We even had an interviewee who only spoke an obscure language not spoken by anyone on our team _and_ had no work experience. This was for a staff engineer position!
We hired someone despite some misgivings in the interview phase who turned out to be a pathological liar (and identity thief) and they proceeded to torment the entire company with insane false allegations for two years and did zero work while we couldn't get rid of them. Finally they quit on their own and this person just made the news recently for stripping down naked and violently attacking a convenience store's workers with a knife.
There are minority candidates who can thrive at all levels of tech. Nobody is telling your to hire subpar candidates. That's on your company's lazy implementation of their inclusion efforts, not on DEI.
The best I've seen as a person who's not part of the DEI team is cultivating relationships with universities with large numbers of URM students. But that's really still just searching slightly outside of the range of the lamppost.
Are you straight up going to small towns and offering scholarship opportunities? Going to college fairs (no, not hiring fairs at colleges, but the fairs that high school students go to to find a college) and marketing what jobs are available at your company for majors of certain degrees? These are just off the top of my head; I'm sure there are a lot better, and tested ideas out there.
This would be a good argument if we ever get to that point. But we aren't even close, and plenty of smaller companies and startups don't have diversity goals at all. There's plenty of room for some big names to go 100% green without being a tithe of a tithe of the full working population. Or even a tithe of a tithe of the working population of greens.
Even Walmart is less than 1% of the total employed population in the US. Much more so for smaller companies such as Alphabet or Meta.
When an initiative fails, the solution is rarely to do more of it.
X does not always lead to the same bad outcome here though. That is, DEI initiatives that increase diversity while not lowering the hire bar do exist. That some particular company decided to lower their hiring bar doesn't indicate that DEI initiatives always cause companies to lower their hiring bars.
I'm also vaguely of the impression that at least some research is finding DEI initiatives to be neutral or perhaps even counter-productive, but I'm having a hard time finding those papers--if this is jogging anyone's memory, I would appreciate links.
If you want to police SEI initiatives to ensure they’re properly implemented, go for it, but the constant aversion to a so thoroughly researched concept is bordering on flat earther level conspiracy.
Is this part of the same body of research suffering a replication crisis more broadly?
It is?
Oh. So, having lots of published “research” that can be linked to by consultants paid to believe it isn’t the same thing as replicable hard science?
Nope. Whodathunkit.
I really cannot overemphasize how detrimental to your argument what you just wrote is to any thinking human being. Blindly claiming all research, from literally every institution in the world, is both inaccurate and rigged somehow on a widely studied topic, is an insane claim only made when you've given up on the entire concept of rationality.
You really would rather throw all of science under the bus before you let black people get an even footing in society, wouldn't you? Incredible.
The issue in STEM fields is that essential elements to replicate (like the code) are not being published, yet the underlying science is solid enough for production technology people rely on every day to be built on it.
In the humanities the replication crisis is that a significant amount of published “research” is essentially made up whole cloth.
One of these things is not like the other.
You get called racist for saying racist things; if you don’t like it, stop doing it. DEI works, the outcomes are clear, obvious, insanely well documented, and freely available to literally anyone with access to the Internet and two brain cells to rub together.
Please continue to question what you’re told, but at some point, when the answers are flowing to you in unambiguous and numerous ways, shut the fuck up and take in the knowledge. At some point you have to accept that either you’re a person of reason or you’re a racist asshole who can’t accept that letting minorities into groups helps those groups. You’ve got an ego, that much is clear, but try to disassociate that ego with this problem. Be a student. Learn.
The only person who who should feel shame here is the person who would believe they understand a problem better than every single major research and academic institution in the US. If that’s not you, great, but it’s looking a lot more like you than it’s looking like me.
You know nothing about me, and your claims about me are not only wrong, they’re laughably so. I hope I never have to work with you or otherwise interact with you off the Internet, you have made it clear by your behavior here that you’re truly a horrid person.
Best of luck in life.
And I didn't say I knew anything about you? I said things that are true for any thinking, breathing human.
Honestly, what a weird reaction. You clearly feel attacked, which I guess makes sense if you genuinely are the worst possible parts of what I wrote about (choosing to be a racist asshole rather than a person of reason), but you're opting into those designations for some reason.
The things people will do to justify hatred are wild, thank you for reminding me of that.
> shut the fuck up and take in the knowledge.
> You get called racist for saying racist things; if you don’t like it, stop doing it
> I really cannot overemphasize how detrimental to your argument what you just wrote is to any thinking human being.
> Blindly claiming all research, from literally every institution in the world, is both inaccurate and rigged somehow on a widely studied topic, is an insane claim only made when you've given up on the entire concept of rationality.
(note that the parent never made this claim, you're falsely imputing it on him)
> You really would rather throw all of science under the bus before you let black people get an even footing in society, wouldn't you? Incredible.
I suspect these comments likely violate even a very narrow reading of the site guidelines. Your account is relatively new, so maybe you aren't aware but you might want to take a look before mods intervene (guidelines are linked at the bottom of the page).
None of those lines are in any way openly hostile, unless you fall into the worst category of what I wrote, which is the racist who is trying to find any excuse to remove black people from the conversation.
I don't care if dang agrees/disagrees in this case. This is too important, and the voices spouting bigotry on this site need to be challenged, even if it's wildly unpopular.
In the past, the bans came from simulating activity on the discussion, which I have made clear this time that all accounts roll up to one person.
And no, you cannot support the concept of DEI and remain on this site without resorting to the tricks I've had to. I'm not perfect, but this site has shown its ugly side these past few days, as a number of anti-DEI posts have been getting traction.
Not at all. For example, I believe that selecting for viewpoint diversity directly is a better way to achieve viewpoint diversity than via DEI. Moreover, I firmly reject that race or gender confer any special abilities (and frankly this gets me into more hot water with DEI advocates than anyone else). These two positions aren't in conflict in any way. This example constitutes incontrovertible proof that "criticizing the concept of DEI is spouting bigotry" is incorrect.
> And no, you cannot support the concept of DEI and remain on this site without resorting to the tricks I've had to.
This is factually incorrect as well. I debate with lots of people who argue vocally for DEI (even strongly implying personal attacks) who have been on this site for a long time (and have lots of karma!). They just stay within the guidelines or at least they don't flout them as egregiously as you seem to be doing.
And you're right, claiming something does not make it so. What makes it so is all of the data supporting it, which is readily available to anyone who actually cares about this topic (up to you if that's you).
Who is arguing that DEI is ineffective when properly implemented (what does "properly implemented" even mean, concretely?).
> they both fly in the face of a whole lot of data
You keep referencing this data... Where are the metanalyses that show concretely that DEI programs are effective? To be clear, I'm aware of and believe that increased diversity makes organizations more robust, but again that's attributed to viewpoint diversity and it's not at all clear to me that modern DEI programs deliver on that viewpoint diversity. It's not even clear to me that there is widespread consensus that "viewpoint diversity" or "organizational robustness" is a goal of these programs--one definitely gets the impression that the primary goal is diversity of identities with little mind paid to the impact on viewpoint diversity or organizational robustness.
Here's HBR (https://hbr.org/2019/07/does-diversity-training-work-the-way...) talking about whether or not diversity training programs are effective; note that the implication here is that the goal is ideological agreement--they're not even looking for viewpoint diversity:
> What did we find? Let’s start with the good news. The bias-focused trainings had a positive effect on the attitudes of one important group: employees who we believe were the least supportive of women prior to training. We found that after completing training, these employees were more likely to acknowledge discrimination against women, express support for policies designed to help women, and acknowledge their own racial and gender biases, compared to similar employees in the control group. For employees who were already supportive of women, we found no evidence that the training produced a backlash.
Regarding the research into DEI, a lot of the measures of its efficacy (that I'm aware of) hinge on Implicit Association Tests which are a famously plagued with issues (https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/7/14637626/implicit-as...).
> Who is arguing that DEI is ineffective when properly implemented (what does "properly implemented" even mean, concretely?).
Nearly everyone in the comments here, are you blind?
> Where are the metanalyses that show concretely that DEI programs are effective?
Here's one that took all of 5 seconds to Google:
> Results from 65 studies (N = 8465) revealed sizable effects on affective‐based, cognitive‐based, and skill‐based outcomes as well as interesting boundary conditions for these effects on affective‐based outcomes. This study provides practical value to human resources managers and trainers wishing to implement diversity training within organizations as well as interesting theoretical advances for researchers. Practitioners have quantitative evidence that diversity training changes affective‐based, cognitive‐based, and skill‐based trainee outcomes. [0]
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263597048_A_meta-an...
Is there any effort at follow-up training? Seems like this interview strategy HAS to be paired with a long-term training strategy for taking less-qualified hires and turning them into very productive employees.
If not, do you end up hiring more people in total? Do these lackluster employees just eat up time and budget, or do they also actively occupy a desk that you need to reclaim to hire more talented replacements?
Yes, I have had a slightly less hyperbolic version of this actual conversation about less-than-qualified diversity hires. Good way to end your career.
This is the best comment in the thread. If you have a diverse funnel you will have diverse employees and as long as you maintain standards, they will be well qualified for the job. This includes internships and job training programs.
I’ve talked to enough managers who complain about lackluster employees and how they’re not fireable because the person is URT. It’s a thing - even if we all like to think it isn’t. Your best effort is to manage them out.