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No One Is Happy About Diversity Efforts at Work

104 points by agomez314 3y ago

pointtheobvious 3y ago
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- pointtheobvious 3y ago
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down_vote_me 3y ago
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lil-lugger 3y ago
Anyone who thinks we should just live in a “pure meritocracy” is a little bit delusional. Maybe they’ve played too many RPG’s where players have stats and you can sort by attribute and pick the best. If that was the case in the real world there would no job interview, just sharing statistics and picking the candidates with the highest numbers. Employers have to evaluate people on how they will perform BEFORE they perform, on subjective grounds. So for any number of reasons, probably subconsciously, people who are more unattractive, short, or possibly of a different race than the hirer can be perceived to be qualified but ‘not a good fit’. There are always ways around excluding people without it seeming discriminatory. That’s not to say there should be quotas, but to think there’s no issue because we should just pick the best candidate never stop to ask “how? How do you know they are the best?”.
- DagsEoress 3y ago
  > “how? How do you know they are the best?”. The answer is you don't. But just because the system isn't perfect doesn't mean we should just throw it in the blender. By that logic we should get rid of "free" health care / safety nets in Western European countries. It mostly works but it also gets exploited. How can you know people aren't exploiting the system? You can't know for sure, but we can do our best to find out.
  - Xeamek 3y ago
    But nobody is saying that. Having hiring quotas is far from throwing entire system out the window.
    - raxxorraxor 3y ago
      But it would still be better without hiring quotas because they cannot constructively improve the situation. You will habe to leave that up to hiring.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    Your comparison is inane. What’s the connection between dei and getting rid of safety nets? Not to mention that dei is not inherently unmeritocratic to begin with
    - DagsEoress 3y ago
      > What’s the connection between dei and getting rid of safety nets There is none, nowhere in my comment did I say that. > Not to mention that dei is not inherently unmeritocratic to begin with It literally is. Meritocracy, people are hired by their merit. DEI, people are hired by representation. Equality versus Equity, polar opposites.
      - endisneigh 3y ago
        You misunderstand what DEI is. It means diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s not incompatible with meritocracy. For example you have similar candidates, take the one who’s least represented in your org. Or you have a “pure” meritocracy, but you spend more energy and money sending your recruiters to areas and schools whose students are more likely to not be represented at your company. If you can’t understand that you shouldn’t be commenting on DEI stuff.
        DagsEoress 3y ago
        > For example you have similar candidates, take the one who’s least represented in your org. This would be the only edge case in which it would "work". And even then you're still systematically rejecting someone based on who they are rather than what they can do. I'd rather lose to a coin flip. > Or you have a “pure” meritocracy, but you spend more energy and money sending your recruiters to areas and schools whose students are more likely to not be represented at your company. Then it's not pure, because you're actively avoiding people. > If you can’t understand that you shouldn’t be commenting on DEI stuff. Regardless if your statement is true or not, you believe we should exclude people from discussions because they might not have enough knowledge on the subject? (Ironic for a topic on inclusion)
- racismsexism 3y ago
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- civilized 3y ago
  I agree that we need to take seriously the history of racism in the US and try to mitigate its impacts. From what I have seen, the consideration of race in admissions and hiring doesn't remove bias, but adds a bias in an opposite direction. I have talked to people who have been involved in hiring processes, and many can cite examples where candidates from URM groups have been given a great deal more credit than non-URM candidates were given for a similar or higher level of achievement/qualification. It's hardly a secret that in job markets with a high emphasis on racial diversity, the highly underrepresented minority is often a hot commodity who is judged by a different standard. I think it's valid to argue that this bias is worth it. But we should not pretend that we are simply remedying bias or pushing people towards a more fair evaluation of each candidate for their individual qualities. What we're doing is adding an opposite bias in an attempt to approach closer to proportional racial representation. There's also reasonable room to question if we should essentially equate diversity to population-proportional racial representation, as we do today. This is also a bias which may take away from seeking diversity along other lines, such as class/upbringing, age, and being outside traditional recruiting networks for the job.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - lapcat 3y ago
    > This is also a bias which may take away from seeking diversity along other lines, such as class/upbringing, age, and being outside traditional recruiting networks for the job. I'm glad you mentioned age. Age discrimination and lack of age diversity is a big problem in tech. Whenever there's a discussion about underrepresented groups in tech, isn't it funny how older people are rarely considered?
    - civilized 3y ago
      > Whenever there's a discussion about underrepresented groups in tech, isn't it funny how older people are rarely considered? IMHO, it's because organizations don't really value diversity in the ordinary sense of the term. They value proportional representation of all demographic groups that have legal standing to sue them for civil rights violations, and who have organized interest groups who stand ready to do so. DEI exists to align the organization towards this objective.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  This “pure meritocracy” argument simply boils down to the fact that it’s not possible to build a system that perfectly measures how prospective candidates will perform in the future. Really, all businesses and institutions should be free to innovate their own methodologies for doing that, and live with whatever consequences they produce, with the governments role being to regulate the limits of permissible discrimination. Race has been a class legally protected from discrimination for quite some time now, and it’s honestly pretty sad that it’s taken this long to get a ruling on this open and unapologetic racial discrimination.
  - 307sar 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - AmericanChopper 3y ago
      Well I don’t think that’s true. You should be allowed to racially discriminate about who’s allowed to come into your home. Employers and universities should not be allowed to racially discriminate about who they employ/admit. My point is simply that the “perfect meritocracy doesn’t exist” argument is pointless. Screening candidates is a problem for businesses to solve, and the only metric they should be incentivised to optimise for is the outcomes produced for the institution/business.
      - 307sar 3y ago
        [flagged]
- yes_really 3y ago
  The difference is that employers at least *try* to pick the best candidate by ignoring characteristics such as attractiveness and height. For race and gender, it's the opposite: employers actively give preference to certain races and to women.
imperio59 3y ago
To fix representation of minorities in fields where they are currently under represented, we need to start by fixing our school system. You cannot fix discrimination of one kind by applying discrimination of another kind. The role of the supreme court is not to fix the inequalities of our society, it is to uphold the law and constitution of the US. This is my favorite quote from the opinion on this case from Justice Thomas's concurring opinion: "Both experience and logic have vindicated the Constitution’s colorblind rule and confirmed that the universities’ new narrative cannot stand. Despite the Court’s hope in Grutter (previous case) that universities would voluntarily end their race-conscious programs and further the goal of racial equality, the opposite appears increasingly true. Harvard and UNC now forthrightly state that they racially discriminate when it comes to admitting students, arguing that such discrimination is consistent with this Court’s precedents. And they,along with today’s dissenters, defend that discrimination as good. More broadly, it is becoming increasingly clear that discrimination on the basis of race—often packaged as “affirmative action” or “equity” programs—are based on the benighted notion “that it is possible to tell when discrimination helps, rather than hurts, racial minorities.” [...] “Purchased at the price of immeasurable human suffering,” the Fourteenth Amendment recognizes that classifications based on race lead to ruinous consequences for individuals and the Nation."
- koonsolo 3y ago
  > we need to start by fixing our school system This is indeed the case. As a European it's very clear to me what the real cause of your problem is: property taxes. In Europe, schools are funded nationally, which means there isn't much difference between one school or the other. 'private schools' are not really a thing here because all of our public schools are good enough. In US, your property taxes decide what kind of neighbourhood you grow up in. Good neighbourhood, good schools, bad neighbourhood, bad schools. This is huge. The social mobility index is not lying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
deleted 3y ago
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Pinegulf 3y ago
https://archive.is/apwvi https://archive.is/apwvi
hospitalJail 3y ago
Darn, the person who commented that non-logical people get to make political decisions deleted their post. I wanted to comment that I think leadership and management are pretty good overall. There is some minimum standard of merit that needs to be achieved, so these aren't the people that are illogical. I sat next to HR at 2 jobs. At one they were behind a locked door, so I only met HR people. The other I was on the other side of the cubicle. Yikes, HR is the illogical part of the chain. Not that they always do a bad job, but you hear some of the things they say, and you can clearly tell they have no problem using bias against people.
- _8j50 3y ago
  The logic is clear, they implement executive's will. Sometimes not getting sued or not having a bad reputation is what they are after.
Yizahi 3y ago
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tomrod 3y ago
I can't read the text of the article due to paywall. But the headline seems a bit on the nose. I'm personally happy about diversity efforts at work -- it's helped my software development and interactions by introducing the ideas, best practices, and pitfalls related to accessibility, localization, and messaging.
- bejd 3y ago
  https://archive.is/apwvi https://archive.is/apwvi
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Much obliged.
hospitalJail 3y ago
I remember a new girl freshly out of college, got an award for something, she was among some people who filed patents, developed new technologies, worked insane hours for free, etc... When she got called to the stage, she was embarrassed. Our group had people working 10 hour days to fix some stuff, yet this person who had been at the company for 6 months and barely finished training, was recognized as award worthy. Whoever made that decision didn't realize that she shined a spotlight on how dumb it all was. I'm not sure if the 1000 people in the room realized how merit-less it was, but our group of ~30 people all knew. I'm sure the girl went on to do great things, she was bright, friendly, and a hard worker. It made me realize that merit is not what the company was necessarily looking for.
- ofcourseyoudo 3y ago
  >I'm sure the girl went on to do great things, she was bright, friendly, and a hard worker. You made your own counter-point here. Many entrenched systems would never have given her a chance to begin with. Maybe she got some advantages early on here career, we can take the tally of them if you're willing to quantify all of the explicit and implicit advantages that her straight white male counterparts got along the way as well (including not having coworkers project "embarrassment" onto them when they receive an accolade). Sounds like the system elevated a bright young talent, recognized her, and by your assumption, she went on to be well-deserving of the opportunity.
_8j50 3y ago
This is true, it all feels so artificial and forced. But the sleight-of-hand trick WSJ and others are trying to pull here as part of their strategy now that they got rid of college affirmative action is that while nobody likes DEI b.s., it goes beyond not liking into actually harmed territory for anyone that's a minority at the work place. And companies do get sued a lot over this stuff. Maybe you don't see this in office environments these days but I had worked in places where the DEI people told us stories of nooses being left at someones locker, watemelons, racial epithets,etc... Elon is infamous at his companies for being "anti-woke" and getting sued and losing like 5 times over overt racism at his companies. So, while I look forward to less bullshitty ways of educating people and making everyone feel welcome and get a fair shot at promotions, much of the US still has a LOT of people who are esentially insecure jerks that are more or less racist. Only slighty related: if I hear someone say "woke" or "anti-woke" these days, by default I assume they are racists with a foot out of the closet. I didn't care much about college affirmative action but this tells me along with book banning there is some fascist conspiracy about. And in my book the only good fascist/nazi is a dead one so I hope I am wrong about this because it means the future bleak in the US, just look at the upvotes to this post. In my observation, the problem is C-level execs and lawyers whose goal is to improve reputation and avoid lawsuit or chances of winning lawsuits. These people are making DEI shitty. I have even seen people get downsized but a new role with the same responsibility get created to avoid lawsuit because the person is a minority. I have seen people of the same exact demographic get interviewed along with a token person of the exact opposite demographic to avoid a suit. I have heard manangers ask "I only want recruiters to send me <insert minority> female for this role" and then they hire the worst candidates possible. It's not HR but litigation centric culuture that's the problem.
- keithalewis 3y ago
  You know what's bad? Racism. Those people should be cancelled! You know what's great? Tribalism. How about them $SportsTeam! Let's have more multibillion dollar businesses to encourage people to hate anyone who doesn't agree $SportsTeam is the greatest! We should have rich old white men own them and give them a pass on DEI. It might hit their bottom line if they were not allowed to hire the best players in the market. Can you imagine a world where ROWM are not allowed their god-given right to exploit our quirks of evolutionary development? We could not enrich them further by gathering in large groups to celebrate our $SportsTeam tribe and spew hate on the $OtherTeam tribe. Maybe even beat them up in the parking lot after the game if we lost. Go tribalism!
SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
I can’t see past the paywall but it brings up the Supreme Court case. Two of the things that confused me about that case and how it would apply to the workplace: - it only excluded race as a consideration for admissions. Why race only? You can argue someone who is disabled who gets in might have “taken” a slot from a more qualified able-bodied person. Similarly, you can argue women athlete scholars of sufficiently unsupported sports are “taking” a slot from a more qualified man somewhere. It’s weird to make race the sole exception when the general argument applies. I wouldn’t even know how to apply this to work! - why did the Supreme Court make an exception for military school? All the logic applies except it’s okay if black/Hispanic people edge out white peoples to go to war? Does this mean also the diversity initiatives in government contractors/department of defense funded research is ok?
- mjburgess 3y ago
  The SC was only asked to consider race. It isnt writing legislation, it's asked a very specific question: is race-based admissions policy consistent with the existing body of interpretations of the constitution. It's answer: No.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- lucozade 3y ago
  > Why race only? Because it was only asked to consider race and only for admission to academic institutions. So that's what it did. > why did the Supreme Court make an exception for military school? Because the Solicitor General argued that the military could have considerations different to civilian academic institutions such as national security. And the Supreme Court agreed that they might so included the exception.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    If racial diversity is a national security implication why shouldn’t all educational facilities foster this? many labs take national defense money. It makes no sense to me to claim ensuring a diverse population is a matter of national security therefore we should make sure civilians don’t do it.
TexanFeller 3y ago
Diversity is the new branding, but it's the same old affirmative action programs, with the same arguments for and against.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  I still despise the evolution of the terminology in this area. A workforce can be diverse, an individual cannot. Diversity is a measure of the differences across a group of people, not whether or not one person belongs to a special category. It is a comparison of two groups, not an individual to the group.
endisneigh 3y ago
I mean, a situation in which everyone is happy with diversity efforts would be one in which such efforts would be unnecessary to begin with.
throwaway22032 3y ago
Statistics "memes" along the lines of "people from X and Y are Z likely to go on to do A" are probably the most misleading and tiring factoids out there. All that they are useful for is for whiners to complain that they weren't blessed with being 6ft6 or beautiful or a certain skin colour or whatever else. In the real world people who actually achieve things just go out and do it. They're not sitting about wondering whether middle management at XYZ prefers working class kids or black supermodels.
- Xeamek 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    Also known as "kill yourself now to avoid surviving".
larata_media 3y ago
It’s not that people don’t want diversity, it’s that the pendulum of inclusiveness has swung to the opposite end; where it can only be recognized as exclusiveness. Diversity of skin color has been achieved for the most part, but now it’s extended to exclusive thought patterns which is not what diversity should be about. Diversity of thought should be embraced but that seems to be the exact opposite of what’s happening in these corporate “diversity” programs and people recognize that as a farce.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  > Diversity of skin color has been achieved for the most part Source? In tech at least this is very much untrue. Black and Hispanic people in my experience don’t appear in tech as often as their population in general might indicate.
  - larata_media 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 3y ago
      Flamewar and/or snarky comments are not ok here, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    You aren't talking about skin color then. There are plenty of Asians of various colors of brown that could pass as Hispanic. My Indian boss used to have Mexicans come up to him speaking Spanish. You are talking about Race. Anyway, with each round of layoffs, I've seen companies get more diverse in race. It could be HR being racist... or HR paying African Americans and Hispanic people less and they didn't get cut first. Yikes yikes yikes.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  LMAO, this is where HN really loses me. I'm unable to understand how anyone could possibly think where anywhere close to achieving diversity of skin color. This is absolute insanity, and I'm expected to pretend this is a reasonable idea and debate against it.
NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
TFA: "No one is happy about diversity efforts at work" Also TFA: "the amount of attention their companies pay to increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work is ... about right ... 44%"
Roark66 3y ago
Looking at this from across the ocean this whole thing looks like it could be an onion article. The society shouldn't be racist. The fact some people still are is not an excuse for rasism in the opposite direction. Those things don't cancel out When I heard "US's supreme court decides race can't be taken into account for accepting university applicants" I thought good for them. And then comes the "onion" part. A president coming from a party that has been trying to champion equality for decades goes in front of the mic and says the most bizzare thing. That he is opposed to equality, he is for race metrics to remain and he even entertained a thought to undermine the authority of one of the most important bodies in the democratic system by saying " this is not a normal court". Up until now I lived under a mistaken assumption a constitutional body is legal when it rules in our favor and lacks "the rule of law" when it rules against was a uniquely European thing. It would be funny if it wasn't sad.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  I can’t help but think that Americans are so deeply and inherently racists that they are only capable of fighting racism by building another racist framework to do it (and, of course, fail). A symptom is that the most visible so-called anti-racist people just won’t shut up about the very concept of race, as if they are okay with it, they just want their particular flavor of people to be up top and oppress the living shit out of their former oppressors, that should show ‘em.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    Eh, I visited Europe and the first question everyone asked me: "Where are you from?" It was unanimous. In the US, I usually hear "Where do you work?" or lesser: "What are your Hobbies?" The US judges people on how much money they make, primarily. I've heard in Europe you are judged based on your position. In Japan, based on where you are on the ladder. When I went to Mexico, I stuck out like a sore thumb. There was no hiding I was an outsider. In the US, you could not figure out if someone has lived next to you for 10 years based on their ability to speak english, let alone skin color. I wouldn't confuse people with good intentions with racism. I think in the future, we will have something like this, but more income oriented.
RobotToaster 3y ago
Most studies have shown that diversity training either does nothing to decrease racial bias, or is actively harmful[0]; The only intervention proven to decrease racial bias is union membership[1], which unsurprisingly executives don't like to promote. [0]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/dei-trainings-effective.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/dei-trainings-eff... [1]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12537 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12537
- leetrout 3y ago
  Makes sense. Its a class war not a race war.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    Though I do not disagree, the correlation is sadly very high.
- 0xParlay 3y ago
  [flagged]
- jl2718 3y ago
  Nobody’s trying to decrease racial bias. It’s compliance training.
- matrix_overload 3y ago
  Well, yeah. Working together towards a common goal. Who would have thought? /s
- _8j50 3y ago
  It still helps as much as it sucks, because it tells overt racists where the company stands. And lawsuit avoidance means enforcing it.
jollofricepeas 3y ago
Indians were not hired at my previous job. I figured something was weird because we shared a parking lot with another IT firm and I noticed their staff looked different. Later I established a relationship with HR and found out that the recruiters actively tossed any resumes with Indian looking names in the trash because they assumed they’d have need a visa and had problems with English. Needless to say as a senior engineer, I confronted HR and offered to help with recruiting. We went from 1 to 5 highly qualified Indian engineers that same year. What am I saying? Diversity is your fault. Senior engineers and EMs are directly responsible for not advocating for others! Things you can do: - Actually meet new people who don’t look like you - Help a junior find their next company - Join forces with other seniors and tell management and HR to be better about hiring
- racismsexism 3y ago
  [dead]
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  You were able to find a team blatantly discriminating against demographics that have not had any trouble making it into tech. Indian engineers are great, but there's really not much of a shortage of them in tech, at least not exceeding the overall shortage. We may not have enough visas, but we have plenty of Indian people that our great engineers. While it's painful to talk about, this simply isn't true for black people and women. I feel uncomfortable talking like this, but I think it's in the best interest of getting it right. It may be bad for all POC, but specifically it looks like blacks have faired poorly, as well as native americans. We know there's gender issues. I digress, but the point is that this is simple a much larger problem than what you presented. In a way there similar. It's always hard to go against racist management. The point is this is a fixable problem. Get rid of the overt racism, and just start accepting resumes from the zillion of qualified people. It's hard to talk about, but I don't think anyone familiar with the issue will disagree. There is a horrible supply problem caused by a couple centuries of horrid racism. This doesn't go away by flipping a single overt racism switch, like yours did. Are we producing enough young black, POC, and women engineers? I think the obvious answer is no. Fight the fight against racism internally, and your efforts will help, but you're never going to be able to fix it under these conditions.
ottoflux 3y ago
“No one”?!? Poorly written headline for a very thin article. Sure, lots of people who are white and deny systemic racism or the effects of it exist. That’s literally the problem we’re fighting and why we need diversity efforts.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Lets say what it is, there aren't enough African Americans in the white collar workplace. Its not that we don't have Asians, Mexicans, or Indians. At least half the companies I worked for, white people were less than 50% of the workers. Its not a current racism issue, its likely a relic of racism issue. A large number of African Americans grow up in poor areas, get terrible education, are among a non-work-ethic driven culture, and never make it to the American Dream. Repeat generation after generation. Sure there are racists from the south, but talk to an African American of privilege(middle/upper middle class) living in a city. They have little bad things to say, and mostly blame it on the individual. The issue is the zip code. You can see it in how white people living in these same areas perform.
  - ottoflux 3y ago
    you make good points but i'd argue it's both. i'm talking about the subconscious bias aspect of racism (to your point it's a relic of racism, but it's an active relic) as well - this is the very reason we need DE&I. we're 3 to 4 years into it and still non-marginalized folks don't seem to fully understand the problem. i feel like "talk to an African American of privilege" and what follows is incorrect. i know and have known a lot of well off Black friends and associates and they all have stories - there are a lot of racists in the north too, they just act a little different.
    - jaredhallen 3y ago
      My issue isn't with the ostensible spirit or intent of DEI programs. The concept sounds great. The problem is the corporate implementations are transparently inauthentic and insincere. It's abundantly clear that the real intent is PR and compliance, not some altruistic desire for fairness.
xyzelement 3y ago
Something I've recognized as I grew up and had kids especially, is that your real outcomes in life are often the product of the expectations placed on you. Eg - I grew up in a poor, 50% immigrant area in Brooklyn. The Russian and Asian immigrant kids had better outcomes than their American peers despite fewer resources because their parents kicked their ass and failure / slacking wasn't an option. Whether perfect meritocracy exists or not isn't the point, the point is to maximize your own input to increase your own chances. In contrast I see a lot of modern approach to problem solving is to lower expectations to make things more equal for some. But I expect that this lowering (eg: no need for SATs, no more selective magnet schools, easier admissions by race, etc) will have a negative effect, the opposite of the immigrant mentality described above. I see a similar trend with lowering enforcement of some laws because the enforcement appears racist based on who's doing the crime. By making it "okay" you are perversely worsening those people's lives in the long run. It's a little sad because I am sure all of this comes from a good place but it doesn't truly elevate people.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  What is it that you want for your children, and how do you plan on ensuring that they achieve that?
  - konschubert 3y ago
    There is no “ensuring” in life, only giving your best
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    One thing I can articulate - I want my children to have high expectations for themselves and be "ambitious" about persuing hard opportunities in front of them. Versus having victim mentality. One thing that's obvious is my wife and I both exemplify this attitude, as do our immigrant parents (eg her dad went from broke immigrant to international biz owner). I also think raising your kid on a religious context (religion is at its base the idea that your choices matter a lot) is a positive. I say this as someone who grew up an atheist, but that's another thing we are doing.
- deleted 3y ago
tjpnz 3y ago
If your interest is only skin deep they work great. I once worked at a place which might well be considered a poster child for racial diversity. Didn't matter that practically everyone came from a wealthy background and had everything in life served to them on a silver platter. I even mentored a "racially diverse" new grad whose father knew the CEO from Harvard. Some would ask questions about what we were doing to aid social mobility but it tended to fall on deaf ears.
sacnoradhq 3y ago
This is from the WSJ, a right-wing publication pushing a political agenda rather than real, prevailing sentiment. There are companies who proscribed "We will hire from demographic A to reach B% in C years." who put too much weight on identity attributes during economic boom hire-fests, but those days won't return at least until 2030 as competency and need are now central. You can tell when some teams haven't de-biased their hiring processes when they are and remain too homologous in either thought, values, or possibly appearance. The goal of hiring shouldn't be to appease today's fashionable virtues of other people, but to hire the best who are cooperative enough to get along, regardless of what they look like or where they came from. Unless you're going to reinterview everyone, reducing bias uniformly and fairly in the now and forward must be more important than putting a thumb on the scale for the past while ignoring merit because there is no solution to bias of the past except to see if it's really happening and find ways to stop it from happening, i.e., resume contact detail blinding, normalize or drop regional writing signals, reformat resumes with the same font, ask everyone the same questions, standardizing peer interviewing format down to a grid layout with scoring, and so on.
jcpsimmons 3y ago
This is an important discussion to have. The fact that this and another article about Harvard race-based admissions yesterday were both insta-flagged suggest that many don’t even want us to have the conversation.
zephrx1111 3y ago
Workplace AA is the least I’m concerning about. Any biased candidate selection method will be punished by market.

104 points by agomez314 3y ago

pointtheobvious 3y ago

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pointtheobvious 3y ago
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down_vote_me 3y ago

[flagged]

lil-lugger 3y ago

Anyone who thinks we should just live in a “pure meritocracy” is a little bit delusional. Maybe they’ve played too many RPG’s where players have stats and you can sort by attribute and pick the best. If that was the case in the real world there would no job interview, just sharing statistics and picking the candidates with the highest numbers. Employers have to evaluate people on how they will perform BEFORE they perform, on subjective grounds. So for any number of reasons, probably subconsciously, people who are more unattractive, short, or possibly of a different race than the hirer can be perceived to be qualified but ‘not a good fit’. There are always ways around excluding people without it seeming discriminatory. That’s not to say there should be quotas, but to think there’s no issue because we should just pick the best candidate never stop to ask “how? How do you know they are the best?”.

DagsEoress 3y ago
> “how? How do you know they are the best?”. The answer is you don't. But just because the system isn't perfect doesn't mean we should just throw it in the blender. By that logic we should get rid of "free" health care / safety nets in Western European countries. It mostly works but it also gets exploited. How can you know people aren't exploiting the system? You can't know for sure, but we can do our best to find out.
- Xeamek 3y ago
  But nobody is saying that. Having hiring quotas is far from throwing entire system out the window.
  - raxxorraxor 3y ago
    But it would still be better without hiring quotas because they cannot constructively improve the situation. You will habe to leave that up to hiring.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  Your comparison is inane. What’s the connection between dei and getting rid of safety nets? Not to mention that dei is not inherently unmeritocratic to begin with
  - DagsEoress 3y ago
    > What’s the connection between dei and getting rid of safety nets There is none, nowhere in my comment did I say that. > Not to mention that dei is not inherently unmeritocratic to begin with It literally is. Meritocracy, people are hired by their merit. DEI, people are hired by representation. Equality versus Equity, polar opposites.
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      You misunderstand what DEI is. It means diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s not incompatible with meritocracy. For example you have similar candidates, take the one who’s least represented in your org. Or you have a “pure” meritocracy, but you spend more energy and money sending your recruiters to areas and schools whose students are more likely to not be represented at your company. If you can’t understand that you shouldn’t be commenting on DEI stuff.
      - DagsEoress 3y ago
        > For example you have similar candidates, take the one who’s least represented in your org. This would be the only edge case in which it would "work". And even then you're still systematically rejecting someone based on who they are rather than what they can do. I'd rather lose to a coin flip. > Or you have a “pure” meritocracy, but you spend more energy and money sending your recruiters to areas and schools whose students are more likely to not be represented at your company. Then it's not pure, because you're actively avoiding people. > If you can’t understand that you shouldn’t be commenting on DEI stuff. Regardless if your statement is true or not, you believe we should exclude people from discussions because they might not have enough knowledge on the subject? (Ironic for a topic on inclusion)
racismsexism 3y ago
[dead]
civilized 3y ago
I agree that we need to take seriously the history of racism in the US and try to mitigate its impacts. From what I have seen, the consideration of race in admissions and hiring doesn't remove bias, but adds a bias in an opposite direction. I have talked to people who have been involved in hiring processes, and many can cite examples where candidates from URM groups have been given a great deal more credit than non-URM candidates were given for a similar or higher level of achievement/qualification. It's hardly a secret that in job markets with a high emphasis on racial diversity, the highly underrepresented minority is often a hot commodity who is judged by a different standard. I think it's valid to argue that this bias is worth it. But we should not pretend that we are simply remedying bias or pushing people towards a more fair evaluation of each candidate for their individual qualities. What we're doing is adding an opposite bias in an attempt to approach closer to proportional racial representation. There's also reasonable room to question if we should essentially equate diversity to population-proportional racial representation, as we do today. This is also a bias which may take away from seeking diversity along other lines, such as class/upbringing, age, and being outside traditional recruiting networks for the job.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lapcat 3y ago
  > This is also a bias which may take away from seeking diversity along other lines, such as class/upbringing, age, and being outside traditional recruiting networks for the job. I'm glad you mentioned age. Age discrimination and lack of age diversity is a big problem in tech. Whenever there's a discussion about underrepresented groups in tech, isn't it funny how older people are rarely considered?
  - civilized 3y ago
    > Whenever there's a discussion about underrepresented groups in tech, isn't it funny how older people are rarely considered? IMHO, it's because organizations don't really value diversity in the ordinary sense of the term. They value proportional representation of all demographic groups that have legal standing to sue them for civil rights violations, and who have organized interest groups who stand ready to do so. DEI exists to align the organization towards this objective.
AmericanChopper 3y ago
This “pure meritocracy” argument simply boils down to the fact that it’s not possible to build a system that perfectly measures how prospective candidates will perform in the future. Really, all businesses and institutions should be free to innovate their own methodologies for doing that, and live with whatever consequences they produce, with the governments role being to regulate the limits of permissible discrimination. Race has been a class legally protected from discrimination for quite some time now, and it’s honestly pretty sad that it’s taken this long to get a ruling on this open and unapologetic racial discrimination.
- 307sar 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    Well I don’t think that’s true. You should be allowed to racially discriminate about who’s allowed to come into your home. Employers and universities should not be allowed to racially discriminate about who they employ/admit. My point is simply that the “perfect meritocracy doesn’t exist” argument is pointless. Screening candidates is a problem for businesses to solve, and the only metric they should be incentivised to optimise for is the outcomes produced for the institution/business.
    - 307sar 3y ago
      [flagged]
yes_really 3y ago
The difference is that employers at least *try* to pick the best candidate by ignoring characteristics such as attractiveness and height. For race and gender, it's the opposite: employers actively give preference to certain races and to women.

imperio59 3y ago

To fix representation of minorities in fields where they are currently under represented, we need to start by fixing our school system. You cannot fix discrimination of one kind by applying discrimination of another kind. The role of the supreme court is not to fix the inequalities of our society, it is to uphold the law and constitution of the US. This is my favorite quote from the opinion on this case from Justice Thomas's concurring opinion: "Both experience and logic have vindicated the Constitution’s colorblind rule and confirmed that the universities’ new narrative cannot stand. Despite the Court’s hope in Grutter (previous case) that universities would voluntarily end their race-conscious programs and further the goal of racial equality, the opposite appears increasingly true. Harvard and UNC now forthrightly state that they racially discriminate when it comes to admitting students, arguing that such discrimination is consistent with this Court’s precedents. And they,along with today’s dissenters, defend that discrimination as good. More broadly, it is becoming increasingly clear that discrimination on the basis of race—often packaged as “affirmative action” or “equity” programs—are based on the benighted notion “that it is possible to tell when discrimination helps, rather than hurts, racial minorities.” [...] “Purchased at the price of immeasurable human suffering,” the Fourteenth Amendment recognizes that classifications based on race lead to ruinous consequences for individuals and the Nation."

koonsolo 3y ago
> we need to start by fixing our school system This is indeed the case. As a European it's very clear to me what the real cause of your problem is: property taxes. In Europe, schools are funded nationally, which means there isn't much difference between one school or the other. 'private schools' are not really a thing here because all of our public schools are good enough. In US, your property taxes decide what kind of neighbourhood you grow up in. Good neighbourhood, good schools, bad neighbourhood, bad schools. This is huge. The social mobility index is not lying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Pinegulf 3y ago

https://archive.is/apwvi https://archive.is/apwvi

hospitalJail 3y ago

Darn, the person who commented that non-logical people get to make political decisions deleted their post. I wanted to comment that I think leadership and management are pretty good overall. There is some minimum standard of merit that needs to be achieved, so these aren't the people that are illogical. I sat next to HR at 2 jobs. At one they were behind a locked door, so I only met HR people. The other I was on the other side of the cubicle. Yikes, HR is the illogical part of the chain. Not that they always do a bad job, but you hear some of the things they say, and you can clearly tell they have no problem using bias against people.

_8j50 3y ago
The logic is clear, they implement executive's will. Sometimes not getting sued or not having a bad reputation is what they are after.

Yizahi 3y ago

[flagged]

tomrod 3y ago

I can't read the text of the article due to paywall. But the headline seems a bit on the nose. I'm personally happy about diversity efforts at work -- it's helped my software development and interactions by introducing the ideas, best practices, and pitfalls related to accessibility, localization, and messaging.

bejd 3y ago
https://archive.is/apwvi https://archive.is/apwvi
- tomrod 3y ago
  Much obliged.

hospitalJail 3y ago

I remember a new girl freshly out of college, got an award for something, she was among some people who filed patents, developed new technologies, worked insane hours for free, etc... When she got called to the stage, she was embarrassed. Our group had people working 10 hour days to fix some stuff, yet this person who had been at the company for 6 months and barely finished training, was recognized as award worthy. Whoever made that decision didn't realize that she shined a spotlight on how dumb it all was. I'm not sure if the 1000 people in the room realized how merit-less it was, but our group of ~30 people all knew. I'm sure the girl went on to do great things, she was bright, friendly, and a hard worker. It made me realize that merit is not what the company was necessarily looking for.

ofcourseyoudo 3y ago
>I'm sure the girl went on to do great things, she was bright, friendly, and a hard worker. You made your own counter-point here. Many entrenched systems would never have given her a chance to begin with. Maybe she got some advantages early on here career, we can take the tally of them if you're willing to quantify all of the explicit and implicit advantages that her straight white male counterparts got along the way as well (including not having coworkers project "embarrassment" onto them when they receive an accolade). Sounds like the system elevated a bright young talent, recognized her, and by your assumption, she went on to be well-deserving of the opportunity.

_8j50 3y ago

This is true, it all feels so artificial and forced. But the sleight-of-hand trick WSJ and others are trying to pull here as part of their strategy now that they got rid of college affirmative action is that while nobody likes DEI b.s., it goes beyond not liking into actually harmed territory for anyone that's a minority at the work place. And companies do get sued a lot over this stuff. Maybe you don't see this in office environments these days but I had worked in places where the DEI people told us stories of nooses being left at someones locker, watemelons, racial epithets,etc... Elon is infamous at his companies for being "anti-woke" and getting sued and losing like 5 times over overt racism at his companies. So, while I look forward to less bullshitty ways of educating people and making everyone feel welcome and get a fair shot at promotions, much of the US still has a LOT of people who are esentially insecure jerks that are more or less racist. Only slighty related: if I hear someone say "woke" or "anti-woke" these days, by default I assume they are racists with a foot out of the closet. I didn't care much about college affirmative action but this tells me along with book banning there is some fascist conspiracy about. And in my book the only good fascist/nazi is a dead one so I hope I am wrong about this because it means the future bleak in the US, just look at the upvotes to this post. In my observation, the problem is C-level execs and lawyers whose goal is to improve reputation and avoid lawsuit or chances of winning lawsuits. These people are making DEI shitty. I have even seen people get downsized but a new role with the same responsibility get created to avoid lawsuit because the person is a minority. I have seen people of the same exact demographic get interviewed along with a token person of the exact opposite demographic to avoid a suit. I have heard manangers ask "I only want recruiters to send me <insert minority> female for this role" and then they hire the worst candidates possible. It's not HR but litigation centric culuture that's the problem.

keithalewis 3y ago
You know what's bad? Racism. Those people should be cancelled! You know what's great? Tribalism. How about them $SportsTeam! Let's have more multibillion dollar businesses to encourage people to hate anyone who doesn't agree $SportsTeam is the greatest! We should have rich old white men own them and give them a pass on DEI. It might hit their bottom line if they were not allowed to hire the best players in the market. Can you imagine a world where ROWM are not allowed their god-given right to exploit our quirks of evolutionary development? We could not enrich them further by gathering in large groups to celebrate our $SportsTeam tribe and spew hate on the $OtherTeam tribe. Maybe even beat them up in the parking lot after the game if we lost. Go tribalism!

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago

I can’t see past the paywall but it brings up the Supreme Court case. Two of the things that confused me about that case and how it would apply to the workplace: - it only excluded race as a consideration for admissions. Why race only? You can argue someone who is disabled who gets in might have “taken” a slot from a more qualified able-bodied person. Similarly, you can argue women athlete scholars of sufficiently unsupported sports are “taking” a slot from a more qualified man somewhere. It’s weird to make race the sole exception when the general argument applies. I wouldn’t even know how to apply this to work! - why did the Supreme Court make an exception for military school? All the logic applies except it’s okay if black/Hispanic people edge out white peoples to go to war? Does this mean also the diversity initiatives in government contractors/department of defense funded research is ok?

mjburgess 3y ago
The SC was only asked to consider race. It isnt writing legislation, it's asked a very specific question: is race-based admissions policy consistent with the existing body of interpretations of the constitution. It's answer: No.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lucozade 3y ago
> Why race only? Because it was only asked to consider race and only for admission to academic institutions. So that's what it did. > why did the Supreme Court make an exception for military school? Because the Solicitor General argued that the military could have considerations different to civilian academic institutions such as national security. And the Supreme Court agreed that they might so included the exception.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  If racial diversity is a national security implication why shouldn’t all educational facilities foster this? many labs take national defense money. It makes no sense to me to claim ensuring a diverse population is a matter of national security therefore we should make sure civilians don’t do it.

TexanFeller 3y ago

Diversity is the new branding, but it's the same old affirmative action programs, with the same arguments for and against.

slowmovintarget 3y ago
I still despise the evolution of the terminology in this area. A workforce can be diverse, an individual cannot. Diversity is a measure of the differences across a group of people, not whether or not one person belongs to a special category. It is a comparison of two groups, not an individual to the group.

endisneigh 3y ago

I mean, a situation in which everyone is happy with diversity efforts would be one in which such efforts would be unnecessary to begin with.

throwaway22032 3y ago

Statistics "memes" along the lines of "people from X and Y are Z likely to go on to do A" are probably the most misleading and tiring factoids out there. All that they are useful for is for whiners to complain that they weren't blessed with being 6ft6 or beautiful or a certain skin colour or whatever else. In the real world people who actually achieve things just go out and do it. They're not sitting about wondering whether middle management at XYZ prefers working class kids or black supermodels.

Xeamek 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  Also known as "kill yourself now to avoid surviving".

larata_media 3y ago

It’s not that people don’t want diversity, it’s that the pendulum of inclusiveness has swung to the opposite end; where it can only be recognized as exclusiveness. Diversity of skin color has been achieved for the most part, but now it’s extended to exclusive thought patterns which is not what diversity should be about. Diversity of thought should be embraced but that seems to be the exact opposite of what’s happening in these corporate “diversity” programs and people recognize that as a farce.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
> Diversity of skin color has been achieved for the most part Source? In tech at least this is very much untrue. Black and Hispanic people in my experience don’t appear in tech as often as their population in general might indicate.
- larata_media 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    Flamewar and/or snarky comments are not ok here, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  You aren't talking about skin color then. There are plenty of Asians of various colors of brown that could pass as Hispanic. My Indian boss used to have Mexicans come up to him speaking Spanish. You are talking about Race. Anyway, with each round of layoffs, I've seen companies get more diverse in race. It could be HR being racist... or HR paying African Americans and Hispanic people less and they didn't get cut first. Yikes yikes yikes.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
LMAO, this is where HN really loses me. I'm unable to understand how anyone could possibly think where anywhere close to achieving diversity of skin color. This is absolute insanity, and I'm expected to pretend this is a reasonable idea and debate against it.

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago

TFA: "No one is happy about diversity efforts at work" Also TFA: "the amount of attention their companies pay to increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work is ... about right ... 44%"

Roark66 3y ago

Looking at this from across the ocean this whole thing looks like it could be an onion article. The society shouldn't be racist. The fact some people still are is not an excuse for rasism in the opposite direction. Those things don't cancel out When I heard "US's supreme court decides race can't be taken into account for accepting university applicants" I thought good for them. And then comes the "onion" part. A president coming from a party that has been trying to champion equality for decades goes in front of the mic and says the most bizzare thing. That he is opposed to equality, he is for race metrics to remain and he even entertained a thought to undermine the authority of one of the most important bodies in the democratic system by saying " this is not a normal court". Up until now I lived under a mistaken assumption a constitutional body is legal when it rules in our favor and lacks "the rule of law" when it rules against was a uniquely European thing. It would be funny if it wasn't sad.

WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
I can’t help but think that Americans are so deeply and inherently racists that they are only capable of fighting racism by building another racist framework to do it (and, of course, fail). A symptom is that the most visible so-called anti-racist people just won’t shut up about the very concept of race, as if they are okay with it, they just want their particular flavor of people to be up top and oppress the living shit out of their former oppressors, that should show ‘em.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Eh, I visited Europe and the first question everyone asked me: "Where are you from?" It was unanimous. In the US, I usually hear "Where do you work?" or lesser: "What are your Hobbies?" The US judges people on how much money they make, primarily. I've heard in Europe you are judged based on your position. In Japan, based on where you are on the ladder. When I went to Mexico, I stuck out like a sore thumb. There was no hiding I was an outsider. In the US, you could not figure out if someone has lived next to you for 10 years based on their ability to speak english, let alone skin color. I wouldn't confuse people with good intentions with racism. I think in the future, we will have something like this, but more income oriented.

RobotToaster 3y ago

Most studies have shown that diversity training either does nothing to decrease racial bias, or is actively harmful[0]; The only intervention proven to decrease racial bias is union membership[1], which unsurprisingly executives don't like to promote. [0]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/dei-trainings-effective.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/dei-trainings-eff... [1]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12537 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12537

leetrout 3y ago
Makes sense. Its a class war not a race war.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  Though I do not disagree, the correlation is sadly very high.
0xParlay 3y ago
[flagged]
jl2718 3y ago
Nobody’s trying to decrease racial bias. It’s compliance training.
matrix_overload 3y ago
Well, yeah. Working together towards a common goal. Who would have thought? /s
_8j50 3y ago
It still helps as much as it sucks, because it tells overt racists where the company stands. And lawsuit avoidance means enforcing it.

jollofricepeas 3y ago

Indians were not hired at my previous job. I figured something was weird because we shared a parking lot with another IT firm and I noticed their staff looked different. Later I established a relationship with HR and found out that the recruiters actively tossed any resumes with Indian looking names in the trash because they assumed they’d have need a visa and had problems with English. Needless to say as a senior engineer, I confronted HR and offered to help with recruiting. We went from 1 to 5 highly qualified Indian engineers that same year. What am I saying? Diversity is your fault. Senior engineers and EMs are directly responsible for not advocating for others! Things you can do: - Actually meet new people who don’t look like you - Help a junior find their next company - Join forces with other seniors and tell management and HR to be better about hiring

racismsexism 3y ago
[dead]
P_I_Staker 3y ago
You were able to find a team blatantly discriminating against demographics that have not had any trouble making it into tech. Indian engineers are great, but there's really not much of a shortage of them in tech, at least not exceeding the overall shortage. We may not have enough visas, but we have plenty of Indian people that our great engineers. While it's painful to talk about, this simply isn't true for black people and women. I feel uncomfortable talking like this, but I think it's in the best interest of getting it right. It may be bad for all POC, but specifically it looks like blacks have faired poorly, as well as native americans. We know there's gender issues. I digress, but the point is that this is simple a much larger problem than what you presented. In a way there similar. It's always hard to go against racist management. The point is this is a fixable problem. Get rid of the overt racism, and just start accepting resumes from the zillion of qualified people. It's hard to talk about, but I don't think anyone familiar with the issue will disagree. There is a horrible supply problem caused by a couple centuries of horrid racism. This doesn't go away by flipping a single overt racism switch, like yours did. Are we producing enough young black, POC, and women engineers? I think the obvious answer is no. Fight the fight against racism internally, and your efforts will help, but you're never going to be able to fix it under these conditions.

ottoflux 3y ago

“No one”?!? Poorly written headline for a very thin article. Sure, lots of people who are white and deny systemic racism or the effects of it exist. That’s literally the problem we’re fighting and why we need diversity efforts.

hospitalJail 3y ago
Lets say what it is, there aren't enough African Americans in the white collar workplace. Its not that we don't have Asians, Mexicans, or Indians. At least half the companies I worked for, white people were less than 50% of the workers. Its not a current racism issue, its likely a relic of racism issue. A large number of African Americans grow up in poor areas, get terrible education, are among a non-work-ethic driven culture, and never make it to the American Dream. Repeat generation after generation. Sure there are racists from the south, but talk to an African American of privilege(middle/upper middle class) living in a city. They have little bad things to say, and mostly blame it on the individual. The issue is the zip code. You can see it in how white people living in these same areas perform.
- ottoflux 3y ago
  you make good points but i'd argue it's both. i'm talking about the subconscious bias aspect of racism (to your point it's a relic of racism, but it's an active relic) as well - this is the very reason we need DE&I. we're 3 to 4 years into it and still non-marginalized folks don't seem to fully understand the problem. i feel like "talk to an African American of privilege" and what follows is incorrect. i know and have known a lot of well off Black friends and associates and they all have stories - there are a lot of racists in the north too, they just act a little different.
  - jaredhallen 3y ago
    My issue isn't with the ostensible spirit or intent of DEI programs. The concept sounds great. The problem is the corporate implementations are transparently inauthentic and insincere. It's abundantly clear that the real intent is PR and compliance, not some altruistic desire for fairness.

xyzelement 3y ago

Something I've recognized as I grew up and had kids especially, is that your real outcomes in life are often the product of the expectations placed on you. Eg - I grew up in a poor, 50% immigrant area in Brooklyn. The Russian and Asian immigrant kids had better outcomes than their American peers despite fewer resources because their parents kicked their ass and failure / slacking wasn't an option. Whether perfect meritocracy exists or not isn't the point, the point is to maximize your own input to increase your own chances. In contrast I see a lot of modern approach to problem solving is to lower expectations to make things more equal for some. But I expect that this lowering (eg: no need for SATs, no more selective magnet schools, easier admissions by race, etc) will have a negative effect, the opposite of the immigrant mentality described above. I see a similar trend with lowering enforcement of some laws because the enforcement appears racist based on who's doing the crime. By making it "okay" you are perversely worsening those people's lives in the long run. It's a little sad because I am sure all of this comes from a good place but it doesn't truly elevate people.

hotpotamus 3y ago
What is it that you want for your children, and how do you plan on ensuring that they achieve that?
- konschubert 3y ago
  There is no “ensuring” in life, only giving your best
- xyzelement 3y ago
  One thing I can articulate - I want my children to have high expectations for themselves and be "ambitious" about persuing hard opportunities in front of them. Versus having victim mentality. One thing that's obvious is my wife and I both exemplify this attitude, as do our immigrant parents (eg her dad went from broke immigrant to international biz owner). I also think raising your kid on a religious context (religion is at its base the idea that your choices matter a lot) is a positive. I say this as someone who grew up an atheist, but that's another thing we are doing.
deleted 3y ago

tjpnz 3y ago

If your interest is only skin deep they work great. I once worked at a place which might well be considered a poster child for racial diversity. Didn't matter that practically everyone came from a wealthy background and had everything in life served to them on a silver platter. I even mentored a "racially diverse" new grad whose father knew the CEO from Harvard. Some would ask questions about what we were doing to aid social mobility but it tended to fall on deaf ears.

sacnoradhq 3y ago

This is from the WSJ, a right-wing publication pushing a political agenda rather than real, prevailing sentiment. There are companies who proscribed "We will hire from demographic A to reach B% in C years." who put too much weight on identity attributes during economic boom hire-fests, but those days won't return at least until 2030 as competency and need are now central. You can tell when some teams haven't de-biased their hiring processes when they are and remain too homologous in either thought, values, or possibly appearance. The goal of hiring shouldn't be to appease today's fashionable virtues of other people, but to hire the best who are cooperative enough to get along, regardless of what they look like or where they came from. Unless you're going to reinterview everyone, reducing bias uniformly and fairly in the now and forward must be more important than putting a thumb on the scale for the past while ignoring merit because there is no solution to bias of the past except to see if it's really happening and find ways to stop it from happening, i.e., resume contact detail blinding, normalize or drop regional writing signals, reformat resumes with the same font, ask everyone the same questions, standardizing peer interviewing format down to a grid layout with scoring, and so on.

jcpsimmons 3y ago

This is an important discussion to have. The fact that this and another article about Harvard race-based admissions yesterday were both insta-flagged suggest that many don’t even want us to have the conversation.

zephrx1111 3y ago

Workplace AA is the least I’m concerning about. Any biased candidate selection method will be punished by market.