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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

#501

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

dijit wrote: post #435
65 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My controversial opinion is that I think "main" is more descriptive and intuitive than "master."

my controversial opinion is that it never mattered, all that really mattered was that there was a universal word- changing it to anything would cause at least a few hundred hours of development work and a few hundred additional hours of changing documents and tutorials and stuff. For what? Main isn’t better if the issue is racism, because “main” has some really negative connotations in Korea (“main” families having s…

This.

What makes it worse:

- Each "bad" term gets replaced by multiple alternative terms, often non-obvious, so good luck figuring out what people mean now. For example, MitM (Man in the Middle) was a well established technical term. Everybody knew what was meant, the term had no acutal gender association in the meaning, but now you instead read "machine-in-the-middle, meddler-in-the-middle, manipulator-in-the-middle, person-in-the-middle (PITM), or adversary-in-the-middle (AITM)".

- The "it's more descriptive" excuse was used as a very thin veil of justification even though the actual reason for the change was clear. So not only do you get to deal with the extra hundreds of hours of overhead, but you also have people lie to your face about why you're being forced to do that.

- It never ends. First it was "master/slave", then "master" in any context, and once that battle was "won", proponents of such policies started finding new "offensive" words.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack#Notes

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

#502

Post by iLoveOncall »

scarface_74 wrote: post #239

I am a Black male and worked as a developer for mostly small unknown companies from 1996-2020. I then pivoted to cloud+app dev strategic consulting when a job at AWS (Professional Services) fell into my lap. I now work for a third party consulting company as a staff software architect. For the last 5 years, I have had customer facing jobs where I am either on video calls or flying out to customer sites working with s…

Maybe you didn't feel like those programs existed once you were in, but I guarantee you that they're very active in "positive discrimination" at the hiring and promotion time.

Just last year Amazon in the UK was offering special referral bonuses to employees referring black people specifically for example. I saved the emails for posterity.

For managers of technical roles, they're also a strong push to promote women as fast as possible. My manager has told me about every woman in my team that he wanted to fast track their promotion. I've never heard the same about any of man, regardless of their skill. Of course I recognize that's more anecdotical than the referral thing, but it definitely exists.

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

#503

Post by darth_avocado »

swatcoder wrote: post #10
JohnMakin wrote: post #3

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…

> acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the first place. That's exactly what they're doing and I don't think that's a secret. > This kind of announcement seems extremely self defeating and unlikely to please anyone and piss off just about anyone that cares about this in any way shape or form, on either side. It's not about making users or bloggers happy. They don't care whether those people are "pis…

I know of a famous tech company where majority of workers were white, not even Asian and Indian people, who usually tend to over represent in tech. Around the BLM times they put in policy that they had to interview people of color. What most managers did was just interview people of color only to reject them, often judge the candidates too harshly to ensure no laws were broken. They often interviewed the same candidate for multiple positions, it was pretty obvious what they were doing. Obviously if they were investigated, nothing provable would ever come out. But stuff like that is pretty prevalent in tech.

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

#504

Post by energy123 »

jeffbee wrote: post #354
gigatree wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Companies care about attracting all segments of society because if they can expand their applicant pool they will pay less for labor. If I am the only person smart enough to recruit qualified graduates from HBCUs then I get to be more selective in hiring and I also get to offer less wages but still fill the position.

Companies also want to be in the middle of the pack when it comes to sociocultural norms. There is safety in numbers. When everyone was adopting DEI initiatives, it was the safest for you to do it too. Now that everyone is abandoning DEI initiatives, it's also the safest to abandon it. There is no upside in being the fastest when it comes to bucking society's norms.

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

#505

Post by darth_avocado »

purplethinking wrote: post #263
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.

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.…

> If you were a woman of color in tech you’ve been basically guaranteed a job, no matter how good or bad you actually are.

Is that why there are so many women of color software engineers in tech?

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

#506

Post by gorgoiler »

whimsicalism wrote: post #469
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…

i think that i've seen in my lifetime AA in hiring absolutely translate to shifts in undergrad composition. not sure if it spills over to highschool, but it definitely does when people are choosing what to do in college.

In my experience girls want to do CS but they lack confidence and are given too many opportunities to opt for something easier where they think they’ll be more successful. (I don’t know about any other of the diversity axes as much.)

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

#507

Post by diogocp »

lolinder wrote: post #371
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…

Yes. What too few people realized was that the rollout of DEI was driven by what was trending at the time, designed to win political points with the groups that were politically ascendant. These programs were never a victory for the principles or the people, they were marketing. So it should come as no shock whatsoever that now that another political group is politically ascendant the marketing that is valuable has c…

> Change that occurs through fear of your power can only last as long as your power. Lasting change is only possible by actually changing hearts and minds.

Exactly. And you're not going to change hearts and minds by silencing dissent and enforcing speech codes, as progressives are wont to do these days.

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

#508

Post by anon373839 »

seadan83 wrote: post #413
lolinder wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. What too few people realized was that the rollout of DEI was driven by what was trending at the time, designed to win political points with the groups that were politically ascendant. These programs were never a victory for the principles or the people, they were marketing. So it should come as no shock whatsoever that now that another political group is politically ascendant the marketing that is valuable has c…

I agree with most of your points. Though with respect lasting change, where is your impression coming from that the gains are in the last 10 to 15 years? Or even that is a widespread belief? According to reporting at the guardian [1], FBs DEI program increased black and brown employees from 8% to 12%. Seems abysmal. My perspective, US society is still fighting for gains that _started_ 160 years ago. Still painstaking…

> My perspective, US society is still fighting for gains that _started_ 160 years ago. Still painstakingly slow.

I feel this comment won’t win me many friends, but since no one has mentioned it: one of the striking features of the DEI/social justice movement was its rejection of MLK-style racial equality ideals. An entirely new language was invented to describe the new philosophy. And in some circles, if you appealed to MLK’s of vision equality you were ostracized.

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

#509

Post by [deleted] »

yoavm wrote: post #358
Animats wrote: post #104

So far, Zuckerberg (Meta), Pichai (Google), Bezos (Amazon),Cook (Apple), and Sarandos (Netflix) have all personally made the pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the ring. That's all of the FAANG CEOs. Nadella and Altman phoned it in. The Wall Street Journal has a long list.[1] It works for Putin. [1] https://archive.is/ozPQi

As an outsider looking at the US, this looks so dangerous. It feels like the whole democratic system is bending to the power of money. Just a few weeks ago, an American friend was making the comparison between the number of billion $ companies in the EU vs the US. I was trying to tell them that it isn't necessarily a bad thing to have less of that - I rather have 1,000 million $ companies than a billion $ one. The co…

[deleted]

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

#510

Post by defrost »

jiggawatts wrote: post #351
jlhawn wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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…

Here in Australia they use the carefully crafted phrase: “the previous custodians of this land”. As in… we are the custodians now .

I've not seen "previous" used ..

eg:

  W.AUstralian Health acknowledges the Aboriginal people of the many traditional lands and language groups of Western Australia.

  It acknowledges the wisdom of Aboriginal Elders both past and present and pays respect to Aboriginal communities of today.
~ https://www.health.wa.gov.au/Improving-WA-Health/About-Abori...

is pretty generic for a handwave across the entire state.

In specific places, large tracts of land here, the terminology is current custodians - if you recall that whole deal with Mabo and Native Title there are large ares in which the traditional inhabitants are now the current owners under Commonwealth Law that once didn't acknowledge them as human and declared the land Terra Nullius.

Mabo decision: https://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/Stories_and_Hist...

  We acknowledge the Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their continued connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to their Cultures, Country and Elders past, present and emerging.

  We also acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and live, the land on which this exhibition was created, and the land on which Australian Parliament House is situated – an area where people have met for thousands of years.
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