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Crucify me for being woke, but I feel like getting upset at this statement is overblown. There is no way that there was a 'white people quota' or anything like

by zwkrt 4y ago

Crucify me for being woke, but I feel like getting upset at this statement is overblown. There is no way that there was a 'white people quota' or anything like that (which would not be 'anti racist'). Charitably, 'anti-racist' just means not turning a blind eye to the real and/or perceived racial outcomes of your decisions. If most of your QA testers are Vietnamese and you cut your whole QA department, it can come off as racist even if on paper you were just focusing on QA. In practice it probably just means some EA looked over the layoffs and made sure the optics wouldn't be horrible. I see this as more of a blow-hard CYA statement that they made sure there is no potential for a class action lawsuit. Putting it in the press release as a bullet point is pretty silly to me though.

anonym29 4y ago
I'll believe this was actually racially blind when Twilio releases a count of each race that was laid off, and the sum of each race for employees in the company prior to the layoff. It's very simple for everyone to verify whether there was racial targeting outside the statistically probable bounds of random selection from the parent group. I have no problem with people being woke as long as we're both working towards a provable shared reality with data rather than rhetoric. Humans lie. Sufficient amounts of data analyzed by a suficient number of people do not. Assuming it was possible to look at the data I call for above, would you be opposed to the public dissemination and analysis of it?
- spamizbad 4y ago
  That's not good enough. They could just lie. You need a formal audit conducted by a third party. Anything else is unacceptable.
  - christkv 4y ago
    That’s what discovery is for in a court of law. Hopefully we all get to read the findings.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Please enumerate all the races first and the criteria to distinguish each race from the other. It will be important for your statistical analysis.
  - anonym29 4y ago
    Let's just use hexadecimal RGB values for skin color.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    No need. You can use whatever Twilio defines because they obviously must have defined something to be able to state they acted anti-racist. (The reality of the whole thing is so obvious that they paid some contractor to say they’re antiracist without actually changing anything they did.)
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      Hell if you wanted to go full Machiavelli, you might say that's in there to distract from the layoffs themselves - seems to work in this thread for instance.
fullshark 4y ago
We have no idea what it means and you can rationalize it all you like. Quota or not they likely fired a white person instead of a another person because of their skin color. Or it’s just cheap talk and means nothing, those are the only two options.
- peter422 4y ago
  - djbebs 4y ago
    Thanks for proving his point.
  - trention 4y ago
    Given that affirmative action has been a thing in both hiring and college admissions for multiple decades now, that's of course incorrect. Those "innumerable advantages" in today's USA overwhelmingly go to (immigrant) minorities. I'm so glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and any company that even tried to hint at doing this is going to get sued to oblivion.
    - peter422 4y ago
      The people being laid off likely grew up in America 25-40 years ago. Modern policies are not relevant to the people I'm talking about (though obviously still a very interesting and important discussion).
      - trention 4y ago
        Affirmative action in college admissions and hiring has been a thing at least since the early 90s.
        peter422 4y ago
        Oh I misread your original post, sorry about that. So your belief is that affirmative action in college admissions is the defining factor in race inequality, even though the vast majority of the structural disadvantages happen much younger? Remember that this is the American society that upon integration decided over and over again they'd rather fill public pools with cement than have them shared between white and black children. You don't believe those same barriers carried over to housing and schools? You just ignore the data and massive, persistent wealth gaps?

by zwkrt 4y ago

anonym29 4y ago

I'll believe this was actually racially blind when Twilio releases a count of each race that was laid off, and the sum of each race for employees in the company prior to the layoff. It's very simple for everyone to verify whether there was racial targeting outside the statistically probable bounds of random selection from the parent group. I have no problem with people being woke as long as we're both working towards a provable shared reality with data rather than rhetoric. Humans lie. Sufficient amounts of data analyzed by a suficient number of people do not. Assuming it was possible to look at the data I call for above, would you be opposed to the public dissemination and analysis of it?

spamizbad 4y ago
That's not good enough. They could just lie. You need a formal audit conducted by a third party. Anything else is unacceptable.
- christkv 4y ago
  That’s what discovery is for in a court of law. Hopefully we all get to read the findings.
hotpotamus 4y ago
Please enumerate all the races first and the criteria to distinguish each race from the other. It will be important for your statistical analysis.
- anonym29 4y ago
  Let's just use hexadecimal RGB values for skin color.
- bombcar 4y ago
  No need. You can use whatever Twilio defines because they obviously must have defined something to be able to state they acted anti-racist. (The reality of the whole thing is so obvious that they paid some contractor to say they’re antiracist without actually changing anything they did.)
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Hell if you wanted to go full Machiavelli, you might say that's in there to distract from the layoffs themselves - seems to work in this thread for instance.

fullshark 4y ago

We have no idea what it means and you can rationalize it all you like. Quota or not they likely fired a white person instead of a another person because of their skin color. Or it’s just cheap talk and means nothing, those are the only two options.

peter422 4y ago
- djbebs 4y ago
  Thanks for proving his point.
- trention 4y ago
  Given that affirmative action has been a thing in both hiring and college admissions for multiple decades now, that's of course incorrect. Those "innumerable advantages" in today's USA overwhelmingly go to (immigrant) minorities. I'm so glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and any company that even tried to hint at doing this is going to get sued to oblivion.
  - peter422 4y ago
    The people being laid off likely grew up in America 25-40 years ago. Modern policies are not relevant to the people I'm talking about (though obviously still a very interesting and important discussion).
    - trention 4y ago
      Affirmative action in college admissions and hiring has been a thing at least since the early 90s.
      - peter422 4y ago
        Oh I misread your original post, sorry about that. So your belief is that affirmative action in college admissions is the defining factor in race inequality, even though the vast majority of the structural disadvantages happen much younger? Remember that this is the American society that upon integration decided over and over again they'd rather fill public pools with cement than have them shared between white and black children. You don't believe those same barriers carried over to housing and schools? You just ignore the data and massive, persistent wealth gaps?