Why is breadth of candidates defined by race and gender instead of experience and expertise. If the DEI department improves breadth of experience and expertise, by looking into alternative hiring streams, thats great, but people who defend DEI always approach it from the race and gender first which is a tell tale sign that race and gender are the primary objectives. And in my experience, when race and gender are the goals, formal and informal quotas appear.

Well "DEI vetos it" is obviously a problem. There's a discussion to be had around expanding candidate pools, expanding the pipeline, however you want to phrase it. These are good and noble goals but we're not talking about the pipeline we're talking about the candidates for a given role that we're hiring for right now.

No department should be vetoing any hire in a different department. Having an engineer veto a hire in the DEI department is ludicrous on its face, but no more ludicrous than having a DEI department tell the engineering team they're not "allowed" to hire a qualified applicant because of their race or gender.

It's HR's entire job to set policies for hiring. They can say a candidate has to have a college degree. Why wouldn't they have the right to set this policy as well?

You are confusing policies and qualifications, its on the engineers to decide the qualifications and HR to run policies on sourcing.

Protected class cannot be used as a factor in hiring. Saying "we can't proceed with an offer until we've hired at least one woman and one URM" (which is what Meta's DSA entailed) is indeed using protected class as a factor in hiring.

It is odd that the expected inclusion was so specific, though. What about a 14 year old white male? Do they not satisfy: "consider more candidates who might not fit your preconceived notion of what you thought a person in that role should look like."?

I get it. I don't think a 14 year old looks suitable for a senior role either, but looking past that is the point. You never know what someone can offer.

I find it interesting that being underage and in middle school is on the same level to you as being a woman. This comment reads like "You want us to interview WOMEN now? Why not teenagers? Or plants?!"

Your biases applied to the comment may read that way. The comment itself doesn't say that at all. It is interesting that we are seeing the discrimination right here on HN too. I thought we were better than that?

The request was to “consider people you normally wouldn’t for this role”

I normally wouldn’t consider a 14y/o for a senior position. I wouldn’t consider a child to run our armed forces either.

It is you who put women and other minorities into that group with this comment of yours. You are the one to compare being underage and in middle school to being on the same level of a woman.

well if a 14 year old has 10 years of (real) experience building software in an enterprise setting, of course they should be considered for a senior role

What about 10 years of experience building software translates to the director position being talked about? Would a 14 year old who has 10 years of (real) experience working on the family farm be equally suitable or is there something about software specifically that primes people for being directors?

sure, replace building software with leading large teams. The general point still stands

So you echo that until you find a 14 year old who has managed a large team for at least 10 years you haven’t tried hard enough? I don’t want to rest on my biases, but…

No, it is obvious that there are not any qualified 14 year olds, and it is also obvious that there are qualified minorities - if you can't find qualified minorities, you should look more closely at your recruitment pipelines.

It might be obvious based on your criteria, but remember that you invented that criteria based your arbitrary biases. Those with 10 years of real experience are statistically more likely to be qualified for the job, that is hard to disagree with, but being a white male also makes you statistically more likely to be qualified for the job in question. That is why the bias spoken of exists! But the point made at the business told about earlier is that statistical likelihood does not preclude outliers who deserve equal consideration.

Your original comment suggests you come from the software industry, in which case you know full well that there are programmers who have been at it for a few years who can program circles around those who have been doing it for 10. Not everyone progresses at the same rate. Years of experience across a wide population will provide positive correlation, but is not anywhere close to being an accurate measuring device and says nothing down at the individual level. To discount someone with less years of experience than your arbitrarily chosen number before you have even talked to them is the very same lack of inclusion being talked about.

> being a white male also makes you statistically more likely to be qualified for the job in question

Source?

Your previous comment. You spoke to the recruitment pipelines that are more likely to find white men, which means that when there are more white men in earlier career stages, there will be comparatively more white men ready to move into next level career stages. That is simple mathematics. Of course, you already knew this as this is exactly why DEI initiatives began. Why act like you don't know what is going on with an exceptionally tired meme?