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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

#531

Post by jmcdowell »

thefaux wrote: post #269

The really troubling news buried in this to me was the appointment of Dana White to the meta board of directors. Like seriously what purpose does he serve but to appease the new administration?

I'd recommend listening to the first hour of the podcast this is taken from just as he was more candid than I thought he would be.

Zuckerberg at points brings up how the EU as is very defensive and has taken social media companies to court for the sum of 30 billion (never mentioning why). He laments how the US government need to be more protective of US tech companies overseas specifically naming the EU. When talking about Dana he says how he will explicitly help with them work with difficult foreign governments (be that through how he did it with the UFC or his relationship with the new administration).

It sounded quite like they're preparing to more confrontational with the EU and he at one point mentions how he thinks the new admin is going to protect them more with foreign countries.

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

#533

Post by JohnMakin »

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…

Thanks for sharing your experience

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

#534

Post by self_awareness »

dom96 wrote: post #483
epicureanideal wrote: post #301

[flagged]

> woke to collapse What does that even mean? "Woke" is such a non-sense word these days that you really need to be more specific.

Only woke people have problems with understanding what "woke" means.

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

#536

Post by AdrianB1 »

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…

Many DEI programs are hit hard by reality: there are only so many people of race X, gender Y or whatever metric Z interested and qualified for a job. The more difficult the job, the less diversity of candidates you have.

I did around 1000 interviews for my current company and about 200 for the previous one. I found that in IT in Europe there are not many candidates to meet DEI targetsand still hire the qualified ones. Even expanding to other continents, we barely made it; the last team I hired was one Latino, one Filipino and one white, 2 out of 3 were male. I interviewed around 30 candidates for these positions and I selected the top 3. These 3 were just above the lower limit of expertise to be hired, so I basically had zero choice, the alternative was to pull triple shifts myself to cover for the missing people.

Let's say you are the director of a steel plant. DEI targets are totally irrelevant, I never heard about a woman working on the plant floor, but I have many cousins who did. Dying at 45 or 50 years old due to lung or throat cancer is not something many women want to, but all my cousins did. I don't believe in DEI in these circumstances. But if you want DEI in "a day in life of a Microsoft /Twitter employee having free food and pointless meetings all day" videos, that is not fair.

So, I don't know why you were not able to place the developers, but think about DEI even more. We have several black people in my department, one of the best PMs I worked with is an older black woman, a good professional will find a place almost anywhere. Morgan Freeman shows that being black does not prevent one from magnificent results, but asking for rewards for being black is not the way.

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

#537

Post by chrislongss »

fmajid wrote: post #299
swatcoder wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You can be unbiased in hiring and still end up with an unrepresentative mix, because underprepresented minorities don't even apply, and outreach is a good way to get to improve that without lowering your standards. That's the theory, at least, but yes, in practice it's really hard and most of these efforts end up performative, and staffing DEI bureaucracies with minorities is a good way to make the dismal diversity s…

These DEI programs were not primarily about outreach. Outreach existed way before DEI (e.g. interns, new grads, Grace Hopper conference, etc) and will continue to exist. DEI introduced improper - discriminatory - systems with quotas and heavy prioritization of specific groups of people.

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

#538

Post by kenferry »

subarctic wrote: post #362
kenferry wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

Yes it will! That pattern matching is based on prior experience and if the entire makeup of candidates changes that'll cause people to pattern match differently. If old prejudices are taking a while to die out, it won't be long until someone smart realizes there's whole groups of qualified candidates who aren't getting the same offers as others and hires them

That's an efficient market theory, and it's extremely optimistic about how real people work.

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

#539

Post by hyperdunc »

mips_avatar wrote: post #280

My experience with DEI at Microsoft was that the true believers really had their hearts in the right place. Almost all of the negative consequences I saw, came from people who saw DEI as a way to get ahead. I think the biggest problem with DEI initiatives is how much they seem to only benefit cynical people.

This is a pattern we see again and again. The true believers are fools because they don't anticipate how the implementation of their doctrine will be gamed.

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

#540

Post by loeg »

dang wrote: post #463
loeg wrote: post #56

Good to hear. Racism / sexism has no place in hiring practices and was always illegal.

" Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What about this do you perceive to be flamebait or a generic tangent? I’m directly and sincerely commenting on the article. Plenty of other comments are expressing either support or criticism of the policy change.
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