Also, DEI is about giving people with special needs the things they require to function. And providing managers insights into the things they might struggle with. We do information packs about LGBT, different religions etc just so managers understand and can accommodate. We have resource networks for managers (and really, all employees) that have questions about such things. We organise awareness events about LGBT and minority topics so employees can learn from each other and create a better understanding. And it works. It's not just about hiring but also creating better awareness for existing employees.
We do look at numbers to guage how we're doing but nobody is being penalised. If we have very few minorities compared to the local demographics it just means our trainings are not getting heard properly and we need to improve them.
I would go as far as to say that a company that has strict quotas doesn't really care about DEI. They just want a quick fix. This is not how these things work. You're working with people, not numbers.
What bothers me the most is that the Trump administration is even trying to force foreign companies like my employer to abandon DEI programs. It's none of their business what we do in the EU. We like what we do and we're not going to change. They cherrypick a few bad examples and pretend everyone works like that.
There are incompetent people on both sides of the issue. the difference is that one side has correctly identified a problem with how institutions choose people. The other side is screaming bloody murder that there's no problem at all and that we have to stop talking about the obviously inadvertent and innocuous inequities in our society and institutions.
Not every inequity is the result of discrimination or bias. Should we strive to have a 50/50 gender split in murder convictions? A quota restricting murder convictions to 50% men would be an equitable policy but an explicitly unequal one as it'd require either men being let off or women being falsely convicted.
If DEI was carried through policies like anonymizing resumes and interviews, I'd believe the claims about how DEI is about reducing discrimination. Instead, all the DEI program I've actually seen firsthand have either directly discriminated on th basis of protected class, or incentivize people to discriminate (e.g. bonuses tied to quotas).
I'm involved in hiring at my company, which is fairly diverse compared to my perception of the average. There are no quotas, only intentional processes that ensure everyone gets a fair shake.
> ...only intentional processes that ensure everyone gets a fair shake.
Care to elaborate? The overtly discriminatory policies I listed above were supposedly just ensuring everyone gets a fair take. The language of "ensure everyone gets a fair shake," is no different than how my previous employers described our policy to restrict a segment of headcount to one gender.
If you're interested in non-anecdotal evidence on tech hiring bias, here's a few studies tracking applicants submitted to companies and universities:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112, the chart with the important data: https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.1418878112/asset/fc20a...
Study on sending resumes to SV tech companies: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484, HN discussion on the paperhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644
> one side has correctly identified a problem
There is no substance to this, you just believe your perspective to be superior. You could of course take a step back to let others take your place. Perhaps that would be convincing.
The nature of dog whistles is that some people use the term in earnest, without the subtext. But in my experience most people enthusiastic about DEI ultimately do condone discrimination in one way or another.
1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics)