Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 1001 posts

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

#711

Post by mruniverse »

arghnoname wrote: post #388
random_i wrote: post #353

I previously assembled & managed a team of engineers at Microsoft. Out of 10 employees on my team, I had: - male and female (80/20 split) - black, white, asian, latino - engineers in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s - east coast, west coast - ivy league, college and high-school graduates That level of diversity was very rare at Microsoft, and even rarer at other tech companies. It took a *lot* of work; with less effort I wou…

From a business perspective, did it work? Was the team more, less, or equally effective than one where you didn't expend the time and expense of hiring a more homogenous group? Was turnover better or worse? I know you can't absolutely know the counter-factual, but I've always wondered this. Incidentally, when I was a young man and CS major, I changed majors and went into a different field because I wanted to be aroun…

Is the business perspective the right one to go with?

Let's say it's legal to discriminate on race in hiring in the US. Then a Japanese restaurant hires only Japanese workers because they find customers prefer it. Do we want to have this?

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

#714

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #703

A few years ago I worked for a company obsessed with DEI. But, as a 40+, I knew their DEI programs where complete BS because they forgot the most important protected group: old people! At this company we had plenty of groups for Muslims, blacks, Jews, Asians, etc, but I was one of the only people over 40. People would laugh when I mentioned that we needed a DEI group for people over 40... but I wasn't entirely kiddin…

If somebody is not a white man, you probably don't have to pay them more than if they were a white man.

If somebody is older, then you probably DO have to pay them more than if they were younger, because older candidates likely have more experience and have correspondingly higher salary expectations.

So there's that. Now suppose you have an older candidate who is not demanding high seniority pay. In that case they should be on equal footing with the younger candidates, right? Well, no. There's the double standard of "if you're so old, why aren't you above our pay grade? Shouldn't you be a manager or something?" That I don't know how to fix. Then there is the more overtly discriminatory "I'd rather hire the young candidate because old people are slow." Maybe what it really comes down to is "I don't want to work with my dad."

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

#715

Post by az226 »

titanomachy wrote: post #596
az226 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At big tech company I used to work for ($3T) they did this in 2017, and my manager did not give a single offer to a man in years even when everyone said hire, and the next 14 of 14 offers were to women, several minorities, despite many having barely any “hire” votes.

Must be Microsoft, I don’t think Apple and Nvidia went hard on this

It was.

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

#716

Post by dalton_zk »

Every change came with pros and crons, I believe that you can't employ people based on personal characteristics, genre, race, and etc. But if person fit the requirements of the open job, what important is the skill.

I know that world ins't fair, and some people (like me by example) have to put more efforts that others, but this is life, we have to conquer our space and be pride by our achievements.

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

#717

Post by mruniverse »

curtisblaine wrote: post #381
random_i wrote: post #353

I previously assembled & managed a team of engineers at Microsoft. Out of 10 employees on my team, I had: - male and female (80/20 split) - black, white, asian, latino - engineers in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s - east coast, west coast - ivy league, college and high-school graduates That level of diversity was very rare at Microsoft, and even rarer at other tech companies. It took a *lot* of work; with less effort I wou…

How did you get there? Did you have to make a conscious choice, for minority candidates, to prefer them to majority candidates?

I think it's always conscious one way or the other. With or without DEI.

It could be close to blind if communication were only done through writing and the candidate names were not known.

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

#718

Post by gfe23aefg »

mmustapic wrote: post #662
zombiwoof wrote: post #601

I’m at white middle aged male and in 10 years have had no call backs from meta hiring. This week I got contacted by a meta recruiter

Maybe you got better at your profession. Maybe they are discriminating non whites now. Or a position just opened that’s great for someone like you.

Or maybe they're discriminating against no one now?

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

#719

Post by reaperducer »

diogocp wrote: post #507
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…

> 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.

silencing dissent and enforcing speech codes, as progressives are wont to do

The Republicans in charge of two school districts near me have been trying to organize book burnings for the last two years.

Get back to me when it's the Democrats.

Post reply on HN