7 ms·

Posts like this seem reactionary and equally anti-intellectual. Sure I know that a lot of the DE&I stuff is frustrating for people. But it seems like if you r

Posts like this seem reactionary and equally anti-intellectual. Sure I know that a lot of the DE&I stuff is frustrating for people. But it seems like if you really want to dig into this you need to take broader approach. Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions, which is pretty squishy to begin with? It seems to me like throwing some extra diversity into an already squishy process is the least of your worries. They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it? Probably. For certain levels of leadership probably 50% of leaders qualified for the position are ready, 20% are exceptional and 5% will be promoted. Better this than promoting the CEO's nephew.

whatshisface 4y ago
>Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions, which is pretty squishy to begin with? It sounds like you're agreeing with the author here, because he says, >I fear that when large companies hire and promote people based on group identities, it discourages individuals from cultivating their abilities. It is only one logical step to go from one to the other. The idea that the promotion process is so random that the introduction of an additional random factor (D&I status is totally uncorrelated to performance) can't make it any worse would nullify anyone's faith in performance incentives.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  > It is only one logical step to go from one to the other. The idea that the promotion process is so random that the introduction of an additional random factor (D&I status is totally uncorrelated to performance) can't make it any worse would nullify anyone's faith in performance incentives. It is only one logical step to assume the opposite as well, that a company that thinks holistically about the hiring process, and questions whether or not managers are acting in a truly meritocratic way will give people confidence that cultivating their abilities won't be for naught if they have a racist/sexist manager. The article states a lot of things based on feels but the one tangible point they make is that HR is not in fact insisting he hire someone based on an "additional random factor" just that they considered all the candidates.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    The article is a lot more than just complaining about D&I policies, for example you'll notice that the manager spent several months unsuccessfully trying to get even one qualified diverse candidate to interview with Microsoft. What's up with that?
bigbacaloa 4y ago
It's clear as day that some culturally contingent notion of race isn't a good way of measuring merit.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Absolutely - there aren't clearly defined lines between cultural notions of race, and the scientific community doesn't even recognize race as anything but a social construct [1]. So in the end it's either how someone self-identifies, or the arbitrary superficial judgement of race by the hiring team, which is patently ridiculous. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) "Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society."
  - topaz0 4y ago
    "Rules made by society" is exactly why it is relevant here.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      Can you explain further? Not getting your meaning.
      - topaz0 4y ago
        Society defines racial categories according to made-up rules. The basis of these rules is not biological. All good so far. But, then we have to live with these categories, and they get applied to how we organize society, sometimes explicitly, sometimes less explicitly. And we may wish for these rules to change, or for the ways that they shape the experiences of individuals to change. But then the people who benefit from the status quo have a material interest in having them stay the same. And in fact the people who benefit from the status quo often are in a position to shape society in a way that keeps them the same. You get the idea.
        4y ago
eonwe 4y ago
They sure can be seen as reactionary as one of CSPI's areas of interest in "The Great Awokening" (see https://www.cspicenter.com/about https://www.cspicenter.com/about). I found the article interesting as I've just started to work in US corporation and I've wondered how achieving specific diversity goals are achieved in cases there is a very limited pool of people to hire / promote in a select subgroup.
Manuel_D 4y ago
You don't need to prove that that measurements are reliable to highlight the existence of discrimination. If 10% of applicants are X, and I mandate that 20% of hires are X, then even if my interview results are truly random it's still discriminating in favor of X. Similar deal with tech hiring. What is the pool of candidates for this hire or promotion? If you're setting quotas in excess of the pool's representation you're explicitly instituting discrimination. I'm okay with people doing this, provided they're transparent in that they're instituting affirmative action and do not intend to create a non-discriminatory hiring or promotion process. What does get on my nerves is when people privately push for policies like this, but publicly decry and mention of discrimination favoring "diverse" groups as hurtful.
- anderskaseorg 4y ago
  The post doesn’t suggest there’s any mandated quota for hiring or promotion—only for interviews or consideration. And it doesn’t suggest any secrecy about this policy.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    If I tell my recruiters to never interview black people, it's not discrimination because it's not actually prohibiting them from hiring or promotion? Quotas in choosing who to interview or who to consider for promotion is absolutely a form of discrimination. I've worked at a company that implemented this. It resulted in a vast double standard: white and asian males only got interviews if they came from elite colleges or well-known companies. Diverse candidates could pretty much come from anywhere. This resulted in a substantial disparity of tech-screen pass rates. Which the company held up as evidence of discrimination, and demanded that we address this disparity. Proposals to anonymize tech-screen, strangely, were ignored. Instead, recruiters (who had bonuses attached to diverse hires) got to decide who advanced from the tech-screen to the on-site instead of engineers.
    - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
      > recruiters (who had bonuses attached to diverse hires) It's hard to attribute longterm success of the company to any given hires but race is easy to count. What is easy to measure comes to dominate your thinking.
duxup 4y ago
I'm not really convinced how good we are at measuring merit. But I don't buy into that being the reason for <insert my idea>. I DO worry that "hey we doubt we're doing it right based on merit so we're picking race this time / some times" will have an effect, and not a good one.
thegrimmest 4y ago
You're writing with the implicit assumption that private companies ought to be meritocratic above all. I don't think that's the case. I think private people and orgs ought to be free to choose whom they associate with, hire, and promote based on any criteria they can come up with. Nepotism? No problem. Height/weight/age/beauty/culture/hair colour discrimination? You bet. Then these orgs all compete and the most efficient ones win. This leads to a long conversation about the merits/efficiencies of monocultures. Furthermore, we as a culture ought to be at least not hypocritical in our tolerance of clearly nepotistic/discriminatory hiring practices in minority-owned businesses (restaurants/trades/jewelry/etc.) but somehow intolerant of them in some sectors like tech and finance. These things are equally silly: 1. Expecting a Chinese restaurant not to exclusively hire more Chinese people 2. Expecting a tech-bro agency not to exclusively hire a more tech bros 3. Expecting a Kosher butcher not to exclusively hire more Jews 4. Expecting a WASPy finance org not to exclusively hire more WASPs
- skavi 4y ago
  I think it becomes more complex when you consider wealth concentration.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Well, it's easy to not notice on the middle of all the noise. But policies that fight wealth concentration are much clearer and have many less side effects than the ones for diversity and inclusion. They are probably more inclusive too, but that measurement is noisy.
- muaytimbo 4y ago
  MSFT is not private, it's public. It's responsibility is to create value for the shareholders. Part of that deal is to hire the best talent.
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    My reading of the original article tells me that these initiatives were interfering with this manager's ability to accomplish his team's objectives/provide value to shareholders. Indeed an assertion could be made that these initiatives run counter to fiduciary duty. If you want to accomplish a goal, hire people you trust, given them clear objectives, and then get out of their way. Don't micromanage them with endless bureaucracy. Do you think that these policies will deter a real racist? Do you think an interview requirement or call asking "Did you consider candidate X?" accomplishes anything? Can you describe what? Also MSFT is publicly traded not publicly owned. It's still a private company.
giantg2 4y ago
"Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions, which is pretty squishy to begin with?" I'd love to hear answers for this. In my experience, it seems ratings are just the boss's unverified opinion. However, I disagree with the conclusion that adding another flawed metric shouldn't be concerning. "They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it?" The biggest thing is that this metric is meaningless. They don't define what the target is and why. They don't dig into the how of the increase either. If it was the policy, they have not taken a systems thinking review of it to see if it's working as expected or causing some other harm. I see no inclusion of the root issue - a pipeline of diverse candidates via schools. If the numbers are underrepresented in school, then they will be in industry too. Maybe you can juice your own company's numbers, but that simply leaving less for other companies. Figuring out diversity discrepancies in the talent pipeline (school, mainly) is the first step. Then figuring out if it's an actual problem and what the proper metrics are, is a step that seems to be glossed over. Without understanding these, there will be no meaningful progress.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  > They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it? I'm still unclear as to why we're even bothering to ask the question. How many blonde leaders are there vs. brunettes? Are brunettes poorly represented in corporate leadership? Does anyone care? Why should they.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    People should care because big companies are constantly competing on talent and it would be a competitive advantage to leverage a larger talent pool.
    - thegrimmest 4y ago
      Don't we already hire managers explicitly to make decisions like this? Given we've hired them, shouldn't we trust them to make the best decisions for their teams and their objectives? It seems as though the additional bureaucracy introduced by DEI serves only to disempower managers. This is the function of all bureaucracy, to disempower individual decision making.
fallingknife 4y ago
When I do an interview, and someone can complete a simple coding exercise in 2 minutes, I feel very good about my ability to say they are better than someone who takes 20 mins on the same question. If you want to argue that it is impossible to judge merit, it is you who needs to provide proof. And even if you were right, doing promotions based on coin flips would be better than on race.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  Unless you're hiring someone for a speed coding competition, I don't see what speed has to do with it. Especially since it seems like you would be biasing for younger candidates and committing ageism in the process.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  > When I do an interview, and someone can complete a simple coding exercise in 2 minutes, I feel very good about my ability to say they are better than someone who takes 20 mins on the same question. Honestly? My gut reaction is you're not very thorough in measuring abilities if you offer a coding exercise that can be completed in two minutes by anybody. > And even if you were right, doing promotions based on coin flips would be better than on race. The article explicitly states they are not asked to make promotion decisions based on race.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    It's not the whole interview. Just the first part of many questions. You have to print a string abcdefghij... like abcd efgh ijkl... And you would be surprised by the number of people who it takes 20 minutes to do that. Doing it in 2 minutes doesn't mean you're competent, but taking 20 damn sure means you're not
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      20 minutes might just be interview anxiety, especially if it’s a first question in the interview.
voidr 4y ago
> Sure I know that a lot of the DE&I stuff is frustrating for people. It's also inherently unfair, that's why nobody likes it, I have seen it first hand that it just leads to a few token hires, with no real change. People who actually care realise that if you want to improve something you start at the beginning, not a the outcome, you would at minimum start at education, however I guess it's cheaper to have a few diversity hires here and there without changing anything that really matters. > Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions You can, otherwise we would select leaders by rolling dices, however we don't tend to do that. > which is pretty squishy to begin with I guess your narrative is that it doesn't matter who we select as leader, they all have a chance of doing an equally bad job, which diverts from the point, we make decisions without knowing the outcome all the time, if we would take your worldview then every decision where we don't know the outcome would be decided by a dice roll. > Better this than promoting the CEO's nephew. You are exchanging one favouritism for another, how is that an improvement? At least the CEO's nephew would have connections in high places and likely more pressure to perform.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  > You can, otherwise we would select leaders by rolling dices, however we don't tend to do that. I would disagree. First of all, just because we think we have ways, doesn't mean that they're good ways, it may be that our ways are the equivalent of rolling dice. I mean hilariously there are all like endemic complaints about interview processes. Why is it that all of a sudden you turn against the criticism and act like our decision making is sacrosanct? Second of all, I'm not talking about a recent grad and someone with 10 years of experience, but having been in leadership circles. It's often "trust" and "reputation" and other sticky things like that that make the decision. I seem to hear all sorts of stories of people hiring leaders because "I had a good feeling about him" > I guess your narrative is that it doesn't matter who we select as leader, they all have a chance of doing an equally bad job. This seems like an overly broad interpretation. Among relatively equal candidates I think this is true. i.e. take your pool of 60 senior managers, there's one open director position. Find your best 15 senior managers. You could probably roll the dice among this group, otherwise, maybe you're not that great at training senior managers? (assuming there aren't specific technical skillsets involved)
kardianos 4y ago
> Reactionary, anti-intellectual. "The Cultural Revolution: A people's history" is a good read. Lot's of people got called reactionary and anti-<insert phrase> then too. Yes, you can measure merit. But then, I'm not a Communist.
- weakfish 4y ago
  This seems like a very large leap in logic, if I follow… are you saying the parent is communist for using the term reactionary?
  - origin_path 4y ago
    They are. kardianos is observing that the situation is very similar, that history is rhyming if not repeating. Woke racism/sexism (DEI) is frequently referred to as neo-Marxism or cultural Marxism because when examined it turns out to be closely related to Marxist thought, with race/gender/sexual attributes substituted for class. Beyond this somewhat trivial difference there are many clear similarities: 1. The insistence that any inequality of outcome is caused by unjust oppression, and not anything else. 2. The belief that the fix for that perceived oppression is itself oppression, but the other way around. 3. The origin in the academic/(pseudo-)intellectual sphere. Communist revolutionaries claimed to speak for the working classes but didn't come from the working classes. Instead they were men of words, with their primary output being books, pamphlets and violence. Thus opposition to communism was sometimes identified as "anti-intellectual", because the arguments for communism sounded clever, whereas the complaints against it didn't. 4. The use of the term "reactionary" to describe its enemies. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary#:~:text=In%20the%2020th%20century%2C%20proponents,Bolsheviks%20after%20the%20October%20Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary#:~:text=In%20the%2....
    - topaz0 4y ago
      Have you read Marx then? I'd love to hear about the core dialectics of the "race theory of value" in your words if so.
    - 4y ago
yucky 4y ago
>They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. So now instead of those 3% being seen as having earned their position, all 5% will be seen as having been given an unfair advantage. So now it's not only unfair to the people excluded based on skin color but it's unfair to those who benefitted strictly because of the perception they now have to deal with as having not really earned their position the same as everyone else. It puts them on equal footing with the bosses nephew, who nobody respects. It's 2022 - maybe we can stop trying to defend race-based favoritism and discrimination?
- topaz0 4y ago
  > all 5% will be seen as having been given an unfair advantage. Only by the kinds of people who tend to assume the worst about Black people.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - yucky 4y ago
    It has nothing to with the people who were given an unfair advantage based on skin color, it is the fact that skin color is used to give a preference that invalidates accomplishments.
  - etchalon 4y ago
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    We're simultaneously being told that the pipeline doesn't contain enough minorities and that catching more fish from a smaller pond isn't going to impact the average size of those fish. I know one megacorp that achieved its diversity by paying above-market for those workers and poaching very qualified people. That's expensive and zero-sum, exacerbating the situation elsewhere, but at least their employees knew diversity didn't mean unqualified.
  - chudmeister 4y ago
inglor_cz 4y ago
By now, America is so racially mixed that "race" of a certain person is even harder to quantify than "merit".
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  In America it is not 'harder to quantify' because much of contemporary American society still follows the 'One Drop Rule': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
raxxorraxor 4y ago
DEI is anti-intellectual to the core. Worse, it is codified racism. It creates problems where there were few to solve. Nobody can measure merit, but that doesn't mean you can hire people based on skin color and that is exactly what DEI did. And not much else, it remains plain racism. Without bias you can see it because racial quotas are the expression. People in the past also thought they had good reason for racial discrimination. There are real good arguments against DEI hiring practices aside from people disliking them. Although many dislike them because of its racism.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  DEI has an enormous surface area, I don’t think you can blanket describe it as anti-intellectual.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    I haven't seen a single example where it can justify its racial discrimination, which of course would require some real hard evidence of its own necessity. I think we agree that racial discrimination is very negative.

whatshisface 4y ago

>Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions, which is pretty squishy to begin with? It sounds like you're agreeing with the author here, because he says, >I fear that when large companies hire and promote people based on group identities, it discourages individuals from cultivating their abilities. It is only one logical step to go from one to the other. The idea that the promotion process is so random that the introduction of an additional random factor (D&I status is totally uncorrelated to performance) can't make it any worse would nullify anyone's faith in performance incentives.

mikkergp 4y ago
> It is only one logical step to go from one to the other. The idea that the promotion process is so random that the introduction of an additional random factor (D&I status is totally uncorrelated to performance) can't make it any worse would nullify anyone's faith in performance incentives. It is only one logical step to assume the opposite as well, that a company that thinks holistically about the hiring process, and questions whether or not managers are acting in a truly meritocratic way will give people confidence that cultivating their abilities won't be for naught if they have a racist/sexist manager. The article states a lot of things based on feels but the one tangible point they make is that HR is not in fact insisting he hire someone based on an "additional random factor" just that they considered all the candidates.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  The article is a lot more than just complaining about D&I policies, for example you'll notice that the manager spent several months unsuccessfully trying to get even one qualified diverse candidate to interview with Microsoft. What's up with that?

bigbacaloa 4y ago

It's clear as day that some culturally contingent notion of race isn't a good way of measuring merit.

colordrops 4y ago
Absolutely - there aren't clearly defined lines between cultural notions of race, and the scientific community doesn't even recognize race as anything but a social construct [1]. So in the end it's either how someone self-identifies, or the arbitrary superficial judgement of race by the hiring team, which is patently ridiculous. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) "Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society."
- topaz0 4y ago
  "Rules made by society" is exactly why it is relevant here.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Can you explain further? Not getting your meaning.
    - topaz0 4y ago
      Society defines racial categories according to made-up rules. The basis of these rules is not biological. All good so far. But, then we have to live with these categories, and they get applied to how we organize society, sometimes explicitly, sometimes less explicitly. And we may wish for these rules to change, or for the ways that they shape the experiences of individuals to change. But then the people who benefit from the status quo have a material interest in having them stay the same. And in fact the people who benefit from the status quo often are in a position to shape society in a way that keeps them the same. You get the idea.
      - 4y ago

eonwe 4y ago

They sure can be seen as reactionary as one of CSPI's areas of interest in "The Great Awokening" (see https://www.cspicenter.com/about https://www.cspicenter.com/about). I found the article interesting as I've just started to work in US corporation and I've wondered how achieving specific diversity goals are achieved in cases there is a very limited pool of people to hire / promote in a select subgroup.

Manuel_D 4y ago

You don't need to prove that that measurements are reliable to highlight the existence of discrimination. If 10% of applicants are X, and I mandate that 20% of hires are X, then even if my interview results are truly random it's still discriminating in favor of X. Similar deal with tech hiring. What is the pool of candidates for this hire or promotion? If you're setting quotas in excess of the pool's representation you're explicitly instituting discrimination. I'm okay with people doing this, provided they're transparent in that they're instituting affirmative action and do not intend to create a non-discriminatory hiring or promotion process. What does get on my nerves is when people privately push for policies like this, but publicly decry and mention of discrimination favoring "diverse" groups as hurtful.

anderskaseorg 4y ago
The post doesn’t suggest there’s any mandated quota for hiring or promotion—only for interviews or consideration. And it doesn’t suggest any secrecy about this policy.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  If I tell my recruiters to never interview black people, it's not discrimination because it's not actually prohibiting them from hiring or promotion? Quotas in choosing who to interview or who to consider for promotion is absolutely a form of discrimination. I've worked at a company that implemented this. It resulted in a vast double standard: white and asian males only got interviews if they came from elite colleges or well-known companies. Diverse candidates could pretty much come from anywhere. This resulted in a substantial disparity of tech-screen pass rates. Which the company held up as evidence of discrimination, and demanded that we address this disparity. Proposals to anonymize tech-screen, strangely, were ignored. Instead, recruiters (who had bonuses attached to diverse hires) got to decide who advanced from the tech-screen to the on-site instead of engineers.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    > recruiters (who had bonuses attached to diverse hires) It's hard to attribute longterm success of the company to any given hires but race is easy to count. What is easy to measure comes to dominate your thinking.

duxup 4y ago

I'm not really convinced how good we are at measuring merit. But I don't buy into that being the reason for <insert my idea>. I DO worry that "hey we doubt we're doing it right based on merit so we're picking race this time / some times" will have an effect, and not a good one.

thegrimmest 4y ago

You're writing with the implicit assumption that private companies ought to be meritocratic above all. I don't think that's the case. I think private people and orgs ought to be free to choose whom they associate with, hire, and promote based on any criteria they can come up with. Nepotism? No problem. Height/weight/age/beauty/culture/hair colour discrimination? You bet. Then these orgs all compete and the most efficient ones win. This leads to a long conversation about the merits/efficiencies of monocultures. Furthermore, we as a culture ought to be at least not hypocritical in our tolerance of clearly nepotistic/discriminatory hiring practices in minority-owned businesses (restaurants/trades/jewelry/etc.) but somehow intolerant of them in some sectors like tech and finance. These things are equally silly: 1. Expecting a Chinese restaurant not to exclusively hire more Chinese people 2. Expecting a tech-bro agency not to exclusively hire a more tech bros 3. Expecting a Kosher butcher not to exclusively hire more Jews 4. Expecting a WASPy finance org not to exclusively hire more WASPs

skavi 4y ago
I think it becomes more complex when you consider wealth concentration.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Well, it's easy to not notice on the middle of all the noise. But policies that fight wealth concentration are much clearer and have many less side effects than the ones for diversity and inclusion. They are probably more inclusive too, but that measurement is noisy.
muaytimbo 4y ago
MSFT is not private, it's public. It's responsibility is to create value for the shareholders. Part of that deal is to hire the best talent.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  My reading of the original article tells me that these initiatives were interfering with this manager's ability to accomplish his team's objectives/provide value to shareholders. Indeed an assertion could be made that these initiatives run counter to fiduciary duty. If you want to accomplish a goal, hire people you trust, given them clear objectives, and then get out of their way. Don't micromanage them with endless bureaucracy. Do you think that these policies will deter a real racist? Do you think an interview requirement or call asking "Did you consider candidate X?" accomplishes anything? Can you describe what? Also MSFT is publicly traded not publicly owned. It's still a private company.

giantg2 4y ago

"Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions, which is pretty squishy to begin with?" I'd love to hear answers for this. In my experience, it seems ratings are just the boss's unverified opinion. However, I disagree with the conclusion that adding another flawed metric shouldn't be concerning. "They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it?" The biggest thing is that this metric is meaningless. They don't define what the target is and why. They don't dig into the how of the increase either. If it was the policy, they have not taken a systems thinking review of it to see if it's working as expected or causing some other harm. I see no inclusion of the root issue - a pipeline of diverse candidates via schools. If the numbers are underrepresented in school, then they will be in industry too. Maybe you can juice your own company's numbers, but that simply leaving less for other companies. Figuring out diversity discrepancies in the talent pipeline (school, mainly) is the first step. Then figuring out if it's an actual problem and what the proper metrics are, is a step that seems to be glossed over. Without understanding these, there will be no meaningful progress.

thegrimmest 4y ago
> They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it? I'm still unclear as to why we're even bothering to ask the question. How many blonde leaders are there vs. brunettes? Are brunettes poorly represented in corporate leadership? Does anyone care? Why should they.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  People should care because big companies are constantly competing on talent and it would be a competitive advantage to leverage a larger talent pool.
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    Don't we already hire managers explicitly to make decisions like this? Given we've hired them, shouldn't we trust them to make the best decisions for their teams and their objectives? It seems as though the additional bureaucracy introduced by DEI serves only to disempower managers. This is the function of all bureaucracy, to disempower individual decision making.

fallingknife 4y ago

When I do an interview, and someone can complete a simple coding exercise in 2 minutes, I feel very good about my ability to say they are better than someone who takes 20 mins on the same question. If you want to argue that it is impossible to judge merit, it is you who needs to provide proof. And even if you were right, doing promotions based on coin flips would be better than on race.

fzeroracer 4y ago
Unless you're hiring someone for a speed coding competition, I don't see what speed has to do with it. Especially since it seems like you would be biasing for younger candidates and committing ageism in the process.
mikkergp 4y ago
> When I do an interview, and someone can complete a simple coding exercise in 2 minutes, I feel very good about my ability to say they are better than someone who takes 20 mins on the same question. Honestly? My gut reaction is you're not very thorough in measuring abilities if you offer a coding exercise that can be completed in two minutes by anybody. > And even if you were right, doing promotions based on coin flips would be better than on race. The article explicitly states they are not asked to make promotion decisions based on race.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  It's not the whole interview. Just the first part of many questions. You have to print a string abcdefghij... like abcd efgh ijkl... And you would be surprised by the number of people who it takes 20 minutes to do that. Doing it in 2 minutes doesn't mean you're competent, but taking 20 damn sure means you're not
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    20 minutes might just be interview anxiety, especially if it’s a first question in the interview.

voidr 4y ago

> Sure I know that a lot of the DE&I stuff is frustrating for people. It's also inherently unfair, that's why nobody likes it, I have seen it first hand that it just leads to a few token hires, with no real change. People who actually care realise that if you want to improve something you start at the beginning, not a the outcome, you would at minimum start at education, however I guess it's cheaper to have a few diversity hires here and there without changing anything that really matters. > Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions You can, otherwise we would select leaders by rolling dices, however we don't tend to do that. > which is pretty squishy to begin with I guess your narrative is that it doesn't matter who we select as leader, they all have a chance of doing an equally bad job, which diverts from the point, we make decisions without knowing the outcome all the time, if we would take your worldview then every decision where we don't know the outcome would be decided by a dice roll. > Better this than promoting the CEO's nephew. You are exchanging one favouritism for another, how is that an improvement? At least the CEO's nephew would have connections in high places and likely more pressure to perform.

mikkergp 4y ago
> You can, otherwise we would select leaders by rolling dices, however we don't tend to do that. I would disagree. First of all, just because we think we have ways, doesn't mean that they're good ways, it may be that our ways are the equivalent of rolling dice. I mean hilariously there are all like endemic complaints about interview processes. Why is it that all of a sudden you turn against the criticism and act like our decision making is sacrosanct? Second of all, I'm not talking about a recent grad and someone with 10 years of experience, but having been in leadership circles. It's often "trust" and "reputation" and other sticky things like that that make the decision. I seem to hear all sorts of stories of people hiring leaders because "I had a good feeling about him" > I guess your narrative is that it doesn't matter who we select as leader, they all have a chance of doing an equally bad job. This seems like an overly broad interpretation. Among relatively equal candidates I think this is true. i.e. take your pool of 60 senior managers, there's one open director position. Find your best 15 senior managers. You could probably roll the dice among this group, otherwise, maybe you're not that great at training senior managers? (assuming there aren't specific technical skillsets involved)

kardianos 4y ago

> Reactionary, anti-intellectual. "The Cultural Revolution: A people's history" is a good read. Lot's of people got called reactionary and anti-<insert phrase> then too. Yes, you can measure merit. But then, I'm not a Communist.

weakfish 4y ago
This seems like a very large leap in logic, if I follow… are you saying the parent is communist for using the term reactionary?
- origin_path 4y ago
  They are. kardianos is observing that the situation is very similar, that history is rhyming if not repeating. Woke racism/sexism (DEI) is frequently referred to as neo-Marxism or cultural Marxism because when examined it turns out to be closely related to Marxist thought, with race/gender/sexual attributes substituted for class. Beyond this somewhat trivial difference there are many clear similarities: 1. The insistence that any inequality of outcome is caused by unjust oppression, and not anything else. 2. The belief that the fix for that perceived oppression is itself oppression, but the other way around. 3. The origin in the academic/(pseudo-)intellectual sphere. Communist revolutionaries claimed to speak for the working classes but didn't come from the working classes. Instead they were men of words, with their primary output being books, pamphlets and violence. Thus opposition to communism was sometimes identified as "anti-intellectual", because the arguments for communism sounded clever, whereas the complaints against it didn't. 4. The use of the term "reactionary" to describe its enemies. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary#:~:text=In%20the%2020th%20century%2C%20proponents,Bolsheviks%20after%20the%20October%20Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary#:~:text=In%20the%2....
  - topaz0 4y ago
    Have you read Marx then? I'd love to hear about the core dialectics of the "race theory of value" in your words if so.
  - 4y ago

yucky 4y ago

>They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. So now instead of those 3% being seen as having earned their position, all 5% will be seen as having been given an unfair advantage. So now it's not only unfair to the people excluded based on skin color but it's unfair to those who benefitted strictly because of the perception they now have to deal with as having not really earned their position the same as everyone else. It puts them on equal footing with the bosses nephew, who nobody respects. It's 2022 - maybe we can stop trying to defend race-based favoritism and discrimination?

topaz0 4y ago
> all 5% will be seen as having been given an unfair advantage. Only by the kinds of people who tend to assume the worst about Black people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yucky 4y ago
  It has nothing to with the people who were given an unfair advantage based on skin color, it is the fact that skin color is used to give a preference that invalidates accomplishments.
- etchalon 4y ago
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  We're simultaneously being told that the pipeline doesn't contain enough minorities and that catching more fish from a smaller pond isn't going to impact the average size of those fish. I know one megacorp that achieved its diversity by paying above-market for those workers and poaching very qualified people. That's expensive and zero-sum, exacerbating the situation elsewhere, but at least their employees knew diversity didn't mean unqualified.
- chudmeister 4y ago

inglor_cz 4y ago

By now, America is so racially mixed that "race" of a certain person is even harder to quantify than "merit".

wildrhythms 4y ago
In America it is not 'harder to quantify' because much of contemporary American society still follows the 'One Drop Rule': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

raxxorraxor 4y ago

DEI is anti-intellectual to the core. Worse, it is codified racism. It creates problems where there were few to solve. Nobody can measure merit, but that doesn't mean you can hire people based on skin color and that is exactly what DEI did. And not much else, it remains plain racism. Without bias you can see it because racial quotas are the expression. People in the past also thought they had good reason for racial discrimination. There are real good arguments against DEI hiring practices aside from people disliking them. Although many dislike them because of its racism.

mikkergp 4y ago
DEI has an enormous surface area, I don’t think you can blanket describe it as anti-intellectual.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I haven't seen a single example where it can justify its racial discrimination, which of course would require some real hard evidence of its own necessity. I think we agree that racial discrimination is very negative.