote: post #55

Are they rolling back Chinese and Indian managers only hiring Chinese and Indian folks, too?

You want to...make their hiring more diverse?

No I think what they're saying is that they want ability to be the only (or at least by far the primary) metric used to evaluate the fitness of a candidate.

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

#317

Post by freejazz »

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…

In no way it is at all believable that 94% of all fortune 500 hiring during 2021 went to minorities. This is statistical mumbo-jumbo. Do you even work at a company like this? This statistic has to be misrepresentative of the conclusion you are suggesting because it is easily debunked by standing at the entrance to any midtown manhattan building during the morning rush hour.

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

#318

Post by dahinds »

wbl wrote: post #274
bko wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes this is a wildly misrepresented statistic that has nothing to do with DEI and everything to do with demographic shifts in the U.S. population (specifically, that the "non Hispanic white" segment of the U.S. population is shrinking).

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

#319

Post by nemo44x »

namirez wrote: post #54

[flagged]

They should statues of him and erect them all over the Bay Area. He was brave as evidenced by being witch hunted. There has been a lot of talk about “speaking truth to power” over the last few years and most of that is BS. What Damore did truly was.

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

#320

Post by cbeach »

> At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.

At last, a corporation acknowledges it's _cognitive_ diversity that matters.

Most other forms of diversity are superficial, inherent human characterstics that are already equal under law, and make no difference to people's ability to use technology.

I'm so relieved to see "DEI" die. With two young boys who are white, heterosexual and normal in every way, I found it disturbing to know they'd be discriminated against in the workplace.

I knew this discrimination existed because I've been a hiring manager and had HR explicitly tell me I needed to focus on hiring female technologist.

Luckily I left that job and am now at a smaller company that doesn't discriminate on gender)

However, most large corporates I've worked at have pushed the DEI agenda (with the 'E' standing for "equity" as opposed to the more ethical "equality").

There may have been historic discrimination against women and other minorities, but I have NEVER witnessed any such discrimination in the present day.

We must avoid replacing one form of immoral discrimination with another form of immoral discrimination.

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