6 ms·

I think even in context its a bit dangerous. Who counts as diverse, and who gets cut in that consideration? Imagine there are three employees, and one of them h

I think even in context its a bit dangerous. Who counts as diverse, and who gets cut in that consideration? Imagine there are three employees, and one of them has to go due to budget cuts. One is a straight African American male, one is a white homosexual male, and one is a white straight female. All of these might be considered diverse because they are all minorities in the tech industry in some way. However, taking any of these three people's race, sexuality, or gender into consideration when making the decision might open the door to lawsuits. How do you make the decision between these three people? Is there a certain level of diversity that would ensure that they keep their job? I apologize if I come off as ignorant...Im not sure how these things work in law. However, I can't think of any way that taking someone's personal attributes that they cannot help into consideration when laying others off would result in anything but resentment towards the company.

kenjackson 4y ago
I was thinking of it more like, if you look at who you're planning to layoff and it is 50% white females -- and your employee population is only 20% white female... then you should probably take a look at why. Has some unintended bias crept into your decision making.
- dropit_sphere 4y ago
  The reverse, however, could also be true---how did you get all those fireable white females in the first place?
  - Volundr 4y ago
    Almost everyone is fireable. People who make it through large layoffs like to tell themselves it's because of the value they produce, but in my experience having been close to the decision making process on some of these it has a lot more to do with luck of the draw than anyone would care to admit.
    - danjoredd 4y ago
      It reminds me of that episode in the IT Crowd where Jen gets the employee of the month award, lets it go to her head, but its revealed that the CEO literally pulled her name out of a large box
    - lordfrito 4y ago
      > but in my experience having been close to the decision making process on some of these it has a lot more to do with luck of the draw than anyone would care to admit. I'm sure this happens, but it's not been my experience working for healthy companies. Been through a few attrition rounds myself. The process has always been, every single time: identify low performers, find reasons to fight for them to stay (do they have gifts the company isn't properly utilizing, etc.). Those at the bottom of the list need to be let go, essentially pruning unhealthy/unproductive branches from the tree trunk to keep the rest of the tree healthy.
      - Volundr 4y ago
        I caveated my statement because my experience in this is obviously limited, I doubt anyone has a wide view of the industry but... > The process has always been, every single time: identify low performers, find reasons to fight for them to stay (do they have gifts the company isn't properly utilizing, etc.) Strongly doubt this is done effectively in anything but smaller organizations. Imagine an organization the size of Google, doing this analysis effectively would involve consulting thousands if not 10s of thousands of managers, some of whom will be on the chopping block themselves. Organizations pretty much never want to telegraph these kinds of moves in advance, and looping that many people in 100% guarantees the entire process will be leaky as hell. Sure these organizations will play games with performance reviews to try to make some attempt at coming up with a more meaningful filter than a dice roll, but the accuracy is at best, questionable, and as we've seen in the recent layoffs a good performance review is a pretty weak form of protection. Your second sentence even provides a perfect scenario around exactly the kind of randomness that comes into play > essentially pruning unhealthy/unproductive branches from the tree trunk to keep the rest of the tree healthy. High performer but working on a product the company has decided to de-prioritize? Bye.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
I think you're just looking at it wrong. None of those people is diverse because no individuals are diverse; a person is only themself. A group of people can be varyingly diverse, and observations about the before/after diversity of a group of employees is a different thing from making decisions based on someone's individual group membership. I think this upside-down view of diversity being located in individuals is really common though, which is one of the problems with tech DEI initiatives. But you get much more use out of it the other way around.
- danjoredd 4y ago
  That's a bit of what I mean though...what counts as diverse? Diversity is such a vague word that anyone with some attribute outside of the norm in an industry might qualify. Do we discriminate against some forms of diversity, and not others? I think that hirings/firings should be done because of performance, as that is the only way to really make it fair in the long run. Its great to have people from different backgrounds be on the team, but that shouldn't be the sole defining decision.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    > Diversity is such a vague word that anyone with some attribute outside of the norm in an industry might qualify. Right, the term has no inherent abstract usefulness, it must be defined in each specific case. You can assess diversity of a group on a certain axis, but not generic "diversity" without defining it. But you're still thinking of it as something possessed by an individual and that's making it hard to see the value. Adding a specific person may increase the diversity of the team on a certain axis, but that's a trait of the team not that person. > as that is the only way to really make it fair in the long run. I don't think this is wrong, but the way you state it makes me think there are several assumptions under it that are worth prodding at. Like, is fairness the goal? To whom? only the members of the team being discussed, or all potential candidates, or society as a whole, or what? Or, what is "performance?" and defined by whom? If a member of the team underperforms their peers on technical assessments but, for example, speaks an uncommon language that gives them access to and business-valuable insight into their users, is that performance? These are judgements that need to be made, not objective facts that can be derived from the world. I don't know of anyone seriously proposing that "diversity" be the sole deciding factor in a hiring or firing. But that assessing the overall diversity of a team on certain axes can surely be one of several things weighed when making these decisions, along with things like tenure, performance, communication skills, morale, etc.
sershe 4y ago
It's obvious, you hire 2 diversity consultants to figure it all out, and then since you only have budget for 2 employees, fire all 3 of the original ones.

kenjackson 4y ago

I was thinking of it more like, if you look at who you're planning to layoff and it is 50% white females -- and your employee population is only 20% white female... then you should probably take a look at why. Has some unintended bias crept into your decision making.

dropit_sphere 4y ago
The reverse, however, could also be true---how did you get all those fireable white females in the first place?
- Volundr 4y ago
  Almost everyone is fireable. People who make it through large layoffs like to tell themselves it's because of the value they produce, but in my experience having been close to the decision making process on some of these it has a lot more to do with luck of the draw than anyone would care to admit.
  - danjoredd 4y ago
    It reminds me of that episode in the IT Crowd where Jen gets the employee of the month award, lets it go to her head, but its revealed that the CEO literally pulled her name out of a large box
  - lordfrito 4y ago
    > but in my experience having been close to the decision making process on some of these it has a lot more to do with luck of the draw than anyone would care to admit. I'm sure this happens, but it's not been my experience working for healthy companies. Been through a few attrition rounds myself. The process has always been, every single time: identify low performers, find reasons to fight for them to stay (do they have gifts the company isn't properly utilizing, etc.). Those at the bottom of the list need to be let go, essentially pruning unhealthy/unproductive branches from the tree trunk to keep the rest of the tree healthy.
    - Volundr 4y ago
      I caveated my statement because my experience in this is obviously limited, I doubt anyone has a wide view of the industry but... > The process has always been, every single time: identify low performers, find reasons to fight for them to stay (do they have gifts the company isn't properly utilizing, etc.) Strongly doubt this is done effectively in anything but smaller organizations. Imagine an organization the size of Google, doing this analysis effectively would involve consulting thousands if not 10s of thousands of managers, some of whom will be on the chopping block themselves. Organizations pretty much never want to telegraph these kinds of moves in advance, and looping that many people in 100% guarantees the entire process will be leaky as hell. Sure these organizations will play games with performance reviews to try to make some attempt at coming up with a more meaningful filter than a dice roll, but the accuracy is at best, questionable, and as we've seen in the recent layoffs a good performance review is a pretty weak form of protection. Your second sentence even provides a perfect scenario around exactly the kind of randomness that comes into play > essentially pruning unhealthy/unproductive branches from the tree trunk to keep the rest of the tree healthy. High performer but working on a product the company has decided to de-prioritize? Bye.

giraffe_lady 4y ago

I think you're just looking at it wrong. None of those people is diverse because no individuals are diverse; a person is only themself. A group of people can be varyingly diverse, and observations about the before/after diversity of a group of employees is a different thing from making decisions based on someone's individual group membership. I think this upside-down view of diversity being located in individuals is really common though, which is one of the problems with tech DEI initiatives. But you get much more use out of it the other way around.

danjoredd 4y ago
That's a bit of what I mean though...what counts as diverse? Diversity is such a vague word that anyone with some attribute outside of the norm in an industry might qualify. Do we discriminate against some forms of diversity, and not others? I think that hirings/firings should be done because of performance, as that is the only way to really make it fair in the long run. Its great to have people from different backgrounds be on the team, but that shouldn't be the sole defining decision.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  > Diversity is such a vague word that anyone with some attribute outside of the norm in an industry might qualify. Right, the term has no inherent abstract usefulness, it must be defined in each specific case. You can assess diversity of a group on a certain axis, but not generic "diversity" without defining it. But you're still thinking of it as something possessed by an individual and that's making it hard to see the value. Adding a specific person may increase the diversity of the team on a certain axis, but that's a trait of the team not that person. > as that is the only way to really make it fair in the long run. I don't think this is wrong, but the way you state it makes me think there are several assumptions under it that are worth prodding at. Like, is fairness the goal? To whom? only the members of the team being discussed, or all potential candidates, or society as a whole, or what? Or, what is "performance?" and defined by whom? If a member of the team underperforms their peers on technical assessments but, for example, speaks an uncommon language that gives them access to and business-valuable insight into their users, is that performance? These are judgements that need to be made, not objective facts that can be derived from the world. I don't know of anyone seriously proposing that "diversity" be the sole deciding factor in a hiring or firing. But that assessing the overall diversity of a team on certain axes can surely be one of several things weighed when making these decisions, along with things like tenure, performance, communication skills, morale, etc.

sershe 4y ago

It's obvious, you hire 2 diversity consultants to figure it all out, and then since you only have budget for 2 employees, fire all 3 of the original ones.