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Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company

• bobleeswagger 4y ago
  > If you're actually a diverse company, then people will notice. Yep. But the damage has already been done. At least you have a voice. I recommend using it to change what bothers you.
• marknutter 4y ago
  The replies to this thread are giving me hope that the DEI madness is starting to wane.
• super_pickles 4y ago
  I think of it as gaslighting. Make poc’s second guess themselves so they focus on not becoming a threat.
• tomp 4y ago
  (We've told you so.)
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• stncls 4y ago
  You're not alone. My partner has the same issue. They work in a field where performance can be judged somewhat objectively, but in which reputation still matters. They get not only impostor syndrome, but also the fear that other people will think their achievements are only due to DEI initiatives. Another issue is that senior minorities constantly get dragged into (useless, time-wasting, chore-like) committees that have representation quotas. > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company. That would be great: "do the right thing but don't brag about it". Unfortunately, "keep doing the wrong thing but pretend otherwise loudly" seems more common.
  • _fat_santa 4y ago
    Whenever my company has had conversations about DEI initiatives, I always come back to the same argument: "talk is cheap, we can talk all day long about how we are diverse. How about we shut up, put our money where our mouth is, and actually hire some folks from diverse backgrounds". DEI is something that is easy to talk about but actually kinda hard to implement. Part of the problem is the makeup of the industry in general. In tech for example it would be physically impossible for companies to be 50/50 male/female because the broader industry doesn't break down that way, same goes for any race, religion, background, etc. Companies love to scream from the rooftops about DEI because yelling about it is significantly easier than actually doing it.
    • xienze 4y ago
      > actually hire some folks from diverse backgrounds Because you’re trying to hire from a small pool of candidates (minority software developer or whatever) that EVERY OTHER tech company is trying to get in a desperate attempt to not look bad (because not having a sufficient number of minorities on staff is a sin). It’s simply a question of numbers. There’s only so many minorities, and only a fraction of them are sufficiently talented, and everyone wants them. Your company may not be a big enough name to woo these folks. So it’s not necessarily the fault of your leadership to act on their principles. Now there’s a whole OTHER can of worms associated with DEI, which is that everyone wants minority employees => there’s a lack of them => let’s lower our standards to widen the pool we have to choose from, and your company certainly could go down that route if you think they’re not doing enough.
• fatnoah 4y ago
  I think you raise some good points, and I think there are ways to handle DEI hiring well, and ways not to do it well. IMHO, when it's done well, DEI hiring isn't about filling quotas or giving anyone an edge, but it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance. I've been part of DEI hiring at a couple companies, and my role has been much more about answering questions and making sure that candidates start the process on a level footing with everyone else. All of the candidates are fully qualified for the roles -- I wouldn't be talking to them if they weren't.
  • sokoloff 4y ago
    > when it's done well,...it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance If that's the measure, then I think it's not done well in a lot of places (possibly most). Some places are biased one way; other places biased the other way; relatively few are dead-centered.
  • rel2thr 4y ago
    > it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance How does that look in practice? In most companies it seems that means that under-represented people get green lighted at the resume screen step at a much higher percentage than over-represented people. But the bar is the same at the interview stage. But don't you see how that is a big dis-advantage for the median over-represented applicant?
    • backzerman 4y ago
      > But the bar is the same at the interview stage. If the bar is sufficiently high, the median applicant, over- or under-represented, won't get the job anyway. I've heard from people who work at companies (specifically big tech) that have diversity interview quotas (but not hiring quotas). In practice, you just end up interviewing more people: the candidates you would have interviewed anyway, plus some diverse candidates with closer-to-the-median resumes. And then you end up hiring the people you would have anyway, because interviews are much harder to pass than resume screens. It's a fairly pointless exercise that mostly disadvantages the interviewers, who have to spend more time interviewing, and the "lucky" candidates, who almost never outperform expectations in the interview.
• tarotuser 4y ago
  I've always found these telling when companies bandy around with "DEI great!"... All the while the C-levels are 'white male sausagefest' except for the DEI position, which is invariably a black woman. I like seeing real diversity at all levels of a company, and not the fake diversity pushed by DEI initiatives.
  • adolph 4y ago
    > All the while the C-levels are 'white male sausagefest' Aren’t those the wurst? It’s like they could at least include vegetables, like aubergine or something.
    • tarotuser 4y ago
      +1 for the funny joke! But as a story of "DEI" in real practice vs a company who fakes it: I worked as a system engineer for a gov contractor SaaS company with 4 C-levels. 2 were men, and 2 were women. The CEO was a second generation Italian. The CFO was a guy. The 2 women were in charge of the core part of the business: development lifecycle (design, dev, QA), and customer experience (helpdesk, consultants, sysads). The lady responsible for dev was also a developer and designer, and a damned sharp one at that. The lady responsible for customer experience was a systems engineer by trade. More than a few times I consulted with her about company direction for our infrastructure and growth plans. There never really was public vocalizations in the company for DEI - it was about actually getting people from a wide background and putting them in power. And to that, our group reviewed potential hires, with all demographic details wiped. It was just the facts what they had done, to prevent us from focusing on demographics unchangable by us. When BLM hit news hard, our CEO said bluntly in our monthly meeting "We're not able to hire most black candidates because police regularly harass their communities, give them an arrest record or a criminal record, and that prevents getting a public trust clearance. We are also powerless to change this by ourselves." I've *NEVER* heard spokespeople say even close to that, and here's our CEO pulling the curtains aside to look at the meat grinder. Aside that terrible fact, the company did its best to hire diversely, promote from within, and put a diverse group of people in charge at leadership positions. Federal regulations GREATLY hamper good people with asinine decisions and local governmental harassment. Sadly, this company a year prior got in bed with a venture (vulture) capitalist. They, after assuring "no real changes will happen (HAH!)", sold us like a Pokemon card to a terrible company. You could feel the grease off of this place. Felt like a used car lot combined with a county carnival/fair. There were 8 C level positions in this 600 person company. For 7 of them it was "White male". The "DEI Officer" was a black woman. Doing this shows me you absolutely do not care about actual diversity, but only the thinnest veneer as not to be called out by other companies. (See? We have a token Black Woman on our C levels!) Like... You just "bought" a 200 person company with 2 scary sharp women as proven C level leadership... and threw them away as their newest acquisition.
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  It's a problem. In our town people went past "Black Lives Matter" to a lot of cheap pandering to the effect that "Black people are awesome" and maybe all of them are right out of Wakanda Forever. It comes across as not based in reality, not really sincere, and not really attending to black people in the community. I voted an Alumni Trustee ballot on the weekend and there were two black people on the ballot. One was a woman who'd done some of the biggest jobs in the biggest banks, the other was a man who'd leapfrogged from one "diversity officer" job to another. The first one was someone who proved black people could get it done, I'm afraid the second one may be perpetuating the problems of that community. You know who I voted for.
  • GrinningFool 4y ago
    > The first one was someone who proved black people could get it done This phrasing suggests an base expectation that a black person needs to prove they could get it done [like a white person could]. What I think DEI tries[1] to do is normalize the idea that anyone of sufficient ability /can/ do the work by giving more opportunity to people who 'traditionally' have not received those opportunities. And in so doing, remove the [often] unconscious perception that says a black person needs to 'prove' something extra in the first place [1] at its best, which it often isn't.
    • tristor 4y ago
      > This phrasing suggests an base expectation that a black person needs to prove they could get it done [like a white person could]. Your response suggests a base expectation that a white person doesn't have to prove they can get it done. The realities of the job market suggest otherwise. Turns out, with a /very narrow/ set of exceptions based on direct nepotism, white people too must go through interviews, demonstrate some capability to do the job, and undergo performance reviews which might lead to termination if their performance is lacking on the job. A common occurrence in DEI circles is to look at the experiences of the top 0.01% of society, notice that these extraordinarily wealthy families have children who go on to have absolute silver-spoon up ass level privilege in the workplace, and then extrapolate that for the many millions of people who constitute the other 99.9% of society. It doesn't matter in America if you're white or a man, it does matter if your daddy has a last name that is known publicly as part of high society and your family net worth starts with a B. The basic reality is that EVERYONE must prove themselves. With the exception of the most wealthy and privileged minority of society, nobody is given shit just for being born.
• calvinmorrison 4y ago
  For all the energy private companies do working towards DEI, think about how easily it could be transitioned into something you don't like. If the winds blow to a falangist anti-capitalism under not catholicism but protestant sects for example, all these little HR people will suddenly be touting the reasons not to hire women and get them back in the home. HR departments should not be cultural enforcers, and while you may enjoy it now or think positively of DEI, it can flip around just as easily to something not very nice
• giantg2 4y ago
  "...it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company." "...is nothing short of corporate virtue signaling." It might be most beneficial for individuals if it's kept-low key. It's best for the company to scream it to the world. Or at least that's what the leaders think right now. Personally, I think any medium to large company that talks about DEI and isn't addressing the supply side issues are just just marketing. Without addressing that, it's just companies trying to outbid each other, and not using money but using virtue signaling. They should be putting their money where their mouth is and sponsoring scholarships/internships/apprenticeships. Instead of asking you talk at town halls, maybe they should be asking you to talk at high schools so the students can ask questions about your career journey. But hey, I'm just a dev so what do I know that these highly intelligent and highly trained CEOs/HR don't...
  • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >They should be putting their money where their mouth is and sponsoring scholarships/internships/apprenticeships. I worked at a BigCo that did all the usual DEI garbage and their only initiative that actually had results was the one where they spent a bunch of money sponsoring "women in stem" stuff at the high-school and college level.
    • zmgsabst 4y ago
      I’m unsurprised their only program was for the majority in education. Weird how there’s programs for the majority (women) when the minority (men) succeed — but no help for the minority (men) in any form. And this isn’t some new issue… men have been the minority in education longer than I’ve been alive.
      • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        They had many DEI programs dating back to before it was called DEI. The one targeting women who were predisposed toward stem careers and keeping them on that track was the only one that persisted over time because it was the only one that wasn't asinine when you actually looked at the results. Management basically said as much but less directly whenever they cut other programs but kept that one. The women hired as a result were far more socially diverse than people from the other hiring pipelines and I think that is of greater value than the fact that they were women. This is a big non-FAANG tech company FWIW
• dillutedfixer 4y ago
  Thank you for sharing this. I feel the exact same way. Work at a state university. Found out at a big town hall style meeting that I was hired during a "diversity cluster hire." I know I am talented but I was sitting there questioning myself. I am hispanic. Everyone speaking about the cluster hire was white. I appreciate the overall push towards awareness of this issue but I agree this felt like we were being paraded around. I skipped the "DEI Luncheon."
• subjectsigma 4y ago
  I’ve no evidence to support this, but I strongly suspect these kind of dog-and-pony shows are a result of there simply not being enough black voices. White people want to be inclusive but they consistently fail to understand what black people actually want out of DEI… because they’re not consulting enough (or any) black people. The best thing you can do is speak up and make sure your opinion is heard in a way that is simple and direct. Doing it on HN is fine but that won’t change your immediate situation, you need to talk to your leadership.
  • concordDance 4y ago
    > because they’re not consulting enough (or any) black people They are, problem is those black women they consult are mostly DEI people. Who are very different from the actual worker.
    • subjectsigma 4y ago
      I would include that under “not consulting enough black people” but you make an important clarification & I agree with you.
• benmmurphy 4y ago
  its probably a deliberate strategy in order to make you feel that you haven't earned your position but rather you are beholden to the people that gave it to you
  • FartyMcFarter 4y ago
    I don't think that's right. Most people involved in DEI have good intentions, they're often just too short-sighted to see second order consequences of the way they do things.
  • oaiey 4y ago
    that assumes competency of someone to have a real strategy and then competency to conceal it because it is a timebomb waiting to explode. Too complicated ;).
• tjpnz 4y ago
  Tangential to the current discussion but why do I always sense a reluctance to include matters relating to social class in these programs? When I bring it up during D&I discussions I'll usually get blank stares, and in one instance there were crude comments made about needing to beef up building security first.
  • Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    DEI took off right after Occupy Wall Street. The whole purpose is to destroy the class discussion entirely and use DEI issues as a weapon against anyone who brings up class. That's why DEI feels so disingenuous, because at its core, that's exactly what it is.
    • AustinDev 4y ago
      Bingo, much like the political brinkmanship that is the current left and right divide it’s all a distraction from that moment of class clarity.
    • tristor 4y ago
      This is exactly it. The entire DEI-driven conversation about "white privilege" is designed to distract from the reality that privilege in American and Western society is based on social class and economic status, not on skin color. Those two things are often correlated due to historical race-based discrimination, but they are not the same, and there are many many millions of white people who are lower class and treated horribly in America on the basis of their socioeconomic status. DEI is all about dividing poor people based on immutable characteristics so they don't have a way to effectively organize against the wealthy elites. There's a reason DEI is most popularly held and enforced by elites with high levels of education, and not by those who are the working masses. Frankly, it's /exactly/ the same stuff that was done to create white vs PoC racism in the US prior to the civil rights era to divide the working class to prevent labor organization. It's just the other side of that same coin, and basically the same tactics with a veneer of paint. Socioeconomic class has always been the primary leading indicator of outcomes for people born in the US, and that has not changed significantly in the last 30 years as DEI rose to prominence.
• fastball 4y ago
  This has been a criticism of Affirmative Action / DEI initiatives since they were first proposed. Unfortunately, I've never heard a good rebuttal to this argument. As long as such a system is in place, the potential beneficiaries of such programs cannot be sure if they are there because of merit or just to fill quotas; potentially causing harm to the exact people you're trying to help.
• workOrNah 4y ago
  > However, when I have to join a cheesy townhall once a month to discuss diversity hires, it makes me feel like I have no right to feel proud of any accomplishments I've made within the company. DEI doesn't prescribe monthly townhalls about to discuss diversity lol Why are you blaming the failings of your company on DEI?
• spangry 4y ago
  > If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here? I can understand how DEI initiatives might undermine your self-esteem and I'm sorry you are made to feel this way, but take solace in the fact that you have a job. Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially discriminated against. > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company. Personally, I prefer companies to be loud and proud about their DEI initiatives so that I know which companies engage in racial discrimination, rather than it all happening behind closed doors.
  • chuckhendo 4y ago
    This take is radically wrong, and you're just reinforcing OP's insecurities. How do you know that OP has a job at the expense of a white person? How do you know that OP isn't in fact the best candidate for the job? You're making a whole lot of assumptions here that are bordering on outright racism
    • spangry 4y ago
      That assumption was suggested by the OP, not me. Thanks for suggesting I'm racist, but I'm basically immune to such thought stopping non-arguments at this point. If disagreeing with making hiring decisions on the basis of skin colour is racist, then I suppose I'm racist.
      • chuckhendo 4y ago
        OP never said he was hired due to the color of his skin though. Not once. Is it possible that's the case? Sure. But for all we know, he was hired on merit.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • Taurenking 4y ago
• monero-xmr 4y ago
  It boils down to a core philosophical difference - do you want to emphasize equal access to opportunity, or do you want to emphasize equal outcomes? Some would argue it isn't an either-or thing, and we can do both at once, but I argue mandated equality of outcomes is insidious and causes social strife. If you are a minority and get hired, and the company has an explicit policy of hiring N% of minorities, then you will always wonder (as will all other employees) whether you were hired because of your minority status or because of your actual skills. This is very bad for morale and self worth. I don't think the minorities themselves were consulted. Perhaps it is being instituted by a minority, but they do not represent the preferences of people they purport to help with these policies. I think the UC university system has it right because they ban racial preferences for admitting students. While overall the percentage of certain racial minorities is lower there, those that do get in feel accomplished and deserving. This is a better outcome for society and personal self worth.
  • spacephysics 4y ago
    Fully agree. I think it’s damaging to a society to assign a spokesperson for certain groups that wasn’t “elected”, but rather given the position, prestige, and reputation due to fitting in that group. Thus it perpetuates the in-group, and causes the symptoms you’ve mentioned with equality of outcome derived solutions.
  • LeifCarrotson 4y ago
    On the other hand, if you only emphasize equal access of opportunity you will never reach equal outcomes. White men have centuries of cultural expectations, family wealth, and other advantages, and minorities have none of those advantages, and may be only a few decades (if that) removed from illiterate, impoverished inequality. Give those groups equal opportunity and it's unsurprising when an inequality of outcomes is perpetuated, observe that inequality of outcomes long enough and you start to foment the idea that maybe those people aren't actually intrinsically equal. Our office has a similar problem as a woman-owned business... The WBENC seal is valuable for winning bids in the government and aerospace industries, where regulatory measures encourage taking contracts with us over those that are still in the "old boys' club." Are we actually providing more value than our competition? Are we as innovative and sharp as we think we are? Or is much of the work we build together only selected because it satisfies some regulatory checkbox? I don't know, but I'd rather suffer that social strife and doubt for a few decades in my generation, wondering about my own accomplishments and worthiness, than kick the can down the road and leave the inequality unaddressed. I believe that temporarily creating equal outcomes, while temporarily problematic, will be a much faster route towards long-term equality than doing nothing.
• blissfullynot 4y ago
  I have a close friend who expresses similar sentiments sometimes, as someone who is sometimes the target of DEI initiatives. I've seen DEI hiring initiatives abused to paradoxical ends. Once department administration got into an attempt to basically hire someone using funds set aside for DEI, essentially with the plan to terminate them later, just to collect the support monies that came along with the position. The situation was complex but none of this had to do with hires' actual competence, it had to do with the available pool and this zealotry in unit aims at the time (basically the minority applicants were all working in areas different from the types of projects administration thought people should be working on). In any event, it created this disturbing situation where an attempt to increase DEI by the higher powers that be was actually having the opposite effect on a hire arguably, by creating this opportunity for unit management to use them for support funds with no actual intent to support them in their career or keep them around long term.
• User23 4y ago
  Become a founder. You might benefit from some early advantages raising seed money or getting picked for an incubator, but probably not appreciably more than founders like Gates or Zuckerberg from well connected families and communities. And past that first step if you succeed it’s going to be because you made it succeed. And if you somehow end up founding the affirmative action unicorn because private equity gives you an undeserved valuation on the basis of your race, well so long as you don’t sell your soul you may as well enjoy the ride.
• NickC25 4y ago
  >but creating townhall meetings and parading your black/brown employees around like show ponies is nothing short of corporate virtue signaling. It doesn't just undermine the self-esteem of a PoC, it undermines the self-esteem of white folks, too. Hiring or promoting people due to their skin color is just wrong, no matter what skin color that is. As a white dude, seeing my PoC teammates in the past celebrated not for their accomplishments, but for something they had no control over (their skin color) is sad. "John in Engineering is really talented, and works his tail off daily. He has come up with some really ingenious solutions to tough problems that have allowed us to grow as a company....but we're celebrating him because he's black, not because he's a kickass engineer". Seen things like this before, which make no sense. Celebrating an employee who is awesome at their job for being awesome at their job is great. You're a company, after all, not a social club. The goal is to grow and make money. Celebrate anyone who can do help with that, regardless if they are black, white, yellow, orange, green, pink, whatever. Diversity is cool, but when it's put into practice and not shouted from the rooftops, it's even better.
  • zozbot234 4y ago
    > He has come up with some really ingenious solutions to tough problems that have allowed us to grow as a company....but we're celebrating him because he's black, not because he's a kickass engineer The soft bigotry of low expectations.
    • godshatter 4y ago
      Why are you making the assumption that they added a silent "for a PoC" on the end of the first statement?
  • version_five 4y ago
    > PoC > White folks I just want to mention that one of the worst aspects of all this is trying to sort people according to (here apparently a binary) label. There is not really such thing as either of these categories - it's stereotyping of the worst kind, and takes us back many generations
• xwowsersx 4y ago
  Interestingly enough, Pew Research ran a study[0] a few years back which found that the majority of whites, blacks, and Hispanics reject race-conscious hiring—even if it results in less diversity. I can only imagine what it would feel like to be a PoC in a company that has openly stated that their goal is to achieve a certain racial/ethnic composition regardless of standards. How would I not always have a sneaking suspicion that I was hired to fulfill some quota rather than on my own merits? Worse, I would feel that all of my colleagues are looking at me and wondering the same thing. Excuse the cynicism, but I think the reason these companies have to shout about their DEI initiatives from the rooftops is because they care less about diversity and helping disadvantaged groups and more about signalling their virtue to the rest of the world. [0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/05/08/americans-see-advantages-and-challenges-in-countrys-growing-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/05/08/america...
  • Firmwarrior 4y ago
    As a Hispanic man, I can say that I don't care about whether I earned my spot or lucked into it through my ancestry. Life isn't fair, and I'll gladly take whatever advantages I can scrounge up. The software interview process in particular is already so capricious that I feel absolutely no shame in tilting it in my favor in any way that I can.
    • debacle 4y ago
      You shouldn't feel bad about leveraging a system to your advantage. Life is hard.
    • hedora 4y ago
      The concern is that there are places where minority hires are explicitly a lower bar, so those people get junk jobs and layoffs, regardless of ability. Personally, I think the problem should be pushed upstream whenever possible. (More funding for minority elementary and high schools, and candidate quotas for recruiters but not hires both are good examples of effective approaches).
    • dayvid 4y ago
• rdl 4y ago
  I wish there were an HR "brand" for "We want the absolute best team possible, with diversity of thought and experience, and aligned on our mission and core values. We recognize lots of people are excluded because they're not part of our existing networks, or because they don't think they belong here, so we'll put extra effort into looking for them and showing them what's possible, but we've got the same standards for everyone we bring in, and will always pick the people who make our team the best. This might not always be the best individuals at their specialties in isolation, but the people who will work the best together to achieve our mission. This isn't a single-round game, so we do value long-term evolution of our company, the industry, our country, and humanity overall, but if we aren't successful in the short term, we won't be at the table to make positive changes over time, either. We have minimum moral, ethical, and legal obligations in how we treat people which we will always meet (and hopefully far exceed), but the minimums are not our targets."
• workOrNah 4y ago
  [flagged]
• Zigurd 4y ago
  What you are describing sounds performative, which doesn't mean it's tokenism, window dressing, or a bad faith put-on show. It could all be with the best intentions. However it's hard to disagree with your take that DEI results should be self-evident. If a company feels a need to be self-congratulatory, they might be doing it wrong. You put your finger on it right here: "I could understand publishing a quarterly report, but creating townhall meetings and parading..." Women and minorities in tech have their networks and know what's what. Accurate reporting of positive results is what makes a company welcoming to applicants.
• DebtDeflation 4y ago
  DEI has become just another corporate metric for executives to game in order to optimize their bonuses. Same with ESG, NPS, and everything else before it - eventually the metric becomes the end unto itself and the original objective gets completely lost.
• AdamN 4y ago
  You shouldn't have to do this but if you're being asked to present at the DEI townhall, you might politely but firmly ask for a different panel makeup to reflect the power the company is putting behind the effort. These initiatives should be driven by the business units, is the VP of product there, the SVP of engineering, the officers of the company, board members even??? This panel can talk about what they're doing to drive the initiative and ideally there are no DEI/People people on stage at all aside from maybe a moderator. If there is no diversity on that stage ... ask them what they're doing about it and if it's a goal for them to drive inclusion at all levels. Also, big monthly meetings are an anti-pattern. Once high level people are participating, you will hopefully see the frequency go down and the quality go up.
• micromacrofoot 4y ago
  > If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here? I get this... but is the contrary worse? you've very possibly missed out on jobs at the expense of a less qualified white person. There's some evidence that even having a "black sounding name" results in resumes being looked over. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-applicants-with-black-names-still-less-likely-to-get-the-interview#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-appli... Inclusivity initiatives can be problematic, but prior to their existence a lot of the time it was "continue not even being fully aware that you only hire white people"
  • joemazerino 4y ago
    Applying real world hard from theoretical data is exactly why DIE should die. It is absolutely absurd to assume that data supporting racism (ie: black people can't get jobs because they are somehow handicapped) is more applicable than data showing equality of opportunity. Play this logic game: besides racism, why do you think these resumes are passed over?
    • micromacrofoot 4y ago
      It's not really a "logic game"... that seems like a dismissive way to approach this conversation and makes me feel like you may not be willing to entertain any ideas through the course of a discussion. There have been multiple experiments run using resumes with identical experience but different names, and it seems that "black sounding" names are consistently called back less often, in some cases 50% less. https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-racial-names https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-racial-n... This makes me feel like some kind of hard requirement like a quota might actually be corrective given that there are measurable biases in who gets called back for an interview? Or maybe to put it in a different lens, given this is a narrow scope of data that doesn't do much to support the vague idea of a "diversity initiative" — perhaps the better approach would be anonymizing resumes during the initial outreach process?
• warchowder 4y ago
  [dead]
• afavour 4y ago
  I don’t want to take away from your personal experience and opinions but the title led me to believe its assertion was from a study or some other kind of statistically backed examination. If there is one I’d be fascinated to read it. Do the majority of PoC employees feel this way? That’s the kind of question that can’t really by answered by an HN thread.
• inglor_cz 4y ago
  DEI is one huge attempt to make a right out of two wrongs.
• spacephysics 4y ago
  I think these initiatives had great intentions, as the saying goes, “road to hell is paved with good intentions” We shouldn’t be “color blind”, but at the same time shouldn’t raise (or especially demote) anyone for their skin color These initiatives are antithetical to what MLK preached, to much of the civil rights movement And just like the scrum cult, once these systems are implemented, they understandably have motive to keep themselves “alive” and worth the investment. That begs the question then, if there’s perfect diversity in a company, why would you need DEI? You’d only justify the cost if it’s a perpetual problem that will never be solved, one that every individual is conscious or unconsciously guilty of, and actions must be taken to curb the ever-encroaching perpetuation of anti DEI thoughts/behaviors.
  • not_a_pet_rock 4y ago
    > but at the same time shouldn’t raise (or especially demote) anyone for their skin color thats literally what colorblindness is all about, recognizing people for their actions not their skin color.
• koonsolo 4y ago
  We shouldn't care about the skin color of people. And when I was young, I thought we would evolve into a world were skin color wouldn't matter. But now it seems some people 'accepted' that skin color matters, and so we have to positively discriminate skin colors that get discriminated against. Their belief is that there will always be racism against colored people, and somehow it needs to be offsetted. If find this very strange. I would hope one day we could still evolve into a world where skin color doesn't matter. But it seems further away as we move along.
  • ModernMech 4y ago
    The problem is that as we started to transition to a world that didn’t discriminate against racial groups based on skin color, the people who wanted to discriminate against those groups changed tactics. They discriminated using other signals strongly correlated with race, largely with the same effect. The coup de grace was then declaring racial discrimination “over”, all the while maintaining the same racially discriminated power structures. Now we live in a world where racial groups can be targeted with surgical precision using such signals. The racists aren’t using the N word out loud anymore, but the racial animus is still there. The promise of a colorblind world was naive, and it won’t work.
    • koonsolo 4y ago
      > The promise of a colorblind world was naive, and it won’t work. I'm all for equality and anti-racisms. But if you say "game is on between the races", well then let's go and see who wins. Edit: Maybe I wasn't clear, but if you are going to discriminate me for whatever skin color I have, I'm not going to roll over and cry. I'm going to fight you. Fair and simple.
      • ModernMech 4y ago
        That’s not what I am saying and it’s sad to me that you interpret my words to mean I intend to discriminate against you based on your race. Im not advocating any competition between races. The point is that creating a “colorblind” world, without correcting the other indicators which strongly correlate with race, doesn’t lead to a a diverse outcome. For instance, let’s say we institute a policy that to eliminate hiring bias, we will only look at the school you went to. We sort the applicants by top schools, and interview only the top achievers at each of the top schools. This selection process, while “colorblind”, will not necessarily result in a diverse population. I hope the reasons are obvious but if not I can explain why. To correct this, we can institute a policy that says: not only will we look at the traditional top Ivies, but we will also consider top HBCUs. Does this mean that whereas before you passed the filter, now you may be passed over for someone else who may be a minority? Yes. Does this mean that person is less qualified than you? No. The best students at most schools can be just as good as or better than top Ivy students. Does that mean you were passed over because of your skin color? No, it could mean the applicant pool was widened and you didn’t make the cut after more talent was considered. None of this has to do with your skin color or really anyone’s. What it has to do with is eliminating systemic bias in the hiring process. As they say, to the privileged equality can feel like oppression, but that’s not what is happening. It was a privileged position for a long time that whites got priority consideration. Now they don’t and it feels to whites like oppression. Be that as it may, it’s still not racist. Does this explanation put my comment into a better perspective for you?
• hnhamdani 4y ago
  Reading DEI related threats, it's interesting that this phenomena happened in the US which impacting US institutions/companies. From the outside looking in, it kind of a consequence of treating the symptom which is not the permanent solution. The actual root cause of the bug is still not yet addressed, hence why you see the side effect of the bug fix. The root cause is multi faceted ofc, but some of them we could already identify. Economical inequality, social mobility which correlates with the given opportunity along the way. Once this fixed, the opportunity given to each individual will be fairer.
• narrator 4y ago
  If you're dissatisfied with this stuff, I wouldn't talk to management to solve this, but instead I'd work on communicating with ESG funds and ask them to change their guidelines for their DEI initiatives. Let me explain. The corporation you work for is just trying to get a better ESG score. The DEI initiative and programs were probably handed down in some quasi-government fashion from Blackrock and other ESG funds who chose investments and even board votes based on that. Your company's HR department might have had all this mandated from Blackrock who has a ton of control on the boards of publicly traded companies. Corporations have to regularly report their DEI initiatives to Blackrock and other ESG funds. "Last week, BlackRock released its 2021 proxy voting guidelines for the U.S. and other major markets ... These updated materials demonstrate how BlackRock intends to pair higher expectations for corporate responsiveness across a number of topics, including diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental risk, with a greater willingness to vote against management where these expectations are not met." "In 2021, BlackRock will expect disclosure of workforce demographics, such as gender, race, and ethnicity in line with the EEO-1 Survey, along with steps being taken to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. Where BlackRock believes disclosures or practices fall short of market or peer practice, it may vote against members of the appropriate committee or support related shareholder proposals*." https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/01/12/blackrocks-2021-proxy-voting-guidelines-prioritize-esg-actions/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/01/12/blackrocks-2021-p... If you look throughout Blackrock's governance documents they talk about "Stakeholder Capitalism" which is a world economic forum program[1] to bring all sorts of influences into the running of companies besides shareholder value. Thus, the bottom line isn't always the goal and often there are other reasons for all of this, so appeals to corporate profitability aren't even going to work here. [1] https://www.weforum.org/stakeholdercapitalism https://www.weforum.org/stakeholdercapitalism
• steve1977 4y ago
  > creating townhall meetings and parading your black/brown employees around like show ponies is nothing short of corporate virtue signaling. That is the point of DEI for companies. Pretty much all HR initiatives are just virtue signaling.
• nivenkos 4y ago
  It's crazy how it's become so commonplace. I hope one day we can really reach the point where skin colour is as unremarkable as eye colour. Where people really are judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
• canadiantim 4y ago
  An acronym called DIE should give everyone pause for consideration...
  • ModernMech 4y ago
    That's why its DEI, not DIE.
    • canadiantim 4y ago
      yeah, but let's be honest... it's DIE. I don't recall acronyms being chosen based on the least remember-able version
• dougSF70 4y ago
  I had not realized this problem would exist.
• taude 4y ago
  I was talking to a black woman friend about DEI recently. As a white man, I can't really share any of our discussions. But we both agree'd the whole thing does more damage than benefit to an org, especially the people, etc. My friend also added the slant of her escape from generational poverty, and the decisions she made in her life that her siblings, didn't. I wish she could come into companies and have an honest conversation about it.
  • pnutjam 4y ago
    Another angle, are you certain this person was comfortable having a real conversation with you? PoC are very accustomed to bending with the wind and playing their cards close to their chest. I know it's only caused me grief to speak out.
    • alphabettsy 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • taude 4y ago
        Not claiming to be good. But I will say most my white friends don't actually engage with this conversations, nor do they even have friends of color, so....whatever. EDIT: BTW, I was only offering opinion to support what the OP was feeling and saying.
        • pnutjam 4y ago
          I was not intending to denigrate you, just opening up another possibility that could be overlooked. People in tech say question your assumptions, right?
          • alphabettsy 4y ago
            The prevailing HN demographic doesn’t want their assumptions on diversity and race questioned. The opinions and views of minorities are only acceptable and elevated on HN when they support the existing views that maintain the status quo or revert to some inaccurate remembrance of a better past. Compare the comments and upvotes of this post to any of those discussing experiences with racism or lack of diversity.
• sebastianconcpt 4y ago
  Reverse racism is a form of preventing racism from going extinct, of course.
• mach1ne 4y ago
  I know this has nothing to do with the subject of this post, but this is a prime example of why I greatly dislike the widespread use of obscure acronyms especially prevalent in the US. It took way too long to process that PoC meant ”Person of Color” and not ”Proof of Concept”.
  • harryvederci 4y ago
    IANAL, but idk. It's not an issue, imo. You gotta stay on your tip top game with your GTL to stay FTD to keep 'em DTF in MIA. Just my 2c.
• JCM9 4y ago
  This is a challenging subject, but there’s a lot of valid criticism of DEI efforts of many large companies. For one, these programs tend to be led by teams that are, ironically, not very diverse. They tend to focus too much on box checking while ignoring broad swaths of underrepresented populations. “Asia” is a big complex region of the world with those from this region often very underrepresented in the US and subjected to discrimination. However many DEI programs fail to recognize those from this region as underrepresented and the whole lumping everyone under the generic label of “Asian” is itself painting with a very broad brush that’s insensitive to all the nuanced cultures in this region. They also tend to push messaging that is not broadly accepted, even by the communities they claim to be helping. For example DEI had a big push on saying the word “Latino” was offensive and insisted people must say “Latinx.” Many Lantinos in companies were outraged and pointed out that in fact this concept of “Latinx” can in fact be extremely offensive to those it’s attempting to describe. For one, it’s suggesting that a gendered language is somehow inferior and must be corrected. As the OP indicates, putting people up in a pedestal when someone that checks a desired box is hired also diminishes that person. It sends the message that they’re hired and celebrated in part to check the box vs the skills they bring to the team. The above is all complicated that people are terrified to discuss these matters because of their sensitive nature. Rather that creating an inclusive environment to discuss these issues DEI programs more frequently establish a culture of indoctrination into the thinking of a few (such as the Latinx example above). In short, DEI programs have a lot of self-reflection to do and need to be more aware that many of the efforts so far have caused more harm than good.
  • tablespoon 4y ago
    > They also tend to push messaging that is not broadly accepted, even by the communities they claim to be helping. For example DEI had a big push on saying the word “Latino” was offensive and insisted people must say “Latinx.” Many Lantinos in companies were outraged and pointed out that in fact this concept of “Latinx” can in fact be extremely offensive to those it’s attempting to describe. For one, it’s suggesting that a gendered language is somehow inferior and must be corrected. IMHO, in almost all cases, DEI isn't about helping anyone, except white liberals who feel guilt they want assuaged. The Latinx example you cite is nice example of the contradictions of DEI: you can't actually "include" everyone without dominating them (colonizing?) and forcing a new identity on them, because different groups have mutually exclusive aspects of their identities.
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  While I was still employed, I recall filling fields in my yearly self-evaluation form to the tune of "ate rainbow-colored cake at an LGBTQI++ event - 2 times".
• DubiousPusher 4y ago
  > "Why should I feel proud of my accomplishments, when the accomplishments were spoon-fed to me by the company because of my skin color? If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here?" I'm not a PoC but I am disabled. I have uncorrectable low vision. My perspective is different. If they want to hire me and promote me because I'm blind that's fine by me. I'm just happy that for once, something I have no control over, is maybe giving me a boost instead of being a drag. But maybe it's because I'm skeptical of meritocracy. Not in an absolute sense. I have a strong suspicion that if I weren't delivering value, I'd be gone by now despite being a diversity hire. But simultaneously, I don't believe people are promoted one over another strictly due to performance, even when DEI isn't a consideration. There's plenty of research indicating that humans and especially organizations suck at evaluating job performance. And I've seen many cases directly where someone is filling a leadership role to everyone's satisfaction yet someone else gets promoted to the permanent position even though they are clearly inadequate for the job. Promotions already appear chaotic, political and quasi-random. Essentially, what does it matter if DEI is just one more wonky variable in quantum mechanical promotion engine.
  • Forgeties79 4y ago
    > I don't believe people are promoted one over another strictly due to performance, even when DEI isn't a consideration. I wish I could find the study but this one fascinating read pointed out that the greatest predictor of whether you'd get promotions/raises/etc. was whether or not you were 1) white, 2) male... Those 2 aren't surprising but then it continued: ...3) 6ft tall or taller, 4) "conventionally handsome" (very loaded to term I know), 5) well-groomed/dressed by whatever standards of the industry you were in. Height in particular had a ton of correlation. As you said, the meritocracy idea is kind of BS. It's a consideration, but it's not the primary consideration. Presentation appears to have an outsized effect, whether you control it or not.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      The bias is toward looking like a better version of your boss. Match him in everything culturally, but be cooler than him, better looking that him, taller than him. As a black man, I'm pretty sure I got more than one programming job because I played in punk bands in the 90s. This would be bad if the demographics of the people hiring were representative of the general population. They're not, so it makes it worse for specific groups.
• kbrannigan 4y ago
  Are they parading them around, or are they just good at their job? Minority hires stick out because they look different. A fresh white hire being exceptional is just a kid being exceptional Is a black hire being exceptional and standing out only getting the attention because he’s a minority? Let me me a wild assumption, you are used to being the only black guy dev at your company. Now that the company is making an effort to hire people, not just and endless stream of white people, you might feel a little threatened. You’re no longer the special unicorn. On the other hand companies could humanize the process more, less bureaucracy.
• smcl 4y ago
  Damn yeah it sounds like your company is really clumsy and a bit patronising in how they've implemented or communicated these initiatives. I think if I was in your position I would feel the same way. I wish I had some advice for you, I think only you and other PoC in your company would know whether mentioning this to HR would help the situation or make it worse and more annoying :/
• dncornholio 4y ago
  And thus, hiring for diversity is just another form of discrimination.
• rvz 4y ago
  These companies are chasing ESG points to show who is the most diverse company to get more investment, despite DEI being a useless trend that proves nothing but virtue signalling as you said. It is indeed nonsensical virtue signalling and an enormous and very expensive distraction.
• John23832 4y ago
  (Black man here) Two things can be true at once. I have built great things. I can stand on my own. My merits are great. I do not want to be the token employee that is trotted around for Diversity Points (tm). I do not like the diversity porn that a lot of these DEI groups get off on. That being said, I do recognize that I have benefited from these groups (at least at their most genuine). There are groups that are aimed at cultivating black people in tech. Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. That was where technical people were in the computer tech space. Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not want to deal with the hate. There's also the fact that most (read: all) of the computing pioneers are white. I respect all of those people, but it does help to have someone to look up to. I'm positive that Satya and Sundar are great motivators for indian kids to look up to (as they should be). These DEI initiatives aren't perfect in any way, but the goal is to give the affected groups the foundations to succeed. To put people in the affected communities out front as role models. I accept the annoyances for the sake of good and progress. EDIT: In the below thread are many people who personally identify as omnipresent IRC Gods, so my experience must have happened in an alternate universe. My bad.
  • f6v 4y ago
    > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black Many communities were and are generally anti-human.
  • Pegasus930 4y ago
    [flagged]
  • trenchgun 4y ago
    > Prior to this, in the earlier internet age, you had to cut your teeth on IRC and forums. That was where technical people were in the computer tech space. > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. That is totally off-putting to someone who has the ability succeed but does not want to deal with the hate. Wow, thank you. Gives me a new perspective.
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  I don't think we as a society can have our cake and eat it: if there is an initiative, it will become public one way or another. So if you must have one, you must be honest about it and accept the consequences. Lying about it will just make everyone all the more suspicious and prejudiced. And that is without touching any of the other issues here (pipeline problems, defining diversity by external criteria, etc)
• TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Same issue with hiring quotas for women in Europe. Did she really get this job based on her merit or did she get it, because she is a woman? From my perspective, quotas are just covertly saying, that women are stupid children who needs to be pampered by society. I see quotas as degrading and disgusting and I hope that nobody will come with quotas for men.
• malcolmgreaves 4y ago
  You just have a problem with capitalism. Nearly all companies’ DEI efforts are fake because they’re about marketing. They don’t care about using their resources to ensure that they have hiring practices that don’t put a spotlight in the places where white people congregate. I got laughed out of the room when I pointed out that my company never attempts to find candidates at HBCUs. Or, frankly, any place that isn’t Stanford or MIT. It’s cheap for them to lie, saying “oh sure we give a shit!” and then literally do the same thing every brain dead recruiting team “thinks” up for a strategy. Also, until a company would fire someone for being racist, any DEI work there is meaningless. And I’m not talking hooded-klan level racism (that one you can just sue and win it’s so cut and dry).
• joemazerino 4y ago
  Not surprised we have arrived here on HN. After BLM, there were a flurry of posts supporting DIE as if it's the tyleonal to the racism headache. "If we hire non-whites, WE can solve systemic racism!". People didn't stop to think that it hurts everyone all around. White people are now ignored for hires based on their race (as is the Left's proposition towards black names on resumes) and minorities are paraded around as if they are corporate mascots. I feel for you OP. IMO the next hiring landscape is in anonymous handles providing superior results. Keep increasing your skills and climb above the DIE garbage hole.
• NDizzle 4y ago
  ~15 years ago, at a big 4 accounting firm... One of the network engineers that I became work-friends with, as he was leaving the office at 2:15 on a Friday... <Me> Man you always bail around this time, how do you get away with that? <Him> I'm a Mexican with a CCIE - what are they going to do, fire me?
• ecmascript 4y ago
  Personally, I really dislike DEI initiatives and think they should be avoided. Just treat everyone the same. How hard is it, really? Unfortunately, because I am a white man that express these thoughts I am now a racist and a sexist even if the ones who actually commit the racist/sexist/etc acts nowadays mostly are the ones who claim to fight it. If more people would view people as individuals instead of some kind of collective, I believe a lot would be improved.
• mabbo 4y ago
  > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company. The problem is incentives and selection bias. Let's imagine a company that has a pretty obvious diversity problem when anyone happens to look around the room. What kind of person is likely to either be assigned "fix the diversity problem" or take on the job on their own? Probably they're someone high up the corporate ladder who has learned how to play the game. That kind of person already knows that being "hush hush" about anything doesn't get them the next promotion, the big bonus. It doesn't achieve their personal goals. That's not how they got here. And if this person is someone who meets the 'diversity' label (because who else would they assign it to?) in a company that has a clear diversity problem that they don't seem to understand (usually caused by implicit bais the leadership have and will never acknowledge exist), then this person has already learned that being quietly successful gets them no where. The only way to succeed is to do so loudly, publicly, and undeniably. The goal isn't to increase diversity. It's to get the person in charge of increasing diversity a bigger paycheck.
• cabbagesauce 4y ago
  As a white european dude, who's ancestors never oppressed anyone, rather were oppressed by other white dudes through history. Can you ELI5 why the DEI exists and what problems does it solve, from but from a perspective of someone of my position? Not a troll-bait question, but I sincerely try to comprehend this as to me the mere term people of color is the uttermost racist label imaginable. Also, that presumes I'm from people of no-color...
  • hedgehog 4y ago
    In the US discrimination based on skin color is widespread and goes back to before the country's founding, and access to opportunities is very uneven based on wealth. The PoC term is a reflection of the general pattern of discrimination as practiced here. This situation both has strong inertia (easier to get access to opportunity if you have relatively wealthy parents and/or blend in with wealthier people who tend to be white) and is also reinforced by vested interests (demonizing Latinos and Asian immigration for taking jobs helps keep immigration regulations tight and labor costs down). DEI initiatives are one take on how to get the system to correct towards giving everyone a fair shot.
    • ianhawes 4y ago
      Discrimination in the US is based on socioeconomic status just as much as race.
      • hedgehog 4y ago
        There are both, and they are related. For example family wealth and wealth accumulation in the US is weighted heavily to home ownership and appreciation, the GI bill that powered a great deal of home purchases was structured to exclude blacks, and the combination of those facts shapes the distribution of wealth today. Expensive neighborhoods tend to have better public schools, the quality of that schooling is a lifelong advantage, yet redlining was only banned around 50 years ago. This directly affected the cohort of people in their 60s who are still part of the work force. Overall social mobility in the US is pretty poor compared to other wealthy countries but I'm not sure if there is any rigorous work to attribute causes.
• throwaway85858 4y ago
  On a tangent... but has anyone here had some success in correcting their unconscious biases?
• ksec 4y ago
  All roads to hell are paved with good intentions. People may want to look back, given most comments on HN are not deleted, between ~2014 to 2020. How DEI took over nearly every single Tech company, and then somehow spread across different domains and industry. Yes, Twitter along with MSM played a big part of it. And yes, it took until 2021 / 2022 before we (could?) had any push back. Remember when people were trying to cancel DHH? Most of what you wrote were true since Day 1. And it is not like anything is unforeseen or new. But we cant even talk about it, writing the above in 2018 you will have likely been labeled as Trump supporter even if you are not an American. Basically the hypocrisy level in unreal. It has die down quite a bit, I dont see an angry Microsoft employees shouting or tweeting in all caps about DEI and pronouns to non-native English speakers. ( It is somehow always Microsoft ) We have enough "influencers" backing the some of these Anti-DEI / Woke movements. ( Although the word Woke is now being used by Right Wing meaning something different )
• ryanmentor 4y ago
  I have heard first hand from trans hires that they KNOW their job is to 'be diverse', and there's no reason to grow technically or professionally - just coast and fail to get fired. Everyone reasonable hates that shit.
• AdrianB1 4y ago
  About 10 years ago I had an incompetent colleague, but she was a woman of native American ancestry, with a lot of visible tattoos and she was a lesbian. She was passed on from one department to another every couple of years to check a lot of diversity boxes and not to spend too much time the headcount and budget of any department. She was actually a cool person, in my opinion, but she had a fame way bigger than the real person. I looked for her in the internal directory, but she is not around anymore or she changed the name. The big problem with diversity hires is that good people that are hired will be automatically tagged as bad people. It is hard to fight this image and prove it wrong, especially when it is widescale in some places and it not just based on race, but any diversity target. For example my country is almost exclusively white (with a couple of non-white celebrities as exceptions), there are legally no trans people so the pressure is to hire women, lots of them (70-80% is the desired target). That fires back visibly, the really good ones leave the company, the bad ones remain (to cash in on their gender) and this makes the image even worse.
• asimpletune 4y ago
  Honest question for the crowd. Obviously DEI or affirmative action-esque initiatives are not perfect. But is there something better that could be done? Asking bc I went to a good school that had affirmative action. It was for years that I just assumed it was racist, even if it was helping poc. Then it dawned on me in my last year that it was also benefitting me. That if the govt hadn’t done something to intervene, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to know any poc until I was an adult. (For those of you wondering, a lot of Americans are born in highly segregated communities, where there are few (or even zero) poc, like many suburbs, and it’s not by choice or fault of their own) Anyways, without that experience and diversity in college, I would have been very deprived. So, I’m not saying OP doesn’t have a point. I just want to share my pov and ask what else can be done? In an almost selfish way, as a white guy born in the suburbs, I am extremely grateful that I had a chance, even if by intervention, to go to a diverse college. I take it for granted now, but I shudder to think what school would have been like without that. So what’s the better alternative to diversity initiatives? Which is the least evil option?
  • dbrueck 4y ago
    A big part of the problem is that it's not really a problem for companies to solve. Or, put another way, it's nearly impossible for most companies to address the problem in a non-ham-fisted way; arguably they end up doing more harm than good. Opinions vary wildly on how much of a problem still needs to be solved, but to the extent that it's still there, it's a societal problem. The most effective ways to address it are going to be in the education of each new generation, both formally (in schools), but also informally (in family discussions, in media, etc.). Ultimately, anything that boils down to judging people based on something like the color of their skin has great potential for being harmful and counterproductive.
  • SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    The problem you’re describing is extremely rare in tech. The industry is full of immigrants and people of color; I’ve personally never worked on a team with more than 30ish% white people, although I’ve interviewed for a few and I hear they’re more common in different specialties. But of course one of the key goals of diversity initiatives is to frame the discourse so people don’t think this way. How often do you hear the Google diversity office talk about how proud they are to have a PoC as CEO?
• dbrueck 4y ago
  I'm so sorry that this is your experience, and I'm sorry that you're being used. This is one of the unfortunate outcomes of so many DEI initiatives - or at least every single one I've seen directly or heard about secondhand. It's wrong that they use you this way and, worse, by doing so they are effectively putting a little asterisk next to every one of your accomplishments, which is of course deeply unfair to you, but also to everyone around you. Hopefully not many DEI efforts are insincere from the outset (i.e. driven by a desire to not look bad), but it certainly seems that DEI efforts are cheapened by their publicity. Keeping them private might be an improvement, but human diversity has so many dimensions to it, and the fixation on relatively superficial things like skin color is largely unhelpful if the goal is actual diversity of things like ideas, perspective, and experience (as opposed to the goal of appearing diverse). I don't know how to reverse the damage of past eras of things like racism and sexism, but diversity hiring does a lot of harm (and, at the end of the day, is really just more racism and more sexism anyway).
• shadowgovt 4y ago
  > "Why should I feel proud of my accomplishments, when the accomplishments were spoon-fed to me by the company because of my skin color?" Because they're still your accomplishments. White people hardly ever ask if they should be proud of their accomplishments when they live in a society that assumes they should and will succeed. > "If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here?" If you were a black man with the same experience, you also might not even be there. Many aren't. Statistically, most aren't (in the sense that relative to the population, black men are still extremely under-represented in tech).
  • ChickenNugger 4y ago
    > black men are still extremely under-represented in tech. Are they? Should be about 6% as black people are 12.1% of Americans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...) and this source: https://www.zippia.com/advice/diversity-in-high-tech-statistics/ https://www.zippia.com/advice/diversity-in-high-tech-statist... says black Americans (doesn't separate genders) are 7% of tech, and if 73.3% of which are men (same source) means 5.1% are black men, which is damn close 6%. Less than 1% off isn't "extremely under-represented".
• px43 4y ago
  Unconscious bias is really really hard to get past in job interviews. People have this weird instinct where they want to work with the kinds of people that they've worked with in the past. A well implemented DEI program nudges the scales towards selection of candidates who are best for the role, rather than who are most similar to the interviewers. Implementing an effective DEI program is hard. The other side of that is also true. Candidates want to work for teams that include the kinds of people that they have worked with in the past. Because of this, having visible diversity in your teams is more likely to attract a wider candidate pool, which means more chances to hire good people.
• debacle 4y ago
  My first introduction to the DEI movement was in college, reading "None of This is Fair," which at the time reflected on the DEI initiatives on the 2000s poorly. Since then we've considerably doubled down on the things Rodriguez was critical of over 20 years ago.
• backzerman 4y ago
  I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to change the demographics of the company. I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota. The DEI sessions I've sat through have focused heavily on the I--inclusion. Sure, they were corny, and there was plenty of virtue-signalling. But making a conscious effort to make sure everyone at the company feels socially welcome and fairly treated is a worthwhile effort.
  • bradlys 4y ago
    We’ve hired people at my jobs (big tech to startups in SV) that were underqualified because of diversity measures. If we had ran them through the typical interview gauntlet with the same rubric, they wouldn’t pass. We often changed the interview format or the rubric when presented with someone who was URT pool. I’ve talked to enough managers who complain about lackluster employees and how they’re not fireable because the person is URT. It’s a thing - even if we all like to think it isn’t. Your best effort is to manage them out.
    • John23832 4y ago
      The solution is simple, hire better minority candidates. There are minority candidates who can thrive at all levels of tech. Nobody is telling your to hire subpar candidates. That's on your company's lazy implementation of their inclusion efforts, not on DEI.
      • willcipriano 4y ago
        Some places are targeting percentages of certain races that exceed that races representation in the general population, let alone the population within a given field. It may be that the demand exceeds the supply.
        • anonymouskimmer 4y ago
• tastyfreeze 4y ago
  Hiring preferences for PoC is discriminating against all not PoC. It is in practice exactly what these initiatives claim to be fighting, bigotry.
  • cycrutchfield 4y ago
    Who is talking about hiring preferences? Why are you mischaracterizing diversity programs?
    • jablongo 4y ago
      Literally the OP
      • cycrutchfield 4y ago
        Where in the OP do they talk about hiring preferences?
  • tootie 4y ago
    That infers the baseline is equality. The reality is that hiring without explicit guidelines will bias against POC. DEI is about counteracting unconscious (or conscious) bias.
    • Dooflegna 4y ago
      Exactly this. DEI isn't about ignoring race--DEI is -recoginizing- the impact that things like gender, race, and sexuality has on our biases.
    • throw_m239339 4y ago
      > That infers the baseline is equality. The reality is that hiring without explicit guidelines will bias against POC. DEI is about counteracting unconscious (or conscious) bias. No, DEI is about replacing one bias with another in order to make a bunch of white people feel better about themselves. DEI doesn't consider Indians or South Asian looking people "People of color", because there are "too many of them in tech already". DEI is just institutionalize racism. So much that some Indians have to fake being black to get jobs in DEI corporations, cause white people can't always tell the difference. The baseline was never equality, however DEI is blatantly racist against people who objectively suffer from racial discrimination themselves.
• pessimizer 4y ago
  > I realize this isn't the type of content posted to HN usually It was once very common, until a "no politics" rule was experimented with, where "politics" was largely a euphemism for "discussion of minority issues in tech." This rule was eventually abandoned, and just applied manually through direct moderation. After that point the only race/diversity stuff that gets through is anti-diversity stuff. I assume this is being upvoted because it's being mistaken for libertarian "race realism" from the title. You're saying that companies should stop parading their "diversity" in their PR, and especially stop focusing on individuals. I tend to agree, but if they stop using black people in their PR, they're probably going to stop hiring black people. They don't know any.
• hnbad 4y ago
  The purpose of DEI initiatives in most companies is not to actually create equity but to be able to demonstrate that you're doing something. If your company explicitly does "diversity hires" to hire people by skin color, they're clearly more interested in tokenism, which only serves the company, not the candidates. I think "diversity hires" are fine for marginalised communities analogous to grants but this would apply to paid internships or apprentice programs, not regular positions. Otherwise as in your case it clearly sends a message that the candidates wouldn't qualify otherwise. If a company takes DEI seriously, the best approach for diversity in hiring would be to recruit specifically from the target demographics via targeted advertising (the old-fashioned way, not Google ads). Having to apply a diversity filter to an already existing applicant pool will always create an impression of tokenism. Of course the elephant in the room is that these are usually companies founded by white guys, run by white guys, owned by white guys, who mostly initially hired other white guys. In the past decades you might also have some Asian (specifically Chinese or Indian) guys in the mix and some might be openly gay or bi but they'll almost always share the same upper-middle class rich kid background. Trying to bolt on "diversity" to that after the fact is always going to be more about optics than genuine concern for marginalised folks. The real thing to worry about is company culture as building a culture around a bunch of wealthy white guys is likely going to make it hard to be welcoming to people outside that microcosm, at least if you care about more than mere skin color. But from the sound of it, your company's attitude to DEI is more akin to that of a Victorian Englishman proudly presenting his "coloured" servants.
• rayiner 4y ago
  I find the way DEI people talk about "people of color" to be demeaning. The language alone is bizarre: people will talk about an individual being "diverse," like they have multiple personalities or something. It's also extremely reductionist. As an immigrant from a Muslim country, I do bring a very different perspective on many things than native-born white Americans. But that's not really what they mean by "diversity." In practice they reduce "diversity" to the negative experiences darker skinned people may or may not have in a majority white society. "Tell me where the bad white people touched you."
• stcroixx 4y ago
  Unequal treatment based on skin color harms all of us.
  • pjkundert 4y ago
    And DEI programs are the most pernicious form of racism existing today. Nothing is worse than a group who believes they are harassing/oppressing you for your own good. There is no true diversity in human affairs apart from intellectual diversity. And if you look at the most DEI-compliant places — they are desserts of intellectual diversity. Nobody interesting would want to work/study there.
• moomoo11 4y ago
  I’m Asian and grew up dirt poor. It’s annoying af when people think of me as some math genius or whatever with parents who are doctors (they’re not.. far from it). I had no choice but to do my best because as a kid I remember no running water and no electricity before we moved to the USA and lived in small apartment with bugs. My parents English is terrible and I saw them suffer here by not being able to afford visiting their family back home. My dad moved here and never went back, could only afford to send my mom a couple times and me once. I’m glad we are doing better today. I find a lot of these DEI policies to be very generalizing and uncomfortable to be completely honest.
• Scubabear68 4y ago
  I’m a tall white middle aged dude living in the US, so I am probably not the best person to comment. But to me DEI is mostly window dressing. I agree with OP that companies should have policies around this, but they should be aimed at being quietly effective, not something to trumpet in the quarterly corporate report. And emphasis on “effective”. If we fold in environment and governance, I see too many companies doing things like planting a zillion trees to show their environmental savvy - which in reality are unfortunately, saplings which are eaten by deer within a few months and end up being a net loss to the environment.
• benj111 4y ago
  >corporate virtue signaling See, you do get it. Although TBF the 'progressive' left is basically nothing but virtue signalling at the moment. And you highlight the problem with putting 'diversity' front and centre. It disadvantages me if I don't get the job and end up annoyed at you, legitimately or not because you got the job. Your achievements are devalued because you don't know whether you got the job because of the colour of your skin, and neither do your work colleagues. Employers shouldn't care about the colour of your skin any further than potentially examining why they aren't attracting certain groups in the interest of getting the very best talent available. Equality should be the goal.
• itronitron 4y ago
  When I was in graduate school, we had a guest speaker who was a diversity consultant come give a talk and ran us through one of the example exercises they do for clients. It basically involves everyone standing in a conference room, on one side of a line, and the diversity consultant standing on the other side. They iteratively make statements relating to personal attributes or experiences and anyone that chooses to identify with that statement step over the line briefly before returning back to the group (either before the next statement or not). For example, the first statement might be "I have served in the military" and veterans that don't mind being known for their military experience can step over the line. Other statements might be "I am the first person in my family to attend college", "I have questioned my sexuality", "I was raised in an upper class family", "I am vegetarian", "I am a recovering addict", ... etc. It's a good exercise for showing both the things people have in common as well as the breadth of experiences that might exist in a group. Interestingly, though I've never seen that exercise performed in an actual company in the twenty years since...
  • cccybernetic 4y ago
    Maybe I'm just more of a private person than some people, but I'm absolutely floored that people would volunteer such private life details to a group of random strangers. I'm not saying it's a bad thing either, it may very well be healthier to share more about ourselves, but I can't wrap my head around it.
• pjc50 4y ago
  > I realize this isn't the type of content posted to HN usually This is because it's going to start a flamewar and get flagged off the front page. It's also suspicious that it might not be authentic.
• moomoo11 4y ago
  I wish we would transcend to a point where we look up to people based on their achievements and separate their race from it. I’m Asian btw. I can relate to Lebron just as much as I can relate to Neil Armstrong or Satya or Matz or Woz or Marie Curie because they are all excellent at what they did/do. I want to be excellent like them. Because we all are humans.
  • HideousKojima 4y ago
    I always get confused when people say they need to have people who look like them in prominent roles in order to feel welcome in a hobby/career/whatever. I'm a fan of boxing, and my favorite boxer is a black Muslim. I do some hobby-level game dev on the side, and most of my favorite devs that I look up to are Japanese. Young black men seem to disproportionately love Dragon Ball Z, with an Asian-appearing main character based on the Chinese epic Journey to the West whose hair turns blond when he gets angry and powers up.
    • BeFlatXIII 4y ago
      Not sure why your comment was greyed-out when I saw it. Voting patterns are truly bizarre and disconnected from truth.
      • alocasia-1 4y ago
        Probably because there is no shortage of white boxers, and an observation about black people liking a cartoon isn't all that relevant?
    • balls187 4y ago
      Are you truly confused or is it that you choosen not to listen to the reasons “people” have for finding value in representation? Does your comment mean that because your human experience is different than other people that you find it difficult to understand how others may think and feel differently than you?
    • strawpeople 4y ago
• bigbillheck 4y ago
  [flagged]
• tootie 4y ago
  I mean, you put it right in the first paragraph. This is just a version of Imposter Syndrome. Maybe being in a DEI initiative gives you an easy target to blame, but it's still just in your head. I think you have to understand what DEI is actually try to solve for and that's racial bias in hiring. As much the hiring of POC may have been foisted on HR, the opposite was likely due to inherent bias and legacy of cultural bias. Were you only hired because you're black. Were your white colleagues hired because they were white? And you're personally worried about what, exactly? What you think people think of you? Everybody worries about that in that a general sense. You're just worrying about is more specifically.
• zxcvbn4038 4y ago
  My advice is to be a great engineer - not a diversity hire. Stay clear of all the DEI stuff.
• tmnstr85 4y ago
  I had my boss and the CTO (both Black) tell me I was no longer "part of their culture". This was after mid year reviews where attendance at DEI events was the center of discussion. There is a thin line between personal and professional when dealing with DEI, and it is a tough line to walk. I agree that two things can be true at once. I also believe that every individual has the ability to break cycles of hate and prejudice, regardless of what we have experienced and encountered. If we are to have hope in the human race, I pray the ability to choose peace is what saves us all.
• avip 4y ago
  DEI can mean 2 orthogonal things: 1. Affirmative action. I'll be mostly "against" this vague concept, as it seems incompatible with meritocracy. 2. Making sure workspace is a safe and pleasant place to work in, where people can generally be heard. This is almost unconditionally "a good thing" which should be actively encouraged.
• type0 4y ago
  Isn't it ironic that the most famous African-American in US is white?!
• f154hfds 4y ago
  There are two possible goals. Affirmative action or color-blind meritocracy. Both will lead to diverse hiring practices (using the term diverse loosely - people who are not like those hiring them). Affirmative action makes sense to get momentum going but becomes its own worst enemy when acted upon for perpetuity. This makes it hard when designing policy because inevitably years will go by and you still haven't reached your diversity goals. Is this because your company is still 'biased' somewhere deep down or is it indicative of real group level differences that have deeper causes than your affirmative action policy can address? In our current navel gazing culture, we will always assume the former and the policy grows in scope. Our companies can't always fix these group level differences, they aren't even always 'problems' (for example, men and women are different and have different strengths and weaknesses, will tend to be interested in different fields, etc.) In my view the way forward is color-blind meritocracy. Tech needs to look closely at the symphony 'blind' interview techniques and be very self-critical of 'culture fit': https://abilitymap.com/articles/recruitment/blind-hiring/ https://abilitymap.com/articles/recruitment/blind-hiring/
• OJFord 4y ago
  I really strongly agree, but I'm a white man, so it can be difficult to confidently have a reasonable conversation about, or maybe I really shouldn't care/be talking at all. I think it was the actor Morgan Freeman who in an interview answered something like 'how do we fix racism/diversity' with 'stop talking about it'. But I'd go further, I find 'PoC' (person/people of colour) which you used yourself a really strange term, I think I'd hate it. 'Why aren't I just a P? Those white guys aren't called Pw/oC.' Your prerogative, of course. Trends come and go, I suppose - it just seems so close to 'coloured', which has itself been both a preferred 'PC' term and considered racist at different times. It's so similar to PoC that I'm honestly not sure where it stands now, I wouldn't use it. When the distinction actually does matter, do we need such euphemisms? At least in the UK, though 'PoC' seems to be catching on a bit, people are and have long been happy with white/brown/black, IME. I'm not a 'manager in an influential company' but if I am ever running the show I don't even want a hush-hush programme - just hire good people and shut up about their heritage/preferences IMO. I realise there's a pipeline problem, but I think you help fix that by funding and otherwise supporting the early stages of it, not by being lax on merit or setting quotas for your late-stage admission process.
  • hedora 4y ago
    The sad thing about PoC is that using the grammatical synonym “colored people” has recently ended people’s careers. The funny thing about PoC is that it (apparently) includes Asians. In California, Asians are greatly over-represented in colleges, etc. So, any effective equity system would mostly just be reinstating old-school quotas against hiring/admitting too many Chinese people (which UC correctly eliminated decades ago). Anyway, I suggest the UK revert to the global favorite of the 1990’s: African American.
• tomrod 4y ago
  I see you and what you're saying. I always feel a bit awkward in these conversations because I feel I have received a lot of help in life and also am a complete dunce when it comes to race/gender and DEI discussions as a cis white male. So... if I haven't shot my own foot off yet, take my thoughts with a grain of salt and feel free to hit me with some better ways to see things if I'm dumb/ignorant? From my perspective, _everyone_ stands on the shoulders of other folks. Not one single person built what they have, know, and can do in a silo. I'm convinced that anyone that claims otherwise lacks introspection. I see the concern around thinking "I couldn't have done XYZ without help of others" and feeling patronized and concerned that you are unable to have accomplished the same under a counterfactual world without help. I feel this assessment misses that everyone else would have had "help" of similar variety as well to accomplish XYZ. And yes, townhalls parading around folks as tokens is abysmal. My undergraduate school, a notoriously bad-at-race-relations school, had a Multiculutral office from which the same 15 people were requested for dozens of brochures produced each year. In my mind, these are the same things and my friends doing the brochures didn't like being token folks. Doing so undermines the confidence of the people being paraded.
• Zvez 4y ago
  I knew a _very_ talented female software developer. And she was radically against any benefits based on her being female. For example she actively tried to avoid female discounts some conferences offered. It seems that people who drive DEI don't have real connection with people they are trying to 'protect'.
  • ModernMech 4y ago
    You cannot generalize an anecdote about a single person you know to draw conclusions about “people who drive DEI”. By your own admission this person had a radical position. How do you know other women appreciate these benefits?
• didgetmaster 4y ago
  I remember seeing a cartoon of a dog typing at a computer with the caption of 'Nobody knows you are a dog on the Internet'. Unless someone goes out of their way to point out their race, gender, ethnicity, or age; you generally have no idea who is commenting or who wrote the software. I couldn't personally care less if my computer was created by a Japanese woman or if my software was created by a black gay man. I just want it to work properly. Same goes for nearly everything else I buy.
• antisceptic 4y ago
  One problem with DEI is that many ethnicities get thrown under the white or white-adjacent umbrella and aren't given the same opportunities simply because the popular view of history doesn't seem them as historically oppressed when in fact they were. For instance, Armenians are a historically oppressed group, even genocided, yet they are not afforded any DEI perks in their career paths. Palestinians are also not included in DEI because it isn't politically expedient to side with them, even though they have lost their homeland and are generally treated like dogs. Many, many such groups exist but because they don't come up during AP US History, they have no mindshare. Another is that DEI seems to simultaneously accept that race is a social construct while also using race as a key criterion for purposes of inclusion, which is absurd. For example, a Black Swede, growing up in Sweden her whole life, would be considered a candidate that improves diversity in the workplace. However, I'm not aware of Swedes being an oppressed people. In fact, growing up in Sweden your life is probably better than in America. The judgment is made purely on skin color and lineage. Lastly, I also want to say that I know this is an ugly situation, because high paying jobs are often about connections, which have a strong correlation with ethnic background in the United States. In that view, it makes sense to have something like DEI shine a light on power structures within the workplace and make them more fair. So despite the above, I support DEI if it helps underprivileged people. After all racism still exists, and it's virulent. Many people harbor racist views and will lie through their teeth in order not to be canceled. I just hope eventually racism is extinguished so we could move forward to a purely merit-based system.
  • goatlover 4y ago
    White-adjacent is one of the dumbest terms I've ever heard, and is downright offensive. But hardly the only one to come out of DEI-like minded movements. Latinx being another.
• onion2k 4y ago
  For example, I know I'm talented - I've got the projects, certs, and experience to back it up. I think a lot of people who are relatively new to tech (less than 20 years experience) fail to realise that DEI measures were invented to tackle literal racism and misogeny in tech hiring. Companies would routinely screen out resumes from people whose names weren't white enough or who were a bit too feminine. You could have all the best projects, certs, and experience, but if you'd been in tech in the early 2000s you still wouldn't have got an interview at quite a lot of companies if your face didn't fit the perceived "this is what an engineer looks like ... oh looks it's a white dude!" mould. People started to complain, and other people listened. DEI is the result. There's a strong argument that companies do it in a tone-deaf manner today, and maybe it's now so much better in hiring that DEI isn't needed any more (a very dubious claim in my opinion) but it's definitely better now even if you have to do a shitty monthly meeting, because in the bad old days you wouldn't have had the job in the first place.
  • trabant00 4y ago
    > Companies would routinely screen out resumes from people whose names weren't white enough or who were a bit too feminine Could you provide any details on this? I've been in tech for more than 20 years and never heard of anything like what you stated.
    • hedora 4y ago
      This still happens today. The easiest way for a computer programmer to see how is to consider the problem of building a non-racially biased hiring algorithm that takes resumes as input. Heuristic one: Pick candidates with first names that are correlated with high performance. This works because certain areas have better math education, and first names help filter on parents’ incomes. It is obviously racist. Eliminate it. Heuristic 2: Look at educational experience. Public schools in the US are horribly racist/classist, so this doesn’t work either. Heuristic 3: Look at work experience. Other employers used heuristic 1 and 2, so this inherits racism from them. Also, older hires are (hopefully) less diverse, assuming the field is improving. Heuristic 4: Objective performance based whiteboard coding. People with imposter syndrome are more likely to choke in high-stress environments. Scratch this. Heuristic 5: “Cultural fit” bonus points to fix up #4. Studies show this selects for things like drinking the same brand alcohol or enjoying the same sports. Strike it too. Heuristic 6: Tailor the interview for the specific candidate. Studies show that women/minorities tend to get “softball” questions like “how did you handle this”, which accidentally puts them on the defensive. Men get alpha male planning questions “how will you grow this company”. I personally prefer #3 graded on a scale from 1-4 with 0.5 increments. I add 0.5 to nervous people’s (women, or english as second language, mostly) scores and truncate the integer. On average, this corrects the bias inherent in the interview setup and in my monkey brain. It pisses off almost everyone I know though. If I controlled recruiters, I’d add women / minority quotas to the candidate stream, but not to the interview phase. I would also track job performance vs. ethnicity/gender, and loosen standards for any group that was outperforming the team.
• Symmetry 4y ago
  There are some behaviors that society wants people to avoid. In most cases where you want to stop a behavior you have to be careful to not make it seem normal, with "It's bad but common" being the second worst message you can send after "It's good and common" in terms of trying to get people to stop. A social psychologist will say this is due to the power of norms and talk about the famous Petrified Forest National Park experiment. An economist will talk about how we can see punishments for behaviors better than their commission in many disapproved behaviors and so making them seem common makes it seem like the odds of getting caught are lower. But in any event in things like drug use, sexual harassment, or bribery we have pretty clear evidence of campaigns against these behaviors being counter productive with, e.g., D.A.R.E actually increasing drug use among high schoolers. So I'd just like anybody looking to conduct a DEI campaign to be careful of this effect.
• t344344 4y ago
  In reality you got like 10% salary boost. Just take it and be happy, or send that money to people in Africa. There is no need to make it personal.
• slowalgo77 4y ago
  I'm a black man working at a start up for the past 3 years and about 10 YoE at various companies. No one is forcing you to attend these meetings, at the end of the day you are there to make money for the business and solve problems. Sooner or later there might be one or two people at these meetings and leadership will 'get' the message. Usually these meetings have anonymous surveys where folks can give feedback. On the other hand, the company believes it is worth something for you to know that they are attempting a diverse work place, otherwise they wouldn't have the meeting. I assume positive intent until proven otherwise. If you want to figure out the 'spoon feeding' issue talk to your manager about why are you selected for tasks and why others are selected for tasks. I'd also change the 'spoon feeding' to something more positive. Spoon feeding has a negative vibe, like you are a helpless little crying baby just waiting for food. But, the reality is that you built a reputation to build software and deliver it on time. The business requires your expertise for certain tasks. The other part of spoon feeding is that there is 'food.' Who makes the baby's food? The CEO? The PM? Is it possible this baby could make their own food? Essentially, you want to understand how are certain tasks doled out. You should ask if there are certain tasks that are promotion worthy and are those tasks fairly distributed? What tasks are 'beneath' your level i.e. did you spend a quarter working on a highly esoteric distributed problem that not a damn soul cares about, did you solve that nasty race condition that's been haunting the code base for years? This can be hard to get right because some problems are much harder to solve at certain companies than others. This conversation should reveal bias and/or general lack of competence within your manager. Then you will have to figure out how to manage your manager to get what you want out of the business. There was one point at a startup where one engineer kept getting tasked 'big' issues and he delivered on them very well. I could have interpreted this as a fault of the company but I instead saw that he is a good engineer and can communicate and deliver on business items. On the other hand, he is also being spoon fed business objectives. Again, who is making all of this delicious food??? I had to grow in another way... I had to crawl into the kitchen, play with the ingredients, burn myself, and learn how to make my own food. From scratch mind you! I objectively look at the business without any hand holding and figure out where we could be more efficient, what we would change to save costs, risks/opportunities, and come up with a strategy to deliver. A good manager should give you hints about opportunities, but genuine curiosity can be a savior. I make the food now. On a more personal note it is nice to have allies/friends. These days it is incredibly easy for someone to do something that could be considered culturally insensitive. Not every interpersonal issue needs to go to HR. Sometimes it's nice to talk to a trusted colleague something that only your religion/race/upbringing would understand. Having worked at large enterprises and small enterprises I have witnessed and experienced a fair share of soft racism, weird random microaggressions/gaslighting, and people randomly being unpromotable/uncoachable/unhireable despite checking all of the boxes. In conclusion I decided to focus on me, my work, my own personal growth as engineer, and protecting my mental health. These are concrete things I can measure and control.
• broast 4y ago
  I think part of DEI is to compensate for currently existing racial prejudices that are unknowingly disadvantaging your probability of hire. What you see as an advantage gained by DEI might actually just be the equalizer that brings you to equal footing with others
  • programmarchy 4y ago
    OP already has equal footing based on his qualifications. He doesn't need an "equalizer". The people who would discriminate against him are the ones who need an "equalizer". In that light, companies who are celebrating diversity are essentially patting themselves on the back for not being racist. So when companies grift so hard off this, it's embarrassing everyone in the process.
• logicalmonster 4y ago
  > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company. That arguably defeats the real purpose of why companies go along with DEI initiatives. First of all, a big part of companies promoting DEI initiatives is to boost a company's ESG score amongst investors like Larry Fink of BlackRock that focus on it. There's billions and billions of dollars in investment money directed just because of some peoples' hard-on for ESG scores. Courting investors well enough can be the difference between a company's survival or not. Second of all, it feels a lot like DEI initiatives are meant to serve as a shield/insurance against ever being called names like racist. Companies are just using DEI to playact as being good people. If they ever get embroiled in some dumb scandal that presents a real risk to their business, they can just point to their DEI initiatives and act like they're doing everything they possibly can to be anti-racist. The DEI Industry (and yes, it's an industry) goes along with this because it's a grift that's financially beneficial to them.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• trieste92 4y ago
  I always thought the reason why companies all started doing this (pretty much simulataneously) is because they think it minimizes settlement liability or something It isn't about making people feel welcome, it's about making it harder to sue them and playing corporate politics
• sequoia 4y ago
  (a bit tangential to your point, but I think related:) "...that leads to what I call the Iron Law of Woke Capitalism: brands will gravitate towards low-cost, high-noise signals if these are accepted as a substitute for genuine reform."[0] Companies engage in these practices (IMHO) from a mix of genuine desire to "be good" and do the right thing, as a marketing exercise, and as PR insurance against charges of racism. If you get "called out" on twitter for being a racist company (for whatever reason) you will probably fare much better if you can point to your diversity initiatives & goals, diversity officer etc. That said I think most individuals are acting in a genuine well-meaning way. It is disturbing to me that (as you point out) the initiatives we have to promote inclusion may end up stigmatizing the people that are intended to be "included." 0: https://helenlewis.substack.com/p/the-bluestocking-woke-capitalism https://helenlewis.substack.com/p/the-bluestocking-woke-capi...
• Vaslo 4y ago
  We need to get started with recruiting PoC much earlier in their careers. I almost never get resumes from african americans beyond entry level. I get why this happens - I fell accidentally into my career - my parents were blue collar and knew nothing about careers in business and couldn't help me. I imagine this is the same for other groups. If people really knew what was out there, like if I knew what the path was in business for IT, Finance, etc I'd be further ahead in my career. Force your HR teams to get out to schools with minority groups and volunteer your time to visit these groups and talk about careers.
• wereallterrrist 4y ago
  What a great time for a thread like this to pop-up and remind me why I basically want nothing to do with this fucking community. I gotta stop making this mistake. Sorry to those that took the time to share their experiences and then were told "no, you're wrong, here's why". Nothing will change here, good luck.
• kohanz 4y ago
  This is a great topic and I support the OP for posting it. However (and as a PoC myself), to me, "Tell HN" is generally reserved for alerting the community to statements of fact (e.g. "Tell HN: AWS us-east-1 is degraded"). This post is an opinion - albeit an informed opinion based on experience. You might ask: "What's the big deal?". To me, the problem is that posting "Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company" tries to make it sound like the post speaks for all POC. The post is a good one and it's an important discussion, but I do wish it would be framed a bit differently. For example, simply "DEI initiatives undermine the self-esteem of some PoC within a company"
• tcgv 4y ago
  Thanks for bringing your experience and sentiment to the discussion. Its eligthening and makes perfect sense. DEI is a complex, multivarible subject. People have a multitude of different views and opinions on the subject. Companies have a bias for profit and for getting good PR. It impacts more predominantly people that are considered of a minority or underepresented group, such as yourself. I see DEI initiatives as a necessary measure for transitioning from a condition of structured inequality to a more balanced society. We can work and hope for a future in which we won't need these initiaives anymore (utopical?). It's a generational change. I see no path forward in which we can overcoe this issues in a shorter timespan, and that people from all backgrdounds won't have to face diffcult challenges, such as the one you shared.
• rubyist5eva 4y ago
  > In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company. They shouldn't exist at all. If DEI favored white people, it would be "problematic", and that tells you all you need to know. As if non-white people can't be successful on their own and need special treatment. Tokenizing human beings to get social-credit for your corporation is, frankly, disgusting and extremely racist.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• mberning 4y ago
  I feel like it has a chilling effect on everything. As you have pointed out, it can make people in the target group feel patronized. And at the same time it can make people in the non-targeted group feel less desirable or less useful to the organization. I could say a lot more about it and what I have seen first hand, but I'll leave it at that.
• paweladamczuk 4y ago
  I don't like any policies based on gender or skin color. I also don't like that my gender and skin color determine how OK it is for me to say that.
• thorawayz 4y ago
  Not to mention the non "diverse" members of a team. I feel marginalized for being a conservative technologist, even though I'm a PoC.
• gabereiser 4y ago
  As someone who loves to hire people with different backgrounds and experiences, don't see you being included in diversity hiring discussions as a negative. Don't see it as "Oh, they just want the black guy's opinion". Yes! They very much do! They also want to know how it all is perceived by you. You should tell them this. We, as humans, should celebrate our diversity. We should make it a culture where it's seemless (as you put it, "able to be seen"). We should NOT make it hush hush. This is how things become swept under the rug and issues not addressed. The fact that you are here, discussing this, instead of with your manager and (hopefully) your director is a sign that they are missing the point. Diversity is great. Inclusion is better. Participation is best. Go bring these issues up with your manager with ideas on possible solutions. You can't complain about not having a better system without presenting a better system. That said, it obviously feels to me like you have some sensitivity issues because of this, probably justifiably so. One of the cool things about tech is that when it comes down to it, it's the output that makes the "man" and not the skin color or their name or their religion or nationality. If you can write some clean, tested, code, I'm all for it! The fact that you are YOU, is even better! Why? Because I don't want a room full of white guys that just agree to what I propose. I want females, I want PoC, I want refugees, I want "I pulled myself out of poverty", I want "I would use this", I want "I care about the outcomes". Not in a cult like way, but in an empathetic to the customers problems way. Some companies have put metrics around this. Hire so much diversity... hit 40% something-or-other... Ignore these false metrics that are doomed to failure. They aren't approaching the problem right. Let them do what they think is right unless you have a better solution. Keep just doing you and look at their efforts as a good, not a negative, even if their methods are naive.
• parasense 4y ago
  > However, when I have to join a cheesy townhall once a month to discuss diversity hires, it makes me feel like I have no right to feel proud of any accomplishments I've made within the company. I feel the same way, kinda... I'm male, and not a PoC, so perhaps maybe my perspective is different? I'm told that I'm privileged, but that's not how I feel. I'm told due to systemic bias that I'm probably unaware of my privilege, but I feel well aware of all the disadvantages I've actually experienced. And yet I'm open minded to exploring the way I could be oblivious to other people' problems. I'm not sure if I'm actually the bad guy, or if I'm being gas lighted.
  • Dooflegna 4y ago
    > I'm male, and not a PoC, so perhaps maybe my perspective is different? > > I'm told that I'm privileged, but that's not how I feel. Think of it this way: As a male and not POC, you're starting at the starting line with no inherent disadvantages. If you're a woman, you're farther behind on the starting line. If you're a POC, you're farther behind on the starting line. Privilege isn't supposed to make you feel -bad-. You didn't choose to be born male and white. It just happened to you. Your accomplishments are still your own, your life is still your own. But it's ignorance (willful or otherwise) to deny the inherent advantages of being male and white, as compared to women, or POC, or people who are LGBTQ. Put differently: if feeling bad about being privileged is the worst part of your experience where it comes to things like diversity, then you are a very privileged person.
  • tristor 4y ago
    > I'm not sure if I'm actually the bad guy, or if I'm being gas lighted. Neither, but more gas lighted than bad guy. The reality is that what is currently described as "privilege", isn't. It's actually the absence of oppression. Most oppression in Western society is based on class, not race or gender, and therefor all but a tiny minority of people in Western society face some oppression at some point in their life. Some oppression is based on race and gender, and this oppression is limited to people of that race or gender, and therefore some people experience more oppression in their life than others. The gas lighting is two-fold: 1. DEI advocates ignore class issues (intentionally, and arguably maliciously), and focus only on race and gender, extrapolating as hard as possible from the most wealthy and privileged minority to the majority. 2. "Privilege" as the absence of oppression is discussed as special treatment, rather than a default state to strive for that should apply to all people. The entire movement to take white people and especially white men down a peg or two, is actually just increasing oppression in totality, rather than reducing oppression in any way. The correct path away from oppression is not adding more oppression, and it is asinine for any rational person to consider a temporary and situational absence of oppression as a form of "privilege". Actually solving these issues is complex and likely intractable, but there are constructive and well-researched ways to improve these issues on societal scale. The, primarily white elites, advocates for DEI though are not interested in actually improving these issues, but getting social status from paying lip service to the issues without improving them to a point at which they could no longer talk about them.
• lampshades 4y ago
  Undermines the self-esteem of whites too.
• shtopointo 4y ago
  Makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, anything that gets hush-hushed or moved to confidential may spark even more controversy than if it were out in the open. So imo you can only be in 1 of 2 states: all-in or not at all.
• pookha 4y ago
  We need specifics... My view of racism: A specific and targeted activity aimed at a race of individuals with the aim of removing their ability to compete in the free-market. Examples: CIA backed rebels in South America sent (oddly) marked down\cheap product to Rick Ross and he proceeded to flood black neighborhoods with crack. The US then passed mandatory sentences during the war-on-drugs. Most of this affected black neighborhoods affected by Hubert Humphrey (Senator in the 60's) redlining. Nothing AT ALL approaching wholesale racism was EVER part of the early (unplanned) IRC scene. If you were new to tech it was a harsh environment and you would get housed on. But there was not a gatekeeper to IRC that channeled blacks into substandard rooms. There was no coordinated effort by the early internet to target black people online with threats and harassment or blacklistings. There was just a lot of dudes talking shit. Calling them racist is a slap in the face to the tech industry that we have in 2023.
• brodouevencode 4y ago
  There's a God-shaped hole in many people's hearts. Unfortunately this hole has been filled with other ideas that are religious in nature, and DEI is one of them.
• atkailash 4y ago
  [dead]
• klik99 4y ago
  Living in Atlanta with an open mind and friends with different political opinions (though pretty clustered around "moderate" to left), this subject has come up a lot. I'm a strong believer in both moral and business benefits for diversity, but what surprises me is the universal dislike of these efforts. I believe the major problem is the role of optics in corporate environments. In a corporate environment people have to justify their existence, and visible efforts are prioritized. Unfortunately these visible efforts are not only superficial (they make the people running the initiatives look good, the company itself can posture, but not much changes internally), but also single out and "other" people. These initiatives can be doing good work behind the scenes too, but how do you judge someone doing a good job in this area? Metrics about hiring? Metrics about promotions? Maybe it would be better if these initiatives answer to and be judged by the people they should be helping, and not to some success metrics thrown out during a board meeting or company optics. Instead of focusing on diverse hires, focus on supporting the diverse staff you already have. If it's a good place to work, the hires will come out of that. I believe these efforts are ultimately a good thing, even if they're getting it wrong, but as a white male I hesitated to even write that, because I know how vastly different the experience of a minority in America is from my own, and from what I've heard it's a mixed bag. I always remember reading an interview with one of the little rock nine who said she felt forced to go to an integrated school and was still angry about it as an adult. It absolutely sucks to be in that position - something that's ultimately good for society but devastating for an individual. So while I think the general thrust of DEI is a good thing, it has to be tempered by the individual experience and always support people as individuals and not perpetuate lumping everyone in the "minority" bucket.
• docmars 4y ago
  DEI is explicitly an anti-White conspiracy that unfortunately ends with it being anti-Black/Brown outcomes, both indirectly and intentionally.
• notchatgpt 4y ago
  I was admitted to university through an EOP (Equal Opportunity Program), which is in the same vain as DEI. One of the criticisms of the program was just that-- people felt like they didn't deserve to be where they are. A constant worry that people would view you as the "one that got in because of their skin/income/background, etc). Obviously this applies to DEI as well. As someone who benefited from EOP, it's weird for me to say this but in all honesty I think we would all be better off without it or perhaps doing it in a way where it isn't labelled or "celebrated" the way it is... it should be unobtrusive and not call attention to itself. I was one of three white people out of 350+ people that was accepted through EOP. If I felt that way as a white person I can't imagine how much more amplified those feelings would be as a person of color.
• hgsgm 4y ago
  DEI gets a lot of unfair hate because it's a fraught topic. It's a job, and like any job, some people do it badly. People here complain about hiring and "agile" and which language smarter people program in and whether unit tests are a good use of time, but it doesn't rise to the level of vitriol that is applied to missteps and bad ideas in DEI. To me that shows that DEI is important but hard. Maybe the problem is DEI doesn't pay enough to attract people who can do it well.
• hvs 4y ago
  To be fair, as a pretty smart, white man in technology, my parents paid for half of my college to a prestigious engineering university and I've had friends and acquaintances (that I've built from my network) that have gotten me to where I am today. If it helps, you can think of DEI initiatives as making up for the lack of an existing network that many minorities have in the business world.
  • ianhawes 4y ago
    To be fair, you still had to graduate from said prestigious engineering university. And a degree doesn't net you a job. And a job doesn't net you a career.
• posdeiefforts 4y ago
  All the people that came from non-colonial countries which are innocent bystanders of these fascist DEI efforts just told all of you that are in involved: Go Suck A Dick!
• sciencesama 4y ago
  Its all just corporate drama, its like an insurance when something shit happens with other senior execs !
• etchalon 4y ago
  As someone who hires people, I think this is a double-edge sword. Bluntly, without a sustained effort by managers, teams will default to hiring people who are as most "like them" as possible. Shared interests, vernacular, professional personas, etc. That's generally going to mean a lot of very homogenous teams, and in tech, that means very white, potentially very male. On the other side, I have a distaste for DEI being made so prominent as to make anyone feel their job wasn't earned. Which is never, ever the case. Unqualified people don't hired. Poor performers get let go. But given the subjectivity of the hiring process – there exist no objective metrics for the vast majority of jobs – you just HAVE to tip the scales sometimes. But it seems an impossible line to walk. If you keep it quiet, staff isn't aware of what you're doing, and may think you're doing nothing at all. That has a cost too.
• barbazoo 4y ago
  > most I'm trying not to extrapolate. You might have more experience than me but I would not generalize here unless you have seen what's going on in the vast majority of companies. In my organization the DEI I am exposed to is, luckily, completely outside of hiring. It's about raising awareness for people that are interested, it's opt-in, and gives a safe space to share experiences, events, etc. It's not only about
• deleted 4y ago
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• aabm 4y ago
  If there's no actual problem to be solved here, isn't this just the same sort of virtue-signalling OP is accusing the entirety of DEI of? Which is ironic, because my understanding of the matter is that diversity has been studied and found to correlate with increased profitability. Even if you zoned out through DEI training, inclusion should be a no brainer— you'll retain employees who feel like they are part of your organization. Equity is probably a little harder (and the part people get hung up on), but frankly, I haven't seen any numbers to convince me that we're approaching anything near equity so again I ask: what is the problem to be solved here? Is it really such an important goal for the IT industry in the U.S. that instead of having the 3% or 4% of our employees be black (by that I mean historically disadvantaged African Americans, descendants of enslaved people, a qualification which would _further_ reduce that percentage), that we bring that number down to 1-2%, or even lower? I'm sorry, but this is such an absurd problem to want to solve, and it just reeks of insecurity to supposed "high performers" bring it up. I don't want to dismiss this issue entirely because I know it's a sensitive topic for a lot of people, but it's pretty frustrating to see the constant anti-DEI posts in tech spaces when nearly every team I've been on in my 10+ year career has been almost exclusively white and male. Why are we clamoring to return to the days of total unmitigated unconscious bias and homogeneity? > However, when I have to join a cheesy townhall once a month to discuss diversity hires, it makes me feel like I have no right to feel proud of any accomplishments I've made within the company. Why in the world would you feel this way, after admitting that you have the chops? What does these "diversity hires" being simply _hired_ have to do with your actual material accomplishments within your company? It strikes me that perhaps the real problem here is that our most insecure colleagues are being threatened by unqualified employees stealing their jobs, in which case I would suggest that the real solution here is therapy, not returning to some idealized version of the past. I can only speak for myself, but my self esteem is not undermined by the fact that DEI could mean that there will be two black men on my team instead of just me, or that my small organization of a few hundred could have maybe four black men instead of three. If anything, my self esteem is undermined by the fact that those numbers are so low to begin with. - Another Black Man
• fmajid 4y ago
  Minorities just can't win (although women are actually a slight majority of the population, so it's really white men who are the minority). Every now and then a woman like Marissa Maier or Carol Bartz will get a "Hail Mary" chance at the top job, and when they eventually fail, it's blamed on them being women.
• _trackno5 4y ago
  Heh, I feel the same way towards DEI: I'm from Brazil and this stupid DEI stuff keeps putting me in the "LatinX" bucket. I freaking hate that. I'm not a freaking latino. That is a dumb denomination created by the US. Yet I keep getting invited for dumb LatinX events as if that means anything. I want to be recognized by the stack of excellent work I've done. Not because I happen to be from a part of the world that is poorer than yours or because you decided I need some kind of nomenclature.
  • ejstronge 4y ago
    I'm a little confused - why do you say that Brazil is not part of Latin America? Is it because Brazil speaks Portugese (a descendant of Latin) instead of Spanish (another descendant of Latin)? I heard a very humorous and apt anecdote that there are no black people in Africa - maybe the same phenomenon is happening here, where the identity you have in Brazil (just a Brazilian) is different from the identity you are ascribed in the US (namely 'Latino/Latina')
    • _trackno5 4y ago
      I'm not saying Brazil is not part of Latin America. What I am saying is I don't call myself a latino. Nobody in South America or Central America calls themselves latinos. That's a US made up term. We all call ourselves by our nationalities. The anecdote on Africa is probably correct though.
      • ejstronge 4y ago
        Yes - we are saying the same thing. Your identity from your home may differ from the identity with which you are perceived in a different nation.
• deleted 4y ago
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• throwawayacc6 4y ago
  I love DIE because I'm a quarter Black. I leverage every DIE initiative I can, in college, in software companies, everywhere I declare myself as "Black". When I finally stroll in for the first day, the HR coordinator and others are shocked that someone as White as Bill Clinton "identifies" as Black. And we've gone full circle: it's like I need to carry a card around to show my quadroon status because it's just unbelievable. We're back to brown paper bag tests and racial purity.
• tohnjitor 4y ago
  If only HR and executives understood the amount of resentment and distrust these policies grow in many of their employees.
• StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  Most marginally intelligent people understand that "DEI initiatives" are all about virtue signalling that do little to nothing except make people feel uncomfortable. Many people who study the issue have concluded that these "DEI initiatives" actually lead to worse outcomes. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/workplace-diversity-dei-initiative.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/workplace-diversi... Is it any surprise that contrived struggle sessions and compelled behavioral modification seminars aren't helpful?
• PathOfEclipse 4y ago
  Diversity should be natural, not forced. DEI forces diversity, which causes more problems than it solves and harms more people than it helps. It's been this way forever, including back when it was called "affirmative action." I suggest reading this book to see just how disastrous it's been: https://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Around-World-Empirical/dp/0300107757 https://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Around-World-Empir... How do we improve natural diversity? Through persuasion, not coercion. That means, first and foremost, improving education for people and instilling the right cultural values so that they have the right skills and qualifications. When we have diverse people with the right skills, diverse workforces occur naturally in a free market system. Finally, people who think America has a huge racism problem should travel across the world now and also read history better. America is one of the least racist places overall in recorded history. It's something we can always improve on, bu, at this point it's just another problem among many, and our overemphasis on it is also causing far more problems than helping people.
  • GaryNumanVevo 4y ago
    Personally, I wouldn't link anything Thomas Sowell has written. He has literally claimed that Black Americans were better off during slavery than they are today [1]. > America is one of the least racist places overall in recorded history [citation needed] [1] - https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-the-legacy-of-slavery-vs-the-legacy-of-liberalism/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-the-legacy-o...
    • PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      Personally, I wouldn't blatantly tell obvious lies. I clicked on the link. Sowell didn't say that at all. But I have to admit, that's a new one. Falsely claim someone said something awful, then provide a link to make it look legitimate. It's a pretty vile and disgusting tactic, honestly. But that's what I've come to expect from people of a certain political persuasion. Anyways, I'll continue to link Sowell. I suggest you stop with the dishonesty, though.
      • 4y ago
• fuckdei123 4y ago
  Hi, bitter Asian man here who constantly got rejected from FAANG/Unicorns because of DEI. I'm not bitter anymore though. I now work at a hedge fund, they pay cash, and they pay more than FAANG/Unicorns. And lots of layoffs are happening in FAANG/Unicorns, especially the DEI. Meanwhile I just got a raise. So, they (the DEI companies and the DEI hires) got what they deserve. I felt vindicated. There is justice after all in this world. Sorry not sorry. I'm out. No, no one's gonna change my opinion. Save your breath.
• samhuk 4y ago
  The concern I have with DEI is that it's the manipulation of the natural function of a market - the jobs market. Just like others in this space such as quantitative easing, printing money, and "stimmy cheques", this often comes with positive and negative effects. Personally, I have a few thouhts: * If we didn't have DEI (which in practice is really just the new AA (Affirmative Action)), would hetero-ethnic areas like Europe and US ever have balance in the workforce? Would society naturally trend towards ethnic balance in the workplace without DEI, or would we end up with a Gattaca? Is DEI necessary in that sense? Without DEI-like influences, would we just be stuck with a black valet and a white CEO? * Psychologists have known for decades about "the tyranny of low expectations" - the tendency for lower expectations to lead to lower performance in humans. I wonder if long-term DEI will lead to performance imbalances as those who are favored by DEI become reliant on it. It's a scary thought to imagine in the long term. * Personally, I think a small amount of temporary DEI exposure is required to offset the human's natural tendency to be hostile towards those of a different ethnicity. I think that if DEI exposure is either acute (a lot in a small time frame) or chronic (little bit over a long time frame), it is likely to lead to systemic negative consequences, such as performative imbalance and/or aggression/hatred between those favored and unfavored by DEI. It's a really complex situation!
  • maldev 4y ago
    The curse of low expectations is real. I recently moved out of Baltimore because of the long term implications of DEI in education. There's schools where a gpa of 0.13 puts you in the top half of your class (https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/calls-to-shut-down-city-school-where-013-gpa-ranks-near-top-half-of-class https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/calls-to-shu...). You also have 77 % of seniors being illiterate (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/77-of-students-at-baltimore-high-school-reading-at-elementary-levels-teacher-says https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/77-of-students-at-...). I also dated a teacher for a bit, they can't even teach, it's daycare and the bar for a highschool senior to pass is literally being able to write their name. Teachers can't fail or require more. This is going to lead to decades of crime, most major cities in America are like this. And it's going to get worse and worse. The future is scary, and I wonder what the outcome will be. These are also largely black schools, what happens when these communities can't read and stay illiterate due to DEI in the school system?
• Eumenes 4y ago
  Big tech companies openly discriminate in the hiring process towards non favored groups, this is a fact. People involved in the hiring committees at these companies know and this has downstream effects. DIE is perpetuating harmful stereotypes no doubt.
• TurkishPoptart 4y ago
  I tried to bring this kind of issue up in an earlier Ask HN but it got flagged for some reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34526053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34526053.
• hondo77 4y ago
  I recently worked for a government organization. DEIA (accessibility) was omnipresent. That's not a bad thing, for the reasons others have pointed out. Lots of recruiting in non-traditional places, for instance. However, there was no need to trot out, as you called them, "diversity hires" because when they would announce the new hires, they would just be diverse. I'm trying to imagine your scenario and cringe. Have you thought of raising your concerns with HR or even townhall feedback, if your company has such a thing (one of mine did and they actually acted on some of my suggestions)? The actions sound well-intentioned but clueless so they just may need to be clued in.
• entwife 4y ago
  An important consideration is that nobody performs better when you tell them that people like them are discriminated against, or often perform poorly.
• deleted 4y ago
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• damita111 4y ago
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• faangiq 4y ago
  No one cares. Your race/DEI/BIPOC/whatever is a tool used by super genius puppet masters to wage a multi century war on other races. You think Bill Gates cares about black people? You think [soulless middle manager] cares about black people? It’s all a game and you should exploit these companies to the max.
• redwolfb14 4y ago
  Another black man here, the facts of the matter are that DEI is needed, forget the research that has been done proving that for a moment and just look around. The world is getting smaller everyday and this idea that ONE group can satisfy the needs of the global population is just fool-hardy. The problem with DEI in the corporate setting is that corporate structures and governance simply can't solve cultural problems. What ends up happening is that you get a DEI board that's all white (that's how most DEI boards look), or that has token participants that have no cultural of corporate power to effect change. Even then, you'd still need to solve the cultural problem of racism, or discrimination as it relates to your organization all the way down to individual contributors? Who is doing all of this work? The same employees you hired to actually do the work of the organization. If DEI is going to work it has to be cultural from the start and the only way you get there is: 1. Find a utopia of people of all races and creeds living in harmony. 2. Externalizing an "OTHER" that's currently not apart of the equation. Aliens attacking Earth. 3. As a group, (black persons) outpace ALL of the other groups and subject them to the same behavior they've practiced. 4. Or lastly, treat everyone equally. Those are the options, until then, the ruse of DEI will continue, is it helping? To date, no. Numbers are stagnant and have been for the last 30 years.
• bioinformatics 4y ago
  Is DEI or DIE? I prefer the latter
• dkn775 4y ago
  OP as a black person myself, I want you to know you may not feel this way, but when the chips are down a lot of times it’s black people you can count on to have your back, not see you as violent when your a little angry, and give you a leg up when they are in a position to. You can have these things and still resent the diversity thing that white people push, which I believe is a scam and actually often contains a lot of racism they don’t know about
• cheri9 4y ago
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• acjohnson55 4y ago
  If you watch The Office (US) Season 1, even though it's almost 2 decades old, it captures the conundrum that minorities can both be subjected to casual racism/sexiam/homophobia and misguided corporate interventions. I've personally never seen what you describe, but I'm sure there are companies that are particularly clumsy at DEI. I believe, however, that doing DEI well is a strategic advantage. It's less about making sure every single individual feels represented and included (even though that's important), because it's not really possible to explicitly enumerate every possible identity. Rather, it's about building the conscientiousness that makes people better at serving a diverse customerbase, and better at collaborating with people, who are diverse in ways that may or may not be apparent. It's not about walking on eggshells to avoid offending anybody. It's about taking ownership and being open to learn. The best trainings I've had really nail this. But it is not easy to do. Or, I should say, it's easy to half-ass.
• steponlego 4y ago
  Many people won't go to a black doctor specifically for this reason.
• kisstheblade 4y ago
  What is PoC? Isn't white a color? Or a "ethnicity" :) Apparently not. It's funny that some people want to treat people differently based solely on their skin colour. Or are they claiming there are other differences at play, that are mainly noticeable through the skin color? Does "diversity" mean differences in skin color?
• adultSwim 4y ago
  Thank you for sharing your experience. I wish the discussion here had been more robust. If it was programming, people would have offered a range of ways to understand and navigate this situation. It would be based on both experience as well as scholarly theory. For instance we often get to hear from functional programmers, some backed by the deep foundations in theory. Yet here we seem ill equipped and unprepared.
• PateaChoux 4y ago
  "but creating townhall meetings and parading your black/brown employees around like show ponies is nothing short of corporate virtue signaling." This is like 90% of the point of corporate DEI programs.
• poorbutdebtfree 4y ago
  DIE and "representation matters" makes no sense to Indian-Americans. They are the highest earning people in America and were nothing but "thank you come again" jokes in Hollywood and MSM in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s (Harold & Kumar).