8 ms·

> (2) Expand our diversity recruitment programs specifically targeting women, people of color, and LGBT people with the goal of doubling recruitment of these gr

> (2) Expand our diversity recruitment programs specifically targeting women, people of color, and LGBT people with the goal of doubling recruitment of these groups in 2017 and steadily increasing the share of these groups as a proportion of new hiring in subsequent years. Initiatives like this worry me that we'll end up like my previous employer where we were off-the-record instructed not to hire a white male for our open position.

stateofnounion 6y ago
It's already happening.
- teekert 6y ago
  The technical University of Eindhoven (the Netherlands) announced they'd only hire women from a certain point in time on and they did for months. Then a judge called them back. In their defense, it was needed, almost all professors were male so I understand how they came to this action. Generally I think it is better to stimulate people to hire outside their comfort-zone and build heterogeneous teams in all dimensions.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
TeaDrunk 6y ago
Yes, “don’t hire white men” is a much different policy than “please increase your funnel and hire more non white cis hereto men”. I would argue your previous employer more or less just misses the point of these things.
- supergeek133 6y ago
  But that's the whole issue. Policy versus practice. I'm usually hard pressed to find people who disagree with the thought of "we should try to hire people other than white men in a white men dominated profession". The issue comes when the unspoken (OP's "off the record") enforcement of this is willful hate towards those people.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    Of course there is an issue when people miss the point and do stupid shit. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to improve representation in one of if not the most fast growing, wealth-providing career fields. I’m utterly baffled by this argument that a case of one company missing the point means IBM shouldn’t even try.
    - supergeek133 6y ago
      IBM should try, everyone should try. But on the same side people just can't believe that the middle management and/or line level people responsible for some of these decisions are being malicious.
      - TeaDrunk 6y ago
        It's fine to call out malicious behavior I'm just confused by the argument that a stupid decision from company A means that company B shouldn't try to make a good decision. I'm even more confused by the concept that company A making a stupid decision means that every push to make a non-stupid decision must be suspected to be malicious.
  - humanrebar 6y ago
    I disagree that the existing diversity in tech is best described as "white". Tech has a lot of diversity. It's that some groups, especially women, are still underrepresented.
    - bluedevil2k 6y ago
      18% of computer science majors in the US are women. 20% of the computer science jobs are held by women. How is that underrepresenting women? * - https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-science/ https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-...
      - Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  Sorry, I'm not getting how "hire less white men" is different from "hire more non-white men"?
  - apacheCamel 6y ago
    The "Drink milk" campaign in my elementary school would be a good example. You should drink more milk, doesn't mean you should drink less water, or juice or whatever. It just means drink more milk.
    - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
      Assuming that you can drink an infinite amount of liquid, yes. But in practice "drink more milk" means "drink less soda".
      - apacheCamel 6y ago
        >Assuming that you can drink an infinite amount of liquid, yes. You would also assume that people drink their "max quota" of drinks a day, thus being forced to eliminate something to make room. There's always room for milk my friend.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  Those things are identical in practice. The request is to hire non-whites and/or non-men. The clearest way to enforce it is just to specify exactly that - it achieves the stated aims with no cognitive dissonance.
raxxorrax 6y ago
This is actually structural racism in contrast to attesting it on society or some specific people. Honestly, I think this letter is quite weak. To see Trump as a racist is a result of medial smear campaigns. He might have a foul mouth, but I have different definition of what constitutes a racist. You can have countless reasons to dislike Trump, but he is no racist. Maybe the signers of this letters are.
- robert_foss 6y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what constitutes racism to you? Trump called White Supremacists 'fine people'. He has clearly played to the racists parts of his base on numerous occasions. If actions promoting racism isn't racism, then I don't know what is.
  - rangoon626 6y ago
    He also achieved the highest black unemployment rating under his administration. That does not seem like something a racist would do. This is why no one is buying this narrative.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    Judging someone simply on his race. Simple example: refusing a job to someone because of this criterion. It doesn’t matter if Asian, Black, White or other, if the candidate is dismissed because of race, it’s racism.
    - robert_foss 6y ago
      So supporting an entrenched system of racism is not racism then? If so I can see why not much progress is being made.
  - Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
    That is pure fake news. You may not be intending to lie, but you're spreading them. "To remove all doubt, the President continued with “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?”" https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/04/30/the-fine-people-hoax-funnel/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/04/30/the-fine-people-ho...
happytoexplain 6y ago
Unfortunately, this is a line of attack used by malicious actors: Summoning the specter of anti-white racism every time "diversity" is mentioned, with not much else to say. I'm not accusing you of doing that, but I am saying that we should try to keep in mind that failures like the one you describe are a natural consequence of Goodhart's Law, and we need to tackle them as problems, rather than just reaching for them as examples that (intentionally or not) imply that trying to diversify the hiring pool is in itself wrong-headed. For example: Note that I said hiring pool - not necessarily hires. Part of avoiding the problem you ran into is focusing on pragmatism and holism - it's OK to address the symptoms if we're applying the treatment justly, but we mustn't let our primary focus stray from addressing the disease.
- faned 6y ago
  Edit: Shadowbanned.
bluedevil2k 6y ago
I'm a former IBM'er and I remember a presentation 14 years ago in front of 500 people by a higher up with a PowerPoint slide that said "We are actively looking to promote women and minorities to management". I saw this in action as a few older co-workers, 40'ish, white and male, were continually passed over for promotions to management.
- pm90 6y ago
  Good
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zerr 6y ago
Similar case here: we were instructed to lower the hiring bar to the minimum for female candidates.
bahlhala 6y ago
Is the off the record instruction not just re-explaining what they are supposed to be doing? i.e. diversify who you are hiring. I can see that it is annoying but I don't get the hostility around this stuff. are there many thousands of white males not able to get a job... probably not (at least not due to this). How else are we meant to have more diverse teams if we don't hire diversely? Personally I would take a theoretical 20% hit in productivity as part of male dominated environment to learn what a more diverse environment should look like. Having this density of basically white men is often pretty toxic imho (fyi i am a white male) I see so many "harmless" jokes made by people who literally don't have enough experience to be respectful outside of their gender and race. It also makes me sad that people say "its fine look we have Susan" or whatever.. no, Susan has learned to put up with your bullshit and keep her mouth closed.. and if you think "hey I put up with bullshit too" then that only means you agree your environment is toxic and no amount of white males is fixing it.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  If you don't think this to be a problem, I don't see how you could criticize people only hiring certain skin colors, which is probably extremely rare in the western world. I know that bias is the next argument, but it is just as baseless.
  - bahlhala 6y ago
    Honestly I find it kind of easier to get on with northern European white males.. because I am one and I hav elots in common with them.. Our parents did similar things, we eat similar foods, we grew up in similar houses.. I find it easier to predict their moods and behaviours etc.. cos they are like me. However, that doesn't mean to say we are in any way right or better than any one else. When i work with people who are different to me it often makes me feel somewhat outside of my comfort zone (not in any kind of major way - just like getting a new pair of slippers or something, it feels a little different to yesterday). I just think we cannot help this at all.. so when i am asked to visualise a new start before they join.. who do i imagine, well mostly someone like me. i mean i have all sorts of practices techniques to mitigate this, but its inherently true, true of all people imho. So we have lots of jobs and areas that are thick with white men.. everything is tailored to what their needs are. start times, lengths of holidays and breaks, how long is taken for parental leave after a child is born, even the temperature of most offices is tuned to middle aged white men. We (white men) dont know what an inclusive environment is.. no single group of people does. so really we have to go for immersion therapy (or fake it till you make it).. we just have to kind of force a more diverse group of people into these roles and see what happens.. all the time trying to be respectful and accommodating. I wanted to work with computers as it was something I saw my dad doing it when i was very young (its not this simple but it almost is).. if our daughters dont see their mothers working in IT why would they put any effort into learning it? Its a chicken and egg scenario to a certain extent and this is basically the only route in we have to change the feedback loop imho. if someone comes up with another idea i am all ears.

stateofnounion 6y ago

It's already happening.

teekert 6y ago
The technical University of Eindhoven (the Netherlands) announced they'd only hire women from a certain point in time on and they did for months. Then a judge called them back. In their defense, it was needed, almost all professors were male so I understand how they came to this action. Generally I think it is better to stimulate people to hire outside their comfort-zone and build heterogeneous teams in all dimensions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

TeaDrunk 6y ago

Yes, “don’t hire white men” is a much different policy than “please increase your funnel and hire more non white cis hereto men”. I would argue your previous employer more or less just misses the point of these things.

supergeek133 6y ago
But that's the whole issue. Policy versus practice. I'm usually hard pressed to find people who disagree with the thought of "we should try to hire people other than white men in a white men dominated profession". The issue comes when the unspoken (OP's "off the record") enforcement of this is willful hate towards those people.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Of course there is an issue when people miss the point and do stupid shit. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to improve representation in one of if not the most fast growing, wealth-providing career fields. I’m utterly baffled by this argument that a case of one company missing the point means IBM shouldn’t even try.
  - supergeek133 6y ago
    IBM should try, everyone should try. But on the same side people just can't believe that the middle management and/or line level people responsible for some of these decisions are being malicious.
    - TeaDrunk 6y ago
      It's fine to call out malicious behavior I'm just confused by the argument that a stupid decision from company A means that company B shouldn't try to make a good decision. I'm even more confused by the concept that company A making a stupid decision means that every push to make a non-stupid decision must be suspected to be malicious.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  I disagree that the existing diversity in tech is best described as "white". Tech has a lot of diversity. It's that some groups, especially women, are still underrepresented.
  - bluedevil2k 6y ago
    18% of computer science majors in the US are women. 20% of the computer science jobs are held by women. How is that underrepresenting women? * - https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-science/ https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-...
    - Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
Sorry, I'm not getting how "hire less white men" is different from "hire more non-white men"?
- apacheCamel 6y ago
  The "Drink milk" campaign in my elementary school would be a good example. You should drink more milk, doesn't mean you should drink less water, or juice or whatever. It just means drink more milk.
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    Assuming that you can drink an infinite amount of liquid, yes. But in practice "drink more milk" means "drink less soda".
    - apacheCamel 6y ago
      >Assuming that you can drink an infinite amount of liquid, yes. You would also assume that people drink their "max quota" of drinks a day, thus being forced to eliminate something to make room. There's always room for milk my friend.
Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
Those things are identical in practice. The request is to hire non-whites and/or non-men. The clearest way to enforce it is just to specify exactly that - it achieves the stated aims with no cognitive dissonance.

raxxorrax 6y ago

This is actually structural racism in contrast to attesting it on society or some specific people. Honestly, I think this letter is quite weak. To see Trump as a racist is a result of medial smear campaigns. He might have a foul mouth, but I have different definition of what constitutes a racist. You can have countless reasons to dislike Trump, but he is no racist. Maybe the signers of this letters are.

robert_foss 6y ago
Just out of curiosity, what constitutes racism to you? Trump called White Supremacists 'fine people'. He has clearly played to the racists parts of his base on numerous occasions. If actions promoting racism isn't racism, then I don't know what is.
- rangoon626 6y ago
  He also achieved the highest black unemployment rating under his administration. That does not seem like something a racist would do. This is why no one is buying this narrative.
- tasogare 6y ago
  Judging someone simply on his race. Simple example: refusing a job to someone because of this criterion. It doesn’t matter if Asian, Black, White or other, if the candidate is dismissed because of race, it’s racism.
  - robert_foss 6y ago
    So supporting an entrenched system of racism is not racism then? If so I can see why not much progress is being made.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  That is pure fake news. You may not be intending to lie, but you're spreading them. "To remove all doubt, the President continued with “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?”" https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/04/30/the-fine-people-hoax-funnel/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/04/30/the-fine-people-ho...

happytoexplain 6y ago

Unfortunately, this is a line of attack used by malicious actors: Summoning the specter of anti-white racism every time "diversity" is mentioned, with not much else to say. I'm not accusing you of doing that, but I am saying that we should try to keep in mind that failures like the one you describe are a natural consequence of Goodhart's Law, and we need to tackle them as problems, rather than just reaching for them as examples that (intentionally or not) imply that trying to diversify the hiring pool is in itself wrong-headed. For example: Note that I said hiring pool - not necessarily hires. Part of avoiding the problem you ran into is focusing on pragmatism and holism - it's OK to address the symptoms if we're applying the treatment justly, but we mustn't let our primary focus stray from addressing the disease.

faned 6y ago
Edit: Shadowbanned.

bluedevil2k 6y ago

I'm a former IBM'er and I remember a presentation 14 years ago in front of 500 people by a higher up with a PowerPoint slide that said "We are actively looking to promote women and minorities to management". I saw this in action as a few older co-workers, 40'ish, white and male, were continually passed over for promotions to management.

pm90 6y ago
Good

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zerr 6y ago

Similar case here: we were instructed to lower the hiring bar to the minimum for female candidates.

bahlhala 6y ago

Is the off the record instruction not just re-explaining what they are supposed to be doing? i.e. diversify who you are hiring. I can see that it is annoying but I don't get the hostility around this stuff. are there many thousands of white males not able to get a job... probably not (at least not due to this). How else are we meant to have more diverse teams if we don't hire diversely? Personally I would take a theoretical 20% hit in productivity as part of male dominated environment to learn what a more diverse environment should look like. Having this density of basically white men is often pretty toxic imho (fyi i am a white male) I see so many "harmless" jokes made by people who literally don't have enough experience to be respectful outside of their gender and race. It also makes me sad that people say "its fine look we have Susan" or whatever.. no, Susan has learned to put up with your bullshit and keep her mouth closed.. and if you think "hey I put up with bullshit too" then that only means you agree your environment is toxic and no amount of white males is fixing it.

raxxorrax 6y ago
If you don't think this to be a problem, I don't see how you could criticize people only hiring certain skin colors, which is probably extremely rare in the western world. I know that bias is the next argument, but it is just as baseless.
- bahlhala 6y ago
  Honestly I find it kind of easier to get on with northern European white males.. because I am one and I hav elots in common with them.. Our parents did similar things, we eat similar foods, we grew up in similar houses.. I find it easier to predict their moods and behaviours etc.. cos they are like me. However, that doesn't mean to say we are in any way right or better than any one else. When i work with people who are different to me it often makes me feel somewhat outside of my comfort zone (not in any kind of major way - just like getting a new pair of slippers or something, it feels a little different to yesterday). I just think we cannot help this at all.. so when i am asked to visualise a new start before they join.. who do i imagine, well mostly someone like me. i mean i have all sorts of practices techniques to mitigate this, but its inherently true, true of all people imho. So we have lots of jobs and areas that are thick with white men.. everything is tailored to what their needs are. start times, lengths of holidays and breaks, how long is taken for parental leave after a child is born, even the temperature of most offices is tuned to middle aged white men. We (white men) dont know what an inclusive environment is.. no single group of people does. so really we have to go for immersion therapy (or fake it till you make it).. we just have to kind of force a more diverse group of people into these roles and see what happens.. all the time trying to be respectful and accommodating. I wanted to work with computers as it was something I saw my dad doing it when i was very young (its not this simple but it almost is).. if our daughters dont see their mothers working in IT why would they put any effort into learning it? Its a chicken and egg scenario to a certain extent and this is basically the only route in we have to change the feedback loop imho. if someone comes up with another idea i am all ears.