> There are a handful of contexts where it makes more sense, like for a HR person potentially
In academia, faculty functionally ARE HR people - with significant power
Sorry, I meant to explicitly include faculty as people who create teams and are responsible for a good work culture. I agree with you, they are HR people in practice.
What does that mean?
I work in industry.
Is my my tech lead an HR person? My manager? My VP? My Board? My majority shareholders? If not, why is a faculty professor an HR person?
Professor has more choice/control of team than your VP|Mananger|Lead
Professor is like CEO of 8 person company (or independent division). All your other examples are cogs in huge machine.
Re:MIT abandons use of DEI statements
by freeone3000 on Sunday May 05, 2024 @10:13PM
(#40270506)
Faculty select teaching assistants and the research staff for their labs, effectively unilaterally. They have the power to hire and fire. They choose topics of research, and can instruct their mentees to stop a line of inquiry. This is similar in scope and power to a combined project-manager, research-manager and person-manager. They also are the decider to grant later-stage credentialing, so throw in a bit of training instructor too…
There are contexts where it is mandatory but makes no sense, like NSF Fellowship Applications where they're asking someone who is just finishing an undergraduate degree and is proposing a research project that ends in a PhD -- who has effectively no influence on hiring or even culture really, and is supposed to focus on the technical aspects and personal aspects of who they are. There are things you can fit in there, but let's say the mandatory question is worded so confusingly that it is hard to even guess what to write about. What, you're going to hire people to assist you in your research under DEI principles when you have no control over the budget? It's just confusing for someone in that position.
Staff hiring? That kind of makes more sense honestly, trying to be non-ideological here. Those people can actually hire people and create a culture that is either DEI positive or not, whatever you believe about whether they should.