MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#671

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 06, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

zero-sharp wrote: post #523

throwaway22032 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't consider there to be a difference. A society in which the children of successful people are prioritised over the children of unsuccessful people is almost certain to lead to better outcomes for exactly the same reasons. I came from an underprivileged background myself, if I were investing money with an aim to generating a return, I'd far sooner give it to a banker's son than someone from the estate I grew up…

Family wealth is probably an indicator for future success. I don't know the numbers, but I would expect family wealth to correlate positively with the earnings of the children. So if you want a return on investment, it makes sense to bet on the wealthy. But I thought we were talking merit and opportunity? No, being a banker's son doesn't predestine you to being more skillful. You should already have enough counterexa…

[deleted]

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

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Post by mistermann » Mon, May 06, 2024, 2:02 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #666

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things have "said purpose" and the "real purpose" because of which such absolutely kafkaesque things survive in organizations. The said purpose of-course is to make sure that the candidate is "committed to diversity". We can argue all day on whether a statement is in any way good measure of it. It really isn't. I have helped people write such statements and we have always written it with cynicism and great c…

The pinned comment at the top of this thread requests that "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive". Bravo to you for providing exactly that. Too much of the discourse around this insists that these statements are useless and counterproductive. But as you've explained, they do pretty well in staffing the leadership of these orgs with people who believe in this phi…

> The pinned comment at the top of this thread requests that "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive". Bravo to you for providing exactly that.

Consider the fine grained details of the logic involved in combining "more" with "exactly(!) that".

The above commenter framed the situation as the DEI folks being necessarily strategically dishonest and malicious, as opposed to being True Believers (more technically: Naive Realists), like most people are, though with different fantasy worlds, due to the consumption of different training material combined with the same flawed interpreter.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

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Post by samatman » Mon, May 06, 2024, 2:02 PM UTC

pygar wrote: post #499

samatman wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better. Your second sentence here doesn't actually follow from the first.

If you have 5 equally good candidates, 4 men and 1 woman that woman has a 1/5 chance of being selected. The others also have a 1/5 chance as individuals but the candidate selected has a 4/5 likelihood of being male. If you want to hire more women what do you do exactly?

Yes, it's true that if you want to hire some group of people above their percent rate in your applicant pool, you're going to have to put your thumb on the scale for that group of people.

But this has the opposite effect from what you were just claiming. It means you hire worse candidates merely on the basis of their immutable characteristics.

Or, equivalently, you discriminate against other candidates on the basis of their immutable characteristics. Which is illegal in the US.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

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Post by rahimnathwani » Mon, May 06, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

mintplant wrote: post #566

rahimnathwani wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP is spouting uninformed opinions and then patting themselves on the back for being an "outsider". Why so hostile? BTW I have nothing to gain from 'spouting uninformed opinions'. My opinion is mostly based on my own interactions with certain academics, and others I've had the opportunity to directly observe. Perhaps the patterns I've seen are not universal. But that doesn't mean that they are not common or, as y…

> Why so hostile? This sort of thread pops up again and again on HN. It's frustrating to read comment after comment of people being confidently wrong about your vocation.

I have an MBA, and spent years as a Product Manager.

There is much snark on HN about MBAs and PMs being useless. I read those comments with curiosity to understand what I might learn.

Those commenters' experience is not universal, but neither is my own. Some of the comments might be based on virtually no evidence, but that's probably not the majority.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

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Post by underlipton » Mon, May 06, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

afro88 wrote: post #557

underlipton wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually explained the need for DEI. >Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the…

Why not measure on diversity of thought then?

That's the goal. But you can't get there, under our current system and circumstances, without some DEI-like anti-filter. It's not either-or; "Measure diversity of thought," is step #2, after, "Counteract the social gravity of tribalism in its myriad forms."

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#676

Post by Manuel_D » Mon, May 06, 2024, 2:22 PM UTC

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #244

collingreen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very interested in increasing diversity but I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith. Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular groups down is a big claim that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a good faith post.

> I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith. My point isn't that anyone disagreeing with a particular suggestion is arguing in bad faith, it's that there are enough bad faith arguments that it becomes effectively impossible to have a productive discussion. > Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular grou…

> Are 80% of the comments I see on DEI related threads actually acting in bad faith, or am I simply so exhausted by the constant stream of bad faith arguments that I lack the ability to discern between people acting in bad faith, uninformed people acting in good faith parroting bad-faith actors arguments, and people who are legitimately trying to engage.

Or perhaps your experiences on DEI run contrary to the typical experiences of other people? You seem awfully eager to call other commenters bad faith or misinformed, but do little in the way of introspection. It reminds me of an old joke:

Someone sees on the news live coverage of a car driving the wrong way down the freeway their spouse uses to commute. Worried, they call their spouse to warn them, "honey there's a car driving down the freeway, be careful!"

"It's not one, there's hundreds of them!"

As for myself, "DEI" has been a thinly veiled dogwhistle for illegal hiring policies at 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked at for the last 10 years. Examples in include: explicitly designating segment of headcount as exclusive to certain races and genders, setting specific percentage quotas on the basis of protected class (and these quotas were well above industry-wide representation of these groups), and constructing separate hiring pipelines depending on race and gender.

However, I'm not going to accuse people who have different or opposing views on DEI as acting in bad faith. 75% of the companies I've worked at used DEI as a dogwhistle for illegal policies, but that's still a very narrow slice of the world at large. I'm not going to allege that people are being disingenuous or acting in bad faith because I recognize that people have different experiences with DEI and can arrive at vastly different opinions on the acronym while acting entirely in good faith. I suggest you do the same.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

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Post by naasking » Mon, May 06, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #520

naasking wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, Dawkins has in more recent years found himself opposing identity politics as they seek to change language usage and perceptions of gender. Correction: Dawkins doesn't care one whit about gender, and he has literally said so. He only cares when people cross into talking about sex, make incorrect claims about the nature of sex (spectrums and such), conflate sex with gender, and make unscientific claims abo…

What claims is he making specifically? > the nature of sex (spectrums and such) Sex shows itself to be a spectrum pretty often. > unscientific claims about being able to change one's sex Phenotype or genotype? They don't always match even without any medical intervention, and a change in hormones can drastically change phenotype.

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/175240399517425272...

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/178678872412412757...

You can debate him there if this is your hobby horse.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

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Post by hilux » Mon, May 06, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

jballer wrote: post #390

hilux wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

“Taking a turn” means I think I understand where you’re going, but then you take your point someplace else. I agree with most of what you’re saying. The casual racial stereotyping is where you lose me.

> The casual racial stereotyping is where you lose me.

Nothing "casual" about it. Very deliberate. White people completely unwilling to see blatant racism (e.g. in hiring) when it stares them in the face.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#679

Post by hollerith » Mon, May 06, 2024, 3:11 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #664

HelloNurse wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling "south Asia" the somewhat geographically and ethnically coherent region consisting of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan (excluding other parts of Asia that are located equally south because they are distinctly east or west) is a refreshingly objective naming. Maybe such a region is too large and diverse to be meaningful, but there's no reason to accuse anybody of confusing parts of the old…

In the US, “south asian” is fine. In the UK, there’s enough of each group where I think you should distinguish Indian versus Pakistani versus Bangladeshi. It’s not a group of people who want to be lumped together, same with Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese. They're also far less closely related to each other than say British people and French people.

One reason this American (me) says "South Asian" is because here "Indian" also means "indigenous North American".

If hypothetically the government of India were to declare that the name in English of the country shall in the future be "Bharat" or "Hindustan", Americans would rapidly switch to the new name, and I would no longer be tempted to say "South Asian" when I mean Indian.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#680

Post by lamontcg » Mon, May 06, 2024, 3:13 PM UTC

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #586

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #81

In the spirit of trying to learn something from the community: while I can certainly understand the rationale and goals behind DEI programs (many of which I agree with, others not), I honestly can't understand these "DEI statements" at all. They always seemed very "1984" to me, and almost designed to engender resentment in a way that would ultimately backfire. So perhaps I'm in a like-minded echo chamber, but is ther…

A lot of things have "said purpose" and the "real purpose" because of which such absolutely kafkaesque things survive in organizations. The said purpose of-course is to make sure that the candidate is "committed to diversity". We can argue all day on whether a statement is in any way good measure of it. It really isn't. I have helped people write such statements and we have always written it with cynicism and great c…

> You are right that there is tons of resentment around the DEI BS that people have to go through. Tech companies have esoteric training problems with terms like "allyship" and "bystander effect" and all that which basically smells rotten to lot of engineers but they cynically complete those trainings any ways.

I think this is probably a feature not a bug. Companies are all about having programs whose sole purpose is to limit liability and to (for lack of a better term) quite cynically virtue signal. And if that causes the programs to be hated and later dismantled, all the better -- because it was never about actually achieving DEI but about appearing to support it. All of the corporate DEI training that I've been through were considered "cringeworthy" by literally everyone in the company. And this was in a very left-leaning company, but it was run by mostly a pile of middle aged white guys at the top.