8 ms·

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 sub

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.

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.