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…
Crowning yourself as an expert in a politically contentious field is very lucrative if you can make it stick.
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.
DEI has not been only for show, I know for a fact that being "diverse" has been a huge benefit in job search for the past 15 years. If you're a "woman of color" in tech you've been basically guaranteed a job, no matter how good or bad you actually are. I've been on several teams where the higher ups demanded we hire women because we were not diverse enough. Various grants and investments require a certain ratio etc.…
I think there is a difference between diversity initiatives before 2020 and the DEI initiatives since 2020. As far as I can see, the latter is indeed is corporate puffery, where employees maybe join a half-hour seminar to talk about DEI every year, and perhaps there are new DEI groups for employees to discuss this. But the diversity hire initiative before 2020 was much more substantive that resulted in real meaningful changes to company demographics.
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…
Has anyone asked why so many companies seem to care so much about the appearance of DEI? And all at the same time? I know there’s cultural shifts towards that sort of thing, probably to fill the void left by religion, but does that explain why the world’s largest private equity firms push them so hard? Seems like something everyone just accepts without question, even though it’s completely out of character for people and entities who only exist to increase their own bottom line (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, it’s just so out of character to the point you’d think it would raise suspicion).
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.
1) it sounds crazy because it's actual statistical malpractice. See the many other comments explaining how it's bullshit
2) the significantly backlash is interesting, primarily because it centers around the bullshit statistics that companies pat themselves with. The hiring process is so nebulous and unknowable to the potential hiree that no person can really know whether they were denied a job due to dei policies. Yet we simultaneously assume that all non white people hired are being _hired because_ DEI, which really just undervalues the nonwhite population, as if they truly deserved none of the jobs, wouldn't have gotten any without the help. This combined into the rage that certain people feel about what really appears to be a back pat circle around naming a git branch and changing security terminology.
This comment is based upon n two assumptions: 1) Twitter has imploded, and is on the road to Myspace level relevance 2) that implosion is due to a removal of moderation I'll try to keep it politically neutral. But this and other Facebook announcements means inexorable collapse is on the medium term horizon, because they mirror what Twitter did These actions could possibly be done with social network circa early to mi…
by that same logic Bluesky should be overtaking X but it isn't X is growing even bigger and has international reach which Bluesky doesn't
It simply hasn’t been long enough. I wouldn’t necessarily bet that it will, but X has lost net users and Bluesky is gaining them so if trends continue (they might not) Bluesky will overtake X, but Twitter also wasn’t built in a year.
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…
> in part because of the "political landscape," People really should be more explicit about this. The "political landscape" here is the desire to pay fealty to an incoming administration in hopes of currying favor. American culture didn't drastically change. Trump got 3 million more votes in 2024 than he got in 2020 which is largely in line with overall population growth. That 3 million also amounts to less than 1% o…
> The "political landscape" here is the desire to pay fealty to an incoming administration in hopes of currying favor.
Exactly as it was when DEI practices were introduced.
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…
Green washing, security theatre, lip service, etc…
This is an old phenomenon that keeps reoccurring in many forms.
> ... 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?
Shouldn’t building dense housing in an area with a terrible housing shortage increase the tax base if anything?
Good to hear. Racism / sexism has no place in hiring practices and was always illegal.
I'm more worried because it's part of a big package of swinging to the right politically. The moderation rule about "You can only call someone mentally ill if they're also queer" seems particularly uhhh nuts, deranged, stupid even.
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.
That post is mostly factual observations, a reporting of lived experiences, if you will, not complaint.