https://www.canada.ca/en/public-service-commission/jobs/serv...
Are you sure?
Many countries require being harmed by an action and then bringing that action before a court, before anyone ever compares that action to any specific law at all.
So you can see how many actions become de facto legal if nobody ever does that.
There's so much bullshit in this. Universities are not allowed to advertise positions as "women only", but at the same time they are required to reach certain percentage of female "representation" by law.
I think a lot of people don't realize this. I didn't. I assumed if you could do it for education you could do it for hiring. Apparently not!
This seems to indicate that minority demographics may be targeted for recruitment, advancement, etc.
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/hiring/affirmativeact
At least at my company, I know they have preferences for minorities over similarly qualified candidates. I've heard a department head specifically tell the managers that we need more women in a specific role. Maybe they're just breaking the law though...
1: https://spigglelaw.com/employers-affirmative-action-boost-di...
I think there's an affirmative action lawsuit currently pending before SCOTUS. It seems discrimination is allowable (so far) as long as it has good intentions. It may change with this case.
Although there could be some discrepancy with a colloquial use of discrimination which includes an implied notion of negative bias, while positive biases (preferences to certain candidates) can also fit the more dry definition.
go on, look it up
Also, people hiring in their friends and family over others who are distinctly better.
I've been in many roles over the years in very different companies, and these two eventualities always play out. People are flawed, and the companies they create become equally flawed
That mostly has to do with weighing trusted known-contact vs. untrusted stranger. In extreme case, we see this in a traditional family business that has been owned and operated for generations.
D&I is not a terrible paradigm that needs to be dismantled just because some companies take it to far, it's no different than accounting or other functional considerations within big business where it's too easy to lose sight of how balanced a company is internally. If you don't keep reports on finances a company can easily fail. If you don't take steps to make sure minority groups are represented within your company, it will also create situations where bias takes hold, and suddenly discrimination becomes the norm.
What's next? Should we get rid of sexual harassment training and policies?
Only someone from a background that elimination of equal opportunity would serve foremost would think that "complete blindness to race" is possible in our world. It's a childish and a destructive ignorance considering what is currently happening in our world even to this day, as white nationalist groups are growing in numbers, and other groups, a prior US president, and public celebrities are also regularly publicly expressing race based hate.
Is there any reason to believe this is true and not just conjecture? This always struck me as kind of far fetched.
This is far-fetched and based mostly on ideology rather than evidence, not much different from a Soviet socialist explaining why planned economies are essential to the country's success (100 years ago it didn't sounds as absurd as now). It's your right to believe this sort of things, I don't deny you this, but don't insist that this is an objective truth that every reasonable person should believe in. As it goes with this kind of questionable ideas, it should be ok to choose not to believe in them, as I think the parent comment does.
And I agree with the parent comment's view here. Whatever advantage the woke-culture companies may have is easily explained by their increased visibility among woke audience, not by some deep insights. It's just a marketing trick, just like putting AI/Blockchain on your ad increases your visibility among some of tech enthusiasts.
> What's next?
Slippery slope is a fallacy.
> white nationalist groups are growing in numbers […] prior US president, and public celebrities are also regularly publicly expressing race based hate
How does any of this back up the impossibility of blindness to race? (Remember that most of the world is outside of US.)
There's a ton of different sources of bias. Look at lesswrong.com. What (other than politics) makes minority bias more significant than the other? And why it can't be fought with ordinary means and working on yourself?
You don't need to be the same thing as the object of your study to study it. Just like you can study Geology without being a rock, you can study what a minority group wants/needs/buys without belonging to it. Nothing in principle prohibits that.
Your logic by nature is total flaw. You can't see it because of your own condition, and supremacist beliefs.
It could probably citing that not be explained to you how a lion cannot be taught to understand an ox's life, or how a Hasidic Jew can be fairly considerate of a Muslim perspective and vice versa.
This is the root of arrogance in ignorance that perpetuates racial bias. People have a right to be different, and a natural tendency to be biassed towards their own individual and cultural perspectives, and globalist companies like Microsoft are by nature required to properly represent all of the people they serve PROPERLY or they will simply fail over time... It's not the call of a few biassed individuals to determine that they are qualified. The market dictates the need for D&I.
Being disrespectful to people who disagree with you, and at the same time unable to produce any sensible argument only harms the cause you're fighting for.
> how a lion cannot be taught to understand an ox's life
Limited intelligence is the defining factor here, not background. Think about it. Humans can understand lions quite well, and we understand what's good for them, what makes them happy. And we do it without having to run around savanna biting zebras!
And yes, Jews and Muslims can have a very good idea about each others life, struggles and priorities—it's just a matter of education.
> globalist companies like Microsoft are by nature required to properly represent all of the people
I could argue with this and would probably enjoy it another time. Now let's remember the context we are in. We were talking about whether D&I are good for company's performance, not about any moral obligations you may think the company has.
> People have a right to be different, and a natural tendency to be biassed towards their own individual and cultural perspectives
We also have a natural tendency to fall for logical fallacies. But somehow we managed to identify those and find ways to fight them, not worship them. Nothing stops you from fighting the cultural bias you have (maybe not completely, but just enough to get it off the way of your work duties) in the same way—later go home, take off your employee hat and be different, biased, whatever.
I don't know if it's valid, but let's assume it is. Have you considered that some of this growth can be attributed to DEI and the rest of far-left policies?
If you're openly being racist towards certain groups, they can also become racist. When a poor white male gets rejected/fired/demoted because company needed a diversity hire, it's not going to make him more tolerant.
This is rational, straightforward, healthy and just righteous in a deep way. It creates an environment bereft of envy and injustice.
Turns out, most high brain mass mammals have a innate sense of fairness. When humans are treated unfairly because of some ostensible moral goal whether through racism or D&I; the end result is not pretty. Humans of all culture are enamored and magnetized by fairness and justice. But those words have been twisted to mean exactly the opposite by contemporaneous social-justice movements.
This was the mainstream view of the Civil Rights movement. It was utterly beautiful. But, post-moderity came and neo-Marxists have reigned for last 40 years in USA at least, gutting out Universities and now, Corporations.
Yes.
I think that would only be an issue if they made a big deal in public about rejecting DEI. Such a statement might also attract a bunch of obnoxious, oppositely-polarized people you don't want. Probably the best strategy would be to not mention it at all unless forced, and then just make vague, positive statements about diversity until whoever is bothering you moves on to something else.
If you want to ignore requirements like that (or similar DEI requirements), you're going to have to forgo those kinds of customers.
Would that work? IIRC, stock prices aren't so much about performance, just who wants to buy your stock. Decreased actual performance from "greenwashing or other ESG bullshit" might be overwhelmed by demand by ESG pots of money.
That said, this is how you end with critical technology in potential adversaries' hands.
This is already the norm in Silicon Valley. D&I awareness is a brand new thing, and mediocre reactionaries like the author pervade existing leadership structures.
Over 50 years ago the US Military recognized that segregation and entrenched racial biases lead to inefficiencies and lack of readiness.[1] In an economy where hiring pipelines for skilled technical people are stretched incredibly thin, we need to be taking a hard look at why we're only getting people that look a certain way through our hiring process.
That doesn't follow, at all. For one, you're comparing apples and oranges. The "norm in Silicon Valley" is not to practice explicit racial segregation like the US Army did in 1940. Additionally, D&I may very well be operating at the wrong end of the pipe.
An anecdote: a non-white friend of mine recently quit her job, because she was pressured into hiring an incompetent person who checked a lot of DEI boxes. That person proceeded to drive her crazy with their incompetence until she burned out and quit.
>D&I may very well be operating at the wrong end of the pipe.
Then that should be the argument at hand. Not rejecting the idea outright.
>she was pressured into hiring an incompetent person
That there is no system in place for addressing concrete performance issues in any employee is the failing of the organization. The requirements for any role you hire for should be clear, expectations should be set and when they are not met there should be consequences. If this is not the case at the organization she worked at, she was bound to burn out, irrespective of the DEI objectives.
> Then that should be the argument at hand. Not rejecting the idea outright.
That doesn't follow. If D&I is operating at the wrong end of the pipe, it should be rejected outright because it won't work and will cause pointless problems in the meantime.
> That there is no system in place for addressing concrete performance issues in any employee is the failing of the organization.... If this is not the case at the organization she worked at, she was bound to burn out, irrespective of the DEI objectives.
There was a system in place, but if you couldn't read between the lines: the bar was far higher for firing a "diverse" employee with performance issues, which followed from the DEI ethos in place.
So instead of discussing ways of making D&I work, we should throw it away. Sounds like a newbie dev throwing a tantrum over having to build on a system with legacy code.
>the bar was far higher for firing a diverse employee with performance issues, which followed from the DEI objectives.
That statement doesn't simply "follow from DEI objectives." Was that bar for performance standards explicit? implicit? or, like a lot of other replies here, hyperbole?
The person simply couldn't do the job and was profoundly incompetent, and the response was to that was to repeatedly be told to spend more time training them. My friend had previously successfully terminated a white employee who was under-performing but turned out to be more competent than this one.
Parent comment didn't say anything like that. Please assume good faith in discussions. They said that D&I efforts are more likely to work if focused on other parts of the education/industry pipeline, which seems at least plausible.
There is a point to trying to change a system that only sees white people at the end of the hiring pipeline. We can debate where it needs to change, but the change is necessary.
Nope, they didn't. A direct quote: "If D&I is operating at the wrong end of the pipe, it should be rejected outright because it won't work". Note the "If". If you disagree that D&I wouldn't work under these conditions, or that stuff that doesn't work should be rejected as pointless, you're still welcome to make that argument. But please be careful not to misquote other users' comments.
> Nope, they didn't. A direct quote: "If D&I is operating at the wrong end of the pipe, it should be rejected outright because it won't work".
Yeah, it's also worth noting that "rejected outright" is actually omegaworks's own language, which he is now taking issue with. I was only echoing it back to emphasize a point in his own terms.
Also, I suspect there's some sloppiness with definitions going on here. When I was using "D&I," I was referring specifically to kinds of corporate hiring polices the OP was talking about and this thread is discussing. I suspect omegaworks may be interpreting the term more broadly at times.
Microsoft - Satya Nadella
Google - Sundar Pichai
Twitter - Parag Agrawal
None of these men is white or even born in the USA, and somehow they managed to arrive at positions of extreme power and influence through this system of "capital and clout".
1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48619734
2. https://slate.com/technology/2022/07/caste-silicon-valley-th...
That richer and more well educated Indians are over-represented in tech jobs and as CEOs of major tech companies relative to those with fewer resources and less well educated is not surprising.
I am not sure what's the relevance of the skin color of those who allegedly imposed the system that led to this particular group being at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy in India today. How did that result in "uplifting whiteness"?
What you see is little more than your own personal anecdote. Who are the voices centered in the conversations around funding? Why is it easier for some people to secure investment? Who is considered important in the conversations around what tech is developed and who is ignored? Who reaps the rewards and who shoulders the costs?
> with fewer resources
Think a little deeper: why were resources allocated in this way?
>How did that result in "uplifting whiteness"?
The people put in charge of these companies have little interest in critically examining the race and caste-based resource allocation mechanisms that helped to get them there.
I hope SCOTUS strikes all of this down.
Do you know anything about employment law or the current state of title VII jurisprudence? I'm guessing not if you're reacting this way to a pretty uncontroversial claim.
The irony being that color/gender is remarkably difficult to accurately track outside of self-reporting (see: Bosom Buddies, blackface, Elizabeth Warren's Native American background). Conversely, we've become quite capable at weeding out technical ability through technical interviews and whiteboarding tasks. It seems like leftists in this thread are attempting to project their own method's weaknesses onto merit-based approaches.
Please stop with the tribal generalisations. There are more than two points of view in the world.
Those who believe that there is no possibility of measuring merit are destined to be out-competed by those who can and do measure it at least somewhat accurately.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33166633
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33166674
There would be merit to this line of thinking, if the diversity initiatives came in the form of anonymizing resumes and interviews (which is easier to do with remote interviews). But that's not the case. More often than not, diversity initiatives come in the form of quotas or penalties for hiring or promoting too many "non-diverse" people. And those penalties often kick in at levels of representation lower than "non-diverse" people's representation in the candidate pool. This is why I'm not irked by over-representation of Asians in tech. They're not advantaged relative to whites, if anything they're penalized for their race (at a past company asian males were categorized as "ND", Negative-Diversity even more undesirable than white males).
However, this is often not how diversity initiatives work. More often than not, they're not aimed at eliminating discrimination, they're aimed at mandating it: attaching bonuses to hires and promotions of particular races and genders, or achieving specific representation numbers (AKA quotas). This isn't eliminating discrimination, this is creating it.
Your rosy portrayal of white struggle is deeply mis-informed... People struggle because of corporate cost-cutting strategies, not because minority hires are taking jobs from white men in droves.
A lot of the posts in this thread are evoquing memories from Birth of a Nation... geesis.
This is literally not the case for the author. From the article:
>I told HR that I had considered it and I believed my recommendation was correct. HR said “OK, then we don’t need to change anything. I just wanted to check that you had considered them.”
That's literally all the author had to do. He made up the idea that it had an impact on his ability to advance in his career in his own mind.
>Again, there was no quota, but it seemed clear that promoting this person would have made HR and my corporate vice president happy.
It only "seemed clear." Weasel words. Engaging in the hyperbolic. This entire discussion is predicated on the fabrication that there is some racialized penalization system in place. It is scaremongering, nothing more than balking at the requirement to do the bare minimum.
Also, as per "Diversity Slating Guidelines" quotas are indeed being used. They require at least one Black or Latin candidate, and one female candidate. If there's only 4 people on the slate, this could mean that 50% of the pool is subject to racial or gender quotas.
There's more context behind Microsoft's diversity initiatives. Hiring managers were given bonuses for hiring diverse applicants. Or conversely, they were penalized for hiring non-diverse applications: https://qz.com/1598345/microsoft-staff-are-openly-questionin...
The highest performing team I have been on had people from 4 continents, ran the gamut on political views, had disparate education levels (from literally a high school dropout to PhDs from prestigious schools), and had people of many races. It had no women and no black people. By the standards of HR, it was not a diverse team at all.
The DEI folks I have worked with want a very specific kind of diversity: They want you to hire people of all genders and colors, but only rich ones from a few schools. They think that school reputation and awards are a better measure of aptitude than an interview or a take-home test (claiming that the test or interviewer is biased).
Only the diversity may go along the lines that the contemporary DEI philosophy does not like or even accept.
E.g. a Ukrainian refugee, a kid of poor Korean shopkeepers, an ex-Muslim atheist who does not even want to pretend that he is still Muslim.
If this is true, then I guess affirmative action isn't needed, right?
"Whiteness" was created in a Virginia 1691 law to be "not negroe and not indian". Naturally, that also expanded to be not: Jews, Asians, sometimes not Italians, usually not Irish, and absolutely no indigenous people of any sort.
Defining yourself by what peoples you exclude is the core kernel of racism. And that's what "white" means.
Also, what are "bizarre sexual proclivities"? It sounds like you are living with a thick layer of judgement and shame in your life. That sounds rough.
You seem to be arguing that we should force people to deny this quite natural impulse in order to make minorities more comfortable. Seems pretty toxic/controlling to me. Let people be.
When you belong to a minority, you navigate the world on the majority's terms. This is true everywhere but only in the US do people seem to get bent of of shape about it. The saying is "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". How would you mutilate this phrase so that it conforms to your worldview?
I'm less tired coming home from 8 hours on my feet dealing with the public than I was in professional settings. I don't have to hide everything about myself and my background (I'm a first-generation college student with a poorish upbringing) or constantly worry about what all my interactions with colleagues mean for my 'career'.
I will say my class background is more of an issue than my sex/sexuality, but my sex was way more of a problem in my teens and early 20s. The interesting thing is that being a techy child was fine, being a techy teenage/20 something girl SUCKED, and being a techy 30 something woman is fine.
I'm now working at a smaller firm and get to be a major influencer and decision maker in how the culture is getting laid out. It's mind boggling how much trauma/PTSD people bring to the table from working in offices that are really homogenized and lack diversity with them being the one that's different. I still can't get over how common it is regardless if it's gender, sexuality, education background, or disability. What I think a lot of people are missing in the DEI discussions isn't about trying to find diverse candidates but how to create environments where they - along with everyone else - thrives.
It's pretty obvious from the comments in this post how there's a strong vocal minority of people that refuse to engage and constantly battle how broken things are. I just hope they figure it out before it's too late. And if they refuse, I hope they remain ICs with very little influence and not included in significant decision making because this attitude is poison for so many people.
The cultural homophobia and misogyny is one of the two major reasons I didn't opt for a CS degree (the other being I had too much pride to take intro classes to prove myself when I'd been coding since I was 5 because 17 year old me was arrogant as hell). This WAS 10-20 years ago, but experiences like mine do have impacts on the candidate pipeline for midlevel and senior positions.
And on the other hand, taking my tech skills into non-tech spaces is very well received. Libraries are always happy to have tech-literate people, and even in my current job, I've had 2 freelance dev projects dropped into my lap in the space of a month simply because I'm easier to work with and very familiar with the very feminine subject domain.
I'm very skeptical of DEI, ironically, because I've seen too much of it turn into grifts for upper-class and upper-middle class POC and gay people while ignoring non-visible differences or differences that might actually require behavior changes (disability and class, mostly). But there's definitely a cultural problem. And I say this as a woman who greatly prefers 'male' communication styles and was raised by a warehouse worker. I'm not pearl clutching - I've lived in a couple of the most dangerous cities in the US, I'm no shrinking violet.