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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

#971

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…

Corporations are by nature sociopathic, even moreso when the leader is someone barely human like Zuck. To wit: they may be fully aware that this statement would piss off thousands at their company, and are counting on those people quitting, so they can downsize without having to pay for severance.

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

#972

That this is a brave counter-cultural stance shows how far we fell.

Were you also trying to figure out which countries you could move to, and which friends and family you were willing to leave to do so? Or was that just me?

What countries were you looking at?

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

#973

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"master" was not a thing even before. While I get the farce of renaming it for "social justice" reasons, it's still a stupid name. It's "trunk", as in "trunk and branches".

Disagree, it has been 'a thing' . Both music and film use the term 'master' for production and release. One would make new releases/mixes from masters. Much like one may branch with a repository. Now, I'll entertain conspiracy for just a moment. There might be concerning roots here with property or ownership... but if that's the case, the problem isn't with the language being descriptive of the system in which it ope…

Having been in the TV industry as well, it would be virtually impossible to "root out" the word "master" by any woke movement. The word is deeply entrenched there. It's everywhere. I was a little surprised when it showed up as a branch name, however.

Note that there is another instance where this is used much more explicitly with "master-slave" replication. Most people don't even pause to think about that.

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

#974

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…

I sympathize with your frustration. A 1% success rate is extremely discouraging.

Do you know what the success rate is for non-DEI candidates? I believe there is some bias in the hiring process including racism, sexism, ageism, etc. But I also think that companies are hiring less than 1% of applicants in general. From what I have seen, companies are very bad at identifying the best candidates. But if you are getting 100 resumes a month and you hire 2-4 people a year, it's a roll of the dice just selecting the 20 resumes out of 400 to invite for an interview.

All of that is to say: don't get too discouraged. A 1% success rate would be remarkable. If you can achieve a 0.5% success rate you can increase diversity by 400%.

Personally, I'm a fan of meritocracy. I wish the most qualified people were surviving the roll of the dice. But I think it would be ideal if the most qualified people included a lot of diversity. As it is, employers' best chance to hire qualified people is to rely on human networks to help somebody stand out in the sea of resumes. So the more people of diversity you can land, the better chance there is for future candidates. And the better qualified your diverse candidates are, the more voice they'll get in future hiring influence. So keep pushing highly qualified diverse candidates. And while you're at it, push highly qualified non-diverse candidates so you aren't just seen as a diversity advocate. People might take your diverse candidates more seriously if they are perceived less for their diversity and more for their excellence. If 80% of your recommendations are diverse and 50% seem to be very high-quality, the 10% that are very high-quality non-diverse will change the perception of the 40% very high-quality diverse candidates.

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

#975
post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you didn't feel like those programs existed once you were in, but I guarantee you that they're very active in "positive discrimination" at the hiring and promotion time. Just last year Amazon in the UK was offering special referral bonuses to employees referring black people specifically for example. I saved the emails for posterity. For managers of technical roles, they're also a strong push to promote women a…

That doesn't feel very "positive" if you're not in those groups

of course it’s not. you don’t solve racism with more racism in the opposite direction. alas…DEI.

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

#976

Contrast Meta's stance with Costco's, when [Costco responded][1] to a shareholder that proposed Costco prepare a report on "the risks of the Company maintaining its current DEI roles, policies and goals." Our success at Costco Wholesale has been built on service to our critical stakeholders: employees, members, and suppliers. Our efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion follow our code of ethics: For our employ…

Note the yaml formatted text string of their statement, very cs-forward (I assume newlines where stripped out by the web UI here.

What are you talking about? A "yaml formatted string" is just a string. And the Costco shareholder meeting notes/ballots that the GP posted is not YAML either, it's a pdf.

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

#977

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by that same logic Bluesky should be overtaking X but it isn't X is growing even bigger and has international reach which Bluesky doesn't

It simply hasn’t been long enough. I wouldn’t necessarily bet that it will, but X has lost net users and Bluesky is gaining them so if trends continue (they might not) Bluesky will overtake X, but Twitter also wasn’t built in a year.

> X has lost net users and Bluesky is gaining them

X grew by about 47% last year so im not sure what net loss you are talking about

Bluesky gained X users but that rate has now almost certainly slowed down

Many who publicly advertised they were quitting X for Bluesky are back on X as they don't get anywhere near the engagement they are used to.

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

#979
post #941
post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree all of this talk about equity inequality and race and gender. completely betrayed the fact that the biggest predictor of societal issues is poverty. it almost feels like the elites are pitting us against each other. again. I can’t think of any societal injustice that could not be undone simply by by floating opportunities opportunities to those in poverty.

Median wealth of a US households by race: white $250k; black: $27k; asian: $320k https://www.pewresearch.org/2023/12/04/wealth-gaps-across-ra...

That actually shows that helping poor people would help black the most. So why not do it?

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

#980

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…

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…

Worth noting that the exact same applies for environment friendliness, sustainability, pride month, etc.
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