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If the average person actually knew what these initiatives meant they would be against them. In practice what it does is make it so members of designated groups

by jrsj 4y ago

If the average person actually knew what these initiatives meant they would be against them. In practice what it does is make it so members of designated groups typically win by default whenever they & other candidates meet minimum requirements for a position. It’s not even good for the people who get promotions faster as a result imo because everyone around them knows things are rigged in their favor. And who has benefitted? This stuff was supposed to help people that lacked opportunity but for the most part it’s people who were upper middle class (predominately white women) to begin with reaping the benefits & using these policies as a political weapon to get more influence inside companies. I’m personally hopeful that the upcoming Supreme Court case involving Harvards admission practices also affects the private sector and that these types of policies simply become illegal.

Manuel_D 4y ago
This is my observation as well. Most women don't want to be hired on account of some eng diversity target. It gets really toxic when a company is simultaneously engaging in this kind of discrimination while also harshly cracking down on anyone who points it out. In 2015 I worked at Dropbox when DEI discrimination was ramping up. Among other things, we only interviewed boot camp grads if they were diverse. We also have diverse applicants two tries at the phone screen instead of one. The onsites we're pretty fair, save for a couple hiring managers. If you asked someone in person, nobody would ever admit to anything. But the company did a poll on whether the hiring process was biased against men and 83% responded yes. What did Arden, the head of HR at the time, do? Rant about how offensive this was to women and how we're all sexist. To reiterate, most women and URM did not want these policies. There was some more support for affirmative action supporting URM, which makes sense to me and I largely agree with: things like lower college attendance and family income are concrete examples of systemic disadvantage. Women, on the other hand, attend college at largely the same rate and the disparity is due to choice rather than lack of opportunities.
- jrsj 4y ago
  In general it’s also a problem with what is considered diverse. If you’re a white man from a poor family with no college education, the policy is to explicitly discriminate against you. If you’re a white woman from an upper middle class background, you’re considered diverse and given advantages despite the fact that you could have gone into any field you wanted, could probably afford to switch on a whim, and don’t have to worry about things like family members potentially dying because they can’t afford their insulin.
  - gedy 4y ago
    Yes this is what bugs me. I and older "white males" were mentioned in DEI surveys as something to fix, by an org full of mostly younger and more privileged backgrounds. AFAIK I was the only person in engineering who had been on welfare as a child, literally lived next to a toxic waste dump, etc. When I was a kid, us "nerds" were picked on/beat up for liking computers. This sort of thing really turned me off on most corporate DEI, as it's frequently not about real diversity.
    - jrsj 4y ago
      I’m younger but from a similar background. I don’t have many opportunities available to me, and my family is going to be dependent on me financially when they can no longer work. It’s extremely stressful to have all of this hanging over my head & be expected to applaud it.
  - Banana699 4y ago
    Every totalitarianism claims the opposite virtues, right ? Dictatorship are always named "People's *". Woke diversity is the exact polar opposite of any reasonable meaning of the word.
  - waterhouse 4y ago
    It's a strange thing for the adjective "diverse" to apply to a single human, in any case. It's a descriptor that applies to groups; the only way I can see it applying to one human is with genetic mosaicism or something.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      In this case, "diverse" simply means "not a white male."
      - Manuel_D 4y ago
        Not white male and not Asian male either. Some recruiters at the company went even further and categorized Asian males as "negatively diverse", a category below even white males.
- __turbobrew__ 4y ago
  Ah, maybe that is why I could never get an interview at dropbox? Maybe I should get rid of my profile pic on linkedin and change my pronouns to "they/them"?
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Biggest boost would be to change your name to an ethnic or predominantly female name. Recruiters had compiled spreadsheets of names correlated with women and URM exported from census data. Also spreadsheets on ethnic fraternities and sororities.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Women attend college at a much higher rate than men.
QuarterReptile 4y ago
This is why the Civil Rights Act passed when the congressman from Virginia (can't remember the name) tried to kill it by including women in the bill. A law designed to save the endangered black family was instead coopted to boost the career prospects of successful women, so I guess the poison pill worked despite the bill passing.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  The black family was only endangered because of those very same people who wrote all sorts of asinine rules for the social safety net programs that penalized stable households, penalized married couples and penalized above the table jobs. Were they poor? Sure. Were they marginalized? You bet. But the single mother, the child without a father figure and the idle black man were not serious issues, let alone stereotypes, until after people tried to "help" them.
  - golergka 4y ago
    Seems like they purposefully created people now dependent on these government programs in order to secure electorate.
    - oslsla 4y ago
      No, it's more complex than that. Racism in large portions of the united states still exists today. Individuals are not given opportunites in the u.s. simply because of something as simple as their last name. While people may base on DEI initiatives in the majority of America in non large corporate and even on those companies they are still refused if any opportunities which add on each other resulting in inequality.
      - golergka 4y ago
        I don't understand how anything of what you wrote (which, BTW, I agree with) contradicts my point.
    - themitigating 4y ago
daenz 4y ago
>And who has benefitted It benefits the people who gain power and status by using virtues as a social weapon.
- themitigating 4y ago
  It also benefits those who rail against "cancel culture", diversity, and the like
  - daenz 4y ago
    If making a mistake benefits your enemies, your enemies can hardly be blamed.
  - nullc 4y ago
    It's always the case for political extremes-- the one extreme can't exist without the other to act as its boogyman. Everyone else is caught in the crossfire.
JacobThreeThree 4y ago
>And who has benefitted? The rationale being promoted to the corporations by management consultants is that the company will make more money. >Our latest research finds that companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/why-diversity-matters https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organ...

by jrsj 4y ago

Manuel_D 4y ago

This is my observation as well. Most women don't want to be hired on account of some eng diversity target. It gets really toxic when a company is simultaneously engaging in this kind of discrimination while also harshly cracking down on anyone who points it out. In 2015 I worked at Dropbox when DEI discrimination was ramping up. Among other things, we only interviewed boot camp grads if they were diverse. We also have diverse applicants two tries at the phone screen instead of one. The onsites we're pretty fair, save for a couple hiring managers. If you asked someone in person, nobody would ever admit to anything. But the company did a poll on whether the hiring process was biased against men and 83% responded yes. What did Arden, the head of HR at the time, do? Rant about how offensive this was to women and how we're all sexist. To reiterate, most women and URM did not want these policies. There was some more support for affirmative action supporting URM, which makes sense to me and I largely agree with: things like lower college attendance and family income are concrete examples of systemic disadvantage. Women, on the other hand, attend college at largely the same rate and the disparity is due to choice rather than lack of opportunities.

jrsj 4y ago
In general it’s also a problem with what is considered diverse. If you’re a white man from a poor family with no college education, the policy is to explicitly discriminate against you. If you’re a white woman from an upper middle class background, you’re considered diverse and given advantages despite the fact that you could have gone into any field you wanted, could probably afford to switch on a whim, and don’t have to worry about things like family members potentially dying because they can’t afford their insulin.
- gedy 4y ago
  Yes this is what bugs me. I and older "white males" were mentioned in DEI surveys as something to fix, by an org full of mostly younger and more privileged backgrounds. AFAIK I was the only person in engineering who had been on welfare as a child, literally lived next to a toxic waste dump, etc. When I was a kid, us "nerds" were picked on/beat up for liking computers. This sort of thing really turned me off on most corporate DEI, as it's frequently not about real diversity.
  - jrsj 4y ago
    I’m younger but from a similar background. I don’t have many opportunities available to me, and my family is going to be dependent on me financially when they can no longer work. It’s extremely stressful to have all of this hanging over my head & be expected to applaud it.
- Banana699 4y ago
  Every totalitarianism claims the opposite virtues, right ? Dictatorship are always named "People's *". Woke diversity is the exact polar opposite of any reasonable meaning of the word.
- waterhouse 4y ago
  It's a strange thing for the adjective "diverse" to apply to a single human, in any case. It's a descriptor that applies to groups; the only way I can see it applying to one human is with genetic mosaicism or something.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    In this case, "diverse" simply means "not a white male."
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      Not white male and not Asian male either. Some recruiters at the company went even further and categorized Asian males as "negatively diverse", a category below even white males.
__turbobrew__ 4y ago
Ah, maybe that is why I could never get an interview at dropbox? Maybe I should get rid of my profile pic on linkedin and change my pronouns to "they/them"?
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Biggest boost would be to change your name to an ethnic or predominantly female name. Recruiters had compiled spreadsheets of names correlated with women and URM exported from census data. Also spreadsheets on ethnic fraternities and sororities.
jimbokun 4y ago
Women attend college at a much higher rate than men.

QuarterReptile 4y ago

This is why the Civil Rights Act passed when the congressman from Virginia (can't remember the name) tried to kill it by including women in the bill. A law designed to save the endangered black family was instead coopted to boost the career prospects of successful women, so I guess the poison pill worked despite the bill passing.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
The black family was only endangered because of those very same people who wrote all sorts of asinine rules for the social safety net programs that penalized stable households, penalized married couples and penalized above the table jobs. Were they poor? Sure. Were they marginalized? You bet. But the single mother, the child without a father figure and the idle black man were not serious issues, let alone stereotypes, until after people tried to "help" them.
- golergka 4y ago
  Seems like they purposefully created people now dependent on these government programs in order to secure electorate.
  - oslsla 4y ago
    No, it's more complex than that. Racism in large portions of the united states still exists today. Individuals are not given opportunites in the u.s. simply because of something as simple as their last name. While people may base on DEI initiatives in the majority of America in non large corporate and even on those companies they are still refused if any opportunities which add on each other resulting in inequality.
    - golergka 4y ago
      I don't understand how anything of what you wrote (which, BTW, I agree with) contradicts my point.
  - themitigating 4y ago

daenz 4y ago

>And who has benefitted It benefits the people who gain power and status by using virtues as a social weapon.

themitigating 4y ago
It also benefits those who rail against "cancel culture", diversity, and the like
- daenz 4y ago
  If making a mistake benefits your enemies, your enemies can hardly be blamed.
- nullc 4y ago
  It's always the case for political extremes-- the one extreme can't exist without the other to act as its boogyman. Everyone else is caught in the crossfire.

JacobThreeThree 4y ago

>And who has benefitted? The rationale being promoted to the corporations by management consultants is that the company will make more money. >Our latest research finds that companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/why-diversity-matters https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organ...