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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 interv

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
    As an under credentialed, relative to the general population very smart white guy, I doubt the demand for any group exceeds the supply. It just might involve searching outside of the range of the lamppost. Gasp, horror, it might involve internal training as opposed to expecting people to hit all the marks for a position on their prior labor and education. It might involve hiring a lot more entry level positions than advanced positions, regardless of the needs of the moment. The best I've seen as a person who's not part of the DEI team is cultivating relationships with universities with large numbers of URM students. But that's really still just searching slightly outside of the range of the lamppost. Are you straight up going to small towns and offering scholarship opportunities? Going to college fairs (no, not hiring fairs at colleges, but the fairs that high school students go to to find a college) and marketing what jobs are available at your company for majors of certain degrees? These are just off the top of my head; I'm sure there are a lot better, and tested ideas out there.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      Let's say green people are 10% of the population to make the numbers easy and not call out anyone in particular. You have company A and they are killing it on their diversity goals, 20 percent of its employees are green people. Now you have company B, same size and industry as company A, they want to hire green people but their "share" of greens is already working at company A, perhaps they can pull greens from other industries but ultimately someone is going to be left holding the "you don't hire enough green people" bag.
      - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        > but ultimately someone is going to be left holding the "you don't hire enough green people" bag. This would be a good argument if we ever get to that point. But we aren't even close, and plenty of smaller companies and startups don't have diversity goals at all. There's plenty of room for some big names to go 100% green without being a tithe of a tithe of the full working population. Or even a tithe of a tithe of the working population of greens. Even Walmart is less than 1% of the total employed population in the US. Much more so for smaller companies such as Alphabet or Meta.
- seneca 4y ago
  This is the classic excuse. "Bad outcomes aren't the fault of X, you're just doing X wrong" even though X always leads to the same bad outcomes. When an initiative fails, the solution is rarely to do more of it.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    > X always leads to the same bad outcome X does not always lead to the same bad outcome here though. That is, DEI initiatives that increase diversity while not lowering the hire bar do exist. That some particular company decided to lower their hiring bar doesn't indicate that DEI initiatives always cause companies to lower their hiring bars.
  - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
    Except study after study shows that good outcomes result from hiring diverse candidates...
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      My impression is that the mechanism is that racial/gender/etc diversity proxies for some amount of viewpoint diversity, and it's the viewpoint diversity which is improving outcomes. Assuming I'm correct on that point, my strong suspicion is that a lot of DEI programs in the US are not resulting in much more diverse hiring than their peer groups while simultaneously limiting viewpoint diversity pretty considerably (or if they're not limiting the viewpoint diversity of the people they hire, they're limiting the willingness of those people to express diverse views--probably a combination of the two). I'm also vaguely of the impression that at least some research is finding DEI initiatives to be neutral or perhaps even counter-productive, but I'm having a hard time finding those papers--if this is jogging anyone's memory, I would appreciate links.
      - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
        Just… stop. DEI works when well executed. Accept that. If you want to police DEI initiatives to ensure they’re properly implemented, go for it, but the constant aversion to a so thoroughly researched concept is bordering on flat earther level conspiracy.
busterarm 4y ago
I've had HR force under-qualified people into my interview pipeline completely bypassing our technical pre-screen phone call. We even had an interviewee who only spoke an obscure language not spoken by anyone on our team _and_ had no work experience. This was for a staff engineer position! We hired someone despite some misgivings in the interview phase who turned out to be a pathological liar (and identity thief) and they proceeded to torment the entire company with insane false allegations for two years and did zero work while we couldn't get rid of them. Finally they quit on their own and this person just made the news recently for stripping down naked and violently attacking a convenience store's workers with a knife.
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
Find the legal definition of hostile workplace and skate just below that until the problems find solutions on someone else’s paycheck.
backzerman 4y ago
That's disappointing to hear. It also seems like a mixed bag for these lackluster hires, who get a paycheck but likely have a less-than-stellar work experience and little opportunity for advancement. Is there any effort at follow-up training? Seems like this interview strategy HAS to be paired with a long-term training strategy for taking less-qualified hires and turning them into very productive employees. If not, do you end up hiring more people in total? Do these lackluster employees just eat up time and budget, or do they also actively occupy a desk that you need to reclaim to hire more talented replacements?
- slackfan 4y ago
  >Training Hahahaha, you dare suggest that we hired somebody underqualified? You can't make them feel like they are inferior, you utter racist. Yes, I have had a slightly less hyperbolic version of this actual conversation about less-than-qualified diversity hires. Good way to end your career.
oytis 4y ago
IMO the right way to implement diversity is to get more underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the bar. But it requires resources that startups might not have/might be unwilling to allocate.
- m348e912 4y ago
  >>the right way to implement diversity is to get more underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the bar This is the best comment in the thread. If you have a diverse funnel you will have diverse employees and as long as you maintain standards, they will be well qualified for the job. This includes internships and job training programs.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    Eh, the resume stack is fundamentally flawed. A lot of URT are never going to go into tech because they just don’t want to. It’s a large cultural issue.
    - oytis 4y ago
      Yes, that's why if a company is committed to diversity, it reaches out to candidates, promotes itself on events for underrepresented people etc.

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
  As an under credentialed, relative to the general population very smart white guy, I doubt the demand for any group exceeds the supply. It just might involve searching outside of the range of the lamppost. Gasp, horror, it might involve internal training as opposed to expecting people to hit all the marks for a position on their prior labor and education. It might involve hiring a lot more entry level positions than advanced positions, regardless of the needs of the moment. The best I've seen as a person who's not part of the DEI team is cultivating relationships with universities with large numbers of URM students. But that's really still just searching slightly outside of the range of the lamppost. Are you straight up going to small towns and offering scholarship opportunities? Going to college fairs (no, not hiring fairs at colleges, but the fairs that high school students go to to find a college) and marketing what jobs are available at your company for majors of certain degrees? These are just off the top of my head; I'm sure there are a lot better, and tested ideas out there.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    Let's say green people are 10% of the population to make the numbers easy and not call out anyone in particular. You have company A and they are killing it on their diversity goals, 20 percent of its employees are green people. Now you have company B, same size and industry as company A, they want to hire green people but their "share" of greens is already working at company A, perhaps they can pull greens from other industries but ultimately someone is going to be left holding the "you don't hire enough green people" bag.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      > but ultimately someone is going to be left holding the "you don't hire enough green people" bag. This would be a good argument if we ever get to that point. But we aren't even close, and plenty of smaller companies and startups don't have diversity goals at all. There's plenty of room for some big names to go 100% green without being a tithe of a tithe of the full working population. Or even a tithe of a tithe of the working population of greens. Even Walmart is less than 1% of the total employed population in the US. Much more so for smaller companies such as Alphabet or Meta.
seneca 4y ago
This is the classic excuse. "Bad outcomes aren't the fault of X, you're just doing X wrong" even though X always leads to the same bad outcomes. When an initiative fails, the solution is rarely to do more of it.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > X always leads to the same bad outcome X does not always lead to the same bad outcome here though. That is, DEI initiatives that increase diversity while not lowering the hire bar do exist. That some particular company decided to lower their hiring bar doesn't indicate that DEI initiatives always cause companies to lower their hiring bars.
- SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
  Except study after study shows that good outcomes result from hiring diverse candidates...
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    My impression is that the mechanism is that racial/gender/etc diversity proxies for some amount of viewpoint diversity, and it's the viewpoint diversity which is improving outcomes. Assuming I'm correct on that point, my strong suspicion is that a lot of DEI programs in the US are not resulting in much more diverse hiring than their peer groups while simultaneously limiting viewpoint diversity pretty considerably (or if they're not limiting the viewpoint diversity of the people they hire, they're limiting the willingness of those people to express diverse views--probably a combination of the two). I'm also vaguely of the impression that at least some research is finding DEI initiatives to be neutral or perhaps even counter-productive, but I'm having a hard time finding those papers--if this is jogging anyone's memory, I would appreciate links.
    - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
      Just… stop. DEI works when well executed. Accept that. If you want to police DEI initiatives to ensure they’re properly implemented, go for it, but the constant aversion to a so thoroughly researched concept is bordering on flat earther level conspiracy.

busterarm 4y ago

I've had HR force under-qualified people into my interview pipeline completely bypassing our technical pre-screen phone call. We even had an interviewee who only spoke an obscure language not spoken by anyone on our team _and_ had no work experience. This was for a staff engineer position! We hired someone despite some misgivings in the interview phase who turned out to be a pathological liar (and identity thief) and they proceeded to torment the entire company with insane false allegations for two years and did zero work while we couldn't get rid of them. Finally they quit on their own and this person just made the news recently for stripping down naked and violently attacking a convenience store's workers with a knife.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

Find the legal definition of hostile workplace and skate just below that until the problems find solutions on someone else’s paycheck.

backzerman 4y ago

That's disappointing to hear. It also seems like a mixed bag for these lackluster hires, who get a paycheck but likely have a less-than-stellar work experience and little opportunity for advancement. Is there any effort at follow-up training? Seems like this interview strategy HAS to be paired with a long-term training strategy for taking less-qualified hires and turning them into very productive employees. If not, do you end up hiring more people in total? Do these lackluster employees just eat up time and budget, or do they also actively occupy a desk that you need to reclaim to hire more talented replacements?

slackfan 4y ago
>Training Hahahaha, you dare suggest that we hired somebody underqualified? You can't make them feel like they are inferior, you utter racist. Yes, I have had a slightly less hyperbolic version of this actual conversation about less-than-qualified diversity hires. Good way to end your career.

oytis 4y ago

IMO the right way to implement diversity is to get more underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the bar. But it requires resources that startups might not have/might be unwilling to allocate.

m348e912 4y ago
>>the right way to implement diversity is to get more underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the bar This is the best comment in the thread. If you have a diverse funnel you will have diverse employees and as long as you maintain standards, they will be well qualified for the job. This includes internships and job training programs.
- bradlys 4y ago
  Eh, the resume stack is fundamentally flawed. A lot of URT are never going to go into tech because they just don’t want to. It’s a large cultural issue.
  - oytis 4y ago
    Yes, that's why if a company is committed to diversity, it reaches out to candidates, promotes itself on events for underrepresented people etc.