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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

#321

Post by eapressoandcats »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #145
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…

This is just common sense, or should be. Unfortunately common sense is as uncommon as people tend to joke about. So you get a lot of focus on business hiring practices, even though it's literally impossible to hire candidates that don't exist. Sometimes this gets taken to absolutely farcical levels. I recall reading a blog from an Irish writer about how activists were trying to demand that companies there hire black…

Except fields often aren’t open to people in different demographics. Sexism and racism are both very real and objectively quantified.

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

#322

Post by a_cardboard_box »

ceejayoz wrote: post #8
spondylosaurus wrote: post #2

> We serve everyone. We are committed to making our products accessible, beneficial and universally impactful for everyone. The new(ly leaked) moderation guidelines might suggest otherwise...

For anyone unfamiliar: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-new-hate-spee... > “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird,’” the revised company guidelines read.

An important thing to note is that this is an exception to the rule: you aren't allowed to call someone mentally ill, unless it's based on gender or sexual orientation.

https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/h...

> Do not post: [...]

> - Insults, including those about: [...]

> Mental characteristics, including but not limited to allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness. [...] We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation

Edit: I re-read it and I think you can normally call someone mentally ill if it's not because of a protected characteristic. It's still a targeted cutout to allow transphobia/homophobia specifically. So you can call someone mentally ill for liking pineapple on pizza, or being gay or trans, but not for being black.

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

#323

Post by blitzar »

mrandish wrote: post #163
jandrese wrote: 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.

> they were largely just PR initiatives right from the start Yes, when they were widely introduced in my large company circa 2016-17 it was explained to senior managers as part of HR's efforts to "align with industry best practices". During the meeting introducing it to VPs and dept heads, there were skeptical questions as a lot of groups were under shipping pressure and short-handed. There was also already a lot of…

My general experience was that this was much more a thing on the ground in ~2015-2020 and the internet / political rage machine is (as usual) a few years behind.

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

#324

Post by kenferry »

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…

Mm. It’s certainly good to work at the other end of the funnel (thank you!) but it also won’t help address pattern matching that people do in hiring.

It’s an incredibly natural thing for people to hire people like themselves, or people they meet their image of what a top notch software dev looks like. It requires active effort to counteract this. One can definitely argue about the efficacy of DEI approaches, but I disagree that JUST increasing the strength of applicants will address the issue.

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

#325

Post by renegade-otter »

OnionBlender wrote: post #248

Does this mean we can go back to using "master" as our git repo's default branch?

"master" was not a thing even before. While I get the farce of renaming it for "social justice" reasons, it's still a stupid name.

It's "trunk", as in "trunk and branches".

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

#327

Post by eapressoandcats »

cbeach wrote: post #320

> 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 t…

Are you serious that you’ve never witnessed any discrimination against women or minorities?

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

#328

Post by dsajames »

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…

So this is an example of what not to do.

1. Violate the law more blatantly than anyone else. 94% of new jobs went to POC? So what, 50% of the population shared 6% of the jobs? This sounds like apartheid era South Africa.

2. Create a backlash where the largest population and richest segment is so angry, it uses all its resources to absolutely destroy this.

Nice going.

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

#330

Post by paxys »

thepasswordis wrote: post #316
triceratops wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no magical measure for ability. People tend to hire people who look like them and act like them, simply because in their mind that is what seems correct. That's how humans have always behaved, and it isn't going to change.
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