Yes, it's true. There has never been a strong team of young, white nerdy men. Never happened.
Technological and engineering progress was at a baffling standstill for centuries until the wisdom of diversity, inclusion and equity dawned upon us.
- We've had major progress over the last however many decades.
- A lot of the teams responsible for that work were probably made up of young white nerdy males (obviously not all, but young nerdy males probably covers a large portion of them, otherwise why would we even be here talking about DEI initiatives?)
- were all of those teams horrible?
> But they make horrible teams.
I find the current push toward so-called equity to be more toxic than anything I experienced on male-dominated teams. People fear saying things because they don't want to be called out. Someone uses a phrase like "off the reservation" or "grandfathered" or "whitelisted" and then we have to have a meeting about how someone might have been offended. Was anyone offended? No. But we'll have a meeting to discuss a hypothetically-offended person. This leads to some behavior change but also some silent backlash.
I get that certain types of toxic behavior might be limited on diverse teams. But it's simply not the case that by adding women and minorities we will eliminate toxic behavior. From what I've seen, we simply swap one type of toxicity for another.
Do you think this would be true if you expanded it to all teams made up of one single demographic? Or is it just young white nerdy males? Cause that would sound pretty controversial if you swapped out white for any other color.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16...
Literally no diversity proponents are saying tech teams in Taiwan must have 20% African Americans or whatever and you'd have to be completely missing the point, or willfully missing it, to think so. In any case, it's pretty telling of your level of understanding of the topic that you seem to think that's what we're saying.
Likewise using friggin India and Nigeria as examples of "fully homogenous" countries is also very telling of your knowledge about other countries from your own. Just wow.
Diversity on most commonly selected metrics barely does a thing as far as empirical evidence goes.
The metrics that really matter aren't actively selected for. At best they are a byproduct. More often than not, the teams willing to be open about hiring gain their benefits over being open and cooperative rather than their diversity hires magically boosting things.
But by all means, let's continue to be reductionist by stereotyping 'le weird white young male' group.
"Making a good team" is part of meritocracy. D&I is often implemented as an entirely separate quota system.
You worked at Big-O Tires as an installer?
Probably the one that isn't making hiring decisions based on the colour of the applicant's skin.
I don't even think you want a "meritocracy". I want a world where people are happy. If that means they're all doing jobs they suck at, then so be it.
Before my current team, my whole career, every single team I worked in was pretty much exclusively young, white, nerdy men. Maybe each person on those teams was objectively the "best" candidate for their respective hiring round! (though I doubt it) But they make horrible teams. If your team looks like that, your team is horrible too, no matter how much you tell yourself it's not.
My current team is a diverse group of well-rounded people. Some women, some men, some younger, some older, from many ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
Guess which is the higher performing? Guess which has a safe atmosphere with zero dick measuring? Guess which is the most pleasant to be a part of? Guess which has zero tolerance for any toxic behavior? etc etc
Sure, there's lots of room for improvement in how tech businesses actually implement diversity vs just paying lip service to it and slicing numbers. But don't pretend like diversity isn't sorely needed in the industry.