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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

#961

Post by gunsle »

antics wrote: post #311

I am Wasq'u (a tribe in the PNW), I am connected to my tribe, and I am one of a handful of remaining speakers of the language. I am really tired of being caught in the maw of people fighting about my identity, what I am owed, and to some extent what place my identity has in society. To the pro-DEI crowd: I have some hard truths for you. Actual change requires commitment and focus over an extremely long period of time…

lol I have been saying similar things here in Minnesota for years. A lot of extremely liberal, wealthy progressives like to try to change landmarks around here to the native language version. I have no issue with this at face value. What I do have an issue with, is these people acting like this is doing anything to help the local Native American tribes. Why would they care if a lake they probably never visit and a flag they barely look at are changed? Especially when they weren’t even asking for it? What does that do at all to actually help our local Native communities struggling with the things you listed above? Absolutely nothing. It’s all a parade to make these people feel like they’re doing something while having to sacrifice absolutely nothing from their own lives. It’s honestly pathetic.

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

#962

Post by gunsle »

Avicebron wrote: post #594
antics wrote: post #311

I am Wasq'u (a tribe in the PNW), I am connected to my tribe, and I am one of a handful of remaining speakers of the language. I am really tired of being caught in the maw of people fighting about my identity, what I am owed, and to some extent what place my identity has in society. To the pro-DEI crowd: I have some hard truths for you. Actual change requires commitment and focus over an extremely long period of time…

> "The problems that afflict my community are running water, drug addiction, lack of educational resources, and secular trends have have made our traditional industries obsolete" So in my rural, predominantly white "Non DEI target" part of the country, this is the problem too except when these people apply to hundreds of jobs in software engineering they get crickets.

I always bring this up to extremely woke people. I grew up at the poverty line in rural Minnesota with a blue collar truck driver father, divorced parents, in a trailer park. I don’t say this to get sympathy, I am proud I overcame it. But DEI and other race based (vs economically/financially based) affirmative action is just racism in a different outfit. Are the white people living below the poverty line all across America “privileged”? Certainly not, and as you said, on top of that they are immediately disqualified from so many types of aid. Imagine applying for college and seeing every other minority under the sun have scholarships specifically for them: women, black people, Asians, etc. White male from poverty? lol not you, you’re privileged. It’s ridiculous and it’s been going on since I was in college over 10 years ago.

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

#963

Post by Manuel_D »

superultra wrote: post #873
j7ake wrote: post #231

Why does the skin color or gender matter if in the end they pick candidates that all went to the same top schools or have previously worked at the same top companies? Diversity in training, education and work history vastly outweighs diversity in superficial physical features.

A very obvious answer is that, for example, film was toned to white tones, which meant that film was not as good at capturing people with black skin on film or in lighting. Another example is of course facial sensors seeing white people but not seeing black people (which informs one of the funniest episodes of the defunct show Better Off Ted). You say these are superficial features and yet the reality is that skin co…

The issues with capturing images of dark skinned people is due to lower light reflected by dark skin tones. It's the same reason why an f-22 is harder for a radar to pick up than an f-16. To have "dark skin" is, quite literally, to have skin that's more radiation absorbent in the visible spectrum. The "racist" screen unlock works just as bad on dark skinned south Asians. Despite south Asians not exactly being underrepresented in tech. Front facing cameras have a tiny lens and image sensor, that's why a lot of phones started adding a front facing led to illuminate faces that were getting insufficient lighting. Eventually, more advanced techniques like IR cameras and depth sensing light grid arrays made the issue of skin tone irrelevant.

This was a problem due to the fundamentals physics of sensing dark faces. It wasn't limited to Black people, a group that's considerably overrepresented in tech experienced the same issue. And this problem was solved without a big demographic change in the tech companies involved (what is the representation of Black engineers at Huawei and Samsung?). I always get a chuckle when people use this example as justification for DEI policies.

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

#964

Post by blablabla123 »

wincy wrote: post #945
blablabla123 wrote: post #932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I'm speaking for me as a straight, white male, not even living in the US but EU. But some observations from my side: - no program will get support/taken seriously if it's just to tick a box - implementing DEI as positive discrimination seems a painfully stupid idea (and yes, large corporations also do that in the EU) - I'm surprised how many comments are celebrating scrapping this effort That being said, I don…

Because the goal isn’t the actual goal. Which is why James Damore lost his job and created an uproar when he suggested very reasonable steps to achieving more diversity. The engineer problem solving mindset is very vociferously opposed in these circles and shut down aggressively.

Ok, so assuming for a moment it wasn't that problematic what he said (which it was actually).

So he's sending around angry company-wide memos as an IC which hits the news. And it's not just 100 people who can read it but a significant part of Google which has almost 200,000 employees. Sorry, but this is missing the point.

I've seen people getting fired for less. And it wasn't even related to DEI.

But back to the topic. The content of this memo seems to me a metaphor to what is wrong with "classic IT culture" when talking about DEI etc. I cannot see how implementing this memo would solve anything, on the contrary it would make things worse.

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

#965

Post by justmy2centz »

seadan83 wrote: post #413
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…

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…

Abysmal? You think that Meta is going to compromise its quality of work to meet a statistic they knew would only be temporary? If they had changed the demographic to 30%+ they would have had to hire subpar people and bypassed people in the top of their field who truly deserved and had the experience to qualify for the job. This whole DEI bs never should have been started.

What should have happened is we should have started to support the early childhood development of underprivileged single mothers. And mandated all of them to have home visits to make sure they are being good mothers. The issue with specifically black American culture is one that has to start in early development. Once they have grown up in a broken household they are essentially unsavable at the macro level. You can’t reverse the neglect, trauma and core belief structure once they enter the criminal justice system. And all this DEI bs simply pampers the deluded belief that people are not being treated fairly. People are treated according to how they act and behave. The disproportionate number of black people in jail is not a misalignment of justice. It’s a misalignment with morals and culture.

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

#966

Post by archagon »

billy99k wrote: post #899

Almost all big companies are doing this now. It's never a good idea to hire someone based on skin color or gender rather than merit. The predecessor to this was affirmative action in colleges (this is basically affirmative action in the work place). New Jersey is seeing the direct result of this. Applicants couldn't pass a basic reading/writing/math test, so they were forced to get rid of these requirements. The dire…

> Almost all big companies are doing this now.

Source?

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

#968

Post by dang »

badgersnake wrote: post #954
dang wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

If you don’t want this type of comment I kindly suggest you don’t post this kind of article. The atmosphere on the site of what you make it and if you promote this kind of racism and misogyny then you should expect an angry response.

That's not how Hacker News works. Commenters are asked to follow the site guidelines regardless of how provocative an article is or they feel it is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ideological passions of every flavor trigger people into posting indignant, informationless things. It's up to you (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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

#969

Post by antics »

pepinator wrote: post #931
antics wrote: post #311

I am Wasq'u (a tribe in the PNW), I am connected to my tribe, and I am one of a handful of remaining speakers of the language. I am really tired of being caught in the maw of people fighting about my identity, what I am owed, and to some extent what place my identity has in society. To the pro-DEI crowd: I have some hard truths for you. Actual change requires commitment and focus over an extremely long period of time…

[flagged]

Oh I think we have very good empirical reasons to believe that’s not true. If this was indeed common knowledge, DEI as a movement would not be mired with the issues it has, specifically relating to performative activism and focus. If that’s not good enough for you, we can evaluate your claim further by surveying people and seeing if this advice is actually well-known. I encourage you to try this yourself, I think what you’ll find is that the vast majority of people who participate in these systems find what I’ve written surprising and unintuitive. And that’s one reason why this comment has 250 upvotes, which is more than almost all HN stories on a given day. YMMV, happy to hear about how this turns out for you.

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

#970

Post by consumer451 »

jmcdowell wrote: post #531
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…

White is very pro-Trump. I don't think that we need to look any further for an explanation of TFA and White on the board than this:

> Former President Donald Trump writes in a new book set to be published next week that Mark Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election and said the Meta chief executive would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did it again.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-el...

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