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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

#471

Post by fc417fc802 »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #242
eddieroger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

To people downvoting the above comment - could you explain your reasons? You may feel all arguments have already been said on this issue but the situation is different today. And especially young people, whether white or colored, feel they have more bleak future in front of them than the previous generations and basically refuse to reproduce globally. In this light, it's worth having this discussion again because it…

I didn't but I would have. It appears to be dragging the discussion towards political flamewar. It doesn't present any substantial observations or reasoning, just ideological talking points that we've all heard countless times by now.

If there had at least been some attempt to tie things back to the headline article in a nontrivial way then maybe I'd be more sympathetic.

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

#472

Post by fc417fc802 »

scoofy wrote: post #244
eddieroger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There is a conflation in the idea behind this comment that drives me crazy. This version of equity based on race is using race as a proxy for outcomes in life that are actually based on a wide variety of factors. Equality based on race is treating peoples race as equal. The idea that we care about equity is important , but using race as a proxy means we need to care especially about the proxy and making sure the prox…

Why use various proxies at all? Most of the group differences seem to largely share poverty as a primary root factor, and this impacts plenty of sub-groups within the supposedly advantaged groups as well. So why are we not simply addressing that directly?

A refrain I've been seeing a lot lately is that the outcome of a system is its purpose. Perhaps that reasoning should be equally applied to an analysis of the implementation choices made by various social programs and the solutions espoused by various political movements.

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

#473

Post by fc417fc802 »

mcphage wrote: post #456
sporkland wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely and unequivocally false. Unless you are casting Asian and Indian as white.

That’s fair—I’m closer to the east coast, so around me it is mostly white dudes, but that might not be true elsewhere. But it is mostly men, at any rate.

The question was if you believe the hiring process is excluding the other groups. Another way of asking that is, are similarly qualified people from the other groups applying in sufficient number? Would they have been hired if they had?

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

#474

Post by fc417fc802 »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #360
jensensbutton wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a simplistic view. E.g. how does this argument account for the data we have that someone with black sounding name will get less opportunity than someone with a white sounding name and an identical resume? In this case the lower chances to get ahead have nothing to do with economic circumstance.

https://thefederalist.com/2018/12/07/thomas-sowell-explains-... It still has to do with economic circumstance, but here, according to Sowell it's about the cost of employing empirical discrimination (judging each specific case through complete knowledge of the individual) instead of a proxy for empirical discrimination (like likelihoods based on a non-arbitrary characteristic such as income or neighborhood). The solu…

> any form of capitalism won't allow it to stand

You raise an interesting point but I think that's an overly broad claim. Groups with strong internal adhesion and sufficiently high trust can remain xenophobic indefinitely.

It's also wrong on some level to refer to these things as arbitrary characteristics. They might be seemingly unrelated, but in a broader social context they are often far from arbitrary. Particularly when it comes to belief systems they can have direct and tangible impacts.

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

#475

Post by fc417fc802 »

nradov wrote: post #430
harimau777 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is necessarily that simple. A pickup truck, a few tools, and enough time or savings to spend starting a business is a lot more than many people have. Then there's survivor bias; while it may have worked out for them, how many people did it not work out for. Finally, there's the issue that not everyone can be an entrepreneur. Someone has to actually work at the various businesses that exist and are be…

Regardless of what you might "think", it really is necessarily that simple. If you try hard enough you can always find plausible excuses for failure.

> If you try hard enough you can always find plausible excuses for failure.

That is true but it does not imply that success is possible for all people in all cases.

I can always blame some external factor for my loss in a competition but it is not necessarily within the realm of (realistic) possibility for me to win every possible matchup.

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

#476

Post by fc417fc802 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #378
ryanobjc wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you said "make it easier for someone without rich parents to start a business by lowering barriers to entry and regulatory overhead on small entities" This is a supposition: the cure "lowering barriers, regulatory overhead" may not cause the intended outcome "make it easier for someone without rich parents to start a business". Given the primary reason why it's hard to start a business is access to capital, I'm no…

> Given the primary reason why it's hard to start a business is access to capital, I'm not really sure what "lowering barriers" (which barriers exactly? how?) and "regulatory overhead" (which ones specifically?) will meaningfully do to improve the outcomes of black people. Suppose you want to start a restaurant. You already have a kitchen at home, so can you put a sign out front and start serving customers without ha…

> When these things are so well documented you can sue the perpetrators in those cases.

To be fair oftentimes that documentation is due to the regulations you're speaking against here. I'm not necessarily taking a side. It just seemed relevant to point out.

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

#477

Post by fc417fc802 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #436
harimau777 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While many regulations exist due to regulatory capture, many also exist for good reasons. Notably, with the possible exception of the complicated taxes, the examples you give all have pretty obvious health and safety reasons why they exist. I agree that we should be careful to avoid overregulation in general and regulatory capture in particular. However, even without that access to capital is likely to be a major bar…

> Notably, with the possible exception of the complicated taxes, the examples you give all have pretty obvious health and safety reasons why they exist. What health and safety reason requires a 3% processing fee for credit card payments? Why is it unsafe for the proprietor to live in a room in the same structure as a restaurant in some areas, but not in other places that have different zoning? The only thing that com…

The electrical example is particularly interesting because it's generally legal to DIY things on a house that you simultaneously own and live in. Many (not sure if all) US states even have laws preventing insurance from forbidding such (although they can generally deny coverage after the fact if the incident can be shown to stem from your DIY work).

There also exist mixed zoning areas where you can run a business that hosts customers on site out of your house.

Presumably the big differences are incentives and scale. Scale wise, more building occupants justifies more regulation. In terms of incentives, there's probably less inclination to cut corners and be reckless with a structure that your entire family lives in.

I think I'm going to blame zoning on this one long before I take issue with electrician apprenticeships.

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

#478

Post by sanswork »

Whoppertime wrote: post #455
sanswork wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an admission that a group focused on women is concerned with the impacts of issues on women.

Is there a society for Men Engineers that is concerned with the impacts of issues on men?

For most of history that would be any society for engineers.

If you feel there are issues uniquely impacting male engineers though why not start one?

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

#479

Post by dlmilli »

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…

[dead]

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

#480

Post by scoofy »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #472
scoofy wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a conflation in the idea behind this comment that drives me crazy. This version of equity based on race is using race as a proxy for outcomes in life that are actually based on a wide variety of factors. Equality based on race is treating peoples race as equal. The idea that we care about equity is important , but using race as a proxy means we need to care especially about the proxy and making sure the prox…

Why use various proxies at all? Most of the group differences seem to largely share poverty as a primary root factor, and this impacts plenty of sub-groups within the supposedly advantaged groups as well. So why are we not simply addressing that directly? A refrain I've been seeing a lot lately is that the outcome of a system is its purpose. Perhaps that reasoning should be equally applied to an analysis of the imple…

Why? I presume that people don’t look for second and third order effects. They see disproportionate numbers of people of color struggling, they blame the first order grouping as the cause.

Statistics is complicated. People reject even straightforward theories with obvious scientific bases. It makes sense.

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