91–100 of 898 posts
And that is without touching any of the other issues here (pipeline problems, defining diversity by external criteria, etc)
From my perspective, quotas are just covertly saying, that women are stupid children who needs to be pampered by society. I see quotas as degrading and disgusting and I hope that nobody will come with quotas for men.
Also, until a company would fire someone for being racist, any DEI work there is meaningless. And I’m not talking hooded-klan level racism (that one you can just sue and win it’s so cut and dry).
"...it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company." "...is nothing short of corporate virtue signaling." It might be most beneficial for individuals if it's kept-low key. It's best for the company to scream it to the world. Or at least that's what the leaders think right now. Personally, I think any medium to large company that talks about DEI and isn't addressing t…
This has nothing to do with eliminating hiring discrimination or whatever; it's part of a political patronage network. You hire our most dedicated people, we don't bring the hammer down.
I think you raise some good points, and I think there are ways to handle DEI hiring well, and ways not to do it well. IMHO, when it's done well, DEI hiring isn't about filling quotas or giving anyone an edge, but it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance. I've been part of DEI hiring at a couple companies, and my role has been much more about answering questions and making sure that candidates start th…
> it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance How does that look in practice? In most companies it seems that means that under-represented people get green lighted at the resume screen step at a much higher percentage than over-represented people. But the bar is the same at the interview stage. But don't you see how that is a big dis-advantage for the median over-represented applicant?
If the bar is sufficiently high, the median applicant, over- or under-represented, won't get the job anyway. I've heard from people who work at companies (specifically big tech) that have diversity interview quotas (but not hiring quotas). In practice, you just end up interviewing more people: the candidates you would have interviewed anyway, plus some diverse candidates with closer-to-the-median resumes. And then you end up hiring the people you would have anyway, because interviews are much harder to pass than resume screens. It's a fairly pointless exercise that mostly disadvantages the interviewers, who have to spend more time interviewing, and the "lucky" candidates, who almost never outperform expectations in the interview.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> actually hire some folks from diverse backgrounds Because you’re trying to hire from a small pool of candidates (minority software developer or whatever) that EVERY OTHER tech company is trying to get in a desperate attempt to not look bad (because not having a sufficient number of minorities on staff is a sin). It’s simply a question of numbers. There’s only so many minorities, and only a fraction of them are suff…
Yeah I look at it from a top level. Say that in the tech industry, 20% (totally made up number BTW) of your workers are black. It would be possible for some companies to have >20% of their workforce be black, but if you look at the top employers (GOOG, AMZN, MSFT, AAPL, etc), there would be physically impossible for them to hire >20% black workers because there are simply not enough of them out there in the broader w…
What's funny is everyone will agree the pool of available candidates to choose from is incredibly small due to (among other things) issues in education, but those same people won't cut companies any slack if they don't hit a certain percentage of minority employees. It then becomes a game of brute forcing minorities into every part of society where they're under-represented, all at once -- because the "real fix" will take decades.
> but creating townhall meetings and parading your black/brown employees around like show ponies is nothing short of corporate virtue signaling. It doesn't just undermine the self-esteem of a PoC, it undermines the self-esteem of white folks, too. Hiring or promoting people due to their skin color is just wrong, no matter what skin color that is. As a white dude, seeing my PoC teammates in the past celebrated not for…
> White folks
I just want to mention that one of the worst aspects of all this is trying to sort people according to (here apparently a binary) label. There is not really such thing as either of these categories - it's stereotyping of the worst kind, and takes us back many generations
It is indeed nonsensical virtue signalling and an enormous and very expensive distraction.
> "Why should I feel proud of my accomplishments, when the accomplishments were spoon-fed to me by the company because of my skin color? If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here?" I'm not a PoC but I am disabled. I have uncorrectable low vision. My perspective is different. If they want to hire me and promote me because I'm blind that's fine by me. I'm just happy that for once, somethi…
I wish I could find the study but this one fascinating read pointed out that the greatest predictor of whether you'd get promotions/raises/etc. was whether or not you were 1) white, 2) male...
Those 2 aren't surprising but then it continued:
...3) 6ft tall or taller, 4) "conventionally handsome" (very loaded to term I know), 5) well-groomed/dressed by whatever standards of the industry you were in.
Height in particular had a ton of correlation.
As you said, the meritocracy idea is kind of BS. It's a consideration, but it's not the primary consideration. Presentation appears to have an outsized effect, whether you control it or not.
(Black man here) Two things can be true at once. I have built great things. I can stand on my own. My merits are great. I do not want to be the token employee that is trotted around for Diversity Points (tm). I do not like the diversity porn that a lot of these DEI groups get off on. That being said, I do recognize that I have benefited from these groups (at least at their most genuine). There are groups that are aim…