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

theregister.com

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

#401

Post by Izkata »

mcphage wrote: post #388
Izkata wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and not just fudge the metric through race quotas etc. It goes further than just fudging the metrics: By relying on quotas you have to dig deeper into the minority pool of candidates, and are more likely to get someone less skilled than if you hadn't used quotas. This combined with the overall focus on DEI just ends up reinforcing racism/sexism when the quota-hires are more inept than the non-quota hires.

> By relying on quotas you have to dig deeper into the minority pool of candidates, and are more likely to get someone less skilled than if you hadn't used quotas. What? By pulling from a larger pool of candidates, you’re more likely to get someone more skilled.

Pulling from the 30% of applicants that matches the quota will always be a smaller pool than pulling from all 100% of applicants.

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

#402

Post by [deleted] »

mcphage wrote: post #388
Izkata wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and not just fudge the metric through race quotas etc. It goes further than just fudging the metrics: By relying on quotas you have to dig deeper into the minority pool of candidates, and are more likely to get someone less skilled than if you hadn't used quotas. This combined with the overall focus on DEI just ends up reinforcing racism/sexism when the quota-hires are more inept than the non-quota hires.

> By relying on quotas you have to dig deeper into the minority pool of candidates, and are more likely to get someone less skilled than if you hadn't used quotas. What? By pulling from a larger pool of candidates, you’re more likely to get someone more skilled.

[deleted]

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

#403

Post by rayiner »

wredcoll wrote: post #385
rayiner wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The plain fact is that people are discriminated, for and against, based solely on their appearance. It happens today and it sure happened 100 years ago. What does that have to do with how someone does their job?

The subject is preferential admission to harvard, what do you mean who does a job?

This thread is about diversity in the workplace. OP said: “Personally I fully agree that building a diverse workforce is more profitable…” I’m asking how that’s possible when race is a superficial and meaningless.

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

#404

Post by [deleted] »

wredcoll wrote: post #323
rayiner wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think people who have different skin colors do their jobs differently? Can you articulate how you think your white workers do their jobs differently than say your hispanic workers?

You know, and I know, and literally everybody in this thread knows, that race is a an imperfect proxy for other things. Why keep trotting this out like you're going to really get someone with it?

[deleted]

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

#405

Post by AnthonyMouse »

wredcoll wrote: post #319
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why is that not the proposal instead of DEI?

Because it's incredibly complicated and proxying it via race is easier and humans like easy?

Using race as a proxy for other things is what racism is all about. We're trying to get rid of that rather than perpetuate it.

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

#406

Post by mcphage »

Izkata wrote: post #401
mcphage wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By relying on quotas you have to dig deeper into the minority pool of candidates, and are more likely to get someone less skilled than if you hadn't used quotas. What? By pulling from a larger pool of candidates, you’re more likely to get someone more skilled.

Pulling from the 30% of applicants that matches the quota will always be a smaller pool than pulling from all 100% of applicants.

Say you’re looking to hire 20 people. So you pick the 20 best, and you end up with the 17 best men and the 3 best women. Of course you claim to be gender-blind and it just happens that you got 17 men and only 3 women, these things happen, it’s nobody’s fault.

Now imagine if you were required to hire 50% men and 50% women. So you’d end up with the top 10 men, and the top 10 women. What that means is, you didn’t hire the 11th - 17th rated men, and instead did hire the 4th - 10th rated women.

Now: maybe you think that’s not a fair system, and you’re probably right. But it would mean you’re hiring better candidates. You pass on some lower rated candidates that only made it through because they were guys, and instead got some higher rated candidates that you had passed on previously because they were women.

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

#407

Post by mcphage »

trogdor wrote: post #396
mcphage wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t see why that is desirable, important, or even possible. Are you okay with being in one of the groups where the outcomes are worse?

I am not sure what you mean. Would you give me an example?

I’m not sure what groups you were referring to in your original post, so it would probably be better if you provided the example.

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

#408

Post by rayiner »

wredcoll wrote: post #304
s1artibartfast wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to education, I'm not attached to SAT scores. Pick any non racial metric of merit, and I'm OK with it. Income is fine, not a protected clause. Random is fine too. Just don't promote or penalize people based on race. With respect to jobs, if you agree the most qualified person should get it, we are similarly aligned. If you agree with all that, we are good, not matter what it is called. I just call it non…

I'm not sure this is terribly relevant given where the conversation has gone, but in your example, college admissions, race was essentially used as a tie breaker between equally qualified candidates. I suspect that's how it ended up being used in a lot of places (aside from deliberate outreaches to encourage applications, etc). Beyond that though, I'm not sure not getting into harvard is exactly a "grave injustice".…

> race was essentially used as a tie breaker between equally qualified candidates.

That’s demonstrably untrue. At Harvard, an Asian candidate at the top decile of academic index scores had roughly the same admissions rate as a black candidate in the 4th decile: https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-acti...

The candidates were basically competing in entirely different lanes based on race.

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

#409

Post by harimau777 »

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…

I think it's probably some of both. Certainly a lot of inequality is economic in a way that is independent of race. However, I think that there's also a degree to which people in power are naturally going to favor people like them. I don't think it's even necessarily a matter of discrimination. If I'm interviewing, for example, it's going to naturally be easier for me to recognize indicators of merit associated with my own culture. Therefore, I think that DEI is an important part of making our society more of a meritocracy.

In terms of your second paragraph. I think that the problem is that those regulations are often put in place to protect people in a way that doesn't depend on company size. For example, in many cases workers usually don't need any less protection just because the company that they are working for is small.

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

#410

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mcphage wrote: post #406
Izkata wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling from the 30% of applicants that matches the quota will always be a smaller pool than pulling from all 100% of applicants.

Say you’re looking to hire 20 people. So you pick the 20 best, and you end up with the 17 best men and the 3 best women. Of course you claim to be gender-blind and it just happens that you got 17 men and only 3 women, these things happen, it’s nobody’s fault. Now imagine if you were required to hire 50% men and 50% women. So you’d end up with the top 10 men, and the top 10 women. What that means is, you didn’t hire t…

You're assuming the men and women being judged on a different scale is the only way you can get a disparity to begin with.

Suppose to be qualified for the job you need a particular degree and 85% of the people who hold the degree are men. Then you'd expect 85% of the people you hire to be men, and what happens if you require 50% of them to be women?

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