9 ms·

There are very concerning patterns developing at the moment in the DEI space. DEI efforts, and often those leading them, are increasingly the most biased and cl

by JCM9 5y ago

There are very concerning patterns developing at the moment in the DEI space. DEI efforts, and often those leading them, are increasingly the most biased and close minded parts of the organization. Spreading selected stereotypes and often solving concerns about “discrimination” by being very biased and inequitable. For example at my last company a report showed that slightly fewer of a certain minority were promoted. This was pointed out and discussed extensively. However when someone pointed out that the same data showed that there were zero of the same minority in performance plans and that everyone on performance plans was a white male, the conversation was shut down. As in it was incredibly important we address this very minor statistical gap on one end, but when the same data suggested that we might be biased against older white males the same DEI department (which had no older white males by the way) shut the convo down immediately. DEI can’t just be about selected DEI that meets a certain biased definition that is, ironically, not inclusive.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
- ghufran_syed 5y ago
  I find it amazing that you think this kind of blatant racism is acceptable - what does being “white” have to do with his behavior or performance? or do you think certain skin colors are limited in their abilities and performance?
  - bjt2n3904 5y ago
    It's been the norm between 2020 and about five minutes ago. Don't let this comment get flagged or buried, let people see it.
  - cafeoh 5y ago
    More amazing yet, perhaps, is that some people find it acceptable to talk about racism in a situation where the word doesn't apply. Discrimination against white people can be a thing, racism doesn't. Discrimination can make sense (for obvious reasons), racism doesn't.
    - AdrianB1 5y ago
      Discrimination based on race is racism, so your argument makes no sense.
actuator 5y ago
Sadly this battle is lost. I understand affirmative action and the need to do it if there has been some systematic bias preventing outcomes but this has become such a touchy topic that how it is done is not debatable lest you be seen sexist. I have sat in hiring debriefs where the criterias used for selection have been very subjective but no one will want to acknowledge that they are trying to do positive bias to do affirmative action. More effort is put on taping things at the end of the funnel rather than fixing things at start, if there are things that need fixing. When metrics of managers and DEI employees are measured on short term impact, why would they not take the easy way out.
- rayiner 5y ago
  I don't think it's "lost." At least with regard to racial preferences in the workplace, they remain unpopular even among the very groups they seek to help: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pew-poll https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pe... (Black people oppose "taking race and ethnicity into account ... in order to increase diversity" 54 to 37, and Hispanics oppose it 69 to 27). Separating people into groups and giving preferences and demerits based on skin color is social engineering mainly being championed by the same people who have always favored social engineering: affluent, college-educated white people. Those folks hold a lot of power in some circles, but are routinely defeated at the ballot box: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/526642-hispanics-shock-democrats-in-deep-blue-california/ https://thehill.com/opinion/education/526642-hispanics-shock...
- daenz 5y ago
  After conducting an interview, before I had a chance to write my review (which was customary, while it was fresh), I was sat down by someone more senior than me who said, explicitly "we are hiring this person." There was a "wink wink" dynamic to it. This person was pretty inexperienced, but a woman. This never happened with any of the male candidates. We hired her. Unrelated, it turned out to be a horrible fit for her, because she went way out on a limb to move to the area and take the job, and the company shut down a few months later. She was now in an expensive city with no contacts or prospects.
bjt2n3904 5y ago
> DEI efforts, and often those leading them, are increasingly the most biased and close minded parts of the organization. That's a feature, not a bug. As Ibram X Kendi says, "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination".
- lazide 5y ago
  Coarse grained discrimination based on some visible attribute is fundamentally destructive to producing value of any kind, and always ends up with terrible outcomes for anyone that cares about anything but the metric of 'what percent matches this coarse grained attribute'. We call it race when it's based on appearance markers we associate with race, we call it sexism when we base it off gender, we call it ageism when it is off apparent age, we call it nationalism when it is based off national origin. And it's always wrong, and left unchecked, it is always destructive.
- buddhistdude 5y ago
  That's right, and the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination x)
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination" this is probably the dumbest sentence I have ever read in my life. Is present slavery the only remedy to past slavery?
- baryphonic 5y ago
  > That's a feature, not a bug. As Ibram X Kendi says, "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination". Not only is this logically fallacious (has Kendi really considered every possible remedy?), but it is belied by historical fact. Chinese people were heavily discriminated against in America at one time. Today, Chinese people and their descendants are among the most successful ethnic groups in America, but have never received any sort of affirmative action program. In fact, Chinese people are still discriminated against (by e.g. Ivy League admissions offices) for being "too successful." My experiences with DEI acolytes who follow the likes of Kendi, Crenshaw, Coates & DiAngelo is that they respond to these inconvenient facts with mystical assertions about successful non-white groups being "white adjacent" or beneficiaries of "white supremacy."
sdsaga12 5y ago
Hear hear. If your conception of diversity doesn't include viewpoint diversity, you are operating within a prejudicial, small-minded, small-hearted, and regressive framework. If you belive the most salient details about a person can be read from their appearance, you are a bigot. This cuts every which way, but many want to pretend it's not true for their own biases. This includes seeing someone with blue hair and a pronouns pin and writing them off immediately just as much as seeing an old white man with a camo mouse pad and assuming the worst. Don't do either of these. You'd be surprised what differences can be bridged if you approach those different from yourself with patience, love, and toleration. Remember, it's not really toleration if there aren't some things about someone that are legitimately hard for you to accept. It's not an impressive moral feat to extend welcome to those who you already felt were on your side. My personal bias here tends toward reflexive dislike of DEI stuff because it feels cult-y to me, but the message of toleration it's rooted in (even if that's not always practiced by its proponents) is obviously the only alternative to fighting over whose values will be imposed on everyone else. At some point, it's federalism live-and-let-live or it's war, kinetic or memetic.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > My personal bias here tends toward reflexive dislike of DEI stuff because it feels cult-y to me, but the message of toleration it's rooted in (even if that's not always practiced by its proponents) is obviously the only alternative to fighting over whose values will be imposed on everyone else. Alternative? The people who promulgate the messages are quite aggressive about imposing their values on everyone else.
- PuppyTailWags 5y ago
  Genuinely asking: Is there a limit as to viewpoint diversity that should be tolerated in perceptions of diversity? eg. Should viewpoint diversity be extended to welcoming "women shouldn't have the right to vote" or "black people are not human beings"? If so, how does one value an opinion and also the opinion that some opinions are worth less than others?
  - pc86 5y ago
fallingknife 5y ago
This is why I'll be voting Republican
- t0mas88 5y ago
  I'm not American, so I'm not as deep into the exact political party differences, but why do you think that's the solution?
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    > do you think that's the solution? I don't think it is and I don't think they'll actually do much about it, but at least they're saying they're opposed to it.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Republicans believe men should not compete in woman’s sports. That woman have babies. How either of those are controversial is beyond insane.
  - qwerpy 5y ago
    I have a similar opinion as the person you replied to. There are many issues that I care about, but this is probably the most important to me because it will affect the educational and career prospects of my children. Unfortunately in this country the only meaningful votes are "blue" or "red", and "blue" is the side that is pushing DEI to the detriment both of my family and (in my opinion) the competitiveness and efficiency of the entire country. So even though I don't agree with all of the politics of "red", I will vote for them until "blue" stops with DEI.
    - t0mas88 5y ago
      Thanks. It's unfortunate that is has to be so polarised. In the end a more inclusive society is good for everyone, but if your only options are "fuck yourself over" vs "avoid all progress" then not a lot of good is going to happen and people will forever be passionately offended at both extremes instead of meeting closer to the middle and working on the future.
kenjackson 5y ago
I think DEI efforts can greatly vary. I know that we've worked really hard to ensure that we don't disadvantage anyone -- but it's harder than it sounds. DEI is often dealing in zero sum spaces. For example, most of the staff is white males. We try hard to hire the best person for the role, but we've instituted a policy where we mandate interviewing underrepresented groups. Not that we will hire them, but that we will interview them. But because of this the interview process can get lengthy and white male candidates maybe tire of waiting and go elsewhere. So in some sense its not fair to the white male. OTOH, most of our personal hiring networks are all white males -- so if we rely on speed to find the next good candidate it will almost always be a white male. I personally think the middle ground we found is good. But still not perfect. Interestingly the best way IMO to fix DEI is to align underrepresenting minority interests with poor white interests (obviously this doesn't work so well for things like sexual identity issues). The fact that poor whites and poor blacks aren't aligned on issues that impact them both creates a tough situation for DEI.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  > But because of this the interview process can get lengthy and white male candidates maybe tire of waiting and go elsewhere. So in some sense its not fair to the white male. Isn't it equally obnoxious to everyone? I'm not sure why only the white males would be put out by the wait. The wait, while due to the lengthy interview process, isn't due to them being white males. Unless you interview the white males first for some reason.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    If you need to wait for someone who is 1% off the population you might be waiting a while.
    - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      I don't think they are trying to catch 'em all like some sort of human Pokemon, it sounds like they are instead simply making an effort to interview instead of automatically rejecting those who may have no otherwise been interviewed.
throwaway789s1 5y ago
I work at a FANG that is ramping up DEI efforts. Their recent campaign was about being diversity conscious and having less "white culture" (whatever that means). The thing is, this same company is hiring mostly for India, my coworkers and manager are from India, when they aren't they'll be from China, and occasionally from Europe. We have like 4-5 white guys in an org of +50. employees in the US. At this point (aside from hiring women), hiring white/black people is how we'd rebalance the diversity of our team yet for obvious reasons you can't say that out loud...
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  50 people in a FANG doesn't sound like being anything close to large enough to be representative of the whole org by random chance. Enjoy being the weird corner case?
treeman79 5y ago
Got hired at a place that apparently only hired anything except white men. Unless they were non cis. Apparently an exception was made in my case because they were absolutely desperate for someone qualified to do the work. Company meetings were mostly just complaining about straight white males. Figuring out ways to force the males to do extra work to make up for… I don’t even know. Mocking their own customers constantly based on same. Most toxic bigoted place I’ve ever been. That’s when I became aware of how dangerous woke culture was. Grew up thinking to treat everyone as equals. Now I’m (nasty words) for that. Fixed their technical issues and left fast as I could.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Name and shame.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by JCM9 5y ago

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

ghufran_syed 5y ago
I find it amazing that you think this kind of blatant racism is acceptable - what does being “white” have to do with his behavior or performance? or do you think certain skin colors are limited in their abilities and performance?
- bjt2n3904 5y ago
  It's been the norm between 2020 and about five minutes ago. Don't let this comment get flagged or buried, let people see it.
- cafeoh 5y ago
  More amazing yet, perhaps, is that some people find it acceptable to talk about racism in a situation where the word doesn't apply. Discrimination against white people can be a thing, racism doesn't. Discrimination can make sense (for obvious reasons), racism doesn't.
  - AdrianB1 5y ago
    Discrimination based on race is racism, so your argument makes no sense.

actuator 5y ago

Sadly this battle is lost. I understand affirmative action and the need to do it if there has been some systematic bias preventing outcomes but this has become such a touchy topic that how it is done is not debatable lest you be seen sexist. I have sat in hiring debriefs where the criterias used for selection have been very subjective but no one will want to acknowledge that they are trying to do positive bias to do affirmative action. More effort is put on taping things at the end of the funnel rather than fixing things at start, if there are things that need fixing. When metrics of managers and DEI employees are measured on short term impact, why would they not take the easy way out.

rayiner 5y ago
I don't think it's "lost." At least with regard to racial preferences in the workplace, they remain unpopular even among the very groups they seek to help: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pew-poll https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pe... (Black people oppose "taking race and ethnicity into account ... in order to increase diversity" 54 to 37, and Hispanics oppose it 69 to 27). Separating people into groups and giving preferences and demerits based on skin color is social engineering mainly being championed by the same people who have always favored social engineering: affluent, college-educated white people. Those folks hold a lot of power in some circles, but are routinely defeated at the ballot box: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/526642-hispanics-shock-democrats-in-deep-blue-california/ https://thehill.com/opinion/education/526642-hispanics-shock...
daenz 5y ago
After conducting an interview, before I had a chance to write my review (which was customary, while it was fresh), I was sat down by someone more senior than me who said, explicitly "we are hiring this person." There was a "wink wink" dynamic to it. This person was pretty inexperienced, but a woman. This never happened with any of the male candidates. We hired her. Unrelated, it turned out to be a horrible fit for her, because she went way out on a limb to move to the area and take the job, and the company shut down a few months later. She was now in an expensive city with no contacts or prospects.

bjt2n3904 5y ago

> DEI efforts, and often those leading them, are increasingly the most biased and close minded parts of the organization. That's a feature, not a bug. As Ibram X Kendi says, "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination".

lazide 5y ago
Coarse grained discrimination based on some visible attribute is fundamentally destructive to producing value of any kind, and always ends up with terrible outcomes for anyone that cares about anything but the metric of 'what percent matches this coarse grained attribute'. We call it race when it's based on appearance markers we associate with race, we call it sexism when we base it off gender, we call it ageism when it is off apparent age, we call it nationalism when it is based off national origin. And it's always wrong, and left unchecked, it is always destructive.
buddhistdude 5y ago
That's right, and the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination x)
peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination" this is probably the dumbest sentence I have ever read in my life. Is present slavery the only remedy to past slavery?
baryphonic 5y ago
> That's a feature, not a bug. As Ibram X Kendi says, "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination". Not only is this logically fallacious (has Kendi really considered every possible remedy?), but it is belied by historical fact. Chinese people were heavily discriminated against in America at one time. Today, Chinese people and their descendants are among the most successful ethnic groups in America, but have never received any sort of affirmative action program. In fact, Chinese people are still discriminated against (by e.g. Ivy League admissions offices) for being "too successful." My experiences with DEI acolytes who follow the likes of Kendi, Crenshaw, Coates & DiAngelo is that they respond to these inconvenient facts with mystical assertions about successful non-white groups being "white adjacent" or beneficiaries of "white supremacy."

sdsaga12 5y ago

Hear hear. If your conception of diversity doesn't include viewpoint diversity, you are operating within a prejudicial, small-minded, small-hearted, and regressive framework. If you belive the most salient details about a person can be read from their appearance, you are a bigot. This cuts every which way, but many want to pretend it's not true for their own biases. This includes seeing someone with blue hair and a pronouns pin and writing them off immediately just as much as seeing an old white man with a camo mouse pad and assuming the worst. Don't do either of these. You'd be surprised what differences can be bridged if you approach those different from yourself with patience, love, and toleration. Remember, it's not really toleration if there aren't some things about someone that are legitimately hard for you to accept. It's not an impressive moral feat to extend welcome to those who you already felt were on your side. My personal bias here tends toward reflexive dislike of DEI stuff because it feels cult-y to me, but the message of toleration it's rooted in (even if that's not always practiced by its proponents) is obviously the only alternative to fighting over whose values will be imposed on everyone else. At some point, it's federalism live-and-let-live or it's war, kinetic or memetic.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> My personal bias here tends toward reflexive dislike of DEI stuff because it feels cult-y to me, but the message of toleration it's rooted in (even if that's not always practiced by its proponents) is obviously the only alternative to fighting over whose values will be imposed on everyone else. Alternative? The people who promulgate the messages are quite aggressive about imposing their values on everyone else.
PuppyTailWags 5y ago
Genuinely asking: Is there a limit as to viewpoint diversity that should be tolerated in perceptions of diversity? eg. Should viewpoint diversity be extended to welcoming "women shouldn't have the right to vote" or "black people are not human beings"? If so, how does one value an opinion and also the opinion that some opinions are worth less than others?
- pc86 5y ago

fallingknife 5y ago

This is why I'll be voting Republican

t0mas88 5y ago
I'm not American, so I'm not as deep into the exact political party differences, but why do you think that's the solution?
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > do you think that's the solution? I don't think it is and I don't think they'll actually do much about it, but at least they're saying they're opposed to it.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Republicans believe men should not compete in woman’s sports. That woman have babies. How either of those are controversial is beyond insane.
- qwerpy 5y ago
  I have a similar opinion as the person you replied to. There are many issues that I care about, but this is probably the most important to me because it will affect the educational and career prospects of my children. Unfortunately in this country the only meaningful votes are "blue" or "red", and "blue" is the side that is pushing DEI to the detriment both of my family and (in my opinion) the competitiveness and efficiency of the entire country. So even though I don't agree with all of the politics of "red", I will vote for them until "blue" stops with DEI.
  - t0mas88 5y ago
    Thanks. It's unfortunate that is has to be so polarised. In the end a more inclusive society is good for everyone, but if your only options are "fuck yourself over" vs "avoid all progress" then not a lot of good is going to happen and people will forever be passionately offended at both extremes instead of meeting closer to the middle and working on the future.

kenjackson 5y ago

I think DEI efforts can greatly vary. I know that we've worked really hard to ensure that we don't disadvantage anyone -- but it's harder than it sounds. DEI is often dealing in zero sum spaces. For example, most of the staff is white males. We try hard to hire the best person for the role, but we've instituted a policy where we mandate interviewing underrepresented groups. Not that we will hire them, but that we will interview them. But because of this the interview process can get lengthy and white male candidates maybe tire of waiting and go elsewhere. So in some sense its not fair to the white male. OTOH, most of our personal hiring networks are all white males -- so if we rely on speed to find the next good candidate it will almost always be a white male. I personally think the middle ground we found is good. But still not perfect. Interestingly the best way IMO to fix DEI is to align underrepresenting minority interests with poor white interests (obviously this doesn't work so well for things like sexual identity issues). The fact that poor whites and poor blacks aren't aligned on issues that impact them both creates a tough situation for DEI.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
> But because of this the interview process can get lengthy and white male candidates maybe tire of waiting and go elsewhere. So in some sense its not fair to the white male. Isn't it equally obnoxious to everyone? I'm not sure why only the white males would be put out by the wait. The wait, while due to the lengthy interview process, isn't due to them being white males. Unless you interview the white males first for some reason.
- bluGill 5y ago
  If you need to wait for someone who is 1% off the population you might be waiting a while.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    I don't think they are trying to catch 'em all like some sort of human Pokemon, it sounds like they are instead simply making an effort to interview instead of automatically rejecting those who may have no otherwise been interviewed.

throwaway789s1 5y ago

I work at a FANG that is ramping up DEI efforts. Their recent campaign was about being diversity conscious and having less "white culture" (whatever that means). The thing is, this same company is hiring mostly for India, my coworkers and manager are from India, when they aren't they'll be from China, and occasionally from Europe. We have like 4-5 white guys in an org of +50. employees in the US. At this point (aside from hiring women), hiring white/black people is how we'd rebalance the diversity of our team yet for obvious reasons you can't say that out loud...

SiempreViernes 5y ago
50 people in a FANG doesn't sound like being anything close to large enough to be representative of the whole org by random chance. Enjoy being the weird corner case?

treeman79 5y ago

Got hired at a place that apparently only hired anything except white men. Unless they were non cis. Apparently an exception was made in my case because they were absolutely desperate for someone qualified to do the work. Company meetings were mostly just complaining about straight white males. Figuring out ways to force the males to do extra work to make up for… I don’t even know. Mocking their own customers constantly based on same. Most toxic bigoted place I’ve ever been. That’s when I became aware of how dangerous woke culture was. Grew up thinking to treat everyone as equals. Now I’m (nasty words) for that. Fixed their technical issues and left fast as I could.

ipaddr 5y ago
Name and shame.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]