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Oh, that’s easy. Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s win

Oh, that’s easy. Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better. You’re 100% right about the funnel, but here’s the thing: junior positions are part of the funnel. About ten years ago I realized that I was screwing up massively by interviewing for current skill level instead of potential skill level. Sure, at a certain point you can’t just look for potential; I’m not gonna hire a senior engineer because they might reach senior levels at some point. But I’m sure thinking about my junior to middle levels differently. And this benefits everyone. Too many FAANGs get obsessed with existing criteria and leetcoding and won’t even look at someone from a small shop, regardless of skin color or gender. Their loss, my gain. Absolutely anything you can do to increase your pool of potential qualified employees is good. Making up theories which give you an excuse to keep the same small pool hurts your company. Again, my gain. Further, cultural diversity helps me get my job done because different viewpoints are useful! It’s amusing: the same people who will insist that cancel culture is bad because we have to invite all the viewpoints will also explain that trying to increase diversity in the workplace is terrible. It’s almost like there’s something else going on there.

hbrn 4y ago
> you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity Diversity, as everything else, has a sweet spot. Too little and too much are equally bad. Of course nobody knows where the sweet spot is, but merely increasing diversity is not a guarantee for improvement. I mean, you can hire someone who hates your gut and doesn't speak your language. This will definitely increase the diversity, but you probably not going to like it. > will also explain that trying to increase diversity in the workplace is terrible. It’s almost like there’s something else going on there. I think most of those folks just despise hypocrisy. "Being anti-racist by being racist" makes me cringe. If you're making a diversity hire to get alternative viewpoints, you're doing it for your own benefit and being honest, I don't think anybody will have problem with that. It's the virtue signaling that makes it despicable. There's also argument to be made that if you're allowing diversity hires, you might have to allow "cohesion" hires. Justifying one but not the other seems disingenuous.
- BryantD 4y ago
  Sure, you could obviously have a poorly functioning diverse workplace. Likewise, you could obviously have a poorly functioning lily-white all-male workplace. The idea that diversity advocates are solely focused on diversity for its own sake is incorrect. There are two factors that typically play into it: one is practical (see my comment) and the other is moral (the belief that it’s inherently better if someone raised in a non-majority culture has an equal chance to succeed). “Virtue signaling” is a tremendously non-useful term because it is always, always applied inconsistently. The dude I’m responding to used the phrase “CRT.” That ensures that we all know that he’s virtuous and recognizes the evil of leftist thought, but you’re not calling him a virtue signaler. Don’t assume people who disagree with you are hypocrites. Maybe we’re just misinformed. “Virtue signaling” ends discussion and promotes division, and we really don’t need more of that in this world.
  - hbrn 4y ago
    I did not imply you're a hypocrite. I only tried to explain the cancel culture / diversity paradox. Both cancel culture and DEI are incredibly hypocritical "holier than thou" contests. > belief that it’s inherently better if someone raised in a non-majority culture has an equal chance to succeed I think it's safe to say that equality of opportunity ship has long sailed. Far left is all about equality of outcome now. But let's focus on equality of opportunity. It's an incredibly complex problem to solve. Take affirmative action for example: based on dose and implementation it could either help, or it could backfire. But any criticism of it will get you labelled as bigot or racist. "We're helping disenfranchised minorities here, how dare you criticize us?" Once you believe you have the moral high ground, criticism is no longer acceptable. I'm not labelling the other guy as virtue signaler because he seems capable of self-doubt and rational thought.
    - BryantD 4y ago
      I believe that you didn't mean to label me as a hypocrite, but if you think that my expression of virtue is designed to signal that I'm a good person rather than being a sincere expression of what I believe -- you're saying I'm a hypocrite. If you don't want to do that, don't accuse me of virtue signaling.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
catiopatio 4y ago
> Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better. What evidence do you have to support the claim that DIE-focused companies outcompete merit-focused companies?
- BryantD 4y ago
  False dichotomy. I spent a couple of paragraphs talking about this. Please read my post and try again if you really want to have a conversation.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    You made a pretty bold claim about the inherent value of diversity; if you cannot support it with evidence, the failure isn’t with me. Efforts to increase diversity this late in the pipeline come at the cost of other priorities, including (and perhaps especially) merit, and are, almost without exception, advanced through patently discriminatory practices.
catiopatio 4y ago
> … people who will insist that cancel culture is bad because we have to invite all the viewpoints … Are we to understand that, given your espoused commitment to viewpoint diversity, that you also oppose cancel culture on this basis? Either you also agree that “cancel culture is bad”, or you don’t actually believe viewpoint diversity is valuable, and yours is just an ethics-of-convenience argument.
woojoo666 4y ago
> Oh, that’s easy. Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better. It would help if you cited your sources here, but I do remember myself seeing some studies on this. One in particular was about how venture capital firms did better when they hired for diversity and had diverse people in top roles [1]. The study mentioned that venture capitalism has very particular homogenous in-group culture, which diversity hiring helped firms break out of. In fact many articles seem to push this idea that diversity hiring leads to more perspectives on issues and more out-of-the-box thinking, leading to greater success. While this makes sense, this is very different from the rational pushed by the top-level comment of this thread, which says that diversity hiring is to make up for discrimination at the beginning of the funnel. Because if the goal is just to broaden perspectives by tweaking their hiring process, companies can do this without looking at race or gender. There are metrics that can specifically optimize for this. There's no reason why race/gender needs to be specifically considered in order to end up with more diversity of thought. [1]: https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
raxxorraxor 4y ago
You probably don't hire diversity, you hire conformity.

hbrn 4y ago

> you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity Diversity, as everything else, has a sweet spot. Too little and too much are equally bad. Of course nobody knows where the sweet spot is, but merely increasing diversity is not a guarantee for improvement. I mean, you can hire someone who hates your gut and doesn't speak your language. This will definitely increase the diversity, but you probably not going to like it. > will also explain that trying to increase diversity in the workplace is terrible. It’s almost like there’s something else going on there. I think most of those folks just despise hypocrisy. "Being anti-racist by being racist" makes me cringe. If you're making a diversity hire to get alternative viewpoints, you're doing it for your own benefit and being honest, I don't think anybody will have problem with that. It's the virtue signaling that makes it despicable. There's also argument to be made that if you're allowing diversity hires, you might have to allow "cohesion" hires. Justifying one but not the other seems disingenuous.

BryantD 4y ago
Sure, you could obviously have a poorly functioning diverse workplace. Likewise, you could obviously have a poorly functioning lily-white all-male workplace. The idea that diversity advocates are solely focused on diversity for its own sake is incorrect. There are two factors that typically play into it: one is practical (see my comment) and the other is moral (the belief that it’s inherently better if someone raised in a non-majority culture has an equal chance to succeed). “Virtue signaling” is a tremendously non-useful term because it is always, always applied inconsistently. The dude I’m responding to used the phrase “CRT.” That ensures that we all know that he’s virtuous and recognizes the evil of leftist thought, but you’re not calling him a virtue signaler. Don’t assume people who disagree with you are hypocrites. Maybe we’re just misinformed. “Virtue signaling” ends discussion and promotes division, and we really don’t need more of that in this world.
- hbrn 4y ago
  I did not imply you're a hypocrite. I only tried to explain the cancel culture / diversity paradox. Both cancel culture and DEI are incredibly hypocritical "holier than thou" contests. > belief that it’s inherently better if someone raised in a non-majority culture has an equal chance to succeed I think it's safe to say that equality of opportunity ship has long sailed. Far left is all about equality of outcome now. But let's focus on equality of opportunity. It's an incredibly complex problem to solve. Take affirmative action for example: based on dose and implementation it could either help, or it could backfire. But any criticism of it will get you labelled as bigot or racist. "We're helping disenfranchised minorities here, how dare you criticize us?" Once you believe you have the moral high ground, criticism is no longer acceptable. I'm not labelling the other guy as virtue signaler because he seems capable of self-doubt and rational thought.
  - BryantD 4y ago
    I believe that you didn't mean to label me as a hypocrite, but if you think that my expression of virtue is designed to signal that I'm a good person rather than being a sincere expression of what I believe -- you're saying I'm a hypocrite. If you don't want to do that, don't accuse me of virtue signaling.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

catiopatio 4y ago

> Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better. What evidence do you have to support the claim that DIE-focused companies outcompete merit-focused companies?

BryantD 4y ago
False dichotomy. I spent a couple of paragraphs talking about this. Please read my post and try again if you really want to have a conversation.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  You made a pretty bold claim about the inherent value of diversity; if you cannot support it with evidence, the failure isn’t with me. Efforts to increase diversity this late in the pipeline come at the cost of other priorities, including (and perhaps especially) merit, and are, almost without exception, advanced through patently discriminatory practices.

catiopatio 4y ago

> … people who will insist that cancel culture is bad because we have to invite all the viewpoints … Are we to understand that, given your espoused commitment to viewpoint diversity, that you also oppose cancel culture on this basis? Either you also agree that “cancel culture is bad”, or you don’t actually believe viewpoint diversity is valuable, and yours is just an ethics-of-convenience argument.

woojoo666 4y ago

> Oh, that’s easy. Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better. It would help if you cited your sources here, but I do remember myself seeing some studies on this. One in particular was about how venture capital firms did better when they hired for diversity and had diverse people in top roles [1]. The study mentioned that venture capitalism has very particular homogenous in-group culture, which diversity hiring helped firms break out of. In fact many articles seem to push this idea that diversity hiring leads to more perspectives on issues and more out-of-the-box thinking, leading to greater success. While this makes sense, this is very different from the rational pushed by the top-level comment of this thread, which says that diversity hiring is to make up for discrimination at the beginning of the funnel. Because if the goal is just to broaden perspectives by tweaking their hiring process, companies can do this without looking at race or gender. There are metrics that can specifically optimize for this. There's no reason why race/gender needs to be specifically considered in order to end up with more diversity of thought. [1]: https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend

raxxorraxor 4y ago

You probably don't hire diversity, you hire conformity.