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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

#771
post #55

Are they rolling back Chinese and Indian managers only hiring Chinese and Indian folks, too?

Never join one of these teams if you're not the modal race. This isn't the case for every team, but there will be important conversations in a language you don't know, and worst case, you were brought on so they have someone to let go when the company demands another 5%.

How do you know the conversation is important if you don't know the language?

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

#772

Every time you try to right a wrong like this (DEI), it just makes things worse for everyone involved. Just find the best person for the job, no matter their skin color, sex, age, etc.

It's not that simple. Without DEI you end up with products created by white men for white men.

DEI means you end up employing some people who potentially aren't as technically qualified, but bring a different viewpoint to the team. Until I spent a long time living with Blacks (as a white) I never knew all the things they go through growing up, I never knew how their communities and families were organized, I never knew what sort of products they needed and what sort of products they bought. I never even watched BET in my life, or read Essence magazine, for instance. My life experience was a bubble that was cut off from a significant portion of the population.

Now add in Hispanics, Asians and every other culture and I am missing out on knowing how most of the world lives.

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

#773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> FBs DEI program increased black and brown employees from 8% to 12% That's a 50% increase. Seems pretty successful to me.

It depends on how this percentage was raised. If they actually increased the black and brown talent pool by 50%, that would be an unequivocal success. What I suspect actually happens is that recruiters are incentivized to improve DEI metrics, so they simply hand out more interviews to underrepresented candidates. The end result is that higher tier companies simply poach these candidates from lower tier companies.

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

#774

Every time you try to right a wrong like this (DEI), it just makes things worse for everyone involved. Just find the best person for the job, no matter their skin color, sex, age, etc.

That’s the goal of DEI; recognizing that scenarios like two hundred years of all male, all white SCOTUS judges and Presidents and all the other top slots was probably not due to them being inherently better than every non-white, non-male otherwise eligible person in the country.

How is that applicable to Europe? Who knows.

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

#775

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…

In Australia, that kind of "acknowledgement of country" is extremely common at the start of all kinds of speeches in different contexts. Slightly shorter, and fixed structure, but very similar content. It's just part of the social fabric now, though not without its detractors.

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

#776

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…

> who owned the land where the campus was built

I understand that it is important to raise social awareness about some things. People should not be afraid to talk about real issues. Freedom of speech, the need to listen to people/citizens/customers &c.

That said, the cheerful, forced vapidity in that video is embarrassing. None of those parroted statements is worth a tinker's cuss historically. And none of it is worth a damn in the present time either unless the corporation is going to give billions in reparation to the tribes that were permanently evicted.

Is the Land Acknowledgement Theatre really a strategic attempt to avoid paying damages in many potential class-action law suits?

Is that corporate fear really what drives most of these obsequious recognition statements and policies?

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

#777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This requires us to trust what comes out of his mouth. If folk are still doing that after all this time, I've got a mighty large bridge you'd likely be interested in purchasing.

You're welcome to your opinion, but this view of adversarial views and people who hold them is building precisely no bridges from your silo.

Listening to someone talk it out for an hour or more, and flesh out their views without constant interruption really helps you understand something about their mind and their drives in life. Very few people can keep up a facade of rehearsed talking points and bullshit for 3 hours.

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

#778

No more discrimination! Choosing supplies based on race had to be illigal.

It is but Microsoft still does this and has a publicly announced program that they’ve bragged about which discriminates against suppliers based on race and gender.

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

#779

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…

Took me way too long that PoC doesn't refer to proof-of-concept.
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