[HN Gopher] Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs
___________________________________________________________________
Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs
Author : bsilvereagle
Score : 1080 points
Date : 2025-01-10 17:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| > We serve everyone. We are committed to making our products
| accessible, beneficial and universally impactful for everyone.
|
| The new(ly leaked) moderation guidelines might suggest
| otherwise...
| jsheard wrote:
| Apparently they consider platforming hate speech to be
| beneficial because it could bolster sympathy for the groups
| being attacked. I wish I was joking.
|
| https://www.platformer.news/meta-new-trans-guidelines-hate-s...
|
| _Alex Schultz, the company's chief marketing officer and
| highest-ranking gay executive, suggested in an internal post
| that people seeing their queer friends and family members
| abused on Facebook and Instagram could lead to increased
| support for LGBTQ rights._
| jandrese wrote:
| [flagged]
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Ultimately, kind of. There were some bumps along the road
| though.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Kind of? More like absolutely no.
|
| The administration went on to go round up Jews and
| literally kill them.
|
| Co-incidentally, that administration was friends with a
| far away island nation that attacked a 3rd party who
| ultimately assisted with removing the administration from
| power for completely non-jewish reasons.
|
| And if somebody wants to point out the USSR's help with
| removing the administration; that was also not for jewish
| reasons.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| I was being facetious, sorry.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| I saw that, but that was a tough one to land.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Only a few million little bumps, no big deal...
| deadbabe wrote:
| A more recent example would be Gaza. People didn't care
| till they saw images. Lately, the imagery has disappeared
| and people don't care again.
| nicce wrote:
| > Lately, the imagery has disappeared and people don't
| care again.
|
| It is sad. Not many even is aware that it is very
| intentional.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| And a marketer too! My god.
|
| Kind of an insane stance to take considering we've seen
| exactly what happens when queer people's friends and family
| members get pummeled with anti-gay and anti-trans hate
| campaigns... which is that half of them end up falling for it
| and turning on their friend/family members.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| A company would have to put me at gunpoint to make me say
| something similarly as insane. I'd sooner quit and give the
| entire place a massive middle finger.
| briansteffens wrote:
| Is there anything that couldn't be justified with this style
| of thinking? Would this person support legalizing murder
| since more murders might raise awareness of how bad murder
| is?
| wiseowise wrote:
| Why would you compare hate comment posted online to murder?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Bullies important part of playground ecosystem, says bully
| lol
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| The world moved away from legitimate grievances to something
| else entirely. Hate speech in 2025 is not the same as it was
| in 2000. None for the better.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| For anyone unfamiliar: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-
| media/meta-new-hate-spee...
|
| > "We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality
| when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and
| religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and
| common non-serious usage of words like 'weird,'" the revised
| company guidelines read.
| jandrese wrote:
| > common non-serious usage of words like 'weird,'
|
| Are they still mad over the couch thing?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "That's my secret, Cap. I'm always angry."
| pesus wrote:
| They are always incredibly upset about extremely mild
| "insults". There's a 50/50 chance you get downvoted for
| pointing out their weirdness.
| mossTechnician wrote:
| This is practically a guideline to people who want to deploy
| hate speech against other minorities on the platform: just
| make a topic "controversial" enough.
| segasaturn wrote:
| Additionally they've unbanned the use of some slurs, such as
| calling other people "retarded". Not a nice feeling having
| grown up with that word directed at me almost every day.
| daveidol wrote:
| Serious question: why does everything need to be banned?
| Why not just select for better friends or forums, and avoid
| people (not platforms) that say things you think are bad?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Serious question: why does everything need to be
| banned?
|
| No one said that, but when you ban _some_ things and not
| others, the details can be fairly revealing. "No
| dehumanizing... unless it's trans people" certainly sends
| a specific message.
| segasaturn wrote:
| What a platform chooses to ban or allow decides the shape
| and direction that platform takes. It's the reason why
| you're on Hacker News and not 4chan right now, HN is a
| strongly moderated platform with expectations for how
| users should treat each other. We saw how quickly Twitter
| degraded when it became a free for all.
|
| That said, I think having "open spaces" on the internet
| is important. 4chan used to be that kind of free-for-all
| space where anything goes and you had to leave your moral
| outrage at the door. Thing is that it was self-contained.
| Now it feels like the entire internet is being turned
| into 4chan. Facebook ideally for most people, is a place
| where you go to see your friends' baby and pet photos,
| not get called slurs by strangers.
| a_cardboard_box wrote:
| An important thing to note is that this is an exception to
| the rule: you aren't allowed to call someone mentally ill,
| _unless_ it 's based on gender or sexual orientation.
|
| https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-
| standards/h...
|
| > Do not post: [...]
|
| > - Insults, including those about: [...]
|
| > Mental characteristics, including but not limited to
| allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental
| illness. [...] We do allow allegations of mental illness or
| abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation
|
| Edit: I re-read it and I think you _can_ normally call
| someone mentally ill if it 's not because of a protected
| characteristic. It's still a targeted cutout to allow
| transphobia/homophobia specifically. So you can call someone
| mentally ill for liking pineapple on pizza, or being gay or
| trans, but not for being black.
| mossTechnician wrote:
| Is this a reference to the changed TOS or something else?
|
| The recent policy carve-out allowing "allegations of mental
| illness" towards LGBT people (but no other minority) definitely
| speaks to a lack of universality, but that's from Facebook
| itself: https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-
| standards/h...
| jsheard wrote:
| The Intercept leaked more detailed internal guidelines:
|
| https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-
| meta-...
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| Holy shit.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| God save us if they're updating their KPI from "engagement" to
| "impact"
| barbazoo wrote:
| "impact" can mean all things
| praptak wrote:
| It is "everyone". Just like "all lives matter" is a deeply
| humanistic message about the sanctity of life of all human
| beings, nothing else.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Ha. Of course.
| wmf wrote:
| Everyone will be insulted equally.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| 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 performative in the first place. This kind
| of announcement seems extremely self defeating and unlikely to
| please anyone and piss off just about anyone that cares about
| this in any way shape or form, on either side.
| jandrese wrote:
| It only seems bizarre if you didn't consider DEI programs to be
| largely symbolic corporate puffery in the first place. For all
| of the hate they received from some political spheres they were
| largely just PR initiatives right from the start, especially in
| larger companies.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm curious, what gives you that kind of deep insight?
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| It's not deep insight. I am for real DEI.
|
| That is not what is actually happening. The net impacts are
| essentially marketing, which has value in it's own right
| for sure, but I'd prefer real change as opposed to
| marketing impacts, and forced trainings everyone must take.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I think part of the problem is that no one knows (or
| agrees on) what "real DEI" is. Is it quotas? Is it bias
| training? Is it a quarterly presentation from HR?
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| That's fair. I guess what I'm communicating is that the
| goals of larger diversity are worth effort, and
| attention, and the reality of them is bias training in
| the long list of mandatory trainings, and marketing at
| conferences.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Even more broadly, what are the normative success and
| failure visions for DEI? At what point does an
| organization say "DEI mission accomplished?" To be
| charitable to the whole idea, it seems to be well-
| intentioned. But beyond that, it's empty in terms of what
| pratical outcomes it actually sought to make real.
|
| Maybe I'm just not someone cut out to be an activist, but
| without articulated end-states, it strikes me as just
| teeing up for a perpetual struggle. That doesn't seem too
| fulfilling.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| I think the practical outcomes that are your KPIs are
| higher diversity from a leadership standpoint, and within
| the organization.
|
| There's nothing empty about that. It's measured, and
| evaluated.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > At what point does an organization say "DEI mission
| accomplished?"
|
| Never, because then the DEI group's budget would be cut.
| The incentives for the people actually running these
| programs are completely out of whack with what would be
| good for the company and for the people they're actually
| meant to help.
| kenjackson wrote:
| The problem is the end-state is complex and nuanced.
|
| The qualitative objective for most companies should be
| something like: "Recruiting and hiring people with no
| bias against race, gender, religion, age, disability,
| etc... Treating those same people with no bias once
| hired, including pay, promotion, opportunities, and
| respect. Leveraging the diversity of perspective and
| skills of everyone in the company to maximize success of
| the company."
|
| How do you measure that? If you're a SW company and you
| have 2% Black engineers is that good or expected? If its
| not good, how should you improve it?
|
| I think these are legitimately important questions, but
| also exceptionally hard questions. I think the big
| problem though is that for the majority of the population
| there is little incentive to actually solve the problem.
| But I think money will eventually be what does it. Market
| inefficiencies will eventually lead people to want to
| solve this, but it can take a LONG time for these
| inefficiencies to manifest, since there are so many other
| factors at play. For example, look at college football.
| Alabama did not integrate black players until the 70s and
| they were fine until they played an integrated USC team
| -- and it took that long despite football being probably
| one of the places where inefficienes are squashed out
| pretty quickly.
| whynotminot wrote:
| > At what point does an organization say "DEI mission
| accomplished?"
|
| I feel like this mindset is the same as CEOs reducing the
| IT budget because "We've recovered from our last critical
| outage and our systems are working fine now."
|
| I think there's a valid place for a DEI-like group within
| HR ensuring a company's hiring and promoting policies are
| fair in an ongoing manner.
| coldpepper wrote:
| Deep insight? It was completely obvious that it was
| performative. Why would huge companies like suddently care
| about black people or women if it was not to seek popular
| approval and get closer to power?
| DAGdug wrote:
| Minimization of regulatory risk and lawsuits. Compliance
| was _always_ about that - if leadership truly valued
| human dignity you'd see Gaza get a few orders of
| magnitude as much attention as BLM in corporate America,
| rather than a few orders of magnitude less.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm skeptical too. I've worked at a series of smaller
| companies with strong DEI programs, and the "enlightened
| self-interest" part was that _it gave us better products_.
| Turns out I have a pretty good idea of how to build
| products and features that appeal to people with the same
| regional, race, gender, and other backgrounds as me.
| Working with people who are in different from me in some
| substantial way showed me how much of that is arbitrary.
|
| For an extreme example, imagine a car company with zero
| women employees. I could imagine that their designs might
| look increasingly awesome to people who grew up playing
| with black, angular, high-powered cars (like me -- that's
| what I'd want!). And while there are plenty of women who'd
| like that, too, there are lots of women (and plenty of
| men!) who'd want something smaller, more brightly colored,
| and with better gas mileage. It they didn't have those
| varying opinions, or weren't even aware that people _had_
| other opinions, they 'd be severely limiting their
| potential market and leaving huge amounts of money on the
| table.
|
| (My wife's a big F1 fan and wants to own a McLaren some
| day. I know that many, many women love fast cars, too, and
| that many, many men do not. That was meant to be
| illustrative, not a perfect analogy.)
|
| I am utterly convinced that getting input from lots of
| people with various backgrounds makes a company much better
| and more profitable. Even if I didn't care about the
| societal ideals behind DEI programs, I'd still happily
| endorse them as a competitive edge.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Volvo had women design a car once.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_YCC
| NewJazz wrote:
| Are there more pics? It seems kind of sleek.
| kstrauser wrote:
| OK, that fascinates me and it's a great example of things
| that would never occur to me. Run-flat tires aren't a big
| deal because I'm not bothered by the idea of changing my
| own tire by the side of the road. Ponytail indentations
| in the headrests? I have short hair that doesn't need it,
| but alright, I can see why that'd be great for people who
| do.
|
| And a key takeaway is that those things don't make the
| car worse for me. I know there are tradeoffs with run-
| flat tires but that doesn't make it less good, and while
| I _can_ change tires, it 'd be nice not to _have_ to. And
| the ponytail indent makes it nicer for some people
| without affecting me whatsoever. Those make a more
| appealing product for buyers with different needs from
| mine, in ways I couldn 't have anticipated.
| dylan604 wrote:
| So your accepting of something you don't need but could
| be useful to others is totally opposite of the design not
| having a hood. Just because these females don't need it,
| they made it so nobody could use it.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Did I say that _everyone_ should have that? No. I like
| working on my own cars. My personal gearhead top
| achievement was when my alternator seized up, and I had a
| new one installed and working 45 minutes later (including
| a quick run to the parts store).
|
| That said, I've done nothing under the hood of our family
| minivan other than changing air filters. It wouldn't
| break my heart if I had to let the shop do that for me
| when I was there getting the oil changed every 2 (!!!)
| years. I can totally see why a lot of people, probably
| _most_ people, would consider that a great tradeoff.
|
| By the way, "these females" is not the preferred
| nomenclature. "Women", please.
| dylan604 wrote:
| so a small group of women made a unilateral decision that
| prevents others. again, it is just an example of one
| group making decisions without realizing (or caring) how
| it affects others.
|
| the point is that every single decision can be construed
| as denying something to someone else when it was only
| made as a convenience for someone else. it's very
| strained here as not having a hood is just odd. Even if
| you only take the car in every 2 years, that cost of that
| service is going to be much higher because of the labor
| involved on removing the front just to access the engine
| rather than just popping the hood. We already have plenty
| of examples of cars where this has been the case
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's ridiculous. You and I don't have to buy that car.
| But if it existed and were brought to market, people who
| _do_ like it have the option. It gives them choices they
| wouldn 't otherwise have without restricting our options.
|
| Tying this back to my earlier point, working on a product
| with people who weren't exactly like me made a better
| product _for everyone_. It didn 't make it a worse
| product for older white guys like myself, while making it
| more useful for everyone else who isn't my twin. That's
| pretty cool, and customers rewarded us for it.
|
| Without the input of diverse opinions, I wouldn't have
| thought of the simple changes we could make to expand its
| reach, again, _without making it worse for me and people
| like me_. The end result was universally better. That 's
| a good thing for our users _and_ our investors. Literally
| everyone involved was better off for it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The fact that you think that removing the hood doesn't
| make it a worse product is baffling. If it has a hood and
| you choose to never open it, that does not make it a
| worse product. If you have no hood but have to incur
| extravagant service fees because of not having a hood
| definitely makes it a worse product.
|
| I'm confused on how you accept A but not B
| einarfd wrote:
| > If it has a hood and you choose to never open it, that
| does not make it a worse product.
|
| This is only true if having a hood has no negative
| ramifications, the argument from Volvo was that removing
| it made forward visibility better. For some people
| trading a hood they never use, against better forward
| visibility, could be well worth it. Especially for short
| people, where forward visibility can be more of a problem
| than for the rest of us.
| woobar wrote:
| Looks like they have designed Tesla prototype.
|
| https://www.automobilesreview.com/pictures/volvo/ycc-2004
| /wa...
| tanaros wrote:
| > Volvo had women design a car once.
|
| To be more specific, Volvo _designed a car specifically
| for women_ and chose to staff that team entirely with
| women. This is quite different than asking a team of
| women to design a car for everyone, and I feel that's
| important context when considering the design decisions
| they made.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Volvo didn't design a car, people did. In this case the
| people were women.
| ultimafan wrote:
| Wow, the lack of a hood is baffling, was that actually a
| conscious design decision or an urban legend?
|
| Because in the case of the former I find it unbelievable
| that no one on the team, or even at Volvo that dropped by
| to see how the project is coming along (I assume they
| weren't shipped off to some isolated island to complete
| their work in complete secrecy) didn't say something. The
| first question at least 80% of people I know would have
| when looking over a car to buy for the first time is,
| "Can you pop the hood?" Not to mention getting at the
| engine to adjust or replace consumables like belts,
| fluids, plugs or even minor repairs.
|
| I'm far more willing to believe this is just a small
| detail that simplified the production process for a one
| off prototype than that anyone thought this was actually
| a good idea.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The idea was that self service would be unneeded because
| you would take it to the service center when it told you
| to.
|
| The BMW i8 also had a hood that could only be removed by
| 4 service techs and it went into production.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Right because the BMW i8's engine is mounted in front of
| the rear axle. You access it through the trunk, not the
| hood.
|
| That said, this is a concept car. It doesn't have to be
| practical.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Yeah, what people miss when they talk about hiring "the
| best person for the job" is that a company is not
| composed of well-defined roles and fungible people who do
| the job description and nothing else. Ideally, you're
| building a team that is _greater than the sum of its
| parts_. Even if someone isn 't the most proficient person
| on the planet for a given role, they might be better for
| _your team as a whole_.
|
| What I'm skeptical of is that DEI programs in bigger
| companies were ever anything more pandering. There was an
| "enlightened self-interest", but it was that the
| regulatory and cultural environment made it difficult to
| attract talent without at least paying lip service to
| DEI. Now the winds have shifted, and -- surprise! --
| their "enlightened self-interest" no longer includes
| pretending to care about it.
|
| This isn't a critique of DEI programs specifically, by
| the way. I think any social initiative at a company
| fulfills basically the same function: environmental
| pledges, etc. The point is to make your company _look
| better_ without actually changing anything.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Alright, I can see that. DEI programs that actually
| change and improve the company are extremely valuable, in
| my opinion. Ones that check a box to say "look at how
| nice we are!" aren't so much.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I agree! But the problem is that many people are _more
| invested in discrimination_ than they are in improving
| their team. At least according to their revealed
| preferences, a lot of people who claim to support
| meritocracy /yada yada would rather be on a worse-
| performing team with more white people/men/etc than a
| better-performing diverse one.
|
| Dan Luu has a good article on this: [1]
|
| _> A problem is that it 's hard to separate out the
| effect of discrimination from confounding variables
| because it's hard to get good data on employee
| performance v. compensation over time. Luckily, there's
| one set of fields where that data is available: sports._
|
| _> ..._
|
| _> In baseball, Gwartney and Haworth (1974) found that
| teams that discriminated less against non-white players
| in the decade following de-segregation performed better.
| Studies of later decades using "classical" productivity
| metrics mostly found that salaries equalize. However,
| Swartz (2014), using newer and more accurate metrics for
| productivity, found that Latino players are significantly
| underpaid for their productivity level. Compensation isn
| 't the only way to discriminate -- Jibou (1988) found
| that black players had higher exit rates from baseball
| after controlling for age and performance. This should
| sound familiar to anyone who's wondered about exit rates
| in tech fields._
|
| _> ..._
|
| _> In tech, some people are concerned that increasing
| diversity will "lower the bar", but in sports, which has
| a more competitive hiring market than tech, we saw the
| opposite, increasing diversity raised the level instead
| of lowering it because it means hiring people on their
| qualifications instead of on what they look like. I don't
| disagree with people who say that it would be absurd for
| tech companies to leave money on the table by not hiring
| qualified minorities. But this is exactly what we saw in
| the sports we looked at, where that's even more absurd
| due to the relative ease of quantifying performance. And
| yet, for decades, teams left huge amounts of money on the
| table by favoring white players (and, in the case of
| hockey, non-French Canadian players) who were, quite
| simply, less qualified than their peers. The world is an
| absurd place._
|
| [1]: https://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I'm not usually one to complain about downvotes but it's
| pretty funny to downvote this post specifically.
|
| Like, what's the actual counterargument here? "No, I
| think companies should hire the most qualified individual
| in the world for the job on paper even if it harms the
| team as a whole. Risking the bottom line is what
| meritocracy is all about!"
| airforce1 wrote:
| Doesn't free market capitalism automatically fix this
| though?
|
| In the example of a car company with zero women
| employees, if the market doesn't want "black, angular,
| high-powered cars", then they will lose market share to
| companies that produce cars that the market _does_ want.
|
| And if "getting input from lots of people with various
| backgrounds makes a company much better and more
| profitable" is a true statement, then capitalism will
| prove it because the most diverse companies will
| naturally become better and more profitable than non-
| diverse companies.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Doesn't free market capitalism automatically fix this
| though?
|
| Free market capitalism: (1) does not exist, (2)
| structurally cannot stably exist (because economic power
| and political power _are fundamentally the same thing_ ),
| (3) is a utopian propaganda concept created in response
| to and to deflect critiques of the way that the
| capitalism that can and does actually exist works.
| kstrauser wrote:
| > Doesn't free market capitalism automatically fix this
| though?
|
| The companies we're talking about have DEI programs
| specifically because they believe they'll improve their
| profitability in one way or another. Meta is scaling
| their program back, not ending it, so they still believe
| it's good for the company in some way.
|
| Now, I may be skeptical of the purity of their goals, in
| this case suspecting that they're more concerned about
| looking to be the "right level" of diverse than actually
| achieving it. Regardless, no one's making them do it.
| They're doing it for those free market reasons.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| _> The companies we 're talking about have DEI programs
| specifically because they believe they'll improve their
| profitability in one way or another_
|
| Definitely not. I've been exposed to the rationale for
| these. Profit and effectiveness have nothing to do with
| it. CEOs put them in place because otherwise left wing
| employees or board members will try and destroy them, and
| Democrat-run regulators will support them in that goal
| even if it means breaking the rules. There have been many
| examples of such things in action - look at the organized
| cartel-like boycotts of X after Musk upset left wing
| marketing execs.
|
| CEOs don't want that to happen to them. That's why this
| is happening now, the moment Trump won a major victory.
| The fact that the left has lost power comprehensively
| makes it safer to stand up for what Zuckerberg believed
| in all along.
| notahacker wrote:
| Companies deciding not to spend money with X because
| consumers objected to ads there more than they bought
| products from ads there is "organized cartel like
| boycotts" and Zuck deciding to ditch decade old
| programmes because the new President hates them and him
| and his platform (and owns a rival platform too!) is
| freeing him to do what he believed all along!? I've heard
| it all now.
|
| Bet Bezos has spent years dreaming of making that Melania
| documentary he's finally become free to spend $40m on
| too...
| notahacker wrote:
| Worth noting the same basic incentives apply to certain
| corporations performatively _dropping_ their policies as
| a declaration of fealty to an administration they hope
| will refrain from interfering too much with their ability
| to make profits as a result. Whether that is considered
| to be a "free market reason" is another question
| entirely.
| corimaith wrote:
| Alternatively, trying to appeal to everyone or really the
| lowest common denominator just ends up creating bland
| products that nobody likes. Which is quite apparent right
| in the AAA video game industry.
|
| I'd argue that a specialised company that focuses and
| hones in on catering to black, angular high-powered cars
| OR smaller, more brightly coloured cars will have a
| healthier long term outlook than a company that tries to
| appeal to every market.
| theamk wrote:
| I keep hearing this example, but it's hard for me to
| imagine how this works with companies that are not
| designing consumer-facing products.
|
| Will "getting input from lots of people with various
| backgrounds" make their servers not fail with 500 errors?
| Or make them actually deliver features at a reasonable
| rate? Or will it prevent them not having a major bug
| every other release? Because that's what the customers
| complain about, and that's what company needs for major
| growth.
|
| (I am suspect that hiring Rachel of rachelbythebay.com
| will help with this, but this will be because she is a
| great engineer, not because of her gender.)
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Agreed. Even if you desire, and want DEI programs to be
| meaningful, the actual implementations don't actually do
| anything useful.
|
| Reading the accomplishments in 2024 for our DEI program, it
| was essentially just marketing. Which has some level of value
| for sure, but the most valuable thing that came out of it was
| the number of conferences the head of the department went to.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > the actual implementations don't actually do anything
| useful.
|
| That blanket statement can't possibly be true for all
| cases, across all businesses.
| notyourwork wrote:
| I've interviewed candidates for DEI specific roles. Not sure
| how that aligns with your narrative.
| edoceo wrote:
| What is a DEI specific role? Isn't that against EoE rules?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Someone tasked with making sure your site works on a
| screen reader? Adding alt tags to images? Plenty of
| inclusive roles are non-controversial.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would classify that as a role tasked with ADA
| compliance, not "DEI".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| One might readily describe the ADA as a DEI initiative,
| yes.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| I would say that DEI has sucked a huge amount of oxygen
| out of the room on accessibility. It's all out of the
| same budget, but as you can see, most people don't think
| of accessibility when they think of DEI, they think of
| race, gender and sexuality.
|
| And out of those, accessibility is the one that has
| actual measurable metrics and requires expensive
| technical skill and compromises with non-accessible
| functions to implement well. Everything else on the list
| is PR work.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > I would say that DEI has sucked a huge amount of oxygen
| out of the room on accessibility
|
| Which is a real shame because accessibility features and
| policies actually make things better and easier for
| everyone.
| pc86 wrote:
| One would be objectively wrong, though.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Disabilities come in a _diverse_ variety.
|
| People with disabilities wanted to be _included_ in
| society.
|
| The goal of the Act was to provide a more _equitable_
| society for those people.
|
| It would absolutely be derided as "woke DEI nonsense" if
| proposed today.
| pc86 wrote:
| Yes I see you doing this all over the thread italicizing
| the same words and using them slightly differently, I'm
| not sure what point you're trying to prove.
|
| ADA predates DEI by a couple decades. Lots of people,
| including Republicans, support the ADA and support
| expanding its protections.
|
| This is a pretty standard tactic of partisans when their
| pet issue becomes unpopular - take something unrelated,
| or at best tangentially related, and pretend it's related
| or that that's what they've been advocating for all
| along.
|
| I don't care if you support the ADA or you don't. I don't
| care if you support DEI or you don't. But they're
| different, they've never been related, and any attempt by
| partisans on the left to lump them together is just
| trying to reframe the issue as "against DEI == against
| the ADA" because of course everyone on the right hates
| disabled people right?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Lots of people, including Republicans, support the ADA
| and support expanding its protections.
|
| Now, sure. At the time? Same sort of bullshit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities
| _Ac...
|
| Both are rooted in the same concept - that people should
| have fair opportunity to participate in society even if
| different in some ways.
| pc86 wrote:
| Scroll up a couple lines from your link and take a look
| at the sponsor, who Republicans nominated to be
| President. So no, your partisan assertion is nonsense.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Tom Harkin? The Democrat?
|
| Are we to think that the Republican party of 1990 - of
| the Bushes and the Cheneys and the Romneys - is the same
| as the Republican party of 2025 that has driven them out
| of the org?
| dalmo3 wrote:
| It's called Motte and Bailey fallacy.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| False allegations of that are themselves a fallacy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pooh-pooh
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The ADA requires accommodation. E.g. a blind software
| developer should be given an interview that does not
| require sight. So a text-only description instead of a
| figure or sketch would be accomodation. It does not
| require specific levels of representation. It is not
| analogous to Meta's former "representation goals".
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| That's called accessibility.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Which means being _inclusive_ towards a _diverse_ set of
| different conditions, so those people may _equally_
| access content others have access to?
| throwpoaster wrote:
| The "E" doesn't mean "equal"...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Change it to "equitably" if you prefer. The point remains
| the same.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| Do you think there is a functional difference between
| those words?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I think you could easily describe accessibility efforts
| to be an attempt to provide both equal and equitable
| access to content.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| Equity requires unequal treatment so do you have an
| example?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure.
|
| Equal is giving everyone a printout.
|
| Equity is giving the blind student a Braille version.
|
| The latter is an attempt at providing _equal_ access to
| the _contents_ to those with different needs, so that
| they may learn _equitably_.
|
| (The alternative term JEDI might argue that this is the
| _just_ result.)
| throwpoaster wrote:
| Thank you, that seems a pretty good example.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You're not describing equity. You're describing
| accessibility.
|
| Equity would be mandating that blind students pass at the
| same rate as sighted students regardless of their scores.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No, I'm describing equity in opportunity to learn.
|
| Equal outcomes for all is not equity - it is inequitable
| for a deliberately lazy person to succeed when a hard
| working person does not, just because of something they
| were born with.
|
| Giving every student the same printed packet is equal
| treatment, but unjust and inequitable to the blind
| student.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_equity?wprov=sfti1
|
| > Social equity within a society is different from social
| equality based on formal equality of opportunity. For
| example, person A may have no difficulty walking, person
| B may be able to walk but have difficulties with stairs,
| while person C may be unable to walk at all. Social
| equality would be treating each of those three people in
| the same way (by providing each with the same aids, or
| none), whereas social equity pursues the aim of making
| them equally capable of traversing public spaces by
| themselves (e.g. by installing lifts next to staircases
| and providing person C with a wheelchair).
| flatpepsi17 wrote:
| Equality and Equity are _vastly_ different things.
|
| If a program treats people equally, that's a good thing.
| If you want equal outcomes (regardless of many very real
| factors), that by definition will require unequal
| treatment.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Equality and Equity are vastly different things.
|
| But related.
|
| I was at a museum that had a full-sized submarine on
| display. There was a touchable model and audio
| description for blind people.
|
| Equal, as much as possible - a Braille variant of a
| novel, for example, provides a fairly _equal_ experience.
| Equitable, when perfect equal results are not possible.
| You can 't fix a person's severed optic nerve, but you
| can certainly attempt to give them fair access to things.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is a semantic argument. Accessibility wasn't under
| DEI in the org chart, and preexisted DEI. That's all that
| matters.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| DEI is a new name for and/or refinement of a long
| existing concept that gave us things like the
| abolitionists, suffragists, the Civil Rights Act of 1964
| and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
|
| As with "negro" and "colored", the new positive term
| eventually became a slur via concerted efforts from its
| opponents. ("DEI mayor":
| https://www.npr.org/2024/04/04/1242294070/baltimore-key-
| brid...)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I disagree with this telling of history. DEI has much
| more in common with various affirmative action efforts in
| the 80s and 90s than it does with something like the
| Civil Rights Act and as such is a lot more controversial
| even among the groups it's meant to help.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If the ADA was being proposed today, Republicans would
| decry it as yet another woke DEI effort.
|
| They're absolutely in the same category.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If the ADA was being proposed today, Republicans would
| decry it as yet another woke DEI effort.
|
| A lot of the culture war entities which now dominate the
| GOP did so (obviously, with different language, as "woke"
| and "DEI" weren't the current generic epithets for things
| the Right doesn't like) at the time, but (1) were
| mollified in some cases with special exclusions, like
| religious schools being excluded from the definition of
| covered public accommodations, and (2) otherwise were
| less politically powerful within the party.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > DEI has much more in common with various affirmative
| action efforts in the 80s and 90s
|
| Affirmative Action was from Executive Order 11246 (1965)
| -- concurrent with and part of the same movement as civil
| rights legislation -- applying to federal contracting; it
| largely spread to large organizations that weren't direct
| federal contractors through subcontracting relationships
| and through state governments adopting similar
| requirements in their contracting.
| dmazzoni wrote:
| At many companies accessibility and DEI are rolled into
| the same office.
|
| https://blog.google/authors/eve-andersson/
| kenjackson wrote:
| It's part of making a product that works for a diverse
| group of people. The same way the XBox controller was
| made smaller for female and children hands. And how
| including darker skinned people in facial recognition
| systems is now standard practice.
| Geee wrote:
| No, it's not that. DEI would be hiring a blind person,
| over a more qualified non-blind person.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No, that's a flat out lie.
|
| DEI would be concerned with encouraging applicants by and
| consideration of blind people to a role they can still
| effectively perform.
|
| It's based on the generally logical idea that if your
| company with 10k people is staffed with 99% white males
| in a place where that doesn't reflect the workforce, the
| most logical conclusion is _probably_ not "only white
| males can perform this role".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > DEI would be hiring a blind person, over a more
| qualified non-blind person.
|
| No, it wouldn't.
|
| DEI might be things like expending resources for outreach
| to and soliciiting applications from the blind community
| because there were almost no blind applicants, when blind
| people _could_ reasonably do the work _even if_ , on
| average, blind people would be at a disadvantage compared
| to the sighted given the job responsibilities.
| ttpphd wrote:
| It is extremely telling that when you hear "DEI specific
| role" you wrongly imagint that refers to the identity of
| the person rather than someone who's role it is to work
| on issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
| pc86 wrote:
| That's one interpretation but the next sentence doesn't
| really track with that. Of course there are roles in DEI
| departments, and roles focused on DEI. That doesn't do
| anything to weaken the argument the GP was making but
| that second sentence sounds like it should.
|
| The reasonable interpretation then is that this isn't the
| right interpretation. The only other one I can think of
| is having prescribed immutable characteristics you're
| hiring for.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Well I interpreted it the way you're saying and I still
| don't understand the real world need of that role in most
| companies. Why not simply hire the most qualified/best
| people for the job? If it ends up being diverse, great.
| If not well thats not really a big issue either as long
| as the hiring is fair.
|
| What does that role provide outside of forced diversity
| i.e. racism. If it helps I am not a white male myself,
| but Mexican.
| edoceo wrote:
| It was me telling you I'm ignorant. Was it telling
| something else?
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| If a role is specifically set to be filled by diversity
| hires, I really don't understand how that's not racist (or
| choose your descriptor here) towards whoever has been
| excluded for that role.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It is racist. Proponents of such diversity hiring try to
| redefine racism in such a way that their definition
| excludes diversity hiring, but that's bad faith
| rhetorical tricks.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| I've actually never seen a 'diversity hire' take place.
| When we set DEI policy and act on it, it was about trying
| to encourage a more diverse pool and a more diverse group
| of choosers.
|
| That's it. Then let the talent speak.
|
| However, let's assume a 'diversity hire' did take place
| in the negative scenario you imagine. Quota's, I imagine.
| It still wouldn't be racist as it wouldn't be based on
| racial superiority.
|
| You can call it something else, if you like. But it
| wouldn't be racist. A 'mistake' perhaps.
|
| There are many out there who beat their chest and say
| that 'the word racist is overused so as to become
| meaningless'.
|
| You've just fallen into that hole.
|
| EDIT: (it appears I've been blocked from replying here so
| to my children, lol:
|
| @Shawabawa: "For as long as I've been conscious and with
| a dictionary (40 years), 'racism' has always been about a
| belief in the superiority and supremacy of one race over
| the other, and the actions that stem from that. Sure,
| your simple version is included also, but the fundamental
| (and meaningful) definition was always about supremacy.
| But really ... based on some of the comments here and the
| prevailing political climate in the US, let's call it
| quits. It really doesn't matter. The 'winners' write the
| history, as they say."
|
| @seryoiupfurds: "Well, better than your first attempt.
| But the thrust of your comment is still that 'diversity
| hiring' is the norm. My experience says it's not - and
| certainly not in the way we apply DEI.")
| seryoiupfurds wrote:
| OK, so it's "just" systematic racial discrimination then.
| Much better.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| The definition of racism changed at some point to some
| people to have connotations about racial superiority
|
| Before that, it simply meant judging a person by their
| race or skin colour, which having a hiring quota based on
| race clearly is
|
| You can have an argument that in some cases racist DEI
| policies are beneficial to counter even worse racism, and
| that's not necessarily untrue, but it's dishonest to try
| and claim it's not racist
| kenjackson wrote:
| That's not what the original commenter was saying. There
| are very few roles I've ever seen target diversity hires.
| Those that I have seen are typically very high-level
| roles, for example, VP nominations will do things like
| target "midwest" or for Supreme Court targeting "female".
| But I don't see this sort of thing in your typical job
| hiring practice.
| pc86 wrote:
| I think it's pretty obvious that SCOTUS and VP
| nominations aren't covered by EEOC and the like, and
| you're going to have a hard time ham-fisting "diversity
| hire" into those roles.
|
| > > I've interviewed candidates for DEI specific roles.
|
| This means one of two things. Either they're interviewing
| for roles on the DEI team, or "I had a role to fill and
| was told I had to hire a [black, hispanic, female, non-
| white] person."
|
| The first one doesn't really have anything to do with the
| comment they're replying to. The second one is blatantly
| illegal but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And the
| next sentence and its tone supports that interpretation.
|
| Is there a third interpretation I'm missing?
| kenjackson wrote:
| The first does have something to do with what he's
| commenting on. That said, the original poster can clarify
| since they're on HN, rather than us speculating.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| You seem quite wrapped up in the idea of 'diversity
| hires'. I've never seen it work that way. Have you?
|
| In my experience it has been about trying to encourage a
| more diverse pool to select from, and a more diverse pool
| of choosers, and that's it. After that, it's selecting
| the best person.
|
| And, to be clear, even if 'diversity hires' did take
| place in the way you seem to imagine it, it wouldn't be
| racist to hire based on diversity as it's not done from a
| basis of racial superiority.
|
| How about 'choose your descriptor here' based on an
| actual understanding of the words. Is it 'woke' now to
| ask people actually understand the words they're using.
|
| Considering you don't understand what the word 'racist'
| means, do you understand what 'DEI policies' are?
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > it wouldn't be racist to hire based on diversity as
| it's not done from a basis of racial superiority.
|
| If you hire someone over someone else due to an immutable
| quality such as their skin colour, sexual orientation
| (which shouldn't even be a thing to discuss on a job
| interview), hair colour, sex, gender etc than that is
| discrimination, and in the case of race, racist. Just
| because the majority of racism happens in one way, does
| not mean it's not racism in the other way.
|
| Unless the immutable quality somehow makes the person
| physically better for the job, such as males typically
| having better muscle/bone mass which gives them an
| advantage for physical work (e.g. oil rigs), or employing
| a black female actor to play a black female character.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Intent matters.
|
| And I'd ask you to focus on the rest (or the whole) of my
| comment as you've spent most of your comment discussing
| it as if I approve of 'diversity hiring' (as it is being
| discussed here, i.e. quotas) when it should be obvious I
| neither engage in it nor approve of it.
| simoncion wrote:
| Sure, intent matters. But you literally said:
|
| > And, to be clear, even if 'diversity hires' did take
| place in the way you seem to imagine it, it wouldn't be
| racist to hire based on diversity as it's not done from a
| basis of racial superiority.
|
| To change up the words a bit to make it more clear:
|
| > And, to be clear, even if 'diversity hires' did take
| place in the way you seem to imagine it, it wouldn't be
| racist to hire based on [race] as it's not done from a
| basis of racial superiority.
|
| "It's not racist to be racist, if it's not done from a
| basis of racial superiority."
|
| To be brutally frank, it _is_ racist to be racist. The
| _outcome_ of being racist _can_ be good! It _absolutely_
| can be good! But, it 's critically important for the
| folks who are developing and implementing racist policies
| in order to produce genuinely good outcomes to be
| brutally honest with themselves about what they're doing
| so that they _also_ implement deliberate, honest review
| into their policies so that they know when they can stop
| being racist.
|
| Without building in a "Okay, our mission is accomplished
| and we're done. Let's go back to treating everyone
| equally again." decision point, policies like these
| mutate into nothing more than getting _your_ turn with
| the proverbial boot stamping on a human face forever.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| I'm genuinely not trying to be a schmuck here ...
| genuinely ... but can I direct you to any decent
| dictionary and to read up on the word 'racist'. Then read
| your comment again.
|
| Thanks.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| From Oxford
|
| > prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an
| individual, community, or institution against a person or
| people on the basis of their membership of a particular
| racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority
| or marginalized.
|
| Not giving someone a job based on their skin colour (a
| racial group) is discrimination, therefore meets the
| definition.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| You're using the word 'discrimination' in the neutral /
| identifying-distinction manner of the word. To
| discriminate ... between red and blue, or hot and cold.
| In relation to racism, I only see the word
| 'discrimination' in the negative.
|
| Thought experiment: two candidates are completely equal,
| one is black one is white. If one made the decision to
| give the job to the black person for reasons of diversity
| or some other possibly positive reason, that wouldn't be
| a decision made in the negative sense of the word. And so
| it fails to meet the definition for me.
|
| However, at this point I accept we're straying into
| generous nuance, and this is no place for that.
|
| So, let's say I give you that.
|
| It's moot. Why?
|
| I'll repeat for the third or fourth time here. I don't,
| and have never, supported giving someone a job based on
| skin colour (or racial group) as your last sentence
| states, nor do I believe it is common or widespread.
|
| DEI, for me, is only about encouraging a more diverse
| pool of candidates and hirers, where possible. The end
| .... Scandalous, right? Racist? How? It's just been
| weaponised by the usual suspects.
|
| To them, DEI means the assumption of just automatically
| choosing black over white, or female over male ... and
| it's just ... boring at this point.
|
| For example, if I'm not mistaken, I understand that the
| Supreme Court has explicitly ruled against quotas based
| on skin colour.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > If one made the decision to give the job to the black
| person for reasons of diversity or some other possibly
| positive reason, that wouldn't be a decision made in the
| negative sense of the word.
|
| No, preferring a candidate because of their skin colour
| is racism and discrimination, alas is wrong. It has no
| relevance to the job.
|
| In such situation, rolling a dice would even be a fairer
| option.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Do you realise you're focusing on my hypothetical and
| ignoring the substance?
|
| Ok, while we're here, there is no 'preferring' about it.
| There are hypothetical 'reasons' for it that may have
| value.
|
| Anyway, at this point, I realise this is going absolutely
| nowhere.
|
| All best,
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >And, to be clear, even if 'diversity hires' did take
| place in the way you seem to imagine it, it wouldn't be
| racist to hire based on diversity as it's not done from a
| basis of racial superiority.
|
| If you hire based on someone's race, that would appear to
| be racist.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Again, that's not how it works, or should work. But even
| if it did, it could be called a 'mistake'. But it's not
| 'racist'.
|
| You're fundamentally misunderstanding the word. And it's
| sad because people (perhaps you) will go around and say
| that the word 'racist' is overused and has lost it's
| meaning.
|
| And yet, you (and co) are the ones mistakenly using it
| here.
|
| EDIT: (it appears I've been blocked from replying here so
| to the below ...
|
| @seryoiupfurds: "Well, better than your first attempt.
| But the thrust of your comment is still that 'diversity
| hiring' is the norm. My experience says it's not - and
| certainly not in the way we apply DEI.")
| seryoiupfurds wrote:
| OK, so it's "just" systematic racial discrimination then.
| simoncion wrote:
| > (it appears I've been blocked from replying here so:...
|
| You probably haven't been blocked, you've probably run
| into one of the rumored "conversation slower-downer'
| mechanisms.
|
| If you select the specific comment that you wish to reply
| to so that it opens in a page on its own, you should be
| able to reply to that comment.
| pests wrote:
| Rumored? It's a very real thing.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089
|
| > We tend to call it the 'overheated discussion detector'
| these days, since it detects more than flamewars.
|
| > Scott and I get emailed every time that software trips
| so we can quickly look at which threads are being
| penalized and reverse the penalty when it isn't helpful
|
| - Quotes by Dang
| pests wrote:
| There is a flame war preventer that disables replies for
| a short time depending on frequency and how deep the
| thread is. Wait a bit or find the post via another UI and
| it's usually possible to reply.
| simoncion wrote:
| > In my experience it has been about trying to encourage
| a more diverse pool to select from...
|
| In my experience, the DEI office rejected the results of
| an interview panel _after_ the interview-and-candidate-
| selection stage because the candidates selected by the
| interviewers and interviewing panel to receive offers
| were "insufficiently diverse". This resulted in
| Corporate closing the job requisition because they didn't
| feel like dealing with the hassle (and expense) of
| repeating the process. (This sucked because we fucking
| needed that hole to be filled... but there's no arguing
| with Corporate.)
|
| This is an N=1 report, and I'm sure there are other
| companies that aren't so super-fucked, but at this
| particular company, this is how it went down.
|
| This scenario doesn't meet the strict definition of
| "diversity hire", but it sure does feel like actions
| motivated by the same sort of reasoning.
| causi wrote:
| Right. For the large companies, and the majority of the
| workforce, they mean nothing. Then the small to mid size
| businesses with some whackadoo who goes "we're not hiring X
| anymore, underrepresented groups only!" get a ton of press
| and create political capital.
| gitremote wrote:
| I worked in a large company that had a lot of pro-LGBTQ
| corporate PR and "Bring your whole self to work", while most
| of my coworkers were openly homophobic (out of earshot from
| management) and LGBTQ people would not be safe to come out.
| Right-wingers would think our company was "woke" and that
| they were being discriminated against based on our company
| propaganda and executive messaging. The reality on the ground
| was the opposite.
|
| Right-wingers are ready to believe companies are lying about
| some things but not about DEI (diversity, equity, and
| inclusion).
| throwpoaster wrote:
| Symbols can have a lot of political power.
| dmazzoni wrote:
| Do you actually have experience with those programs?
|
| Here's what DEI programs actually do in practice, in my
| experience.
|
| As a simple example, let's say there is an opening for a
| somewhat senior position, like a director. Your team does
| some interviews and wants to make an offer. DEI vetos it
| because every single candidate they interviewed was a white
| male. They don't tell you who to hire or not to hire, they
| just say that if you couldn't even find even a single woman
| or POC to interview, then you didn't look hard enough. Go
| back, consider more candidates who might not fit your
| preconceived notion of what you thought a person in that role
| should look like.
|
| If after interviewing more people you still pick a white
| male, that's fine. DEI offices never force diversity and
| standards are not lowered. But they do have an impact - by
| considering more diverse candidates, that naturally leads to
| more diverse candidates being hired.
|
| That's just one example of what they do.
|
| You can argue the merits of the specific programs, but it's
| not true at all to say that those programs are just
| "puffery".
| brailsafe wrote:
| > But they do have an impact - by considering more diverse
| candidates, that naturally leads to more diverse candidates
| being hired. That's just one example of what they do.
|
| Ya, but... what is that impact? Why would a company want to
| pay another company to make it harder to do basic
| operations
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| There are example of DEI not being racist but the one you
| provided is extremely racist.
| fn-mote wrote:
| GP mentions race and gender, so this response isn't
| making an impression on me.
|
| The point the GP makes - why was the promo/hiring
| committee unable to find a breadth of candidates - is a
| troubling but real part of many of our daily lives.
|
| Maybe there weren't any. That's usually the reason/excuse
| given. That should still be a cause for concern.
| pc86 wrote:
| Well "DEI vetos it" is obviously a problem. There's a
| discussion to be had around expanding candidate pools,
| expanding the pipeline, however you want to phrase it.
| These are good and noble goals but we're not talking
| about the pipeline we're talking about the candidates for
| a given role that we're hiring for right now.
|
| No department should be vetoing any hire in a different
| department. Having an engineer veto a hire in the DEI
| department is ludicrous on its face, but no more
| ludicrous than having a DEI department tell the
| engineering team they're not "allowed" to hire a
| qualified applicant because of their race or gender.
| a1j9o94 wrote:
| It's HR's entire job to set policies for hiring. They can
| say a candidate has to have a college degree. Why
| wouldn't they have the right to set this policy as well?
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| You are confusing policies and qualifications, its on the
| engineers to decide the qualifications and HR to run
| policies on sourcing.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Protected class cannot be used as a factor in hiring.
| Saying "we can't proceed with an offer until we've hired
| at least one woman and one URM" (which is what Meta's DSA
| entailed) is indeed using protected class as a factor in
| hiring.
| 9rx wrote:
| It is odd that the expected inclusion was so specific,
| though. What about a 14 year old white male? Do they not
| satisfy: _" consider more candidates who might not fit
| your preconceived notion of what you thought a person in
| that role should look like."_?
|
| I get it. I don't think a 14 year old looks suitable for
| a senior role either, but looking past that is the point.
| You never know what someone can offer.
| danudey wrote:
| I find it interesting that being underage and in middle
| school is on the same level to you as being a woman. This
| comment reads like "You want us to interview WOMEN now?
| Why not teenagers? Or plants?!"
| 9rx wrote:
| Your biases applied to the comment may read that way. The
| comment itself doesn't say that at all. It is interesting
| that we are seeing the discrimination right here on HN
| too. I thought we were better than that?
| pests wrote:
| The request was to "consider people you normally wouldn't
| for this role"
|
| I normally wouldn't consider a 14y/o for a senior
| position. I wouldn't consider a child to run our armed
| forces either.
|
| It is you who put women and other minorities into that
| group with this comment of yours. You are the one to
| compare being underage and in middle school to being on
| the same level of a woman.
| matteotom wrote:
| well if a 14 year old has 10 years of (real) experience
| building software in an enterprise setting, of course
| they should be considered for a senior role
| 9rx wrote:
| What about 10 years of experience building software
| translates to the director position being talked about?
| Would a 14 year old who has 10 years of (real) experience
| working on the family farm be equally suitable or is
| there something about software specifically that primes
| people for being directors?
| matteotom wrote:
| sure, replace building software with leading large teams.
| The general point still stands
| 9rx wrote:
| So you echo that until you find a 14 year old who has
| managed a large team for at least 10 years you haven't
| tried hard enough? I don't want to rest on my biases,
| but...
| matteotom wrote:
| No, it is obvious that there are not any qualified 14
| year olds, and it is also obvious that there are
| qualified minorities - if you can't find qualified
| minorities, you should look more closely at your
| recruitment pipelines.
| 9rx wrote:
| It might be obvious based on your criteria, but remember
| that you invented that criteria based your arbitrary
| biases. Those with 10 years of real experience are
| statistically more likely to be qualified for the job,
| that is hard to disagree with, but being a white male
| also makes you statistically more likely to be qualified
| for the job in question. That is why the bias spoken of
| exists! But the point made at the business told about
| earlier is that statistical likelihood does not preclude
| outliers who deserve equal consideration.
|
| Your original comment suggests you come from the software
| industry, in which case you know full well that there are
| programmers who have been at it for a few years who can
| program circles around those who have been doing it for
| 10. Not everyone progresses at the same rate. Years of
| experience across a wide population will provide positive
| correlation, but is not anywhere close to being an
| accurate measuring device and says nothing down at the
| individual level. To discount someone with less years of
| experience than your arbitrarily chosen number before you
| have even talked to them is the very same lack of
| inclusion being talked about.
| matteotom wrote:
| > being a white male also makes you statistically more
| likely to be qualified for the job in question
|
| Source?
| 9rx wrote:
| Your previous comment. You spoke to the recruitment
| pipelines that are more likely to find white men, which
| means that when there are more white men in earlier
| career stages, there will be comparatively more white men
| ready to move into next level career stages. That is
| simple mathematics. Of course, you already knew this as
| this is exactly why DEI initiatives began. Why act like
| you don't know what is going on with an exceptionally
| tired meme?
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| Why is breadth of candidates defined by race and gender
| instead of experience and expertise. If the DEI
| department improves breadth of experience and expertise,
| by looking into alternative hiring streams, thats great,
| but people who defend DEI always approach it from the
| race and gender first which is a tell tale sign that race
| and gender are the primary objectives. And in my
| experience, when race and gender are the goals, formal
| and informal quotas appear.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Go back, consider more candidates who might not fit your
| preconceived notion of what you thought a person in that
| role should look like.
|
| This is already super weird. If someone is making decisions
| on _who to interview_ based on the gender /culture of the
| name they see on the resume and not the qualifications and
| work history, having them "consider" some additional token
| candidates is not going to do much. On the flip side, an
| interviewer that's already trying to be impartial in this
| situation is going to have to admit candidates he normally
| would not have _based on their qualifications_ to interview
| someone "diverse".
|
| And then there's the definition of "white". In practice, a
| lot of these efforts consider asian immigrants "white" for
| some reason. Meanwhile a privileged black person from an
| Ivy League school is not "white" even though they're going
| to be "white" in every socioeconomic way that matters.
| pc86 wrote:
| The charitable interpretation of why Asian == white in
| these scenarios is that Asians are not typically
| underrepresented in the engineering field, company
| founders, prestigious schools, etc.
|
| The less charitable interpretation is that DEI programs
| aren't being pushed for by Asians and they're designed to
| help people who look like the people starting the
| programs.
| chrislongss wrote:
| Even following the charitable interpretation, grouping a
| dozen of cultures with very different educational and
| economic opportunities into a single "asian" designation
| is a bizarre practice.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > In practice, a lot of these efforts consider asian
| immigrants "white" for some reason
|
| Statically Asians in America outperform "White" people
| when it comes to education and salaries, which shows the
| fallacy in the whole white privilege thing. Therefore DEI
| policies pretend Asians don't exist.
| arccy wrote:
| there's still a "bamboo ceiling"
| hollerith wrote:
| Is there? The CEOs of Microsoft and Google are Asians who
| did not even grow up in the US.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Specific examples don't overcome the overall statistics.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| "bamboo ceiling" is not a statistic.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Underrepresentation of south and east asians in
| leadership roles is, though.
| cyberax wrote:
| Can you provide the stats? I'm looking at the BLS data
| and I don't really see anything relevant.
| code_biologist wrote:
| Those CEOs are great examples, because they show the
| operative power networks are things like being a Brahmin
| or a McKinsey alum. I see less evidence for power
| networks based on race, or those power networks are doing
| less.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > operative power networks are things like being a
| Brahmin
|
| eh, what? Why would US corporate culture give a shit
| about Hindu castes? Google and Microsoft boards appointed
| Sundar and Satya, but I don't think those boards could
| tell a Brahmin from a non-Brahmin.
| danudey wrote:
| There's often a separation between the people who bring
| in the candidates and the people who interview/approve
| the candidates.
|
| If HR passes me a stack of resumes then that's who I
| interview; if all the people HR passes me are white, then
| I'm left to either assume that these were all the
| qualified candidates who applied (or at least, to operate
| under that assumption).
|
| If the process gets bounced back because the stack that
| was passed to me was filtered by HR's unconscious (or
| conscious) biases, that forces them to give me more
| diverse candidates to choose from; the best candidate may
| still be the middle class white dude, but ensuring that
| the hiring manager is presented with a broad range of
| options and not just Chad, Biff, and Troy helps the whole
| pipeline.
| com2kid wrote:
| Years ago the software engineering field looked at this
| problem, came up with good solutions, and then promptly
| proceeded to implement none of them.
|
| Resumes need to be filtered to remove age, race, gender,
| name, even what school someone went to. Then ideally the
| first filtering round of an interview is also completely
| anonymous, a take home test or a video interview with
| camera off and a voice filter in place. Heck modern AI
| tools could even be used to remove accents.
|
| HR has biases, those biases need to be removed.
|
| It only takes a few moments of thinking to realize these
| techniques are a better way to hire all around. Nothing
| good can come from someone in HR looking at a resume and
| thinking "oh that isn't a college I recognize, next
| candidate."
| chrislongss wrote:
| Reminds of the infamous attempt to fight discrimination
| in orchestras by conducting blind auditions. Which ended
| up reducing diversity even further.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| This has been demonstrably proven to make discrimination
| worse, not better.
|
| Apparently, people like to discriminate. Where there are
| overt markers, there is still a chance that people fear
| the legality of their discrimination. And when you remove
| overt markers of discrimination, people look for subtle
| markers, and those exist, and then still end up
| discriminating.
|
| End result, even fewer qualified members of the
| discriminated class gets hired.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Has it been proven that people still manage to tell races
| of candidates apart after removing markers? Or is this
| all just conjecture?
| zo1 wrote:
| Of course the "answer" is never that people were biased
| in favor of DEI groups in the first place, and removing
| said overt markers of their race just removed that bias
| because individuals could no longer discriminate. No, the
| answer was obviously then is that people found "secret"
| and "subtle" markers instead because they just have to
| discriminate and don't like DEI groups.
|
| Occams razor comes to mind.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| If "subtle markers" can still identify someone's race or
| gender, then remove those markers too. You can test of
| this works by giving employees bonuses to correctly guess
| the candidates' demographics and see if they can predict
| reliably.
|
| If anonymization reduced the representation of certain
| demographics maybe it doesn't make discrimination worse,
| but rather you were wrong about which groups are
| discriminated against?
| com2kid wrote:
| Do you have links to any studies that removing names and
| other obvious markers from resumes (college name,
| employment dates, etc) somehow increases discrimination
| in HR screening?
|
| I honestly fail to how that could happen.
|
| For example, if HR is throwing away all resumes that
| aren't from an Ivy League, then removing cities and
| schools from the resume can only help.
| jordanb wrote:
| > Do you actually have experience with those programs?
|
| I was hiring manager at a "woke" (media) company during and
| after peak DEI.
|
| The only policy of DEI that really affected me was that we
| had to have a "diverse slate of candidates" meaning, we had
| to interview at least one woman and (non asian) minority.
| This was actually a problem hiring engineers because we
| wouldn't be able to extend offers unless we'd satisfy the
| "diverse slate" meaning we'd miss out on candidates we
| wanted to hire while waiting for more people to interview.
| We could get exceptions but it'd be a fight with HR.
|
| Asians didn't count as diverse because, in tech, they are
| not underrepresented. Basically "diverse" hires were women,
| AA, hispanic, etc.
|
| Our company quietly walked back the "diverse slate" stuff
| _years ago_. In fact I think it was only in effect for like
| a year at the most.
|
| The DEI stuff rolling out was highly performative. It
| wasn't in place for really long and quietly walked back.
| Now, the _loud_ walking back of policies that probably
| haven 't been enforced in years is also performative. In
| both instances it's companies responding to the political
| moment.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This was exactly my experience in a Big Tech company. I
| will say, a lasting (IMO good) effect we had was that
| hiring managers continued to consider diversity of
| candidates as a factor, but there was no gate in
| extending offers. Some hiring managers took this further
| and actually enforced diverse slate style hiring because
| they believed in it and others didn't care. It also meant
| that if a req was taking a long time to get filled,
| diverse slate just stopped being a factor.
| snambi wrote:
| Not really true. We have been asked to hire women in our
| team. Thankfully we found an amazing person. But other
| teams were not so lucky. It was pure nonsense.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| > consider more candidates who might not fit your
| preconceived notion of what you thought a person in that
| role should look like.
|
| This sounds like a terminally online Twitter user's idea of
| how people do hiring.
|
| It's also funny to consider when 70%+ of H1Bs are Indian
| men. Tech companies just have subconscious bias for hiring
| both brown men and white men, but not black or yellow ones
| to complete the Blumenbach crayon set.
|
| This kind of rhetoric is why we're seeing a pendulum swing
| in the other direction instead of a sane middle ground. But
| at least it's finally becoming trite to make these claims
| with a straight face.
| whynotminot wrote:
| > Tech companies just have subconscious bias for hiring
| both brown men and white men, but not black or yellow
| ones to complete the Blumenbach crayon set.
|
| Have never worked anywhere there was a shortage of Asian
| Male engineers.
|
| Not as many Black engineers for sure -- but I think that
| tends to be a society wide workforce problem. In an
| absolute sense there are less Black software engineers.
|
| I think a lot of these imbalances come down to that. But
| people don't want to acknowledge that the majority of
| software engineers are male, and largely white, Asian, or
| Indian. But they expect their individual company to
| somehow solve a society wide deficit.
| gip wrote:
| This has been my experience as well as a director of
| engineering. I also think more diverse candidates is a good
| thing.
|
| The thing that was harder for me was working with the
| people hired to run the DEI recruiting programs. I never
| was able to establish a great working relationship with
| them even though I was able to do so with a good cross-
| section of the rest of the organization. Not really sure
| why tbh.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| If that's what DEI did, I think that getting rid of it is
| positive. It seems to just add performative and inefficient
| bureaucracy to an already typically slow and laborious task
| which is hiring people.
|
| I am not even white by the way. I would feel extremely
| insulted if I found out I was hired to fill some diversity
| checkbox instead of being hired for being damn good at what
| I do. I am confident and proud of my skills, which I put a
| lot of effort to develop over decades. The color of my skin
| is as meaningless as the color of my shirts.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I would feel extremely insulted if I found out I was
| hired to fill some diversity checkbox instead of being
| hired for being damn good at what I do._
|
| That's exactly what was happening, and you can imagine
| the quality of work that resulted in. Now that the tide
| is turning, that hopefully won't be the case anymore.
| Plasmoid wrote:
| One thing that started happening is that "diverse"
| candidates were aggressively head-hunted, for interviews.
| HR wasn't interested in hiring them, they just wanted to
| fill our their internal diversity quota and lubricate the
| hiring pipeline.
| blitzar wrote:
| The memo sent from on high (multiple years):
|
| You must put up for dismissal 15% of your reports, of those
| 10% will be dismissed. You may not select any female,
| ethnic minority, lgbtq or disabled employees.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| This is terrible. It makes my blood boil just seeing
| this.
| maxwellg wrote:
| Does anyone have any concrete proof of this actually
| happening? I find it extremely doubtful.
| notahacker wrote:
| Seems to be very loosely based on Jack Welch's actual
| maxim that 10% of the workforce should be arbitrarily
| fired every year in the hope that this performative
| beating would improve morale, and maybe productivity too.
| This sort of arbitrariness was actually popular with much
| of the right at the time, but it wasn't white men that
| Welch was explaining just needed to overdeliver and
| outperform (and definitely not have kids) to succeed in
| the long run...
| blitzar wrote:
| The overlords of my time were certainly schooled in the
| ways of Jack Welch, but also particularly inspired by the
| 2009 Netflix vision of a High Performing Workplace as
| seen in their culture document. It was mandatory and
| inspirational reading.
|
| When the performative beating and meritocracy absolutism
| collides with the sensitivities of the modern workplace
| the results are strangely unpredictable.
|
| The memos are tucked away somewhere with my NDA and the
| memories of crushing peoples hopes, dreams and
| aspirations.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| My company did (still does? Not sure) have a policy similar
| to that, even for IC roles.
|
| We would frequently miss out on opportunities to hire
| qualified candidates because we couldn't make an offer
| until satisfying the interview quota. By the time we did,
| the candidate accepted another offer.
|
| I think it's probably a net positive for underrepresented
| people (it's kind of hard to argue harm to white people
| when they just get other offers elsewhere that are good
| enough to accept without waiting), but I'm really not sure
| if it's a net positive for the company (pre-ipo, still
| trying to grow a lot).
| gitremote wrote:
| It's not a net positive for underrepresented groups,
| because it assumes their time wouldn't be better spent
| applying for real job opportunities. They don't have
| infinite time, because they are real people. Would you
| prefer to be rejected because of your resume, or asked to
| attend an interview and then be rejected because of your
| resume?
| hamandcheese wrote:
| > because it assumes their time wouldn't be better spent
| applying for real job opportunities.
|
| I suppose this is true, if you believe that hitting the
| additional quota is entirely performative.
|
| OTOH my company has better representation of women than
| anywhere else I've worked previously, so I don't think it
| is entirely performative.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Not commenting on the merits of AA in general, but
| multiple offers in hand in a timely manner is always
| better so losing out on that is definitely harmful.
| BadCookie wrote:
| What most companies do is interview primarily referred
| candidates, which is arguably the opposite of DEI. It
| favors people in the social networks of the population
| already employed by the hiring company. And most people
| have social networks that look very similar to themselves
| in terms of race, gender, and economic class. Is that fair?
| It doesn't seem fair.
|
| My fringe belief is that giving an edge to buddies of
| current employees ought to be illegal (at least at large
| companies) for many of the same reasons why nepotism is
| frowned upon.
| ip26 wrote:
| The "good old boys" network is a problem. But given how
| hard we all agree it is to interview effectively and
| determine who is a great fit for the role in a matter of
| a few hours, there's a lot of good sense in hiring people
| already widely known to be excellent by your team from
| years of past experience working together.
| BadCookie wrote:
| There's tension between what is best for the company and
| what is most fair to applicants. I acknowledge that, but
| think that the onus should be on (large) companies to
| figure out a better interview process.
|
| I don't see why references have to come from current (or
| past) employees. Colleges don't make you get referred by
| alumni, but they do require letters of reference
| (usually).
|
| On a related note, it's amusing to me when white men in
| tech on Reddit get mad about Indian men preferentially
| hiring other Indian men from their community. I assume
| that many of these same white men don't see any problem
| when they preferentially hire their own friends using the
| rationale that you gave.
| mrandish wrote:
| > they were largely just PR initiatives right from the start
|
| Yes, when they were widely introduced in my large company
| circa 2016-17 it was explained to senior managers as part of
| HR's efforts to "align with industry best practices". During
| the meeting introducing it to VPs and dept heads, there were
| skeptical questions as a lot of groups were under shipping
| pressure and short-handed. There was also already a lot of
| "HR overhead" like various mandatory compliance training
| sessions that all employees had to attend every year
| (unrelated to their actual work). The company was also
| clearly already highly diverse at all levels from the CEO on
| down and had been for a long time.
|
| The DEI training did end up becoming a yet another mandatory
| HR time sink and no one I know thought it was necessary or
| useful. The second year the program expanded to take even
| more time but the worst thing was they brought in outside
| trainers who started doing the "You're a racist and don't
| even know it" schtick along with weird tests and exercises.
| This became contentious and caused a lot of issues,
| especially because the context leaves people feeling like
| they can't openly disagree. There was a lot of negative push
| back but people felt like they couldn't use normal company
| channels so it was all in private conversations and small
| groups. Kind of the opposite of the intent of openness and
| communication.
|
| For me, that was when DEI went from "probably unnecessary (at
| our company) but just another 'HR Time Tax" to "This is
| disruptive and causing problems." I'm not surprised that some
| companies are realizing that the way many of these DEI
| initiatives were implemented wasn't effective in helping
| diversity and that they were also causing problems. It was
| the wrong way to pursue the right goal. At our company, we
| got rid of the old DEI program in early 2020, so this broad
| correction pre-dates the US election 8 weeks ago.
| blitzar wrote:
| My general experience was that this was much more a thing
| on the ground in ~2015-2020 and the internet / political
| rage machine is (as usual) a few years behind.
| purplethinking wrote:
| DEI has not been only for show, I know for a fact that being
| "diverse" has been a huge benefit in job search for the past
| 15 years. If you're a "woman of color" in tech you've been
| basically guaranteed a job, no matter how good or bad you
| actually are. I've been on several teams where the higher ups
| demanded we hire women because we were not diverse enough.
| Various grants and investments require a certain ratio etc.
| There's no point in denying this, this is what DEI has been
| pushing for, and this is what happened.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I think there is a difference between diversity initiatives
| before 2020 and the DEI initiatives since 2020. As far as I
| can see, the latter is indeed is corporate puffery, where
| employees maybe join a half-hour seminar to talk about DEI
| every year, and perhaps there are new DEI groups for
| employees to discuss this. But the diversity hire
| initiative before 2020 was much more substantive that
| resulted in real meaningful changes to company
| demographics.
| code_biologist wrote:
| It was always puffery, just money was cheap before 2020.
| Engineering managers I worked with before then were gung
| ho to grow their head count, even if it meant hiring iffy
| engineers. After 2020, they got told new head count would
| be much more limited and hiring got a lot more selective.
| cbsmith wrote:
| I think it very much depends. When BLM happened, I had
| the opportunity to sit in on a number of discussions with
| executives from a variety of companies about diversity
| programs, and the things I heard...
|
| "I thought after Obama was elected, that diversity was no
| longer a problem" "When we thought of diversity, we
| thought of it in terms of hiring more women" "We just
| don't get the applicants. There's nothing we can do."
|
| The whole BLM thing really shook up their thinking and
| approach to diversity. Now, I think a bunch of them did
| really engage in "corporate puffery", but I did see a lot
| of cases where tangible changes were made to diversity
| programs.
|
| ...and then more recently they seem to be firing their
| entire DEI teams. :-(
| _factor wrote:
| Half hour? Try a two day video on lesson.
| xvector wrote:
| This perfectly fits my old big tech EM who was totally
| incompetent and made life miserable for everyone on her
| team to the point where all but 2 people left (team of 12)
|
| She also took back to back maternity leave throughout her
| time at the company, 3 times in a row, before leaving.
| Didn't even know it was possible to have kids that fast.
|
| Conferences bend over backwards to have her speak. She has
| no clue what she is talking about but at least she gets to
| put it on her LinkedIn I guess.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > If you were a woman of color in tech you've been
| basically guaranteed a job, no matter how good or bad you
| actually are.
|
| Is that why there are so many women of color software
| engineers in tech?
| RestlessMind wrote:
| Many woman of color are simply not entering the pipeline.
| But those who are there get wildly favorable treatment
| compared to people from other demographics with similar
| capabilities.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Wildly favorable treatment according to who, exactly? Or
| are you just being slightly subtle about your actual
| point here?
|
| Explain it to me since I've been in the industry for
| quite some time here and I can't say I've seen what
| you're hinting at.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| One of the solutions to the 'POC Pipeline Problem' was to
| overhire for non-technical roles that could be used to
| hit diversity goals.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| are you a woman of color? if you are not, you absolutely do
| not know for a fact.
|
| Ask a "woman of color" how much of this perceived advantage
| they actually enjoy in real life, especially from their
| perspective. You will be shocked the gap between what you
| presume and what the reality is.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| When you sit in on staff meeting, and the president
| explicitly says, "we are not hiring or promoting any more
| white men, only women of color and those of other
| marginalized groups", you absolutely know it for a fact.
| This in fact occurred, and continues to occur, as I can
| personally attest, at a for-profit college in NYC. And in
| fact, although ~10 people have been hired over the last
| few years, none of them have been white men.
|
| Obviously that isn't to say women of color have it easy
| (nobody has it easy these days), but it is beyond dispute
| that this sort of discrimination is rampant in certain
| industries (like higher education) and in certain cities.
|
| And for people who say this is illegal (and perhaps it
| is), when a white man (not me), who was a victim of this
| policy (many accolades, highest performance reviews,
| seniority), was repeatedly passed over for promotion by
| women of color and other "marginalized" people, filed a
| complaint with the NYC EEOC office, he was met with
| derision.
| purplethinking wrote:
| Must be the worst in Universities where there is no
| reality check in the form of having to make a profit
| (well, maybe decades later when the reputation craters).
| I can't imagine trying to be a white man in the
| humanities today, you've got no chance.
| strix_varius wrote:
| > are you a woman of color? if you are not, you
| absolutely do not know for a fact.
|
| As a hiring manager in a fortune 100 who saw firsthand
| the delta between white men and everyone else in terms of
| the amount of justification required for hiring,
| promoting, and firing... yes, I do know this for a fact.
| themiddleupper wrote:
| Mentioning that a poc is successful only because of their
| colour is harsh. Maybe they bring value and have qualities
| that other candidates did not have. DEI only widens the
| pipeline, no private company lowers their standards.
| zo1 wrote:
| The "well" has been poisoned for all such groups of
| people, and DEI as a concept will eventually be held
| accountable to the harm it did to the groups they
| supposedly aimed to help. DEI as a concept was a leech to
| society, feeding on good will and injecting itself
| everywhere. To the detriment of both sides, and almost
| never to the detriment of _actual_ prejudiced
| individuals.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the
| first place.
|
| That's exactly what they're doing and I don't think that's a
| secret.
|
| > This kind of announcement seems extremely self defeating and
| unlikely to please anyone and piss off just about anyone that
| cares about this in any way shape or form, on either side.
|
| It's not about making users or bloggers happy. They don't care
| whether those people are "pissed" because they're just going to
| keep coming to stare at ads anyway. It _was_ about keeping
| regulators disempowered by proactively tossing an agitated
| public some crumbs, but they don 't need to worry about that
| for a while now. They're obviously just trying to keep their
| staffing strategies open and unshackled so that they can pursue
| whatever business objectives they see coming up in the next few
| years, and aren't at a disadvantage against competitors like
| Musk/X who resisted these kinds of things all along.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Aside: It appears the modern world is inflecting to OVERT
| (subversive) insular, erosion of fundamental values, with
| recent leveraging of power-structures to facilitate
| authoritarian thinking.
| xvector wrote:
| Not many people supported those "fundamental values" to
| begin with. The only people that wanted DEI policies were
| extremely loud liberals (that temporarily gained power by
| steamrolling the apathetic majority)
|
| Now we are just seeing a return to reality.
| fmajid wrote:
| You can be unbiased in hiring and still end up with an
| unrepresentative mix, because underprepresented minorities
| don't even apply, and outreach is a good way to get to
| improve that without lowering your standards. That's the
| theory, at least, but yes, in practice it's really hard and
| most of these efforts end up performative, and staffing DEI
| bureaucracies with minorities is a good way to make the
| dismal diversity statistics look less bad if you don't look
| too closely at the breakdown by roles and salary bands.
| chrislongss wrote:
| These DEI programs were not primarily about outreach.
| Outreach existed way before DEI (e.g. interns, new grads,
| Grace Hopper conference, etc) and will continue to exist.
| DEI introduced improper - discriminatory - systems with
| quotas and heavy prioritization of specific groups of
| people.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Not only that, the "diverse slate" requirement, which is
| mentioned in the Meta posting, is actively harmful to PoC
| jobseekers. When I was at a Microsoft, I I knew of
| multiple cases where a candidate was already essentially
| decided on, but they had to continue what was essentially
| "sham" interviews of at least one woman and one PoC in
| order to check the diverse slate box. Complete waste of
| time on all sides.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I worked with a talented engineer who happened to be
| female and she was constantly behind because she had to
| attend each interview this small company did. Even she, a
| big supporter of these efforts, had to laugh about it.
| themiddleupper wrote:
| The company i work for does not have any quota and
| neither does meta. There is no lowering of standards to
| hire somebody, just more effort to get wider application
| pool and outreach programs to schools. Also DEI is not
| just based on colour or ethnicity. There are other groups
| like mothers, neuro divergent people etc.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| To be clear, the thing that's keeping them from being
| disadvantaged against Musk/X is cozying up to the Trump and
| the government. That's going to make a much bigger difference
| in stock performance than any personnel impact of these
| changes.
| andrepd wrote:
| Surely nothing can go wrong with authoritarians backed by
| trillionaires with social media in their hands, rapidly
| talking over power. I doubt Orwell could have predicted how
| the 2020s are turning out.
| chrislongss wrote:
| "Trillionaire" media moguls were on board with the
| previous regime for at least the last decade. They are
| realigning now, not particularly surprising.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't see how very real differences in hiring practice are
| performative, but maybe that's just me.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I know of a famous tech company where majority of workers
| were white, not even Asian and Indian people, who usually
| tend to over represent in tech. Around the BLM times they put
| in policy that they had to interview people of color. What
| most managers did was just interview people of color only to
| reject them, often judge the candidates too harshly to ensure
| no laws were broken. They often interviewed the same
| candidate for multiple positions, it was pretty obvious what
| they were doing. Obviously if they were investigated, nothing
| provable would ever come out. But stuff like that is pretty
| prevalent in tech.
| sakex wrote:
| Name and shame
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Microsoft did this. I went through a DEI loop at
| Microsoft (found out later) and was ghosted by one
| manager, another manager asked a leetcode hard with 20
| minutes to implement it, another asked a leetcode hard
| and DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE ANSWER until I walked them
| through it step by step (they had never seen the answer
| before).
|
| Less you think I'm complaining about algorithmic
| interviews, I passed Google and Netflix technical rounds
| just fine.
|
| Microsoft managers were the most disinterested group I've
| ever interviewed with, and it was only later that I found
| out I was picked to interview for multiple teams because
| of a DEI recruiter, and then found out that MS had
| initiatives forcing managers to interview people from
| underrepresented backgrounds.
|
| Finally, almost everyone of the above mentioned
| interviewers was just not that bright. Seriously, sell
| your microsoft stock. The IQ difference between the
| people at Netflix and Google compared to MSFT was
| astounding.
| 1over137 wrote:
| >Seriously, sell your microsoft stock
|
| Alas, the stock's future performance is unlikely to be
| tied to any of that. Stock prices are barely attached to
| reality at all.
| Jagerbizzle wrote:
| What part of the org were you interviewing in?
| rootcage wrote:
| I used to work at Microsoft and was on the other side,
| unfortunately I had the exact opposite experience. I
| interviewed and rejected a candidate (due to poor
| technical performance) then had the hiring manager
| contact me asking if I would reconsider as he needed to
| "increase DEI" footprint of his team. He wanted me to
| lower the bar for DEI reasons.
| astura wrote:
| >Finally, almost everyone of the above mentioned
| interviewers was just not that bright. Seriously, sell
| your microsoft stock.
|
| Well, if they were only interviewing you for performative
| box-checking reasons so they could hire the person they
| really wanted to hire then they would have a strong
| incentive to come across as somewhere you didn't want to
| work at. A disinterested interviewer is going to come
| across as not so bright. So this is hardly a fair
| assessment of the talent at Microsoft.
|
| OTOH my professional interactions with Microsoft
| employees has always been positive. They've always been
| extremely capable and have gone the extra mile for me.
| superultra wrote:
| > That's exactly what they're doing and I don't think that's
| a secret.
|
| Which is fine. But are they then suggesting that bias/etc was
| never a problem in the first place? Or, are they suggesting
| that DEI was not the solution, and if so, then why aren't
| they suggesting a new solution?
|
| There isn't a satisfying answer here, to me anyway.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Turns out the whole "culture" thing was made up. You just do
| what is best for your business.
| pton_xd wrote:
| > you're acknowledging rolling back DEI initiatives in part
| because of the "political landscape"
|
| Isn't that the same reason they were rolled out in the first
| place?
| transcriptase wrote:
| The initiatives were put in place to appease large
| institutional investors who were trying to score virtue points
| with the public and progressive lawmakers who generally aren't
| that friendly to Blackrock, Vanguard, et al.
|
| Now that it's not social suicide to point out that codified
| racism to fight bias is absurd and outcomes have been
| questionable, the pendulum is headed back toward centre.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > the pendulum is headed back toward centre.
|
| That's not how a pendulum works. It's leading to a white
| terror, then it will swing back to a smaller red terror, then
| a smaller white terror, etc... Eventually some event will tap
| the pendulum again.
|
| The diversity scam was a way to pretend that Affirmative
| Action wasn't racist, and Affirmative Action was a way not to
| settle accounts with the descendants of slaves. All of this
| is about not dealing with slavery, and the children of slaves
| are not the slightest bit materially better off than before
| it started. The vast majority of the benefits of these
| programs went to white women, immigrants, and sexual
| minorities.
|
| We literally don't even keep statistics about the descendants
| of slaves, because they're too embarrassing. The only reason
| race was introduced into the census was to keep track of
| them, and now we're counting Armenians for some reason.
|
| Not dealing with slavery turned us all into race scientists.
|
| That being said, the white victimization story is a dumb one.
| White people are overrepresented. If some institution stopped
| hiring or admitting for diversity reasons, they wouldn't be
| hiring and admitting more white people, they'd just hire and
| admit _fewer people._ Anti-woke is a civil rights struggle on
| behalf of dumb people: the lowest ranked white people with
| absolutely no historical excuse. If one really believed in
| nature over nurture, or the degeneracy of culture, that 's
| exactly where you would go looking for it.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/articles/long-shadows-the-black-
| wh...
|
| > Our headline finding is that three-generation poverty is
| over 16 times higher among Black adults than white adults
| (21.3 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively). In other words,
| one in five Black Americans are experiencing poverty for the
| third generation in a row, compared to just one in a hundred
| white Americans.
| ADeerAppeared wrote:
| > It seems to me you're doing at least 1 thing here, and
| acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the
| first place.
|
| Keep in mind that these statements are made to pander to the
| incoming president. The implication that "DEI is discrimination
| against white people" is very much a part of that.
|
| > why the initiative in the first place?
|
| Ultimately this is the same answer as with the broader ESG
| incentives. It is in fact a good idea to have a diverse
| workforce for the exact same reasons evolution keeps diversity
| around.
|
| The pretense that it's "discrimination" is rather silly,
| especially for tech giants like Meta whose shortlists of
| qualified applicants number in the hundreds to thousands after
| initial selection.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| ESG is just a jobs program for stock brokers.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| _> evolution keeps diversity around_
|
| Evolution has no built in preference for diversity and
| certain branches of the evolutionary tree wiping out others
| is a common occurrence throughout history. For instance, the
| Neanderthals. That's why there are so many rules about
| importing foreign plants at the border.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It's entirely reasonable to read this entire Meta post as "we
| had DEI programs, they were meaningful and effective, but now
| there's an administration in office that will use anti-trust
| laws to cut us into pieces unless our privately-held supports
| their political preferences."
|
| I'm not saying that's the case (well, I do think it is) but if
| it is true, then trying to extract meaningful conclusions about
| the performance of DEI programs from it is a fool's errand.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| Trump previously threatened to imprison Zuckerberg for life
| on trumped up charges (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-
| warns-mark-zuckerberg-c...). He said in an interview that's
| probably why Meta changed their policies
| (https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lf66oltlvs2l).
| bubblethink wrote:
| >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 performative in the first place.
|
| The initiative was them bowing to public pressure and the
| zeitgeist of the time. We will never know if it was completely
| performative of if they did actual racism. They are obviously
| not going to admit to it one way or the other. But they are
| rolling it back and explicitly stating that they won't do
| racism. That seems fine. What's the problem ?
| llm_trw wrote:
| You need obvious people to fire in the next downturn without
| hurting productivity too badly.
|
| A dei program labels those people for you.
|
| Ironically this is exactly the reason why dei programs were
| considered illegal until a decade ago.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Because both acts are performative, its just rarely we see
| corporations wanting to appear more racist.
| derefr wrote:
| There were already actual commitments to diversity in most
| places, yes.
|
| DEI _programs_ , on the other hand, were basically a symbolic
| "party badge" that many companies and organizations felt
| compelled to adopt to keep scary people -- often their own
| employees! -- from suing them for discrimination.
|
| That's the "political landscape" they are referring to -- a
| political climate that allowed for even _frivolous_
| discrimination lawsuits to succeed, against companies already
| striving to minimize discrimination.
|
| These DEI programs weren't "performative" in the regular
| "performing caring" sense that companies often do; they were
| "performative" in the Red Scare "performing Very Visibly Not
| Being A Communist, even though you were never a Communist"
| sense.
| slg wrote:
| > in part because of the "political landscape,"
|
| People really should be more explicit about this. The
| "political landscape" here is the desire to pay fealty to an
| incoming administration in hopes of currying favor. American
| culture didn't drastically change. Trump got 3 million more
| votes in 2024 than he got in 2020 which is largely in line with
| overall population growth. That 3 million also amounts to less
| than 1% of the US population. If that causes you to drastically
| change your opinion of the culture of this country, you weren't
| paying very much attention beforehand. The only thing that
| markedly changed was who is going to be leading the government
| and thereby the regulators that Meta wants to butter up. That
| is all Meta is doing with these recent moves.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| > The "political landscape" here is the desire to pay fealty
| to an incoming administration in hopes of currying favor.
|
| Exactly as it was when DEI practices were introduced.
| slg wrote:
| You must have a short memory if you actually believe that.
| Diversity programs didn't all coincidentally spring up in
| January 2021 the way they are coincidentally disappearing
| in January 2025. I won't argue if you call them
| performative, but they absolutely weren't just blatant
| appeals to an incoming presidential administration.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| Was that in response to a new incoming administration, or a
| series of social and cultural events?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Actually, these practices were mostly introduced under
| Trump, and ramped up with the Floyd protests, which also
| took place under Trump.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| American culture did not drastically change but mainstream
| media outlets and the entertainment industry attempted to
| make it seem as if it had shifted quite dramatically when it
| really had not. You can't simply say that all the people that
| voted for Harris support all this stuff. There were many
| people that voted for Harris or against Trump for many
| reasons but still don't fall into the far-left camp. It's
| just paying fealty. Is what has happened to AAA games and
| example of consumers paying fealty to Trump? Let's be
| serious.
| slg wrote:
| I don't really follow what point you are trying to make.
| The stuff that Meta has reversed in the last few days is
| literally decades of slow cultural change. It isn't all DEI
| and trans folks. They are now allowing the use of "retard"
| for example. Almost every corner of mainstream American
| society outside those dominated by 13-year-old boys had
| left that word behind at least a decade ago.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| A lot more people use that word in reality than you might
| think, as shocking as the that will seem.
| corimaith wrote:
| Truth be speaking, that's not the direction the rest of
| the world outside the West has gone though, they'd
| actually be more aligned with those "13-year old" boys on
| those cultural issues.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It's not just that Trump is in power now. It's that Trump,
| unlike any US President before him (at least in the modern
| era) is highly and publicly vindictive.
| jollyllama wrote:
| > unlikely to please anyone and piss off just about anyone that
| cares about this in any way shape or form, on either side.
|
| Disagree, right wingers will be satisfied by this performative
| posturing even though there's no real change to existing
| policy.
| glitchc wrote:
| I think that's the point. DEI is performative. A business
| cannot survive unless it hires the best person for the job.
| pc86 wrote:
| Regardless of the first points you make, companies
| objectively do not need to hire the best person for the job.
| Lots of companies need programmers. 99% of them do not need
| world class software engineers.
|
| There are plenty of jobs where "can type JS into a computer
| for 30 hours a week and go to a couple meetings" is plenty to
| keep the business moving forward.
| purplethinking wrote:
| A few small holes will not sink the aircraft carrier, but
| eventually there will be enough holes. See Disney.
| whycome wrote:
| > acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the
| first place
|
| The retraction in itself is performative as well. It's trying
| to highlight that "we only did it because it was a necessary
| performative action at the time due to the political climate
| then -- we didn't really mean it."
| mv4 wrote:
| These programs seem problematic.
|
| 'A former Facebook global diversity strategist stole more than
| $4 million from the social media giant "to fund a lavish
| lifestyle" in California and Georgia, federal prosecutors
| said.'
|
| Interestingly, similar fraud occurred at her next job.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/former-facebook-diversity-le...
| seydor wrote:
| not only performative but discriminative and harmful hence the
| need of removal
| santoshalper wrote:
| They never cared about DEI. The difference is that now they
| don't feel pressure to pretend.
| az226 wrote:
| The honest message wound have been:
|
| Hi all, I wanted to share some changes we're making to our
| hiring, development and procurement practices. Before getting
| into the details, there is some important background to lay
| out:
|
| The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity
| and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The
| Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions
| signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms
| longstanding principles that discrimination should not be
| tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics.
| The term "DEI" has also become charged, in part because it is
| gives preferential treatment of some groups over others.
|
| At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be
| achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in
| knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives,
| and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving
| complex problems and identifying new opportunities which
| ultimately helps us deliver on our ambition to build products
| that serve everyone. On top of that, we've always believed that
| no-one should be given - or deprived- of opportunities because
| of protected characteristics, except if they're a man or white,
| or Asian man.
|
| Given the shifting legal and policy landscape, we're making the
| following changes:
|
| On hiring, we will continue to source candidates from different
| backgrounds, but we will stop discriminating against white and
| Asian men. This practice has always been subject to public
| debate and is currently being challenged. We believe there are
| other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage
| teams made up of world-class people from all types of
| backgrounds to build products that work for everyone. We have
| decreased the importance of meeting racist and sexist quotas
| and tying outcomes to compensation. Having quotas in place make
| hiring decisions based on race or gender. While this was our
| practice, we want to appear less sexist and racist. We are
| sunsetting our supplier discrimination efforts within our
| broader supplier strategy. This effort focused on sourcing from
| Black-owned businesses; going forward, we will focus our
| efforts on supporting small and medium sized businesses that
| power much of our economy. Opportunities will continue to be
| available to all qualified suppliers, including those who were
| part of the supplier diversity program. Instead of equity and
| inclusion training programs, we will build programs that focus
| on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate
| bias for all, no matter your background.
| dmurray wrote:
| > acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the
| first place
|
| That seems unnecessarily judgemental about the true effect of
| the program. Maybe it was really effective and made Meta more
| productive and also helped many people from historically
| underrepresented backgrounds people get good jobs, but they're
| _falsely_ claiming it 's ineffective because that's what they
| expect the current political leadership wants to hear?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The DEI policies were effective, particularly the Diverse
| Slate Approach. But it's legally risky to continue with it
| under the current administration since it was a race and
| gender conscious policy. People can argue as to whether it
| was "discrimination" but it absolutely was conscious of
| candidate's protected class.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Did it note the particular ethnic group that's
| overrepresented in US Tech?
|
| Unlikely
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The diverse slate Approach'd criteria depended on the
| role. Ther are some roles where Asians are
| underrepresented so they'd count in that role. For tech,
| they're not underrepresented so they don't count towards
| the DSA.
| freejazz wrote:
| It's meant to please people who have a political opposition to
| the concept of DEI.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > It seems to me you're doing at least 1 thing here, and
| acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the
| first place.
|
| It only seems that way because it absolutely is an
| acknowledgement that the DEI program was performative in the
| first place.
|
| > This kind of announcement seems extremely self defeating and
| unlikely to please anyone and piss off just about anyone that
| cares about this in any way shape or form, on either side.
|
| No, it will please people who felt that DEI programs were
| hurting productivity and taking jobs away from more deserving
| candidates... and that's exactly why they'd make this
| announcement. I suspect there may have even been some pressure
| applied behind closed doors with the threat of lawsuits and
| government oversight on this matter.
|
| I'm confident there's a ton of people cheering about this. I
| just don't want to know those people.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the
| first place
|
| Right. And being open about it is by design, so that the new
| Overlords (Trump and Musk) know that Zuck's heart was never in
| that DEI stuff anyway, that he just had to do it because of the
| political climate, and they can count on his whole-hearted
| support for the next 4 years.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Took me way too long that PoC doesn't refer to proof-of-
| concept.
| nailer wrote:
| > I'm a PoC
|
| Are you a black American? East and south asians generally don't
| use the term, and DEI focuses on the former and penalizes the
| latter (hence east and south asians avoiding the term).
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It depends on the company, some are faking it, some are taking
| hard lines. For example, my company (>100,000 employees,
| American company, in top 100 Fortune 500) has a 60% women in IT
| in Europe (targets are by region or country). We exceeded that,
| by promoting purchasing assistants as IT Solution Architects.
| Zero expertise, zero experience (purchasing is a different
| dept, they have ~ 80-90% women without any targets, it's a job
| that naturally attracts women), moved to IT to meet dept
| targets and de-professionalizing the entire department. I have
| junior devs paid more than software architects with 30 years of
| experience, because the junior dev is a woman so it was
| promoted directly as "Digital Product Owner", which is a title
| with no meaning or responsibility, but it is one salary band
| higher than a software architect.
|
| This is one company I know very well, but I have friends and
| former colleagues in similar companies. Especially in non-IT
| companies, this happens a lot - check FMCG companies, for
| example, where innovation does not exist because most jobs are
| fake jobs but well known activist shareholders are strongly
| pushing for it, they don't care about profits in the pursue of
| political agenda.
| dagmx wrote:
| Meta have some of the most double speak I've seen.
|
| They'll say one set of virtuous sounding goals while completely
| undermining it in the same breath.
|
| This is just them running with their tails between their legs
| before the new admin takes over.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I think this is the norm for any topic that is politicized. You
| could have ChatGPT or some other LLM write the memo and it
| wouldn't be much better or worse.
| macNchz wrote:
| Goes way, way back--I remember announcements nearly 20 years
| ago where they were basically removing/setting bad defaults on
| what primitive privacy controls they had at the time, but
| calling it making things "more social."
| loeg wrote:
| Suppose you made a bad policy decision and want to roll it
| back. How do you do that? Anything you do is going to piss
| someone off. I think they're trying to do it in a plausibly
| reasonable way without shitting on everyone who worked on it
| for a couple years.
| paxys wrote:
| It's funny how they suddenly realized and reversed every
| "wrong" policy decision made over many years just days before
| a new administration takes over. And these new policies are
| exactly aligned with what the administration wants.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, if you've made a bad decision, which is better, to
| reverse it for a bad reason, or to keep it for a not as bad
| reason?
| loeg wrote:
| Maybe you have the causality backwards -- that the response
| to these kinds of unpopular policies are why a new
| administration was elected.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| It was, after all, the federal government that forced
| Meta to do any DEI anything /s
| JeremyNT wrote:
| They didn't have to announce shit, much less announce it
| right as the new regime is taking over. If they wanted to
| sunset these programs they could've slowly ramped these
| programs down without saying anything and nobody would've
| noticed.
|
| This sends a very clear message about what they're trying to
| do and whose side they are on.
| loeg wrote:
| I disagree that silently rolling it back would not be
| noticed or create at least as big a shit-storm. Being
| public about the change was the only real option.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| Meta are willing to be downright evil if it's profitable. Just
| ask the Rohingya. They might have hired enough DEI people that
| there was a cadre of pro-DEI thought within the company, but at
| a higher level that was only ever preemption against regulatory
| action, and evidently they weren't ever allowed to take root.
|
| > This is just them running with their tails between their legs
| before the new admin takes over.
|
| They're not running away from this, they're running towards the
| new admin, mouths wide open to receive. This admin promises to
| be amazing for dead-eyed big tech fuckery and they want in. And
| it's a win-win for them as they can also save the expensive DEI
| and fact-checking cost center departments while they're at it.
| ColdTakes wrote:
| That title image looks like it is from the set of a sitcom
| starring Mark Zuckerberg.
|
| DEI initiatives have always been a dog and pony show, not a thing
| executives have ever truly cared about and they are now in a
| political environment where they can show what they believe in.
| People will learn the hard way these companies have never cared
| about you.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| They may have been a dog and pony show but were definitely real
| and forced executives to change how they hire and promote in
| illegal, discriminatory ways.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Perhaps in your experience, I would be for them if they
| "forced executives to change how they hire".
|
| From my perspective, that has not happened. My problem is
| their lack of teeth to do what they say they do.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| There were teeth, in that your own performance review (as a
| leader) would be affected by it. Depending on your level,
| your own promotion would require certain stats for your
| teams for it to be approved. So people made all sorts of
| decisions - including hiring people they shouldn't have
| hired - in order to push those numbers to where they were
| forced to. The same happened behind closed doors on
| promotions.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| That was not the case in my experience. I am learning
| that we all have vastly different experiences on what the
| implementation was, making the discussion rather
| difficult because we are all talking from very different
| vantage points.
| ColdTakes wrote:
| It would help the conversation if you expound on your
| experiences on implementation.
| devvvvvvv wrote:
| What exactly else did DEI initiatives do besides try to
| get people hired for their race instead of their
| competence?
| laughinghan wrote:
| In theory they try to get people hired for their
| competence rather than their network. A widely-cited
| anecdotal example of this reportedly working well is the
| Rooney Rule:
| https://www.espn.com/nfl/playoffs06/news/story?id=2750645
|
| This thread also has a lot of anecdotal examples of
| failure modes of 'diverse slate' rules, though, such as
| people who have already decided who to hire still
| interviewing women candidates just to appease the rule,
| thus wasting everyone's time.
| devvvvvvv wrote:
| >Rooney Rule
|
| Was there any evidence then or now that blacks
| weren't/aren't just statistically worse at coaching? How
| many White coaches that were known to be better than the
| black ones were passed up for interviews due to this
| crap?
|
| Your definition of success is more of minority group
| being hired, you don't care if they're competent. In the
| example you gave, you would be happy if they instead
| hired a woman, regardless of whether she could do the job
| - the "failure mode" to you is not hiring a woman. Your
| ideology is cancer to a functioning society.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| I think the only "dei" hire i saw was an administrative
| assistant that got fired ultimately. Let's not pretend eng
| hasn't had a massive gap in available hires for a very long
| time.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Well said. What we need is real DEI initiatives. But private
| dictatorships don't care about this stuff. Only what marketing
| value they can gain from it.
| bubblethink wrote:
| The weirdest one I saw was when Uber Eats would highlight black
| owned businesses and ask you to order from them. Uber isn't
| going to lower its cut for these black businesses or donate to
| some charity for black people if you order. It just wants you
| to funnel money to them through a black business. Bizarre.
| undersuit wrote:
| https://merchants.ubereats.com/us/en/black-owned-
| restaurants...
|
| Not bizarre, capitalism. Uber Eats should expand their
| offerings else someone else will take that market segment.
| erulabs wrote:
| I think it's somewhat important to understand meta and its
| products are _not_ tech products. Outside of React and llama and
| the like, Meta is not building for or speaking to the tech
| community. If what they do or say sounds like populism, it's
| because it is. It can be ham fisted, because the majority of
| people are only barely paying attention, and the majority of
| people is who facebook wants to please.
|
| Like politics, things feel dumb and ham-fisted, because they are.
| They're playing at winning wide swaths of _billions_ of people,
| and the majority of people _aren 't paying attention_, so
| hypocrisy doesn't register as well as just being vaguely aligned
| with what's popular.
|
| I don't mean any of this in an derogatory "unwashed masses" sort
| of way, it's just how it is.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| Thank you for putting this so eloquently, especially "the
| majority of people are only barely paying attention". It's not
| necessarily bad, as you said, just the reality.
|
| We may wish that reality were different or so, but we shouldn't
| resent this fact.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think the billions you are talking about care
| about Meta's hiring policies. I don't even think billions of
| people accurately understand what it means to work at "Meta"
| vs. Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp (and even then, I doubt
| majority know that Meta owns all three surfaces).
| jorblumesea wrote:
| I don't think Meta was in any danger of anything, either
| implementing pro or anti DEI policies. Zuck is still owner
| founder. He does whatever he wants, see: metaverse fiasco. The
| average person could not care less about meta's DEI policy,
| unlike Meta's content moderation policy. Meta was not in danger
| of being regulated by congress, who can't seem to even fund the
| government properly, less agree on any kind of regulations on
| tech hiring. Who does this pander to exactly? Meta's reputation
| isn't exactly stellar to begin with among all sides.
|
| This feels like an incorrect read on the situation. More likely
| this is just a blank check to hire as many people on visa as
| they want without having to conflict with any official
| policies. Meta already has entire orgs staffed by people of
| certain countries (hint: not US).
| hyperadvanced wrote:
| On the contrary, if DEI really is meaningless performative
| bloat which is resulting in labor problems, this is just an
| easy way out. It may not be popular or even possible to
| effectively legislate against the supposed legalized
| discrimination inherent in DEI, but it is pretty easy to take
| the L and save a few million in not having an army of
| lecturers on staff.
|
| The whole charade is telling for those who believe that
| businesses have any real mission other than to make money:
| with the carrot pulled out from in front of them and the
| sticks put away (and possibly other sticks being brandished
| as we speak) it's not hard to see why something like this
| would happen every 4 or 6 years.
| coldpepper wrote:
| Money always following power.
|
| Power always following money.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| This comment is based upon n two assumptions:
|
| 1) Twitter has imploded, and is on the road to Myspace level
| relevance
|
| 2) that implosion is due to a removal of moderation
|
| I'll try to keep it politically neutral. But this and other
| Facebook announcements means inexorable collapse is on the medium
| term horizon, because they mirror what Twitter did
|
| These actions could possibly be done with social network circa
| early to mid 2010s.
|
| But since the rise of massive online campaigns of disinformation
| or propaganda, and then rocket fueled by AI...
|
| It means not only will left-wing people run away in droves, but
| then toxicity explodes and successive waves of moderates and
| apolitical people get driven away.
|
| It's interesting because people seem to have forgotten what the
| word moderation means.
|
| It's keeping out the extremes. In particular, the extremes of
| emotions. Which then cloud any sort of productive discussion.
|
| Without moderation, especially with the organized ai and
| misinformation and other social Network phenomena, The pure
| outrage cycle while individually effective for posts, very
| rapidly makes the overall ecosystem completely intolerable.
|
| Because one thing at the political extremes I would argue more
| strongly on the right but definitely on the left, is intolerance.
| lokar wrote:
| I mostly agree. FB is trying to "sell" (the price is data /
| ads) a product. They have to decide if that will be a
| "moderate" product or an extreme product. But, I'm not
| excluding that they have reasonably concluded that a more
| extreme product will generate more revenue (perhaps from fewer
| people).
| Animats wrote:
| > 1) Twitter has imploded, and is on the road to Myspace level
| relevance
|
| Revenue is down, yes. But when a head of state wants to say
| something to the world, they put it in a tweet. 189 countries
| have an official presence on X.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Sure, but government bureaucracies are also famously slow to
| adapt and move on. Is it actually a vote of continued
| confidence?
| Animats wrote:
| Yes, it is. Here's a list of world leaders congratulating
| Trump on his election. Almost all of them did it on X.[1]
| Now that's market share.
|
| [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/list-of-world-
| leaders-c...
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I think you missed my point. Government policy right now
| is to use Twitter, yes, but is that because everyone has
| confidence in it, or because they are simply slow to
| change? Twitter is quickly losing it's claim to being the
| digital town square both as users flee it and it becomes
| more difficult to use. I can't even navigate twitter
| anymore because I don't have an account. I can see single
| tweets at best. A new default choice has yet to appear,
| but what are the odds everyone is going to stick around
| if Bluesky continues to gain a following? To me it seems
| like momentum more than anything else.
|
| And really, if you were going to publicly congratulate
| the Tweeter in Chief and wanted to make sure he saw, how
| would you do it?
| Animats wrote:
| > And really, if you were going to publicly congratulate
| the Tweeter in Chief and wanted to make sure he saw, how
| would you do it?
|
| Good point. The old approach was to broadcast something
| on your countries' official radio station. The CIA used
| to have something called the Foreign Broadcast
| Information Service, with people listening to Radio
| Albania and such, just in case somebody announced
| something important.
| jandrese wrote:
| We've already run the experiment on what an unmoderated
| discussion forum looks like once it grows beyond a trivial
| number of users. It's called 4chan, specifically /b/. Twitter/X
| is just reinforcing the previous findings as it rapidly shifts
| into being another version of /b/.
|
| The shameless and the trolls push out the sensible people. It
| quickly devolves into conspiracy theories, grifts, porn, and
| propaganda.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| 4chan is moderated.
| jandrese wrote:
| For some of the channels yes, but /b/ mostly stops at
| "delete the obvious child porn". Even the more moderated
| channels take a fairly light touch, only mostly removing
| off topic threads in addition to the blatantly illegal
| stuff.
| mossTechnician wrote:
| It's strange Facebook would follow in the path of Twitter
| explicitly, because at least on paper Facebook is (and has
| been) the more profitable of the companies.
|
| But I do understand a willingness to abandon "moderation" and
| allow extremes, because things like extreme emotion could lead
| to arguments that lead to increased user attention and thus,
| platform usage.
| mempko wrote:
| I created a new account on Twitter to see what new users see
| and the website is unusable. It's basically 4chan now with Elon
| Musk and sports.
|
| Anyone defending people should try it. See how long you don't
| see and Elon Musk post or other hateful far right content.
| rendang wrote:
| I use it every day and my feed is full of intelligent,
| thoughtful analysis and discussion. Even the edgy humor is
| much more clever and subtle than what you'd find on Reddit or
| 4chan
| smy20011 wrote:
| Do you have an example of such account? Most of the thing I
| saw is engagement bait.
| mempko wrote:
| Read my post again. Try creating a new account and see the
| content you get.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It means not only will left-wing people run away in droves,
| but then toxicity explodes and successive waves of moderates
| and apolitical people get driven away.
|
| Left-wing people haven't left twitter. Some extreme Democratic
| Party partisans, many with histories on twitter too ugly and
| venomous to possibly clean up, have left twitter. Others have
| created accounts on Bluesky, but still post twice as often on
| twitter as they do on Bluesky.
|
| Bluesky showed hockey stick active usage growth in the two
| weeks after Trump's election, peaked on _November 20th_ , and
| has been steadily dropping ever since.
|
| https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
|
| There was a little inauguration bump, but Bluesky should be at
| its pre-election activity level within a few months unless they
| do something drastic.
|
| The real threat to Twitter _is_ Threads, and _only after this
| announcement._ Zuckerberg is promising exactly what Musk
| promised, but is not as erratic as Musk (who is happy to attack
| users based on his own personal whims.) If he actually
| delivers, formally and professionally, a 2015 twitter
| experience, he 'll win.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| I'd be curious to see the same graphs for X / Threads, but I
| don't think we'll ever get that data.
| stockerta wrote:
| Facebook already was a cesspool, now they add the shit into it.
| pkkkzip wrote:
| 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
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| 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.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| What is there at this point that is going to stop FB from
| having the same advertising problems that Twitter has had?
|
| You used to have major corporations advertising on Twitter but
| they bailed out when they realized that their ads were
| appearing amidst people posting insane bigoted screeds.
|
| It would seem like there is now a severe risk of a revenue
| collapse at Facebook if advertising corporations behave the
| same way they did with Twitter.
| tim333 wrote:
| I can't see FB becoming like X. If nothing else FB has a real
| names policy so everyone can see who said what whereas on X
| you can be anonymous or set up a million bot accounts or
| whatever.
| tim333 wrote:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/303681/twitter-users-wor...
| shows users down from 368 to 335 million. Down but not really
| imploded.
|
| Musk has approx doubled his net worth from $200bn to $400bn.
|
| It's not really Myspace.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| There are two things that are important to separate here:
|
| 1. In one hand, the rolling back of how DEI has/was implemented I
| think can be a good thing. I think lots of people, myself
| included, believe that it "went off the rails", but most
| importantly, I think it ended up being counterproductive to its
| end goals. Nearly everyone I know who wasn't part of the DEI
| cottage industry came to view many/most of these programs with
| cynicism, even if they weren't vocal about it.
|
| 2. Don't mistake the validity of number one for thinking that
| this is just pure and unadulterated pandering to the incoming
| administration. Meta would sacrifice small babies if they thought
| it would make them more money in the long run.
|
| The reason I believe so strongly about number 2 is what happened
| with their content guidelines changes. I'm gay, and I'm actually
| fine with people calling me insane. But I also better be able to
| call lots of religious practices based around some invisible sky
| fairy insane too. The fact that the guidelines specifically
| called out "it's OK to call gay and transgender people mentally
| ill", and _only_ those groups, is grossly despicable, and clearly
| shows Zuckerberg is just taint licking his new overlords.
|
| And to people who still work at Meta, I also think that's fine -
| we all need a paycheck. But please don't try to convince yourself
| or anyone else that you're doing it for anything but the money.
| I'm so sick of these tech companies talking about their lofty
| goals (and honestly, have been for a while long before Trump)
| when it's so abundantly clear it's just about making money. And
| again, I think that's fine to only be about money - it's a
| business after all. Just don't pretend you're doing some sort of
| societal good.
| mempko wrote:
| Except the whole reason for governments to charter companies is
| the belief it's good for societal goals. Otherwise why allow
| private and public companies in the first place if their only
| goal is to make money, that you as a government create?
|
| This idea that business has this singular goal is the result of
| brainwashing and shows a deep misunderstanding of both history
| and how things work today.
| techfeathers wrote:
| I'm really disturbed the extent to which companies are in
| lockstep with the government, and this should be a conservative
| value? I'm glad to see a reset on DEI in general, it's not
| going away but we've needed new ideas in the space and I
| suspect we'll see a resurgence sooner than you'd think.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Big, oppressive, intrusive governments are fine as long as
| they praise Jesus, cut welfare, and lower taxes.
|
| Corporate DEI seems unambitious to me - like expecting face-
| eating leopards to eat fewer faces if you can persuade them
| to wear make-up.
|
| The real problem is corporate psychopathy. DEI is a band-aid
| on a monster.
|
| And the first step to a solution is accepting that we are in
| fact dealing with monsters, not with organisations that have
| positive social aims and can be reasoned with.
| davidw wrote:
| They also got rid of some messenger themes:
| https://www.404media.co/meta-deletes-trans-and-nonbinary-mes...
|
| You can argue about the proper way to do DEI or not and its
| effectiveness, but this is all blatantly political. I mean, if
| someone got some enjoyment out of having those themes, what's
| it to anyone else?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Wow, that example is even more blatant, and just goes to show
| how all this free speech talk is bullshit. Exactly as you put
| it, "what's it to anyone else"? And if anything, I'd be all
| for adding _more_ themes: You want everything in MAGA red?
| Cool, knock yourself out.
|
| I hope lots of people at Meta are in full-on quiet quitting
| mode.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Yeah it's common in politics. Free speech for me, but
| "cisgender" (a medical term, same as "transgender") is a
| slur. States' rights for slavery, but not for abortion.
|
| "There must be an in-group who is protected by the law and
| not bound by it, and an out-group who is bound by the law
| but not protected by it."
| pityJuke wrote:
| Yeah, what the fuck do Messenger themes have anything to do
| with free speech, or company effectiveness?
|
| It's a clear signal, along with the moderation changes that
| allow you to call LGBT+, and only LGBT+ people, mentally ill:
| Meta, the company, hates gay people.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| It's incredibly honest that they went out of their way to say
| explicitly the groups that can be bullied.
|
| Scary, but also honest.
|
| Bad times in the short future for everyone...
| Gys wrote:
| DEI = Diversity, equity, and inclusion
|
| (Not explained in the article)
| hypeatei wrote:
| Seems fine as it always appeared as virtue signaling to me. This
| is one less talking point that conservatives will use when
| literally anything happens.
| thrance wrote:
| They don't care about reality, watch them blame the democrats
| for everything wrong happening in the next 4 years, despite
| them no longer holding any meaningful power.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I am open to discussing the efficacy of DEI vs its harms.
|
| BUT
|
| The right wing media machine will never run out of silly things
| to tell its consumers to be angry about.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| I honestly think race/gender-based hiring or school admission
| is a legitimate thing to be angry about. Democrats have been
| clear about their stance on this for decades, and they can
| always change it if they want. It's not like the Hillary
| Clinton email "scandal."
| npteljes wrote:
| >This is one less talking point that conservatives will use
| when literally anything happens.
|
| In this regards, I trust them to handle themselves well, even
| in a face of shortage. And it's not like grounded arguments
| matter in era that is being dubbed "post-truth politics".
| CurtHagenlocher wrote:
| This change is no less "virtue signaling" than the previous
| policy; it's just signaling to a different audience.
| baq wrote:
| Are they rolling back Chinese and Indian managers only hiring
| Chinese and Indian folks, too?
| triceratops wrote:
| You want to...make their hiring more diverse?
| baq wrote:
| Preposterous!
| thepasswordis wrote:
| No I think what they're saying is that they want _ability_ to
| be the only (or at least by far the primary) metric used to
| evaluate the fitness of a candidate.
| paxys wrote:
| There's no magical measure for ability. People tend to hire
| people who look like them and act like them, simply because
| in their mind that is what _seems_ correct. That 's how
| humans have always behaved, and it isn't going to change.
| triceratops wrote:
| Then they're saying specifically Chinese and Indian
| managers hire people who are less skilled than the best
| candidates available to them. It's a fishy claim that needs
| proof.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| When you see a mediocre team of _all_ H1Bs from the same
| country of origin as their manager, it seems pretty fishy
| to me.
|
| Really, not _one_ other candidate from a slightly
| different asian country hit your bar?
|
| I've seen on occasion at FAANG.
| triceratops wrote:
| > mediocre team of all H1Bs
|
| More mediocre than other people in the company?
| Presumably the manager is themselves an immigrant,
| possibly also on a visa. OP's saying they deliberately
| saddle themselves with people who are worse on every
| dimension, and thereby make their own job harder. And
| only managers from 2 countries do this. That should be
| suspicious to anyone possessed with logic.
|
| > Really, not one other candidate from a slightly
| different <group> hit your bar?
|
| See now that's a very different question. Are you, like
| OP, also arguing for diversity considerations in hiring?
|
| > from the same country of origin
|
| But not any random country. Literally the 2 largest
| countries in the world, which produce massive quantities
| of software engineers. Preferentially hiring from your
| "in-group" is never morally or legally right. But why is
| there automatically a presumption of lower competence
| when that "in-group" is such an enormous hiring pool?
| pkkkzip wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| annzabelle wrote:
| That's the most egregious hiring practice I've actually seen.
| The white/black/hispanic/asian american managers all hire teams
| with multiple ethnicities based on the most qualified
| candidates for the job, while Indian born managers frequently
| seem to end up with teams that are 80+% Indian. I don't think
| I've ever seen a team that's 80% white, even in roles that
| require US Citizenship, but 80% Indian happens frequently.
| runako wrote:
| > I don't think I've ever seen a team that's 80% white
|
| I assure you this is very common in the industry, at least in
| the US. I can even go further: that 80% white team will
| usually also not have any women. 80% white men on a team
| describes most of the teams I've worked on over the decades.
| golly_ned wrote:
| Depends highly on the scale of the company from what I've
| seen. Megacorp can sponsor visas and end up with entire
| organizations of Indian or Chinese.
| nprateem wrote:
| How many women were doing Comp Sci in your year at uni?
| Mine had 6 out of 110. And they mostly hated it and don't
| work in IT now the ones I know about.
| aldebran wrote:
| There's a simpler non malicious explanation for this. Asians
| know other Asians in tech and hire based on who they are
| familiar with rather than their ethnicity. It's also why
| women managers tend to have more women in their teams.
|
| It's not malicious. Just a side effect of people's network.
| Should that change? Yes. You want a heterogenous team. And
| this is exactly why DEI is important hahaha
| throwaway48305 wrote:
| This isn't just a meta phenomenon, it happens at all the
| big tech companies and it's always asians and indians that
| form insular groups (indians slightly less so). It is
| common and not an accident.
| ukoki wrote:
| Are you sure? there are particular combinations of
| ethnicity and gender for which people seem to be quite
| convinced it's "malicious" when hirers stick to their own
| fooker wrote:
| > I don't think I've ever seen a team that's 80% white
|
| I have. But surely that won't convince you.
| formerlurker wrote:
| You're right. This article describes many lawsuits of how
| U.S. citizens would get replaced with Indians on H1B.
|
| > Insiders Tell How IT Giant Favored Indian H-1B Workers Over
| US Employees
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-cognizant-h1b-vis
| as-...
|
| I do not understand why the H1B visas are skewed towards
| Indian men. It isn't fair to Indian women nor people from
| other countries.
|
| > The latest data showed around 72% of visas were issued to
| Indian nationals, followed by 12% to Chinese citizens. [2]
|
| > About 70% of those who enter the US on H-1B visas are men,
| with the average age of those approved being around 33. [2]
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg87n2ml11o
| yantramanav wrote:
| There's no data to prove this allegation. Are we resorting to
| hearsay and racist dog whistles at HN now?
| dtquad wrote:
| Sounds like you want DEI for white people. That is not going to
| happen. Chinese and Indians in tech was already a stereotype in
| the 90s.
| zht wrote:
| what a disgusting comment
| sandspar wrote:
| Is it true?
| bigtimesink wrote:
| 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%.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| How do you know the conversation is important if you don't
| know the language?
| alexanderchr wrote:
| Have you never noticed that you were left out of an
| important conversation, without hearing the conversation
| itself?
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Well the case is different here.
|
| OP was present in the conversation and was able to figure
| out it's important without knowing the language.
| Otherwise they can just say they had a very important
| conversation in a place where OP was not present.
|
| Also curious what happened after OP figured it out and
| asked them to switch to English. Did they refuse? Did OP
| reach out to his manager? Did manager ignore OP? Did OP
| reach out to skip or HR about the manager?
|
| Lot of missing details.
| lionkor wrote:
| you hear your boss's boss's name a few times, maybe your
| own name
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| How does that become important? Could be just gossip.
| lionkor wrote:
| Yeah, could be
| tyingq wrote:
| Noting you seem to be the only person on the team surprised
| when important news is shared more broadly later.
| ken47 wrote:
| Folks from a given country tend to network with and feel more
| comfortable with people from said country, affecting their
| hiring and promotion practices. That's only natural.
| bushbaba wrote:
| I'm an immigrant and I've never felt that way. The U.S. has a
| melting pot of cultures with everyone able to relate to
| everyone in some way shape or form. Generally with food.
| Americans eat German food, Italian food, Indian food,
| Cantonese food etc. and best of all, we fusion them
| together...curry pizza for ex.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| Thought we were supposed to hire on merit. These folks are
| lowering the bar.
| nprateem wrote:
| Only if they stop making it cheaper to hire from offshore
| loeg wrote:
| Good to hear. Racism / sexism has no place in hiring practices
| and was always illegal.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| And we all know there was no racism or sexism before DEI
| programs.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Valid point. But the cure should not also be the disease.
| wussboy wrote:
| I feel like people who say this haven't read the research about
| our unconscious biases. My personal "hit me on the head" moment
| was reading about the Cincinnati Orchestra who started
| auditioning candidates behind a curtain and suddenly found
| their ratio of male:female went from 3:1 to 1:1. No one at that
| organization was consciously discriminating. Everyone thought
| as you did that they were acting without racism/sexism. And yet
| (at least) sexism was obvious once they removed it from the
| hiring equation.
|
| And this leaves people in a quandary. How do you control for
| sexism when you can't just hide your candidate behind a
| curtain? The solution society has tried is to mandate ratios.
| Why they tried this makes sense. It's obvious downfalls make
| sense. I'm not aware of any other suggestion that is viable.
| klooney wrote:
| You're behind the times- blind auditions have been disfavored
| by DEI-practitioners for years, on the grounds that they're
| not as effective as quotas.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is a funny example because some in the pro-DEI movement
| advocate for ending blind auditions to enhance diversity[1].
|
| I think if we could somehow do "blind auditions" for any kind
| of work, that would be the ideal case of non-biased hiring.
| But if the outcomes of this kind of blind hiring did not
| result in a "diverse" workforce, I don't think many DEI
| advocates would be on board.
|
| [1] https://archive.is/iH2uh
| llamaimperative wrote:
| > if the outcomes of this kind of blind hiring did not
| result in a "diverse" workforce, I don't think many DEI
| advocates would be on board.
|
| I really disagree with this. Obviously there are the
| extremists on the far end of the spectrum which this
| accurately describes, but the vast majority of people who
| support these types of programs arrive at it by observing
| 1) the literal centuries of examples like the one above and
| 2) the numerous visible day-to-day examples of
| racism/sexism one sees directly (not talking about silly
| microaggression shit)
|
| It doesn't take an extreme viewpoint to come to the
| conclusion there are knobs that might need to be turned a
| bit more deliberately in our society to bring it closer to
| the blind evaluation model.
|
| It's a shame how much of our discourse is people in the
| middle of the bell curve arguing principally against people
| on the far ends of it (or observing such arguments and
| wisely choosing to stay out of it).
| int_19h wrote:
| Thing is, the "extremists" are the ones with strong
| beliefs, so they tend to be the ones actively promoting
| such programs and running them, not the middle of the
| ground people.
|
| One is reminded of the famous debacle when GitHub
| canceled ElectronConf after using a blind review process
| to select talks, and ended up with al male speakers.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Sure but the DEI programs have only ever constituted a
| tiny, tiny portion of hiring/firing/economic activity in
| general.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > auditioning candidates behind a curtain
|
| That anecdote is widely shared but inaccurate:
| https://reason.com/2019/10/22/orchestra-study-blind-
| audition...
| alickz wrote:
| DEI seems to me to be the _opposite_ of blind auditions
| though, where instead of hiding immutable characteristics in
| the hiring process, they are factored in
| dijit wrote:
| You should read the research because its actually good.
|
| They studied the effect of _telling people_ that they had an
| unconscious bias and it worked in eliminating it.
|
| I would like to see that reproduced as it seemed like only
| certain demographics followed as you would expect; and
| primarily not the one you would like to hear. But it would be
| good to do something actually effective that doesnt introduce
| racism to fight racism.
|
| Fire vs Fire style.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| The claims about unconscious bias don't replicate:
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/iat-behavior-
| problem...
|
| and the claims about the orchestra also didn't replicate.
|
| Actually DEI promoters hate blind hiring and usually try to
| kill it because when implemented it always raises the number
| of white men being hired - there _is_ racism and sexism in
| society, it 's just in the opposite direction to what DEI
| programmes claim, and it's not unconscious.
|
| An interesting example of this kind of meltdown was the one
| attempt to organize a conference for Electron developers.
| They decided to select speakers using blind reviews of
| abstracts, because they believed the non-replicable pseudo-
| science you're repeating here. When the results were unveiled
| it turned out every speaker they had selected was a man (the
| expected outcome of blind auditions), so they cancelled the
| entire conference in fit of anger. The whole community lost,
| because the organizers had believed in these lies told by
| social studies academics.
| honkycat wrote:
| DEI has so little effect on hiring. I'm much more concerned
| about H1B for cheaper work. It's a total non-issue.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I'm more worried because it's part of a big package of swinging
| to the right politically. The moderation rule about "You can
| only call someone mentally ill if they're also queer" seems
| particularly uhhh nuts, deranged, stupid even.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| loeg wrote:
| What about this do you perceive to be flamebait or a generic
| tangent? I'm directly and sincerely commenting on the
| article. Plenty of other comments are expressing either
| support or criticism of the policy change.
| dang wrote:
| The comment didn't respond to anything specific in the
| article. It just used it as a springboard to make a generic
| comment about a much more general topic. That's what I mean
| by generic tangent.
|
| Generic tangents always make threads less interesting,
| because they take attention away from the specifics of
| what's new in an article and direct it instead to one of
| the large pre-existing topics that people tend to fixate
| on. I sometimes compare this to a spacecraft flying too
| close to a black hole and getting sucked in: https://hn.alg
| olia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
|
| It was flamebait in two ways: (1) Generic tangents on
| inflammatory topics are already flamebait; and (2) the
| comment makes a huge assumption (that the previous
| situation was "racism / sexism") and treats that as fact
| without substantiating it. Large unsubstantiated claims
| about inflammatory topics are also flamebait.
| loeg wrote:
| Many many other top-level comments are similarly non-
| specific to anything in the article and more or less
| generic springboards. But you didn't respond to them in
| the same way. _shrug_. That DEI policies were an form of
| racism /sexism is not an especially novel or heterodox
| opinion. Opinions aren't facts and can't be
| substantiated. And I think agnostics and even DEI
| promoters can correctly infer why detractors would
| perceive these policies to be racist/sexist in nature
| without elaborating in depth.
|
| Rayiner writes substantially the same comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42663406
| nibbles wrote:
| Not sure how much experience you have with HN but this is
| practically dang's fiefdom. He's just a clone of a typical
| reddit mod. Agree with me or GTFO
| mempko wrote:
| I started a new account on Twitter just to see what it's like.
| It's completely unusable. The place is filled with shit content
| that a I don't want to see and bots. Not sure what competitive
| advantage you are talking about.
| swatcoder wrote:
| They all suck. But the user experience is practically
| irrelevant to the business of selling ads and operating
| sentiment manipulation channels, which is the business that all
| of the large social media companies are in.
|
| And whether their ideas and strategies are well-grounded or
| seem optimal or ethical to the rest of us, the top leadership
| at most of those companies lean strongly towards corporatist,
| libertarian political ideals and see most regulation (and
| preemptive self-regulation) as both philosophically immoral and
| an existential threat to their businesses.
| mulmen wrote:
| > which is the business that all of the large social media
| companies are in.
|
| I agree with you.
|
| If this is the case and money is speech, can a well-
| intentioned organization just collect donations to advance
| their message? Like when Philip Morris uses this to sell
| cigarettes to kids we say that is bad. But what if the EFF
| used it to ensure net neutrality? Or if Planned Parenthood
| used it to add reproductive rights to the bill of rights?
|
| Do my donations already pay for social media campaigns?
|
| Do the ends justify the means?
| glimshe wrote:
| I keep hearing this about Twitter and Facebook but my
| experience is completely different. I believe the default
| experience is as you describe, but after I started following
| dozens of retrogaming groups, old games are all I see in both
| places. Even the ads became relevant and, believe it or not,
| interesting. I've clicked on a couple, which took me to small
| creators in the retrogaming and RPG areas.
| eitally wrote:
| The same is true with Reddit. The default feed is absolutely
| awful, but the bar required to curate something individually
| interesting and useful is too high for most new users, given
| the toxicity + banality of the default.
| i_love_retros wrote:
| I'm sorry but reddit is trash. Every subreddit, no matter
| how niche, is basically cringy phrases being repeated or
| photos of some "home set up" or said niche product someone
| bought who is looking for validation of their decision.
| It's so bad I blocked reddit from my search engine results.
| eitally wrote:
| Clearly we're using different subs. ymmv.
| i_love_retros wrote:
| Provide an example of a sub that isn't like that?
| ColdTakes wrote:
| Both /r/Science and /r/AskScience are very heavily
| moderated and verified industry experts discuss papers on
| it.
| qqqult wrote:
| There's a lot of interesting discussions on r/science but
| like the rest of reddit it's such an echo chamber that
| you end up with bizarre one-sided arguments that
| discourage all opposing views.
| jemmyw wrote:
| Is there much space for opposing views on a forum
| answering science questions? Presumably the purpose is to
| answer from established science.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > Is there much space for opposing views on a forum
| answering science questions?
|
| Perhaps more than anywhere. Science is a process of
| challenge and response, not a static body of knowledge.
|
| > Presumably the purpose is to answer from established
| science.
|
| "Established science", which is still subject to debate
| itself, isn't what link aggregators cover. They bias
| towarss stuff more like science news and novel study
| outcomes, which are nothing to do with established
| science except as a seed for critical discussion.
| kragen wrote:
| If something is "established" and has no "space for
| opposing views" it's the opposite of science. "Dogma",
| perhaps. In science, by contrast, _every_ belief is at
| best contingent, subject to rejection when better
| evidence becomes available. That 's what makes it science
| in the first place!
| ColdTakes wrote:
| I don't see any benefit in entertaining flat-Earthers in
| discussion.
| kragen wrote:
| If you prohibit arguing about the shape of the Earth,
| you're banning people from explaining that EGM08 is
| generally more accurate than EGM96--and where it isn't.
| That is a significant harm. Trolls advocating obvious
| nonsense like flat-Earthism isn't a significant harm,
| because nobody over the age of 6 will be misled.
|
| Even if you were right that debate on the shape of the
| earth _had no benefit_ , forbidding it still wouldn't be
| _science_. Science is not coextensive with beneficial
| things.
| ColdTakes wrote:
| Fully grown adults believe the Earth is flat or that we
| have never been space to and dismissing them as just
| trolls is doing the same thing you are accusing me of
| doing and not allowing "space for opposing views."
| qqqult wrote:
| This is precisely what I was talking about when I said
| that reddit turns all communities into echo chambers.
|
| If you assume that all opposing opinions come from flat-
| earthers and idiots that couldn't possibly be right about
| anything you will never even think about changing your
| opinion on anything. You'll continue to chat with other
| reddit yes-men and pat yourselves on the back about how
| you're all so right.
|
| The upvote / downvote self-censorship system simply does
| not work for any serious discussions. It might be ok for
| sorting the snarkiest comment under an article but that's
| about it
| ColdTakes wrote:
| You're contradicting yourself. You yourself say there is
| plenty of interesting discussion but what interesting
| discussion is there on reddit if it is just people
| patting themselves on the back?
| kragen wrote:
| There do exist paranoid schizophrenics, yes. Science
| generally doesn't have much trouble dealing with them,
| unlike, for example, institutional censorship regimes,
| which can transform minor personal delusions into major
| collective catastrophe.
|
| I am not, in fact, denying you space for your views. I'm
| giving you the space for your views and explaining to you
| why they are incorrect.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yeah the upvote based ranking basically means that every
| comment section is basically dogpile on the same points
| of view and every dissenting opinion is hidden...
| Terrible
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Broadly appealing subs like that should be the last subs
| you cite if your goal is to provide evidince that Reddit
| isn't lowest common denominator trash.
|
| Even in fairly niche subs I find that "surface level"
| content quality dominates and nuanced takes are
| frequently unpopular which is basically a recipe for
| anyone who knows anything to leave. I find the best subs
| are satire subs because having to know enough about
| something to be able to satirize it weeds out all the
| people who create and perpetuate surface level content. I
| assume there are some super niche subs that are similar.
| filchermcurr wrote:
| /r/CreaturesGames/ - Discussion about the Creatures
| artificial life simulation games. I haven't seen anything
| particularly cringey on it.
| lupusreal wrote:
| On reddit the defaults are shit and the rest of the site
| bans you by default until you've karmawhored yourself past
| an arbitrary threshold on those defaults. Trash website.
|
| I used to use it years back. Some subreddits were really
| great but they all inevitability devolved so I lost any
| interest in maintaining active accounts there. r/skookum
| had really interesting content for a while but devolved
| into idiots reposting the same skookum brand wrenches over
| and over again.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| I finally quit my barren Twitter when the Musk takeover
| resulted in my feed being flooded with porn (including
| illegal content) and arabic carpet cleaning ads. I
| seriously doubt anyone's default Reddit front page has ever
| looked like that.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I keep seeing people say they've experienced this, but
| I've been on twitter for years (pre Musk and stayed post
| Musk) and I've never once seen porn on there. How does
| this happen by accident?
| swatcoder wrote:
| They're going to have a pretty developed and stable
| picture of you and what you respond to by now, especially
| of their view of you aligns with high- value placements
| already.
|
| So they probably don't bother to audition that kind of
| content for you very often because they already have
| strategies that milk your attention, engagement, and
| wallet better.
|
| When you hear other people share their experience as new
| or different users, keep in mind how customized all these
| platforms are and how idiosycratically optimized they'll
| already be for you as a long-time, engaged user.
|
| Most people can't go back in time to get where you are,
| and don't have any sure (or worthwhile) road to get
| there.
| SmirkingRevenge wrote:
| In my case, my (now deleted) account (which was primarily
| read-only) would get several porn bot followers per day.
| If I didn't log in for a week, I'd have dozens of new
| "p#i#c#s#i#n#b#i#o" type accounts following me.
|
| Towards the end, there would often be porn in replies of
| many posts on all kinds of topics, like politics, news,
| etc.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > several porn bot followers per day
|
| Ah, ok, yeah, you're right, that did (and still does)
| happen to me. I had forgotten about that, I just ignore
| followers now.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I don't see any porn in my feed. Some of it is salacious,
| but not porn.
| ge96 wrote:
| YouTube is nuts when not logged in as well. Those crazy
| clickbait thumbnails eg. Mr. Beast or whatever.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| My logged-in YouTube shows me almost entirely
| 3blue1brown, Applied Science, and the like. Logged out it
| is 100% chum and garbage.
| ge96 wrote:
| I wish the home was better showing the stuff you followed
| vs. having to go into subscriptions tab.
|
| edit: there are a limited number of tiles to show but
| yeah
| runjake wrote:
| Agreed. The X ads were terrible and annoying until I flipped
| on that "Let X ad track you" and at least I get tolerable ads
| on mobile. (uBlock Origin blocks them on desktop)
|
| The For You feed varies week by week but is generally okay. I
| make heavy use of lists, mute words, etc to clean things up.
|
| X is a train wreck, but an interesting and useful one,
| depending on who/what you follow.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| Use Firefox and you can block them on mobile as well.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I bought a premium account on X and the ads went away.
|
| I bought a premium Prime account on Amazon, and yet some of
| their shows still have embedded commercials. grrrr.
| runjake wrote:
| I have Premium and I still get half the ads as free.
|
| Plus, I get constant ads to upgrade to Premium+ for ads-
| free.
|
| Premium+ is probably what you have.
| tomrod wrote:
| I use bluesky and so far have no ads and lots of great
| journalism and academic lists to follow. Greatly enjoying
| it, feels like Twitter 2012 or so.
| runjake wrote:
| I have Bluesky, but I don't really like it as much. The
| UX is much better than X, though.
|
| On Bluesky, I pretty much follow the people I followed
| before they fled Twitter. However, they complain _a lot_
| about politics, Elon Musk and the US President Elect on
| their timelines. I could unfollow, and do in some cases,
| but that would pretty much leave me with nothing to read
| on Bluesky.
|
| That, and the weird tech people I get the most value from
| still post primary on X, so I deal with it.
| tomrod wrote:
| These are the current events, so it isn't unwarranted to
| see complaints.
|
| They will likely complain about other things in the
| future :)
| qqqult wrote:
| same, people keep complaining that their twitter feeds are
| full of violence, porn & political bullshit but I get 0 of
| that
|
| I haven't gone out of my way to restrict my timeline either,
| I follow ~1000 accounts I just don't follow or interact with
| accounts that post any of that crap.
| celticninja wrote:
| Don't worry it will come, it takes a while but then you start
| getting sent outrage bait, stuff you will disagree with just
| to get you involved.
| threeseed wrote:
| I run a number of business X accounts which are post-only.
|
| The very second the US election got underway _all_ of our
| accounts started to heavily promote right-wing political
| content. Even though we specifically said when we signed up
| that we aren 't interested in anything like that.
| chasd00 wrote:
| This happened to me on imgur, i explicitly filtered out
| politics but once the election got underway I started
| seeing it everywhere (except in imgur's case it was left-
| wing content). I turned off the politics filter and then
| turned it back on and they vanished for a time but then
| slowly leaked back in. If i reset the filter every week
| then i could keep political related content hidden for the
| most part.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| The fact that you're being downvoted for accurate reporting
| that can be easily verified by anyone who makes a Twitter
| account.. lol
|
| Before I deleted my Twitter account, I tried really hard to
| just block every account that posted content I felt was pol-
| tier.. it just doesn't work. That platform is FUBAR, and the
| prime example is the owner of the platform who has been
| completely brainrotted from staring into the orb for 12 hours a
| day.
|
| It seems like public sentiment is trending towards rolling over
| and letting channers run society. We'll see how that goes.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| I had my Twitter account for almost 15 years before deleting
| it.
|
| I hadn't blocked ANYBODY for 13 of those years, but towards
| the end I was blocking dozens of users per day. Not not just,
| "I don't agree with this person" but "Wow this person is
| genuinely hateful and not contributing anything meaningful,
| and I would rather not see that."
| Xunjin wrote:
| I don't understand why you were being flagged, it was actually
| my experience then deleted my account, of course it was some
| months ago, but still think that is the current one. (September
| of 2024)
| Rumudiez wrote:
| are you suggesting the company's staffing policy influences
| what users post? I don't agree the arrow points in that
| direction. or that there's an arrow between those topics at all
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > It's completely unusable
|
| I will rail on FB just as hard as the next guy, but
| realistically, from a business perspective, if facebook's wild
| popularity and 3 billion active monthly users still says
| "unusable" to you... well, do you really think most people
| would agree with you? And more importantly to the company...
| whose opinion matters the most?
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| You have to follow people you're interested in, and continually
| curate that list. X is garbage in the same way /r/all is - you
| have to find the subreddits you like and aren't too large
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42658074.
| jvwww wrote:
| As someone that uses Twitter quite a lot for consumption, I
| actually think it's great. I've learned so much on Twitter (and
| yes, I'm aware there is plenty of disinformation), and it's
| also extremely entertaining. Maybe I've just used it long
| enough so I my feed is quite curated.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| That this is a brave counter-cultural stance shows how far we
| fell.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| 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?
| lobsterthief wrote:
| I am actively doing this as well
| paxys wrote:
| DEI was a song and dance that companies put on for the media,
| politicians, investors, employees, and the public at large.
|
| Now anti-DEI is a song and dance for the exact same reason.
|
| If you have been in the business long enough, you will know that
| the company has NO ONE's interests at heart. Never had and never
| will. They will discriminate against any race they have to,
| whether majority or minority, if it leads to an extra dollar on
| their balance sheet.
| teeray wrote:
| > the company has NO ONE's interests at heart
|
| Except for shareholder value
| bhouston wrote:
| > Except for shareholder value
|
| Well, it depends. Zuckerberg has controlling interest in Meta
| even though he owns a minority of it (<15%) because of its
| dual share structure. Meta will do what he wants it do.
|
| Google has a similar structure.
| jjulius wrote:
| Semantics. I'd replace "shareholder value" with "making a
| chunk of people insanely wealthy".
| iforgot22 wrote:
| It's not semantics. Those founders have more voting power
| than their actual share in the companies, so they don't
| have the same incentives as regular shareholders.
| zht wrote:
| the founders are also shareholders so they are still
| maximizing shareholder vlaue
| iforgot22 wrote:
| Zuck's other financial and personal interests could
| compete with his money in the company. Unlikely at 1:1,
| but it's more possible the higher his vote multiplier is.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Isn't that more about the value of the shares they personally
| received as part of their compensation package?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| If meta cared about shareholder value they wouldnt be
| spending 10 bil a year on VR. Decisions at meta are made with
| marks interests in mind
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Not even really true anymore. It's all about "stakeholder
| capitalism" now, which boils down to management being able to
| prioritize whichever stakeholder it wants to in any given
| situation.
|
| Shareholder primacy may not be perfect, but it at least
| constrains management instead of giving them completely free
| rein.
| greenthrow wrote:
| This take is cynical to the point of wilfull ignorance. My
| spouse works in DEI and I guarantee you her and her coworkers
| are sincere and trying to instill better, _less biased_ hiring
| practices and to make _everyone_ feel welcome and part of the
| team. Not everyone is going to be the same but that 's like
| anything else. Being 100% dismissive is as much of a mistake as
| being 100% unquestioningly accepting.
| lantry wrote:
| I think both things are true: there are people who sincerely
| want to change things, but the organization and incentive
| structure for large public orgs means the corps will only do
| things that don't lower their profits.
| drewbug01 wrote:
| I believe the comment is implying that having DEI programs at
| all was a song-and-dance put on by the C-suite; not that your
| spouse is insincere in their work.
|
| Put differently: the C-suite set up these programs (and hired
| very sincere people to work in them) but never really
| actually cared about the outcomes.
| nearbuy wrote:
| The C-suite are humans and as humans, many of them have
| ideologies. It's very cynical to think executives have no
| goals or ideologies beyond enriching themselves.
| drewbug01 wrote:
| > but never really actually cared about the outcomes
|
| To be clear, I'm referring to the outcomes of the DEI
| programs in and of themselves; not the outcomes that
| resulted from _having_ those programs (and /or appearing
| to have them). And to be clear - some C-suites really
| _might_ have cared about the programs because they
| believed in them.
|
| > It's very cynical to think executives have no goals or
| ideologies beyond enriching themselves.
|
| I disagree, wholeheartedly. The majority of executives
| have shown, time and again, that they primarily care
| about money. A close second is power. It's not to say
| that they don't have goals beyond enriching themselves,
| but rather that does appear to be the goal they
| overwhelmingly choose when said values are in conflict.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| How does she implement DEI, in terms of hiring practices?
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Parent post is about _capital_ not _workers_.
|
| Companies are filled with workers, and plenty of them _do_
| care. But unless they work for a co-op _employees are
| disposable_ , and ultimately they serve at the whims of
| capital.
|
| When capital decides that equity doesn't sell, the workers
| striving to create more diverse workplaces will be discarded.
|
| The only counter to this is government, but Americans just
| voted for a government that explicitly wants to _increase_
| disparities.
|
| There is literally no counter to this in the private sector,
| save co-ops or non-profits that actually sell their
| principals as part of their brand (e.g. Patagonia).
| bamboozled wrote:
| Exactly, throwing the baby out with the bath water, but I
| have to ask the question , why did any of this happen in the
| first place? There must've been some need and catalyst for it
| outside of "libtardation".
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Sure, megacorps never had genuine interest in liberation at the
| very top.
|
| But it is a genuine sign of renewed danger when megacorps are
| perceiving the general public as valuing reactionary politics
| instead of valuing diversity.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| "Reactionary" is a pejorative and not an argument.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Reactionary is a pejorative usually used by Marxists, and
| implies drawing one side into their false us-vs-them
| dichotomy where the "them" has a "fair game doctrine"
| applied to them. Usually other epithets soon follow:
| racist, criminal, etc.
|
| Not only is it not, as you note, an argument, it's a
| pejorative label designed to discount and demonize the
| opponent. It's also likely to be used by someone in a
| political cult (or "high demand new political movement" if
| you prefer).
|
| George Orwell had a really fun article on "Politics and the
| English Language" which goes into some detail on the
| controlling nature of such language and the people who use
| it.
| nox101 wrote:
| At the company I work at, IMO, their DEI initiatives are
| counter productive so they claim "we support DEI", but in
| actual practice they're making the problem worse not better. It
| might be true that removing DEI is performative, but at least
| at my job, removing DEI would be a net positive for actually
| diversity, equity, and inclusion.
|
| There might be other things they could do proactively. But, the
| ones they actually chose are derisive, racist, and do nothing
| to actually make the world a more diverse, equitable, and
| inclusive place.
| bnetd wrote:
| We Trump administration now.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Diversity should never be a goal or initiative.
|
| It's a value. You wake up every day and practice diverse hiring
| practices.
|
| The moment you put a tangible target to hit, is when you gamify
| diversity into something bad.
| mmooss wrote:
| How do you make it happen? Relying on people to "wake up every
| day and practice diverse hiring practices" wasn't working.
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| How do you know its not working? Because there are
| statistical differences in outcomes between groups of people?
| deadbabe wrote:
| It starts by hiring people who share your values. Don't hire
| scumbags, liars, racists, Neo-Nazis, etc.
|
| If someone demonstrates they don't represent your company's
| values, get rid of them or put them in non-decision making
| roles and keep an eye on them.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Company values are bullshit.
|
| Corporations only care about making money, no matter the
| damage they cause in their profit-seeking motive. All else
| is fluff.
| mmooss wrote:
| X doesn't seem too motivated to make money; Musk's
| decisions seem to pursue is values (power) and sacrifice
| revenue. It seems like Facebooks recent decisions may do
| the same.
| deadbabe wrote:
| If you don't give a fuck about anything besides making
| money then why even pretend to care about diversity if
| you don't have to? Seems like corporations will drop the
| mask in 2025.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Because pretending to care costs very little, and
| gullible people fall for the "company values" talk.
| mmooss wrote:
| You think you're taking a side, but really you are taking
| the corporations side: By saying organizations and the
| people who run them have no morals, you've lowered the
| requirements and norms of organizations and humanity.
|
| It turns out people have morals - it's an intrinsic part
| of humanity, especially as social beings - and they can
| choose them and act on them, and they are responsible for
| doing so in any society. Somehow, you just let them off
| the hook.
| adrr wrote:
| Is this anecdotal or do you have source where hiring doesn't
| match the pool of qualified candidates(Eg: recent CS degrees
| graduates)?
| npteljes wrote:
| I agree that it's a bad goal, in terms of how it being a goal
| corrupts the value itself. Like in Goodhart's law, "When a
| measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". But
| managing a larger entity cannot realistically be done via
| values, I think. Different people have different
| interpretations of the same values, and not sharing the values
| 100% in the first place, so, the values will need to be
| formulated into more tangible things, like goals, limits,
| directives, laws, ect. Will not be ever perfect, but I doubt
| that we have better tools to achieve it.
| tim333 wrote:
| There's also the Martin Luther King thing "...will not be
| judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
| character." A lot of DEI hiring seems to be about fashionable
| skin colours.
| Animats wrote:
| So far, Zuckerberg (Meta), Pichai (Google), Bezos (Amazon),Cook
| (Apple), and Sarandos (Netflix) have all personally made the
| pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the ring. That's all of the
| FAANG CEOs. Nadella and Altman phoned it in.
|
| The Wall Street Journal has a long list.[1]
|
| It works for Putin.
|
| [1] https://archive.is/ozPQi
| yoavm wrote:
| As an outsider looking at the US, this looks so dangerous. It
| feels like the whole democratic system is bending to the power
| of money.
|
| Just a few weeks ago, an American friend was making the
| comparison between the number of billion $ companies in the EU
| vs the US. I was trying to tell them that it isn't necessarily
| a bad thing to have less of that - I rather have 1,000 million
| $ companies than a billion $ one. The concentration of
| financial power seems so unhealthy, and it looks like it's
| crippling the whole American system.
| janderson215 wrote:
| The US isn't just home to the largest companies. You only
| hear about the multinational corporations when you're in
| other countries, but all those companies operate in the US
| initially because the US is very friendly to small businesses
| relative to the rest of the world. I would be willing to
| place a substantial wager on the US having more operating
| businesses per capita than any large country in the EU.
|
| Business in the US is underappreciated in so many ways.
| yoavm wrote:
| Could be, but I don't think it changes my point about some
| companies (or people) acquiring too much wealth (aka
| power), in a way that risks democracy.
| lbrito wrote:
| >I rather have 1,000 million $ companies than a billion $ one
|
| Except in the real world the bn $ company will dump and
| outright buy the puny million dollar companies. It will do
| everything in its power, which is a lot, legally and
| illegally, to destroy the competition. That's just the way
| capitalism works.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| I thought monopolies were bad for capitalism?
| lbrito wrote:
| And yet people smoke and eat fast food.
| ken47 wrote:
| Democracy being influenced by wealth has _always_ been a
| thing.
| Super_Jambo wrote:
| I think what's most worrying here is Trump & co publicly
| exerting influence over these huge companies.
|
| So the concentration of economic power has made the number
| of oligarchs he needs to capture quite manageable.
| yoavm wrote:
| Democracy was always _influenced_ by wealth, now it looks
| like it can easily be taken over. The richest people are
| buying their seats in the government, and the very rich
| (but not the richest) feel like they have to protect their
| wealth by politically endorsing it.
| ianhawes wrote:
| The CEOs you identified are all associated with for-profit
| companies (with the notable exception of OpenAI lol). Investors
| expect them to "make nice" with the current regime; this is a
| part of being a CEO of a public company worth billions.
| romellem wrote:
| 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 employees,
| these efforts are built around inclusion - having all of our
| employees feel valued and respected. Our efforts at
| diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with
| everyone at our Company the importance of creating
| opportunities for all. We believe that these efforts enhance our
| capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our
| business succeed. This capacity is critical because we owe our
| success to our now over 300,000 employees around the globe.
|
| [1]:
| https://materials.proxyvote.com/Approved/22160K/20241115/NPS...
| ericmcer wrote:
| Did Costco ever have a diversity issue? I don't think people
| are worried about getting more representation among grocery
| store cashiers.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't see them as different to any other company, really. I
| could imagine diversity in their staff of buyers would be
| useful, for example, to ensure they're stocking products that
| represent the different desires of different groups.
| nomel wrote:
| > I don't see them as different to any other company,
| really.
|
| The pool of _qualified_ people, for a cashier, is basically
| _everyone_.
|
| The pool of _qualified_ people for, say, working at a tech
| company, is _not_ as diverse [1], and don 't match the
| general population.
|
| [1] https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/people/talent-
| flows...
| afavour wrote:
| At the risk of stating the obvious here: Costco hires a
| great many people other than cashiers.
| nomel wrote:
| > I don't see them as different to any other company,
| really.
|
| My point was in response to this. The idea is the
| _available pool for a specific job_ may not match that of
| the general population. Different companies have
| _different ratios of different jobs_. So, assuming all
| things are equal, the diversity at different companies
| can only match _the diversity of the qualified pool of
| workers_. In that sense, different companies _will_ be
| different.
|
| For example, according to those statistics, Costco
| _should_ be more diverse than, say, Netflix.
| spike021 wrote:
| perhaps it goes without saying but they don't only employ
| front line store staff.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| The diversity isn't for you the customer, it's for the
| employees and the kind of corporate environment Costco wants
| to build.
|
| Edit to add: A better corporate environment, of course, does
| tend to lead to a better customer experience, but the
| "visibility of diversity" should not be the goal but rather
| "genuinely fostering an inclusive environment where people
| are respected and feel willing to put in their best work,"
| and I think that shows at Costco.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| It certainly is not there for the customer, as their core
| business of exclusionary membership is a quintessential
| example of systemic racism and classism via
| disproportionate impact.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Can you expand on this?
|
| The cost of a Costco membership is $65 per year (really
| half that if you can share the 2 membership cards you get
| between two families), available to everyone, and the
| prices they have there are so good that even my 3-person
| family saves money each year by shopping there. Every
| family I know here in my local area shops at Costco, rich
| or poor, because the prices are so good for many things.
| I don't see how any of that is exclusionary on racist or
| classist lines, it seems to me like Costco is one of the
| good corporations trying to give a good service/product
| and low prices.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| If the time, effort, and incidental costs of procuring a
| state ID card is enough to render the prospect of Voter
| ID requirements systemically racist, classist, and
| exclusionary then so are Costco cards.
|
| The argument goes as such: up-front tolls change behavior
| to the degree of deterring people from even trying
| otherwise beneficial arrangements, as people are not
| perfectly rational. Look at the impact of NYC's new
| congestion pricing. Compare your impression of Walmart
| shoppers to Costco shoppers. If they don't match there
| are disproportionate effects at play.
|
| It's possible that some mildly exclusionary policies can
| be worthwhile and create more societal good than bad,
| even if they have some incidentally disproportionate
| demographic impact. Perhaps endless yak shaving fixated
| on residual disproportionality should not have been
| entertained by the DEI field in the first place, and was
| part of what undermined its reputation.
| anon7725 wrote:
| Citizens have the right to vote, not to be a Costco
| member.
|
| Costco is not the sole source for anything. You can live
| a happy and fulfilled life never having set foot in a
| Costco warehouse. I often think of that just before I do,
| in fact.
|
| > Compare your impression of Walmart shoppers to Costco
| shoppers.
|
| There is literally no difference where I live.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I shouldn't have asked.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| That's interesting. Every company I worked at that
| instituted DEI policies claimed that achieving a workforce
| representative of the customer base helped the customer.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| Costco's always interested me as a company. Still the only
| place where I pay to be able to shop. It's a personal point of
| pride whenever I go there and spend less than $100.
| m463 wrote:
| > It's a personal point of pride whenever I go there and
| spend less than $100.
|
| so you make two trips?
| HaZeust wrote:
| Ha! I was going to say, I haven't managed to spend less
| than $100 for weekly grocery since before COVID at Costco,
| wonder what his secret is.
| kristianp wrote:
| You can go almost anywhere and spend less than $100. What's
| to be proud of? I went to Tommy Hilfiger and spent < $100.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| it's a joke, because literally every time I go to Costco
| it's $150 bill because it's so fun to do "treasure hunts"
| with my wife lol
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Interestingly, Costco's core business model and marketing is
| built on membership gatekeeping practices which have
| disproportionate exclusionary effects along class and race
| lines.
| ianhawes wrote:
| They make up for it with the $1.50 hotdog and drink combo.
| LPisGood wrote:
| I thought their model was cheap/bulk products
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Costco employees were never called to testify at congressional
| hearings. They do not need to worry about pr and political
| pushback like meta does.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Trump hasn't specifically threatened to put their CEO in
| prison for life either, AFAIK.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| Note the yaml formatted text string of their statement, very
| cs-forward (I assume newlines where stripped out by the web UI
| here.
| caturopath wrote:
| The subject matter is nominally the same, but I don't know how
| comparable I would guess the situations are. I 100% could see
| Meta making a very similar statement still today.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| While WalMart - unsurprisingly - ended its DEI efforts.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meta-dei-programs-mcdonalds-wal...
| mmooss wrote:
| The problem isn't evil, but the lack of any leader standing up
| for good (using simplistic terms). The evil is always there, in
| our souls and in our society, as is the good; we just need to
| choose and use the latter to check the former. Who of any serious
| stature is standing up to Zuckerberg, Musk, Trump, etc.? The
| absence - the empty stage - is shocking.
|
| It is one of Biden's great responsibilities, but he has long
| abandoned the country and the world in this essential sense and
| bears great responsibility for the outcome.
|
| As a simple example, who is standing up for the LA fire chief? Is
| the mayor, the governor, national leaders? If they have, they are
| highly ineffectual - I haven't heard a thing - which is also
| failure on their part.
|
| It's the responsibilities of many others. It's the responsibility
| of people here, in our own small community. If you are the
| leader, and now we all are, it's not your role to toy with the
| latest thought experiment; it is to make a just community. This
| isn't hacking the new thing, it is building critical human-rated
| systems on which lives, freedom, justice, and the future depend.
|
| It shouldn't be hard for organizations to implement just
| policies: Agree to eliminate anything that favors one group.
| Agree it should be equal to everyone. And that means majority and
| minority, powerful and vulnerable: Eliminate anything that favors
| a group, including what favors the powerful majority group -
| which is mostly what is favored.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Zuckerberg and Musk are billionaires, money always grants
| power.
|
| What are Biden and Harris supposed to do when the swathes of
| land that vote for politicians, don't vote for them? And when
| Congress doesn't back them up? Should they just... say
| "Pweeeaase" louder?
|
| This is why recently I've switched from "Progressive income
| taxes are good because we need to fund social programs, and
| rich people can afford to bear a greater tax burden" to "Taxing
| rich people is essential to democracy, since wealth can buy
| political power."
| mmooss wrote:
| Biden and Harris aren't victims, they are leaders; they have
| have power. Their job is to guide people. They can frame the
| issues, inspire people, lead them. They can persuade people
| just as well as others, or better given their authority.
|
| Musk and Zuckerberg and lots of others don't hesitate to
| lead.
|
| > And when Congress doesn't back them up? Should they just...
| say "Pweeeaase" louder?
|
| No, that's pretty ignorant about politics. Again, they aren't
| victims. They make things happen. There are ways to persuade
| the public and compel Congress. But the Dems have completely
| abdicated any such thing, as if they aren't politicians or
| leaders.
| imgabe wrote:
| > As a simple example, who is standing up for the LA fire
| chief?
|
| Why should anyone stand up for her? She is doing an objectively
| bad job. If you're the fire chief and your entire city burns
| down, you will rightly catch flak for it. You had one job.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Why should anyone stand up for her?
|
| Because people are attacking her sexuality, not her job
| performance.
|
| > you're the fire chief and your entire city burns down, you
| will rightly catch flak for it. You had one job.
|
| I don't know anyone who thinks the LAFD could have prevented
| this problem. Maybe they should be given ultimate power over
| zoning!
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| "As it turns out, principles _are_ for sale "
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Diversity in tech hiring never felt like the right end of the
| funnel. It's why I went into teaching and I'm proud to say after
| what seems like a ridiculously short amount of time ("they grow
| up so fast" etc.) the girls from my classes are now entering the
| work force as SWE and ML interns. Not many, but more than none.
|
| When we focus diversity efforts on high school kids then we get a
| turnaround at the funnel _entrypoint_ in as little as only five
| years. Companies could be far more impactful here than any lone
| teacher could hope to be.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| This is just common sense, or should be. Unfortunately common
| sense is as uncommon as people tend to joke about. So you get a
| lot of focus on business hiring practices, even though it's
| literally impossible to hire candidates that don't exist.
| Sometimes this gets taken to absolutely farcical levels. I
| recall reading a blog from an Irish writer about how activists
| were trying to demand that companies there hire black people at
| such a rate that there literally are not enough black people in
| the country to meet that quota. And yet, this sort of brainless
| activism continues unabated - why I can't begin to guess.
|
| I do think that trying to shape job demographics is misguided.
| It doesn't matter that we get more women in tech, it doesn't
| matter that we get more men in nursing, and so on. What matters
| is that the fields are open to anyone with an interest, not the
| resultant demographics. If people aren't interested in those
| careers, that's perfectly fine.
| pavl- wrote:
| One of the smartest people I know almost quit software her
| first year out of school, because her all-male team spent an
| afternoon teasing her about how they were going to start a
| strip poker game and they think she'd be "a natural", or some
| nonsense like that. Do you think such dynamics introduce
| barriers to female participation in tech? Do you think
| focusing solely at the "bottom of the funnel" could still
| result in a lack of diversity if the "top of the funnel"
| isn't pleasant for certain demographics to work? Do you think
| such an event would've occurred without pushback on a team
| with more than 1 woman? Do you think what you consider to be
| "common sense" is shaped very much by your personal
| experience, and that you'd have no "common sense" intuition
| for how frequently things like this happen because it doesn't
| personally impact you?
| gedy wrote:
| I hear stories like this, but now after 25 years in the
| industry, no place I've worked at would have ever tolerated
| this, nor have I seen or heard this happen from colleagues.
| Granted I've worked mostly in California, but still seems
| so foreign to me.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously, every instance I'm aware of men having done
| something like that where I worked (and it's happened
| more than once), they've been fired either the next day
| or the same week.
|
| The solution there has nothing to do with hiring more
| women, and everything to do with zero tolerance for a
| sexist environment.
|
| I mean, that happening is just insane. This isn't the
| 1950's.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Even in Chicago 30 years ago I cannot imagine that
| happening where I worked. Women were pretty well
| represented in tech there, incidentally. My immediate
| supervisor was a woman and I was the only male on my
| team. This was in IT in financial services. I would guess
| the whole department was 60:40 male:female.
| pavl- wrote:
| I have a first-hand experience once or twice a year that
| make me stop and think -- if I were a woman in this
| situation I'd probably be doubting my career path. The
| example I cited is particularly egregious, but I have
| seen several other examples from a variety of companies:
| - two guys on a zoom call joking that someone's camera
| was off because they were doing "weird stuff" - manager
| from another team drunkenly telling a 24 year old at a
| holiday party that he would leave his wife for her -
| software system named "naggy_wife" - coworker telling
| younger coworker to "not get married because you will
| never have sex again"
|
| I am passing along these anecdotes because they're more
| easy to empathize with than some of the more general
| arguments of why it can be hard to succeed in tech as a
| woman (but they really only tell part of the story). Some
| of my other anecdotes might also sound closer to things
| you've seen or heard at the work place, or perhaps it's
| easier to see how some of these things might have
| happened without you being aware of them, given their
| (relative) infrequency and the contexts in which they
| arise. All of them happened without an HR incident (like,
| really, should a guy who wrote a system called "naggy-
| wife" get in trouble? a choice was made like 20 years
| ago... and maybe the guy doesn't even work there
| anymore). But you can also see how negative experiences
| like this can build up and contribute to the relatively
| common feeling among female engineers that they "don't
| belong".
| bradlys wrote:
| This won't be a popular sentiment among the woke mafia
| that puruses HN but I've seen far more women drop out of
| tech roles due to the general work environment than due
| to some sexist commentary. In fact, I don't know any who
| left due to some sexist commentary. I know many who left
| due to how toxic the work environment is for everyone.
|
| Tech workers are one of the least sexist groups out of
| any. If you think techies are sexist, you'd never last a
| day in medicine, law, or finance. Yet, women sign up for
| those in far higher percentages. Genuinely, it is
| actually hard to find a more left/progressive leaning
| professional field. It is not sexism that is the one
| thing keeping women out of tech. It is that it's not an
| attractive or high status field to women. The people
| working in it are not seen as socially competent, it is
| highly outsourced, and depending on role has relatively
| little socializing. It's also insanely competitive and
| you have to fight to keep your job from an army of H1B
| workers invading the country due to CEOs looking for
| slave labor. There are so many reasons to not be in tech
| and sexism should be one of the lowest reasons out there.
|
| I don't know any women complaining about sexism in
| comparison to the level of "holy fuck, when will I ever
| get a break?" It is an unrelenting field that constantly
| has you worried you'll lose your job next month. On top
| of requiring you study at least 500 leetcode problems
| before you do any interviews. Go figure, most women don't
| enjoy that.
| jyounker wrote:
| My ex-partner was a consultant at a FANG. It was her
| first engagement at a customer site after six months of
| very successful work internally.
|
| She was placed in a group overseen by another consultant.
| He was from the same firm. In fact he was a principle in
| the firm.
|
| He immediately started undermining her. He gave her
| advice that she followed, and then he criticized her for
| following his advice. He was extremely helpful to women
| employees from the client, but a complete dick to her.
| There were many other things he did. She documented what
| was happening, and complained to the skip-level but he
| denied it, and they didn't believe her. It looked like
| she was going to be out.
|
| Then there was a reorganization and several other women
| from the same consulting company were moved onto her
| team. They had much more history with the company. They
| were all high performers. He started doing the same shit
| to them. When they started reporting the same treatments
| and complaints management finally listened, and recalled
| him to the central office.
|
| The story has a great ending though. Once back in the
| main office, said horrible man then made a wonderful
| mistake. He started sexually harassing the new corporate
| council. That ended very badly for him.
|
| So, yeah, sexual harassment happens.
| gedy wrote:
| > He immediately started undermining her. He gave her
| advice that she followed, and then he criticized her for
| following his advice. He was extremely helpful to women
| employees from the client, but a complete dick to her.
| There were many other things he did. She documented what
| was happening, and complained to the skip-level but he
| denied it, and they didn't believe her. It looked like
| she was going to be out.
|
| This sounds like what happens to other males too? I'm not
| sure if that's related to sexual harassment though.
| bradlys wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. This is the difference. People in tech
| assume that when this happens to women that it's sexually
| motivated. No. It's motivated by knowing you're stack
| ranked and the best way to get ahead is by tearing others
| down. The industry is insanely toxic and most men just
| deal with it silently.
| pavl- wrote:
| How much of this opinion has been shaped by actually
| talking to the women whose experience you are
| summarizing? And specifically in a context where they'd
| give you an honest and candid answer, which probably
| wouldn't involve you saying stuff like "woke mafia" out
| loud (as it would put regular people on guard and they'd
| feel less comfortable being honest with you). I don't
| want you to answer question that literally, because it's
| the internet and you can just say "I've talked to 1000
| women in tech and have summarized their tabulated their
| experiences in a spreadsheet on my computer." Just
| honestly take a quiet minute or so and think about it. If
| the answer is somewhere close to zero, ask yourself why
| you felt such a high degree of confidence in the
| assessment you gave above.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| >But you can also see how negative experiences like this
| can build up
|
| Not really, TBH. I especially can't see why a woman
| experiencing these (to my mind, rather mild) interactions
| would think that things would be better in some other
| career path.
|
| Let's say I, a man, went to work in a traditionally
| female-dominated field like nursing, and found that the
| other nurses there had named their cafeteria dishwasher
| "Hubby" as a joke because it took forever to work.
|
| Would I, a grown man, consider changing my career because
| of this? No, I wouldn't.
|
| OTOH, if the other nurses seemed to view me with
| disrespect or suspicion and I found I wasn't able to
| shift that perception through my actions, then I'd
| reconsider.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > Let's say I, a man, went to work in a traditionally
| female-dominated field like nursing, and found that the
| other nurses there had named their cafeteria dishwasher
| "Hubby" as a joke because it took forever to work.
|
| Actually, this issue is in nursing. If you talk to male
| nurse organizations they do actually have issues of e.g.
| constantly being saddled with the heaviest patients or
| most physical labor because they're assumed to be strong,
| not having sexual harassment taken seriously from
| patients, and to be expected to take one for the team in
| handling the patients that were sexually inappropriate
| with female nurses. It does grate over time!
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Those sound to me like genuine issues that need to be
| fixed. (To give an example of something I _do_ think
| would need to be fixed in a gender-flipped scenario:
| Expecting only female employees to bring food to office
| parties, or clean up afterwards.)
| dijit wrote:
| I'm 35 now, at no point in my career have I ever been in an
| environment that would have tolerated that, school- college
| or workplace.
|
| And I haven't been trying exceptionally hard to avoid it.
|
| If such jibes had happened those people would not have a
| job, point blank.
|
| Given the average seniority for a full stack engineer is 10
| years, I should have encountered at least one, or worked
| with someone who had been in such an environment.
|
| I think chud behaviour is an excuse, because it's not
| tolerated for at least my lifetime.
| segasaturn wrote:
| Even if it's very uncommon, unfortunately even one
| incident like the one in GP's comment is enough to
| convince someone that they're unwelcome and abandon
| working in the field. In fact, an argument for workplace
| diversity initiatives is that it can re-assure people
| that they _are_ welcome, and that kind behavior of is
| fireable. Personally the kind of "DEI" I most strongly
| support are the initiatives that lay out clear rules and
| expectations for what kind of employee behavior is
| allowed, and tell people who to go to if they see it
| occurring.
| dijit wrote:
| if everyone openly has your back, consistently, and for
| years yet you're so fragile that a single dickhead (who
| _will_ be fired) derails your entire career then honestly
| you were too fragile to do the job anyway..
|
| I don't know a single engineer who doesn't get imposter
| syndrome.
|
| As a man, I have been openly derided for doing something
| stupid, if I were a woman I might internalise that as if
| it was sexism- so how do you deal with that? When people
| are so convinced that if anything critical could be based
| on gender?
|
| At some point you're treating people like children.
|
| Again I'll say it: every single educational institution
| and workplace I have ever been in has intentionally
| mentioned that anything that could be perceived as
| misogyny or sexual harassment have a zero tolerance
| policy.
|
| Am I _really_ the outlier? I've worked so many places and
| across so many countries and industries...
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > Again I'll say it: every single educational institution
| and workplace I have ever been in has intentionally
| mentioned that anything that could be perceived as
| misogyny or sexual harassment have a zero tolerance
| policy.
|
| Just because they say that doesn't mean they'll do that.
| People lie, they systematically sexually harass for
| years, and only if its made public will they actually do
| anything about it.
|
| https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/uber-pay-44-million-
| resolve-ee...
|
| https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/activision-blizzard-
| gender-...
| ptero wrote:
| In US companies and universities that I have been at
| throughout my 30-year career: a group of men harassing a
| woman with strip poker jokes would be dealt with _very_
| swiftly and decisively. My 2c.
| jyounker wrote:
| One thing to pay attention to is how you influence those
| around you. I'm guessing, doesn't put up with that kind
| of shit. People who act like that probably don't act like
| that when you're around. Because of that, you get a
| sanitized view of the world.
|
| That sort of chud behavior is very much tolerated in many
| places: https://www.romerolaw.com/blog/2021/11/complaint-
| alleges-ram...
| Dove wrote:
| Your suggestion that bad behavior by all-male teams would
| be improved by the addition of women rests on a couple of
| assumptions that are not true: that women are inherently
| better behaved than men, and that women naturally see each
| other as being on the same team.
|
| I have been through some really awful experiences in the
| workplace in the last few years, and some of the most
| egregiously abusive behavior came from another woman. Women
| can be incredibly cruel to each other, and this woman in
| particular seemed to have it out for other women. Women are
| not inherently saints, and they are not inherently kind to
| other women.
|
| On the other hand, I have often, often worked on teams that
| were (except for me) all men, but by and large they were
| men who had mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters that
| they loved, and who therefore had no trouble relating to me
| with respect and affection. While it is true that some men
| treat women specifically badly, and that some men treat
| people generally badly, it is not true that men _in
| general_ treat women badly. Quite the opposite.
|
| It does take a moment, as a woman, to find your feet
| socially in an all male space. But does it not always take
| a moment to find your feet in any new space? I have
| generally found that what makes it go smoothly is the fact
| that we are all hackers. If anything, it is all the walking
| on eggshells about sexism that makes social integration
| awkward at first. People are trying to figure out how they
| are "supposed" to behave around me, worried that I will be
| aggressive socially and legally. When we focus on the work
| we do together and the love we have in common for the
| field, we become friends naturally and get along well.
|
| I myself think all the hand-wringing over demographics has
| been a waste of time at best and counterproductive at
| worst. I think it makes more sense to focus on developing
| virtue, civility, and good leadership among the people who
| find themselves here.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| It is always so refreshing to read this kind of thing.
|
| For a number of years I had the sense that I might be
| going crazy, because it seemed that throughout my whole
| working life I'd encountered good and bad people of both
| sexes, but never witnessed the kind of systematic
| targeting of women that both mainstream and alternative
| media sources told me was rife. How could it be that I
| couldn't see what was apparently right under my nose? So
| it's reassuring to know that there are also women who
| have had a similar experience.
| pavl- wrote:
| I don't think women are inherently better behaved than
| men, or that they naturally see themselves as being on
| the same team. It's that the dynamic where it feels fun
| or funny to tell a joke that makes a minority in a group
| feel bad is less likely to arise when there are multiple
| people who wouldn't be laughing, or perhaps even telling
| them to give it a rest. Nothing to do with comradery,
| just the natural tendency of people to not like when
| their personal identity is threatened in some way.
|
| FWIW, I do think most men with wives and/or daughters are
| generally thoughtful coworkers, but I'm not sure that's a
| majority in most tech workplaces, especially the ones
| that skew young. Thinking back to my own experience, I
| think, I was blind to a lot of the things I'm speaking
| about (or perhaps even resistant to the idea of calling
| it out) until I had a long-term partner.
| Izkata wrote:
| > I have been through some really awful experiences in
| the workplace in the last few years, and some of the most
| egregiously abusive behavior came from another woman.
| Women can be incredibly cruel to each other, and this
| woman in particular seemed to have it out for other
| women. Women are not inherently saints, and they are not
| inherently kind to other women.
|
| In my teens my mom tried to reenter the workforce and got
| an office job, and she absolutely hated working with
| other women because of this. She wanted to work with men
| because in her experience, women were so much worse.
| wyager wrote:
| Extreme examples like this provide a nice attention-
| grabbing narrative, but they're not responsible for driving
| the central 99.5% of the workforce distribution
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Do you think such an event would've occurred without
| pushback on a team with more than 1 woman?
|
| Sure. One of the women I dated detailed a story about how a
| man at a conference she attended suggested it'd be more fun
| if she was roofies. To her face, in front of her co-workers
| (many of them women). She was in a majority female industry
| (healthcare).
|
| Why do we just assume that men stop doing cringe stuff just
| because women are around?
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The problem I've heard from friends in education is that it's
| just very difficult to affect these in the US education
| system because of how underfunded the system is as a whole.
| Most of these issues, at least when we talk about cisgendered
| folks, come from how parents push their values onto their
| kids. I have plenty of friends whose parents discouraged
| daughters from exploring technically or mechanically involved
| interests because of ideas they had about masculinity and
| femininity.
|
| My parents softly discouraged my sister from playing with
| Legos as a kid because "girls like pretty things."
| annzabelle wrote:
| I'm not sure that's entirely what's to blame when the
| countries with the least gender discrimination
| (Scandinavia) tend to be about 20% female in tech. I think
| that when people are free to choose their fields based
| purely on personal inclination, without major financial
| incentive, tech lands at about 20% female and early
| childhood education ends up being the opposite.
|
| Now of course, a lot of software in the US is below 20%
| female and we easily end up with spirals where departments
| end up lower than that and develop a toxic environment that
| pushes each new woman out. I personally ended up majoring
| in math instead of cs because of that process at my
| college.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Yeah I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the
| answers. You might be right.
|
| I guess the interesting point of discussion here is
| "personal inclination". A lot of my female friends have
| stories about how their parents encouraged their brothers
| to fix things around the house, get their hands dirty,
| read manuals, and set up new appliances. They tell me how
| they were, conversely, encouraged to make friends,
| maintain relationships, and steered toward more aesthetic
| pursuits like art, drama, or music.
|
| My sister, at an age when she had no strong interests of
| her own, was given paintbrushes and nice paper as gifts
| by our parents but not Legos because they felt like girls
| were more likely to enjoy aesthetic things than
| mechanical things. Funny enough, as an adult she has
| neither mechanical nor aesthetic interests. The question
| I guess is how much of "personal inclination" is driven
| by these small decisions of what options we give to kids.
|
| I will say my experiences are colored by the fact that my
| family is a low-income immigrant family in the US from a
| culture with definite gender discrimination and so they
| hold stronger gender prejudices than probably a high-
| income Scandinavian family. My guess is also that younger
| generations have grown up with a much better idea of
| gender equality and will raise their kids with less of
| this prejudice.
|
| I also observed in my school that a lot of women felt
| more comfortable in the math department than CS (though
| CS had much less prestige compared to now), so thanks for
| your story and background.
| annzabelle wrote:
| I think I may also have somewhat of a blind spot here
| because I grew up with a mom who is a software engineer
| herself and I was bought a bunch of electronics/building
| toys by engineer relatives on both sides. When I was 13
| or 14 I was given the parts for a computer under the
| instruction to put it together and make sure to dual boot
| linux. I knew a fair number of other girls my age whose
| parents really wanted them to be engineers/devs and did
| similar things, but a lot of them were uninterested and
| went on to happy careers in other fields.
|
| The math vs CS dept thing is concerning because at the
| foundations they're very similar fields. It's such a
| strange phenomenon that my graph theory elective in the
| math dept was 30 or 40% female, yet algorithms was 5%
| female. Definitely at my institution there were
| structural issues in the CS dept that didn't exist in the
| math dept.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Lol our CS and math departments had the exact same thing.
| I remember our algebraists were 50/50 men and women but
| the algorithms folks were 5% women.
| davidgay wrote:
| Or, just maybe, those stories about Scandinavia are a
| fig-leaf to justify discrimination. There's clear
| country-level differences in proportions of
| engineers(+scientists) in EU countries:
| https://www.trendingtopics.eu/bulgaria-with-the-2nd-
| largest-...
|
| I would hesitate to advance any theories as to cause
| based on that data (e.g., Denmark - part of Scandinavia -
| is >50% and Finland - not part of Scandinavia but next to
| it - is <30%).
| wyager wrote:
| > the US education system because of how underfunded the
| system is as a whole.
|
| The US spends more per student than any other country, by a
| lot. Money is very clearly not the problem.
|
| BTW, if you condition PISA scores on racial groups, _any_
| racial group (black, white, asian, whatever) scores higher
| in the USA than in any other country, _except_ Hong Kong.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > The US spends more per student than any other country,
| by a lot. Money is very clearly not the problem.
|
| I've heard this, but will fully admit I don't know how
| real this is. For one, the US generally has the highest
| COL in the world, so it's bound to spend more per student
| than any other country. Moreover, the general concern
| I've seen is that badly funded school districts in the US
| are much worse off than well funded school districts.
| Moreover gender disparities are not as bad in well funded
| school districts.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I've seen that concern as well, but it's pretty clearly a
| zombie concern from the days when schools would be funded
| almost entirely by local property taxes. Most states now
| equalize funding between local districts.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I don't know the picture in every state, but in CA
| schools still receive 31% of their funding from local
| taxes. That's still quite a bit. Then there's other
| sources of funding like the school PTA which does things
| like fund school supplies.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Again, the state equalizes. After the 2013 funding
| reforms, the state gives districts gives districts with
| high-need students more money to make up for local
| funding shortfalls. The statistics I've seen (e.g.
| https://www.ppic.org/publication/financing-californias-
| publi...) indicate that this more than closes the gap.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Except fields often aren't open to people in different
| demographics. Sexism and racism are both very real and
| objectively quantified.
| wyager wrote:
| > Sexism and racism are both very real and objectively
| quantified
|
| Outcome differences are real and quantified. Your preferred
| explanations for the differences are not. Racism and sexism
| are not the most parsimonious explanations for the majority
| of outcome variance. We know this because there are
| shallower nodes in the causal graph you can condition on
| and race/sex disappears as an outcome predictor.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The problem is that when you quantify sexism in tech
| objectively, the results aren't what most people expect.
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > What matters is that the fields are open to anyone with an
| interest
|
| except that it's not, which is the problem that DEI
| initiatives tried to compensate for
| npteljes wrote:
| I think these efforts need to be done at every level at the
| same time, and I agree that the "lower" or "earlier" levels
| need to be prioritized. Similar to how prevention is usually
| preferred to reaction.
| morkalork wrote:
| You're absolutely correct and I think it's what drives all the
| resentment about DEI programs. People aren't dumb, when they
| see some group only makes up 3% of the population of engineers
| and they see a program trying to balance senior positions,
| they're going to feel its unfair bs. What's really interesting
| is that almost every woman I've worked with professionaly isn't
| from North America, they're all from India, Iran and Eastern
| Europe (Belarus, Bulgaria etc). There's something deeply wrong
| with the culture here that's screwing up the top of the funnel.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Hint: None of this is news to people advocating for DEI
| programs. They believe that part of what screws up the top of
| the funnel is there being so few examples to follow later on
| down the funnel.
|
| There is no person on the planet who's advocating for DEI at
| senior level positions in advanced fields and no changes
| elsewhere in the system... obviously.
| blitzar wrote:
| (~2018) In India, women represent 45% of total computer
| science enrollment in universities, almost three times the
| rate in the United States, where it is 18%.
| morkalork wrote:
| And in Iran, it's even higher (1). It is not what you would
| expect from either country based on the stereotypes people
| have in their minds.
|
| (1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyguttman/2015/12/09/set-
| to-ta...
| iforgot22 wrote:
| The stereotype in my mind is that countries in Asia
| prioritize STEM a lot, so this makes sense to me. And
| they don't call it STEM, it's just school.
| blitzar wrote:
| The stereotype in my mind ...
|
| countries in Asia prioritize education a lot, prioritize
| good jobs and good careers a lot. Children are pushed
| towards the schooling that offers the best careers and
| STEM is it at the moment.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| I did forget about lawyers, the other stereotypical
| Iranian-American career that isn't STEM. The part of my
| family from Iran jokes about this a lot, saying even
| lawyers unofficially go by the title "doctor" because of
| the status it holds, idk if that's true.
| umeshunni wrote:
| And then people wonder why Asians are overrepresented in
| high-paying careers in the US. Surely, it might be
| because of lack of DEI programs.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The 70% statistic is very prominent, but some of my
| Iranian friends were incredulous of it. Some speculate
| that men tend to pick up skills during mandatory military
| service, so women make up a larger proportion of college
| graduates. Interestingly when you look for statistics on
| the workforce itself (rather than graduates with STEM
| degrees), you see familiar ratios of ~20-25%. E.g.
| https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/425963/23-percent-of-
| mobile...
|
| "Women make up 48 percent of internet users, 45 percent
| of cellphone users, and 23 percent of mobile app
| developers in Iran, Telecommunications Minister Mohammad
| Javad Azari Jahromi said here on Sunday."
|
| I can't seem to find stats on the aggregate gender
| breakdown of software developers in Iran.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| This tracks. I got a computer science degree from a large US
| university. Something like 75-80% of the major was male. The
| majority of the male CS students were Asian-American*, but
| not extremely. Way larger share on the female side, like 90%.
|
| Several of my friends in CS said their parents wouldn't have
| supported their college education if they were getting a
| humanities degree, with the _possible_ exception of law. Even
| business was unlikely.
|
| * counting South and West Asian too
| energy123 wrote:
| > There's something deeply wrong with the culture
|
| Another possibility: Women in poorer countries enrol in CS
| out of necessity. In wealthy countries, they have more
| economic freedom and there are more jobs available higher up
| on Maslow's Hierarchy, so they enrol in what they actually
| want (which is not CS).
|
| On average.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Entirely accurate, in ex-communist eastern europe some sort
| of math/engineering job was about the only way to live
| somewhat decent, so anyone remotely ambitious would go into
| that.
| kevinh wrote:
| People oppose efforts to make changes at the other end of the
| funnel too. This is the most popular post about Girls Who Code
| (the first organization that comes to mind, why I searched it):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980431
|
| You get similar complaints there.
| like_any_other wrote:
| That post is mostly factual observations, a reporting of
| lived experiences, if you will, not complaint.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| There's a background assumption in this debate that society
| has a moral requirement to increase the representation of
| those who are underrepresented. I've never seen this
| assumption justified.
|
| What if it is actually _fine_ for Asians to be under-
| represented in the NBA, and over-represented in software
| engineering?
| guax wrote:
| I guess it depends a lot on the reason why they're under
| represented. Lack of skinny people in UFC makes sense. I'm
| not so sure companies and schools are just passive in a
| cultural preference environment. And by not so sure I mean
| I am pretty confident there is tons of discrimination, I've
| seen it.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Lack of skinny people in UFC makes sense
|
| UFC (and all other fighting sports) segment based on
| weight class. Plenty of flyweight fighters look scrawny
| when wearing a shirt. Also some of the most intense Muay
| Thai fighters I've ever sparred are skinny Thai guys from
| farming villages in Isaan who showed hallmarks of
| malnutrition (stunted height and extremely thin physique
| compared to Isaan Thai who grew up in BKK or even towns
| like Khon Kaen).
|
| And this brings up a good point - you need to make an
| effort to build a pipeline from an fairness standpoint.
|
| Not everyone has to be a SWE, but everyone should get an
| equal chance to try and become one. Plenty of kids end up
| in crap schools with few resources to succeed in a STEM
| major, or are limited by social or cultural norms from
| actually trying to major in STEM.
|
| This goes both ways - women and African Americans are
| underrepresented in CS. No way around that. It should be
| solved. Same way men are underrepresented in teaching and
| nursing, and it should be solved as well.
|
| This whole conversation around DEI became unneccesarily
| heated due to mutual political ambitions.
|
| At the end of the day, everyone should have a fair chance
| at trying an industry or field, and because the world
| isn't a fair playing field, it doesn't hurt to try and
| build an ecosystem by incentivizing a pipeline.
| sojournerc wrote:
| If under-representation is because of preference and not
| discrimination, then there is no problem to be solved.
|
| I work in a wood shop with a bunch of men. It's a
| physical job, but there's no reason a woman couldn't do
| it, but guess how many women apply?
|
| The lack of women in our shop is not because of
| discrimination, but if we had to get 50% representation
| with women without a passion for woodworking, the product
| would suffer, or those women might not enjoy it, or...
|
| Disproportion does not always indicate discrimination.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > If under-representation is because of preference and
| not discrimination, then there is no problem to be solved
|
| I agree.
|
| > I work in a wood shop with a bunch of men. It's a
| physical job, but there's no reason a woman couldn't do
| it, but guess how many women apply
|
| Because it's a chicken and egg situation - if it's all
| guys you aren't necessarily sure whether or not it's
| because no women applied or because the shop purposely
| tried to make it difficult for women to join.
|
| Even making a token statement that "hey, we aren't dicks
| - we'll accept anyone and everyone who has skills and is
| motivated" can at least signal to potentially interested
| women applicants that the shop is friendly.
|
| And this is what plenty of DEI programs are in states
| like California that have strict laws and regulations
| against using race or gender based quotas. Plenty of
| organziations used a de facto quota system (eg. UNC) or
| treated DEI as struggle sesssions, but plenty of
| organizations tried to concentrate on the Equity part.
|
| The whole naming of this as "DEI" was itself problematic.
| Just use simple English - it's about Equal Opportunity or
| Free Choice.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| How about advocating for more objective hiring processes
| then? You could use AI to mask someone's voice and visage
| during a video interview. This was actually tried btw,
| see if you can predict the result:
|
| https://interviewing.io/blog/voice-modulation-gender-
| technic...
| kenferry wrote:
| Mm. It's certainly good to work at the other end of the funnel
| (thank you!) but it also won't help address pattern matching
| that people do in hiring.
|
| It's an incredibly natural thing for people to hire people like
| themselves, or people they meet their image of what a top notch
| software dev looks like. It requires active effort to
| counteract this. One can definitely argue about the efficacy of
| DEI approaches, but I disagree that JUST increasing the
| strength of applicants will address the issue.
| subarctic wrote:
| Yes it will! That pattern matching is based on prior
| experience and if the entire makeup of candidates changes
| that'll cause people to pattern match differently. If old
| prejudices are taking a while to die out, it won't be long
| until someone smart realizes there's whole groups of
| qualified candidates who aren't getting the same offers as
| others and hires them
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > it won't be long until someone smart realizes there's
| whole groups of qualified candidates who aren't getting the
| same offers as others and hires them
|
| There's an argument to be made that this is _exactly_ what
| pipeline-level DEI programs are!
| kenferry wrote:
| That's an efficient market theory, and it's extremely
| optimistic about how real people work.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| If the goal is to prevent people from being biased, why not
| anonymize candidate packets? Zoom interviews can also be
| anonymized easily. If it's the case that equally strong, or
| stronger, candidates are being passed over anonymization
| should solve this.
|
| Rather than working to anonymize candidates, every DEI policy
| I've witnessed sought to incentivize increasing the
| representation of specific demographics. Bonuses for hitting
| specific thresholds of X% one gender, Y% one race. Or even
| outright reserving headcount on the basis of race and gender.
| This is likely because the target levels of representation
| are considerably higher than the representation of the
| workforce. At Dropbox the target was 33% women in software
| developer roles. Hard to do when ~20% of software developers
| are women.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Anonymization is probably an under tried idea. Various
| orchestras switched to blind auditions and significantly
| increased the number of women they hired.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| If you anonymize applications you don't hire the 'right'
| ratio.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| people can cheat in anon interviews?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| They can cheat non-anonymous interviews too. An
| alternative is to have candidates go in person to an
| office to interview, but the grading and hiring panel
| only sees anonymized recordings of the interview.
| specialp wrote:
| The start of the funnel is also the most racist and class
| discriminatory. Almost every school in the USA takes pupils
| from districts where the property owners pay the taxes for the
| schools. Rich areas get much more resources and support. Poor
| students get put into less funded schools and suffer from not
| having mentorship or peers to look up to.
|
| I live on Long Island and we have a majority white population.
| Despite that we have 2 school districts that are almost 100%
| black. That is where the problem is. You are not giving these
| students a chance. When I am going through resumes I am not
| getting a diverse pool of qualified candidates because these
| poor people have been historically oppressed into a caste of
| poor schooling and neighborhoods.
| polski-g wrote:
| Most of what you said is just wrong.
|
| "Poor students" have the most support in the country:
| https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2024/are-poor-urban-
| districts-... Baltimore public schools get $30k per student.
| Carmel, IN public schools spend $10k per student.
|
| You should look into heritability. There is no longitudinal
| impact on adult outcomes as a result of parenting/schooling
| practices.
| jyounker wrote:
| I'm assuming you are not familiar with this study: https://
| scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/chk_aer_mto_04...
|
| It shows that if a poor family moves from a poorer school
| district to a richer school district, and they have
| children under 13, then those children are significantly
| more successful than children whose families remain in the
| poorer school district. However, after 13 there seems to be
| a slight negative effect.
|
| There are other studies showing similar effedcts.
|
| Summary: It's not genetics.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of that has to do with who your kid goes to school
| with. If we take equally funded schools (in WA that's
| easy since education is primarily funded by the state),
| the results are still different: districts with richer
| families do better probably because they get more support
| at home, but even lower income students do better since
| they feel like they need to keep up with their
| classmates.
| tuan wrote:
| Interesting. I've the same observation in Vietnam where I
| grew up. Maybe this is more universal than I thought.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| that is poor evidence for a school funding effect, but
| yes - environment is important. i will say that this is
| the first time i've ever seen MTO cited as a positive
| example of the impact, my understanding (not very
| informed) was that it is considered a negative result.
|
| i wish these analyses were pre-registered, but i
| recognize that is difficult to do for very long timespan
| studies like this
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > Summary: It's not genetics.
|
| No one said its genetics. They're saying its not only
| funding.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| They said heritability. They meant genetics.
| Biganon wrote:
| Several people have told you that's not the case; don't
| assume other people's intents. Heritability is absolutely
| not congruent to genetics.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| The genetic meaning is the most common usage of the word,
| which is evidenced by a Google search. It's also the most
| obvious meaning when referring to racial minorities.
|
| If they didn't mean genetic, then they really screwed up
| in their use of language.
| thfuran wrote:
| Heritable doesn't mean genetic. Language and money are
| heritable.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Technically yes, but the poster also listed "parenting"
| practices not having an effect so I think we all know
| what he means.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| In California funding is based upon attendance. The main
| place wealthy neighborhoods get extra money here is through
| PTAs rather than property taxes.
|
| This is in addition to what the other commenter said. I'm not
| very well informed about how other states fund their schools,
| but even if this blanket generalization is true in some
| places, there's enough evidence out there that funding isn't
| the only or maybe even the main problem.
| dmix wrote:
| US ranks very high in the world in gov spending on
| education at 6% of GDP. Higher than Canada, France,
| Germany, UK, etc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending
| _...
|
| The EU as a whole for example is around 4.7%
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Washington state pools property tax money and then
| redistributed it equitably across the state to pay for
| education on a per pupil basis. This mainly means poorer
| eastern Washington districts are subsidized by richer western
| Washington districts, and districts that lose students to
| private schools take a direct hit in their funding.
| blindriver wrote:
| This is the same as California.
|
| EDIT: I was wrong, and explain it as a comment below.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, it isn't.
|
| (1) California property tax stays local, and is not
| pooled,
|
| (2) However, due to Prop 13, property taxes are very
| small in California, and just over half of total funding
| for school districts comes from the state,
|
| (3) Distribution of funding (either just the state funds
| or total funding) is not equal per-student across
| districts, with per student expenditures ranging _widely_
| across districts.
| blindriver wrote:
| My mistake, I know that most of school funding came from
| the state but I thought it was because it was from
| property taxes being collected. In fact it's from state
| income tax and sales tax.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Property tax in California is a huge mess. In terms of
| K-12 funding there's also Prop 98 to contend with.
|
| https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/tax/property-tax-
| primer-1129...
| IcyWindows wrote:
| It doesn't help when the Seattle school superintendent told
| parents that if they didn't like their school policies,
| they could leave.
| streptomycin wrote:
| NJ is even more extreme, the poor districts get more
| funding and it's been that way for decades
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district
|
| This is true many places. But I think the "property tax
| explains everything" talking point is going to persist a
| long time, because it's very convenient.
| wyager wrote:
| America spends more money per student, in almost any school
| district, than any European country. The problem is not
| "resources and support". We've tried "resources and support"
| for 50 years, so the (a priori entirely fantastical) notion
| that just throwing more money at the problem would make it go
| away has been thoroughly disproven.
| Loughla wrote:
| Want to hear my hot take?
|
| It's not funding (though that is A problem).
|
| It's not attracting qualified, talented teachers (though
| that is A problem).
|
| The main problem is parents and society. Individualism
| means parents know better than the schools, and teach their
| kids that attitude as well. This cuts across class,
| ethnicity, and any other demographic marker you can think
| of.
|
| Am I right? I don't know, but I think I am.
| wyager wrote:
| If you condition on race, American students do better
| (e.g. on PISA) than almost any other country with a few
| exceptions like Hong Kong. American test cores are
| (slightly better than) what you expect given our
| demographics, which are by far the strongest predictor of
| population educational attainment.
| croissants wrote:
| Do you have a link to this analysis? I'm curious what
| "condition on race" actually means.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| I don't think that's true. It looks like the US has pretty
| similar spending to European countries at least as a
| percentage of GDP: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en
| /publications/report...
| wyager wrote:
| "As a percentage of GDP" is doing a lot of heavy lifting
| there. Why would we normalize this to GDP?
| bdangubic wrote:
| what would we normalize it to? not saying you are wrong
| in any way, just curiously wondering?
| wyager wrote:
| There's no a priori reason you would expect student
| expenditures to become less effective per dollar in
| richer countries, except the fraction spent on labor.
| einarfd wrote:
| Because a lot of it is salaries and other employee
| benefits.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-
| statisti...
|
| Depends which state.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| as someone who grew up attending a majority black school
| district, this is not really true.... underfunded majority
| minority districts typically more than have the gap made up
| by federal funds and the causal evidence on returns on
| education funding suggests extremely limited impact if any
| Loughla wrote:
| That's just false. Nearly every state relies
| disproportionately on local property taxes to fund schools.
| Federal dollars tend to be supplemental and come in the
| form of food subsidies or Title grants. They absolutely do
| not "more than have the gap made up" unless you're in a
| state with an equity funding pool (like Washington).
| bberenberg wrote:
| I have heard that Baltimore school performance is the
| counterpoint here, but I have never dug into it myself.
| Do you happen to know if there is a material point there
| or obfuscation of some form?
| ryan93 wrote:
| Places like Baltimore often have substantially more
| funding than many suburban districts
| klooney wrote:
| Title 1 schools can get a ton of money. Smartboards in
| every class, school supplies fully stocked, not the usual
| "grim downward spiral" feel of a public school.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Yes, class is the root divide. However, rejecting that fact
| is dogma for the people running these DEI programs.
|
| This is intentional because then DEI is intended to be a
| self-help religion for the corporate class designed to
| deflect the externalities that they produce, and not about
| actual material conditions. And that's at its best. At its
| worst, DEI is insulting and infantilizing to "marginalized
| communities."
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Much of our economic disparity in this country remains
| regional. We have states full of poor White and Black people.
| Of course, I have never worked anywhere that "diverse" wasn't
| only about skin color and gender, which means kids in West
| Virginia and Alabama are treated like they grew up in Malibu.
| It's gotten worse where I live in recent years since those
| historically disadvantaged schools are also 50% English as a
| second language now with no new resources.
|
| Do any tech companies have programs to hire out of
| historically disadvantaged regions of the US?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think that i've seen in my lifetime AA in hiring absolutely
| translate to shifts in undergrad composition. not sure if it
| spills over to highschool, but it definitely does when people
| are choosing what to do in college.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| In my experience girls _want_ to do CS but they lack
| confidence and are given too many opportunities to opt for
| something easier where they think they'll be more successful.
| (I don't know about any other of the diversity axes as much.)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| interesting. not going to comment too much on this, but
| this idea would seemingly be belied by the well-known STEM
| gender-equality paradox.
| golly_ned wrote:
| Just noting for those interested to check out Microsoft TEALS.
| JofArnold wrote:
| I definitely recognize what you're saying and it's fantastic,
| but hiring managers and execs do indeed need to be active on
| this too.
|
| The channels to reach out to more diverse candidate are more
| often than not different to those recruiters use to find your
| "average white guy in a hoodie". That's decreasingly the case
| for women (and I use that term very intentionally; I'm not
| talking generally "non-male" here), but social media and
| professional networking is quite hostile and/or intimidating to
| other groups. While the business benefits of putting in this
| extra effort in are obvious (it's a no brainer to seek out
| overlooked top talent, let alone the benefits of culture and
| diverse experiences), those benefits aren't always aligned with
| the hiring team who are incentivized in most companies to hit
| numbers. The business goals need to be driven from above by DEI
| initiatives or - if not - hiring manager allies who'll put
| their foot down.
| carabiner wrote:
| I'm most curious about the timing. Could this be related to the X
| narrative of LA fire response being compromised by DEI hiring?
| Zuck really sounds like he's mimicking X TPOT dialogues these
| days.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Let me get thsi right... Meta resolved issues with a performative
| DEI program with an even more performative act pandering to an
| incoming administration which is openly histile to POC... that's
| not better, it's worse.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| You're right, it's all performative. Meta will do what it takes
| to keep regulators off its back and reduce friction. If Dems
| are in power then they'll do fact checks and DEI. If they
| aren't then they'll get rid of it.
|
| They're like fair weather fans changing ball caps and jerseys
| based on the favored team. They'll kiss the ring, throw some
| cash where it needs to be, make some meaningless changes that
| satisfy the current political party in power, and get back to
| making billions.
| timmg wrote:
| From the memo:
|
| > We previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic
| minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions
| are being made based on race or gender. While this has never been
| our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it.
|
| I don't know how they treated those goals, but: you can imagine a
| large company. The CEO says "we need to reach X goal in Y. Your
| executive bonus will take into consideration how close you got to
| X." In a world like that, _many_ (most /all) executives will do
| whatever they can to get to those goals -- even if it goes
| against other official (or even legal) policies.
|
| And that certainly would explain a lot of the behavior I saw
| working at a large company during DEI peak. (Not to say that is
| any kind of proof of anything untoward).
| az226 wrote:
| 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.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Must be Microsoft, I don't think Apple and Nvidia went hard
| on this
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Nvidia has the polar opposite problem on their hands,
| they're one of the most Asian-overrepresented companies in
| America. 56% of employees are of Asian descent, in a
| country where Asians make up 6% of the population. Second
| largest market cap in the world. And yet, not a peep about
| it from the social justice folk, funny how that works.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1369578/nvidia-share-
| of-...
| pcbro141 wrote:
| Pretty sure every big tech company is Asian-
| overrepresented. Apparently almost 75% of tech employees
| in Silicon Valley are immigrants, no doubt the vast
| majority are Asian (East Asian and Indian).
|
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-foreign-
| citizens...
| dilyevsky wrote:
| If you ever seen an inside of a CS auditorium at any
| prestigious university that wouldn't be so surprising to
| you
| msoad wrote:
| "problem". Looking at the $NVDA chart is not showing any
| problems to me
| az226 wrote:
| It was.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Apple went hard on it, especially culturally, and it led to
| the type of censorship and control you see on the iPhone.
| Like apps being required to match Apple's moderation rules,
| or the gun emoji being removed, or whatever. You can't be
| an Apple employee that isn't aligned to their way. You'll
| be fired.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| "We're not discriminating or putting majority candidates at a
| disadvantage... but for candidates with a diverse background we
| have some leeway to exceed headcount limits."
|
| Or, for a court-documented example of exactly what you're
| describing happening:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501663
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Dropbox instituted this policy in 2019. We called it
| "opportunistic hiring". Not sure if it's still in force, as
| I've since left.
| gibbety wrote:
| As a mid-level manager in a prominent tech company, my VP (not
| current) explicitly asked me if there were any women or
| minorities for whom we could accelerate promotion. Not that
| were ready, but may be ready soon and we'll take the benefit of
| the doubt. I know that lots of women, minorities, and LGBTQ
| employees benefitted from that, but white male employees
| learned there wasn't budget for them.
|
| Execs given a goal will do what it takes to meet the goal.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Confirming Google did this.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple, Twitter, Netflix
| all did this. As far as I know, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple,
| and Google still do this. For hiring and promotion both.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| ITT a new step in the Gaslighting Slide just dropped!
|
| 5. It's been pretend this whole time.
|
| Previously:
|
| 1. It's not happening.
|
| 2. It's only happening a bit.
|
| 3. It's good that it's happening.
|
| 4. It's the people complaining who are the problem.
| firefoxd wrote:
| 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 programs trying
| to help these companies. Some folks right here on HN shared their
| successful experiences and I presented it to several companies. I
| was met with resistance every step of the way.
|
| Over the course of a year and hundreds of candidates I presented,
| I've managed to place just one developer in a company.
|
| However, most these companies were happy to change their social
| media profile to a solid black image or black lives matters. They
| sent memos, they organized lunches, even sold merch and donated.
| But hiring, that was too much to ask. A lot of graduates told me
| they never even got to do a technical interview.
|
| Those DEI programs like to produce a show. Something visible that
| gives the impression that important work is being done. Like
| Microsoft reading who owned the land where the campus was built
| [2] in the beginning of every program. It eerily reminds me of
| "the loyalty oath crusade" in Catch-22.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23669188
|
| [2]: https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4?si=wtnQtBOE-fs4V7gR
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Yes and the fun part is a lot of people see this "eager yet
| resistant" as a damnification of diversity initiatives instead
| of the calcification of current systemic problems.
| ncr100 wrote:
| This is saying those businesses all used DEI for show, and
| suggests their efforts were half-hearted, if I read correctly.
|
| Their metrics I assume are zero / flat, around 'success' for
| DEI, derivatively.
|
| To me this suggests the next best focus area for increased
| fairness of societal fiscal (opportunity) performance is
| regulation, perhaps driven by social change and social
| pressure.
|
| I have next to no influence. Still I wonder if I'm naive?
|
| ALSO, awesome work Ibrahim / firefoxd, you deserve to be
| honored for your experience and celebrated for meaningful
| efforts to make society better. I would not know about this
| without you:
|
| > If you are black and take a group picture with your white
| colleagues [on Zoom] one evening, eventually someone will make
| the joke that all they see are your teeth. If you are black and
| hang out with your white colleague, people will always assume
| you are the subordinate.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| An alternate take: there are good DEI programs and poor ones.
| The poor ones fail because the planners dont really know what
| they are trying to do, but leadership thinks they ought to
| have one, and so they metric-ize it. And since (again, no
| clarity of thought) hard numbers in areas like hiring sail
| perilously close to large legal rocks, they whiff on the
| metrics and end up measuring something like "engagement".
| And, concomitantly, deliver a lot of low value chatter that
| provides ample ammunition to opponents of any kind of DEI
| programs, even the good ones.
|
| A good DEI program should, IMHO, be indistinguishable from
| good management culture embedded at every level in an org.
|
| - It should not be controversial to assert, and product
| management to insist, say, that products designed for
| humanity should be usable by humanity: men and women, for
| example - but we still have medicine and cars tested on male
| models, and software that is unusable if you have low vision
| or cant operate a mouse and keyboard simultaneously. That
| doesn't automatically mean one must hire 50:50 men:women, say
| (see legal rocks, above), but it certainly starts to smell
| like a missed opportunity if you don't have a single person
| on your staff or in your network of consultants who can
| explain what it feels like to wear a seatbelt when you are
| 1.5m and 50kg not 2m and 85kg. If you want better products,
| this seems like a no brainer, but it doesnt seem to happen.
|
| - It must absolutely be a mandate for all managers to avoid
| cliques. All men? All women? All Indians? All Purdue grads?
| Close watching needed, especially when those groups hire and
| promote. Doesn't need a mandate, needs better managers of
| managers.
|
| Tldr is that no amount of DEI will fix bad management
| culture.
| nradov wrote:
| The particular issues around medicine and cars were more
| due to regulatory and liability issues than bad management
| culture or intentional discrimination. Pharmaceutical
| companies often didn't include women as subjects in
| clinical trials over fears that if one got pregnant and
| then had a baby with serious birth defects because of the
| drug that would be ethically problematic and potentially
| lead to huge monetary damages in a civil trial. The FDA has
| since changed their rules to require broader participation
| in clinical trials.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/consumers/diverse-women-clinical-
| trials/...
|
| Likewise with cars, the NHTSA originally had a single
| standard crash test dummy designed to mimic an average
| sized man. So manufacturers optimized around that. Now they
| are using a more diverse set of dummies.
|
| https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/improving-safety-for-
| women-...
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > Likewise with cars, the NHTSA originally had a single
| standard crash test dummy designed to mimic an average
| sized man. So manufacturers optimized around that.
|
| I think I would still blame the management of NHTSA for
| setting that standard.
| golly_ned wrote:
| That's what I've seen in the metrics. DEI hiring has been an
| enormous failure. A lot of the concern in non-exclusively-
| left-leaning online spaces (including this one) about DEI
| hiring was and is way overblown given how drastically
| unsuccessful they are in practice. The default like is that
| "it's bad, but getting better" by showing difference year to
| year in sectors where the numbers look good, or even just
| reporting on noise.
| bko wrote:
| A lot of people say DEI programs were purely performative and
| just for political points. But these policies did change the
| corporate landscape and affect hiring decisions.
|
| Of 323,092 new jobs added in 2021 by S&P 100 companies, 302,570
| (94%) went to people of color
|
| This data came from workforce demographic reports submitted to
| the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by 88 S&P 100
| companies
|
| Hispanic individuals accounted for 40% of new hires, followed
| by Black (23%) and Asian (22%) workers
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-e...
| linotype wrote:
| So it was racist?
| thfuran wrote:
| Depends what the applicant pool looked like, but 94% seems
| almost certain to be an overcorrection.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| The way it's calculated is just based on the net change,
| so it doesn't really match overall hiring practices. At
| the end of it all high status jobs were still
| disproportionately held by White people and Asian people.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| What does that matter when all your newcomers are not
| white? eventually you'll end up with the polar opposite.
| You should hire based on skill not race or any other
| thing you have no control over.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Right but part of that is asking why your workforce isn't
| representative of the available workers. If you're
| disproportionately hiring some types of people you
| probably are hiring on race and not skill.
|
| And yes, some of this is not solvable at the end of the
| funnel when hiring but as a society leaving a full class
| of people in less productive jobs due to race (or caste
| or whatever) is a waste of human potential.
| dijit wrote:
| > why your workforce isn't representative of the
| available workers.
|
| It's good you mention workers, because most people focus
| on the demographics of the population, which is bunk..
|
| Available workers includes factors such as qualification,
| motivation, aptitude and smaller factors like _"did they
| even apply"_.
|
| If your workforce demographics skew significantly from
| _qualified applicants_ then there's a problem. If you
| intentionally want to skew applicants then marketing to
| them or investing in their training and education is the
| way, not whatever the hell we seem to be doing.
|
| And a dearth of leadership of a certain ethnicity will
| change over time, demographics shift over the course of a
| generation of workers, not in a quarter of a decade like
| I've seen people expect.
| jerojero wrote:
| This point is very important particularly when it comes
| to gender disparities.
|
| Although women do make about half of the population they
| do not make for half of the applicants in tech fields, in
| reality, a lot of women don't even get to the stage of
| studying STEM careers.
|
| There's some interesting studies when it comes to girls
| own perceived perceptions on how well they will do in
| math. With girls perceiving they will not do as well in
| math subjects as their male peers (even though in
| assessments they're pretty much equal). This perception
| often comes from home and it's a significant factor in
| why girls don't eventually become STEM women.
|
| I think there's probably similar factors at play when it
| comes to different ethnicities and putting an effort into
| changing these perspectives has led to some of these DEI
| measures.
|
| Not to mention the fact that a degree of diversity is an
| asset when it comes to decision making, as groups with
| too similar backgrounds tend to fall into conventional
| thinking (the version of it that's applicable to their
| respective fields). So some diversity in teams leads to
| more dynamics dialogue between people which is key for
| creative problem solving.
|
| I'm not sure, given that a lot of the data available
| seems to be poorly constructed, that DEI efforts have
| been too much. Certainly there's a conservative backlash
| but that doesn't really tell us if these DEI measures
| have been effective or not at achieving their objectives.
| Fundamentally, I think there are some people out there
| who don't really value diversity so they're against the
| objectives sought by DEI measures to begin with and these
| voices seem to quite loud lately. I don't think these are
| the kind of people who would change their minds if shown
| data and research anyway.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Or it will reach a new stable equilibrium based on modern
| demographics, as things that add to 100% tend to do.
| freejazz wrote:
| Sorry do you actually think that 94% of new software
| engineering hires at fortune 500 companies during 2021
| were black? It's statistical nonsense.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| I dont think the people of color that got their foot in the
| door in tech would agree with you.
| miles wrote:
| > Of 323,092 new jobs added in 2021 by S&P 100 companies,
| 302,570 (94%) went to people of color
|
| Given this July 2024 population estimate by race from
| census.gov[1], leaving only 6% of new jobs to the majority
| seems tailor-made to trigger a large-scale backlash:
| 75.3% White alone 13.7% Black alone 1.3% American
| Indian and Alaska Native alone 6.4% Asian alone
| 0.3% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone
| 3.1% Two or More Races 19.5% Hispanic or Latino
| 58.4% White alone, not Hispanic or Latino
|
| [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045224
| grahamj wrote:
| When the playing field is tilted you have to put a thumb on
| the other side to balance it out. This might annoy the ones
| who were tilting it in the first place.
| programjames wrote:
| How are the people without the jobs doing the tilting?
| grahamj wrote:
| They aren't, but it's unfair from them to benefit from
| the tilt.
| programjames wrote:
| Who is benefiting from the tilt? Are they the same people
| getting thumbed in your proposed solution?
|
| EDIT, I'd also like to add: Why do you believe this tilt
| exists? I find it plausible to exist (especially because
| lots of people seem to make a lot of money talking about
| it), but where is the evidence for it? What I'm asking
| for isn't evidence that one group of people are doing
| better than another, I'm asking for evidence that a group
| of people are being _discriminated against_. E.g., if you
| took the exact same person and switched out their profile
| photo to showcase a Hispanic woman instead of an Asian
| man, they would end up with far fewer job offers. The
| thing is, people have tried doing exactly this, and every
| time it goes the other way! The exact same application,
| minus a name and photo change, has the reverse effect
| from what you would expect if the basis behind DEI
| initiatives was true.
| dsajames wrote:
| This isn't pressing your thumb. This is throwing away
| half the scale
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| Why is skin colour or ethnicity when it comes to
| employment even relevent?
| grahamj wrote:
| Because one of them is systemically suppressing the
| others. The point of DEI is (or at least should be) to
| counteract systemic bias; how can you do that without
| looking at the characteristics that are the determining
| factor of that bias?
|
| tbf this should all start at the education level so that
| black/hispanic/indigenous girls/gays/whatevers aren't
| joining CS classes, looking around and thinking they
| don't belong there, but until that's reality all we can
| do is tackle it where it impacts people the most -
| hiring.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > counteract systemic bias
|
| What is the bias and causes it?
|
| Because I don't think it's a systemic bias in the hiring
| system, so why not solve the problem rather than trying
| to patch the effect.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| > Because one of them is systemically suppressing the
| others.
|
| Prove it.
| Izkata wrote:
| > tbf this should all start at the education level so
| that black/hispanic/indigenous girls/gays/whatevers
| aren't joining CS classes, looking around and thinking
| they don't belong there
|
| I never thought that. That part of me was irrelevant to
| the degree, and I found it great that no one cared and
| were able to focus on the degree.
|
| Forcing diversity topics in and making them a focus
| instead would have been hell.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| No matter what people think the right thing to do is,
| making any hiring decision on the basis of a protected
| group is illegal in the US, no matter who is on what side
| of the equation.
| jrockway wrote:
| People aren't making hiring decisions based on protected
| classes. Rather, they're looking for qualified candidates
| in new areas.
|
| One thing that's common is for people to recommend their
| friends for jobs. Most of the time, their friends look
| just like them, because that's the kind of friends that
| people make. If you base your hiring process around this
| easy source of candidates, you end up not talking to a
| lot of people that would be qualified for the position.
| "DEI" can be as simple as "in addition to employee
| referrals, we're going to hand out brochures at a career
| fair".
| foota wrote:
| I don't want to make too many assumptions here because it's
| a bit of a minefield, but... perhaps there's an entirely
| selfish and rational explanation for DEI hiring programs in
| a tight labor market? If you feel like you've hired all of
| the labor you can at a given market price (e.g., you're
| cheap and don't want to pay people more) it might make
| sense to try and reach out to parts of the labor force that
| you feel have been underutilized (or historically
| underrepresented, but we're looking at this from the
| perspective of a ruthless business), and DEI programs could
| be a way of achieving this.
|
| I don't think that's an entirely accurate narrative, but I
| do think it's probably at least part of this (e.g., that
| all of the best white people were already hired, while many
| POC people of equal caliber were not or not making as
| much). The job market was soaring in 2021 and looking for
| ways to hire new people without having to pay them more
| would likely be highly attractive. Now that the job market
| is not so competitive, there's not as much need to do so if
| you're just trying to find workers.
| nearbuy wrote:
| I suspect the conditions were the opposite at the time:
| competition for good non-white employees was fierce after
| BLM, making them harder to find. If I'm understanding the
| Bloomberg numbers correctly, a random non-white person
| would have 47x better odds of being hired than a white
| person at the S&P 100 companies.
|
| Edit: another comment on hn says that Bloomberg's
| methodology was flawed, which seems more plausible to me.
| stevage wrote:
| I had an interesting experience asking a startup I worked
| at why they had no female engineers. The answer was they
| couldn't afford them. They were in such demand that they
| commanded a significant premium over male engineers at
| the same level.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| That's absolute nonsense. We know it's almost completely
| a supply problem not a demand one.
| llm_trw wrote:
| And price is determined by both supply and demand.
|
| If there wasn't a demand for specifically female
| engineers they would cost the same as male engineers
| regardless of the supply because an engineer should be
| fungible with gender. Unless you think that women have
| some innate characteristic that makes them better than
| men?
| mjevans wrote:
| It can be both.
|
| To fix this sort of problem a wholistic approach is
| required. Whatever the approach it should apply to all
| equally so that the market is fair. Offhand, my historic
| recollection is that STEM generally is traditionally less
| appealing to those of the female sex (by Science/Biology
| definition of the phrase), and that there might
| (rightly?) be a perception of poor work / life balance
| and career tracks that don't pair well with fulfilling
| time limited biological imperatives. My personal opinion
| is that enforced labor regulation that provides
| sufficient parental leave, work / life balance generally,
| and generally promotes healthier recognition of employees
| as humans would be better for society overall.
|
| I also recognize that we're probably not going to get
| that until the US gets rid of the 'first past the post'
| madness and adopts a voting system with literally _any_
| form of IRV. There just won't be bandwidth for such an
| issue otherwise. Of said systems,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method is my
| favorite, but I'd start with ANY IRV, they're (offhand)
| all less flawed than what we've got.
| ponow wrote:
| None of that is combatting sexism, but reality.
| mjevans wrote:
| Sexism is '(sex) Can't do x'. That's combated by
| successful examples being common.
|
| Bias of applicants is solved by making the job worth for
| all to do, not just from the positives but by removing
| the negatives.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| This is real. Female engineers are overrepresented in big
| tech something like 3-4x the graduation rate. There just
| aren't any left over for startups that can't afford FAANG
| rates.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> Female engineers are overrepresented in big tech
| something like 3-4x the graduation rate. _
|
| Why is that? Virtue signaling? Discrimination on males?
| LPisGood wrote:
| Could be a combination of technical skill gap, better
| networking, better interviewing. Jumping straight to
| virtue signaling or discrimination seems strange.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| Why would those quality traits be specific to females in
| engineering? Engineering as a whole is a skill fungible
| regardless of gender so if a gender is hired by big-tech
| at 3-4x their graduation rates compared to the other
| gender, then there must be something at play.
|
| Think about it like this, if you'd use the same argument
| you gave me if the roles were reversed with men being
| 3-4x overrepresented in a well paying white collar
| career, everyone would cry sexism and discrimination and
| action being taken to "fix" that. So why isn't it when
| the genders are reversed?
| LPisGood wrote:
| Is there any data out there that reflects this? That's
| really interesting
| az226 wrote:
| Before 2020, it was around 7-10x, so it doesn't surprise
| me it went up after.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > a random non-white person would have 47x better odds of
| being hired than a white person at the S&P 100 companies.
|
| I'm so old fashioned thinking your immutable
| characteristics shouldn't be considered for employment.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > you feel like you've hired all of the labor you can at
| a given market price (e.g., you're cheap and don't want
| to pay people more) it might make sense to try and reach
| out to parts of the labor force that you feel have been
| underutilized (or historically underrepresented, but
| we're looking at this from the perspective of a ruthless
| business), and DEI programs could be a way of achieving
| this.
|
| In my experience, DEI programs do the opposite. I've seen
| manager leave headcount unfulfilled because the qualified
| candidates they found were non diverse and hiring them
| would put them below their diversity target. If 20% of
| the workforce is women and your bonus is contingent on
| reaching 30%, you could recruit at Grace Hopper and try
| to hire more women. But if that doesn't get you to your
| quota, you need to hire fewer men to push up the
| proportion of women.
| goldenManatee wrote:
| What kind of role did you occupy that you saw "manager
| leave headcount unfulfilled because the qualified
| candidates they found were non diverse"? Have you
| considered it may all just be the appearance you are
| interpreting in your head, but it doesn't map out to
| reality?
| dijit wrote:
| There are better ways of asking this.
|
| The incredulousness is valid, but the way you've posed
| this question is so inherently biased it reads as tone
| deaf, as if the parent couldn't _possibly_ have witnessed
| this.
|
| Reality is a lot stranger than you might expect, if you
| can believe people can hold out for a junior engineer
| with 5+ years experience and a $50k salary: you can
| believe this.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Nothing about this was ambiguous. The company instituted
| "outcome based goals" specifying 33% women in
| engineering. We had hires that passed with flying colors,
| but were told that proceeding with an offer would put out
| org below 33%. We'd have to wait until we hired a woman,
| or just not give an offer.
| droptablemain wrote:
| We are already in the backlash.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| this is an incredibly misleading statistic skewed by the
| fact that almost all retiring corporate workers are white
| so lots of white jobs were "lost"
| wbl wrote:
| That data cannot support the conclusion drawn. You don't know
| what the turnover rate was.
| dahinds wrote:
| Yes this is a wildly misrepresented statistic that has
| nothing to do with DEI and everything to do with
| demographic shifts in the U.S. population (specifically,
| that the "non Hispanic white" segment of the U.S.
| population is shrinking).
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Thats true, and enhanced in places that reward that
| characteristic. Hispanic origin is tied to lineage,
| nationality, or country of birth for an individual or
| ancestors.
|
| It's a vague definition that is impossible to verify.
| Spain itself is a multicultural and multiethnic state.
| How do you prove that I don't have deep affiliation with
| my basque ancestor who settled in Ireland after a
| shipwreck?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| affirmative action for hispanic people has always been
| uniquely absurd and exploited by effectively white
| europeans for as long as it has existed. my college
| counselor told me to mark "hispanic" on my college
| applications because I'm of Iberian descent, which I
| refused to do - but I know of multiple others who did and
| went to Harvard/MIT.
| cmdli wrote:
| Looking at that article, it looks like for "Professional"
| degrees, it was about 25% white and 40% Asian. The "White 6%"
| figure came from a decrease in white workers in low-skilled
| roles and a massive increase in Hispanic people in those same
| roles.
|
| Given that many DEI programs specifically focus on "high
| skill" roles (like software engineers), it's unlikely that
| DEI accounted for this disparity while massive numbers of
| black and hispanic people being hired for low-skilled jobs
| had a larger impact.
| derektank wrote:
| If only 25% of people hired for roles requiring
| professional degrees were white, that's still a remarkable
| number, given 2/3rds of people receiving professional
| degrees in 2021 where white, without even considering the
| total population of professional degree holders
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72
| cmdli wrote:
| The most imbalanced group in hiring were Asians,
| representing around 5% of the population but around 40%
| of the chart in that article. From my anecdotal
| experience with DEI programs, they generally don't target
| or encourage hiring Asians over black/Hispanic people. If
| we are purely talking about discrimination against white
| people, it's much more likely that an Indian or Chinese
| person is replacing a white person, not a "DEI hire"
| black person.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| no it's because the study is measuring net changes and
| most retiring professional degree workers are white
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| but Whites with a professional degree are much more
| likely to already be employed, or be able to retire
| (creating opening for new hires)
| enragedcacti wrote:
| From my understanding that analysis is complete junk. From
| the Daily Wire of all people:
|
| > But it's not possible from the data to say that those
| additional "people of color" took the 320,000 newly created
| positions. Most of them were almost certainly hired as part
| of a much larger group: replacements for existing jobs that
| were vacated by retirees or people changing jobs.
|
| > A telltale sign that Bloomberg's "percentage of the net
| increase" methodology is flawed, VerBruggen explained, is
| that, if the departures of whites had been just a little
| higher, the net change in whites would have been negative
| instead of the actual small growth of 20,000. Bloomberg's
| methodology would then assert that whites took a negative
| percentage of the new 320,000 jobs, a mathematic
| impossibility.
|
| > The percentage of new jobs that went to whites was likely
| about 46%, eight points below the 54% white makeup of
| companies' existing workforces. That's to be expected given
| demographic changes in the United States since the time that
| the currently-retiring baby boomer generation first entered
| the workforce.
|
| https://www.dailywire.com/news/bloomberg-flubs-data-for-
| bomb...
| freejazz wrote:
| In no way it is at all believable that 94% of all fortune 500
| hiring during 2021 went to minorities. This is statistical
| mumbo-jumbo. Do you even work at a company like this? This
| statistic has to be misrepresentative of the conclusion you
| are suggesting because it is easily debunked by standing at
| the entrance to any midtown manhattan building during the
| morning rush hour.
| sterlind wrote:
| I think the flaw works like this:
|
| 1. Acme Inc. has 40,000 white employees and 10,000
| employees of color on payroll. The statistic would be 20%,
| if Acme were hiring at a constant rate by the same
| demographics.
|
| 2. However, suppose Acme hired the bulk of its employees
| during its growth phase 10 years ago. Acme's hiring back
| then was proportional, _but the population has changed._
| Now only 60% of applicants are white, compared to 80% back
| then.
|
| 3. Acme lays off 5,000 staff (at random), and hires 1,000
| (proportionally.) So they've laid off 4,000 white people
| and 1,000 people of color. And they've hired 400 people of
| color and 600 white people.
|
| I'm too lazy to do the math but I think that works out as
| hiring a negative % of white people, even though it's just
| representative of demographic shifts.
| dsajames wrote:
| So this is an example of what not to do.
|
| 1. Violate the law more blatantly than anyone else. 94% of
| new jobs went to POC? So what, 50% of the population shared
| 6% of the jobs? This sounds like apartheid era South Africa.
|
| 2. Create a backlash where the largest population and richest
| segment is so angry, it uses all its resources to absolutely
| destroy this.
|
| Nice going.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| 1) it sounds crazy because it's actual statistical
| malpractice. See the many other comments explaining how
| it's bullshit
|
| 2) the significantly backlash is interesting, primarily
| because it centers around the bullshit statistics that
| companies pat themselves with. The hiring process is so
| nebulous and unknowable to the potential hiree that no
| person can really know whether they were denied a job due
| to dei policies. Yet we simultaneously assume that all non
| white people hired are being _hired because_ DEI, which
| really just undervalues the nonwhite population, as if they
| truly deserved none of the jobs, wouldn't have gotten any
| without the help. This combined into the rage that certain
| people feel about what really appears to be a back pat
| circle around naming a git branch and changing security
| terminology.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > Yet we simultaneously assume that all non white people
| hired are being _hired because_ DEI
|
| Add that to the list of why DEI is harmful. There will
| always be a potential asterisk next to minority hires as
| long as DEI is a thing. It's unavoidable.
| typon wrote:
| In my entire career working for US companies, I have yet to
| work with a black software engineer. Not a auxiliary role
| like PM, DevOps, IT but a straight SDE role. I have worked
| with literally hundreds of software engineers in my life.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| As a black software engineer, in my entire career working
| for US companies, I have yet to work with another black
| software engineer.
| kragen wrote:
| As a white software engineer, in my entire career working
| for US companies, I only ever worked with one black
| software engineer. He was Nigerian. I believe that this
| is because the US has a profoundly racist culture;
| usually this was implicit racism (I only recall ever
| hearing one overtly racist remark against black people).
| I also worked with very few Hispanic people. But I worked
| with _lots_ of Indian and Chinese people, plus Arabs,
| Pakistanis, etc.
|
| Perhaps the US system of racism is less effective against
| people who had first-class opportunities at education and
| mentorship before entering the work force? It's still
| pretty effective -- there were lots of times I had Indian
| and Chinese coworkers and a white boss.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > I believe that this is because the US has a profoundly
| racist culture
|
| I wonder why US is not racist against Indians and
| Chinese.
|
| > Perhaps the US system of racism is less effective
| against people who had first-class opportunities at
| education and mentorship
|
| Are we supposed to believe that only certain societies
| (like India and China) have these kind of opportunities?
| Why doesn't Latin America, with 600-700M population, have
| this kind of opportunity then?
|
| > lots of times I had Indian and Chinese coworkers and a
| white boss.
|
| Anecdote - at the last FAANG I worked at, 6 out of 7
| people in my management chain were Indian dudes,
| including the CEO. Also as a matter of statistics, Asians
| are over-represented in S&P500 leadership positions
| compared to their share of the US population.
| kragen wrote:
| If you've ever been Indian or Chinese in the US, you know
| the US _is_ racist against you, just not in a way that
| excludes you from programming work. And, yeah, there 's
| quite a bit of Indian-American senior leadership in
| Silicon Valley.
|
| I live in Latin America now, and the universities almost
| all suck. Latin America culturally has the idea that
| universities are for job training and are basically all
| equivalent. China and, generally speaking, India instead
| place very high value on education and on good
| universities, and China also has a massive research
| budget. Latin America, broadly speaking, has zilch. The
| result is that in lists like
| https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-
| rankin... the top 100 universities include 11 in China, 4
| in Singapore (which is largely Chinese), and 0 in Latin
| America. Most of India's IITs don't appear on that list
| for some reason, but they should -- and the ones that do
| appear are the wrong ones.
|
| Here in Buenos Aires, the University of Buenos Aires was
| badly damaged by Peron demanding loyalty oaths from the
| professors, driving those who valued their intellectual
| freedom out of the university and often out of Argentina
| entirely. A few years later, it was damaged further by an
| anti-Peronist military dictatorship attempting to purge
| it of Peronists https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noche_de_lo
| s_Bastones_Largos. The first computer in Latin America
| was lost in the shuffle. Decades of such intermittent
| political violence disproportionately affected the
| intellectual classes; the last dictatorship, backed by
| the US in its secret mass murders of political
| dissidents, notoriously blamed society's drug problems on
| "an excess of thinking" among students:
| https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_Bardi#Ministro Those
| intellectuals who could move abroad often did so,
| including Favaloro, who invented heart bypass surgery
| after refusing to swear loyalty to Peron, and Chaitin,
| the discoverer of the random number omega at the heart of
| computability and the graph-coloring formulation of the
| compiler register allocation problem.
|
| Despite all that, the University of Buenos Aires is still
| one of the best five or so universities in Latin America.
| That may give you a clue as to how bad the situation is
| in places like Ecuador, Venezuela, and Honduras, or even
| the poorer provinces of Argentina.
| freejazz wrote:
| >I wonder why US is not racist against Indians and
| Chinese.
|
| You really can't imagine why American culture treats
| blacks differently from how it does Indians and Chinese?
| That says more about your imagination than it does
| America.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > You really can't imagine why American culture treats
| blacks differently from how it does Indians and Chinese?
|
| I don't know why you infer that from my comment. I am
| merely responding to the GP's post which I disagree with.
| I believe US, or at least Silicon Valley which I am very
| familiar with, is one of the least racist place. At the
| same time, it is also highly classist.
|
| Unfortunately, race and class correlate for American
| blacks. Not so for, say, Nigerian blacks because the ones
| able to migrate from Nigeria to the US are already the
| privileged ones in their society. Same goes for
| immigrants from India, China, Philippines or Egypt.
|
| Look at class, not race, if you really want to understand
| the SV demographics.
| freejazz wrote:
| >I don't know why you infer that from my comment. I am
| merely responding to the GP's post which I disagree with.
| I believe US, or at least Silicon Valley which I am very
| familiar with, is one of the least racist place. At the
| same time, it is also highly classist.
|
| I don't think you are responding to the other poster's
| point at all. I think you made up your own, and that's
| exactly what I pointed out. Because it's so facially
| asinine.
|
| >Look at class, not race, if you really want to
| understand the SV demographics.
|
| Weird, I thought we are talking about American culture,
| not just SV? Anything else you want to swap in so you can
| make your obtuse points?
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > Weird, I thought we are talking about American culture,
| not just SV?
|
| kragen's post literally starts with "As a white software
| engineer...", so I am addressing the context of being a
| software engineer, i.e. SV (the metaphorical place, not
| actual physical location). Broader American culture is
| besides the point here.
| kragen wrote:
| I agree that SV (the actual physical location) and the US
| software industry are less racist than most of the rest
| of the US. But they're still way more racist than, say,
| Porto Alegre or Caracas, which are no egalitarian utopias
| either. And the reason for this is, in fact, the broader
| culture of the US. (Not "American culture" because that
| would affect Brazil and Venezuela just as much as the
| US.)
|
| There are significant numbers of upper-middle-class black
| people in the US, and there have been for decades now.
| Their kids _still_ don 't end up as programmers in
| significant numbers. White rednecks' kids do; they're
| facing a pretty stiff uphill battle too, but a lot more
| of them prevail. That's racism, not just classism.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| [Aside: thanks for engaging in a civil manner, really
| appreciate that]
|
| > Their kids still don't end up as programmers
|
| I can see that there could be racism which prevents upper
| middle class black kids from becoming programmers. Do you
| think it's because of SV (metaphor) or because of racism
| in the pipeline leading to SV? If it's the latter, can SV
| even do anything about it?
| kragen wrote:
| It's difficult to engage in a civil way on such a
| controversial issue. I appreciate your collaboration on
| that matter as well.
|
| There's clearly a pipeline problem. As Ibrahim Diallo's
| experience shows, it's not _just_ a pipeline problem; it
| 's also an SV problem:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53180073
| naijaboiler wrote:
| As a person who has been black elsewhere and black in
| America, the biggest advantage of being foreign born
| black person is having grown up in an environment where
| black excellence is not exceptional, it just expected.
|
| In the US, inferiority of blackness is so deeply
| ingrained and entrenched. it's like air, we (blacks,
| white and everything in between) have all breathed in and
| fully internalized that we don't even realize its there.
| kragen wrote:
| That rings true to me. I couldn't see it until I'd moved
| to Argentina for a few years, which is also very racist
| but in a way sufficiently different that I could see the
| absurdity of the US system of racism from the outside.
| Dangerous as this is, recognizing my own blindness to my
| own subconscious racism makes me totally disregard the
| opinions of people who have lived in the US all their
| lives on this matter, because I know that 95% of them are
| looking at the world through the same lens of
| subconscious prejudice I was, because they've never seen
| anything different.
|
| Reading things like _The Color Purple_ , _Black Like Me_
| , and _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_ in my childhood
| didn 't remove that blind spot; if anything, the contrast
| tempted me to think that racism was pretty much a solved
| problem in the US, except for a few reactionaries. It
| wasn't until years of living something fundamentally
| different that I could start to notice how absurd and
| pervasive it was.
| pixxel wrote:
| Did the software suffer? Did you suffer?
| freejazz wrote:
| Hmm, what's missing from this list?
| golly_ned wrote:
| I had a chance to see Amazon Hr's organizational
| dashboard which listed, among other things, the racial
| breakdown for each VP in the company. BLACK_NA (which I
| figured means american-born black employees?) in
| engineering organizations were generally at about 1%. I
| knew of one black American engineer in my org of about
| ~150.
|
| There was one notable exception: an org based in Virginia
| with something like 10% or 15%. I figured it was due to
| black former military and defense workers who had to be
| on-site in Virginia to work on a specific GovCloud
| project, part of the JEDI contract effort. I knew of one
| black engineer who worked on that compared to about ~5
| others I knew who worked on that.
| nomel wrote:
| I'm software, but towards the hardware side of things, for
| decades, in silicon valley and elsewhere. I've worked with
| (as in, in the whole org) exactly zero software/firmware,
| and only one black hardware engineer (born and raised in
| Nigeria). I've interviewed a couple hundred people at this
| point, with only one being black.
|
| Where I've been, trying to get some DEI policy to influence
| who's hired would be impossible, since the panel has to
| agree, and there's no way they would agree to someone not
| qualified. Even with pressure like "we really need to hire
| someone before end of month or we'll lose the req", the
| response has always been "find better people then".
| SirMaster wrote:
| But this discussion is about it being a problem with
| hiring?
|
| There was not a single black student in my graduating class
| of Software Engineering from college.
|
| So is the problem truly with hiring, or is it earlier on.
| It could also be both. But if none are graduating with a SE
| degree...
| typon wrote:
| Just replying to the above comment that seems to suggest
| that all these DEI jobs are being taken over by "black or
| Hispanic" people.
| svieira wrote:
| While I can think of _at least_ five people I have worked
| with who were SDEs and black (two from Africa, three from
| I-don 't-know-where-but-I-presume-American-born).
| golly_ned wrote:
| I've worked directly (that is, either on the same team or
| with an immediately neighboring team) with two black
| engineers.
|
| My company historically has had leveling issues and, sadly,
| they were definitely not meeting expectations for their
| level, or maybe even for the one below their level.
|
| One was nudged out to another team. One currently on my
| direct team is being nudged out. One or two people want him
| to be fired (very curmudgeonly engineers who had worked
| with him), but me and the manager would rather find him new
| work within the company suited to his background in data
| science rather than software engineering. He's been
| dragging his feet; it's getting more and more difficult.
|
| The company has a strong and vocal DEIB/social justice
| culture within certain parts of the company (though I
| suspect much less so among executives). It sometimes comes
| into play pretty directly in hiring. I've been in panels
| where someone calls out that the candidate is part of a
| disadvantaged population who've historically been under-
| leveled, though I haven't been in a panel where that made a
| difference in hiring or leveling.
|
| The standard line is that the company doesn't compromise
| its hiring standards for diversity. I clearly have my
| doubts about whether that ends up happening in practice.
| bigmutant wrote:
| Northrop Grumman had a lot of folks from
| Crenshaw/Hawthorne/Carson when I was there, due to a
| partnership program with the local Cal State (Long Beach).
| All of the security staff was from that area too. Good
| folks, would 100% work with them again.
|
| On the other hand, I've seen exactly 1 guy at the FANG I
| work at. What's the difference? I think it's companies like
| Northrop realizing that folks from under-represented
| communities _have great value_ and prioritize that instead
| of whatever the current HackerRank-based interview process
| selects for
| pixxel wrote:
| Are you presenting this as a positive?
| groby_b wrote:
| I recommend reading the WaPo article that goes along with it:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/28/minoritie.
| ..
|
| Bloomberg's choosing to misrepresent the data here - this is
| not about jobs added, it's about changes in the employment
| composition.
|
| Simple example: Company X has 950 white and 50 POC employes.
| 10% leave over the year (95 white, 5 POC). They hire 200 more
| at an even split (50% white, 50% POC). They now have 1100
| people, 955 white, 145 POC. So they've gained net 100 folks -
| and the net change is +5 white, +95 POC. Voila, 95% people of
| color hired.
|
| It's still a pretty stunning change with a large ramp up in
| hiring of POC, but it's much less an indicator of
| preferential hiring than the Bloomberg framing makes it
| sound.
| ksec wrote:
| I would not be surprised while the OP were sending
| applications to DEI programmes, most of them went to Asians.
| Which I assume this still fits the PoC PoV of DEI.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| But most of those new hires were the lowest level employees
| -- service workers, etc.
|
| Also, in the US Asians, overall, are not economically
| disadvantaged like most Blacks and Latinos. So I don't think
| you can really put them together in this particular context.
| Notice that the largest group of Professionals were Asian
| (lots of engineers/programmers from India/China as usual).
|
| (Also at the Executive job level, Whites still very on top.)
| purplethinking wrote:
| Wow
| empath75 wrote:
| This is true, but that was a one or two year phenomenon,
| driven by BLM protests, and at the end of it, ended with
| white people still having a disproportionate share of senior
| and management positions.
| jlhawn wrote:
| > ... who owned the land ...
|
| they didn't use the word "owned", only "occupied". The
| indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our
| modern concept of land "ownership" and would think of it more
| like land alienation. As a Georgist, I'm personally very
| annoyed by these sort of empty indigenous land
| acknowledgements. I'm more excited about stuff like this
| Squamish Nation housing development in Vancouver, BC [1] where
| they actually get rights to use the land how they want even if
| it doesn't fit local expectations of "indigenous ways of
| knowing and being".
|
| [1] https://senakw.com/
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything
| like our modern concept of land "ownership"
|
| I doubt they had deeds to land. But they did fight inter-
| tribal wars over which territory belonged to which tribe.
|
| Humans have a very well developed notion of "mine" and "not
| mine". Saying indigenous peoples did not have this is an
| extraordinary claim, and would need strong evidence.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Also, OUR idea of ownership, at least legally, is based on
| the idea of usage and access. You may own a piece of land,
| but not the mineral rights. You can't prevent an aircraft
| from flying over your property etc. Ownership is a bundle
| of rights and exclusions. The idea of ownership meaning
| "who is allowed to hunt on this land" would fit right into
| our legal framework of ownership.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm also pretty sure that any tribe that built a village
| and farmed had a very strong notion of _my_ house and
| _my_ garden.
|
| Even animals mark their territory and aggressively defend
| it.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You'd be surprised then. Indigenous property rights
| aren't homogenous. Many lacked the kind of exclusive
| ownership that we have in Western systems. (Some) Inuit
| recognized communal band lands for example, where a
| particular individual within that band might have rights
| to a particular resource location while they used it, but
| their usage was governed by complex systems of traditions
| and they couldn't necessarily exclude others from
| separate resources in the same physical location.
|
| Pueblo groups had extremely strong ideas about property
| lines, but those properties were often analogous to
| modern corporations where individual families could own
| "shares" in the property, and exchange those for other
| shares in other properties to reallocate ownership. Areas
| within a property could also be "rented" to others, or
| the entire property reclaimed by the government.
|
| The best way I can summarize it is that native Americans
| tended to have much more fine-grained ideas about what
| property rights entail than our Western systems.
| Capabilities based security vs role based security, to
| really force the analogy into computing.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Is that really different than traditional Western
| societies? Medieval European societies had complex
| systems governing shared rights and ownership of common
| grazing lands and forests, for example. Those rights
| changed over time (such as through the Inclosure Acts)
| but it's not a concept alien to western societies.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There's probably an interesting comparative discussion
| that I'm not remotely qualified to have on medieval
| European property rights, but there's enough history of
| colonial settlers wildly misunderstanding indigenous
| property systems that I don't know a better word than
| "alien".
| ethbr1 wrote:
| "Misunderstanding" seems perhaps overly charitable to the
| colonial settlers.
|
| Possessing of enough military force to ignore others
| rights would be more historically descriptive.
|
| Even if they had fully understood all the nuances of
| indigenous property rights, they still would have stolen
| the land. Confusion was just a fig leaf.
| ponow wrote:
| Developing defence capacity is a basic responsibility.
| Humans can scream foul if they lose out to machine
| hybrids or extraterrestrials.
| 9dev wrote:
| So what, it's your own fault if someone assaults you and
| takes away your things?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The best way I can summarize it is that native
| Americans tended to have much more fine-grained ideas
| about what property rights entail than our Western
| systems.
|
| Capitalism has _very_ fine-grained ideas about property
| rights. Consider corporations, for just one example.
| There are multiple kinds of shares about who owns what
| rights to the corporation. Then there are all the
| contractual obligations that, in essence, transfer
| specific property rights. There are the web of rights
| that workers have over it. Then there are the rights the
| government has over it, via tax obligations and
| regulations. Layer on the concept of "stakeholders" that
| layer on more ownership rights.
| ponow wrote:
| We need one title one owner. Shared ownership is
| confusion. Governmens shouldn't run interference between
| managers and stockholders.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks for this bit of sanity. Arguing that Native
| Americans didn't have a concept of land ownership, while
| still having the concept "I'm going to murder you and your
| compatriots so that I can occupy the land where you live.",
| seems a bit like splitting hairs.
| dcrazy wrote:
| It's not splitting hairs. There's a recognizable
| difference between a tribe collectively defending
| exclusive access to certain land, and the concept of
| transferable, heritable _private_ land interest.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| Even in the US, commons-deeded land between multiple
| people is still a thing. Albeit one that lawyers hate to
| mess with because it's more work for them.
|
| For purposes of this thread, exclusive control of an
| area, absent other claims, would certainly entitle
| indigenous American peoples to ownership of that land.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| We even form corporations to try to deed land as a group.
| That's the entire purpose of an HOA -- to confer private
| ownership of community-owned land and equipment among the
| members of the community as their private land changes
| hands.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| HOAs do not confer private ownership of land among
| members of a group.
|
| They impose a mutually agreed upon set of rules on
| everyone who owns land that is covered by the HOA (with
| one of the rules preventing severance of the property
| from the HOA).
| jjnoakes wrote:
| I'm pretty sure all of the common areas in HOAs that I
| used to live in were equally owned by all members.
| dcrazy wrote:
| I don't think thats how my HOA works. I live in a high
| rise; I believe the HOA owns the common areas but grants
| exclusive use of certain parts to owners/tenants.
| dcrazy wrote:
| You don't need a corporation to deed land to a group. Any
| group of persons can hold title to a property. My wife
| and I had to choose whether to buy our condo as joint
| tenants or as tenants in common.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Fine, but recall what started this discussion, this issue
| of land acknowledgements (which I agree are absolute peak
| stupidity which literally managed to piss off everyone on
| all sides - the right thought it was useless virtue
| signalling, and lots of actual indigenous people pretty
| much agreed, considering it a vacuous gesture). For all
| intents and purposes, native tribes owned that land
| before settlers kicked them off and said you couldn't
| live there anymore.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > transferable, heritable private
|
| None of this is guaranteed by 'ownership'.
| stonesthrowaway wrote:
| > seems a bit like splitting hairs.
|
| It isn't splitting hairs. It's outright propaganda
| invented to justify stealing native land. The idea being
| if natives had no sense of property, we didn't really
| steal anything from them because they had no property to
| begin with.
|
| The other trope justifying theft of the land is of the
| "dumb indians" who sold the land for cheap. Like indians
| selling manhattan for a handful of beads.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think that's accurate. The historic colonizers
| fully understood that native Americans had a sense of
| property, which is why even the most blatant land grabs
| were almost always justified by a forced sale or treaty.
| I've only ever heard the idea that natives didn't own
| land from people promoting the myth of the noble savage.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Brett Devereaux talks about this in relation to the Mongols
| and other nomads. Yes they didn't "own" land but if you
| trespassed on their grazing pastures they would absolutely
| use violence against you:
| https://acoup.blog/2020/12/04/collections-that-dothraki-
| hord...
|
| The notion of a lack of land ownership is just
| fetishization.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Well, I feel like the "traditional way of life" argument is
| okay for why they should get special treatment. But why
| should anyone get special treatment if they are going to
| just, essentially, treat it as way to siphon tax revenue from
| the larger society?
| pshc wrote:
| Shouldn't building dense housing in an area with a terrible
| housing shortage increase the tax base if anything?
| phdavis1027 wrote:
| Because that society committed what are at least atrocities
| and probably more fairly described as genocide against
| those societies for like 400 years. A small casino empire
| seems like the least we could do lol
| colechristensen wrote:
| I'm perfectly fine with modern corrective actions taken in
| response to past treaty violations. They were treated with
| as separate nations in the past and now there are
| mechanisms for limited forms of self rule on tribal land.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Here in Australia they use the carefully crafted phrase: "the
| previous custodians of this land".
|
| As in... _we are the custodians now_.
| stevage wrote:
| What? No. The phrase is "the traditional owners" or
| sometimes "traditional custodians". Never previous.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Bad memory/paraphrasing on my part. Traditional and
| previous are near-synonyms.
| stevage wrote:
| I don't think that's true. Traditional can also carry the
| sense of ongoing.
| defrost wrote:
| I've not seen "previous" used ..
|
| eg: W.AUstralian Health acknowledges the
| Aboriginal people of the many traditional lands and
| language groups of Western Australia. It
| acknowledges the wisdom of Aboriginal Elders both past and
| present and pays respect to Aboriginal communities of
| today.
|
| ~ https://www.health.wa.gov.au/Improving-WA-Health/About-
| Abori...
|
| is pretty generic for a handwave across the entire state.
|
| In specific places, large tracts of land here, the
| terminology is _current_ custodians - if you recall that
| whole deal with Mabo and Native Title there are large ares
| in which the traditional inhabitants are now the current
| owners under Commonwealth Law that once didn 't acknowledge
| them as human and declared the land Terra Nullius.
|
| Mabo decision: https://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/
| Stories_and_Hist... We acknowledge the
| Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their
| continued connection to land, waters and community. We pay
| our respects to their Cultures, Country and Elders past,
| present and emerging. We also acknowledge the
| Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the traditional
| custodians of the land on which we work and live, the land
| on which this exhibition was created, and the land on which
| Australian Parliament House is situated - an area where
| people have met for thousands of years.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| funny because i feel that your comment plays into the exact
| same tropes about "indigenous ways of knowing" you critique
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The institution of land ownership is very important in
| farming societies, where land is what produces wealth and
| health.
|
| Societies on the hunter/gatherer spectrum also value their
| hunting grounds, but in far less strict ways.
|
| I'm pretty sure the indigenous peoples that lived by farming
| had well developed concepts of land ownership, but they were
| the minority when Europeans arrived.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Or really any permanent settlement. Look at say, Northern
| Inuit vs. Puebloans.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I have always disliked and told people I disliked land
| acknowledgements because they are designed to earn the social
| capital of giving the land back without ever having any
| intention of doing anything close to that.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I've noticed most academic places I've worked perpetually use
| photos of the same 1-2 black people that ever worked there in
| marketing materials. Including people that left or were pushed
| out years ago due to racism and unfair treatment. We have
| constant trainings and workshops on diversity and inclusion
| (taught exclusively by perpetually angry and abrasive middle
| aged white people), but everyone ignores me when I point out
| how specific aspects of the hiring process and work culture
| systematically exclude people from diverse backgrounds. In
| truth, at our supposedly "woke" and "DEI hire" academic
| institution, a black candidate still needs to be much much
| better than a white candidate to have any chance... and once
| they are here they will not feel welcome or included.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yes, effecting actual change is hard, pulling employees into
| a meeting room for 45mins to show them some buzzword filled
| slides is much easier.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Crowning yourself as an expert in a politically contentious
| field is very lucrative if you can make it stick.
| gigatree wrote:
| Has anyone asked why so many companies seem to care so much
| about the appearance of DEI? And all at the same time? I know
| there's cultural shifts towards that sort of thing, probably to
| fill the void left by religion, but does that explain why the
| world's largest private equity firms push them so hard? Seems
| like something everyone just accepts without question, even
| though it's completely out of character for people and entities
| who only exist to increase their own bottom line (not that
| there's anything inherently wrong with that, it's just so out
| of character to the point you'd think it would raise
| suspicion).
| jeffbee wrote:
| Companies care about attracting all segments of society
| because if they can expand their applicant pool they will pay
| less for labor. If I am the only person smart enough to
| recruit qualified graduates from HBCUs then I get to be more
| selective in hiring and I also get to offer less wages but
| still fill the position.
| energy123 wrote:
| Companies also want to be in the middle of the pack when it
| comes to sociocultural norms. There is safety in numbers.
| When everyone was adopting DEI initiatives, it was the
| safest for you to do it too. Now that everyone is
| abandoning DEI initiatives, it's also the safest to abandon
| it. There is no upside in being the fastest when it comes
| to bucking society's norms.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| Yes, this is asked a lot, and I've always assumed it was
| legal pressure. If a company doesn't have enough of X
| demographic, they can be sued for discrimination, while at
| the same time it has been illegal to hire based on race. This
| time the legal pressure in the opposite direction is more
| obvious.
| andrepd wrote:
| It's marketing, they judge that they will gain more by the
| good will earned than it costs to hire those "DEI experts".
| Now that the reaction is in full swing across many
| territories they start to cut back (see tfa).
|
| It's all very exhausting.
| ed_voc wrote:
| Could it be caused by ESG investments?
|
| Ignorant investors check a box to put their money towards
| 'ethical' investments, leading companies to create DEI
| marketing departments to exploit the new investment pipeline.
| alephnullshabba wrote:
| I'm surprised I don't come across this perspective more
| often. ESG funds reached 15% of the total global securities
| market in assets under management (although much of this
| was merely a reclassification of existing investments). It
| seems very reasonable to conclude that ESG funds/scorings
| became the primary market incentive driving the corporate
| DEI initiatives we've seen rolled out this past decade.
|
| Publicly traded companies operate under a fiduciary
| responsibility to their shareholders (maximizing long-term
| shareholder value). For consumer-facing companies one could
| easily argue these initiatives are part of a broader
| marketing/corporate branding strategy that benefits
| shareholders. But, for large publicly-traded companies that
| don't rely on retail consumer sentiment, I presume DEI
| initiatives were primarily a strategy to attract investment
| from ESG funds and help quell potential regulatory
| action/political controversies
|
| I'm ultimately not sure how reasonable my take is (I have
| no insider experience or knowledge) but would love to hear
| from someone with relevant first-hand knowledge and get
| their perspective
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Loads of companies saw a fresh source of capital. but it
| had strings, you couldn't be an evil mining company, use
| exploitative labour practices or generally be shitty.
|
| Obviously thats hard to do and still maintain a massive
| profit, so _some_ did the next easiest thing to
| greenwashing: hiring some DEI consultants and PR people
| to take some photos of the three employees with blue hair
| and melanin.
|
| ESG is still a thing, despite some finance bros making a
| fuss.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Green washing, security theatre, lip service, etc...
|
| This is an old phenomenon that keeps reoccurring in many forms.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Jeez, the most I ever got was called aside by the VP of
| Engineering on my last day to give him my opinion of their
| Diversity program ("since you're leaving, I figured you could
| be brutally honest with me"). Loved him for that, BTW :-)
|
| But seriously, congratulations!
|
| The negative effect of "fake diversity" is that it leaves
| everyone else wondering if the minority employees actually know
| what they're doing or if they were hired to make the company
| look good.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| > The negative effect of "fake diversity" is that it leaves
| everyone else wondering if the minority employees actually
| know what they're doing or if they were hired to make the
| company look good.
|
| This is the most insidious thing, in my opinion. If you're
| already a hater, now you can unabashedly claim the moral high
| ground. "Did she interview well, or was she a diversity
| hire?"
| fenomas wrote:
| One of my theories about DEI programs is: the people
| running the programs see their only failure mode as "we
| fail to improve our metric", but the much more dangerous
| failure mode is "current employees see our program as a
| joke that creates no value and hires unqualified people".
|
| And it seems like a lot of DEI teams are just completely
| blind to the latter mode. You sometimes hear about a team
| announcing an apparently minor change, like renaming
| something to sound more inclusive, and then go on about how
| they spent six months discussing it and gathering feedback,
| and it's very obvious that nobody involved ever asked
| themselves "when we announce this are we going to sound
| like a serious team that does valuable work?"
| lolinder wrote:
| 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 changed, so there go the marketing programs that
| were designed for the old power structure.
|
| 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. Progressives have forgotten in the
| last 10-15 years that the progress which we've won took
| generations not because our predecessors were weak and slow but
| because it _inherently_ takes generations to effect lasting
| change. It 's a slow, painful process, and if you think you
| accomplished it in a decade you're almost certainly wrong.
| seadan83 wrote:
| 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 painstakingly slow. We take
| for granted perhaps the first black president is _recent_,
| the first time having two black senators is now, school
| integration is about 40 years old in some places - not even
| one lifetime.i don't think it's an accurate characterization
| that huge strides were made in just the last decade, or that
| we were even starting at a "good" place.
|
| I fundamentally agree on how slow the progress has been. I
| don't know if it needs to be that slow. I disagree that there
| is a wide held belief that everything was done in the last
| decade. Notably because of how little has been done. It's not
| like we're in that good of a place, never really were.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/10/meta-
| ending-...
| ruined wrote:
| the last known direct child of an american born into
| slavery died only a few years ago
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/20/slaver
| y...
| dkga wrote:
| Into _institutionalised_ slavery. Sadly slavery still
| exists, is live and well, and occurs throughout the
| planet (even rich countries). The difference is that it
| is not statutory now in most places.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Slavery is at an all-time high going back thousands of
| years
|
| 2 million institutionalized slaves (per 13th amendment)
| in the US today, around the same as 1830 USA
|
| 50 million worldwide as of a few years ago
| gizmo686 wrote:
| The 13th amendment allows for slavery as a punishment for
| crimes. It does not require that everyone in prison be a
| slave.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Ok?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Are you actually claiming that everyone in a US prison is
| a slave?
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| The constitution allows that they be used for slave
| labor, and many are.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| But are they slaves by virtue of being in prison?
| ponow wrote:
| Don't commit the crime if you can't handle it. It's a
| punishment.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I think you mean, don't be poor.
|
| It's not like people in prison are actually all guilty of
| their convicted crime.
|
| You'll see this double-standard a lot for minor offenses
| as well. How many times has MKHB been caught excessively
| speeding (including 90? in a school zone) and still have
| a license.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| We forbid cruel and unusual punishment. If we lived by
| the morality you just articulated, we wouldn't do so. I
| think slavery is cruel and unusual, I think that's clear.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| You're saying that only those forced to do labor would be
| slaves? Slaves aren't made free by a lack of tasks.
| What's your point?
| khimaros wrote:
| could you say more about this or provide resources for
| learning more?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-
| studie...
| JohnMakin wrote:
| You only need to go back 3 generations in my family to
| find someone born a slave. And I am not even middle aged.
| People don't understand that hundreds of years of
| enslavement and all the ensuing trauma doesn't just go
| away after a few generations, it carries over in really
| strange and insidious ways.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > hundreds of years of enslavement and all the ensuing
| trauma doesn't just go away after a few generations
|
| This sounds unreasonable. If Europe can forget about
| Germany messing with everyone some 80 years ago, then so
| can the US forget about slavery.
|
| If there's continuing trauma, it isn't caused by what
| happened 100 years ago, it's because it is still being
| perpetuated somehow.
|
| That might be what you are trying to say, but I had to
| read it a few times to see it.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > If Europe can forget about Germany messing with
| everyone some 80 years ago,
|
| Europe has not forgotten about that, other than in terms
| of formal politics.
|
| Hell, England has not even forgotten about the Norman
| conquest of 1066.
|
| It does help somewhat that Germany has made really
| serious efforts to repudiate its own behavior, the
| culture that enabled it, and efforts to revive it. Much
| harder to say that about the equivalents for US slavery.
| davidgay wrote:
| > Hell, England has not even forgotten about the Norman
| conquest of 1066.
|
| I feel that's overstating it a bit. But my mother
| (English) was definitely brought up in a context that had
| not forgotten about Napoleon - Napoleon was
| viewed/presented as comparable to Hitler.
| vladgur wrote:
| Exactly. The history is filled with injustices directed
| by everyone at everyone if we go back generations.
|
| Are there injustices being perpetrated by the
| institutions today? Lets call them out.
|
| Injustices perpetrated generations ago belong in history
| books. We cant forget about them but Im not going to be
| held responsible for them.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > Are there injustices being perpetrated by the
| institutions today? Lets call them out.
|
| Yes! welcome to black lives matter. But, that seems to
| have been labeled a terrorist group for some reason.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I haven't heard that but in general tactics and threats
| could get your labelled terrorist? You may feel you have
| a just cause but it doesn't mean your goal justifies your
| actions.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > You may feel you have a just cause but it doesn't mean
| your goal justifies your actions.
|
| Only ever said by someone that's part of the
| establishment.
| dijit wrote:
| by definition, if you want to destroy the established
| methods for change or circumvent them then yes, that is
| treason (or; terrorism) especially via threat or force.
|
| Real change that will jot be classified that way has to
| happen by engaging with the process for change- though I
| definitely recognise that its a lot slower and more
| difficult.
|
| So too is it more difficult to save up money instead of
| robbing a bank, but it doesn't mean you're morally
| justified to rob a bank to give to charity vs working and
| giving a percentage of a paycheck.
| vladgur wrote:
| Black Lives Matter as an organization has lost any
| respect from me on October 8, 2023 when they celebrated
| the October 7th attack killing over a thousand Israelis
| on their X account [0]
|
| Please use a different example
|
| [0] https://nypost.com/2023/10/10/blm-chicago-under-fire-
| for-pro...
| 395112342 wrote:
| Older injustice still has ramifications today.
|
| Take redlining for instance. That happened a long time
| ago. Redlining systematically and intentionally deprived
| non-white families of home ownership, while helping white
| families to own homes. But wealth begets wealth, so
| owning a home lets someone borrow money against it to
| start a business. When these people die, their children
| will inherit their wealth. As a result, the
| (grand)children of a family are still denied
| opportunities that they would've gotten, if not for
| redlining.
|
| The creator of VeggieTales has a great video on this!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGUwcs9qJXY
|
| P.S. Yes, a family who was able to get a home loan
| (redlining didn't affect them) might have squandered this
| wealth gambling, or maybe they didn't pass it onto their
| children, so some people unaffected by redlining may
| still end up in a similar place. Similarly, some families
| that were affected by redlining have still managed to
| accumulate wealth in spite of redlining. My claim is that
| the family that squandered their money still got the
| chance to squander was was given to them, and the
| injustice is that the redlined family was denied that
| opportunity.
| 395112342 wrote:
| I can't help but notice (believe me, I'm trying not to
| notice!) that this comment is getting some downvotes. I'd
| love it if a downvoter could let me know why they're
| downvoting, and how I can improve!
| Omatic810 wrote:
| I can't speak personally to why peeps are downvoting,
| just wanted to say I appreciate the comment - you
| explained the position well.
| gottorf wrote:
| > the injustice is that the redlined family was denied
| that opportunity
|
| Right, but the median debate isn't about whether there
| was in fact past injustice done via discrimination on
| racial lines. The median person agrees. The debate is
| whether present discrimination on racial lines is
| required to "correct" that past injustice, and whether
| that would be a form of present justice. There's very
| little agreement on that.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| >sounds unreasonable. If Europe can forget about Germany
| messing with everyone some 80 years ago, then so can the
| US forget about slavery.
|
| Germany probably shouldn't forget the genocide of
| millions of people from a variety of groups, just as the
| united states should not forget the systematic
| enslavement and repression of millions of people, who are
| also americans and their descendants are alive and
| numerous today. It doesn't really make sense to me why
| people should forget that, and it cannot be forgotten by
| the people still living with the consequences of it today
| - but I'm not really willing to be baited into this type
| of discussion on a platform like this, so I'll just say
| your fundamental premises in your post sound flawed if
| not extremely troubling in what you seem to be implying.
| It sounds completely unreasonable to say for instance,
| indigenous groups should forget they were pretty much
| wiped out by largely white colonizers. This isn't a
| political statement, it's just a matter of fact.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > they were pretty much wiped out by largely white
| colonizers. This isn't a political statement, it's just a
| matter of fact.
|
| And if were to say "...but those colonizers are no longer
| alive, and neither are their children.", is that not also
| a fact?
|
| Or is my wording a political statement but yours is not?
|
| I don't know that we can be so uneven in our evaluation.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think you are intentionally misreading this. My point
| is that we shouldn't hold people responsible for actions
| they didn't take. Sins of the father and all that.
|
| Doesn't mean we should forget them. But getting angry at
| someone now because of something that his great
| grandfather did to your great grandfather is a great way
| for these grudges to never die.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > My point is that we shouldn't hold people responsible
| for actions they didn't take
|
| No one is holding people responsible for actions they
| didn't take. YOu're just mis-perceiving assistance given
| to historically oppressed people as a _personal slight
| against yourself_.
|
| Helping a black person is not _punishing a white person_
| , and you're showing your own ass when you suggest it is.
| DecoySalamander wrote:
| Taking resources - tax dollars and opportunities usually
| granted on the basis of merit - from white person and
| redistributing them to black person on the basis of race
| absolutely does punish the white person. Talk of
| "historical oppression" is just a polemic to distract
| from this racist favoritism.
| spopejoy wrote:
| Insofar as Europe has "forgotten" about the Nazis, you
| might want to check out how Israel legged into this in
| the early 60s, basically getting Germany to back any of
| their militaristic objectives in return for full
| diplomatic engagement with all the symbolic power that
| implied.
|
| Every government wants to "forget". France maintained a
| viewpoint that Vichy was a "few bad apples" until the
| evidence of deporting Jews until their death was
| undeniable.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I don't know about the rest of Europe, but "getting more
| reparations out of Germany" is a constant refrain of
| Polish politics regardless of what wing, faction, or
| party is leading it.
|
| The thing about oppression is that it causes both long-
| lasting _and_ recurring trauma. The people targeted will
| be hurt for a long time, _and_ they will be the target of
| follow-up attacks because other bullies know they can get
| away with it.
|
| In the specific case of Nazi Germany, exterminating the
| Jews was not an original idea of Hitler. Hitler's only
| original idea was taking shittons of methamphetamine.
| Martin Luther had done the legwork of radicalizing
| Germany into hating Jews; once Germany had become a
| functionally unified nation-state the Holocaust was a
| forgone conclusion. This is the core belief of
| Zionism[0]: that the only way to stop Jews from becoming
| victims is for those Jews to form their own nation-state
| that can commit its own atrocities.
|
| BTW, this is the same logic the Japanese had in their
| head when they started invading and destroying the rest
| of East Asia, around the same time as Hitler. They wanted
| to be respected in the way that the Christian Bible would
| describe as "having the fear of God". The fact that this
| led to the horrific rape of China and Korea[1] would
| suggest that these victim narratives are morally self-
| defeating without some framework of _reciprocal_ [2]
| tolerance and human rights to distinguish between
| justified self-defense and unjustified oppression.
|
| But America at least sort of has that, so we can make
| that distinction. In fact, that's part of what makes
| American race relations so weirdly straightforward. In
| the "old world" you have complicated webs of peoples
| angry at each other for shit that happened anywhere from
| ten to ten thousand years ago. But in America, there's
| just one very deep wound that never seems to heal.
|
| When does America "forget" slavery? Well, ideally, we
| don't 'forget', but we do 'forgive'. Practically,
| however, we can't. Every time a cop thinks it'd be a good
| idea to treat a criminal suspect like a demon in DOOM
| Eternal, and it hits social media, we get a huge reminder
| of "oh, there's still people in this country who think
| it's OK to do this to black people".
|
| [0] I'm a Mormon[3], so I'm morally obligated to point
| out that we fell into this rhetorical trap, too:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre
|
| [1] And yes, they still complain about it, too. It
| doesn't help that Japan's ruling LDP was run by a war
| crimes denialist for a decade and change.
|
| [2] As in, "tolerate all except the intolerant." See
| also: the GNU General Public License.
|
| [3] I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're
| referring to as Mormonism, is in fact, LDS/Mormonism, or
| as I've recently taken to calling it, LDS plus Mormonism.
| Mormonism is not an operating system unto itself, but
| rather another free component of a fully functioning LDS
| system made useful by the LDS Doctrine & Covenants, the
| Old & New Testaments, and the Pearl of Great Price
| comprising a full testament as defined by Jesus.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > If Europe can forget about Germany messing with
| everyone some 80 years ago
|
| Germany paid massive amounts of reparations for the sins
| of the Nazis, and on top of that, Nazi leadership was
| executed.
|
| It's simply ignorant to think a citation to post-war
| Germany is a winning argument for you.
| svara wrote:
| > This sounds unreasonable. If Europe can forget about
| Germany messing with everyone some 80 years ago
|
| That's politics. Many Europeans are certainly still
| hurting from the trauma the wars caused. That includes
| later born generations.
|
| Culturally, the two world wars have had a great impact,
| but that's another story.
|
| My main point is that individually experienced trauma
| does transmit over generations, while great national
| narrative can change relatively quickly.
| thatcat wrote:
| plenty of forms of slavery still exist, perhaps we should
| focus on that
| sethammons wrote:
| The grandson of the 10th US president is alive and well.
| That president was alive when George Washington was. This
| is a young country.
| lolinder wrote:
| > I disagree that there is a wide held belief that
| everything was done in the last decade.
|
| I think I may have miscommunicated there--I'm not saying
| that anyone believes that we made all of the progress of
| the last 150+ years in this past decade. I'm saying that in
| this past decade progressives have forgotten that it takes
| generations to make even small changes. You can't hold the
| national government for a few years and push a bunch of
| bills through and coerce a bunch of companies into going
| through the motions of equity and then expect anything you
| did to stick.
|
| I think where we do disagree is that I do believe real
| progress has been made over the last 160 years. Yes, we're
| still working towards the goals that were defined 160 years
| ago, but we're nowhere near where we started.
|
| Change like this has to happen on the scale of generations
| because people ossify and you frankly have to wait for them
| to pass on. Your only choices are to gradually change the
| culture as generations roll over or to undo democracy
| itself. You can't have both a democracy and rapid social
| change to your preferred specs.
| xwolfi wrote:
| But you make a strange comment here: "black and brown"
| employees are both completely different people.
|
| What you should want in priority is to get the descendents
| of former slaves to have a prominent place in society,
| include them as equals and make them powerful. I can
| understand that, they built the US same as the other
| invaders, and maybe even the natives should be more present
| in american society.
|
| But brown ? Im French, and sadly not brown, I wish I was
| ofc, but why would an Indian from Calcutta be more
| "diverse" than me from Normandy ? Skin color is as
| interesting as hair color, it means nothing. Say
| "descendent of slaves", Indians and Europeans if you want
| to rank people by order of priority, maybe ?
|
| For me that's why these DEI things are wrong, they're
| racist in a way. They divide people across skin color
| boundaries that make no sense.
| yantramanav wrote:
| Disenfranchising Indians must be the new racist trend
| here. Please try to have some empathy.
|
| Brown person can be a descendant of the "Coolies" taken
| as Indentured servants to Fiji, Trinidad, Suriname,
| Malaysia, SA etc.
|
| They could be people from French colonies like Algeria as
| well.
|
| Brown doesn't only mean an Indian from Calcutta, although
| they were heavily persecuted until recently (Check Bengal
| Famine)
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Coolies have nothing to do with America though.
|
| If we have solved all of the locally rooted problems
| already, then sure let's go ahead and help others too.
| That isn't the case though.
|
| I think it's insulting to descendants of American slaves
| to go from treating them as sub human not long ago
| straight to putting others' past hardships at the same
| level as theirs _in America_.
| lmz wrote:
| How is that a US issue? It's more of an issue for the
| French or the British.
| xwolfi wrote:
| I was simply pointing out an Indian deserve no more
| advantages than a Turkish or a Portuguese, while a
| descendent of slave might, since his family was wronged
| by the initial american invaders and they contributed,
| sometimes via back-breaking work, to the current state of
| the country.
|
| Indians can go through totally normal immigration and
| hiring procedures, just like me: they're brown just
| because of the sun, just like Im white because the
| weather is shit in Normandy.
| bubblethink wrote:
| You're thinking in terms of group guilt and inter
| generational guilt, which frankly doesn't make sense.
| There is no rational basis to trace ancestry of people to
| find who descended from slaves or slave owners. It's non
| sensical. In a fair hiring environment, no one deserves
| any special preference. If you want to help economically
| poor groups, the time to intervene is much earlier in
| their childhood by providing them better education,
| communities, infrastructure etc. So tipping the scales by
| investing more in certain communities is alright, tipping
| them at the job interview isn't.
| visarga wrote:
| When we think about society we love equality, but when we
| have to choose our heart surgeon we only want merit.
| Helping some group get by easier through school and
| hiring only puts a question mark to their real merits.
| It's also demeaning for them to be admitted with lower
| standards.
| manishsharan wrote:
| I am not sure where you are getting the idea that people
| of Indian origin are asking for or getting any special
| consideration compared to Turkish or a Portuguese or any
| other ethnic groups.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I personally think that it is not helpful to subscribe to
| 'sins of the father belong to the son' view of the world.
| Apart from everything else, it rewards near-constant
| cries of perceived injustices that drown any point you
| may have had about descendants of slaves.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| This actually makes a lot of sense to me. It would be
| like trying to get more white-looking people in
| positions, when what you really want is to integrate the
| Irish or the Italians into more prominent positions in
| your culture. We don't even think about that anymore
| because our definition of white has expanded to include
| those people. But for a while they were on the outside
| trying to get in while the newly freed slaves weren't
| even at the door yet.
| xwolfi wrote:
| But being white is really random: how is it my problem
| that the weather is shit in Normandy and all my ancestors
| are pale ? I arrive in the US, people would tell me I'm
| privileged somehow, when all I do is work hard and do my
| best to contribute to companies. And the same goes to
| more sunny weather-born people.
|
| If we talked less about skin color, and a bit more about
| the actual nature of people (I can accept positive
| discrimination towards former slave families, they
| deserve compensation), maybe we'd accept those DEI
| policies more ?
|
| It's a complex debate everywhere anyway, we have the same
| in France with our own colonial crosses to bear, and like
| what to do with a Tunisian freshly arrived vs a
| descendent of a Tunisian family who's been French for 3
| generations.
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| It should not make sense, but as long as discrimination
| is based on skin color, you will see efforts to address
| it also be based on skin color.
|
| The only thing I advocate for is on economic basis.
| Nothing else should matter.
|
| If one is "poor" (for a socially acceptable definition of
| poor), we as a society must help them.
|
| Skin color, historical persecution, country of
| origin,gender, sexual orientation or any of the thousand
| things that can be "different" , shouldn't matter.
| xwolfi wrote:
| I agree, but I think the constant division of people
| across vague color lines make people counter react in
| unproductive ways. Like (random example) talking about
| Obama as a black person hides so much nuances about who
| he truly is (and who his ancestors are) that it gives his
| opponents the impression that s all he is and his
| defenders not much else to defend him with.
|
| I just find the american casual racism, both sides of the
| political spectrum, very ... american :D
|
| In France we sort of pretend to ignore there s skin
| color. I d never describe someone as black, or no more
| than I d describe someone as blonde and I would almost
| never use a French word to describe it. It makes me
| nervous to reduce someone to this random attribute, when
| maybe his family came from Mali, or Martinique or the US
| and that's so much more interesting than the effect of
| the sun on his skin.
| Tainnor wrote:
| I'm in Germany and I'm also puzzled by how Americans view
| race. To me, black, white, etc. are just phenotypes, no
| more important than e.g. being blonde (of course, I
| realise that some people discriminate based on skin
| colour). The idea that these skin-colour labels
| constitute separate "identities" is a bit weird to me.
|
| And yes, of course many African-Americans have certain
| cultural traits, some heritage etc. that sets them apart,
| but I would describe that as "African-American" and not
| "black" because I don't think that a Nigerian or a Sri
| Lankan would share those traits.
|
| When Donald Trump insisted that Kamala Harris wasn't
| really black that just made no sense to me.
| ponow wrote:
| Brevity informs diction.
| Tainnor wrote:
| Your comment is too brief for me to figure out what you
| mean by it.
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| Yes, it is not optimal. Like I said, I don't subscribe
| how its handled either.
|
| I am not an American, and I'm brown. I don't take issue
| if someone says I'm brown because I am brown! Maybe I
| cannot empathize with other races who've been extremely
| discriminated because of their skin color, but as you
| said, it is _an_ attribute describing me, among hundred
| others. I also agree, color of skin by itself is not
| interesting at all, just like being blonde is not
| interesting at all - but may play into personal
| preferences, again, just like any of the hundreds of
| physical, personality attributes.
| vrc wrote:
| There are more brown people than Indians... Usually these
| initiatives push for underrepresented brown people, ie
| Hispanic/Latino Americans.
|
| Most diversity programs actively harm Indians as over
| represented, as they fall under the broad "Asian"
| category (see Harvard).
|
| But I guess Indians are easy pickings these days.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| This is an interesting response that points out ambiguity
| in it all. Depending on what you're reading / what
| statistic is being derived, often times you see Hispanic
| / Latino included as white and not brown.
| Marazan wrote:
| > FBs DEI program increased black and brown employees from
| 8% to 12%
|
| That's a 50% increase. Seems pretty successful to me.
| o0-0o wrote:
| So, more "black and brown" people (your words not mine),
| and less, what, White and Yellow and Red people and
| Purple people? = success? That sounds a bit racist to me,
| just saying.
| Drew_ wrote:
| Achieving representation closer to that of the wider
| population is not racist.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Which population? FB hires from everywhere in the world
| and sponsors visas. Having an employee base that's 30%
| Chinese and 30% indian should thus be the goal.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| To start with, you can sort the employee records into a
| visa pile and a not-visa pile.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You are explicitly considering a man's race, that is
| racism.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Are you serious? Measuring something is not
| discrimination.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You are explicitly considering a man's race for something
| that is irrelevant to that consideration, in this case to
| answer whether to hire/admit them.
|
| You must consider a man's race if this concerns something
| relevant to that consideration such as their medical
| history. This is not one of them; there are actually very
| few instances where asking a man's race is necessary.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The person above was just saying that having a closer
| balance of hires to the greater population was a good
| thing. They didn't talk about how companies got there. We
| shouldn't just assume they got there by using race while
| deciding whether to hire or not. Maybe they did something
| else, or maybe they found some existing racism in hiring
| decisions and _removed_ it.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The only way to change employee racial composition is to
| hire and terminate on a racial basis. The only way to
| _force_ that composition to mirror social composition is
| to do so explicitly and strictly on racial basis.
|
| A lot of factors go into proper hiring and terminations,
| most significantly the merits of the individual
| concerned. Such factors will lead to an employee racial
| composition that might not mirror that of social
| composition.
|
| Certain hiring practices like favoring women for flight
| attendants and black men for basketball teams should be
| terminated with extreme prejudice, but to force employee
| racial composition and specifically that one way or any
| other is racism.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The only way to change employee racial composition is
| to hire and terminate on a racial basis.
|
| I put an example of another way _in my last post_. If you
| 're creative, you can think of more.
|
| Another one is seeking out people and inviting them to
| apply, at which point they enter the normal unbiased
| hiring process.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > The only way to change employee racial composition is
| to hire and terminate on a racial basis
|
| That's ludicrous. If I hire only from Harvard, but then I
| start hiring from state schools as well, the employee
| racial composition is highly likely to change.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| But is the goal to hire from certain schools or to hire
| certain races?
|
| The axiom presented is that the employee composition must
| mirror the surrounding social composition, ergo you are
| hiring for racial reasons because you must set quotas and
| then hire based upon satisfying (and not exceeding) those
| quotas.
|
| As an example, if the social composition is composed of
| 40% Earthlings, 30% Martians, 20% Venusians, and 10%
| Mercurians and your workforce consists of 10 men: You
| cannot ever hire more than 4 Earthlings or 3 Martians or
| 2 Venusians or 1 Mercurian and must refuse or terminate
| any excess. If you cannot hire even 1 Mercurian at all
| you arguably can't hire anyone.
|
| That's racist.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Using quotas like that would be racist.
|
| But the idea of quotas is something you pulled out of
| nowhere. It was not part of the conversation until you
| showed up.
|
| It's a strawman.
|
| Also the post up above was talking about statistics with
| error bars a thousand people wide. The idea of having a
| demographic match with 10 employees is... also a
| strawman.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I agree life is seldom as simple as the examples, the
| small numbers are just for sake of brevity.
|
| In any case, none of that takes away from the crux of
| this conversation that programmes like mirroring
| surrounding demographics and others are discriminatory
| and have no place in free and civilized societies today.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's a good idea to measure the imbalance, and sometimes
| it's a good idea to try to do _something_ to work against
| it. It requires a lot of care, but it 's not inherently
| wrong. When there are a bunch of bad actors, everyone
| else trying to be completely neutral leaves things quite
| unbalanced.
| ponow wrote:
| If you have to force something, it is. And it's being
| forced. If we made more white play in the NBA it might
| seem clearer.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Apparently Indians don't count as Brown.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| In DEI parlance, black and brown refers to African-
| Americans and Latinos, although, curiously they also do
| accept African H1B visa holders in this group, despite
| them typically having high education, wealth from home,
| etc.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > curiously they
|
| Who is the "they" here. Whenever I see a pronoun
| (especially "they" it's always "they") with no referent,
| I ask this question.
| defrost wrote:
| In standard English "they" clearly refers to those that
| use DEI parlance.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| When I have read writings on DEI, they usually talk about
| "African-Americans," a term historically used to refer to
| the descendants of slavery. Which writings by DEI
| professionals and experts have you read that say African
| H1B visa holders should be included in DEI initiatives?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| But they are included. Because the companies talk about
| demographics and include "black" as one of those. A group
| which mixes African-Americans and African immigrants
| together
| defrost wrote:
| > Which writings by DEI professionals and experts have
| you read ...
|
| None. I'm a third party HN commentator that dropped in to
| address the incorrect assertion that the sentence in
| question contained a "they" with no referent.
|
| I have six decades of reading, writing, and speaking
| Commonwealth English and four or so with American English
| and felt the user who asked could use the grammar assist.
| Aunche wrote:
| 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.
| anon373839 wrote:
| > My perspective, US society is still fighting for gains
| that _started_ 160 years ago. Still painstakingly slow.
|
| I feel this comment won't win me many friends, but since no
| one has mentioned it: one of the striking features of the
| DEI/social justice movement was its rejection of MLK-style
| racial equality ideals. An entirely new language was
| invented to describe the new philosophy. And in some
| circles, if you appealed to MLK's of vision equality you
| were ostracized.
| goatlover wrote:
| Equity instead of equality. Sounded awful close to
| promoting equal outcomes over equal opportunity. I dont
| trust people who want to engineer society from the top
| down to be the result they think is fair and just.
| treyd wrote:
| This is a common misinterpretation. It's not about
| equality of outcomes.
|
| It's about recognizing that some people have potential
| that they wouldn't be able to realize due to longstanding
| historical inequalities that are highly correlated with
| race and working to account for historial injustices that
| still impact people today.
|
| It's not anyone's _fault_ that these issues exist today,
| but it 's our responsibility as a civilized society to at
| least ensure we don't actively _perpetuate_ them.
| marcusverus wrote:
| > This is a common misinterpretation. It's not about
| equality of outcomes.
|
| Could you inform Kamala Harris? She just ran a campaign
| which was largely predicated on the need for "equity",
| the goal of which she repeatedly described as meaning we
| need to take proactive measures to ensure that "we all
| wind up at the same place".
|
| https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1322963321994289154
| jonathanlb wrote:
| I think the voters already informed her about that. The
| campaign was shut down a few months ago.
| xrd wrote:
| I was surprised when you said "just ran a campaign
| largely predicated" because that wasn't how I saw her
| campaign. And this tweet is from 2020, not 2024, so it
| doesn't really prove your point. Trump and his MAGA
| friends might have framed it that way, but I need better
| evidence to believe what you are asserting. It might be
| that this proves you didn't pay attention to what she was
| saying and paid attention to what others said about her?
| water9 wrote:
| Why is make America great again so offensive? For
| African-Americans, the wealthiest they ever were was
| during the reconstruction era in the 1870s. That was
| because after the war, there was a shortage of skilled
| laborers and so they were in great demand. So this,
| Misnomer that make America great again is racist makes no
| sense. Good people don't teach you to hate other people,
| remember that. You can't do the same thing evil people do
| without becoming the thing that you hate. Morality is not
| relative. Morality is not Machiavellian
| intended wrote:
| Without context nothing is offensive.
|
| I have no problems with Tan suits for example.
|
| Good people don't tell you to hate, sure?
|
| They do tell you to take care of yourself and to protect
| yourself. That some people are evil and should be
| stopped.
|
| Bad people sound like good people and use different words
| to achieve the same goals.
| ouEight12 wrote:
| >That some people are evil and should be stopped.
|
| That's the rhetoric of both sides though, isn't it?
|
| the only difference is in who the far left vs far right
| each believe "should be stopped".
| etchalon wrote:
| You're implying Black Americans should be thankful to
| return to an era where they were slightly wealthier, but
| had fewer rights, fewer protections and enormous,
| normalization, socially acceptable discrimination.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Are you saying Make America Great Again means a return to
| the 1870s?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > "we all wind up at the same place"
|
| Yes? You're presenting this as some kind of gotcha but
| isn't that what the ultimate goal is?
|
| I mean there's multiple ways to go about it; one that a
| lot of people object to is e.g. giving people jobs
| they're not qualified for. But another that I myself
| benefited from was a government that paid for everyone's
| education from elementary to university level, allowing
| me to go from a blue collar lower class to a comfortable
| middle class income level.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Good for you for being able to use the system to you
| advantage. Parent has a point though. DEI goals kept
| moving and changing along with the language in ridiculous
| direction. Question of the expected future state is very
| much relevant here. Note that we may disagree on what is
| acceptable future state.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| How do you measure that other than equality of outcomes?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You measure how many people with different backgrounds
| (measured by a variety of metrics) gain entry to the
| pipelines that are recognized as the most common ways to
| gain power, wealth and prestige in a society.
|
| You don't require that they all actually gain power,
| wealth and prestige (since that measures something else,
| which could be equally important or not, depending on
| your perspective).
|
| If the only way to become a SCOTUS justice is to get into
| one of 2 or 3 law schools, and only people with a
| narrowly defined profile ever get into such schools, you
| pretty clearly do not have equality of opportunity. You
| can establish this even though in reality almost nobody
| ever becomes a SCOTUS justice.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| > If the only way to become...you pretty clearly do not
| have equality of opportunity.
|
| This assumes that there are no group-level differences. A
| very popular assumption, but contrary to the evidence.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > This assumes that there are no group-level differences
|
| There is no one reading this comment who doesn't
| understand you really, _really_ wanted to say "black
| people are just stupider than white people"
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| You think I'm afraid to say what I believe? It's a fact
| that the average black IQ is significantly lower than the
| average white IQ. There is no good reason to believe that
| this is _entirely_ due to environment. So, yes, black
| people are on average less intelligent than white people,
| and some nonzero portion of the difference has to be
| inherent. It would be an incredible coincidence if it
| were 100% environmental given how persistent the gap is
| over time and in different places.
|
| So now...what? You've won, because I've "outed" myself as
| "racist"? Sorry to have to break the bad news to you, but
| there are _very few intelligent people_ who still believe
| that _there are no genetic group differences_. The
| intelligent people who hold onto the blank-slate and
| group-egalitarian ideas either haven 't given it enough
| thought or just choose beliefs that don't make them
| uncomfortable.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Group level differences are of little to no value when
| evaluating a specific candidate.
|
| It is widely understood and accepted that males and
| females differ in their physiology in ways that have
| dramatic impacts on their capabilities. However, the two
| groups form overlapping bell curves, and if you're
| seeking someone for a task you'd be a lot better off
| focusing on the attributes of the individual, which may
| be at either end of their group bell curve or anywhere in
| between.
|
| Put differently, my wife, when she was a serious
| triathlete, would never have been able to beat the best
| males at any distance. But she could beat most of the
| males in a half ironman. So if you were interviewing her
| and some male to do something like a half ironman, you'd
| better make sure you ask a lot more than "what sex are
| they?". You'd better find out if the male is in the top
| X%, because if not, you should be hiring her instead.
|
| All of that is true despite the group differences being
| real and significant.
|
| Hiring is never about groups ... unless you're a
| racist/sexist/*ist ...
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| I mean, all of this is obvious. Group-level differences
| will still lead to the composition of individuals in a
| given profession differing from the composition of the
| general population, even if no hiring managers
| discriminate.
| skellington wrote:
| Yes, you do everything except measure merit.
|
| Equal outcomes for everybody.
|
| This is how you get 100lb women in the fire department
| who can't even control a fire hose at full pressure.
| defrost wrote:
| > This is how you get 100lb women in the fire department
| who can't even control a fire hose at full pressure.
|
| \1 Is this a _real_ problem in _actual_ fire deployments
| or simply a made up bit of Fox News DEI outrage?
|
| \2 Here in the Western Australian rural bush fire service
| 100lb women and people in wheelchairs are valuable
| members that operate GIS terminals, coordinate aircraft,
| work as administrators and bookkeepers, etc.
| Animats wrote:
| This is the actual test to get into firefighter training
| in California.[1] This is just to get into training.
| Graduating is tougher.
|
| Eight test events in 10 minutes 20 seconds. All events
| must be passed. No breaks. Candidates wear 50 pounds of
| weight through the whole test. Plus an additional 25
| pounds for the stair climb. The events are all
| firefighting-related.
|
| Here's a woman firefighter passing this test.[2] With two
| minutes to spare.
|
| LA City Fire is about 3% female.[3]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh3EoE1yJnQ
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0sUjZ8Abuc
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiUAWBuIWDE
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Nothing in what I described called for "do everything
| except measure merit". And I specifically disclaimed
| attempting equal outcomes.
|
| I'm a firefighter in NM. Your comments about firefighters
| are pathetic and ignorant.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Let's say you have a company in Warsaw full of lovely
| people who want what's best for the company. They have an
| opening for an infrastructure engineer and need somebody
| with particular skills, but are willing to interview
| candidates who don't have those skills but show aptitude
| , interest and a willingness to learn. They throw the
| doors open wide and interview everybody who applies. They
| only get white males applying for the job.
|
| If they're measuring the diversity and inclusion of the
| pipeline, they'll still end up failing. Warsaw (one of
| the most diverse Polish cities) doesn't have a
| significant black population. They might get a handful of
| Chinese or Vietnamese applicants. The bulk of the
| "foreign" population are Ukrainian (by a wide margin)
| followed by European.
|
| The trouble with _any_ metric used to prove DEI
| credentials is that the org starts changing behaviour to
| boost that metric.
|
| Perhaps the metric should be aligned with availability.
| No idea how that would work in practice though.
| tjpnz wrote:
| You don't have to practice American-style DEI. Removing
| blockers for women and people from working class
| backgrounds is IME far more productive.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Well the first thing to do would to acknowledge that the
| responsibility for representation in a given workforce
| roughly matching that of the broader population does not
| fall solely on the shoulders of "a company in Warsaw".
|
| The second thing to do would be to ask why only white
| makes are applying, and consider what (if anything) might
| be done to alter that. That might involve some changes at
| the company, but more likely would require changes in the
| broader society.
|
| The third thing to do would be to note that essentially
| no serious advocate of DEI goes beyond the idea that an
| ideal scenario is on average having work place
| representation roughly match the distribution in some
| broader social unit. If you have 0% black people in that
| broader social unit, nobody but people trying to ridicule
| DEI would suggest that you need to work towards more
| black people.
|
| The criteria for what characteristics are considered by
| DEI efforts in a given context will vary. Gender,
| religion, "race", language, age ... these are others are
| all valid things that you might want to try to even up in
| workplaces to match the broader social context.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Send applications that are identical save for identifying
| characteristics (e.g. names, ethnic extracurriculars) and
| observe of there are disparities in call back rates. Or
| anonymize applications and observe if the rates change.
|
| Equality of outcome is absolutely not a measure that
| ensures nondiscrimination. An extreme example, but
| imagine if we instituted a policy mandating equal
| outcomes in murder convictions with respect to gender.
| Would that make the justice system fairer?
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > This is a common misinterpretation. It's not about
| equality of outcomes.
|
| That's because no one really defined what "equity" means
| in the first place. In absence of a clear definition,
| people just fill in whatever they want.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > That's because no one really defined what "equity"
| means in the first place
|
| Just because you haven't bothered to look up what it
| means doesn't mean no one has defined it. This comment
| reminds me of the people who complain "the mainstream
| media isn't talking about XYZ" when they are, in fact,
| talking a lot about XYZ, but the complainant is only
| reading Facebook articles shared by their friends.
|
| One might consider [this seminal paper](https://web.archi
| ve.org/web/20090612025522/http://bss.sfsu.e...) on the
| concept of social equity, and then google "equity" to see
| how institutions are using the term.
|
| Most of them, you can see a connection between the ideas
| expressed in that paper and the definitions the modern
| institutions purport to believe in.
| water9 wrote:
| It's the government's job to make the playing field
| equal, it's not the government's job to make sure
| everybody ties. The fact that you don't recognize that
| they swap the word equality for equity means that you're
| missing something.. It wasn't by accident.
|
| It doesn't make you like some sort of prodigal genius to
| cite some Marxist garbage and pretend like yeah if we
| only did it right this 270th time it'd be perfect. Like
| you think you can do it better than stalin, huh? And even
| if you could, what makes you think someone wouldn't take
| you out.
|
| You can never have equity because people will never work
| equal equally as hard. That is a fundamental fact of
| humanity.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > Just because you haven't bothered to look up what it
| means
|
| I also didn't bother to look up the meanings of equality,
| fairness or diversity. But those words are fairly
| straightforward and one learns them when one learns
| English.
|
| "Equity" is one where the implied usage in corporate
| settings is pretty confusing given the standard meaning
| (see next para) of that word. So if my corporate bosses
| and HR are going to use that word, it is on them to
| educate and address the confusion of the audience.
|
| Dictionary definitions of equity: "the quality of being
| fair and impartial", "the value of the shares issued by a
| company". Assuming it's the former, what does my HR even
| mean when they say we should be "fair and impartial"? On
| the one hand, that's a given, like saying "we should obey
| all the laws". On the other hand, if we are not being
| fair and impartial, then HR should lay out specific ways
| in which we are not and also the specific remedies.
| swatcoder wrote:
| The challenge is that only some "historical inequalities"
| reduce to skin color, so it becomes easy to start
| favoring certain "historical inequalities" over others
| because of their political salience rather than their
| severity, intensity, extent, impact, etc. And that can
| very easily start to look like a kind of racism itself.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Which more severe or intense or extensive or impactful
| historical inequalities are you thinking of?
| swatcoder wrote:
| You can't really measure any of them in an indisputable
| and quantitative way, can you? That's kind of the point!
|
| But we all know that there are innumerable stories of
| families and cultures that have suffered, struggled, been
| exploited, been abused, and been excluded for generations
| or centuries in ways that they still are deeply
| disadvantaged for today.
|
| Who might see more impact from more opportunity though:
|
| * the poverty-raised first-generation-collegiate
| grandchild of a Russian refugee whose family history is
| just hundreds of years of serfdom followed immediately by
| Soviet oppression
|
| * the Stanford alum son of a middle class Chinese
| immigrant who came here to run a thriving import/export
| business
|
| They both face structured disadvantages compared to some
| other people, but skin color doesn't do a good job of
| telling you where a helping hand might contribute to the
| more equitable future or which will add more diversity of
| perspective/culture to a workplace.
|
| Programs like DEI often assume all PoC as similarly
| disadvantaged, and then contrast them against an
| archetype of an uncommonly successful and priveleged
| imaginary WASP. But the reality of history and equity
| involves far more dimensions and many more fine
| distinctions.
| Radim wrote:
| The one that gave us the very word "slave"?
|
| To GP's point, skin colour did not seem to be the salient
| factor there.
| Levitz wrote:
| Being poor.
|
| A rich person descendant of slaves is very clearly
| advantaged against a poor person descendant of slave
| owners. This is so evident that even those thinking that
| the "historical inequalities" are the important bit can't
| help themselves but turn to money at every step of the
| way to fix then.
| mjevans wrote:
| Evaluating potential is difficult. Measure something that
| isn't in a thin history summary. Measure stuff you have
| an opportunity to see without human bias or algorithms
| that are easily gamed? Measure, what is a desirable
| outcome?
|
| As someone who's been looking for a job that will take a
| chance on how I can grow to full their needs rather than
| already being a perfect match; I would really love
| someplace that had a 'career pivot' entry track and not
| just a recent / about to grad track.
|
| Maybe something like a 1 week, then 1 month (3 more
| weeks), then 3 months (total), then every 3rd month
| evaluation track for working the job in a 'temp to hire'
| sense with a 1 year cutoff so they can't just keep hiring
| 'perma temps' like in the past.
|
| I understand there's risks, and I understand it's very
| hard for both sides. However there's a ton of untapped
| potential and corporations are the ones who aren't
| offering a way of tapping it.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Evaluating potential is difficult. Measure something
| that isn't in a thin history summary.
|
| Ivy League schools in the US have been doing this for
| rather a long time now. Whether they are any good at it
| is subject to significant debate, but they certainly like
| to pretend that they can evaluate it. Their evaluations
| tend to show a strong belief in the hereditary properties
| of "potential", which is not well established in actual
| objective research.
| gg82 wrote:
| They mostly do it by measuring the family bank accounts!
| User23 wrote:
| Measuring potential isn't particularly difficult.
| Everyone from the NFL to the US military does an adequate
| job of it.
|
| Of course it's not perfect, but it's literally good
| enough for government work.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Most tests for potential are easily gamed by people who
| are taught how to pass the test, or simply avoided by
| people whose wealth and social status allows them to
| avoid the test.
|
| For example: When I was 18 I was completely overlooked by
| the NFL because I had never played gridiron football. Had
| I been coached professionally for 10 years I may have
| been a star.
|
| I sat in an interview for an army officer scholarship
| once, acutely aware that the man testing me had an accent
| that made it clear he was from a higher social class than
| me. He mentioned that I was not properly prepared for the
| meeting, but I was given no notes as to what to prepare.
| I was told later that in the private schools that feed
| the majority of candidates to this route, that they coach
| their pupils specifically for this test.
|
| So I would like to hear a test for potential that is not
| easily gamed by wealthy people
| User23 wrote:
| In our present society, gaming the test is part of the
| test.
|
| Whether it's learning the social mores of the institution
| you're trying to join, or grinding test prep, or whatever
| else.
|
| Is that ideal? Probably not, but like I said nothing's
| perfect.
| macintux wrote:
| How do you game the color of your skin? How long does it
| take to game your accent in a second or third language?
| User23 wrote:
| Nepotism, obviously.
| ponow wrote:
| No, it's equal outcones, or worse, turn the tables.
| Racist hiring aka affirmative action illustrates this.
| Sabinus wrote:
| >historical inequalities that are highly correlated with
| race
|
| Highly correlated with one race for a particular moment
| in history. New immigrants from Africa don't share the
| same disadvantage.
|
| Is targeting a divisive proxy for disadvantage worth
| targeting when you can just target poverty itself?
| lazide wrote:
| Ah, the problem for many people is they see being poor as
| the worst sin of all.
| rayiner wrote:
| Are we perpetuating them? Or we just not undertaking to
| undo the effects? Those two things are fundamentally
| different.
|
| I don't see why being civilized requires undoing
| persistent effects of past bad acts. Everyone's economic
| circumstances are an accident of birth. Why is it any
| different--to people who exist in the present--whether
| you're poor because you were born black in inner city
| Baltimore versus being poor because you were born white
| in Appalachia?
|
| Many people alive today have parents that went to
| segregated schools in America. But my dad went to a
| school without walls in a Bangladeshi village. That's
| almost certainly worse in terms of objective educational
| quality. But why does that path dependence mater anyway?
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > Are we perpetuating them? Or we just not undertaking to
| undo the effects? Those two things are fundamentally
| different.
|
| It is not clear to me that they are fundamentally
| different in any way other than deontology.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Hmm. I think you suffer from the illusion that your shell
| does not influence your behavior. Even if we are the same
| species, the genetic baggage, expression of that baggage
| and how we react to it cannot simply be ignored as not
| 'fundamentally different' partially, because genetic
| makeup is very much part of the foundation.
|
| We are not all the same. It is silly to suggest that. We
| share common form factor and there are things that bring
| us together, but pretending otherwise is how we end up
| where we are now.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > Are we perpetuating them?
|
| Yes.
|
| > Why is it any different--to people who exist in the
| present--whether you're poor because you were born black
| in inner city Baltimore versus being poor because you
| were born white in Appalachia?
|
| Because Black people are jailed at far higher rates than
| white people. The poor white potsmoker in Appalachia is
| likely to get a pass from the police while the Black man
| gets jailed for 10 years and sentenced to forced labor
| for pennies.
|
| Now what would you call this exactly?
| skellington wrote:
| The gaslighting from the DEI types is unrelenting.
|
| I've been in the corporate DEI training courses. I've
| read the CRT papers and books that are the influences of
| the DEI types. They all define equity as EQUAL OUTCOMES
| not equal opportunity. And they all say that the ONLY
| reason why we don't get equal outcomes now is because of
| structural -isms.
|
| There is NO concept of individual merit in the source
| materials that lead to DEI ideas because DEI/CRT are
| offshoots of 'critical theories' which are related to our
| favorite communism/Marxist ideologies. This is not
| hyperbole.
|
| (Mark Cuban is absolutely wrong the way he describes DEI
| vs what the proponents are really demanding in case
| that's where you got your idea about DEI from.)
|
| But at the same time, it's true that most companies use
| DEI for marketing and conveniently ignore the equity part
| because it would lay bare their hypocrisy when their CEO
| gets paid $50 million a year.
| naasking wrote:
| > It's about recognizing that some people have potential
| that they wouldn't be able to realize due to longstanding
| historical inequalities that are highly correlated with
| race and working to account for historial injustices that
| still impact people today.
|
| You can recognize this without accepting that an
| infrastructure of explicit racial discrimination is a
| good idea. Many, many people seem to miss this point.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Equality of outcome is implied by equality of
| opportunity. Or, more specifically, because outcomes are
| proportional to opportunity, there is only so much that
| can be explained by variability in knowledge, effort, or
| circumstances. When the system consistently hands out bad
| outcomes to one group of people, it's reasonable to at
| least assume there is analogous bias in the opportunities
| that were presented to that same group.
|
| In other words, equity and equal outcomes are not a goal,
| they're a heuristic. Same as how logical fallacies,
| _while wrong_ , are still valuable heuristics.
|
| My read on the past decade is that most DEI programs were
| adopted in blue[0] spaces primarily to redirect
| Progressive voices away from questions of economic
| justice and elite control. That is, businesses virtue-
| signal the most tolerable Progressive politics in order
| to distract rank-and-file Democratic voters away from
| questions like "isn't it fucked up that Mexico is
| basically a perma-scab to bust unions with" or "why are
| we just _letting_ Facebook buy up all the social media ".
|
| To be clear, you're right that these companies want to
| engineer society from the top down. But it's not about
| handing out high-paying jobs to the unqualified for the
| lulz, it's about making Facebook into the new Boeing - a
| company that is so integral to the operation of the state
| that shipping software that murders people is considered
| an excusable mistake. If that means Facebook has to
| change political alliances every so often, then so be it.
|
| [0] As in, "aligned with the Democratic Party
| leadership", not "left-wing"
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| > Equality of outcome is implied by equality of
| opportunity.
|
| Only if you assume that group-level differences can't
| exist.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| But, group-level differences are probably caused by
| inequality of opportunity.
|
| Or are you thinking they caused by genetics?
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| I think that the most likely explanation is that both
| environment and genetics are factors. In order to view
| inequality of outcome as _proof_ of inequality of
| opportunity, you have to believe that group differences
| are due entirely to environmental conditions. That 's a
| rather extreme position to take.
| andriesm wrote:
| Of course genetics play a role - some people can get by
| on long term sleep of 4-5 hours a night, while most
| people need more. Some people have fantastic health from
| genetics (and then work hard to maintain it), while
| others are born with a slew of minor ailments that make
| them less productive. Not to speak of inteligence or
| natural talents, height etc.
| gottorf wrote:
| > But, group-level differences are probably caused by
| inequality of opportunity.
|
| There's no evidence that this is true. Even if you take
| the extreme position (against which there is plenty of
| data) that different ethnic groups are more or less
| identically "genetically" capable at a group level, both
| in terms of the average member as well as the outliers,
| the fact that different groups have different cultural
| values and practices mean that those differences play out
| in considerable differences in results. And those
| differences get even more exaggerated at the outlying
| levels.
|
| For example, the US population is roughly 14% black and
| 6% Asian, but among NFL players, it's 58% black and a
| 0.1% Asian. Even if you assume no group-level differences
| in inborn ability and potential, the fact that football
| is a much bigger part of black American culture than it
| is Asian American culture would mean that after
| generations of such cultural differences, you will end up
| with such a skewed distribution.
|
| In real life, of course, there are group-level
| differences at the genetic level, which compound into
| culture and over time result in wildly different outcomes
| for members of those groups. Over nine-tenths of the
| world's top sprinters are of West African descent; same
| for the marathon and people of East African descent. You
| might easily imagine that a group of people composed of
| those who naturally run fast will develop cultural
| customs that involve running, which further develops the
| talent pool in that group.
|
| Apply that over generations, and it results in such a big
| difference between groups that a naive observer concludes
| that external causes (i.e. racism) is the most reasonable
| explanation, coming from the faulty assumption that
| group-level differences do not exist outside of such
| external causes.
|
| In fact, I would go a step further a claim that it's
| virtually impossible to take a subgroup of a broader
| population that precisely reflects the composition of the
| latter, along any lines.
| xocnad wrote:
| Since you are qualifying what type of societal engineers
| you don't trust are there ones that you do?
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| Hip hop artists from the 90s I thought for a while.
| Nowadays not sure anymore. Folk artists from any decade
| are usually my more trusted societal engineers, going all
| the way back to maybe even before Jesus.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Unfortunately your alternative is a society engineered
| from the top down to be deliberately unfair.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
| That is not weakness, that is life."
|
| -Jean-Luc Picard
|
| Additionally, the Declaration of Independence states our
| fundamental philosophy as a nation that _all men are
| created equal_. We all start from the same line, but
| where life takes us and what we make of it is completely
| up to life and us the individual.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Note it says "all men". Not "all men and women". Big
| difference
| skellington wrote:
| It is commonly understood that 'men' in that context and
| in the context of the time is a reference to 'mankind' or
| 'the race of men' which means the human race, not males
| specifically.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| So why weren't women allowed to vote when those words
| were written?
| Levitz wrote:
| It's not as if every man was able to vote back then
| either. Property owners, of age, white.
|
| The story of universal suffrage isn't that clear cut.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| So did the Founding Fathers actually believe that all
| human beings were created equal?
| gopher_space wrote:
| I think like half of them did. The compromise over
| slavery cursed our nation.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| To copy myself from another sibling comment:
|
| Man as in mankind. https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/man
|
| >1a(1): an individual human
|
| >b: the human race : HUMANKIND
|
| >c: a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens) that is
| anatomically related to the great apes but distinguished
| especially by notable development of the brain with a
| resultant capacity for articulate (see ARTICULATE entry 1
| sense 1a) speech and abstract reasoning, and is the sole
| living representative of the hominid family
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Linguistic pedantry with strong sexist overtones said in
| bad faith. Come on.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Literally (and I mean that) no difference when it was
| written. Language changed.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Language changed.
|
| I argue that it hasn't; we say "man" both by itself and
| as part of another word (eg: manpower) in many contexts
| where gender is literally irrelevant.
|
| What has changed is the likelihood of certain individuals
| engaging in sexism in the name of equality.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Equity is more like... wheelchair ramps. Or chirpers at
| traffic lights for blind folks. Or subtitles.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| MLK's ideals were not colorblindness. He explicitly
| supported race-specific reparations and policies that
| focused on repairing specific racial oppression and
| suffering.
|
| MLK had one famous line in a speech that has been
| leveraged by reactionaries to use him as a weapon against
| advocates of racial liberation. But that is not an honest
| use of his beliefs.
| ponow wrote:
| But that line is what people agree with, not the commie
| stuff.
| Izkata wrote:
| Yep, that's exactly why it became the thing he's known
| for.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| what is the commie stuff?
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Dunno but I wonder if Jesus would be considered a commie
| if he appeared incognito in 1950s America.
| Draiken wrote:
| No need to wonder. He'd be labelled a commie back then
| and now without a doubt. I can even imagine a Fox News
| host labeling them as such on a long rant against
| communism, haha.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| You could claim that if you want, I suppose. But the post
| above me said "MLK's of vision equality", which is not a
| system of official colorblindness.
| nine_k wrote:
| MLK was a minister (because Baptists don't have
| priesthood), _Reverend_ Martin Luther King Jr. He was
| profoundly Christian.
|
| The whole movement for racial _equality_ , and thus
| liberation, in the USA grew from intensely Christian
| foundations. One of the core tenets of abolitionism was
| the idea that humans are created equal, and such
| attributes as race or skin color are irrelevant before
| God, and hence to the faithful, too. Christ specifically
| said that being a Greek or being a Jew does not matter
| before God, and being a slave or being a master also does
| not matter; all are equal.
|
| So, _certain_ amounts of colorblindness are inherent to
| the very idea of people of different origins being equal,
| as it emerged in the USA, and supposedly elsewhere in the
| Christian-dominated areas of the world.
|
| Also, it's the idea of equality, equal worth (before
| God), not of fairness or compensation; the latter might
| come from atonement and Christian love to the neighbor.
|
| Eventually other ideas took hold and somehow eclipsed the
| initial ideas, not just of 1860s but also of MLK's.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| MLK believed in equal worth. But he did not believe that
| the mechanism to achieve this in public was systems-level
| colorblindness.
|
| I also think that Christians specifically should be
| comfortable with the concept of generational sin and
| personal sacrifice for social justice rather than a
| vigorous defense that one's achievement's are solely
| their own and must be hoarded at all costs.
| naasking wrote:
| > I also think that Christians specifically should be
| comfortable with the concept of generational sin and
| personal sacrifice for social justice rather than a
| vigorous defense that one's achievement's are solely
| their own and must be hoarded at all costs.
|
| This is a false choice. They are not the only two
| options.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| MLK was a communist who was killed for his views by the
| US Government.
|
| He was not the harmony flowers and rainbows he was white
| washed into.
|
| Rights are never given, they have to be taken by force.
| thefounder wrote:
| >> Rights are never given, they have to be taken by
| force.
|
| That's simply not true. You can also be persistent
| instead to be violent(i.e by force). A small group of
| people with the same goal can do wonders without being
| violent.
| maeil wrote:
| This only ever happens when protesting those with fairly
| little power, very lower middle management, and those in
| actual power don't care.
|
| It's also become less and less common over time, as the
| focus on next quarter shareholder returns and hoarding of
| wealth even when past the point of ever being able to
| spend it all has increased every single year for decades.
| And this focus overrules everything else.
|
| Syria had plenty of peaceful protests against Assad.
| Russia against Putin. China aginst the CCP. The
| participants generally aren't doing very well. Hong Kong
| had enormous, mass protests. Georgia (the country) has
| had big ones recently.
|
| Occupy Wall Street was big and peaceful. What did that
| accomplish again? Everything they protested against has
| only intensified.
| thefounder wrote:
| It won't happen overnight. It's not like violence beings
| best results that fast. What did Bin Laden accomplish in
| the U.S with his violent protests/terrorism ? Or the
| Islamic state? Not to mention the latest wonder from
| Gaza...it didn't go down that well, did it?
| ben_w wrote:
| > What did Bin Laden accomplish in the U.S with his
| violent protests/terrorism ?
|
| He convinced one of his enemies, the USA, too eliminate
| one of his other enemies, Iraq's Sadam Hussein. (Or the
| US was incompetent enough to do that all by itself, hard
| for me to be sure).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-
| Qaeda_li...
|
| And the Taliban is back in charge of Afghanistan.
|
| > Not to mention the latest wonder from Gaza...it didn't
| go down that well, did it?
|
| No, it didn't. On the other hand, it triggered such a
| response from Israel as to make Israel a pariah in the
| eyes of many, and attempts at prosecution for genocide --
| something I have been told motivated some of the Israeli
| protesters against Netinyahu.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| The parent's comment is fascinating isn't it? One of Bin
| Laden's stated goals was to get US engaged and bled out
| through protracted and costly war, which he actually
| managed to achieve..
|
| I mean this is not ancient history and lot of it at this
| point is public record.
| maeil wrote:
| > Not to mention the latest wonder from Gaza...it didn't
| go down that well, did it?
|
| How had it been going up until that point? Very poorly
| too. The idea that peaceful protests by Palestinians
| would've changed that would be so awfully naive that I've
| never even encountered that argument.
| Draiken wrote:
| It won't happen.
|
| It's too easy to forget that even our beloved weekends
| were only achieved after bloodshed.
|
| The people in power successfully managed to sell us the
| belief that we can achieve change by sitting on our asses
| and yelling really loud. If we spend 5 minutes thinking
| about the current power structures, it's clear that no
| amount of peaceful protesting will ever achieve any
| meaningful change.
|
| The only real power we have is to withhold our labor on
| strikes, and somehow even those need permission (!) to
| run.
| roenxi wrote:
| You seem to be talking about protests. Protests will
| rarely succeed because protesting is something of an
| already-lost-the-battle tactic. If the protesters had any
| effective options they'd be doing that instead of
| protesting. Protesting is for people who don't have the
| numbers/power to force change, don't have a persuasive
| argument to get what they want through formal channels
| and can't think of a better strategy than basically
| shouting complaints into the wind. Sometimes they can
| achieve success regardless, but generally protests don't
| work. There might be protests because people like outdoor
| activity, but they are a sideshow or charitably an
| opportunity to meet people. Effective non-violent tactics
| don't involve on protesters.
|
| For something interesting consider the topical Roe v.
| Wade decision, both in its establishment and removal.
| That involved some significant questions of rights and
| was settled without violence. Protesting, on either side
| of the issue, was largely ineffective compared to small
| groups of organised people working to align the legal
| system over long periods of time.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Although the women's suffrage movement in the United
| States did have some violence in the extremes, proposal,
| advocacy, and ratification of the Nineteenth amendment to
| the US Cobstitution (which granted women the right to
| vote in the US) was not driven by violence in anything
| but the most remote margins.
|
| It passed through moral persuasion and nonviolent
| activism.
|
| Your statement is factually incorrect. There are dozens
| of other examples.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Mind you, feminists had a woman, often several, in every
| household.
|
| My guess is that if race was determined at birth by
| chance (instead of genetics) we would have the same
| racial distribution on a societal level but race issues
| would move faster.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| King was a Christian, he considered communism atheistic.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Even school integration was largely motivated by red lining
| and even now by white flight.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| ^mitigated, not motivated
| rayiner wrote:
| America is a country where the majority even of "white"
| people belong to ethnic groups that never had anything to
| do with African American slavery (German, Italian, Irish,
| etc.) And the non-black non-white people (Asians,
| Hispanics) didn't either. So nobody will do anything that
| costs themselves anything. The best you can hope for is
| color blindness and a very slow homogenization and
| equilibrium.
|
| There was a gambit to achieve change by getting the non-
| black non-whites to identify with black people, but it
| looks like that is going to fail. As you would expect. The
| income mobility of a Guatemalan immigrant today is similar
| to that of Polish or Italian immigrants a century ago, and
| German immigrants 150 year ago. The folks who hit economic
| parity with whites when their grandparents who are still
| alive came here in poverty aren't going to be easily
| persuaded that they need to upend a system that works well
| for them.
|
| Indeed, in that environment, the longer you keep the
| concept of "race" alive, the worse things will be. You're
| never going to use the concept of race to undo past harms;
| so it'll only be used to stir up resentment and disharmony.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > America is a country where the majority even of "white"
| people belong to ethnic groups that never had anything to
| do with African American slavery
|
| You're framing DEI as a punishment for slavery, which
| it's not. White people aren't being _punished_. That 's
| not the correct framing. That's a self-centered
| misinterpretation of what's going on.
|
| DEI programs are meant to correct for generations of
| injustice and to push for equity). But to the dominant
| group, this _feels_ like oppression, in the same way that
| feminism feels like man-hatred to many men bc if you have
| 90% of the pie and there 's a trend toward you only
| having 50% of the pie, you think that's oppression.
|
| So I get why you view this as a punishment of your group
| (which I assume is one of those white groups who "didn't
| own slaves", never mind that they all benefited from, and
| still do, the systemic oppression of non-white people in
| the US).
|
| I'm full German American to the extent I'm still the same
| religion as my ancestors, I still speak German in the
| home with my kids, etc. But it's plain to me how much I
| benefit from being white even though my ancestors didn't
| own slaves and were, in fact, opposed to slavery.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| This idea that white-passing people benefit from BIPOCs
| being discriminated against is not convincing. We are all
| harmed when we are amongst racist assholes refusing to
| coexist with others based on skin color.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > This idea that white-passing people benefit from BIPOCs
| being discriminated against is not convincing
|
| Did you sleepwalk through literally every American
| history class you had growing up?
|
| It boggles the mind that you can write "discrimination
| against people doesn't help the people who aren't
| discriminated against."
|
| That is _the point_ of discrimination: to benefit those
| who aren 't discriminated against. That's why it was
| created, that's why it persists, and that's why people
| who benefit from the discrimination oppose its cessation.
| Look elsewhere in this discussion: the people who
| historically benefit from that oppression are saying _its
| abatement is oppression directed back at themselves_.
| runarberg wrote:
| The beneficiaries of discrimination are usually split
| among class lines. So you have economically poor white
| folks who are indeed harmed by racial discrimination--
| though not nearly as harmed as the discriminated groups
| them selves--and rich white folks who are the only ones
| making money off of it.
|
| The harm is often second factor such as the abundance of
| cheap (or free) labor yields less bargaining power and
| you end up working for less than you otherwise would have
| (but also the psychological harm of living in an unfair
| society). But next to the harm caused to those who are
| indeed discriminated against, the harm is rather minute.
| greentxt wrote:
| His point was that racism harms all. Calm down: benefit
| of the doubt goes a long way on hot topics like this.
| eadmund wrote:
| > White people aren't being _punished_.
|
| When the required score to hire a member of group A is
| 95, and the required score to hire a member of group B is
| 90, then clearly group A is being punished.
|
| When more resources are spent recruiting members of group
| A than group B, then clearly group B is being punished.
|
| When time is never spent praising members of group A just
| for being members of group A, but time _is_ spent
| praising members of group B just for being members of
| group B, then group A is being punished.
| hdctambien wrote:
| What do you do when both A and B score a 95 and there is
| only one job?
|
| That's what DEI solves for. Not "higher a lesser
| candidate," but "when both candidates are equal, use
| diversity of the company when making the final decision"
| logifail wrote:
| I don't wish to throw any fuel onto the fire, but people
| appear to have very different experiences of DEI.
| lazide wrote:
| affirmative action as implemented requires percentage
| targets (based on statistical models of the overall
| population) based on race/gender/etc.
|
| If you don't get enough candidates, or the candidates you
| do get don't happen to exactly align quality wise on
| whatever other criteria you are using, of the right race,
| gender, etc. what do you think actually happens?
|
| NOTE: I have been told multiple times by HR reps and
| recruiters that what happens is not what you assert. I
| have also been told multiple times by HR reps and
| recruiters that I should say what you are asserting if
| anyone asks.
| greentxt wrote:
| The word "justice" being the keyword (now, for some
| people) for DEI indicates it is precisely about
| punishment. At least to those who frame it in terms of
| "justice". I see that word and I know it is a buzzword
| for angry people. In the 90s when I was first persuaded
| as to the necessities of policies that instantiate
| reverse racial discrimination (i.e. affirmative action)
| talk was more about equality and unity, and increasing
| efficiency of the system. Blacks were (still are) not
| utilized to their full potential, so aa offered a common
| good inthe form of a more productive, better functioning
| society. I don't encounter those arguments as much niw as
| arguments about "justice" or the impossible to define
| "equity" (not the same as the phrase "equality of
| outcome" which was a very concrete and useful construct
| for thinking about racism). Historical context is
| everything.
| fsloth wrote:
| "DEI programs are meant to correct for generations of
| injustice and to push for equity)"
|
| I guess that what went wrong with them. Rather than
| generate systems to treat _evereyone_ equally the systems
| attempted very hard to 1. categorize people into
| predefined groups 2. after people are grouped, then treat
| each group individually.
|
| What I mean that rather than have a quota for
| recruitment, recruitment systems should have been
| converted totally blind to age, gender and visible
| phenotype differences. THIS would have leveled the
| playing field.
|
| The DEI systems that were implemented were just policy
| theater, that were ineffective and alienating.
|
| In US corps outside US (I worked for a subsidiary in
| Finland) the DEI stuff they implemented was just insane
| and non-helpfull almost in every aspect. "You can no
| longer use git repositories with the term master.." -
| that was hilarious. It's obvious nobody was serious about
| DEI. Management just hired bunch of consultants who sold
| them checklists so managament could check the box in
| their own checklist. An opportunity to actually help
| minorities was lost sadly.
|
| The only good thing that came from the rigmarole were
| unisex toilets which are just common sense.
| visarga wrote:
| > What I mean that rather than have a quota for
| recruitment, recruitment systems should have been
| converted totally blind to age, gender and visible
| phenotype differences. THIS would have leveled the
| playing field.
|
| Interviewing for orchestras behind a screen, so the
| judges can't see the age/gender/race. That's a good way
| to go about equality.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| << White people aren't being punished. That's not the
| correct framing. That's a self-centered misinterpretation
| of what's going on.
|
| I think you are correct, but it still misses the mark on
| framing. White people are indeed not punished, but they
| are being hindered by DEI mandates. At one point, it gets
| a little annoying, because we see no real benefit from
| it. If anything, demands seemed to escalate.
|
| I will tell you my own personal 'fuck it' moment. Company
| meeting with chief diversity guy. Peak DEI moment. A
| suggestion is made after presentation that maybe 'we'
| should have 'black safe spaces', where only black people
| meet. It took everything in my power to remain silent at
| that time, because if I have ever heard of a racist
| policy, that was it and the company is lucky I did not
| pursue legal path. Someone else did cautiously raised it
| though and that concerned was dismissed with wordplay.
|
| I am just one guy, but DEI breeds heavy, misunderstood
| and very much unseen resentment discussed in small local
| groups only, because you cannot even discuss it openly in
| company channels. If anything, people bond over 'fuck it'
| moment.
|
| << But it's plain to me how much I benefit from being
| white even though my ancestors didn't own slaves and
| were, in fact, opposed to slavery.
|
| _shrug_ Does it mean we should exacerbate those issues
| by instituting restitution? Seems counterproductive.
| Levitz wrote:
| >You're framing DEI as a punishment for slavery, which
| it's not. White people aren't being punished. That's not
| the correct framing. That's a self-centered
| misinterpretation of what's going on.
|
| You can't just dismiss the framing to dismiss the
| injustice it points to. Slavery wasn't meant to be a
| punishment either, doesn't mean we can omit the injustice
| it entails.
|
| Skip explicit racial discrimination and help those who
| are most in need. It's that simple. Yes this group will
| have a specific racial makeup but it makes a world of
| difference to discriminate based on need rather than
| taking a racist approach.
| jiscariot wrote:
| My issue is the metrics constantly parroted to show
| inequality wouldn't (shouldn't) stand muster to an Econ
| 101 student.
|
| - Household income disparities between groups, without
| controlling for household makeup. There are vast
| differences between racial groups in regard to one vs.
| two parent households (+/-30% between white/black). It
| should not be controversial, that two income earners,
| create larger household incomes (or reduce need for
| expensive childcare).
|
| - Income disparities, without controlling for age or time
| in workforce. White populations in US average about 14yrs
| older than non-white. It should not be controversial,
| that people tend to make more money the longer they have
| been in the workforce (via raises, promotions, etc).
|
| - 74 cents on the dollar between sexes. Hopefully this
| one doesn't need an explanation in 2025.
|
| - Achievement gaps. High achievers throw these numbers
| off (vs. US average), hence, the killing of many advanced
| placement programs. The other one I see where I live, is
| more ironic than bad data--people bemoan the growth of
| the achievement gap yet don't see the connection to the
| consistent yearly refuge resettlements of thousands of
| ESL Somalis in the same schools.
|
| Many of these missteps are so blatant, I can't take
| anyone using them seriously and throw the baby out with
| the bathwater.
| xrd wrote:
| Your comment about white people that didn't have anyone
| to do with slavery doesn't seem entirely correct. I'm one
| of those people (great grandparents were German or
| Scottish immigrants). But my mom's house is in a
| neighborhood where black people were explicitly
| prohibited from buying houses (it was on the deed at the
| time). And, loans from the government were red lined.
| Isn't that government collusion that benefitted only me
| and harmed black people? It didn't help Latinos or
| Japanese immigrants in the twenties. I'm not sure if that
| counts as having nothing to do with slavery. That impact
| seems directly correlated to slavery, although the
| dragnet could have impacted recent African immigrants in
| the 1920s.
|
| Definitely agree nobody will vote for anything that costs
| them anything.
|
| But my kids are mixed race partial African heritage and I
| do think it behooves us as Americans to think about
| rectifying that terrible wrong on my wife's side of the
| family. There are dozens of examples of horribly wrong
| headed ways to do that (Brazil had some really creative
| and disastrous ideas), but we should at least acknowledge
| the lingering effects that still impacts people today
| that are descendants of slaves.
|
| Maybe I'm just sensitive because it feels like Florida,
| where I currently live, is trying to wipe away that
| history. Why inhibit discussion about it?
| lazide wrote:
| Have you spent time in other countries?
|
| Racism is everywhere, and often far more dramatic and in
| your face than what you are describing. What you are
| describing is still wrong! And was made illegal for a
| reason. But anyone coming from Asia, Africa, South
| America, and most of Europe is going to just shrug their
| shoulders at what you just described.
|
| I have yet to see even the most progressive Western
| European country that didn't have a huge hate against
| Roma/Travelers, or Indian community that didn't have
| _some_ serious Muslim /Hindu friction, or Chinese vs Non-
| Chinese, etc. And let's not talk about Eastern Europe, or
| African tribal/clan warfare!
|
| The issue here is that the more you talk about all the
| wrongs and specifics, the more you highlight finer
| granularities of identity, the more you base things on
| some small group, the more it splits everyone, the more
| different groups/factions end up getting created, the
| more finger pointing happens, etc.
|
| The more people start thinking of us vs them, their
| identity and how they are different/split from everyone
| else, etc. and past grievances, the more they start
| thinking about retribution, control/exclusion, etc.
|
| For an incredibly evolved version of this, check out a
| (brief summary of
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India].
|
| It ends up in a nearly infinitely Balkanized hellscape
| where the more someone knows about someone else, the more
| likely they will end up enemies than friends. And
| eventually, nearly everyone is an enemy with their
| neighbors, and sometimes even themselves.
|
| If we try to focus on what _should_ happen, and the best
| _common_ identity we can, and punish divergences from
| that instead, at least we can be mostly going in that,
| someone similar direction. And have at least some idea
| what common elements we can be friends on, and what we
| shouldn't talk about lest we become (likely) enemies.
|
| It is far from perfect, but at least it has some cohesive
| identity and direction, rather than infinite levels of
| infighting. Nothing is perfect.
|
| Together, we can be strong. Alone, we are weak and easy
| to pick off.
|
| The issue the US always has had, is that really the only
| common theme between all its different groups, is the
| desire to make money, and be left alone to do what they
| want.
|
| But then when times get tough, inevitably some groups
| want to make everyone else do what they want and/or take
| everyone else's money.
| xrd wrote:
| Yes, I've lived in Brazil for almost a year, and lived in
| Japan for two years, and was more or less fluent in both
| the languages of those countries. I've traveled to almost
| every country in Europe and South America.
|
| But, I fail to see how your lengthy diatribe about modern
| day racism, most of what I agree with, disputes my
| comment about reparations. Those are totally different
| things and that's what I'm pointing out.
| lazide wrote:
| Because how do you propose doing reparations without
| causing the exact problem I'm describing?
|
| After all, there are practical problems of who is
| eligible, how long, and who gets to decide that.
|
| Not only that, but at that point there is now strong
| financial incentives to be in specific groups. At least
| while the money flows.
|
| Not everyone can be eligible, or it loses all meaning.
| Someone has to pay, or it can't be funded.
|
| Someone has to be officially the victim, and officially
| the offender, or such a program can't actually exist.
| Etc.
|
| These aren't modern problems either, and this isn't
| 'modern' racism, whatever that is.
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Alcatraz]
| xrd wrote:
| Ah, I see your point now. I agree there isn't a way to do
| this easily. And I see what you are saying about the
| impact of separating into groups to achieve the goal of
| reparations.
|
| Tying it back together, though, this is why I'm
| disappointed that there is so much backlash about DEI
| programs. I know first hand from my time at a Fortune 50
| company that the lack of black people employed there was
| partially due to the fact that they had never recruited
| at any historical black college ever. When they hired a
| Chief Diversity Officer, we did (I went there). And there
| were good candidates.
|
| I successfully recommended for hire the first black
| employee at the satellite office for that company. That
| (candidates being pushed that don't look like the current
| workforce) just simply doesn't happen when it is all
| white guys. We generally find other people that look like
| we do to recommend and hire, especially when we aren't
| aware of it. I'm sure Asian men suffer from the same
| myopia as I do. It doesn't stop unless I really think
| about my default behaviors.
|
| That feels like the right way to do reparations. That's
| the best way, IMHO, to build generational wealth.
|
| But, it's falling apart because angry white men like me
| are complaining that they are cut out of opportunities. I
| can understand, as a 51 year old white male I've seen how
| hard it is to find work the last few years. It's brutal.
| But I've always gotten most of my jobs through my
| personal network of other mostly white men that worked in
| tech. If you don't have that network because you aren't
| in a group heavily represented in tech, then your chances
| are slim even if it truly is a meritocracy.
| lazide wrote:
| But as you note, you used race to discriminate, and
| someone who otherwise would have been qualified who
| wasn't black (apparently), lost not due to some skill gap
| or the like, but apparently purely due to the color of
| their skin. At least that is how I read it.
|
| At some point (when growth is not infinite), there are a
| limited number of positions after all.
|
| Or did everyone evaluate the candidate without awareness
| of their color, and come to the decision?
|
| Same as someone who was black, but otherwise qualified,
| would have if someone discriminated against them, yes?
| Like the folks who never got considered because they went
| to the wrong college. (Though notably, you apparently did
| get hired despite going to that college correct?)
|
| Why _shouldn't_ those 'angry white dudes' be angry?
| Really?
|
| Anymore than a black dude be angry when the same happens
| to him?
|
| Because they 'already had enough'? When should they stop
| being angry then? When they no longer have enough? Who
| decides that? And why should they let someone decide that
| for them?
|
| I'm not saying either choice is good - I'm saying this is
| why making those choices this way fundamentally causes
| the problems it does.
|
| But I'm also under no illusions that will change anytime
| soon.
|
| The strong do what they will while they are strong, and
| it's a fool that lets someone make them weak enough they
| are no longer strong eh?
|
| And the weak will do what they can to be strong, and it's
| a fool who lets themselves get talked out of that too.
|
| The difference is if 'us' means people with a common
| nation, or a common color, or gender, or sex, or
| religion.
|
| In your personal situation, how long would it take of not
| actually having opportunities before _you're_ willing to
| get angry enough to do something? Or lost potential
| income due to better opportunities you could have had,
| but didn't.
|
| Some people are less patient, and more violent than you
| likely are. And apparently, they just won the elections.
|
| Frankly, they often do.
| hdctambien wrote:
| If you interview 10 people for one job opening, you have
| to pick _one_ of them. If 5 of them pass the technical
| interview you start filtering them on other non-technical
| things. "Would I like to hang out with this person",
| "were they funny", "do they have similar hobbies to me?",
| "did they go to the same school as me?"
|
| Whoever you pick, for whatever reason, didn't _take_ an
| opportunity from the other 4 qualified people.
|
| Heck, my wife would have a pile of resumes to go through
| and she only read them until she found 5 people she
| wanted to call. If you were "the next" person in the pile
| it was just bad luck that you didn't get called. The
| people in the pile before you didn't _take_ your
| opportunity.
|
| Interviewing is hard. People don't have a "technical
| skill" stat that you can sort by and just take the best
| one. People interviewing people is a terrible way to
| decided if someone will be a good fit, but it's the only
| way we have.
|
| Often you end up with a bunch of people that you feel are
| equally qualified and you just have to pick one. If you
| use "dei" to pick rather than "this person was in the
| same fraternity as me" that's just a different side of
| the same coin. The difference is that before DEI
| programs, the people that passed the "post technical"
| part of the interview were the people that were most
| similar to the interviewers (that's human nature) and the
| interviewers were mostly white guys.
|
| Rather than taking away opportunities, DEI takes away the
| ability for white people to "always win ties"
| lazide wrote:
| Those situations you are describing _are_ discrimination.
| At least by the meaning of 'a choice based off criteria'.
| The vast majority of them are legally just fine, but as
| you note produce a specific, rather predictable outcome
| yes?
|
| Some discrimination is perfectly fine (generally when it
| is a legitimate requirement of the job). For instance,
| hiring vivacious young women for a stripper job?
| Perfectly acceptable per the gov't. Same with hiring only
| men of a specific age, and 'build' for male underwear
| models.
|
| Some legally not fine criteria, would be for example if
| your wife threw out any black sounding names. Or any
| women that sounded young enough to be having kids soon.
| Or foreigners.
|
| But many of those legally fine criteria are, practically,
| can be somewhat effective proxies for illegal
| discrimination, yes?
|
| Someone not getting an opportunity because of some
| consistent criteria, especially a criteria they cannot
| change, and especially one that is not related to the
| actual performance of the job, _is_ taking away an
| opportunity. You are quite right though, that it happens
| every day, and is a necessary part of hiring.
|
| Civil rights laws are to help stop large classes of
| people from being from being consistently screwed because
| they are consistently losing opportunities based on some
| criteria that society judges should be protected. It's a
| small list, but includes race, national origin, gender,
| etc.
|
| DEI has come about (or chicken/egg? Resulted in?) a re-
| interpretation of Civil rights and labor law enforcement
| that says for larger companies, the actual composition of
| the employees hired, on coarse criteria (such as
| gender/sex, race, etc), must roughly match the overall
| population, or that is _de facto_ evidence of
| discrimination. I can link to some DOL consent decrees if
| you don't believe me.
|
| In some areas (like Gov't contractors/employment), this
| has been required for decades. There are explicit Gov't
| mandates for Affirmative Action, which requires employers
| who meet certain criteria to _actively discriminate based
| on otherwise legally protected classes like race_ to
| ensure they hire enough of each category. It's after all
| practically impossible to end up with X% of a certain
| race /gender/whatever if you never keep track of, or make
| decisions in hiring, based on it eh?
|
| For larger companies, it's generally been less required,
| and a more lenient 'someone needs to have been explicitly
| using illegal discrimination' standard was used. Until
| relatively recently.
|
| A number of companies have gotten huge fines over the
| years (including Google, among others) because the
| composition of the employees hired and their pay did not
| align with expected population wide statistical norms.
| You've almost certainly heard it as one group being
| 'overrepresented'.
|
| Well, when hiring freezes/stops, or there are layoffs,
| guess what happens to that 'over represented' group
| disproportionately?
|
| Notably, this entire post is because Trump is changing
| the criteria so that it is no longer required that
| companies meet the 'in proportion to the population'
| standard, and rather that someone has to prove they are
| actually discriminating illegally on race.
|
| Which, since you have to actual discriminate on race to
| do affirmative action, seems to defacto make Affirmative
| Action illegal?
|
| Or at least makes de facto (but not explicit)
| discrimination on an otherwise protected class just fine
| again for large companies.
| visarga wrote:
| > for larger companies, the actual composition of the
| employees hired, on coarse criteria (such as gender/sex,
| race, etc), must roughly match the overall population
|
| But there are also personal preferences, and some groups
| have different average preferences than other groups.
| Look at rich countries, women often prefer non-STEM jobs
| if they have the choice, while poor countries can have
| more equality because women will pursue traditionally
| male jobs lacking other good options.
| lazide wrote:
| That argument has historically not been accepted by the
| DOL in the US. We'll see what happens now.
| visarga wrote:
| > Because how do you propose doing reparations without
| causing the exact problem I'm describing?
|
| If you are a white or Asian boy who likes computers, and
| have been playing with code ever since you were little,
| you get rejected at college admission with a higher score
| than a black kid. Why has anything to do with skin color,
| programming doesn't get any easier if you are white. Math
| problems are just as hard no matter how rich are your
| parents. If you achieve some level of understanding, it
| should not be wiped away by skin color, especially to
| redress a wrong that was made generations ago and not
| your fault.
| stratocumulus0 wrote:
| > I have yet to see even the most progressive Western
| European country that didn't have a huge hate against
| Roma/Travelers
|
| You don't even have to go this deep. Each and every
| friend of mine who's German of mixed heritage (Black,
| Asian) has struggled with people who _can 't imagine a
| German not being white_. As in you, a German born in
| Germany, get addressed in English every now and then by
| strangers, because if you're not white, you have to be a
| tourist.
| lazide wrote:
| People pattern match. Gender, skin color, height, hair
| color are intuitively and naturally the easiest things
| people can pattern match on. Not a whole lot of Asians or
| black folks in pictures like these [https://upload.wikime
| dia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/West_and...], just like
| you won't see a whole lot of local folks who are white in
| China or India.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > As in you, a German born in Germany, get addressed in
| English every now and then by strangers, because if
| you're not white,
|
| Not sure why you find that surprising. Being German is
| not written on your face. Since most Germans are white,
| most people will make the correct assumption that if
| someone is not white, there is a stronger likelihood that
| they are not German. The same happens in Japan with mixed
| race kids who get treated like foreigners even though
| they were born and spent their whole life in Japan.
| That's just how brains work.
|
| If you had no prior assumption you could assume that
| nobody is who they seem to be and that would make things
| very complicated for everyday life.
| portaouflop wrote:
| The easy fix is to stop assuming and start talking to
| people in German - it's really easy to do. If they don't
| understand the language you will notice immediately.
|
| A bit of an aside but I find it very condescending by
| fellow Germans to address people immediately in English
| if they don't speak perfect fluent German - give the
| people some chance to learn and practice the language for
| god sakes
| thunky wrote:
| > The easy fix is to stop assuming and start talking to
| people in German
|
| If 9 times out of 10 English is actually the correct
| choice, then it probably makes less sense to do this.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Even if that number would hold up - Why? It's still more
| dignified for all involved. Not every human interaction
| needs to be made as efficient as possible.
| lazide wrote:
| Clearly as evidenced by your irritation, most people
| don't work the way you think they should? At least by
| default. If they're German.
|
| Honestly, being part German, I'm surprised there isn't a
| law about this already! Though I guess there was an
| attempt that ended badly not _that_ long ago...
| portaouflop wrote:
| Yes there is something deeply wrong in German society -
| as evidenced by the recent stellar rise of a popular
| racist and facist party and the more and more common
| casual racism that is just accepted by the majority of
| the population.
|
| I for one am sad that Germany once again seems to head
| toward embracing some death-cult ideology that in the
| past did unimaginable damage to the people it was
| supposed to serve.
|
| It makes me feel that all the progress we made in the
| past 80 years is built on sand and we can slide back
| anytime in a highly fragmented, tribalistic and cruel
| society.
| nec4b wrote:
| >> Yes there is something deeply wrong in German society
| - as evidenced by the recent stellar rise of a popular
| racist and facist party and the more and more common
| casual racism that is just accepted by the majority of
| the population.
|
| I guess you mean the party which led by a women in a
| relationship with another women from Sri Lanka. You
| should probably start looking for other insults, racist
| and fascist are getting kind of boring.
| portaouflop wrote:
| I will never understand why Weidel hates herself so much
| - how can you be lesbian and head of a party that opposes
| same-sex marriage and wants to take away your rights?
|
| The party is internally divided but a strong portion of
| it openly endorses facist "heroes" - for example calling
| the SS "all good people". They try to hide it and purge
| their extremist members but it's not working. Hocke and
| Gauland are very obviously racists as are many other less
| prominent members of the party.
|
| >"Germany for the Germans". >referring to Germans of
| Turkish origin as "fatherless vermin" and "camel
| drivers", who should go back to their "mud huts" and
| "multiple wives".
|
| Yea those are definitely not racist or facist statements
| /s
|
| Edit: even the other far right European parties don't
| want to associate with the afd, I wonder why
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Because probability and logic says it is the best way.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| You know it's the same everywhere? It's hopeless to wish
| for all of humanity to change their common intuitions and
| independently reproduced heuristics.
|
| I'm white and spend a lot of time in Korea. I can get
| around in Korean. Do I take offence when a Korean talks
| to me in English first? No, it wouldn't make sense. If
| they switch to English when they notice that my Korean is
| imperfect? Neither. I'd have unrealistic expectations
| about my fellow humans if I blamed people for easily
| explainable interactions. Better to presume good
| intentions than to take offence at the banality of such
| interactions.
| portaouflop wrote:
| You are correct of course.
|
| I'm not saying you should take offence - I just know that
| it can be corrosive for people in that position. Being
| never seen as part of the culture does something to you,
| you feel apart, forever, even across generations.
|
| I'm saying to give your fellow humans more consideration
| when you interact with them.
|
| It might not affect you much because you didn't build
| your whole life in Korea.
|
| But imagine you are 3rd generation living there, your
| parents have been born in Korea but you still aren't seen
| as part of the country. It builds resentment and
| segregates the citizens which makes life harder for
| everyone.
| rayiner wrote:
| Nobody owes you anything.
| portaouflop wrote:
| And?
| gottorf wrote:
| > I just know that it can be corrosive for people in that
| position
|
| The reverse is also true: it can be corrosive for the
| people on the other side of that equation. Of course the
| 3rd generation "foreign" descendant had no choice on
| where to be born, but you can imagine that for the
| generation of the "natives" that took in the immigrants,
| it might have felt strange to see among their community
| people that looked different, spoke a different language,
| and had different cultural customs. It's hard not to
| think that this was corrosive to the social fabric,
| especially for the people who didn't feel that they had
| agreed to that particular change in the social contract.
|
| > your parents have been born in Korea but you still
| aren't seen as part of the country
|
| Some immigrant groups don't integrate very well, even
| after generations. Naturally, it's a bit of a chicken-
| and-egg problem; do the immigrants not integrate because
| the natives reject them, or do the natives reject them
| because the immigrants don't integrate?
|
| As an immigrant myself, I believe the onus is on the
| immigrant to integrate, and to raise one's children to be
| even further integrated. Again, it sucks for those who
| had no choice but to be born in a country as the
| descendants of immigrants, who nevertheless get judged as
| an immigrant unwilling to integrate; but that's not a
| problem particular to immigration. It always sucks to be
| judged not as an individual but as a member of a group.
|
| We should all strive to judge people by who they are and
| not what group they belong to, which I suppose was your
| overall message; but I just want to point out that
| everything is a two-way street.
| gottorf wrote:
| There's a white Korean member of the National
| Assembly[0], whose existence I find fascinating. I have
| no doubt that he would also get spoken to in English on
| the streets, if the speaker does not know who he is. And
| even more funnily, supposedly his Korean has a thick
| Jeolla accent!
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihn_Yo-han
| lazide wrote:
| Also, born and grew up in Korea to missionaries, only to
| be deported to the US by the Japanese when they took over
| Korea. Then moved back later in life.
|
| Talk about an unusual life!
| boringg wrote:
| It's honestly like an odds calculation in those
| environment. The odds of someone who looks different that
| is local is incredibly low so they default to assuming
| said individual is a tourist.
| portaouflop wrote:
| It might be the case in certain Asian countries but in
| Germany the odds are definitely not incredibly low -
| something around 40% of the population don't look like
| what most people think of when speaking of Germans.
| klooney wrote:
| The point of all the tiny European states is that they're
| blood and soil ethnostates. A lot of people got killed to
| establish that point.
| hjgjhyuhy wrote:
| In some countries yes, others not. Nobody got killed to
| make Nordic countries "ethnostates". It's just that not
| that many people wanted to live so far north.
|
| In fact, in Finland the largest ethnic minority (Swedish)
| on average do much better than ethnic Finns. Sami
| minority got discriminated admittedly, but not violently
| persecuted.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Nobody got killed to make Nordic countries
| "ethnostates"_
|
| Literally the Vikings [1].
|
| > _in Finland the largest ethnic minority (Swedish) on
| average do much better than ethnic Finn_
|
| Yes [2].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involvin
| g_Norwa...
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish%E2%80%93Novgo
| rodian_...
| nordic-ethnos wrote:
| That's gotta be among the most revisionist takes I've
| ever seen. The nordic countries subjected hundreds of
| thousands of individuals from mostly lower class
| backgrounds to mandatory sterilizations over a period of
| decades in order to secure the population distribution
| they have now.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/08/how-did-sweden-
| sterilise...
|
| https://nordics.info/show/artikel/eugenics-in-the-nordic-
| cou...
| dotancohen wrote:
| As a non-European I'd like to read more. What exactly
| should I be googling to get the real history and not the
| clean history that is commonly told?
| esafak wrote:
| Read about the French Revolution and the origin of the
| nation state.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state
| rnabsv wrote:
| So, Germany previously had Prussia, Bavaria and the rest.
| They were separate kingdoms, but all ethnically German.
|
| There is something to be said of for the individual
| cultures being even stronger during those times. Perhaps
| the formation of the German nation state was a counter
| reaction to the Napoleonic wars?
|
| Anyway, this has little to do with immigration from all
| over the world: All these kingdoms already had the same
| language and largely the same culture.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Thank you. I wouldn't exactly call France a tiny state.
| Are there any others that I should specifically be
| looking at? The Europeans pride themselves as being quote
| unquote civilized people, did they not have uniform
| ethnicities within their borders before the founding of
| their states? If not, then what did define those borders?
|
| Have states such as France ethnically cleansed other
| peoples from within their borders? If so, then why isn't
| that mentioned in the well-known histories?
| nshfgav wrote:
| Germany is too small to be a so called melting pot
| immigration country like the U.S. around 1900. It is
| natural to assume that people are white.
|
| As you say addressing non-white people in English does
| not happen very often. Why would it? There are so many
| immigrants that 30% of interactions in department stores
| supermarkets etc. are with non-white people.
|
| When you are stopped by a security guard in a store, he
| is invariably of Arab origin.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| > Germany is too small to be a so called melting pot
| immigration country like the U.S. around 1900.
|
| Why? Are we talking population or space? On population,
| 1900 US population was 75M, current Germany population is
| 85M.
|
| If we are talking space - what does that have to do with
| it? And even in 1900, Americans were far more clustered
| in cities in the Northeast/Cali/etc, so probably not
| terrifically more area than current footprint of Germany.
|
| Currently we are seeing countries in Europe go through a
| moral panic over immigration that is probably not
| terribly different than the US in 1900. I've seen some
| historical stats that something like 80% of US urban
| residents in 1900 were foreign born or 1st generation.
| NYC alone we've had immigrants as ~35-40% of our
| population from 1900 thru the tightening of immigration
| laws in 1920s, after which it dropped to 18% by 1970. The
| percent has rebounded since then and is back around
| 35-40% again.
|
| So nothing that is going on in Europe is terribly
| different or unique, and not being a melting pot is a
| choice that most of Europe has made by being ethnostates.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not a "choice" Europe has made. That's what they
| _are._ Most European countries, as a matter of history,
| are ethnic tribes with flags, similar to Japan or
| Bangladesh or Israel.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Everything is a choice. There are differences in
| immigration, work visa, citizenship, social security, etc
| laws that perpetuate these choices. But these laws are
| downstream of the local culture desiring this.
|
| Japan didn't just end up with 97-99% Japanese population
| by accident.
| fhsTabv wrote:
| Space and wages of course. In Germany you are a bank
| slave for your entire live if you want to buy a house.
| Meanwhile rich people from all over the world buy up
| prime real estate.
|
| Their globalist friends want more immigration to drive
| down wages and increase rents.
|
| This is nothing at all like in the U.S. The U.S. is huge
| and I'm green with envy when I see YouTubers owning whole
| estates in Idaho to make their private aircraft videos.
| Such things are completely impossible in Germany.
|
| Then there is the cultural aspect of course. The U.S. has
| been an immigration country from the start. Europe had
| diverse hand highly advanced cultures in music,
| paintings, literature etc. Frankly, since the
| Americanization following WW2 neither Europe nor the U.S.
| have produced anything comparable.
|
| What you call ethnostate, which is a derogatory term,
| other people call culture.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I use ethnostate more as a statement of fact than as
| derogatory. Often though I do it to needle lefty euros
| who like to tell Americans how much more racist we we are
| than them.
|
| I don't think America has been a melting pot from the
| start. It was Protestant whites and slaves for 100 years
| or more.
|
| Letting in Catholics and Jews was a choice and
| controversial at the time. Then the same for East Asians,
| South Asians, MENAs, and the latest drama is Latinos. I
| probably forgot many other groups. Different choices
| could have been made at each juncture. Continuing on this
| trend was a choice.
|
| Germany continuing to not be a melting pot is a choice
| just the same as deciding to become one.
|
| European wages are a different issue and it is to me more
| a problem of thinking you can tax and regulate your way
| to prosperity. Letting in more or less immigrants isn't
| the primary problem.
|
| Why do Americans and foreigners want to start companies
| in the US so much? Where are the European startups? Are
| any Americans moving overseas to start companies? No new
| firm formation leads to no new job creation leads to
| lagging economic growth.
| rayiner wrote:
| Germany is an ethnostate, so why is that surprising? The
| country's name is literally "land of the people" in the
| language of a group of tribes of people who happened to
| have fair skin. Our languages' names for Germany are
| derived from the names of specific tribes.
|
| It's like "Bangladesh." Literally, "country of the
| Bengalis." If you aren't brown with vaguely southeast
| Asian features then you'll always be considered a
| foreigner. That's not "racism." That's the nature of
| nations that arise from being the homeland of specific
| ethnolinguistic groups.
|
| Ethnocultural groups like germans and Bangladeshis have
| ancient shared history, language, and culture. When you
| say that people should assume that anyone who looks any
| way should be assumed to be German, that erases Germans
| as a distinct ethnocultural group. It's completely
| different than saying the same thing in a country like
| America.
|
| My family has been in Bangladesh since before anyone can
| remember, likely back before the language split from
| vernacular Sanskrit. My parent's generation fought the
| Pakistanis to establish the country as a homeland. You
| cannot, out of a desire to avoid offending a small
| minority, erase that shared history and reduce being
| Bangladeshi (or German or Japanese) to a legal
| designation established with some paperwork.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Humans are tribal. As much as I wish it weren't the case
| often, I don't think just pretending we're all one big
| family will work.
|
| I hope we can build some common identity as "world
| citizens" or whatever- but the trend seems to go towards
| _more_ balkanisation and more division along
| class/wealth/privilege.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The answer is to stop paying lip service to the idea that
| an ethnicity is like a big family - an idea almost nobody
| in the US believes, so this will not be that hard - and
| start saying what we all know to be true: that we're all
| individuals whose behavior and loyalties are determined
| by our character and values, not the circumstances of our
| birth, our skin tones, or which side of a pointless
| conflict our ancestors fled here to escape.
| lazide wrote:
| In most cases, it's not so much that they're a family,
| but rather a group of folks with somewhat aligned
| interests that can fight together for those interests.
|
| The 'black community', 'Irish community', 'catholic
| community'. And those do often work - frankly, it's often
| the only thing that works when that community does have
| some specific interest.
|
| It's for lobbying and other pressure tactics, yes?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Ethnic groups don't actually have collective interests.
| Individuals have specific examples of universal
| interests. Sometimes individuals are lead to believe that
| they have collective interests, but that's usually
| because they're being made to do something against all of
| their individual interests. Let me offer a few examples.
|
| Civil rights is a specific example of a universal
| interest: equality before the law. The rise of the Nazi
| party is an example of people forsaking their own
| interests for a facade of collective interest that
| covered over the personal interest of a few leaders -
| Nazi Germany was extraordinarily corrupt, and of course
| ruined the lives of and killed most of the people who it
| claimed to exist for the interest of.
|
| It is interesting that you bring up "Catholic interests,"
| because the Church is naturally opposed to concepts like
| "Irish interests." The Church doesn't want its members to
| divide themselves along ethnic or other lines because
| that would detract from their Catholicism. It is no
| accident that the Nazis - the most famous example of an
| "ethnic interest group" - had to destroy or subsume every
| other kind of organization to exist.
| lazide wrote:
| I'm not sure that you're saying what you think you're
| saying, if you look at your examples a little more
| closely.
|
| If you were an Irish immigrant in NYC in the 30's, would
| you still say that about an Irish community group?
|
| How about a Latino workers group in 70's Los Angeles?
|
| Or for that matter a 'black community' group in 70's Los
| Angeles too.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Irish New Yorkers in 1933 didn't want Irish rights, Irish
| houses and Irish jobs, they wanted rights, houses and
| jobs. That's what I mean by individual examples of
| universal interests. Nobody went around saying, "I'll
| only work for an Irishman," or "I'll only live in a
| building built by an Irish mason."
|
| LA has always had a lot of gang warfare, which divides
| itself along ethnic lines because that's the underbelly
| of human nature. Gang warfare is a great example of
| everybody doing things that are very bad for themselves
| and others because of a perceived division with little
| basis in fact. If there's enough gang warfare I guess you
| could see racially segregated unions, like in the deep
| south, but that is again against worker's interests just
| like how segregated churches oppose God.
|
| It is very difficult to find even a selfish motive for
| segregation unless you are an actual slaveowner or
| apartheid government official.
| lazide wrote:
| Irish New Yorkers were being heavily discriminated
| against, to the point that worrying about rights, houses,
| and jobs was a particularly serious and somewhat unique
| problem for Irish folks (individuals!) there at that
| time. It's not like someone fresh off the boat is going
| to be able to pass as anything else.
|
| There were also prevalent crime issues and ethnic gangs
| at the time. And many people (Irish in particular) DID go
| around saying those things you assert no one ever said.
|
| For people who 'looked Irish' it was absolutely in their
| interest to align with these groups to some extent, or
| they'd be discriminated against _and_ not have useful
| power to fight against it, _and_ not have a group of
| people aligned with them that would provide housing,
| jobs, etc. to them.
|
| In fact, near as I can tell, the only reason the Irish
| stopped being discriminated against so heavily is because
| of the political machines and gangs that punished groups
| for discriminating against them this way.
|
| Same with the Catholics, actually.
|
| So what are you actually talking about?
| whatshisface wrote:
| I can see that we have different interpretations of what
| acts were central to the progress of civil rights, and
| which were ancillary or even effects.
|
| I don't think, for example, the "mafia" was a major
| contributor to equal rights for Italian immigrants. One
| obvious piece of evidence is that today, the mafia has
| been weakened thanks to the efforts of the police, but
| Italians haven't become persecuted as a result.
|
| Membership in the Italian Mafia has turned out to be bad
| on net for the good of the people the families claim to
| represent. I think some people can get rich doing it but
| it is not a beneficial or admirable lifestyle.
|
| If you want another example, where were all the Jewish
| gangs? I'm not aware of a single one. Some famous
| gangsters were Jewish (at least if you count the movies,
| I don't know about real life), and I don't think the
| cause of equal rights has suffered as a result. You have
| to read this with a smile even though the topic is very
| serious because the ideas involved would be at home on
| Saturday Night Live.
|
| One final example is what could be the most hated
| organizations in America: the white nationalist gangs
| that only exist in prison. They are all in jail, and
| equal rights for people of European descent hasn't
| suffered at all. I'm surprised I ever participated in a
| conversation where I had a reason to write this, but
| white nationalists have no positive goals, not even for
| anybody.
|
| The advancement of the universal recognition of equal
| rights for all is a much better explanation because
| unlike the rise of gangs, it hasn't been reversed.
| lazide wrote:
| That is a rather weird shifting of the goal posts, and
| completely ignores that there is such a thing as
| collective interests _if a collective is being
| specifically targeted, or has special interests_ correct?
|
| Which is what you seemed to be rejecting?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Yes, collectives don't have special interests.
| Individuals have specific instances of universal
| interests, like security or freedom. "Black people"
| doesn't have a separate existence from a black person. By
| guarding the principle of equality before the law, you
| are not getting involved in anybody's business but yours.
|
| It isn't right to view something like equality before the
| law as a matter of somebody else's self-interest, or to
| justify a ruthless pursuit of self-interest by recasting
| it as service of an imagined collective interest.
| lazide wrote:
| I honestly don't understand the point you are trying to
| make. Does it have a practical point?
|
| If a bunch of, say Catholics, get together to make a
| community group and lobby for something they want - how
| is that not that groups 'special interests' in every
| practical way?
| portaouflop wrote:
| There were a ton of Jewish gangs in New York:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-
| American_organized_cr...
|
| Also your example of white nazi gangs in prison: they
| exist for the same reason- people need to band together
| to survive
| whatshisface wrote:
| Well, at least I admitted I didn't know. :-)
|
| As to your second point, not all Nash equilibria are
| beneficial. Gang formation is a lot like a Keynesian
| beauty contest in that appealing to the basest parts of
| our nature is the safest bet, and I think we can agree
| that this has nothing to do with anything good.
|
| People do not need to "band together to survive" in that
| sense. Those gangs were mainly shaking down businesses in
| their own neighborhoods anyway, and everybody is a lot
| better off now that they're history.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Some minor edits:
|
| > Humans are tribal. [...], I don't think just pretending
| we're all one [tribe] will work. [...] I hope we can
| build [a] common [tribe].
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Indeed humans are unfortunately tribal creatures.
|
| If you want to see some European racists, go to a
| soccer/football match between national teams. Or ask a
| Northern European what they REALLY think about the south.
| Or even a Northern Italian about Southern Italians. Or
| ask almost any of them about Eastern Europe or especially
| Roma.
|
| In many cases immigrants bring their own racism to the US
| that white Americans are completely unaware of. One of
| the only direct "racism in the workplace" complaints I've
| been party to in the workplace was Indian on Indian.
| Former team lead was fired and replacement was an Indian
| guy, from one particular caste/region I don't recall.
| Anyway he immediately tried to due-diligence the
| caste/region of the only Indian on the team. The rest of
| us had no idea what was going on until our Indian
| colleague rapidly found another job and accused him on
| the way out the door.
|
| I've even seen some crazy resentment in the workplace
| between patriotic CCP PRC enjoyers vs Taiwanese coworkers
| "you aren't Taiwanese, it's not a real country".
|
| It's not to excuse any past or present faults in the US,
| but only to raise the relative performance to other
| countries&group / how achievable the utopian Star Trek
| vision is. Our technology and living conditions have
| evolved rapidly, but HumanOS remains the same. We move
| ever forward, but its slow.
| visarga wrote:
| > The issue here is that the more you talk about all the
| wrongs and specifics, the more you highlight finer
| granularities of identity, the more you base things on
| some small group, the more it splits everyone, the more
| different groups/factions end up getting created, the
| more finger pointing happens, etc.
|
| One issue that often escapes our attention when we focus
| on group identities and historical grievances is just how
| much we collaborate across groups. When a white woman
| (Katalin Kariko, Hungarian) worked on mRNA, the end
| results of that research were used by all groups and
| social identities. We collaborate across much more than
| we like to acknowledge.
| rayiner wrote:
| Say you inherit your mom's house which is worth more as a
| result of historical redlining, and your wife inherit's
| her mom's house and it's worth less. So there is some
| persistent economic disparity as a result of past
| actions. But both houses probably are worth more than my
| wife's grandmother's house, which is a modular house in
| rural Oregon. And _my dad's_ family house is a tin roof
| building in a third world village that didn't have
| electricity last time I was there in the late 1980s.
|
| What's the rationale for distinguishing between these
| house valuations by attaching moral metadata to them?
| Everyone's economic condition is path dependent. What's
| the point of distinguishing between similar economic
| conditions based on that path?
|
| The typical reason people focus on these economic effects
| is that Americans broadly agree that people don't bear
| direct moral culpability for their family's conduct or
| their ancestor's conduct. So the focus shifts to
| persistent economic effects. But that just attaches that
| generational moral culpability to economic valuations. My
| wife's inheritance isn't worth anything because her
| grandmother was a waitress in rural Oregon. Why is that
| different than if your wife's inheritance isn't worth
| anything because her grandmother couldn't get a bank
| loan? The economic conditions are identical, and the
| people with moral culpability are dead.
|
| The important context is that there's more people
| situated like my wife than your wife. Although _e.g._ 62%
| of black people made under $40,000 in 2016, and only 40%
| of white people, there's still _four times_ as many white
| people under that threshold than black people. What's the
| logic of singling out a minority of people who are
| similarly situated economically and treating their
| economic circumstances specially because of what happened
| to their ancestors?
| foxglacier wrote:
| There's a clear reason for these ideas being popular but
| it's something you have to work out yourself because
| everyone who writes about it is too deeply politically
| motivated to address it objectively.
| rayiner wrote:
| As to teaching history, the question is how you do it.
| Growing up in Virginia, I learned about slavery as a
| cautionary tale: we treated people in the past
| differently, and that was bad, and we strive to treat
| everyone the same now. That's good history.
|
| The way it's often taught today is different. It's
| teaching about the history as a way to justify or support
| calls for differential or remedial treatment in the
| present. And that has the opposite effect--it reinforces
| that we're different, rather than being the same.
|
| This is where Americans should wake up and learn some
| lessons from the rest of the world. Encouraging people to
| develop ethnocultural identity is something that has
| never worked anywhere in the history of the world. The
| idea that we'll teach kids to see each other as
| different, but then assume those differences are all
| "good, actually" is a fantasy. The only way multi-ethnic
| societies have ever worked is to suppress identity.
|
| For example, "Han Chinese" would probably be several
| different ethnic groups if people were being honest.
| Likewise, "white people" are also several different
| ethnic groups--you can see the difference between French
| and German people in their DNA. They're no more the same
| than are Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. What has suppressed
| ethnic strife in America between "white people" is the
| homogenization of the population and subordination of
| ethnic identities to a constructed, synthetic identity.
|
| Funny anecdote: I live in a blue state, so they're trying
| to teach my daughter about "BIPOC." She's the only
| Bangladeshi in the class, so her teacher gave her a book
| about a Pakistani girl, thinking she'd be able to relate.
| And I'm like "you're not Pakistani. Pakistanis tried to
| genocide your poppy and grandma in 1971."
| xrd wrote:
| Darn it, rayiner. I should know better than to debate
| you. I always learn a lot.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| You can see the difference between one immediate family
| and another in the DNA. DNA differences range from
| distinctions between individuals to distinctions between
| species. How do you decide where it makes sense to draw a
| middle line and say "ethnic group"?
|
| One thing that you definitely can't trace in the DNA is
| "that group of people tried to genocide my grandparents",
| but that seems like an important "ethnic group"
| distinction to you.
|
| This is not to dispute your main point which I take to be
| that you stop fighting over "ethnic" distinctions by
| giving people a new unifying identity, but I still find
| myself thinking that something is lost in the process,
| even if it is a proven approach.
| chii wrote:
| > FBs DEI program increased black and brown employees from
| 8% to 12%. Seems abysmal.
|
| and yet, why isn't this same standard applied to, for
| example, NBA players[0]?
|
| DEI isn't about equity, it's about affirmative action. And
| i am fundamentally against affirmative action.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > why isn't this same standard applied to, for example,
| NBA players[0]?
|
| There's no way this isn't just disingenuousness on your
| part. Or do you really think there has been a historical,
| society-wide attempt to deprive white people of the right
| to play basketball?
| chii wrote:
| > a historical, society-wide attempt to deprive white
| people of the right to play basketball?
|
| no one is depriving anyone's rights to apply and tryout,
| but there's certainly a lack of affirmative action in
| these teams. And no one bats an eye about it - it's only
| natural apparently.
|
| So i am asking why is this affirmative action must exist
| for companies hiring, but not for the NBA?
| gottorf wrote:
| > do you really think there has been a historical,
| society-wide attempt to deprive white people of the right
| to play basketball?
|
| You can remove white people from the equation entirely,
| if it makes it easier. Asians comprise 6% of the US
| population and only 0.2% of the NBA, and it's much the
| same story in the NFL. Should then therefore be a
| concerted push to increase the number of Asian players in
| those leagues?
| deanishe wrote:
| > According to reporting at the guardian [1], FBs DEI
| program increased black and brown employees from 8% to 12%.
| Seems abysmal.
|
| Abysmal based on what? What % of CS graduates are
| brown/black to begin with?
| Over2Chars wrote:
| According to this, the groups marked black and hispanic,
| bachelor's degrees are 27%, but it doesn't say what
| subject.
|
| So, assuming all of them aren't CS, under 27%...?
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=72
| 4dregress wrote:
| I'd add to that, the developed west still has a problem
| with non white people and pretty much all women.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > FBs DEI program increased black and brown employees from
| 8% to 12%. Seems abysmal.
|
| That's a 50% increase.
| lazide wrote:
| The biggest issue for changing percentages like that, is
| that fundamentally the actual mindset/work required to do
| software engineering effectively kinda sucks.
|
| And often conflicts heavily with the type of life most
| groups/people want to live, and the type of work most
| people want to do.
|
| Especially historically under represented groups.
|
| It doesn't mean people in any of those groups can't or
| won't be able to do it well.
|
| But it does mean, statistically, is there won't be a lot of
| them (from a sheer numbers perspective), and if you want a
| lot of them you'll need to actively fight significant
| cultural and personal tendencies for a long period of time.
|
| Especially since experienced people take decades to train,
| and are the result of massive amounts of filtering.
| Probably not 1 in 200 or fewer new hires will ever end up
| as an experienced Staff Eng, 1 in 500 as a Senior staff
| Eng, etc.
|
| If you're a large company, that means you have a huge
| pipeline problem, if for instance, you need to hit some
| target number of people with some coarse criteria of
| color/race/gender/sex, whatever.
|
| Because there probably just literally aren't that many that
| meet any other criteria you would use. Either because they
| got filtered out due to some discrimination thing too early
| on, so never had time to grow to the level you need, or
| just went 'meh' and chose some other different path.
|
| But for many years now, the DOL in the US has been
| requiring large companies to hit mandatory percentages
| meeting those coarse criteria. For some criteria, _decades_
| , but for most less than an decade. And have been enforcing
| it.
|
| So 1) you can only move the needle so far, before every
| potentially plausible recruit could be hired, if you try to
| do it right now, and 2) in many cases, the issue is the
| groups involved just flat out don't want to do/be that
| thing enough, for a ton of reasons.
|
| One big issue in California in the Latino and Black
| communities for instance, is investing in schooling is seen
| as a serious 'nerd'/uncool thing, same with professional
| employment. So both those communities have huge issues with
| grades and education. There are also historic issues with
| 'the man' smacking down members of those groups if they
| try.
|
| East Asians (and US Indians) see education as a competitive
| necessity, and professional employment as a measure of
| success - the classic 'Asian Parents' trope is very real.
| They have had issues with 'the man', but have managed to
| mostly sidestep them, and are very highly represented in
| education and professional employment. To the point they
| have been actively penalized in many Affirmative Action
| programs.
|
| If it takes one woman 9 months to make a baby, you can't
| get 10 babies with 10 women in 1 month. Even more so when 9
| of them are on birth control.
| torginus wrote:
| >FBs DEI program increased black and brown employees from
| 8% to 12%
|
| That sounds proportional?
|
| I don't have access to these stats but considering the US
| black population is 13.7%, and certain academically
| accomplished groups, such as Asians are overrepresented,
| having a mostly non-immigrant population be 90% as
| represented as they are in society, is fine I think?
| jsnell wrote:
| > the first time having two black senators is now
|
| This seemed implausible, so I checked. It does not appear
| to be true. It's been continuously true since 2013, and you
| currently have five.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-
| American_Unite...
| thewanderer1983 wrote:
| >so there go the marketing programs that were designed for
| the old power structure.
|
| AKA. Cheerleading for the power structures.
| diogocp wrote:
| > 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.
| goatlover wrote:
| Shouting people down and canceling them is never a way to
| persuade people your cause is just.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| >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.
|
| This is just demonstrably untrue. For nearly a century the
| Soviet Union succeeded by doing exactly that. They had
| international support from the progressive types too.
| davidgay wrote:
| You're moving the goal posts to try and tar your
| opponents with the "communist" brush. The Soviet
| definition of "silencing dissent" was far more extreme
| and violent (prison, death) than what the grandparent's
| comment is referring to.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Ask anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union about that
| one. The vast majority of people could see through the
| propaganda - even supposed party loyalists - but they
| understood the consequences of failing to toe the line.
| There wasn't a sudden moment of collective enlightenment
| that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, just a
| gradual breaking of a taboo. Imposition of an ideology
| through coercion is remarkably durable, right until it
| isn't.
| wombatpm wrote:
| And if you were in a large corporate environment, you
| could see through the bullshit as well. It is just a CLM
| (career limiting move) to call it out, so everyone gives
| it lip service.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > ...as progressives are wont to do these days.
|
| Progressives I know are pretty tolerant. It's the
| conservatives that seem obsessed with free-speech-for-me-
| and-not-for-thee. Xitter is the loudest example.
| lolinder wrote:
| Both the progressives I know and the conservatives I know
| are pretty tolerant of dissenting speech in that they
| disagree with it but don't advocate for it to be
| silenced.
|
| But at the same time, both the progressives and the
| conservatives who are active on political social media
| (take your pick of platform) are very likely to actively
| attempt to silence the opposition and punish them for
| speaking.
|
| It's less a political divide and more that _most_ people
| are still tolerant of dissenting speech, so the people
| you know in person will tend to be tolerant. There 's a
| loud minority that's vocal on the internet on both sides
| that advocates for silencing others.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If it's mostly only online then why did left leaning
| papers self censor, on the orders of their rich owners?
|
| Which side is often going to court (and losing) to
| dispute facts (like election integrity or sexual assault
| allegations)?
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| The sense I get is that those on the far right are worse
| than those on the far left, but those on the moderate
| left are much worse than those on the moderate right, to
| the point of being nearly insufferable.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Donald Trump was re-elected. He has said that we should
| deport pro-palestinian protestors on college campuses and
| has sued multiple news outlets, both on tv and in paper,
| for their coverage during the election season. It's really
| hard to find any political figure who is more aggressively
| targeting speech he doesn't like than Trump.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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.
| skellington wrote:
| That's almost certainly a lie...but weird things happen.
|
| I keep hearing about Republican book bans, but I've only
| heard they don't want certain books to be available to
| children in schools, not that they should be banned in
| general. Compare this with liberals who got some Dr.
| Seuss and other books cancelled and removed from Amazon
| etc.
|
| It's seems like both sides attempt to decrease
| accessibility to literature that they find objectional,
| but neither has achieved an actual ban.
| hobs wrote:
| >In February 2021 some religious communities in the
| United States have started holding book burning
| ceremonies to garner attention and publicly denounce
| heretical beliefs. In Tennessee pastor Greg Locke has
| held sermons over the incineration of books like Harry
| Potter and Twilight.[86] This trend of calling for the
| burning of books one's ideology conflicts with has
| continued into the political sphere. Two members of a
| Virginia school board Rabih Abuismail, and Kirk Twigg,
| have condoned the burning of recently banned books to
| keep their ideas out of the minds of the public.[87][88]
| In September 2023, Missouri State Senator and
| gubernatorial candidate Bill Eigel showed off a
| flamethrower at a campaign event and vowed to burn "woke
| pornographic books [...] on the front lawn of the
| governor's mansion" if elected.[89]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning
|
| I guess if you think this is fine then that's what you
| think.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| If DEI was only marketing, why has the number and proportion
| of women in tech been increasing over that time? I'm not
| trying to challenge you, I'm just curious if you have any
| insight.
|
| ETA: and do you think that number will increase, stagnate, or
| decrease with DEI gone, and why?
| lolinder wrote:
| It can be marketing _and_ somewhat effective. I 'm not
| trying to say that it didn't accomplish anything (though
| others are), I'm suggesting that it wasn't motivated by a
| sincere desire to accomplish something real for equity. And
| since the motivation was external pressure, a change in
| external pressure immediately triggers a pivot.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| Oh ok, that makes sense. I can agree with that. Given
| that, I worry the number of women will stagnate or
| decrease without it, which, imho, would be a detriment to
| the industry.
| geoelectric wrote:
| There's no reason to believe it's primarily due to the DEI
| programs until it gets worse again with them gone. That's a
| basic ABA flow for testing causation.
|
| Things improve on their own over time too.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| This is true. I know the change wasn't just DEI, but I
| thought it might have been the biggest push. And yeah,
| after it's gone we will see how much it helped (or not),
| or other influences will muddy the data and we'll never
| really know (unless it's a really big trend). _shrug_
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Honestly I think a lot more of it has to do with the
| perceived status of engineers in society - particularly
| teenage girls are hyper aware of social status.
|
| 15 years ago in any movie a software engineer was
| considered the biggest loser ever, ridiculed, and
| unattractive. I think if I had to choose any single thing
| that increased female participation in engineering the
| most, it was the Iron Man movies, which showed a vision
| of high social status in an engineer and started to break
| the stereotypes.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I wanted a wider view of the trend, and it looks to me like
| after the covid dip the US is still not back at the 2000s
| level of participation.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300026
|
| In tech it might be a different story, but all I've seen
| where the stats decrease until 2020, and haven't seen much
| data covering the recent years. Was there any significant
| increase above what the other fields have seen ?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I remember watching some event around CHAD time, where white
| social justice warriors on stage where making lots of social
| justice outrage statements, on behalf of Native Americans, in
| front on this native America elder. Only to have him take the
| microphone after them, and he was having none of it, he went
| up to the mic and completely denigrated them. Then it dawned
| on me, that these white people where literally ruining his
| cause by trying to take it over. And there's long history of
| white people doing this, where they subvert and neuter a
| movement and insert themselves as leaders, but only temper
| the cause. The end result is a kind of moderation, where no
| effective change happens because of it. I guess I read a
| similar sentiment once, where Anarchists where claiming that
| it was them that changed course of human history, repeatedly,
| by throwing the wrench in the wheels of society, to cause the
| change. From that point of view, it would get annoying if
| there was someone taking the wrench out before the fall.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| This is true, and unfortunately you can't say this to any
| colleagues at any of these companies without jeopardizing
| your future. Even still as the DEI programs are dying, the
| DEI social norms are still strong in most corporations
| zmgsabst wrote:
| There hasn't been a decade in the past 130 years of their
| existence that Progressives haven't advocated for systemic
| racism.
|
| We have dozens of programs that were later legislated against
| or later ruled illegal by courts. There was no time
| Progressives were against racism. Notable black leaders like
| Malcolm X correctly pointed out that white Progressives never
| supported black people -- but were appropriating their voices
| as a cudgel against other white people, eg in an internal
| power struggle of the Democratic Party where the northern
| Progressive faction drove out the Dixiecrats.
|
| 2025 is the year that Progressives need to accept their
| perennial racism is no longer acceptable, even if they
| appropriate the language of civil rights to justify their
| continued bigotry.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| This is pretty spot-on. Whether they're aware of it or not,
| most white liberals are motivated not by a desire to lift
| nonwhites up but rather by a desire to push "white trash"
| down.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| I think your analysis is missing some nuance.
|
| There are countless instances throughout history of lasting
| change being sparked by a single moment. Sure, that moment is
| frequently the culmination of some period of struggle, but
| you have to remember that the issues that came to a head and
| sparked those DEI initiatives a few years ago were exactly
| that--the product of literally centuries of struggle. Or,
| perhaps more accurately, a recent phase of that struggle.
|
| So, I believe your emphasis is on the wrong side of the
| equation here. That is, it's not that there is an inherent
| deficiency in a trending moment or ascendant party giving
| rise to change. It's the explicit _pushback_ against DEI that
| is responsible for its unwinding. And, this effort was not
| successful because the party that sponsored the pushback was
| ascendant. Instead, part of the party 's ascension was due to
| it making an issue of the pushback. More specifically, the
| blowback was part of a divisive theme, along with illegal
| immigration and other issues.
|
| Progress is not a one-way street and gains are not de facto
| insulated against erosion. Progress (and its security) is a
| product of the mores and culture of a time, and these can be
| influenced and manipulated. So, there is really not such a
| thing as "lasting change", and that's what we saw here. In
| some ways, the blowback has taken us not just back to our
| pre-DEI state, but to a pre-1960s mental footing.
| lolinder wrote:
| The methods chosen to push this and other recent changes
| _assumed_ that those advocating change would stay in power,
| if not in government at least in the culture. They
| _assumed_ that they could keep up the pressure to act in a
| particular way in spite of the fact that those so pressured
| didn 't really believe in any of it. That was a critical
| and fatal flaw. You can't plan change on the assumption
| that you'll be able to apply pressure indefinitely.
|
| You're right that there are tipping points, but they don't
| come at will, they come when the culture is ready for them.
| Push too soon, and as you note, you may actually undo
| progress that had already been truly won.
|
| Culture behaves like a non-Newtonian fluid: manipulate it
| gently and it flows smoothly. Apply too much stress too
| fast, and it turns into a solid and resists you. Trump did
| not invent that resistance, he simply untapped it and rode
| it to power. The progressive movement created the
| resistance by applying too much pressure to a culture that
| wasn't ready.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| There's too much history arguing against what you're
| suggesting here.
|
| And, your claim argues against itself. The problem is
| that minds can be changed in either direction, and the
| people who "didn't believe in any of it" had been
| precondtioned to reach that position of non-support
| before DEI was even a thing.
|
| Likewise, Trump was able to manipulate people based on
| age-old tactics or, as you put it, he "untapped" existing
| resistance. So how, exactly, do progressives convince
| these same people?
|
| You're suggesting they do so by not moving too fast? That
| they wait for the "culture to be ready for change"?
|
| If we waited for the culture to be ready, then schools in
| the South would still be segregated. Instead, they were
| integrated under the protection of men holding rifles.
|
| Of course the status quo doesn't change without pressure.
| That's why it's the status quo. There is no amount of
| progressive pace calibration that would have addressed
| this. If there was, then 400 years should have been
| enough time.
|
| Again, the problem is not with progressive pacing. The
| problem is on the other side.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Who says ' 400 years should have been enough time'?
|
| Why not 4000 years or 40000 years?
|
| Or never? There are simply no preordained guarantees.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I'm trying to put in flat terms, but fundamentally power
| matters. This is the base of democracy: give people the power
| to change things, there needs to be a fear that these people
| will exercise their power.
|
| Changing hearts and minds is beautiful, but one reason is
| that it usually doesn't happen, I think very few people will
| ever just stop being racists for instance. They might stop
| saying racists things, and might care more to not go against
| social rules and laws, but changing their deep believes will
| not happen, or it will take decades, if not a lifetime.
|
| And also people are way more influenced by their everyday
| environments than nice speeches. Having a nation that values
| diversity helps more to also embrace these ideals, than
| living in a racist dictatorship and fighting at every corner
| to keep your minority voices in your heart.
|
| > It's a slow, painful process
|
| The trap is to see it as a one way ratchet, when in reality
| it comes and go, and the groups with the most power can
| revert decades of progress in a snap of finger. Women lost
| abortion rights over a few weeks (the leading to that was
| also long and slow, but when it finally happens it doesn't
| take much). Foreign people lost the right to return to their
| US home within days when the ban happened last time.
|
| Power matters.
| lazide wrote:
| The issue here is that power not exercised is power lost,
| and power fundamentally comes down to either perceived or
| actual consequences.
|
| All people have some degree of racist tendencies -
| regardless of gender, sex, color, etc. And criminal
| tendencies. And other tendencies.
|
| And what actual consequences will be applied that impact
| one group or another tend to go in cycles/pendulum back and
| forth (and hence impact what percent of the population is
| going to do x, and how many will see real consequences for
| those actions).
|
| That is because when one group overdoes it (or is perceived
| to), enough people get tired of that group/outraged, and
| then things shift. And these patterns tend to be on coarse
| criteria like gender/sex/color/race/language, etc. because
| the most brazen users of any sort of shitty
| force/violence/shaming/whatever are exactly the type of
| people who are the shittiest. And every group of people
| have a percent that is shitty.
|
| For instance, for many years now shame has been a major
| consequence, along with legal action.
|
| So eventually, we end up with a group/leader essentially
| immune to shame and legal action, who is now going to use
| do all sorts of shameless and illegal things. Really, a
| large group of people like that. And who don't mind
| violence (or the threat of it) as a potential consequence.
|
| Eventually, being a shameless crook will fall out of
| fashion (or will have finally hurt/pissed off enough
| people), and another counter group will rise to take it's
| place.
|
| Often, when it gets particularly ugly/strong in one
| direction or another, there is also a corresponding
| backlash against the particularly strong users of the prior
| 'fashion' of power.
|
| Sometimes beheadings, or ostracizing, or legal harassment,
| or whatever.
|
| Weinstein getting what he got (as deserved as it was), was
| one swing. We'll see who gets this next counter reaction.
|
| Why do you think the dems and tech companies are going out
| of their way to be as friendly to the incoming admin as
| they are? They know the score, and are trying to avoid
| getting whacked.
|
| Or, to quote an old western - 'Deserve has nothing to do
| with it'.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Yes.
|
| This swinging pendulum is really the tough part, and the
| nazi trend coming back in force after a black president
| was there for 8 years is the most symbolic image of it.
|
| In the current situation though, the money doesn't seem
| to be swinging around, so I wonder how far it could even
| swing back. That's part of what I mean by "power", the
| current changes we're witnessing are huge shifts of money
| in one specific camp, and I don't imagine heads rolling
| either, so outside of a completely unforseen even wildly
| resetting the scene, it looks kinda toast to me.
| lazide wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by money not swinging around?
|
| The largest tech companies in the world (which directly
| or indirectly control all modern media, and are > $4trln
| in market cap), just publicly 'bent the knee' to someone
| they quite publicly fought for almost a decade now - and
| which of all market segments, they were the most
| consistently against.
|
| In many cases for personal identity reasons (Tim Cook
| being gay, for instance), but also because these
| companies are based in areas which are typically Liberal
| - west coast urban areas.
|
| Most other market segment companies were never strongly
| Liberal in the same way.
|
| And if you think Tech DEI programs may have been
| performative, I can assure you that initiatives in
| Construction, Heavy Industry, Finance, Transportation,
| etc. had far less actual backing. They just rarely got
| the press, because Tech == $$$ and visibility, and also
| Tech == historically incredibly naive when it comes to
| politics and power.
|
| In my experience, at least FAANG Tech DEI programs
| actually weren't performative - they really did work
| very, very hard to meet their goals, which actively made
| huge problems later in the cycle because there just
| weren't enough candidates.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Changing hearts and minds is beautiful, but one reason is
| that it usually doesn't happen, I think very few people
| will ever just stop being racists for instance. They might
| stop saying racists things, and might care more to not go
| against social rules and laws, but changing their deep
| believes will not happen, or it will take decades, if not a
| lifetime.
|
| Yes. Probably multiple lifetimes. This is why I say that
| real change takes generations.
|
| You cannot have a democracy and rapid social change to your
| preferred specs. You can either strip the people who hold
| reprehensible beliefs of the vote, or you can work
| diligently over generations to change the culture. But as
| long as you have a democracy, you will never be able to
| create change that sticks by simply wielding the power
| temporarily granted to you.
|
| Wield that power too forcefully, and you'll get pushback,
| and unsavory politicians will ride that pushback to power.
| When that happens, as you observe, a lot of what was
| previously accomplished is undone.
|
| I believe that democracy is the greatest good progressivism
| has ever accomplished. I'm not willing to sacrifice
| democracy in order to speed up the rate of change, even if
| it means that people suffer in the short term. And because
| I believe in democracy, I cannot support the heavy-handed
| use of power to try to force people to change. Not for
| their sakes, but because it simply doesn't work. As long as
| those people have the vote, they will resent you for your
| use of power and be able to strip it from you. That's the
| lesson of 2024.
|
| That's not to say we can't do _anything_ while in power,
| but it must be done with an eye towards the next century,
| not just the next election cycle.
|
| > The trap is to see it as a one way ratchet, when in
| reality it comes and go, and the groups with the most power
| can revert decades of progress in a snap of finger.
|
| The trap is accidentally triggering a reactionary movement
| by moving too hard too fast. Reactionaries aren't called
| that by accident--they react. It is within the power of
| progressives to avoid triggering them by staying within
| (whilst steadily changing) the national Overton window.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| > ...was driven by what was trending at the time, designed to
| win political points with the groups that were politically
| ascendant.
|
| Of course it was, and so is this latest effort from Meta. I'm
| sure if there was some anti-Brazilian group in power in
| Washington or something, you'd see Meta shutting down their
| offices in Rio.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| DEI was a ZIRP phenomenon, now you get unrestricted H1B
| (slave labor). Either way the average American tech worker is
| screwed.
| preciousoo wrote:
| H1 Visa has existed since 1952. The 65,000 per year cap
| (H1B) has existed since 1990. The 20,000 quota for
| Masters/PhD holders has existed since 2004.
|
| What in the world are you talking about?
| torginus wrote:
| I've always found these loud DEI programs incredibly uncanny
| - every career website loudly how important diversity and
| inclusiveness is for them, but in flowery language, as
| implying they'd actually discriminate against non-diverse
| hires would be illegal in most places. Which begs the
| question of the point of these programs, considering of why
| they were needed this outwards messaging against
| discrimination, considering it was illegal in the first
| place.
|
| I've witnessed the DEI transformation from the inside - which
| amounted to a chief diversity officer being hired, a lot of
| incredibly sanctimonious online trainings got scheduled for
| us, and rainbow flags started popping up in the weirdest
| places.
|
| A few coworkers I had, who checked a lot of the boxes got
| dragged into interviews and company events (which some found
| somewhat uncomfortable). Very little changed in practice, and
| if you didn't care to read the company newsletter (who does
| that anyway), then you didn't experience much of it.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Largely agreed DEI was a bit of a workplace recruiting
| marketing/signaling exercise than something that changed
| demographics at work.
|
| I've worked in Wall Street tech for 20 years, and while the
| demographics of my coworkers have changed, it largely had
| nothing to do with DEI or other recruitment efforts.
|
| In the late 90s/early 00s it was FSU Russians&Ukrainians
| living in South Brooklyn & US born and/or raised Cantonese
| speaking Chinese from downtown. By late 00s, percent of
| Indians started to tick upwards. In 2010s, mainland Chinese
| students on visas ticked way up, and in 2020s one of the
| fastest growing groups was actually female mainland Chinese
| students. Campus recruiting may pat themselves on the back
| about finally growing the % of women, but this was largely
| downstream of enrollment & degree choices made by these women
| many years before.
|
| In many ways it's gotten a lot better as all these different
| groups largely work wherever in the organization. 15-20 years
| ago there was a big problem with the Indian UI guy loading
| his team with Indians, the Chinese data guy loading his team
| with Chinese, and the Russian backend lead hiring all
| Russians. You could guess what team people were on by their
| face, and they'd often slip into their native languages at
| work. Not the best for collaboration.
|
| Also agree that real change of hearts & minds is slow going
| over generations, and can't be legislated. That said we have
| made and continue to make a lot of progress. Anyone who has
| been alive more than 20 years should be able to recognize US
| culture in 2020s is so different than even 2008, 1999, 1990,
| or the 1980s..
|
| I think some people mix 1) cultural change (acceptable words
| people use / ok jokes people make) with 2) legal changes (gay
| marriage rights / expanded legal protections from
| discrimination) and finally 3) outcome changes (higher % of
| group going to college / lower % of group being poor / etc).
| 1 moves faster than 2 which moves faster than 3. I think
| that's because each is downstream of the preceding change.
| You can't directly change outcomes in a short time span.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| Is this because truly doing race-based hiring has been illegal
| for a long time? I've noticed they'll target certain
| demographics for interviews and other opportunities, but
| identity can't be a factor in the interview itself. It's a fine
| line.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| maybe race-based hiring has been illegal and you _might_ be
| able to win a civil case, but the DOJ certainly wasn 't going
| after companies for not hiring enough white people or men.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| Definitely. I think they just had to make sure not to
| decline a candidate for that reason explicitly. But it
| trickled down, e.g. interviewers were told not to ask
| anything remotely related to the candidate's identity and
| especially not to write it down, even gendered pronouns.
| Aunche wrote:
| They will target certain demographics in ways that their
| lawyers can argue are legal such as giving more interviews to
| Grace Hopper attendees or schools with favorable demographics
| [1]. This is a great way to poach minorities from different
| companies without moving bringing any minorities to tech in
| any significant capacity. This is probably why men are
| increasingly going to Grace Hopper [2].
|
| [1] https://blog.duolingo.com/how-duolingo-
| achieved-a-5050-gende...
|
| [2] https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203845886/women-tech-
| confere...
| harrall wrote:
| Personally I feel if you want to make an impact, you need to
| provide resources early on when people are growing up and in
| school.
|
| There's nothing like gaining inspiration because someone you
| know growing up is doing it. e.g. It's much easier to go
| camping for your first time when someone in your life is "the
| camping person" and can guide you through it. And the earlier
| you do it, the higher chance that you end up pursuing it.
|
| In a lot of impoverished communities, they don't have as many
| as those kinds of people. Especially not compared to a well-
| connected family in a wealthy suburb.
|
| I don't know how you would provide those resources and maybe
| these big companies already are, but the availability of
| professionals that young people surround themselves with should
| not be overlooked.
| andrepd wrote:
| Overlooked point but this is very very important. It's hard
| to understate the importance of good examples and role models
| while growing up. We are animals which learn essentially by
| imitation while growing up. We internalise what we see both
| consciously and subconsciously. It has a _massive_ impact.
| And in places where good role models are scarce this self-
| perpetuates.
|
| Not discounting the material/economic conditions, obviously.
| scelerat wrote:
| It's why day care, head start, school lunch and the like are
| super important.
|
| Even before we get to corporate demographics or college
| graduation, admittance, and application rates, there are
| millions of children growing up in poverty in the US.
| Relatively inexpensive social welfare investments can
| mitigate many of the worst effects, even for those who don't
| decide to become software engineers.
| blindriver wrote:
| None of this matters if the children grow up in a single-
| parent household. Keeping a two parent household has an
| outsized influence on the children's development and needs
| to be a cultural shift in our society.
| ketzo wrote:
| It can absolutely matter, and in fact it is all the more
| important in a single-parent household.
|
| You're right that single vs. two parent household is the
| largest contributing factor. You're wrong that it means
| that no other factors matter at all.
| scelerat wrote:
| "single parent households" are precisely why these levers
| are important: among other things, they help reduce the
| disadvantages some kids have due to being raised by an
| impoverished single parent, and gives those kids a leg up
| in a way which will foster more stable home life and less
| likelihood of themselves becoming single parents.
| drewbeck wrote:
| Not only that, but more resources and more stability help
| foster successful relationships. If you want more two-
| parent households, make it a lot easier to have and care
| for a child.
| 1over137 wrote:
| > Like what makes one an expert?
|
| Your skin colour of course.
| stevage wrote:
| 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.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| To underscore your point, I've met 5 black engineers in 13
| years as a software developer. To put this in perspective, my
| high school was 50% black, and my college was 30% black.
| Somehow I got where I am, but almost none of my classmates were
| able to do the same. I don't know what the solution is.
| ArthurStacks wrote:
| Why is a solution needed? Where is the problem?
|
| I hire developers. They are all white because theres no black
| people around here. It isnt a problem.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > Where is the problem?
|
| When the inequality gap widens, it has broader long term
| socioeconomic impact. The civil rights era is not even a
| century behind us and many fellow Americans are still
| effectively competing against others that have been given a
| generational "head start".
|
| Does this matter to you? This depends on the type of
| society you want to live in and be a part of. My take? None
| of us live in a vacuum in isolation; we live in a country
| of 300+ million people. My neighbor's are Iranian, Syrian,
| Turkish/German, French/Moroccan, Indian, East Asian and all
| lovely people.
|
| The problem DEI programs _should_ solve is a systemic one
| where hiring practices might otherwise pass on qualified
| minority candidates or may not even be presented to them in
| the first place. The _implementation_ of many programs is
| questionable, but the objective and why have some form of
| policy that focuses on broader inclusivity in the hiring
| process should not be: I want a better America for everyone
| and not just some subset of Americans.
| ArthurStacks wrote:
| Or maybe theres just less people from certain cultures
| that want to be a software developer.
|
| Whats next, you want to force more white people to become
| developers because ethnic Indian devs are becoming too
| populous in the industry.
|
| In my country most of the blacks are in London and so we
| have no black devs in our office. We arent going to go
| out and find some to hire.
| matsemann wrote:
| > _Whats next, you want to force more white people to
| become developers because ethnic Indian devs are becoming
| too populous in the industry._
|
| You managed to sneak in both a slippery slope fallacy and
| a straw man in the same argument here. No one said what
| you're claiming.
| ArthurStacks wrote:
| I never claimed he did say that.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I decided to look up the demographics on Wikipedia.
| London does indeed have a higher percentage black
| population than the rest of the country, but Manchester
| and Birmingham are very similar, whilst other major
| cities where you're likely to find the most tech
| companies have around 5%.
|
| London: 54% white, 14% black
|
| Manchester: 57% white, 12% black
|
| Birmingham: 49% white, 11% black
|
| Bristol: 81% white, 6% black
|
| Leeds: 79% white, 6% black
|
| Sheffield: 80% white, 5% black
|
| Liverpool: 84% white. 4% black
|
| Note: this excludes mixed black and white backgrounds,
| which make up a decent proportion of people who would
| describe themselves as black.
|
| So _if_ equal numbers of black people went into tech, and
| companies hired without bias, then you 'd expect at least
| 1 in 20 people in most tech companies to be black.
|
| You're right that fewer people from black backgrounds are
| applying to tech jobs, although I think it's a leap to
| say it's because they "don't want to". It could just as
| easily be that they find it intimidating, or don't
| believe they can do it, or they're socialised into other
| careers. As a company or hiring manager, if you do come
| across black applicants, it may well be the case that
| they have had to battle against a lot to get where they
| are, which shows grit, enthusiasm, and initiative.
| ArthurStacks wrote:
| I'm in the business of making money, not one of getting
| blacks into software. If they don't want to come for
| interviews then I'm not going out and finding them.
|
| Also using those stats is flawed because the majority of
| the people working in those cities don't live in them.
| The real number (of what % blacks constitute the
| available workforce within commute distance) will be less
| than 1% in most of them.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > I'm in the business of making money
|
| Respectfully, there is _always_ a trade-off between how
| much money you make and how positive a social impact you
| have.
|
| > The real number (of what % blacks constitute the
| available workforce within commute distance) will be less
| than 1%
|
| Yes, as I said, it's not the case that black people are
| as likely to apply for tech jobs. And I agree with you
| that it's not your responsibility to make that happen.
| The problem is systemic and goes back to education and
| environment. However, your tone is a little disconcerting
| as it seems to suggest that you think everything is fine
| just the way it is.
| ArthurStacks wrote:
| That is you being ignorant of other cultures and
| countries and assuming things work like they do in yours.
|
| The few blacks that are in almost all those cities you
| mention recieve the same education, are the same
| environment and socioeconomic group as the whites.
|
| It is also a US obsession with US black people and their
| problems, and thinking everyone should join in on it.
| This is why when they tried to bring all the George Floyd
| protest stuff to this region, they were politely told
| where they could stick it. There are already enough
| social problems that should get attention and don't, that
| affect the people living here. Rather than protests about
| something that has no relevance to anyone living here.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Sorry if I misled. I'm UK born and bred, grew up an hour
| from London, and have been living in London for nearly a
| decade. I've seen the racial divide between private and
| state schools, and I've seen how the inner city schools
| split into the good ones in affluent mostly white areas
| vs the poor ones in struggling ethnic minority areas.
| There's some in the middle obviously, but there's a
| definite split. In the former, teachers will advise which
| Oxbridge college you should apply to. In the latter,
| teachers will have a strategy for how to respond if
| someone brings a weapon into class. Black people might
| technically follow the same syllabus, but the environment
| is totally different.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Still bettsr than doing fascism with ethnic white nationLism.
|
| Its not like jettisoning systemic racism would happen faster
| than a generation.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Since you seem relatively open minded and objective about it
| let me ask you this:
|
| How much did you get paid for doing all those consulting gigs
| on DEI topics?
|
| Just to point out, even as you highlight the hollowness of the
| trend passing through, you were a part of the industry it
| created and a beneficiary of people's sudden interest in the
| symbolism of it even if it achieved little. Tons of people who
| could justify some kind of vague contribution/expertise were
| glad to make money off of the political need to pursue this,
| and be seen doing it.
|
| It sounds like you were one of the more respectable
| contributors. Others were hangers-on, making money or careers
| off people's fear of being accused of not toeing the new party
| line, regardless of how hollow it was. VPs/deans/executive
| directors of diversity and inclusion at whatever institutions
| they could sell their services to.
|
| Whether it was good or not at its core, some people had a
| vested interest in it continuing. It happens equally with every
| new trend that is hard to set real goals against. (or
| achievable ones, until it's found out to be empty).
| firefoxd wrote:
| I had my day job. This was something I did just to help. I
| did not request any payment for the work I did. The DEI teams
| where in house while I was an outside consultant.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experience
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Many DEI programs are hit hard by reality: there are only so
| many people of race X, gender Y or whatever metric Z interested
| and qualified for a job. The more difficult the job, the less
| diversity of candidates you have.
|
| I did around 1000 interviews for my current company and about
| 200 for the previous one. I found that in IT in Europe there
| are not many candidates to meet DEI targetsand still hire the
| qualified ones. Even expanding to other continents, we barely
| made it; the last team I hired was one Latino, one Filipino and
| one white, 2 out of 3 were male. I interviewed around 30
| candidates for these positions and I selected the top 3. These
| 3 were just above the lower limit of expertise to be hired, so
| I basically had zero choice, the alternative was to pull triple
| shifts myself to cover for the missing people.
|
| Let's say you are the director of a steel plant. DEI targets
| are totally irrelevant, I never heard about a woman working on
| the plant floor, but I have many cousins who did. Dying at 45
| or 50 years old due to lung or throat cancer is not something
| many women want to, but all my cousins did. I don't believe in
| DEI in these circumstances. But if you want DEI in "a day in
| life of a Microsoft /Twitter employee having free food and
| pointless meetings all day" videos, that is not fair.
|
| So, I don't know why you were not able to place the developers,
| but think about DEI even more. We have several black people in
| my department, one of the best PMs I worked with is an older
| black woman, a good professional will find a place almost
| anywhere. Morgan Freeman shows that being black does not
| prevent one from magnificent results, but asking for rewards
| for being black is not the way.
| torginus wrote:
| What does DEI even mean in Europe? Do you hire stand-in
| versions of US racial groups?
| bambax wrote:
| > _https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4_
|
| I have never seen anything more cringe or ridiculous than this
| video.
|
| Bill Gates has said publicly that he's a fan of _Silicon
| Valley_ , the tv show that pokes hard fun at the startup
| culture. But it's Microsoft that's beyond parody...
| zombiwoof wrote:
| I worked at Apple. In our org of 1000 people there were/are
| zero black leaders/senior managers
|
| It's all Indians and Chinese
| 01100011 wrote:
| But we'll call that "diversity" because they're not white.
|
| It's like the southern Bay Area in general, the least black
| place I have ever lived. People call it diverse, but it's
| really just 4 ethnic groups that rarely intermingle. It's not
| diverse like LA or NYC are diverse.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| None of the companies I worked for considered Asian tech
| workers "diverse". One actually carved out a separate
| category for Asian males: ND. Negative Diversity.
|
| I'm not doubting your companies' policies, but just
| throwing my data point in there too.
| maeil wrote:
| Where I was at there surely were internal "Asian"
| community groups with a budget and so on, for one. Don't
| think proposing a "White" or even "American" or
| "European" one would've gone over especially well.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Every single socially progressive initiative every company
| engages in is purely performative. If those initiatives
| potentially hurt their bottom line or hurt them politically,
| they will be dropped so fast your head will spin.
|
| Years ago, tech companies would promote such moves to improve
| their image, play intot heir role as being "outsiders" or
| "disruptors" and to attract staff, who tended to skew towards
| socially progressive issues. There was genuine belief in the
| missions of those companies. Google once touted its mission "to
| organize the world's information and make it universally
| accessible and useful".
|
| But now we're talking about trillion dollar companies that move
| in lockstep with US policy.
|
| I tend to believe that every US company eventually becomes a
| bank, a defense contractor or both.
|
| The biggest heel turn politically is probably Mark Zuckerberg,
| who now makes frequent donations to Republican candidates (and
| some Democrats, for the record) but we also have Meta donating
| $1M to Trump's inauguration (by comparison, there was no
| contribution to Biden's inauguration). Efforts of fighting
| misinformation are out. DEO is out.
|
| If you work for Meta, you're now really no different to
| Tiwtter. Your employer now actively pushes right-wing
| propaganda and the right-wing agenda. There is no real support
| for minorities. But the sad truth is, every other big tech
| company is on the same path.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > But the sad truth is, every other big tech company is on
| the same path.
|
| its why relying on companies is no substitute for real social
| movements; they have their own incentives and will turn on a
| dime if its prudent
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Yawn. Focus on being a great dev and not what your skin color
| is. I couldn't care less where your ancestors were from or
| whether you have a penis or a vagina. If the code is good,
| let's merge it. If it sucks, delete it.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Your story reminds me of my friend, also Black, went to
| engineering college with an overwhelmingly white population (me
| included). He was in more than half of the pamphlets pitching
| the school they give out to prospective students. It was so
| blatant.
| iaseiadit wrote:
| I can only speak from personal experience, but since about 4
| years ago, every candidate I've been asked to interview for a
| software engineering position has been Black, Hispanic, South
| Asian or East Asian. Not a single white American.
|
| Are there no white people studying CS anymore or looking for
| jobs? Did they all stop applying?
|
| Again, it's only from personal experience. I never asked any of
| my coworkers a "hey, do you ever interview white people?", so
| it could be a coincidence that I was never matched with any.
| But I don't think that's the most likely explanation...
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| If you don't take them can you please forward me their
| resumes? It's extremely hard for me to find a candidate who
| isn't a 20s-30s white male named Chad.
| iaseiadit wrote:
| My understanding is there's a lot of outreach at HBCUs, so
| you may try that. Also H-1Bs.
|
| The joke that white men are all named "Chad" is tired.
| You'll notice I didn't say everyone I interviewed was name
| DeShawn or whatever. Let's move past that.
| muglug wrote:
| That has not been my experience working for a big US tech
| company.
| iaseiadit wrote:
| I also work for a big US tech company. If it's not standard
| practice, I'm happy to hear it.
| cplanas wrote:
| Your experience is very different from mine. I rarely
| interviewed white candidates, but they were still more common
| than Hispanic and Black ones. The majority of the candidates
| were Asian.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| DEI programs are simultaneously for PR and morale. You don't
| want to be _" that company that doesn't even have a DEI
| program"_. But also you don't want your employees being pissed
| off that you don't have a DEI program, because they could
| leave, or complain and decrease morale, which could become a PR
| nightmare.
|
| But they can be more. Some companies I've worked for used their
| DEI programs to actively support local communities, organize
| volunteering efforts, collect donations. Even companies that HN
| might consider "Evil", I've seen have very strong and engaged
| DEI groups. It came down to two things: 1) they hired
| passionate people who took it upon themselves to organize
| internally and do more with the groups, and 2) they had
| leadership that (amazingly) gave the support needed for the
| group to make a positive impact.
|
| But also, some companies I've worked for just had a 30 minute
| "movie lunch hour" and guest speaker and that was it. So it's
| obvious to me now when a DEI program is a PR dodge, and when it
| does real work.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > 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?
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Wow.
|
| I'm curious why it took _hundreds of candidates_ to _not_ be
| hired before it dawned on you that it was not sincere? Wouldn
| 't the first _dozen_ have been enough?
|
| Unless your financial interests intersected with those of the
| companies you consulted for this "show"...?
|
| But, I applaud your bravery in calling these guys out after
| they stopped giving you work.
|
| Bravo.
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| At the end of the day companies want employees with talent.
| Yes, they were using DEI as a marketing, and kept hiring using
| merit, not DEI principles, which I find nice.
| l2silver wrote:
| > Over the course of a year and hundreds of candidates I
| presented, I've managed to place just one developer in a
| company
|
| I work at pseudo government organization where we take seminars
| every few months about dei, gender issues, etc... and it has
| made 0 difference when it comes to hiring. Ultimately my org is
| trying to reach out more, get to dei events, but that's as far
| as the effort goes. Once a job application is posted, it's the
| same old process. Maybe that's fair, but it felt disingenuous,
| and unnecessary, especially since we weren't great at hiring
| anyways.
| bartread wrote:
| You say you only placed one? Did you get any feedback on the
| rejections or were they just cold/ghosted?
|
| So I don't positively discriminate but, the most recent role I
| was looking to fill, I didn't speak to that many candidates
| because applicant quality was overall poor, but getting on half
| of those I did speak with were from minorities.
|
| In the end we decided not to hire for the time being because we
| couldn't find anyone at the standard we needed (possibly due to
| time of year - November/December often aren't great), but I'm
| surprised that you weren't even getting people to interview.
| That, on the face of it, is quite concerning.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Maybe the candidates you presented weren't high quality enough?
| hedora wrote:
| That reminds me of a big company around that time. They changed
| master to main in git, which cost each engineer many hours on
| average, which translated into many engineer years (decades?)
| of wasted time.
|
| It was in the middle of a hiring spree. Why not spend that time
| interviewing black engineers instead?
| tantalor wrote:
| > Diverse Slate Approach. This practice has always been subject
| to public debate and is currently being challenged
|
| These challenges are always in bad faith. It starts off by
| assuming this practice is exclusionary of white males. We know
| that's not true, because that would (obviously) be illegal (Title
| VII) and these companies are not dumb.
|
| > there are other ways...
|
| Like what? Why won't those "other ways" be immediately challenged
| by the same bad faith actors?
| alangibson wrote:
| That they decided to fold before even being challenged really
| shows you how deeply held their DEI beliefs were.
| gusfoo wrote:
| > Read the memo from Meta in full:
|
| That did not seem at all controversial to me. It seems quite
| sensible, but it alludes to some silly practices that are now
| being retired. For example "This effort focused on sourcing from
| diverse-owned businesses" is, in my opinion at least, a very very
| silly thing to do.
|
| I am much, much, more interested in high quality, affordable,
| stable products when I buy things. Not the skin colour of who
| owns the business. To filter things based on the owner's identity
| (in the American sense of the word) may disadvantage my business
| by making my own products (build from their components) worse. It
| would not be a sensible thing to do.
| fourside wrote:
| > may disadvantage my business by making my own products (build
| from their components) worse
|
| One of the biggest wins for the anti-DEI crowd was convincing
| people that embracing DEI implicitly meant getting something of
| lesser quality or value.
|
| Here, you assume that focusing on businesses owned by people of
| color necessitates lowering your standards of your suppliers
| below acceptable levels.
| Nathanba wrote:
| The irony is that he didn't say that at all and it's actually
| you who assumed this.
| fourside wrote:
| I'll quote the parent comment again:
|
| > To filter things based on the owner's identity... may
| disadvantage my business by making my own products (build
| from their components) worse.
|
| Filtering based on identity can hurt his business by making
| his products worse. The line between cause and effect that
| he's drawing seems pretty clear to me. What other
| interpretation would you have for that?
|
| And for the sake of completeness let's ask a 3rd party.
|
| ChatGPT prompt:
|
| """ Given the following sentence:
|
| To filter things based on the owner's identity... may
| disadvantage my business by making my own products (build
| from their components) worse.
|
| To what is the reader attributing a potential lower quality
| in his products? """
|
| Response:
|
| """
|
| The reader is attributing the potential lower quality of
| their products to the filtering based on the owner's
| identity. This implies that restricting components based on
| who owns them could limit access to necessary or high-
| quality components, thereby negatively impacting the
| quality of the products they build. """
| Nathanba wrote:
| Yes you need to read carefully and not let your own
| assumptions get in the way.
|
| He did say: Filtering based on the owner's identity is
| bad. He did not say: Filtering based on the owner's
| identity is bad _while that identity matches a person of
| color_
| mike_hearn wrote:
| It does require lowering standards and quality, by
| definition, because in the absence of DEI pressure campaigns
| they'd have been selecting suppliers based on standards and
| quality by default. Any other criteria inherently trades off
| against that.
|
| And you seem to know that's true because your claim slides
| smoothly from "getting something of lesser quality" to
| "lowering standards below acceptable levels" which aren't the
| same thing. The latter phrasing means the products _are_
| worse but you consider the lowered quality to be an
| acceptable tradeoff.
| fourside wrote:
| > It does require lowering standards and quality, by
| definition
|
| It does not _require_ it. My second point refers to the
| fact that people often talk about evaluating candidates
| /choices as if there's a single, objectively measurable
| metric by which we can rank them. I argue that's not how
| people really make decisions, but even if they did, who's
| to say that the top three choices of suppliers are not all
| owned by minorities or women? You can both fulfill a
| mission to engage with more diverse suppliers _and_ not
| lower your standards.
|
| I've personally never been a fan of stringent DEI
| requirements, especially those that came from companies
| that were clearly in it just for the optics, and I do think
| it can result in lower quality. It's the way that some
| people almost take lower quality as a given if diversity is
| involved that doesn't sit well with me.
| chii wrote:
| "we have the same product/service, and charge the same
| price as all our competitors. But because we're
| owned/operated/benefits minorities, you should be
| choosing us as a form of guilt driven affirmative action"
| jensensbutton wrote:
| If all the competitors have the same quality and price
| then you're always going to be using some subjective
| criteria to decide between them. Why is choosing a
| minority supplier worse than any other criteria in this
| case?
| dmix wrote:
| > You can both fulfill a mission to engage with more
| diverse suppliers and not lower your standards.
|
| That is bypassing competition, instead sorting by
| identity first. Competition is how the world found the
| best services/products for the best price for over a
| century and the foundation of our economy. Supporting
| that idea is how the west became as dominant and wealthy
| as it was. Only recently have large organization and gov
| bypassed that for social justice experiments and using
| ranked systems, similar to giving preferential treatment
| for 'national security' (aka keeping zombies like Boeing
| alive).
|
| Even massive US defense contracts are being forced to
| contract out to minority owned businesses first. It's not
| an optional thing where the decision maker gets leeway,
| they are required to start there and narrows the options
| by definition.
|
| > You can both fulfill a mission to engage with more
| diverse suppliers and not lower your standards.
|
| There's no hidden genius in technocractic top down
| manipulation when it comes to purchasing decisions. The
| options are what they are. The less options you have the
| harder it will be to find the best. Like being forced to
| choose between 2 gov-backed monopoly ISPs for your
| internet here in Canada.
| mmustapic wrote:
| That's not necessarily true. In fact, by not having DEI
| programs, companies could, because of leaders' own biases,
| reject better suppliers based on owners or employees being
| minorities.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I can tell you, even a massive corporation that makes
| medical devices definitely does NOT choose their suppliers
| just by quality, a LOT of the suppliers we used were thanks
| to "people who know people", such as the painter that
| sucked but was buds with the plant manager so we kept
| dumping money into his company to fix their deficiencies.
|
| The biggest lie that they told you was that the world
| actually works on merit: it does not.
| dijit wrote:
| That kind of nepotism is the exception, not the rule, and
| it stands out like a sore thumb when it happens.
|
| You're right that success (as a company, or individual)
| is not only based in merit though. There's plenty of
| examples of people continuing to do business with Oracle
| to prove that point.
|
| Making a good enough product, at a good enough price
| point and make the executive with money happy enough with
| the trade-offs: and you're successful. Same as B2C,
| really.
| rainsford wrote:
| There's no reason to believe pure meritocracy is somehow
| the default state and plenty of evidence to the contrary.
| Humans are naturally biased in how we make choices and
| "this person looks and sounds like me" is probably one of
| the most common and deep rooted subconscious (or sometimes
| conscious) preferences. This isn't just a workplace hiring
| problem either. Humans are objectively bad at making purely
| objective decisions, even when they think they're doing so.
|
| This isn't to say DEI programs as implemented today are the
| best solution to this problem, or even an effective one. I
| personally think more broad anti-bias training and programs
| could be a good alternative since race and gender are
| hardly the only biases that lead to bad decision making
| (e.g. hiring someone just because they went to the same
| school as you is also bad). But it seems silly to pretend
| bias doesn't exist or that it doesn't take active effort to
| counter, although I understand the appeal of doing so
| especially for uncomfortable topics like race.
| orblivion wrote:
| The optimum outcome comes if there's zero racism, i.e. we
| only look at the quality of the company. Let's say there's R
| amount of racism, and D amount of DEI to counter it (super
| hand-wavy of course). The optimum outcome is if R = D. If R >
| D, racism skews the outcome away from the optimum. If D > R,
| DEI skews the outcome away from the optimum.
|
| The anti-DEI (and anti-affirmative action, etc) crowd is
| claiming that in 2024, D > R. They would probably also claim
| that in 1960, R > D, i.e. a black doctor is likely to be more
| qualified than his/her peers.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| This is disingenuous.
| wtcactus wrote:
| > Here, you assume that focusing on businesses owned by
| people of color necessitates lowering your standards of your
| suppliers below acceptable levels.
|
| And it does. Otherwise, the movement would be simply named:
| "focus on businesses with the best product".
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| A few years back, suggesting these "sensible" changes would
| have you seen shunned and/or fired in many companies.
| silisili wrote:
| > This effort focused on sourcing from diverse-owned businesses
|
| This alone is abused to no end. In my small city, I've
| personally known three 'woman owned businesses' where the
| husband just put it in his wife's name to win contracts.
|
| Like all things, what may have had good intentions justs gets
| abused by the adaptive.
| cubefox wrote:
| Even giving preferential treatment to actually woman owned
| businesses is arguably bad in itself. Women shouldn't get
| preferential treatment at all when picking a business. Only
| the performance of the business should matter. Discriminating
| against male owners (equivalent to preferring female owners)
| is clearly not "good intentions".
| casey2 wrote:
| Quality is determined by the competence of the people running
| the business. If two companies are of the same or similar
| quality then the race, not skin color, of the owner can be used
| as an indicator of their competence. Since it is well known
| that non-white races get less resources at every stage of
| personal development. When a company like Meta buys them the
| growth potential is much higher.
| xvector wrote:
| I would disagree, there is a huge and closely knit support
| community for black-owned businesses that has existed for
| some time, a community that provides everything from money to
| experience.
|
| There is absolutely nothing like this for, say, Asian owned
| businesses or even White owned businesses. You're totally on
| your own.
| j7ake wrote:
| 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.
| pkkkzip wrote:
| Top schools like ivy league in America exclusively discriminate
| against Asians and there was a lawsuit but its not being
| enforced.
|
| This is a different issue that precedes DEI.
| loeg wrote:
| Harvard Law Asian admissions are up 30% 2023 to 2024. Maybe a
| sign the situation is improving.
| zht wrote:
| i dont know where you work but my company actively diversified
| sourcing to other kinda of schools
| superultra wrote:
| 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 color drastically impacts one's experience of life in
| this world.
|
| Therefore if one is designing products, why would you exclude
| the perspective of people who would ultimately use your
| product?
| moskie wrote:
| This deluge of terrible things from Zuck over the past few days
| is so clearly 100% in deference to Trump. The fact that Zuck
| name-checked Twitter when explaining the change to Community
| Notes was also such an obvious tell. If he viewed Twitter as a
| competitor, he would have framed this shift in policy as
| something better than what Twitter does. But instead, "we're
| doing what they're doing" is a message that he is essentially
| collaborating with Musk on shared goals.
|
| Gee, what goals might those be.
|
| I had deleted Facebook years ago, but this has convinced to also
| delete my Instagram. Sincerely hoping an Instagram alternative
| starts to take shape, like what Bluesky is to Twitter.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I am a Black male and worked as a developer for mostly small
| unknown companies from 1996-2020.
|
| I then pivoted to cloud+app dev strategic consulting when a job
| at AWS (Professional Services) fell into my lap. I now work for a
| third party consulting company as a staff software architect.
|
| For the last 5 years, I have had customer facing jobs where I am
| either on video calls or flying out to customer sites working
| with sales.
|
| When I first encountered the DE&I programs at Amazon, I couldn't
| help but groan. The entire "allies" thing felt like bullshit.
|
| The only thing that concerns me is that I hope companies still do
| outreach to colleges outside of the major universities and start
| partnering with them to widen the funnel and partnering with
| smaller colleges to help students learn what is necessary to be
| competitive and to pass interviews
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| 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 as fast as possible. My manager has told me about
| every woman in my team that he wanted to fast track their
| promotion. I've never heard the same about any of man,
| regardless of their skill. Of course I recognize that's more
| anecdotical than the referral thing, but it definitely exists.
| cdot2 wrote:
| That doesn't feel very "positive" if you're not in those
| groups
| jensensbutton wrote:
| > The only thing that concerns me is that I hope companies
| still do outreach to colleges outside of the major universities
| and start partnering with them to widen the funnel
|
| I can assure you they think that is bullshit as well.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| When I hear these sorts of arguments I'm reminded of this
| XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/808/
| wiseowise wrote:
| How is that applicable to Europe? Who knows.
| Johanx64 wrote:
| As somebody who born and spent significant portion of my
| life in very homogenous country.
|
| Reading these threads I always come to the very same
| conclusion: diversity IS the problem and creates problems
| instead of providing any tangible benifits.
|
| DEI is attempted solution to the "problem" and yet creates
| even more of a problem where people aren't hired based on
| merit and being the best candidate for the job.
|
| None of those things are a problem in homogenous country.
| They simply do not exist.
|
| Similarly it doesn't make sense that a person with a
| different skin color could bring anything new to the table,
| after all skin color does not matter.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are no homogenous countries. Skin color is just one
| of the many ways people get slotted into buckets.
|
| Your country has men and women. It has gay and bi people.
| It has trans people. Young and old. It has blind people.
| It has amputees. It has atheists and religious people. It
| has mentally ill and chronically sick and abused kids and
| all sorts of other diverse conditions that have to be
| addressed with various accommodations.
| Johanx64 wrote:
| You live in such a twisted "diverse" world-view that has
| pitted even men and women, young and old against each
| other. What a rotten culture.
|
| Don't No-True-Scotsman and pontificate me what a
| homogenous and non-homegenous country is, I very well now
| what the difference is.
|
| I've lived it, I've seen it, I've experienced it.
|
| It's a symptom of a sick, atomized diverse society if it
| can be so easily fractured by using <0.1% fringe cases as
| tool.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Why do you believe skin color is the only possible thing
| "diverse" covers?
| Johanx64 wrote:
| What benefits does your linguistic framework and
| redefinitions of commonly used terms offer? I'm not
| seeing it.
|
| Looks like you're desperately looking for some seams from
| which to break fabric of cohesive society appart.
|
| Homogenous societies do not need nor should they offer
| special affordances to either atheists or religious
| people. Only diverse societies that have imported bunch
| of incompatible religions that beef with each other and
| prevailing culture (often violently!) that need "special"
| accomodations and guard rails to prevent escalations of
| conflict.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm not the one redefining terms. Diversity covers far
| more variation than skin color alone. DEI efforts have
| long included things like "women in tech" or "LGBT
| friendly".
|
| Your country may be homogenous in color, but in
| everything? Closest you probably get to that is the
| Vatican, and even there there's various kinds of
| diversity.
| qingcharles wrote:
| 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.
| romanovcode wrote:
| Why couldn't they build their own products then? Land of
| opportunity and all...
| nprateem wrote:
| Framing hiring as a strategic decision like this makes sense.
| But that doesn't mean fast tracked C-suite promotions, etc.
| also do.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > employing some people who potentially aren't as technically
| qualified, but bring a different viewpoint to the team
|
| I would be pretty pissed off if I couldn't hire a the best
| qualified person in favor of someone with a different
| viewpoint that's not materially relevant to the position.
|
| > My life experience was a bubble that was cut off from a
| significant portion of the population.
|
| No offense, but nothing is stopping you from expanding your
| horizons, in this day and age it doesn't require you to live
| with other kinds of people. Nor is expanding your horizons
| particularly beneficial for many/most domains we work in. I
| can speak 3 languages, have lived in the US/Europe, grew up
| in a poor US black/hispanic neighborhood, etc. Knowing how
| other people live has never given me any particular insight
| that was helpful at my software development job.
|
| My highly-skilled coworker (and friend) is black/hispanic, he
| hates this DEI stuff. He didn't get his job from any DEI
| initiatives (we've worked together at previous employers, his
| connections/reputation got him here), but that won't stop
| people who don't know him from wondering if he's actually
| competent, or is just here because of some DEI quota.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| Does this mean we can go back to using "master" as our git repo's
| default branch?
| renegade-otter wrote:
| "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".
| snovymgodym wrote:
| It could not matter less. It's a piece of technical jargon.
| You learn what it means and move on.
|
| Depending on VCS and branching style, "master, "main",
| "mainline", or "trunk" might make more sense.
|
| "Master" always made sense to me.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Yep master never made any sense
| bravetraveler wrote:
| 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
| operates.
|
| We won't _' kill all masters'_ by getting rid of the word. My
| real conspiracy theory is this is one of many attempts to sow
| division. Nation-state nonsense.
| 65 wrote:
| My controversial opinion is that I think "main" is more
| descriptive and intuitive than "master."
| dijit wrote:
| my controversial opinion is that it never mattered, all that
| really mattered was that there was a universal word- changing
| it to _anything_ would cause at least a few hundred hours of
| development work and a few hundred additional hours of
| changing documents and tutorials and stuff.
|
| For what? Main isn't better if the issue is racism, because
| "main" has some really negative connotations in Korea ("main"
| families having servant families).
|
| And, for crying out loud. the tools name is literally a mild
| british swear word.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| Good point about the number of dev hours dedicated to this.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| This.
|
| What makes it worse:
|
| - Each "bad" term gets replaced by _multiple_ alternative
| terms, often non-obvious, so good luck figuring out what
| people mean now. For example, MitM (Man in the Middle) was
| a well established technical term. Everybody knew what was
| meant, the term had no acutal gender association in the
| meaning, but now you instead read "machine-in-the-middle,
| meddler-in-the-middle, manipulator-in-the-middle, person-
| in-the-middle (PITM), or adversary-in-the-middle (AITM)".
|
| - The "it's more descriptive" excuse was used as a very
| thin veil of justification even though the _actual_ reason
| for the change was clear. So not only do you get to deal
| with the extra hundreds of hours of overhead, but you also
| have people lie to your face about _why_ you 're being
| forced to do that.
|
| - It never ends. First it was "master/slave", then "master"
| in any context, and once that battle was "won", proponents
| of such policies started finding new "offensive" words.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-
| middle_attack#Notes
| wiseowise wrote:
| This is the first time I ever see any of these.
| 65 wrote:
| Fair point, I don't think it should have been changed in
| the first place. But it's been changed whether we like it
| or not. If it was "main" in the first place I think that's
| still a better name than "master."
| layer8 wrote:
| "Master" implies that the contents is authoritative
| somehow, as in "master copy" (meaning 13 in
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/master#Noun). "Main"
| doesn't have that connotation.
|
| When one is willing to discard that connotation, then, if
| anything, "default" would be a more accurate name,
| because the fact that it is selected by default in
| certain situations is really the only technical
| difference compared to other branches.
| laughinghan wrote:
| > "Main" doesn't have that connotation.
|
| It has had the connotation of "mainline", a synonym for
| "trunk", in version control since before Git existed:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(version_control)
|
| Presumably this was originally due to the connotation of
| the railroad mainline:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_line_(railway)
| dijit wrote:
| I agree that if it was main before it shouldn't have been
| changed.
|
| The whole branch naming thing is still only half
| implemented fwiw. Lots are still master, the default for
| new branches seems to be main. At my company it is
| "develop" for git.
|
| Other VCS software uses a totally different name,
| perforce uses main for example.
|
| I don't really care what it was, it could have been
| "killwhitey" and I still would have been against changing
| it because of the effort involved in changing every repo
| on earth and the invalidation of every tutorial in
| existence.
| drdrey wrote:
| and shorter
| Klonoar wrote:
| _My_ controversial opinion is that I still use _trunk_ as the
| branch name.
| golly_ned wrote:
| "master" makes sense if taken to mean a "master" as in a
| recording from which other records are made.
| bnycum wrote:
| I've been working with a large European company and it
| surprises me that they insist on using "master". They even
| make other master named branches on the repos as well.
| torginus wrote:
| My uncontroversial opinion is that it's the worst when your
| company uses both, and you have to juggle a dozen different
| repos that have it this way or that.
| int_19h wrote:
| I hope not; "main" is shorter and more to the point, regardless
| of any DEI stuff.
| darknavi wrote:
| I still rename my git remotes from origin to gh because less
| typing is nice.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Why not `g` then? Or `o`?
| anal_reactor wrote:
| In my company some repos use `master` and some use `main` so
| there's definitely some diversity of terminology
| LPisGood wrote:
| And diversity was the goal all along, after all.
|
| More seriously though, it should be a policy that the change
| is atomic; complete or not at all.
| izacus wrote:
| No, I don't think you (most likely white) scrum master would
| allow you to work on that change.
| rvz wrote:
| The damage had already been done for Git. The master -> main
| change was a totally ridiculous move and caused unnecessary
| breakages into many tools that use Git and in internal systems.
|
| I'm still waiting for Mastercard to change their name to a less
| "offensive" name: [0] /s (They never did.)
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32044361
| denysvitali wrote:
| Maincard
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| but you might have to change it back to main when the next
| president shows up.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| I don't know. I was told reliably that he is a fascist and
| this will be the last election. That democracy is on stake.
| And democracy obviously lost. So it may be more permanent.
| LPisGood wrote:
| I think you may have reliably heard he is a fascist, which
| is objectively true, and confused that with unserious
| people saying this will be the last election.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Him being fascist is objectively false for every person
| that has passed 9th grade history, when fascism and WWII
| were studied in school. It makes as much sense as calling
| him juche. So calling him fascist is usually in my book
| indication of hypocrisy, ignorance, limited vocabulary,
| or lack of will to spend the five minutes it takes to
| understand the differences between the different types of
| authoritarian systems.
|
| There is no evidence that he had ever studied Il Duce or
| that he even knows who he is.
| tdiff wrote:
| Is not it a confession that DEI ideas were always political and
| Meta never truly believed in it?
| romanovcode wrote:
| You could clearly see it's all smoke and mirrors even ten years
| ago when Twitter handles of multi-national companies were
| celebrating LGBT pride except in the countries where LGBT is
| not allowed e.g. Saudi.
| intalentive wrote:
| Astute observers have been predicting a woke / DEI rollback ever
| since Claudine Gay got canned. Big tech companies are enmeshed
| with the state, so it helps to keep the wider political /
| geopolitical context in view.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| They're bluffing
| thefaux wrote:
| 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?
| tyleo wrote:
| Out with the DEI people appointed to appease the old
| administration in with Dana White to appease the new one I
| guess.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I was thinking about this as well, and it makes sense if Meta
| is planning a big sports push. Using a Quest 3, the sports
| "coverage" I've seen has been compelling (virtual NBA courtside
| seats are pretty nifty), especially MMA. Zuck's an MMA
| enthusiast so it fits.
|
| It would be silly to pretend politics plays no role in this,
| but it's not like they're putting Don Jr. on the board.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| There's also the factor that Zuck is becoming personal
| friends with Joe Rogan (according to Joe, they text each
| other memes and shit talk people) and Dana is Joe Rogan's
| best friend.
| CSSer wrote:
| He's Mark Zuckerberg's friend. They became close because
| Zuckerberg picked up MMA as a hobby. Zuckerberg has a majority
| stake in the company that can't be contested. He decided to
| throw his buddy a bone. That's it. Zuckerberg is tired of how
| much effort being "woke" takes. This is pretty easy to
| understand if you imagine being white and super-rich, and the
| closest exposure you have to any "real" adversity in life is
| your other super rich, multi-cultural friends and loved ones.
|
| Wealth inequality is at its highest _ever_ in the United
| States. He observed that the people he was supporting still
| hated him because he 's disgustingly rich, so he's getting
| diminishing returns for his effort to "be cool". Meanwhile
| everyone else is having so much fun. When he complained to his
| other rich friends about this, they convinced him that they
| don't really have any biases, he doesn't owe anyone anything,
| and people are just jealous. So the metaphorical gloves come
| off. The next four years, and maybe even many more years beyond
| that because of the persisting judicial climate, are going to
| be filled with people coming unmasked in this regard.
| adrr wrote:
| Maybe Zuk wanted good seats to UFC fights.
| MrMember wrote:
| He already gets a cageside seat, right next to Dana.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| That's not news, just reiterating, this was announced
| separately earlier in the week
| jmcdowell wrote:
| 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 about Dana he
| says how he will explicitly help with them work with difficult
| foreign governments (be that through how he did it with the UFC
| or his relationship with the new administration).
|
| It sounded quite like they're preparing to more confrontational
| with the EU and he at one point mentions how he thinks the new
| admin is going to protect them more with foreign countries.
| jjulius wrote:
| 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.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| 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.
| bamboozled wrote:
| What Joe does is let people be persuasive for 1-3 hours.
| It doesn't reveal anything secret or give you any special
| insights into their real character, motives or
| intentions.
|
| You need to judge people through their actions, past
| history and ideally by working with them directly.
|
| This is all just PR, not saying it's bad, or even
| intentional. But it's a form of self-promotion most of
| the time.
|
| A fun podcast to checkout is called "Decoding the Gurus"
| where they dissect a lot of these conversations.
| jjulius wrote:
| Exactly this. We've had two decades of watching whether
| or not his words match his actions. I'm glad that someone
| might enjoy listening to another person wax poetic
| relatively unchallenged for three hours, but there have
| been 156,966 hours since Facebook went public on 2/4/06.
| That's a much larger dataset.
| jjulius wrote:
| In addition to what I and someone else mention in the
| other response chain, I have absolutely no desire to
| build a bridge to Zuckerberg/Meta. Zero. What he has put
| together has had a tremendously negative net impact on
| society and we've had twenty years with which to learn
| how he acts relative to what comes out of his mouth.
|
| There should be no bridges to him.
|
| Edit: I should also clarify that I try to be open and
| bridge-building in most cases. Shoot, I was in this
| instance too, for a while, even in spite of that cliche
| that "he told us who he was from the very beginning".
| Well I'll be absolutely damned and tickled rosey pink if
| it didn't turn out to be true.
|
| Edit 2: And then there's this[1]. Plenty of salient
| points in there as to why letting someone just ramble and
| "flesh out" ideas while hardly being challenged isn't
| actually helpful. Yet even in moments where Joe asks him
| to clarify a point, he kinda stumbles, can't provide
| evidence. But you want me to trust him based on this very
| interview? Pfft.
|
| Edit 3: His $30 billion claim during the interview might
| also be bullshit[2].
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/10/24341117/mark-
| zuckerberg-...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42666620
| jjulius wrote:
| "But wait, there's more!"
|
| >According to him, neither he nor the board, an
| international group of experts in law, human rights and
| journalism, were not told about the new policy ahead of
| time.
|
| >Meta executives, however, allegedly informed Trump
| officials about the change in policy prior to the
| announcement, a source with knowledge of the
| conversations told the New York Times.
|
| Yes, if we're going to make moves to fight EU regulations
| and other international matters, let's _not_ talk to the
| group of experts in international relationships before
| making this move!
|
| That's a pretty glaring example of his actions _this
| week_ not matching the words of his "fleshed out" three-
| hour interview.
|
| Boy, that facade you mentioned sure crumbled pretty fast,
| huh?
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/mark-zuckerbergs-meta-
| board-co...
| bigtimesink wrote:
| > When talking about Dana he says how he will explicitly help
| with them work with difficult foreign governments
|
| Isn't this what Nick Clegg was an expert at?
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Dana works with quite a different set. UAE, Saudi's , etc
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I wonder where that 30 billion figure comes from, could you
| have misheard?
|
| Meta was fined for EUR1.2 billion (the largest fine ever) for
| mishandling user data in violation of GDPR. The other fines
| they had add up to less than two billion:
|
| 1. $800M for antitrust violations with Marketplace
|
| 2. $400M for collecting children's data on Instagram
|
| 3. $200M + $180 in Ireland for forcing users to accept new
| advertisement/personalization terms
|
| 4. $200M for a personal data leak
|
| 5. $200M for WhatsApp "unclear privacy policies"
|
| 6. $60M for failing to allow opt-out of third-party tracking
|
| The law allows up to 4% of global revenue but it you stack
| fines it does start looking a bit ridiculous (especially #5).
| Though, as an EU resident, I'm happy someone is fighting for
| privacy and more a humane internet - even if that feels like
| a lost battle already.
| jjulius wrote:
| I think $30billion was in reference to a fine that was
| _thought_ could 've been imposed on Apple last year. I
| don't think that actually happened, though.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/apple-30-billion-violating-eu-digital-
| ma...
| jdminhbg wrote:
| It's interesting seeing reactions to this. My first take was
| "of course he appointed Dana White, he's a big MMA dork now."
| The connection to Trump didn't occur to me til later.
| tim333 wrote:
| I was just watching Zuck explain that to Rogan. The bit:
| https://youtu.be/7k1ehaE0bdU?t=3579
|
| tl/dw: amazing entrepreneur
| evilfred wrote:
| he beat his wife on video, that is who Zuck likes now, kinda
| strange
| MattyMc wrote:
| > The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made
| decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI.
|
| Does anyone know what decisions he's referring to?
| paxys wrote:
| Ending affirmative action, I assume
| jdminhbg wrote:
| SFFA v Harvard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair
| _Admissions_v...) outlawed affirmative action in public
| institutions, but I think most legal observers assume that if
| someone brings a case against the same thing in private
| institutions to the Supreme Court, they'll outlaw it there too.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| Also, 2020 California Proposition 16 failed. It would have
| overturned a 1996 proposition that similarly banned
| affirmative action in the state.
| mips_avatar wrote:
| My experience with DEI at Microsoft was that the true believers
| really had their hearts in the right place. Almost all of the
| negative consequences I saw, came from people who saw DEI as a
| way to get ahead. I think the biggest problem with DEI
| initiatives is how much they seem to only benefit cynical people.
| hyperdunc wrote:
| This is a pattern we see again and again. The true believers
| are fools because they don't anticipate how the implementation
| of their doctrine will be gamed.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business,
| and eventually degenerates into a racket."
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >true believers really had their hearts in the right place
|
| it is usually the position of the brains of the true believers
| that is questionable. Road to hell is paved with good
| intentions and so on.
| Eumenes wrote:
| > Sunsetting supplier diversity efforts
|
| Why the hell would a company pick vendors based on the sexuality
| or skin color of the owner or whatever?
| popcalc wrote:
| The US Government is required to do this.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Its wrong!
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Many companies explicitly and publicly state these policies.
| The government does this too. It's explicitly discriminatory
| and should be illegal. For private companies it is illegal.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| DEI, in my experience, was always getting hires from special
| programs (like black women coding bootcamps) and having them
| pushed as junior in your team, no choice about that. If you were
| their line manager, the responsibility of them succeeding was
| ultimately your. I'll let you imagine how much it helped the
| cause.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Musk buying Twitter had a profound effect on the discourse. I
| don't think this happens without him buying it. I don't think
| Trump wins without it. People can speak freely and it's just
| obvious some of these sacred cows were unpopular and only in
| place due to pressure. Overton window has shifted big time.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Except you can't say anyone is cisgender, so not that freely.
| antics wrote:
| 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_. That means you have to choose probably 1 cause
| among the many worthy causes, and then invest in it _instead of_
| the others. You can 't do everything. 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. I am not saying that land
| acknowledgements and sports teams changing their names from
| racial slurs are negative developments, but these things are not
| even in my list of top 100 things to get done.
|
| We all want to help, but to have an impact you _must_ have
| courage to say no to the vast majority of social issues you could
| care about, and then commit deeply to the ones you decide to work
| on. Do not be a tourist. I don 't expect everyone to get involved
| in Indian affairs, but I do expect you to be honest with me about
| whether you really care. Don't play house or go through motions
| to make yourself feel better.
|
| When you do commit to some issue, understand that the biggest
| contributions you can make are virtually always not be marketable
| or popular--if they are, you take that as a sign that you need to
| evaluate whether they really are impactful. Have the courage to
| make an assessment about what will actually have an impact on the
| things you care about, and then follow through with them.
|
| To the anti-DEI crowd: focus on what you can build together
| instead of fighting on ideological lines. The way out for many
| minority communities in America is substantial economic
| development. In my own communities, I have seen economic
| development that has given people the ability to own their own
| destiny. It has changed the conversation from a zero sum game to
| one where shared interests makes compromise possible. If you want
| to succeed you need to understand that your fate is shared with
| those around you. In-fighting between us is going to make us less
| competitive on the world stage, which hurts all of us.
| algebra-pretext wrote:
| > "Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas,
| nor for what is in men's minds. The people fight and accept the
| sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material
| advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from
| progress, and for the better future of their children. National
| liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction
| of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of
| any significance unless they can be translated into a real
| improvement of living conditions." - Amilcar Cabral
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| >to have an impact you must have courage to say no to the vast
| majority of social issues you could care about, and then commit
| deeply to the ones you decide to work on.
|
| I strongly agree, but sadly I think what you're saying here is
| probably almost incomprehensible to a broad swathe of middle-
| class white Americans, to whom being seen to be outwardly
| supportive of every DEI-ish cause has essentially become
| something like personal hygiene -- a thing you do perfunctorily
| and without thinking. It's just "what you do", "what a
| civilised person does", etc.
|
| I'd be interested to hear more about what you have seen work
| and not work for economic development in these communities.
| antics wrote:
| In our area, it is mostly resorts and casinos. Economic
| development gives everyone in the area jobs and
| opportunities. This has changed the picture from "Indians
| begging the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and local
| government for resources" to "we have a robust economic
| engine which is a critical part of the greater surrounding
| community, and which we'd mostly all like to succeed, but
| need to work through details on." It's not perfect and
| there's still conflict but it's much easier to work together
| in the latter situation.
| getnormality wrote:
| Thank you for this wonderful message. As a fellow American, I
| can see you have our common interests at heart, as well as
| those of your tribe. That is a model for all of us.
| antics wrote:
| Thank you for the response, I am very glad to hear that came
| through. I think these discussions tend to be fundamentally
| pessimistic towards the future and I really don't think they
| need to be. We control our destiny, and we can make it
| whatever we wish.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > To the anti-DEI crowd: focus on what you can build together
|
| The problem with DEI-as-implemented is that it often not only
| contains _overt_ discrimination against a group (based on a
| protected class), but also prohibits any criticism of this.
| When someone is being discriminated against, not subtly or
| silently but explicitly, intentionally and overtly, and then
| punished for daring to complain about it, that leads to a lot
| of resentment (both by the people directly affected and by
| other members of the same class that observe both the
| discrimination and the silencing).
|
| I'd say that resentment is justified; unfortunately, I suspect
| the backlash will primarily hit the people that the DEI
| policies were supposed to help, rather than the perpetrators of
| the discrimination.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > that leads to a lot of resentment (both by the people
| directly affected and by other members of the same class that
| observe both the discrimination and the silencing).
|
| Agreed. This is the fundamental flaw of a lot of social
| theories borne out of academia when they land in the real
| world. They thrive in an academic world where hierarchy is
| bought into by students eagerly and are transplanted into a
| world where people must accept hierarchy to survive.
|
| > I'd say that resentment is justified
|
| Resentment never makes anything better, no matter how
| justified. Unfortunately.
| teitoklien wrote:
| That resentment drove people to vote for powers that forced
| FB and other bigtech to reduce the discriminations that
| were creating those resentments
|
| I'd say it did make things better.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| It wasn't the driving force of that at all, but I'll
| rephrase if you want to be pedantic. Resentment is rarely
| ever only channeled in good ways
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Ah yes I remember all the polls saying "Meta's hiring
| policies" were in the top 1,303,886 issues voters cared
| about
|
| That might've drove a few people to donate huge sums of
| money to information campaigns that fomented hatred,
| division, and distrust among voters, but no: American
| voters were not voting on big tech DEI policies.
|
| Feel free to post evidence otherwise.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/11/there-
| are-a-...
|
| _White voters point to conversations about justice - for
| racial minorities, for the children of immigrants, for
| women worried about losing their reproductive rights, for
| transgender teenagers - and question why nobody ever
| talks about justice for them._
|
| _Few expect Trump to fix everything or believe him when
| he says he will. What they do believe is that the system
| is broken and corrupt, just as Trump says it is, and that
| a candidate who promises to tear it down and start again
| might just be on to something._
|
| I think this goes in this direction. People don't care
| about "Meta's hiring policies" but they care about
| "wokeness", and news articles about the former lead to a
| perception that society has way too much of the latter
| and that it's a bad thing.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| DEI was a major Republican talking point. This is a thing
| well beyond Big Tech, like in other industries and in
| college admissions.
| antics wrote:
| I totally get it. A lot of our wounds are still open, too.
| I'm not here to tell people how to feel, I'm just advocating
| for deciding what is _actually_ important to you and focusing
| all your attention on it until it is resolved. I happen to
| think that citizens of the US are worth more to each other as
| sometimes-conflicting allies than as complete adversaries,
| but that is for everyone to decide on their own.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > lack of educational resources
|
| Could you please explain this part? I am not sure how you meant
| it. Is the main problem that the resources are not in the
| language of your tribe? Or is that a lack of educational
| resources regardless of language (e.g. simply not enough
| textbooks to give to each child)? What kind of educational
| resources do you wish you had?
| sfifs wrote:
| Interesting comment... I keep getting surprised by implicit
| first world assumptions on HN.
|
| I'm not the OP but you could consider hypothetically as an
| example, would great teachers largely choose to settle in
| PNW?
| macrocosmos wrote:
| Yes they would. It's a beautiful part of the country. And I
| know great teachers that live there.
| antics wrote:
| Unfortunately, our reservation is in central Oregon,
| which is less desirable. Even if we were not forced out
| of the ancestral homeland (what is now called the
| Columbia River Gorge), I'm not sure that would have been
| better. Although pretty, it is very out of the way, and
| people do not know that it is in the same class as the
| Yangtze (say).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| in the US, schools in poor counties have less resources and
| less high quality teachers, and the children have much less
| of an education-focused environment in which they can
| flourish because of the parent's lack of resources
|
| raise the economic level of the community, and education
| rises with it
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Abbott districts in New Jersey are an obvious counterpoint
| to this. They are funded at levels equal to if not greater
| than the wealthiest districts in the state, despite being
| in some of the poorest parts of the state. I spite of this,
| over the _four decades_ that Abbott districts have been in
| place, educational attainment gaps between them and the
| rest of the state have actually widened.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| it's not just about the funding to the schools; it's
| about the economic situation of the parents and their
| ability to provide conditions where their children can
| thrive academically
|
| that's why I said the best way to improve the education
| is to improve the economic conditions of the community
| visarga wrote:
| You make this to be a financial problem, but I think
| actually it is a cultural problem. Maybe lack of row models
| or not valuing education sufficiently. Having too much
| money can be a hinderance to educational motivation too.
| antics wrote:
| Great questions. The kids mostly speak English as first
| language, and the schools are in English. With the exception
| of one huge twist, the schools have many educational
| difficulties you'll find in rural America generally--it's
| hard to get money for materials and curriculum, hard to
| recruit good teachers, hard to get students connected to
| people with practical advice/guidance, hard to get connected
| to opportunities, hard to reach escape velocity, and so on.
|
| So, what's the twist? Tribal schools tend to be administrated
| by the federal government which makes problems extremely slow
| and hard to address. With some asterisks, the local
| elementary school was basically provisioned as a consequence
| of a federal treaty with the US Senate, and is/was mostly
| administered by a the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which
| rolls up into a federal department that until 2020ish, had
| never been run by a native person. All of these things make
| it very tricky to work with.
|
| In spite of that, believe it or not, this is a massive
| improvement: until relatively recently, the school was a
| mandatory boarding trade school meant to teach kids to be
| (basically) English-only maids. This lead to a substantial
| percentage of the population being either illiterate or semi-
| literate, with no meaningful work experience, and with very
| very few opportunities that were not menial work. That
| inertia is extremely challenging to overcome, and the most
| natural place to try is the education system, which generally
| is simply not up to it.
|
| I am stating these as a neutral facts on purpose. Regardless
| of how we got here, the hand is ours to play. Some of us got
| out and whether we succeed in the next generation depends on
| whether we can mobilize the community to productively take
| advantage of the resources we do have. This is why it's
| painful to me to hear about, _e.g._ , land acknowledgements.
| If you have seen this pain firsthand I just do not see how
| that can be the #1 policy objective.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| Land acknowledgements are easy. They're not a policy
| objective. Most DEI stuff, it's the result of being in a
| room where you're trying to get some real change
| accomplished and you just give up with the decisionmakers
| and say "OK, whatever, do nothing about this problem, but
| could you at least admit that the boarding schools were
| bad?" And they agree because it gets them out of the
| conversation. And no, it's not going to solve everything,
| it might not even solve anything, but it's nice to at least
| have some agreement on things that we definitely shouldn't
| do again, even if we have no idea how to fix the damage.
| Avicebron wrote:
| > "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.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Well, in the non-DEI world, we'll soon find out if the reason
| this happens was solely because of policies or if low
| educational attainment seeps into one's college, ones
| preparedness for a job, one's ability to get a job, etc.
| antics wrote:
| Well, just one data point for you (YMMV), but in "DEI"
| contexts I've been a part of, class diversity did actually
| come up somewhat regularly. I would not say corp diversity
| efforts I saw were all that successful in staffing that
| demographic--but they also weren't that successful in
| staffing minorities either. Mostly I think this reflects a
| consistent disconnect between what people wanted corp
| diversity efforts to be, and what they really were.
|
| With all that said I do have a story of my own like this. In
| 2013 or so I wrote some stuff about spam detection and a
| Twitter engineer reached out about a job. I was an outgoing
| new grad from the University of Utah. When I got through with
| the loop the recruiter said, "How did you get here, we don't
| get many candidates from Utah." I still wonder what they
| wanted me to think when I heard that. What I actually felt
| was deeply out of place and uncomfortable. And it has
| affected every hiring process I've been apart of since.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| but you do see the problem here. Its not the "DEI targets"
| that are at fault, its the systematic roll back of any
| protection for any poor community.
|
| The same people that are saying "a new way forward" or "make
| america great again" failed to put any money to help. Your
| community doesn't produce anything that those funding
| congress care about, means that you get nothing.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I don't have to be invested in a cause to know that diversity
| in problem solving can be a key component to success hence
| global technology companies, or that promoting the ideas of
| equity and inclusion are things most humans can benefit from.
| DEI is not about change or solving a particular problem, it's
| about awareness of perspective and seeking to understand
| others.
| antics wrote:
| To be clear I am not arguing for or against working with a
| bunch of people from totally different backgrounds,
| demographics, _etc_. I am arguing that, because we can 't do
| _everything_ we should decide what really matters to us,
| commit to it in the long term, and invest in it to the
| exclusion of the many other completely worthy causes. I know
| it _sounds_ obvious, but at least for the communities I
| belong to, the industry committed shallowly and as a result
| accomplished very little.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| It sounds like you're confusing affirmative action with
| DEI. A broader perspective benefits everyone. Different
| lived experiences contribute to a broader perspective. It's
| not about checking boxes or filling quotas and it's not
| specific to any particular group.
| pepinator wrote:
| This is such a superficial take.
| cbeach wrote:
| > At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be
| achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in
| knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives,
| and experiences.
|
| At last, a corporation acknowledges it's _cognitive_ diversity
| that matters.
|
| Most other forms of diversity are superficial, inherent human
| characterstics that are already equal under law, and make no
| difference to people's ability to use technology.
|
| I'm so relieved to see "DEI" die. With two young boys who are
| white, heterosexual and normal in every way, I found it
| disturbing to know they'd be discriminated against in the
| workplace.
|
| I knew this discrimination existed because I've been a hiring
| manager and had HR explicitly tell me I needed to focus on hiring
| female technologist.
|
| Luckily I left that job and am now at a smaller company that
| doesn't discriminate on gender)
|
| However, most large corporates I've worked at have pushed the DEI
| agenda (with the 'E' standing for "equity" as opposed to the more
| ethical "equality").
|
| There may have been historic discrimination against women and
| other minorities, but I have NEVER witnessed any such
| discrimination in the present day.
|
| We must avoid replacing one form of immoral discrimination with
| another form of immoral discrimination.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Are you serious that you've never witnessed any discrimination
| against women or minorities?
| cbeach wrote:
| I have witnessed:
|
| * co-workers being extremely wary of offending them in any
| way
|
| * superiors telling me to hire them
|
| * corporate literature that focuses on promoting their
| interests
|
| * corporate networks that grant them additional networking
| and social opportunities
|
| I have worked at a hedge fund, market data company, American
| and Australian investment banks and a travel startup.
|
| I have NEVER witnessed racism or sexism in the workplace. If
| I ever did, I would find it shocking and very weird.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Maybe try talking to this guy:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23669188
|
| If you're not witnessing it then that's only because you're
| not noticing it, unless you think a large chunk of the
| population is just a bunch of liars.
|
| Also you need to explain why there is a huge racial
| imbalance in elite jobs.
|
| Also you need to explain literal blinded studies
| demonstrating racism in callbacks based on resumes.
|
| None of it excuses reverse discrimination but denying it is
| happening is just not based in reality.
| cbeach wrote:
| > you need to explain why there is a huge racial
| imbalance in elite jobs.
|
| Well, that's easily explained by demographic history.
|
| Here in the UK, we only had mass immigration from the
| Middle East and Africa within the last couple of
| generations, and many of the people who came were
| emmigrating from countries with low rates of literacy.
|
| We wouldn't expect white-collar roles to match the
| demographic makeup of the population in tight lock-step.
| We cannot ignore the differences in economic and
| educational background, and the time it takes to attain
| elite high responsibility jobs in terms of career tenure.
|
| Luckily, children of ethnic minority immigrants are
| performing well in the UK school system, so hopefully
| over a generation or two we should naturally see the
| trend improve. But while our population is expanding at
| approx 900K per year, with many from low-income countries
| with poor education systems, we will continue to see
| demographic imbalances in elite roles.
|
| > you need to explain literal blinded studies
| demonstrating racism in callbacks based on resumes.
|
| I don't discount that racism exists. I simply pointed out
| that the only racism and sexism I've experienced in the
| workplace has been _against_ white people, as opposed to
| _perpetrated by_ white people.
|
| DEI, by lowering the bar for certain genders and races,
| is actually promoting prejudice against those groups. It
| sends the message that these people need a leg up.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| How would you experience racism and sexism in the
| workplace that is not targeted at you?
| bollocksie wrote:
| > Also you need to explain why there is a huge racial
| imbalance in elite jobs.
|
| For the same reason there is a huge racial imbalance in
| crime rates.
| jyounker wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Because people in power decide to keep
| wealth for themselves and people who look like
| themselves, and because when minorities start to gain
| power, then the majority crushes them.
| chimen wrote:
| There are many countries where the white man (I know
| you're burning to write patriarchy) is in absolute
| minority and doing very well, without being in the top
| for crime rates. There is enough wealth "kept for
| themselves" with blacks also, this is just nonsense, you
| people love to point fingers since there is no other
| excuse but the white male for everything you have to
| experience. "People in power", what a lame argument.
| blindriver wrote:
| In any company of a large size, you will always get bad
| people. But many companies in tech have a lot of good people
| that don't discriminate. I worked at Uber and it was one of
| the most progressive companies I've seen. Yes, Susan Fowler's
| experience was real and disgusting and should never have
| happened. But I know a dozen females personally that said
| that working at Uber was their best job ever and they never
| felt discriminated against ever.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| To the degree that I've seen non-URM males get discriminated
| against? Not even remotely. Here's some discrimination I've
| witnessed.
|
| * I've worked at companies where the first thing we did was
| mark resumes by the candidate's demographics. Two stars for
| "double diverse" URM women (recruiters' words, not mine), one
| star for URM males and non-URM women, and "ND" for Asian
| Males. "Negative diversity".
|
| * I worked at a company that cordoned off a segment of
| headcount and made it only available to women and URM
| candidates.
|
| * I worked at companies that docked people's pay if they
| didn't hit a diversity quota. Remember a "bonus" is just
| another word for a penalty. If I have $X bonus conditional on
| reaching Y% women that's the same as a penalty if you don't
| hit the quota.
|
| I'm sure women have had co-workers assume they weren't
| developers, or have meetings where they were talked over,
| etc. But not once have I witnessed a company deliberately try
| to set up a policy to disadvantage a woman or URM candidate.
| Whereas for non-URM men, it has been the norm rather than the
| exception.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > two young boys who are white, heterosexual and normal in
| every way, I found it disturbing to know they'd be
| discriminated against in the workplace.
|
| At least they will always feel welcome in their own country. I
| had that feeling about 10 years ago and I miss it.
| cbeach wrote:
| I don't think that's true. I've lost count of the number of
| times I've heard "pale, male and stale" as a racist, sexist,
| ageist slur in the UK - against its own native population.
| energy123 wrote:
| Internet Research Agency bots on social media
| starchild3001 wrote:
| yes, it turned out to be a scam to conflate "diversity in
| thought" with skin color or gender. The term "diversity" became
| too toxic. The term "equity" was morally dubious / wrong to
| begin with. Inclusivity is still respectable. So, in the end,
| DEI must die... Meta is right to start deemphasizing it.
|
| On a semi-related note, I believe they should still moderate
| lies and mythologies on their platform. 2016 was a horrible
| time to be a facebook user. We don't want to go back to those
| days where facebook is toxic mix of clicky lies, untruths and
| manipulation.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > There may have been historic discrimination against women and
| other minorities, but I have NEVER witnessed any such
| discrimination in the present day.
|
| You are posting at the same time as Meta literally saying that
| it's okay to sling slurs at specific minorities and them only.
| Where multiple states in the US are banning abortion and local
| state governments are trying to ban gay marriage. Where the US
| president is outright threatening to strip people of
| citizenship so they can be deported.
|
| Even from personal experience as a white straight man I have
| had people fire slurs at me or try to stop me from entering the
| male restroom because I have long hair and they assume long
| hair means I'm either gay or transgender.
| frob wrote:
| I remember meeting Maxine Williams on my first day at Facebook.
| She gave a strong introductory address that left me with a deep
| appreciation of the value of diversity not just as a moral good,
| but as a good business decision. Seeing her work denigrated and
| thrown under the bus to appease the bigotry of Trump, Elon, and
| their odious ilk is a gut blow.
|
| We are in for some dark times.
| random_i wrote:
| 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 would have had a more
| uniform distribution (male, white/asian, younger, west coast)
| curtisblaine wrote:
| How did you get there? Did you have to make a conscious choice,
| for minority candidates, to prefer them to majority candidates?
| mruniverse wrote:
| 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.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| > I think it's always conscious one way or the other. With
| or without DEI.
|
| Isn't the central point of DEI that whites prefer whites
| due to an _unconscious_ bias?
|
| Then, on one hand you have a very conscious decision to
| hire a minority just because he or she is a minority. On
| the other hand, you have an unconscious bias that might or
| might not be there but you can't really measure it by
| definition because it's unconscious. It's not the same.
| mruniverse wrote:
| I think it's more unsaid than unconscious. But putting
| that aside, if DEI is purposeful and deliberate while the
| "natural state" of things is not (unconscious bias), is
| that how we should leave it?
|
| Should businesses have the freedom to exclude if it's
| unconscious?
| curtisblaine wrote:
| The problem with unconscious bias is that it's
| unobservable by definition: it might be there, it might
| not be there and if it's there it might be imperceptible
| or very strong; you don't know because it's unconscious.
| It might even be not existing, and the gaps in hiring
| explained by the fact that minorities have less access to
| higher education for economic reasons. Yet the response
| to this is always conscious.
| mruniverse wrote:
| I think people can have unconscious bias.
|
| But in hiring, I think it's mostly conscious. What I mean
| is that I think people will see a long Indian name they
| can't pronounce and skip that resume or put it off until
| later. That's conscious. They'll see someone who looks
| like themselves and feel more comfortable talking to
| them. That's conscious. Etc.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| If it was so simple, we wouldn't need equality of
| outcome. We would just need to tell people to pay more
| attention. The whole point of dei is that, since bias is
| unconscious and impossible to eliminate, we should err on
| the other side.
| mruniverse wrote:
| It might not be simple. It could be very hard, very
| expensive. Is it worth doing? Does it have value?
|
| Would it be so bad if most of the CEOs are white men? All
| the execs are white men?
|
| But I don't want to pick on white men. Let's say would it
| be so bad to let the incumbents call the shots. Let the
| incumbents hire only who they want to hire.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| > Should businesses have the freedom to exclude if it's
| unconscious?
|
| Business should have the freedom to not hire for any
| reason. They shouldn't be forced to enter a business
| relationship they're not fully convinced of.
| mruniverse wrote:
| Should business have freedoms that are good for business
| but bad for society?
|
| Isn't the whole reason for businesses in the first place
| is that they improve society? They are an efficient way
| to allocate resources for the good of everyone involved.
| It runs by rules that we set. And we tweak those rules.
| And it seems DEI may be one of those rules that aren't
| good and we can change it.
|
| But the end goal shouldn't be defined as anything that is
| good for business is good for society.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| Introducing unfair bias to contrast perceived bias that
| might or not might be there and might have or not have
| the provided explanation is not good for society, no.
| mruniverse wrote:
| What if we don't assume any bias and just look at
| outcome?
|
| We stipulate that bias should play no part in decision
| making. Only the outcome should matter. If the outcome
| doesn't match racial balance of the society we make it
| so.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| > What if we don't assume any bias and just look at
| outcome?
|
| That's a great way to distribute work ignoring
| differences in scholarization. Normally ends up in a lot
| of resentment.
| arghnoname wrote:
| 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 around more women, but I've never known
| if being outside that kind of monoculture actually is better
| for the business or not.
| mruniverse wrote:
| 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?
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| It's a business. The business perspective is what's
| relevant.
| mruniverse wrote:
| The purpose of our state is to provide for its citizens.
| So we decided to use a market economy because it seems
| the most efficient way to do that. But we make up the
| rules that it runs by and we can change the rules as we
| see fit.
|
| So it seems now we are saying DEI is not a good rule. Can
| we make a better rule or is the goal of that rule not
| good?
| brap wrote:
| >It took a _lot_ of work
|
| A lot of work rejecting talented candidates of the wrong color?
| encoderer wrote:
| As an elder millennial I have to cheer.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| Why?
| encoderer wrote:
| Feels great when a fever breaks.
| parasense wrote:
| From the linked Article:
|
| > Why it matters: The move is a strong signal to Meta employees
| that the company's push to make inroads with the incoming Trump
| administration isn't just posturing, but an ethos shift that will
| impact its business practices.
|
| I would say the shift in policy is to avoid law suites, as the
| Federal Courts have held DEI programs are sometimes
| discriminatory... especially the equity parts. Diversity and
| Inclusion are important parts of existing civil rights laws, so
| those aspects of DEI programs are not very important except to
| actually ensure ethical hiring practices are in fact practiced
| (E.G. not being racist or sexist when hiring). But practicing
| equity, or sometimes called other things... like affirmative
| action, etc... are illegal (they are sometimes blatantly sexist
| or racist). I've been on technical teams blessed by the DEI
| hiring program, and it was alright... We got more ladies, and we
| hired people (who earned less) in other time zones around the
| world. It got weird, for a lot of weird reasons I won't go into,
| but the main point is the team stopped vibing like before, and
| that's fine to some extent but this was a disconcordant vibe, not
| a minor offbeat member of the band, but a bunch of folks playing
| their own tune...
| abeppu wrote:
| So setting aside the details of DEI-specific issues, I find it
| really ironic that the right really wants to claim that
| government shouldn't be telling people how to run their
| businesses through regulation, but businesses trying to improve
| relationships with the incoming administration are changing how
| they do business to match Trump's preferences. I.e. three-letter
| agencies regulating their areas is governmental dangerous
| overreach but Trump expressing a view and having companies
| restructure themselves to meet his whims to curry favor isn't a
| concern.
| fullshark wrote:
| In politics no one believes in anything except power (hard and
| soft). Deregulate (by selectively removing regulations to help
| certain industries) or regulate (to selectively add regulations
| to help certain industries) it's all the same game.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Why would any California based company take a chance on being
| sued by the California attorney general's office in such a way?
| Meta is the perfect target to pick for fighting the overreach of
| a Trumpian department of Justice and GQP congress set on
| reversing years of social progress
| coliveira wrote:
| Whatever they were doing at DEI was certainly not working. I
| worked at a major FAANG and rarely saw any black person, and when
| it happened it was from another country. So I can only conclude
| that it was really only a farcical display for outsiders.
| justinl33 wrote:
| It's giving _Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard_
| masto wrote:
| I'm fortunate enough to have worked for Google during a period of
| time when Big Tech started to gain at least a modicum of self-
| awareness of its toxic culture and history of excesses and
| indiscretions. I arrived on the scene slightly late to witness
| the worst of it, but the stories were actively circulating, and
| the structure was very much still present. SRE teams had bars
| next to their desks, and office parties ended with ambulances.
| One of the first things I had to deal with as a new manager was a
| sexual harassment concern (which I was terribly unprepared to
| handle and it showed). And if you looked around the office, you
| saw a lot of people who looked a hell of a lot like me.
|
| But as I said, there was some awareness creeping in. Along with
| that, the folks in charge had the courage and empowerment to do
| something about it. And when I say the folks in charge, I don't
| mean the CEO. This was a company that was still running on a sort
| of quasi-anarchy of conscientious under-management: my first
| impression in 2013 was that there was no clear power structure,
| but everyone was trying to do the right thing and it somehow
| worked out. And most importantly, people could speak up if
| something didn't seem right.
|
| There are many examples, but to pick one, I remember my first
| trip to Dublin and being invited to join their local SRE
| managers' meeting. I watched someone bring up the topic of
| alcohol being omnipresently displayed around the office and how
| it was, at a bare minimum, not a good look. There followed a
| thoughtful and reasoned discussion that concluded with the
| decision to put it away. Not a ban on fun, but a firm policy
| that, among others to follow, helped SRE culture mature into
| something more appropriate for a workplace, while maintaining the
| essential feeling of camaraderie and mutual support.
|
| There were also top-down initiatives with varying degrees of
| success. When an executive puts something into OKRs, there's a
| good chance that by the time it reaches 13 levels down the org
| chart, it has turned into your manager demanding that you cut the
| ends off of 4.5% more roasts by the end of Q3 so they can show
| leadership on their promo packet. Nevertheless, there were a lot
| of good ideas, and a lot of good things were implemented. Through
| my job, I had access to training on topics like privilege and
| implicit bias that I believe have had a lasting positive impact
| on me as a person and as a leader. I also had access to people
| who thought about and fought about these things on a far deeper
| level than I will ever be able to, and I am grateful if even a
| sliver of their courage rubbed off on me.
|
| It wasn't just a song and dance. At least down near the bottom,
| we cared, and we tried very hard to make things better. We failed
| a lot of the time as well, in the sense that those top-down
| targets that were set were rarely achieved, which I suspect is at
| least part of the reason for dropping them. They've tried nothing
| and they're out of ideas.
|
| What we're seeing now is just more of the slide in the wrong
| direction that, unfortunately, started a while ago. Google in the
| mid-2010s was a place where people spoke up, to a fault. Yes,
| they complained about the candy dispensers running low or not
| having a puppy room, but they also told a senior vice president
| that he had been saying "you guys" a lot and do you know what
| happened? He thanked them, apologized, and corrected himself.
| Google in the 2020s is a place where you keep your mouth shut,
| sit down, and do what you're told. I don't know what it's like
| inside Meta, but I'm not surprised at this turn, because they're
| basically all following the same playbook, handed to them by
| Elon.
|
| I'm embarrassed that I've hesitated to speak my mind because I am
| looking for a job and what if someone reads this on my profile
| and decides I'm not a team player? Well, I'll say it clearly: I
| am on team try to be a good person and do the right thing and I
| am very much a team player. I believe that encouraging hate, and
| dropping DEI goals is wrong. And if that makes me not a good fit
| for your organization, I think we're on the same page.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| James Damore spoke up then. What did Google then do to him?
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| > they also told a senior vice president that he had been
| saying "you guys" a lot and do you know what happened? He
| thanked them, apologized, and corrected himself.
|
| And you look back on this as a nostalgic memory? Something
| useful and productive?
| wiseowise wrote:
| More than 10 years and the only major things are nebulous
| sexual harassment concern (without any details, of course),
| booze and "guys". Remarkable achievement for DEI crowd.
|
| What a sad story, you can't say "courage", "allyship" anymore
| and get a promotion!
| masto wrote:
| If I did a service here by pulling a few cockroaches out into
| the open, the comment was worth it.
| cryptozeus wrote:
| Good riddance!
| qwe----3 wrote:
| No more discrimination! Choosing supplies based on race had to be
| illigal.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| 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.
| thunder-blue-3 wrote:
| I'm not going to review the above, as I've had to much of DEI
| corp talk over the past decade. Given that, it's likely no
| surprise that I'm glad to see it phased out. Throughout my
| experience, I witnessed underqualified engineers navigating FAANG
| companies due to DEI initiatives, accumulating significant wealth
| despite contributing little to released projects. I believe its
| departure is overdue.
| mglikesbikes wrote:
| Jesus.
| fixnord1 wrote:
| DEI programs typically implemented in US companies are considered
| constitutionally illegal in other parts of the world, such as in
| France. Giving preferential treatment based on protected
| characteristics is not allowed in France, for ex. preferring a
| female hire over male, to meet female quotas.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| That's unfortunately not true, it's actually the opposite. The
| EU is bringing in legally mandatory gender quotas for corporate
| boards right now, and some European countries have had such
| rules already at the national level.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/docume...
|
| The US does in fact ban discrimination like that, but the rules
| weren't enforced (or rather they were enforced in one direction
| only). The EU has simply changed the rules.
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| Parent post was talking about employment. Members of the
| board of directors are not employees. Management is also
| typically not covered by most employee protections in EU
| countries.
| slavik81 wrote:
| The GP is still generally correct. In Canada, there are now
| some job postings that are only open to candidates of the
| appropriate race, gender or sexual orientation. These job
| postings would be illegal in the United States, but are
| allowed in Canada as long as the discrimination is intended
| to correct for historical injustice.
| cryptonector wrote:
| In the U.S. racial discrimination is only prohibited for the
| State governments (see the 14th Amendment):
|
| | No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
| the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
| [...]
|
| and then the courts have interpreted this to mean that the
| Federal government does have the right to "make or enforce any
| law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
| citizens of the United States". I.e., the Federal government
| may discriminate on the basis of race (as one example of that
| which is forbidden to the States), but only subject to
| statutory authorization (i.e., a bill passed by Congress which
| then becomes law).
|
| This is because in the aftermath of the Civil War the Radical
| Republicans in the North expected they'd have to force some
| discrimination against {White, Democrat} Southerners / for
| Black Southerners as part of Reconstruction. But statutory
| authorization for racial discrimination is still required, and
| by and large there is not much such statutory authorization
| left on the books. That means that almost every DEI program in
| the U.S. that uses racial discrimination is suspect if not
| outright illegal. With an incoming DoJ that's likely going to
| be sympathetic to that view, suddenly all these DEI programs
| have become a major liability.
| mlepath wrote:
| I worked at Meta, I am not sure the hiring was ever "diverse".
|
| DEI always seemed like an activity they did for show. This
| changes nothing honestly.
| rvz wrote:
| Good. It always has been a ZIRP scam.
| arghandugh wrote:
| Zuckerberg single-handedly pulling the control rods out of a
| platform with three billion users may go down as the most
| consequential, catastrophic decision in human events.
|
| The only good billionaire is a former billionaire.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Plenty of popes have made far more consequential decisions.
| pharos92 wrote:
| DEI was always inherently racist and discriminatory.
| nsoonhui wrote:
| I'm a Chinese Malaysian, and I look at the DEI debacles in the US
| with a mixture of amusement and sadness.
|
| In Malaysia, we have something similar to DEI that stretches back
| to 1970. We call it the New Economic Policy (NEP), which aims to
| "restructure society" to achieve a more equitable distribution of
| wealth and opportunities across different ethnic groups. The
| explicit aim of the NEP is to increase the participation of
| Bumiputera (the "natives") in the economy, sometimes at the
| expense of the non-natives, the Chinese and Indians. The key
| target was to achieve 30% Bumiputera equity ownership of
| Malaysia's domestic corporations.
|
| 30% only? Bumiputeras constitute a much larger population
| percentage than that, even at that time. Furthermore, there was
| an expiry date attached to the policy: 20 years. So, for a
| Chinese person, enduring slight injustice for 20 years so that
| our friends can catch up with us--isn't that a good thing? Life
| is about give and take, right?
|
| Except that even after 20 years--in fact, after more than 50
| years--in the eyes of politicians and policymakers, the objective
| of the NEP hasn't yet been accomplished, and it looks like it
| will continue indefinitely. That's right: despite the fact that
| all major companies require Bumiputera participation (never mind
| that it's a gambling conglomerate, which is supposed to remain
| forbidden (Haram) to Muslim Bumiputeras), and despite the fact
| that Bumiputeras now monopolize public sector posts, public
| university quotas, and administrative/teaching positions, and
| pretty much dominate every aspect of government institutions (the
| police, army, judiciary, and all are basically Bumiputera-
| dominated), the NEP must still continue, because it hasn't yet
| accomplished its goal.
|
| It will never accomplish its goal.
|
| Meanwhile, the side effects of the NEP are palpable. It's common
| agreement that Malaysia is lagging behind, especially when
| compared to our neighbor, Singapore. In 1970, it was 1 SGD vs. 1
| RM, and now... it's 1 SGD vs. 3.3 RM. See how much our currency
| has declined compared to our neighbor. It's no secret that
| Singapore gladly welcomes Malaysian Chinese "refugees" who escape
| to that little island to avoid discrimination and frequent hate
| speech.
|
| Affirmative actions are a double-edged sword. They come at the
| expense of sacrificing market efficiency and some degree of
| fairness. And it's not at all clear that anyone can wield them
| well. I'm sure that the NEP's creators did have noble intentions
| and did try to minimize the side effects, but you can see where
| it's gotten them.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Coming from a very homogenous country, all these diversity
| discussions are interesting to say the least
| tjpnz wrote:
| How do we get more Hispanic LGBTQ members? Actual conversation
| I've overhead in Japan of all places.
| self_awareness wrote:
| > Coming from a very homogenous country, all these diversity
| discussions are > interesting to say the least
|
| After reading your username, the context of your comment
| changes a little bit
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| JSON, no Javascript:
|
| https://www.axios.com/api/axios-web/get-story/by-id/636ca008...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It was always a sham anyway.
|
| We now return to our regularly scheduled programming: making $$$
|
| I don't expect BigTech to care about people -- it's clear that
| they never have. BUT what makes me sick is that they pretend to
| care, pretend that they are "solving the world's problems",
| "building communities", etc. They're no better, and perhaps just
| as destructive, as WalMart.
|
| 15-20 years ago I was very excited about and supportive of these
| companies. I've grown to despise them.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| 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
| mmustapic wrote:
| 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.
| gfe23aefg wrote:
| Or maybe they're discriminating against no one now?
| mmustapic wrote:
| My man, Meta is full of middle aged white men. Do you think
| they've been discriminating the OP specifically for 10
| years?
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Asians are very significantly overrepresented. Especially
| women. Those people you mentioned are a minority.
| Zuckerberg is also from an even smaller minority
| malshe wrote:
| In Texas, effective January 2024 DEI activities by state
| universities were prohibited. Universities are still trying to
| understand the implications fully [1]. I am generally in support
| of DEI on the university campuses but there were a few unwanted
| outcomes of blind DEI pursuit. The first major bad outcome is it
| adds administrative bloat. Our universities are already admin
| heavy. DEI departments just inflated that bloat sucking up more
| resources that could be used for instruction. The other poor
| outcome was that they added a lot more paperwork in every hiring
| decision. I know of a university in northeast that had to wait
| two months to get their job ad approved by the DEI folks.
| Finally, DEI departments also added mandatory annual DEI training
| for everyone on the campus. A lot of these training modules were
| downright patronizing in most cases.
|
| [1] https://compliance.utexas.edu/sb17
| bamboozled wrote:
| I think this is all misguided honestly. There was a need for
| some of this, now because we're claiming cost the democracy the
| election we need to tear it all up. Smells fishy to me.
| lugu wrote:
| Coming from another continent, it feels the discourse in the US
| is poisoned by the word RACE. Back home, no one uses it. The best
| proxy for inequality is poverty. Make poor people richer with
| basic support like free education and health care. Tax the
| richer. That should solve the problem. If you wonder about woman,
| create support for working mum with after school program and free
| baby care. Sorry to state the obvious.
| dijit wrote:
| 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.
| rbetts wrote:
| 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...
| doom2 wrote:
| > it feels the discourse in the US is poisoned by the word
| RACE. Back home, no one uses it.
|
| I'm not sure where you're located, but as an American fan of
| European football, it seems like race is still very much an
| issue on other continents and not just as a proxy for some
| other inequality. Just in the last week, there have been at
| least two instances in the top 5 leagues of fans racially
| abusing players[1]. Maybe the US is too focused on race (I
| don't think so), but saying "no one uses it" seems like an
| indication of the opposite problem.
|
| [1] In Fulham vs Watford and Valencia vs Real Madrid
| csubj wrote:
| wow thank you, you solved all the problems. who could have
| thought it was just that simple. as you said we should just not
| think about the demographic complexities across every single
| possible issue and then tax the people who make the rules; easy
| as apple pie.
| jjulius wrote:
| I agree that OP's idea glosses over and ignores a lot of
| things, but ill-spirited sarcasm is the quickest way to get
| someone to be defensive and argumentative rather than open to
| a different viewpoint/perspective had you kindly offered one.
| csubj wrote:
| Thank you for the lecture.
| jjulius wrote:
| I genuinely hope that you have a wonderful weekend and
| that you're able to find some peace. :)
| yowayb wrote:
| I got a UC Regents Scholarship to UCSD bc my parents are
| southeast Asian. My grades and SAT score were lower than my
| Jewish best friend's grades and scores. He did not get a
| scholarship. I promptly lost my scholarship after failing Physics
| 2A because I skipped the final to make out with a girl. I didn't
| think twice about what I squandered until I had to get a job and
| ask my parents for money to pay for the next quarter.
| userbinator wrote:
| I don't care whether who made the products I use is "diverse". I
| care about their quality, which has been sacrificed at the altar
| of DEI for far too long. Not surprising to see this happen once
| the population realised the truth. Finally a slow return to
| sanity.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Genuinely curious, which product's quality has been sacrificed
| at the altar of DEI? Could you name some?
| userbinator wrote:
| Just about every widely used software. Especially from Big
| Tech.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Care to provide any names, and some examples of how they
| were affected?
| riwsky wrote:
| The whole zero-sum, straw man depiction of DEI initiatives is
| intellectually lazy, even if we ignore the ideology. When I've
| put effort into it, it's looked like: * blinding
| candidate names from take-home or resume reviews * writing
| structured interview rubrics * defining concrete soft
| skills and behaviors we're looking for, instead of "culture fit"
|
| In a world without, say, sexism, the above practices would still
| lead to better hiring decisions. It just happens to be the case
| that in our world, making your hiring process better tends to
| make it less sexist; everything that rises must converge.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| That's all good but you're talking about you. What about
| others?
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| About time.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| 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 kidding. It's frankly
| bizarre that you can have 1000+ employees and only 2-3 are over
| _40_!? I had worked in industries prior where the median age was
| > 40 and it did sincerely shock me that a publicly traded company
| would have almost 0 people in that age range.
|
| The funny part is that while I will not ever be _black_ ,
| everyone of my younger coworkers (baring serious tragedy) will be
| in the 40+ protected group. So in theory, if anyone cares at all
| about DEI in a sincere way, they should care about people who are
| 40+ because _they will be there_.
|
| So while we celebrated Ramadan with multiple company activities,
| there wasn't much respect for "I have to leave a bit early to
| pick up my teenage kid from my ex-wife's place".
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| 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."
| sethammons wrote:
| Some of my early unconscious bias interview training helped
| me realize I assumed older candidates were vastly more
| experienced, and when they were "normal," then they must not
| be very good. Logically, that is silly because everyone is at
| different levels at different times with different areas of
| interest. 28 or 55, give the same interview against the same
| rubric and let the best candidate win.
| liontwist wrote:
| I know this topic has been beaten to death, but the shallow
| symbolic form Diversity takes in practice (college recruiting
| photos) confirms it's merely political.
|
| Here are a few forms of "real diversity" I have run into that
| you will never see initiatives for at big tech, and it would
| not necessarily be taboo to publicly discriminate against them:
|
| - Number of siblings
|
| - Asian ethnic minorities (Miao, etc)
|
| - Discriminated indian castes
|
| - Parents vs childless
|
| - University degrees
|
| - American 19th century religions (JW, Mormon, 7th day
| adventists, etc)
|
| - Military experience
|
| - experience in manual labor jobs
|
| - Sunni and Shia Muslims
|
| - Russian ethnic distinctions (russkiye vs rossiyane)
|
| Obviously we can't create programs for every possible form of
| identity. But you can look at 2 asian men and say there isn't
| any diversity, when actually their life experiences couldn't be
| more different.
|
| Similarly, you can have all the skin colors in a room, but if
| they are all upper middle class, secular humanists, from the
| same handful of Universities, they aren't bringing new
| perspectives.
| gcau wrote:
| For those living in countries that don't have majority white
| people (eg asian or african countries), do they have any DEI
| programs to hire more white people and all that?
| throwaway431234 wrote:
| Was it true Meta had tampons in the men's room
| https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/meta-orders-removal-tampon...
|
| Were they ever used and or how much?
| dalton_zk wrote:
| 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.
| sidcool wrote:
| Zuck has been a laggard in taking high risk policy decisions.
| Musk, despite some bad decisions, has at least shown the spine to
| buck the trend and do what he believes in.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| What is going to happen to James Damore now? Is he still
| canceled?
| paulcole wrote:
| "I may have been early but I'm not wrong."
|
| "ITS THE SAME THING!"
| thefounder wrote:
| I hope this extends to the media/movie industry. If there is one
| reason I would have voted for Trump that would have been to stop
| the flood of DEI in movies.
|
| Couldn't watch a movie without a gay scene even if it had no
| sense in the movie. The exception became the norm.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity
| and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing
|
| The legal landscape isn't changing--it just was never what
| companies like Meta thought it was. The civil rights laws never
| embraced a distinction between racism against white people versus
| racism against non-white people. A lot of what corporate America
| did between 2020-2024 was simply illegal. All that's changed is
| now corporate counsel are now dealing up from their thrall and
| realizing they'd been giving bad advice to their clients.
| jongjong wrote:
| DEI has ruined many people's careers and lives. I'm not sure I
| can recover.
| Stephen_0xFF wrote:
| Meta, maybe Zuck specifically, always seemed liked a pandering
| company trying to follow the social meta. VR gets popular, Meta
| goes all in. Twitter "dies", Meta swoops in with Threads.
| Snapchat stories, FB stories. TikTok, FB shorts. Musk getting
| close to Trump, Zuck trying to get close. People say he's a
| robot? Hey, he now has a chain, does jujitsu, and has a broccoli
| haircut. Puts Dana White on the board and does JRE. Now he's
| removing fact checking and DEI as the left is losing power. It's
| like Zuck just wants to be recognized as a cool kid in the group,
| but is clearly trying too hard. The last cool thing FB did was
| marketplace and then all the way back to timeline feature.
| ArthurStacks wrote:
| Finally
|
| Hopefully this means my company of 16 developers, all of whom are
| white and male, stops getting accused of being racist because
| ignorant people on the internet don't realise we are English and
| there are no black developers within 80 miles
| woodpanel wrote:
| 20 years from now we will look at this DEI era, the way we look
| at the soixant-huitards and their obsession with
| ,,decriminalizing" incest and pederasty: Bafflement how the
| disgustingness wasn't obvious then.
|
| ,,White Straight Man Are Evil" isn't a force for good, its
| sexist, racist - and by the way classic cultural imperialism as
| US academic social science departments pushed this crap down the
| throats of every country in America's orbit (and sometimes even
| more if it helped with regime change).
| nprateem wrote:
| Great, maybe we can instead focus on hiring based on merit
| instead of gender, etc.
|
| It wouldn't be that hard to create a blind CV filtering process
| to avoid bias. And if the company is so racist they won't hire
| people with certain names, non white people probably wouldn't
| want to work there either.
|
| Maybe we can even go back to not pretending everyone is equally
| good at everything. Men and women are different.
| drumhead wrote:
| Looks like they feel they don't have to tick boxes anymore.
| b8 wrote:
| Thomas Sowell had good counter arguments against DEI. I recommend
| reading his book(s) including Social Justice Fallacies. The
| neurodiverse hiring stuff never even got me an interview. Even
| though I qualified for the programs and have the tech skills plus
| ASD, ADHD etc
| throwaway48305 wrote:
| As a current Meta engineer my perspective is this:
|
| - DEI at meta has been non-existent for the past 6 months or more
| anyways. They care far less than any FAANG I've seen about DEI
| beyond the lip service and yearly training. This is just the
| announcement of something that's already been in place for a
| while
|
| - Meta has very poor diversity. I go most days without seeing any
| black engineers. I see occasional latino engineers. Asians and
| Indians are extremely overrepresented. White people are a
| minority. Maybe 1/10 engineers are women.
|
| - This comes against the backdrop of Meta failing something like
| 98% of market tests for H1B immigrants. Word is getting out that
| Meta is not the place to go if you're trying to immigrate to the
| US.
|
| - There's the obvious pandering to the incoming administration
| (this is the third announcement this week, first Dana White on
| the board, then cancelling fact checking & moving some moderation
| people to Texas).
|
| Summary: meta has serious diversity problems it needs to address.
| Existing DEI problem was not helping. Hopefully they do something
| to hire more women and minorities. They face H1B headwinds that
| may drive hiring outside the US or (much less likely) increase
| hiring of americans.
| thunkingdeep wrote:
| Meta being way ahead of the game as usual.
|
| Acknowledging race in job seeking makes for intrinsically
| tokenized contingents of people. I'm not just a PHP guy... I'm a
| BLACK PHP guy, etc.
|
| True equality imo is equivalent to a form of neutrality. Pay no
| mind to race at all and instead focus on hiring the best hackers
| available and let the educational markets figure out the rest.
| dark-star wrote:
| For everyone like me who had to google that acronym:
|
| DEI: Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are organizational
| frameworks which seek to promote the fair treatment and full
| participation of all people, particularly groups who have
| historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination
| on the basis of identity or disability.
| etchalon wrote:
| There's apparently nothing more cowardly than a billionaire
| worried about being slightly less rich.
| itissid wrote:
| The only way to really solve the problem of historic
| discrimination is to solve the root problem of child poverty and
| lack of good developmental experiences as a kid. Not all, but a
| lot of it is about just requires money flowing to school
| districts. Most rich people know this, and it's impossible for
| them to fix this without giving up a part of their most valuable
| asset: land/home
|
| It is impossible to predict a kid who got all this, even though
| born in adverse circumstances, will care about DEI or support it
| at all(e.g. Clarence Thomas).
| itissid wrote:
| Did you know positive discrimination is written into the Indian
| Constitution as an amendment(maybe there are more?).
|
| Reservations in school and colleges is likely the only way kids
| get in, but from my own personal experience it's been a mixed
| bag. I have seen relatively more people fail and some succeed in
| schools and jobs who can via reservation(more of them failing in
| high school or college).
|
| But perhaps that was not the point, the policy idea was to give
| them a chance. Public Policy and Skill at the job are not meant
| to align; It can create a shitty experience to work with someone
| who is not nearly as good as a they should be. But perhaps their
| future generations could do better.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It was all a trick in the first place, capitalism does what it
| feels is in its best interest, some days it's inclusion, some
| days it's world wars, every day it's self serving
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I just hired two women into an all male team. It wasn't because
| of DEI, it was because the code bootcamp we recruited from had
| equal representation. I was delighted to increase diversity,
| because diverse teams do better work. But the fix was farther
| back in the pipeline.
| saos wrote:
| It was all lip service from the start anyways. Nothing really
| changed
| billy99k wrote:
| 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 direct result of
| this will be teachers that shouldn't have gotten the job in the
| first place and poor student results.
|
| More information here:
|
| https://www.njspotlightnews.org/video/nj-eliminates-redundan...
|
| They call it 'redundant', but I would rather have someone
| teaching my kids that actually knows the material, rather than
| someone that went to any number of low-quality colleges where I
| have no idea if they know the material or not.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| 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't really get why companies aren't
| working on actionable goals instead. There've been so many
| scandals related to this in the last years. One complaint from
| someone affected being taken seriously by HR seems like a
| bigger step than a purely box ticking endeavor.
|
| Again, I'm speaking from my non expert point of view but it
| seems a banal truth that a diverse workspace may also score
| better on innovation and perhaps offer a larger solution space
| for certain cultural problems. But this might be just my
| ignorant point of view.
| spirit-sparrow wrote:
| DEI programs can be counter productive. The incorrect biases of
| the past can't be fixed with opposite biases. Merit based equal
| representation should be the ideal state. For 10 positions if
| there are 50 applicants wearing blue and 50 applicants wearing
| red, knowing that the shirt colour doesn't matter we should end
| up ~5 red and 5 blue new starters.
|
| Now if there are only 2 blue applicants, then we should look into
| if there is something preventing the blues to get to a point
| where they can apply. That usually doesn't fall under the hiring
| company's control.
| zkmon wrote:
| Did someone say woke banks have fallen ....
| follower wrote:
| I wonder how this page might look if people could only comment in
| support of policies that wouldn't lead to a direct personal
| financial benefit.
|
| (Disclosure: In such a situation I would be unable to post this
| comment--as, in our just world, this comment's insightfulness
| would undoubtedly lead to me being the beneficiary of significant
| financial remuneration.)
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