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I predicted this would likely happen at the start of the year. I don't think it was an accident that tech become one of the main industries pushing D&I over th

by kypro 4y ago

I predicted this would likely happen at the start of the year. I don't think it was an accident that tech become one of the main industries pushing D&I over the last several years. Whatever your opinion is on D&I it's arguably not something a company would put significant investment or time into unless they had spare margin and cashflows. This isn't a political comment, just an observation as someone who works for a company with a large D&I team, but I do hope this injects some sanity into what a reasonable emphasis on D&I looks like in the corporate structure, because I think a few tech companies have gone a little too far in recent years. The company I work for at the moment has ended up dividing the workforce by race by pushing "inclusive" policies so hard. Our corporate Yammer is worse than Twitter.

dijit 4y ago
My, perhaps bitter, opinion is that D&I was pushed heavily by tech to get more workers in so that wages could be suppressed. The layoffs happening across all tech companies (including the ones recording record profits and that have extremely large cash reserves) also strikes me as another way of depressing tech salaries. Maybe this perspective doesn't hold much weight, because why then get rid of D&I? Maybe because keeping the lights on is more important, or D&I has already done as much as it could do, if that was the ambition.
- kypro 4y ago
  The reason I thought D&I teams would get cut is because I believe in a lot of companies today these departments are reducing productivity and workplace satisfaction. No one wants to work for a company where you're likelihood of being promoted is, in part, dependant on having the right immutable characteristics. The issue is when times are good and companies are expanding it's hard to justify why you're suddenly cutting people who work in D&I roles. And you can't even freeze their hiring because even that looks bad when every other department is still growing their headcount 10% YoY. But now for the first time in many years tech companies have an excuse to cut fat - so who are they going to cut? Well, it's not going to be the engineer who's been their for 10+ years who has built several essential tools and services. It's generally going to be teams who work on speculative innovation projects that are likely going nowhere and those from departments offering little value to the company such as D&I. My opinion on the tech layoffs from the start has been that if you're a good engineer who's providing value, or is able to provide value elsewhere, it's unlikely you'll be impacted much. Even if you're let go.
  - ashwagary 4y ago
    >The reason I thought D&I teams would get cut is because I believe in a lot of companies today these departments are reducing productivity and workplace satisfaction. Or it could simply be the standard "last in, first out" approach that most businesses take when hiring and firing going into an economic downturn.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kypro 4y ago
After writing this I figured I'd check our Yammer just to see what's happen today... The top post is someone who's upset because they believe an employee has intentionally moved all the books about feminism and race in the office library to the top shelf where they are out of sight. They also suspect the same person has likely moved a Piers Morgan book down to eye level. After some angry words they finish their post by explaining they were only able to make this observation because they are an individual of above-average height, and apologise for this fact before ending their post with kisses.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  They are just working that dominance hierarchy! University taught them well. For their next trick, objecting to clapping emojis in Slack.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    Only if the hands are not the correct color
- jemmyw 4y ago
  If they wanted to play the game they'd move Piers and all the other books they don't like to the lowest shelf so you have to bend down to find them.

by kypro 4y ago

dijit 4y ago

My, perhaps bitter, opinion is that D&I was pushed heavily by tech to get more workers in so that wages could be suppressed. The layoffs happening across all tech companies (including the ones recording record profits and that have extremely large cash reserves) also strikes me as another way of depressing tech salaries. Maybe this perspective doesn't hold much weight, because why then get rid of D&I? Maybe because keeping the lights on is more important, or D&I has already done as much as it could do, if that was the ambition.

kypro 4y ago
The reason I thought D&I teams would get cut is because I believe in a lot of companies today these departments are reducing productivity and workplace satisfaction. No one wants to work for a company where you're likelihood of being promoted is, in part, dependant on having the right immutable characteristics. The issue is when times are good and companies are expanding it's hard to justify why you're suddenly cutting people who work in D&I roles. And you can't even freeze their hiring because even that looks bad when every other department is still growing their headcount 10% YoY. But now for the first time in many years tech companies have an excuse to cut fat - so who are they going to cut? Well, it's not going to be the engineer who's been their for 10+ years who has built several essential tools and services. It's generally going to be teams who work on speculative innovation projects that are likely going nowhere and those from departments offering little value to the company such as D&I. My opinion on the tech layoffs from the start has been that if you're a good engineer who's providing value, or is able to provide value elsewhere, it's unlikely you'll be impacted much. Even if you're let go.
- ashwagary 4y ago
  >The reason I thought D&I teams would get cut is because I believe in a lot of companies today these departments are reducing productivity and workplace satisfaction. Or it could simply be the standard "last in, first out" approach that most businesses take when hiring and firing going into an economic downturn.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kypro 4y ago

After writing this I figured I'd check our Yammer just to see what's happen today... The top post is someone who's upset because they believe an employee has intentionally moved all the books about feminism and race in the office library to the top shelf where they are out of sight. They also suspect the same person has likely moved a Piers Morgan book down to eye level. After some angry words they finish their post by explaining they were only able to make this observation because they are an individual of above-average height, and apologise for this fact before ending their post with kisses.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
They are just working that dominance hierarchy! University taught them well. For their next trick, objecting to clapping emojis in Slack.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  Only if the hands are not the correct color
jemmyw 4y ago
If they wanted to play the game they'd move Piers and all the other books they don't like to the lowest shelf so you have to bend down to find them.