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From an ideology point of view, this is amazing. Imagine having activist pressure be so strong that you can make institutions create high paying executive posi

From an ideology point of view, this is amazing. Imagine having activist pressure be so strong that you can make institutions create high paying executive positions designed to satisfy your demands.

EpicEng 6y ago
The tricky bit, apparently, is making the right demands in the first place.
- nailer 6y ago
  Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer is a fine demand, in that it requires the institution to pay attention to activists. Activists of the 'woke' kind generally prioritise attention over improving ethnic group involvement in a field. Once the CDO is hired, the activists will move on gaining attention by making subsequent additional demands.
namdnay 6y ago
I don't see what "ideology" or "views" that would be. It's not like anyone is saying that diversity is bad, we all agree that the ideal company would match the diversity of the society it operates in. It's just that hiring someone specifically for this seems a bit silly. To take a coding parallel, it's as if you had a "chief code review officer" to ensure people are doing enough code reviews. We all agree that code reviews are a good thing, and that most companies could do with more of them, but we also think it's a bit silly to have n executive position for it
- jimbob45 6y ago
  I’m saying diversity is bad. I want a pure meritocracy, not a college campus where applicants are judged based on the color of their skin.
  - namdnay 6y ago
    We seem to be arguing two different things. I'm saying diversity is a good goal for our society to aim for, not that it's a good means to get there. i.e. I'm not saying that selection should be based on skin colour, I'm saying that it's a good long term goal for our institutions (be they fortune 500 companies or universities) to reflect the diversity of our society. There are lots of ways to get there, and american-style racial quotas are definitely not the best way IMHO
- free_rms 6y ago
  Which society should they demographically match, America?
  - namdnay 6y ago
    I guess it depends on the company, right? For a global company I'd expect the top levels to be pretty global too.
- vel0city 6y ago
  > It's not like anyone is saying that diversity is bad From the start, there are absolutely people out there who argue diversity is bad and that ultimately we should live in some kind of ethnostate. Then there's a whole gradient of people from that end to people who think the government should force integration in pretty much any semi-public setting. There are definitely people out there arguing diversity is bad. I don't agree with these people, but I at least acknowledge these people do exist. In this spectrum, there are other people who don't have a problem with diversity but only wish for such things to happen more or less organically. Of course there's a view that if the people making hiring decisions are always a particular kind of world view they're going to usually select people they can self-identify with leading to a self-selection bias that restricts the rate of integration in an organization. Enforcing such integration or not, or the level of such forced integration, is absolutely a diverse range of policy viewpoints largely anchored on base political ideologies. Your own opinion that "hiring someone specifically for this seems a bit silly" is a view you have based on your ideology. Others don't find it silly, which is their view based on their ideology.
- rory 6y ago
  I think the more common stance is that diversity is neutral, not good or bad but merely incidental.
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
Doesn't seem much different than any of the ISO9000 guys I've met at big companies. Cushy job if you can tolerate it.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  I was going to argue that ISO9000 doesn't get its own C-level exec, but apparently Chief Compliance Officer is a thing so maybe
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  ISO9000 is a documented and defined standard. What qualifies as 'Diverse' is entirely up to the whims of the most vocal.
jariel 6y ago
This has become institutional. And FYI it's not a paradox that you can 'care about diversity' and still be bullied by activists. Major corporations are making requirements for panels at conferences etc. and it can get very complicated. A female documentarian in Montreal just quit the industry over the institutional rejection of her work which focused on homelessness and happened to be mostly 'white men' due to requirements of diversity. In my own discussions with 'executive level people' I find that they are generally of the classically liberal type (think European liberal). Basically - they are nice, upper middle class white men who actually do 'care' about such things, but generally are not exactly well read or super thoughtful on the issue. They're not 'up on the lingo' and are very, very afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. The 'right thing' is effectively forced upon them, and they generally act to placate angry voices and want it to all go away, like a Father caving to his teenagers angry demands about this that, hoping that tomorrow it will all just go away. I've heard, even my own very white, executive golf club member say the most 'woke' things lately it's almost made me laugh, when I inquire about it, it's clear they have no idea what they are saying, they are repeating the argument made to them by someone with a more radical view. Because there is no 'pushback' on the issue (everyone is afraid), then things get out of tilt. I'm not sure what the end-game is, but it would be nice if there were some kind of 'centrist' and defensible ideal that people could appeal to that enables execs to make thoughtful decisions about diversity but that aren't based on 'caving out of fear to activism'.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > A female documentarian in Montreal just quit the industry over the institutional rejection of her work which focused on homelessness and happened to be mostly 'white men' due to requirements of diversity. Homeless folks were white men in Montreal? How is that surprising?
  - jariel 6y ago
    It's not surprising, it's just that she was getting widespread systematic and cultural pushback in the vein of: "It's not the time to tell stories about White Men". Of course, her own rejection of the industry wasn't popularly covered either in the press. The industry preference is for sympathetic stories of Aboriginal, LGBTQQ, PoC etc.. This becomes apparent everywhere there is government or related money, i.e. grant applications for projects, even commercial enterprises. Of course there's some thoughtful impetus behind this on some level, but these trends become cultish and authoritarian, sometimes promoting some upside down worldviews.

From an ideology point of view, this is amazing. Imagine having activist pressure be so strong that you can make institutions create high paying executive positions designed to satisfy your demands.

EpicEng 6y ago

The tricky bit, apparently, is making the right demands in the first place.

nailer 6y ago
Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer is a fine demand, in that it requires the institution to pay attention to activists. Activists of the 'woke' kind generally prioritise attention over improving ethnic group involvement in a field. Once the CDO is hired, the activists will move on gaining attention by making subsequent additional demands.

namdnay 6y ago

I don't see what "ideology" or "views" that would be. It's not like anyone is saying that diversity is bad, we all agree that the ideal company would match the diversity of the society it operates in. It's just that hiring someone specifically for this seems a bit silly. To take a coding parallel, it's as if you had a "chief code review officer" to ensure people are doing enough code reviews. We all agree that code reviews are a good thing, and that most companies could do with more of them, but we also think it's a bit silly to have n executive position for it

jimbob45 6y ago
I’m saying diversity is bad. I want a pure meritocracy, not a college campus where applicants are judged based on the color of their skin.
- namdnay 6y ago
  We seem to be arguing two different things. I'm saying diversity is a good goal for our society to aim for, not that it's a good means to get there. i.e. I'm not saying that selection should be based on skin colour, I'm saying that it's a good long term goal for our institutions (be they fortune 500 companies or universities) to reflect the diversity of our society. There are lots of ways to get there, and american-style racial quotas are definitely not the best way IMHO
free_rms 6y ago
Which society should they demographically match, America?
- namdnay 6y ago
  I guess it depends on the company, right? For a global company I'd expect the top levels to be pretty global too.
vel0city 6y ago
> It's not like anyone is saying that diversity is bad From the start, there are absolutely people out there who argue diversity is bad and that ultimately we should live in some kind of ethnostate. Then there's a whole gradient of people from that end to people who think the government should force integration in pretty much any semi-public setting. There are definitely people out there arguing diversity is bad. I don't agree with these people, but I at least acknowledge these people do exist. In this spectrum, there are other people who don't have a problem with diversity but only wish for such things to happen more or less organically. Of course there's a view that if the people making hiring decisions are always a particular kind of world view they're going to usually select people they can self-identify with leading to a self-selection bias that restricts the rate of integration in an organization. Enforcing such integration or not, or the level of such forced integration, is absolutely a diverse range of policy viewpoints largely anchored on base political ideologies. Your own opinion that "hiring someone specifically for this seems a bit silly" is a view you have based on your ideology. Others don't find it silly, which is their view based on their ideology.
rory 6y ago
I think the more common stance is that diversity is neutral, not good or bad but merely incidental.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

Doesn't seem much different than any of the ISO9000 guys I've met at big companies. Cushy job if you can tolerate it.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
I was going to argue that ISO9000 doesn't get its own C-level exec, but apparently Chief Compliance Officer is a thing so maybe
BitwiseFool 6y ago
ISO9000 is a documented and defined standard. What qualifies as 'Diverse' is entirely up to the whims of the most vocal.

jariel 6y ago

This has become institutional. And FYI it's not a paradox that you can 'care about diversity' and still be bullied by activists. Major corporations are making requirements for panels at conferences etc. and it can get very complicated. A female documentarian in Montreal just quit the industry over the institutional rejection of her work which focused on homelessness and happened to be mostly 'white men' due to requirements of diversity. In my own discussions with 'executive level people' I find that they are generally of the classically liberal type (think European liberal). Basically - they are nice, upper middle class white men who actually do 'care' about such things, but generally are not exactly well read or super thoughtful on the issue. They're not 'up on the lingo' and are very, very afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. The 'right thing' is effectively forced upon them, and they generally act to placate angry voices and want it to all go away, like a Father caving to his teenagers angry demands about this that, hoping that tomorrow it will all just go away. I've heard, even my own very white, executive golf club member say the most 'woke' things lately it's almost made me laugh, when I inquire about it, it's clear they have no idea what they are saying, they are repeating the argument made to them by someone with a more radical view. Because there is no 'pushback' on the issue (everyone is afraid), then things get out of tilt. I'm not sure what the end-game is, but it would be nice if there were some kind of 'centrist' and defensible ideal that people could appeal to that enables execs to make thoughtful decisions about diversity but that aren't based on 'caving out of fear to activism'.

908B64B197 6y ago
> A female documentarian in Montreal just quit the industry over the institutional rejection of her work which focused on homelessness and happened to be mostly 'white men' due to requirements of diversity. Homeless folks were white men in Montreal? How is that surprising?
- jariel 6y ago
  It's not surprising, it's just that she was getting widespread systematic and cultural pushback in the vein of: "It's not the time to tell stories about White Men". Of course, her own rejection of the industry wasn't popularly covered either in the press. The industry preference is for sympathetic stories of Aboriginal, LGBTQQ, PoC etc.. This becomes apparent everywhere there is government or related money, i.e. grant applications for projects, even commercial enterprises. Of course there's some thoughtful impetus behind this on some level, but these trends become cultish and authoritarian, sometimes promoting some upside down worldviews.