Yes. It's assuming that the non-white person is in some way incompetent or lesser than (soft bigotry of low expectations) and needs a boost from the feigned-benevolence of the white man (or opportunistic "person of color").
FWIW, I'm mixed-race (white/black) and was mouth-agape at how this got as far as it did the past few years.
Then you end up with a wider range of quality levels among the underrepresented group (because you had to scrape deeper in the barrel to fill your quota, and the overrepresented group ends up being in the higher quality band (because scooping the cream off the top filled the quota).
This has the really perverse effect of creating a true observation (in the context of your organization) that the average quality of the underrepresented group is lower than the average quality of the overrepresented group. e.g. the asian men you hired are all the cream of the crop and the black women you hired are everything from the cream to the dregs.
I suppose you could artificially hire lower quality overrepresented groups to correct for this, but then you're really setting yourself up to be outcompeted by companies that only hire the highest quality employees they can.
This is uninteresting thinking. If the pool doesn't have enough qualified candidates, you expand the pool. That requires more effort. That's good effort that should be taken. It's lazy to do otherwise.
There are a few universities where there are above average proportions in STEM fields like MIT and Harvey Mudd. But these are few and far between, and their graduates have heavy competition for offers. There aren't enough graduates to meaningfully make a dent in representation. Furthermore, these universities have big gender disparities in admissions rates - over two to one [1] - so directing recruitment at these universities is still achieving "better" representation through discrimination, just indirect discrimination.
1. https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/can-your-gender-give...
That's the sneaky part. There's an assumed "bias," but it's rarely rooted in fact or backed by statistical evidence and more of a religious statement. At best, it's admission of a guilty conscience [1].
No, as a non american living in the US i find american obsession with race fascinating.
DEI is about every characteristic on which human can differ and how those difference play a role in the work place. Race is of course a factor , but so are neuro divergence, language, culture, gender and sexuality. Hell even things like "Don't schedule a meeting before 9 AM" is a form of inclusion for the non morning people.
> yet its practical effect is giving certain races a favorable edge in the hiring process, independent of merit.
Then that's a badly designed program. However the other side of the equation, if there some aspect of the workplace ( such as say every important meeting are at 8 AM) are needlessly preventing certain people of expressing their talent... we should also look into it.
> Most recently when he hired an engineer from one of these "favorable races" even when half of the interview panel recommended a no-hire.
Yeah sounds like a problem. Maybe look into the statistics to see if usually those type of candidate would have been rejected.
This is a disingeuous point of comparison, because this is a behavior that can easily be corrected. Just set an alarm clock like everyone else. On the other hand, I cannot correct the fact that I am from a non-minority background. How is it in any way fair for me to be disadvantaged in the hiring process for something I cannot control?
> Maybe look into the statistics to see if usually those type of candidate would have been rejected.
This sounds like a question asked in bad faith. Rather than analyzing hiring outcomes by background, does it not make a lot more sense to analyze hiring decisions based on interview performance, totally independent of race/language/gender/etc.
If this data is then correlated against race, and hiring decisions are provably equitable across races, then great! But anecdotal evidence suggests this is not the case.
As someone commented bellow, that's incorrect. Modern sleep science seems to indicate that people have different circadian rhythm, which correlate with different energy and alertness level at different time of the days. Sure it's easy to set an alarm at 8 AM, but it's not easy to be at 100 % for some people at that time. I think there is even a movement to make school start later to combat those effects.
> How is it in any way fair for me to be disadvantaged in the hiring process for something I cannot control?
I can't pretend to understand your experience on DIE but at the risk of repeating myself... this is not what DIE is about... you don't get browny point because your are a minority or get point taken away because you not a minority. It's about providing the best condition for EVERYONE to express their best potential and then select the best one.
> This sounds like a question asked in bad faith. Rather than analyzing hiring outcomes by background, does it not make a lot more sense to analyze hiring decisions based on interview performance, totally independent of race/language/gender/etc.
I do not follow your reasoning here. You mentioned that you witnessed "ONE" case where a candidate was accepted despite having "HALF" of the reviewers no hire decision.
Where i work, those case go to deliberation and usually we would have the candidate come back for a second round of interview, or even depending on the seniority level send him to specialist reviewer. Generally, those case are a result of miss-calibration of the interview loop : like for example having an experience network/kernel specialist ending up in a generalist loop designed for entry level.
I do not know how things work in your company : You are making the case that one experience is an example of DEI gone bad... My point is that if you want to make that point, a statistical analysis of similar case is the only way to know for sure. Just saying that someone with so so performance on half reviewer got in is simply not enough...
This person does not have, or does not know anybody with a sleep disorder.
Ah, and we all know the plural of anecdote is "data". /s Oh wait...
The fact that you said this, suggests to me that you were the odd-person out on a hiring committee, and because the person got hired anyways, you feel like that means all hiring decisions are made on the basis of race. When in reality, you just didn't like the one candidate, and everyone else was fine.
I don't know for sure that this happened, but I've met people who made these cases, and they pretty consistently overvalue their own opinions.
there are magical criteria like culture fit which is inherently discretionary and biased which should be penalized too
DEI as you have experienced isnt a solution for that either
one reality is that companies dont always need most the cognitively/physically qualified person. they need to tap into markets and revenue, companies that have already reached the peak of their primary market gain perspective by having people of backgrounds more in align with markets they aspire to be in. Many large companies are in that position and should be ignoring employee reindeer games about pedigree and performance.
although one most complaint alteration of DEI is just recruiting from different sources that might have more minorities, like different schools, or even creating the pipeline in those schools, where the goal is more talent that happens to perform as well as existing talent, there is a parallel effort where none of that matters if the organization’s expansion into markets simply relies more on familiarity with that market. Do both, I say
but other organizations that are just metoo-ing DEI should absolutely be called out
all organizations that implemented it for arbitrary reasons should be called out
OK, I have been rejected once -- during the interview no less, not via an email after -- because I said I am not into Game of Thrones. Apparently everyone on the team's pass time was chatting about it. They openly told me I don't fit in because I don't like GoT, even though the interview before that was an exhaustive technical one and I passed with 93% score.
Whom should I contact so they get penalized?
You realize these are private companies and they are not accountable to how they achieve their results as long as the means are not illegal, right?
And you do realize suing them over this will take a huge amount of time and money? Money that most working people don't have?
> one reality is that companies dont always need most the cognitively/physically qualified person.
Whose reality is that? I haven't seen it ever. Business makes money by hiring N people with capability X, and not N*5 people with capability X/5. Otherwise business will go broke paying salaries to incapable people. Common sense.
I get that you are saying that you might need people who understand certain markets better and that's practically their only skill but... on a more general premise the statement "you don't always need the most qualified person" is just confusing.
obviously its paradoxical because the person with the only skill that differs from the rest of the entire corporation would be the most qualified person. I tried to qualify that with other ways. I'm glad that we used language to convey a shared understanding, which is the purpose of language.
Regarding how to hold corporations accountable for hiring bias, I never broached that at all. "Culture fit" likely has a limited halflife, where legislatures or labor agencies will just discourage the word and that kind of discretion. labor agencies use their own budget from taxpayers or the state's other revenue sources to bring action to corporations, you should check them out, they might have found the Game of Thrones criteria to be window dressing for a sanctionable form of employment discrimination, that other people have already complained about. So that suggests your reality is either hyperbole or ignorance, easily remediable with accurate guidance.
I don't think that you are.
Especially super weird is the hiring practises of (non-US) businesses OUTSIDE the US who've blindly copied this US DEI stuff without thinking if it even applies.
Several major Australian universities (and some gov departments) practically don't hire white males any more. As several friends already working at these places have complained about in private.
Sometimes forwarding the "new and updated policy" mass emails from HR about it, just to show how insane things have become.
Most DEI work I've seen at my company was in reducing HR complaints from women, LGBT and different ethnic groups. When it comes to hiring, it was in showing up at recruiting events and other areas to encourage people to apply.
I've done interviews and I think they're more fair/merit-based than other places. I view it as a positive. Also barely any minority applicants.
A lot of DEI was to counterract really annoying people on one side who were very racist, homophobic, sexist, etc. and ruin the environment or opportunities for people. I think this is just the pendulum swinging the other direction where some people are very vocal or unfair in dealing with men, white people, republican, etc. and/or creating an unproductive work environment getting mired in politics.
Also recession creates more economic pressure for results, but I honestly think DEI has barely had an impact in most companies and most revenue loss is hiring consultats or bad hires.
So at least in my experience, DEI == affirmative action for white and Asian women.
yes, which is why that kind of thing is illegal in the UK.
Proper DEI is about creating a decent pipeline of people, that includes outreach, or having training programmes for non-traditional juniors.
And, if done properly, its a great way to lower your wage bill, as you hire people at more junior levels and keep them longer. (you need to job hop to get good wage increases.) But that requires a commitment to develop your own team. (regardless of who they are)
https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/house-of-lor...
Actions outside of parliamentary testimony are not protected .. but these have to be seperately observed | evidenced as the testimony cannot be used to convict.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/part/11/chapter...
Specifically outlaws having a policy of lowering the bar. You can only choose one protected character over another if they are equally qualified.
Specifically the guidance that comes with this says that its legally unwise to do anything past pipeline stage, once you have reached interviewing, its a bad idea. Its certainly something I'm not going to do.
Now, in the uk we do not have "affirmative action" thats an americanism. We do not need to import american racism issues, we have enough of our own.
I have worked in IT long enough, and recruited enough people to know that the people who complain about the "bar" generally are never privy to the actual data.
The color wars have been going on for at least 100 years in the US. Just look at the testimony of Manning Johnson. The communists of the 1920s realized that race was the weakest point in the American social fabric and bent a large quantity of resources on that point (and probably still do). If they figured that out then others have too.
EDIT: Spelling
Your coworkers probably agree with you, but conversations critical of DEI efforts in the workplace are radioactive as HR will come down on you for being racist or whatever.
Thus, the DEI bubble in any corporation is completely insulated from checks and balances or internal critical feedback.
1. You assume that giving a certain race a favorable edge is unfair. If the premise of DEI is correct, that the field is tilted against certain races, then having a preference for those races is leveling the playing field, not tilting it in their favor.
2. Perhaps hiring a no-hire was exactly the right thing to do. Perhaps the interviewers were prejudiced against the candidate for reasons other than merit. Of course, I don’t know the exact situation, so I said “potential” flaws.
I raised this with colleagues on a few separate ocassions and was promptly shunned, yet they didn't have an answer. Most recently when he hired an engineer from one of these "favorable races" even when half of the interview panel recommended a no-hire.