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Tech's DEI backlash is here

130 points by coloneltcb 3y ago

cncivubyv 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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xvector 3y ago
> DEI [ensures] a firm or company attracts a diverse pool of talent, hires and promotes people without bias, and fosters positive working environments so all individuals can thrive. What an incredibly biased take by the author, who clearly has not worked at one of these companies and seen DEI in action. Having actually worked at big tech companies with DEI initiatives, there have been many instances when we have had to lower the hiring bar to meet diversity requirements. What it really fosters in a company is resentment, both due to hiring bar changes and also as the actual DEI job function is mostly useless but gets paid quite a bit, and in times of layoffs, is often not targeted over engineering functions due to politics and PR. The whole DEI profession feels like a grift on top of the hard work of those that actually drove a company to success. This is not to say a company shouldn't consider the diversity of users when building a product, UX, etc, but it's absurd when you're hiring a backend engineer and your team has to meet some vague diversity quota.
- yetanotherdood 3y ago
  > there have been many instances when we have had to lower the hiring bar to meet diversity requirements. Where have you worked, if you don't mind me asking?
- rurp 3y ago
  That quote is not only biased, the "without bias" part is strictly wrong. Treating people differently based solely on their race or gender is a core part of most DEI programs. Just because the proponents think it's "good" discrimination or bias, doesn't give those words the opposite meaning.
- feedforward 3y ago
  > a grift on top of the hard work of those that actually drove a company to success Where does the profits and dividends sent off to the idle class aristocracy fit into this constellation? Your resentment seems to mostly be that some dufferent people might be at the workplace.
  - xvector 3y ago
    I am fine with different competent people at the workplace. I am frustrated with having to forcibly hire a no-hire candidate to meet a diversity quota. I am annoyed by the fact that DEI is not targeted by layoffs but ostensibly contribute less to the company than engineering. I find it ridiculous that no one can criticize these initiatives without being labeled racist and fired by HR.
    - MyShawdowySelf 3y ago
      Again... more data of 1... At my company DEI was very VERY much targeted by the layoff...
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    I am a straight white male and for 22 years of career I have never, not once, received profits and dividends as a working programmer. Do with that info what you will. My resentment stems from the fact that I have witnessed people being hired with 3x more lenient interviews and end up doing 5-10% of what I do while being paid 80-90% of the money. Of course I will resent that. Every working person would be resentful of that.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  I feel like you should take some responsibility for your own resentment rather than passively saying another party has "fostered" it. I'm not a fan of corporate and especially tech DEI initiatives either, I don't think they're an effective way to achieve their stated goals. But the hiring bar thing just does not match my experience at all. Some of the worst teams I've been on have been behind some of the most grueling & "selective" interview processes and some of the best teams have had lax ones. Given how poor we are at actually predicting who is going to be a good coworker we might as well allow some other backgrounds in.
  - xvector 3y ago
    > Some of the worst teams I've been on have been behind some of the most grueling & "selective" interview processes By this process we should just drop hiring bars altogether. But for every team I've worked at, hiring bars clearly worked. We filter out maybe 95% of candidates and none of them would work for our team. Everyone on our team is incredible at what they do. When I had to lower the hiring bar, it was destructive. We hired a person that was inexperienced and could not keep up with the rest of us. They did not have the domain knowledge others on our team had. They were eager, friendly, and personable, but they required a longer period of extensive coaching get up to a level we would consider adequate.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - dude187 3y ago
        What about his comment implies that? I don't get that at all
    - justinclift 3y ago
      > They were eager, friendly, and personable, but they required a longer period of extensive coaching get up to a level we would consider adequate. Did they end up being productive, and hopefully worth the effort? --- As a data point I'm ok when hiring new people with less-than-desired level of experience (within reason ;>), as long as their general attitude and willingness to learn are solid. Those last two mean they'll get the hang of things given some appropriate guidance, so it works out ok.
- deleted 3y ago
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- MyShawdowySelf 3y ago
  > Having actually worked at big tech companies with DEI initiatives, there have been many instances when we have had to lower the hiring bar to meet diversity requirements. Since we are throwing random samples of 1 on the internet, having been involved into some of those initiative at a large big tech company : Not lowering the bar was pretty much always top of mind, and we always made sure to be fair to ALL candidate. Most of the initiative where around reaching a larger pool of candidate (for example reaching out to more school than we use too) and also addressing what looked to us like information deficiencies : Someone in an IVY league school for example just by osmosis will absorb a lot of the what/why/how companies look for in an employee and therefore can better show the required characteristics. Every generation of engineer always feels like the engineer after them are somewhat the consequence of lowering the bar... We used to think this when we started recruiting outside of ivy league, then we started lowering the importance of formal education at all ettc... etc... You would be amazed at the difference good interview preps makes to someone who was never exposed to it. > What it really fosters in a company is resentment, both due to hiring bar changes and also as the actual DEI job function is mostly useless but gets paid quite a bit From experience, those type of feeling are usually a consequence of lack of information and exposure of what actually goes on in the meetings. You mentioned you worked at the companies with those initiative, but i am not sure how many time you have actually been involved in the design of those programs. Tech jobs in large tech companies is very competitive job. Everything is always framed as a competitive advantage and can sometime wrap one's perceptions. Companies spend a bunch of moneys on all kind of weird stuff. And finally let me be clear, i am a software engineer myself. I do believe that pretty much anything HR does that's not purely the day to day of employee is a grift. Hell the bigger the companies, the more grift around : from management "training" that somewhat requires fancy restaurant. Team building exercise that somewhat require a bunch of very introverted engineer to go to a concert non of them are interested in etc... etc... DEI is not different, yes grifter gonna grift and some people are just in it for themselve. So can DEI be better/ more efficient : yes, is there a lot of virtue signaling and fakeness around yes, are we somewhat lowering the bar because we like having diverse people around NO, and for having witness the difference that those program can be in the lives of young and new people in the industry... i think they worth keeping around even if a better more pragmatic form.
newsclues 3y ago
[flagged]
fwungy 3y ago
Here's the problem: you can't change the hiring rules for more equity unless it applies to everyone equally. Otherwise you're just trading one arbitrary class for another. You need to basically destroy seniority and job protection for all, to make it fair. Furthermore, the people brought into replace the oppressive class must be held to a high standard so they don't repeat the offending behavior. DEI agendas can only work if the displaced people (i.e. white males), see a genuinely better alternative rising in its place and are not asked to pay the price for their skin color and gender for their entire lives. I suspect white males would be far more accepting of DEI if it wasn't a lifetime penalty they felt they had to struggle against, but just a few years.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  DEI is a way to say you did something, without doing the expensive thing that is really required, which is extensive wealth redistribution. Fixing labor laws, minimum wages, parental leave, cash or securing good housing, etc is way more expensive. And a lot of it is not solvable in a timeline of a few decades, it would be a slow multi generational change.
  - Zanneth 3y ago
    I don't think giving a bunch of free money to people is a good solution either.
deleted 3y ago
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zozbot234 3y ago
The pipeline problem in "tech" is absolutely massive. Most DEI efforts inside existing firms are doing very little if anything to address this while introducing toxic and prejudiced attitudes of their own, so that part of the 'backlash' is quite understandable. But denying altogether that a problem exists is not.
- MightyBuzzard 3y ago
  Sure. That's a perfectly legit criticism. It's not, however, an excuse for the terrible way things have been done. If you want to fix a problem, you fix the original cause. You do not come along at the very end and adjust the values to where you think they should be.
lopkeny12ko 3y ago
DEI as a philosophy is fundamentally flawed. Its whole premise is alleviating racism in the workplace, yet its practical effect is giving certain races a favorable edge in the hiring process, independent of merit. Is this not in itself inherently racist? I raised this with colleagues on a few separate ocassions and was promptly shunned, yet they didn't have an answer. Most recently when he hired an engineer from one of these "favorable races" even when half of the interview panel recommended a no-hire.
- xvector 3y ago
  Yes, hiring a no-hire engineer to meet DEI quotas is completely unacceptable, but who is going to risk their job to suggest that? A culture of fear has been created around speaking out against stuff like this. Your coworkers probably agree with you, but conversations critical of DEI efforts in the workplace are radioactive as HR will come down on you for being racist or whatever. Thus, the DEI bubble in any corporation is completely insulated from checks and balances or internal critical feedback.
- deleted 3y ago
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- anonporridge 3y ago
  DEI and affirmative action are systemic racism in a very literal sense.
- rglover 3y ago
  > Is this not in itself inherently racist? Yes. It's assuming that the non-white person is in some way incompetent or lesser than (soft bigotry of low expectations) and needs a boost from the feigned-benevolence of the white man (or opportunistic "person of color"). FWIW, I'm mixed-race (white/black) and was mouth-agape at how this got as far as it did the past few years.
  - Hnrobert42 3y ago
    I don’t think it assumes that the candidate is in any way not as qualified. It assumes the candidate is not as likely to get hired because of bias in the hiring process.
sdsd 3y ago
Oof. I bet people are reticent to post any comments here. That's good - it's hard to post about this topic in a way that doesn't detract from the overall tone and quality of HN. No one wants to post some James Damore screed decrying the longhouse, nor some 2010s style social justice screed. No matter which side you argue, you'll get a 1,000 very uninteresting comments from uncurious ideologues doing their duty to defend The Good Truth. I don't like to talk to these partisan soldiers, but rather, curious scouts having fun exploring ideas. Maybe that's because I have the privilege to not take these ideas so personally, or maybe I'm a brave hero speaking out against the HR scolds. Blegh. It's all so tired. Mom and dad arguing in the other room, about things which are surely much more important than my gameboy, but which nevertheless seem much less interesting to me. By the time I post, others will have gotten here sooner. We'll see if my pessimism is justified. I'm gonna close my laptop, since clearly I'm procrastinating instead of finishing that keylogging article I'm supposed to be writing. I'll write it at home. I miss my babies. Hope you all have a merry Christmas btw!
- EA-3167 3y ago
  IMO some topics can't be meaningfully discussed between a group of largely anonymous people, especially when the existence of... hostile interlocutors is always present. There are people I know offline who I'd avoid discussing these topics with, never mind millions of people I've never met, who's body language I can't see, and who's sincerity I can't identify. As you said, it's tiring, and there are other things to talk about online that don't inevitably lead to the worst possible outcomes.
  - MightyBuzzard 3y ago
    [dead]
  - unwise-exe 3y ago
    This seems more like a topic that can only be discussed anonymously, lest someone take offense and start a pressure campaign against one's employer. > hostile interlocutors A strong noise filter is indeed required.
givemeethekeys 3y ago
[flagged]
woodpanel 3y ago
Couple of years ago I've excelled at a lead position interview, we've arrived at the part where I get to just spitball questions about their company, team and overall culture. I just talked about how I think it is important for leaders to have an extra-fine antenna for the psychological well-being of your colleages when in a remote-first environment. The moment I uttered the word "psychological" it triggered the interviewer's DEI-driven buzzword thesaurus and he immediately started talking endlessly about their efforts for "Inclusivity" which of course stands for: if a non-straight, non-white, non-male candidate existed alongside me, they would've of course chosen him/her/... instead of me. I know that this is what it meant because this were his exact words ;-) (which he confided in me thinking I would see statements like these as a good thing and not a massive red-flag) Needless to say I declined.
- woodpanel 3y ago
  Aww, I can't say I'm surprised that this text of mine (an open confession by a major european tech company to have racist employment standards) would be getting down-votes :-) Or of course that a link criticizing DEI would get flagged on HN. Shocker.
  - thinkingemote 3y ago
    HN Guidelines suggest not going on about down votes btw "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." I agree though it's understandable if a bit sad that this submission gets flag killed. Better to stick to safer tech stuff unless there's a big story I guess! Personally I don't believe the hype of this "backlash". It smells manufactured.
blondie9x 3y ago
DEI is truly division and exclusion. It is a euphemism for new types of discrimination. Hopefully Supreme Court rules on this soon as they did on affirmative action. You cannot fix the world by implementing new types of bias and discrimination, even if it is being wrapped up and sold as diversity and inclusion or however else it is pitched. This should be unconstitutional and against the Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution period. We cannot and should not ever judge a book by its cover. We must always focus on merit, ability, and equality first. However, I do think society needs to provide social nets to help people get free education that are not able to afford it if the education has promise to lead to great career opportunities. From the film Lincoln, 'Euclid's first common notion is this: "Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other." That's a rule of mathematical reasoning. It's true because it works; has done and will always will do. In his book, Euclid says this is "self-evident." You see, there it is, even in that two-thousand year old book of mechanical law: it is a self-evident truth of things which are equal to the same thing, are equal to each other. We begin with equality. That's the origin, isn't it? That balance-that's fairness, that's justice.' We are all homo sapiens and need to be treated fairly, equally. No one should be given structural preferential bias on a public or private level. We have fought so hard for equality in this country, DEI is a step backwards in equality by sanctioning new biases.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  How many centuries do you think is an acceptable timeframe to quote people when they want a problem solved? Right now, we're about a century and half out from when Black Americans were first recognized as people, about 3/4 of a century out from when the last slaves were freed, and less than half a century past living in an overt Apartheid state. If you look at the rich and powerful, the vast majority of them started from a position that was simply impossible for POC at the time. Each generation benefits from the prosperity of the last, giving them a leg up over those without that advantage. Over time, random chance may reduce the resulting advantage to below the noise floor, but how long should those affected be expected to wait? Or maybe we can try to remedy the situation, now, for the living. Overt diversity initiatives try to solve the problem that someone from a marginalized group is likely to be less qualified than their unmarginalized peers because they've had fewer opportunities to become qualified exactly because of that marginalization. If you don't take corrective action, then you just perpetuate the problem. So, if you still are opposed to corrective action: How many centuries is enough?
ta_fang_dei 3y ago
[flagged]
throaweee123 3y ago
"Due to the current economic situation we don't have new headcount for our org however feel free to reach out if you have a diverse candidate that would be interested in joining" From a director during a all-hands. "We have already selected a male candidate for the internship so it'd be best if the next one was a woman" From my manager's manager. "Your no-hire vote should have more justification since the candidate is a woman" The reality is that we need a strong legal ruling against these type of things otherwise it is simply too "problematic" to bring this up and the risk for retaliation is insanely high.
- minerva23 3y ago
  > diverse candidate Even though some people would call me that, I've always hated that term/ideology. I wish companies would shift their mindset to, "a candidate that adds to our diversity". E.g. my current employer has done a really good job at not discriminating too much against women and attracting women, so we're well above industry average in our woman:NB:man ratio so it's more representative of the source population. We haven't done as well with regard to racial and age non-discrimination. As we do better in either of those two categories, the definition of "a candidate that adds to our diversity" will change. > We have already selected a male candidate for the internship so it'd be best if the next one was a woman This is both true and legal (though I wish it included NBs as well). The more candidates you select from a given demographic, the probability increases that your organization is participating in a discriminatory system. If it makes it more palatable, reword it in your head by tacking on at the end, "... so we can be somewhat reassured we're not contributing to gender discrimination." > Your no-hire vote should have more justification since the candidate is a woman Studies have shown even women evaluate women more harshly than they evaluate men. Extra justification is warranteed when gender is known or implied and the reviewer is likely to have unconscious bias. That's why better hiring systems try to hide gender on the initial application, so you can be reasonably reassured gender is not a factor. (That said, there are a lot of gender implications on many applications, so it can be tough to hide gender completely). > The reality is that we need a strong legal ruling against these type of things Alternatively, guaranteed job placement into one's chosen profession would help everyone indiscriminately. Trying to ban anti-discrimination efforts serves only status quo biases. > too "problematic" to bring this up and the risk for retaliation is insanely high I agree this is a risk. Surely there are some people who "bring this up" in a bigoted way and are rightfully fired, but I suspect there's a number of people who, with a gentle reframing, can see how their views are problematic and can learn the knowledge gaps that caused them to come to the wrong conclusion. From the company's perspective, they're doing anti-discrimination work, and an employee objection sounds like they're pro-discrimination. It's a bilateral failure to communicate in an at-will employment relationship.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
elzbardico 3y ago
DEI is a scam where militants secure jobs, speaking and consulting contracts by exploiting legitimate grievances in a cynical manner. Rent Seeking.
- Hnrobert42 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - aydyn 3y ago
    He’s not cynically accusing, he is accurately accusing.
    - Hnrobert42 3y ago
      Go is making a cynical assumption about their motives.
      - aydyn 3y ago
        Gp is making no such assumption of motives. Lots of people actively peddle scams while believing in the product. For a less controversial example, MLMs.
        Hnrobert42 3y ago
        GP literally says, “in a cynical manner.”
        aydyn 3y ago
        The fact that you’re trying to read the tea leaves on gp’s post rather than discuss them correctly calling out the DEI corporate scam tells all you need to know about the bad faith of this discussion.
        Hnrobert42 3y ago
KaiserPro 3y ago
I don't quite understand the anger that DEI gets, unless people assume that people are only hired because they belong to a certain group. I'm not US based, so I only see that "safe for UK" view of what $Company blast over to us. Musk and Thiel see the world in very specific ways. Because they are who they are, and the people that surround them, they will not change their view unless something drastic happens. They simply don't have to, because they are rich enough to weather any storm that requires anyone else to change tack. They have opinion gravity, where anything they say will become true, because people with the same opinions will gravitate towards them (see Taylor Swift & Kanye) Don't get me wrong, there are parts of DEI that grate my balls: the performative celebration, the "days of action" and the tedious celebrations where we pretend that we've not got a problem with women in the workplace. However, applying a bit of data to change a few procedures so that we get a better more diverse set of people joining and thriving, is fucking great. Done properly, most people wont notice.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  It's not a US thing. If you think it is, you're just not being told about it by the news sources you read. Just a few days ago the head of a large UK insurance company stated directly to Parliament that she insisted on personally reviewing any attempt to hire a "non diverse" person, whilst "diverse" (i.e. non male British) could be hired more easily. This is by far not the only such example in British life. So this type of discrimination is rampant and out in the open. If you only read the Guardian you may not be aware of it.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    > If you only read the Guardian come on, the gruaniad ceased to be a newspaper many years ago. the source: https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14007/html/ https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14007/html/ q141 actually makes a fair bit of sense, as its a insurance company who are the generally masters of hiring Henno who went to a good school, not Terry who's talented. Moreover, its not "we directly discriminate" its "I question to make sure that the procedure is followed". Which is different. Bear in mind, this is for rich senior insurance execs, who have a fucktonne of money to take people to court, you're sure as shit going to be sure that the policies they are talking about are going to be water fucking tight. Also, as its insurance, there are about 5 women who are that senior, so the CEO is going to be doing a lot of asking if the procedure is being followed.
lacker 3y ago
One great things about the tech industry is that it includes people from many sorts of backgrounds. People from many different countries and many different cultures, especially immigrants. China, India, and eastern Europe are heavily represented, but so are immigrants from other places, and second-generation immigrants. This is real diversity, and it's wrong to evaluate diversity in a way that ignores this.
justinclift 3y ago
This article submission has already been flagged. :( Seems like it's a valid thing to discuss though, as it affects a lot of people.
- gitfan86 3y ago
  [flagged]
- rurp 3y ago
  This seems to be happening more often on HN. I wish there were a way to vouch for stories that get flagged, like how we can for comments. As it stands, a small group of passionate flaggers can shut down a lot of articles on a topic they want to block.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > I wish there were a way to vouch for stories that get flagged, like how we can for comments. It's a bit manual, but emailing "hn@ycombinator.com" to ask about unflagging a particular submission can work. :)
verdverm 3y ago
My $0.02 DEI is good in principle but poorly executed. Diversity is good for business. You want people from different backgrounds and different ways of thinking. But we have had a problem in tech of hiring only people like we already have, whether it be age, attitude, or race. At the same time, the DEI initiatives went too far. I am ok with racial targets that try to bring the company numbers closer to the local geography, but not the national statistics. We also have to be mindful that the qualified candidate pool may not yet allow us to reach parity. We should also be investing in the pipeline much earlier so that the qualified candidate pool has parity with the local geography. The DEI effort we saw was an over reaction to our self created self similar selection bias. The pendulum is swinging back now, but we should not throw everything away. Maybe we can think about it like we do our software... rapid cycles of iteration and learning
- annexrichmond 3y ago
  > Diversity is good for business. It's not clear to me that it is either good or bad for business. Why is this stated as a matter of fact. And please spare me links to studies funded by special interest groups. > You want people from different backgrounds and different ways of thinking. Define "different backgrounds". Why is only reduced to the color of someone's skin or sex? Why not people who grow up as Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, etc? Or those who grew up as a single child? Or played team sports? Don't all these things play a role in shaping who someone is? Some people just like to worth with really intelligent, hard working people and don't care anything else about the person. And some people want to work with people like themselves. I probably fall into the former, but who am I to dictate what model creates the most success for a business (assuming that's the goal) If you are hiring the first 5 employees of a company you started, I think DEI will be the last thing on your mind. So why does DEI suddenly become so important 50+ employees later?
  - narutosasuke 3y ago
    > It's not clear to me that it is either good or bad for business. Why is this stated as a matter of fact. And please spare me links to studies funded by special interest groups. Not the poster and going to try to read the last sentence with positive intent. You can find the benefits in most industries where you are providing a product to be used by the general public. The design of products come from the vantage of who is designing them. Historically this has been products designed by men and made for men. From male crash test dummies, to PPE, and even medical treatments. The designers were not looking to exclude women in these cases, everyone simply has blind spots or things that they don't consider, leading to worse/less safe products. Going back to tech. How many demographic text boxes are designed by people who are not accustomed to long surnames? Security/Admin controls by someone who has never been in an abusive relationship? UX that is unusable by anyone with a disability, or simply not accustomed to technology. If you don't care about these groups using your product effectively, then it's likely fine for business. Heck, many companies don't see a problem and conclude that their customers are "wrong" or "dumb" when features are left unused or bugs are reported. > Define "different backgrounds". Why is only reduced to the color of someone's skin or sex? Why not people who grow up as Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, etc? Or those who grew up as a single child? Or played team sports? Don't all these things play a role in shaping who someone is? Everyone is different but I statistically have more in common with a white male 21-35 than any other group (even if he played team sports). Could a particular person be a deeply different 25 year old white man born in Thailand, deeply poor, and raised Jewish? I suppose, but we're all doing heuristics out there. So we use the heuristics that are both good proxies to determine "diversity of thoughts and experiences" and are easy to know. We all know that a leetcode question, or a system design interview, or a take home project isn't a perfect show of someone's technical skills, why should heuristics around diversity be any different? > Some people just like to worth with really intelligent, hard working people and don't care anything else about the person. And some people want to work with people like themselves. I probably fall into the former, but who am I to dictate what model creates the most success for a business (assuming that's the goal) It's easy to say that in the abstract, hard to actually live that. You ask most people on the street and few will say they judge people beyond their character/actions/intelligence/whatever. But we know that isn't true, people aren't that logical and detached. It also ignores what intelligent/hardworking means to each of us. Let's even ignore gender/race. I know many engineers that view front end code as "beneath them" and "not real software engineering". Are they really going to view me as a hardworking, intelligent engineer if that's what I'm doing? Heck, am I a hard working, intelligent engineer if I focus some of my time on DEI initiatives? What if I can't invert a B-tree? What if I still got hired, what would you think of me?
brvsft 3y ago
One side-effect of DEI is that I take HR even less seriously than ever. Any HR-hosted event is most likely a hard pass for me. Even if it's something I am slightly interested in (say, company event to celebrate Diwali because we do have Indian employees, and despite not being Indian, I have some tangential interest in it partly because I respect and like many of my coworkers and partly just out of curiosity), if it's hosted by HR, I am not going to bother. We had an All Hands once where they actually spent 20+ minutes talking about the Genderbread Cookie, which I found especially egregious. Not that I have a problem with the Genderbread Cookie, but an All Hands is the most expensive meeting a company can host. Why are we learning about sex and gender identity vocabulary in that meeting? Of course, this all matters a lot less than hiring and promotion processes. I don't work at a larger company, so I don't think I've seen the worst of it. Smaller businesses still have to take what they can get, and if that means the pipeline is mostly Asian men and white men, that's who gets hired.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  It's sort of weird, I (used to) work at a very large company and saw pretty much none of this, at all, over last 3 years. Even people ranting anonymously in Blind would admit we had ~nothing extreme like this. Nothing even close. Yet we were famous for it. For them, the issue was feeling they couldn't share their politic opinions without derision because their coworkers were uniformly liberal. If you tweeted this and tweeted about DEI a lot I'd say you were making it up completely. You aren't. That's very very very strange. I've never even heard of the Genderbread Cookie. I've been wondering if maybe mid-small corporation try-hards were ending up doing some distorted funhouse mirror version of "let's try to interview more minorities and champion them more publicly?" and ended up doing crazy stuff.
  - unwise-exe 3y ago
    > never even heard of the Genderbread Cookie. https://www.samkillermann.com/work/ https://www.samkillermann.com/work/ You can find it on that ^^ list, along with other projects by the same person.
AlexandrB 3y ago
I like how this debate never changes. 20 years ago everything I see in the comments was being said about "affirmative action". The only thing that's really changed is the terminology. affirmative action -> DEI PC (political correctness) -> "woke" Can't wait to see what the language for the next iteration of this looks like, because I doubt the debate itself is going away anytime soon.
- NewsyHacker 3y ago
  1990s-era affirmative action in the US was purely a decision made by company management and HR when hiring though, wasn’t it? That is, it wasn’t something that involved the average employee. So much of the frustration about DEI that I have seen on HN and elsewhere, is about all employees having to attend boring meetings or events.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  SCOTUS ruling changed a lot So have the lawsuits, and the IBM lawsuit will change even more
- Always_Anon 3y ago
  Affirmative Action != DEI PC != Woke These are different terms for different concepts, even if there's some overlap.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fwungy 3y ago
The problem of DEI is that it creates an environment of what psychologists refer to as 'Secondary Gain' Secondary Gain In psychoanalytic theory, the advantage derived from a neurosis in addition to the primary gain of relief from anxiety or internal conflict. Advantages may include extra attention, sympathy, avoidance of work, and domination of others. Such gains are secondary in that they are derived from others’ reactions to the neurosis instead of from causal factors. They often prolong the neurosis and create resistance to therapy. Also called advantage by illness. https://dictionary.apa.org/secondary-gain https://dictionary.apa.org/secondary-gain Once a hindrance becomes a benefit all sorts of incentive problems begin to arise.
yieldcrv 3y ago
Its all been poorly implemented, and would be supporters are invalidated for disagreeing with the implementation Of course those days were numbered amongst organizations that have to focus on revenue instead of social justice
ryandv 3y ago
[self-censoring for wrongthink]
- zozbot234 3y ago
  Very good point. "DEI" as commonly practiced is nothing more than the soft bigotry of low expectations, enshrined as official company policy. The outcomes are pretty much what you'd expect: Divisive, Exclusionary and Inequitable.
Always_Anon 3y ago
This is paywalled and archives are not able to get around said paywall. I am unable to view this article. This is quite an important topic go discuss because the ramifications of its implementation are everywhere. Does anyone have a link handy so that I may read the article?
Manuel_D 3y ago
One thing that's irked me about Tech DEI is that it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women, while I really only see the justifications for benefitting racial minorities on Dei grounds. The justifications for benefitting underrepresented racial minorities seem way, way stronger than gender. Black and Latin students are less likely to go to college, while women are more likely to go to college than men. Some try to justify affirmative action for women in tech on the grounds of ameliorating the pay gap, but that too has reversed and now favors women. The idea that favoring women over men is justified to the same degree as favoring disadvantaged ethnic minorities seems absurd to me. I'd be way more motivated to spend time mentoring or otherwise helping aspiring high school and college students from underprivileged backgrounds. But instead effectively all of the "DEI" I've seen has been preferences for well off White and Asian women, rather than people coming from underprivileged backgrounds I want to be clear I don't fault or resent non-URM women. Many (most?) agree that diversity initiatives ought to be focused on ethnic disparities. These women also had no agency over these policies, they are institutions by leadership, often over the objections of the supposed beneficiaries.
- hightrix 3y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, what does URM refer to in this context?
  - AwaAwa 3y ago
    Underrepresented Racial Minority
    - hightrix 3y ago
      Thank you!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Underrepresented Racial Minority. Basically Black, Latin, or Native American. The last is a bit hand-wavy because there's huge rates of intermarriage in Native families, and many ethnically identify as white. Ideally I'd prefer if there was some mechanism to actually examine people's backgrounds. I'm Latin myself, but had educated parents, went to a top 10 school, and basically not disadvantaged in any way. But aggregate disparities do exist and I see reason to take action on them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jnaina 3y ago
I support merit based DEI. What worries me is that for "diversity" candidates, the hiring bar is usually set low (at least in my company). And nobody is brave enough to talk about the consequences of these decisions. Have lost lucrative projects due to poor delivery, team mates having to do additional work to cover for the lapses, overall team performance pulled down leading to variable compensation impact, etc. One other observation. Some of these "diversity" candidates seem to have found a way to leverage this DEI 'movement' to advance their careers (at the risk of generalizing, but I'm only talking about extreme cases here). They put in a maybe 2 years of mediocre work, while spending an inordinate time on LinkedIn on relentless self-promotion to build up their profile for their next DEI entry point into another tech company on the DEI virtue signalling bandwagon.
- crop_rotation 3y ago
  The thing is the hiring bar is never explicitly lowered, but during any such DEI initiative hiring the HR leaders championing the program would informally send wink, wink messages while explicitly saying at public meetings that bar can not and will not be lowered.
- unwise-exe 3y ago
  > merit based DEI what even does this mean
  - xvector 3y ago
    It means you prioritize hiring diverse candidates over regular candidates, but without lowering your hiring bar.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      > It means you prioritize hiring diverse candidates over regular candidates, but without lowering your hiring bar. This is still illegal. You cannot, outside of bona fide occupational qualification [1], prioritize the hiring any any protected class (race, gender, religion, etc.) over another. Also, care to explain the criteria for "diverse"? Answer that question and swap out "diverse" in the sentence above with your answer. Then read it aloud, and ask yourself if that's something that's legal. There's a reason why companies hide behind euphemisms like "diverse". 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifi...
pdimitar 3y ago
As a guy in Eastern European who has worked 99% of the time in the EU market, I am very happy that I have almost never seen any DEI actions in person. But the very few times that I did it left a very bitter taste; that otherwise well-sounding initiative was hijacked to hire much less capable people who were commanding almost the same salary as mine or the other team members' while doing barely 10% of the work (vetted via code output and team discussion collaboration; nobody knew what that person was doing, even his direct supervisor who was also their coach buddy). And it was doubly strange because the company actively went out of its way to look for these people, easily spending times more on hiring even single such person as compared to, you know, posting on several reputable job boards and filtering resumes. I suspect it was investor pressure. Or the CEO getting a "life-changing experience" after watching a few videos. Oh and you know what happened to those forced hires? Months later the CTO and two other seniors said "it's me or them" and had their resignation ready on the same day. Turns out business interests do override some nebulous diversity targets after all. Take a guess who actually left / was fired? Exercise for the reader.
DebtDeflation 3y ago
IMO, an approach to DEI that would be both ethical and effective in meeting its objectives would include the following: primary school initiatives to get young girls and minorities interested in STEM topics, secondary school initiatives to encourage the same to choose (and prepare them for) a STEM major in college, corporate recruiting initiatives to broaden the pool of applicants beyond the typical target schools, employee support initiatives to give them the tools they need to succeed and advance in their careers. It has to start early. Instead we get quotas for college admission, hiring, and promotion. Then, when the quotas aren't met because the candidate pools are way too small, we tell admissions officers and hiring managers to "stop putting up white males". Like everything else in corporate America, it just becomes a metric to be gamed.
- nec4b 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - gmm1990 3y ago
    If a young woman was interested in STEM and saw your comment it would be a reason for them not to go into STEM. That is bad. It pushes someone away from what they might be interested in.
    - nec4b 3y ago
      Why? I'm saying they can do what they want. You are basically pushing them into something.
      - gmm1990 3y ago
        Things that are considered normal in society like women not being interested in it and engineering are self reinforcing. I don't know of any studies that indicate they shouldn't be doing those jobs, just that they are more likely not too. This robs women of higher paying stem jobs and society of more people to do those jobs.
gedy 3y ago
What I've seen and hate in recent years is HR taking control of pipeline and interview panels so that individual interviewers or hiring managers don't see all applicants or interview feedback. They don't want teams recruiting from their network or discussing openly. This basically results in a lot of mediocre "diverse" candidates, and many hiring objections being ignored or not shared with others. It’s ironic, because my teams typically were the most diverse when you look at their economic backgrounds, graduating from state schools, older people, veterans, etc. - while other teams I worked with were very frequently monocultures of young attractive people from good schools and backgrounds. But somehow skin color makes things “diverse“.
snapplebobapple 3y ago
It's not really fair to call it a backlash when the pendulum is swinging from far in the field of racism/sexism/ism land back towards the normalcy of the center with an emphasis on equality rather than the thinly veiled isms of equity.

130 points by coloneltcb 3y ago

cncivubyv 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xvector 3y ago

> DEI [ensures] a firm or company attracts a diverse pool of talent, hires and promotes people without bias, and fosters positive working environments so all individuals can thrive. What an incredibly biased take by the author, who clearly has not worked at one of these companies and seen DEI in action. Having actually worked at big tech companies with DEI initiatives, there have been many instances when we have had to lower the hiring bar to meet diversity requirements. What it really fosters in a company is resentment, both due to hiring bar changes and also as the actual DEI job function is mostly useless but gets paid quite a bit, and in times of layoffs, is often not targeted over engineering functions due to politics and PR. The whole DEI profession feels like a grift on top of the hard work of those that actually drove a company to success. This is not to say a company shouldn't consider the diversity of users when building a product, UX, etc, but it's absurd when you're hiring a backend engineer and your team has to meet some vague diversity quota.

yetanotherdood 3y ago
> there have been many instances when we have had to lower the hiring bar to meet diversity requirements. Where have you worked, if you don't mind me asking?
rurp 3y ago
That quote is not only biased, the "without bias" part is strictly wrong. Treating people differently based solely on their race or gender is a core part of most DEI programs. Just because the proponents think it's "good" discrimination or bias, doesn't give those words the opposite meaning.
feedforward 3y ago
> a grift on top of the hard work of those that actually drove a company to success Where does the profits and dividends sent off to the idle class aristocracy fit into this constellation? Your resentment seems to mostly be that some dufferent people might be at the workplace.
- xvector 3y ago
  I am fine with different competent people at the workplace. I am frustrated with having to forcibly hire a no-hire candidate to meet a diversity quota. I am annoyed by the fact that DEI is not targeted by layoffs but ostensibly contribute less to the company than engineering. I find it ridiculous that no one can criticize these initiatives without being labeled racist and fired by HR.
  - MyShawdowySelf 3y ago
    Again... more data of 1... At my company DEI was very VERY much targeted by the layoff...
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I am a straight white male and for 22 years of career I have never, not once, received profits and dividends as a working programmer. Do with that info what you will. My resentment stems from the fact that I have witnessed people being hired with 3x more lenient interviews and end up doing 5-10% of what I do while being paid 80-90% of the money. Of course I will resent that. Every working person would be resentful of that.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
I feel like you should take some responsibility for your own resentment rather than passively saying another party has "fostered" it. I'm not a fan of corporate and especially tech DEI initiatives either, I don't think they're an effective way to achieve their stated goals. But the hiring bar thing just does not match my experience at all. Some of the worst teams I've been on have been behind some of the most grueling & "selective" interview processes and some of the best teams have had lax ones. Given how poor we are at actually predicting who is going to be a good coworker we might as well allow some other backgrounds in.
- xvector 3y ago
  > Some of the worst teams I've been on have been behind some of the most grueling & "selective" interview processes By this process we should just drop hiring bars altogether. But for every team I've worked at, hiring bars clearly worked. We filter out maybe 95% of candidates and none of them would work for our team. Everyone on our team is incredible at what they do. When I had to lower the hiring bar, it was destructive. We hired a person that was inexperienced and could not keep up with the rest of us. They did not have the domain knowledge others on our team had. They were eager, friendly, and personable, but they required a longer period of extensive coaching get up to a level we would consider adequate.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dude187 3y ago
      What about his comment implies that? I don't get that at all
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > They were eager, friendly, and personable, but they required a longer period of extensive coaching get up to a level we would consider adequate. Did they end up being productive, and hopefully worth the effort? --- As a data point I'm ok when hiring new people with less-than-desired level of experience (within reason ;>), as long as their general attitude and willingness to learn are solid. Those last two mean they'll get the hang of things given some appropriate guidance, so it works out ok.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MyShawdowySelf 3y ago
> Having actually worked at big tech companies with DEI initiatives, there have been many instances when we have had to lower the hiring bar to meet diversity requirements. Since we are throwing random samples of 1 on the internet, having been involved into some of those initiative at a large big tech company : Not lowering the bar was pretty much always top of mind, and we always made sure to be fair to ALL candidate. Most of the initiative where around reaching a larger pool of candidate (for example reaching out to more school than we use too) and also addressing what looked to us like information deficiencies : Someone in an IVY league school for example just by osmosis will absorb a lot of the what/why/how companies look for in an employee and therefore can better show the required characteristics. Every generation of engineer always feels like the engineer after them are somewhat the consequence of lowering the bar... We used to think this when we started recruiting outside of ivy league, then we started lowering the importance of formal education at all ettc... etc... You would be amazed at the difference good interview preps makes to someone who was never exposed to it. > What it really fosters in a company is resentment, both due to hiring bar changes and also as the actual DEI job function is mostly useless but gets paid quite a bit From experience, those type of feeling are usually a consequence of lack of information and exposure of what actually goes on in the meetings. You mentioned you worked at the companies with those initiative, but i am not sure how many time you have actually been involved in the design of those programs. Tech jobs in large tech companies is very competitive job. Everything is always framed as a competitive advantage and can sometime wrap one's perceptions. Companies spend a bunch of moneys on all kind of weird stuff. And finally let me be clear, i am a software engineer myself. I do believe that pretty much anything HR does that's not purely the day to day of employee is a grift. Hell the bigger the companies, the more grift around : from management "training" that somewhat requires fancy restaurant. Team building exercise that somewhat require a bunch of very introverted engineer to go to a concert non of them are interested in etc... etc... DEI is not different, yes grifter gonna grift and some people are just in it for themselve. So can DEI be better/ more efficient : yes, is there a lot of virtue signaling and fakeness around yes, are we somewhat lowering the bar because we like having diverse people around NO, and for having witness the difference that those program can be in the lives of young and new people in the industry... i think they worth keeping around even if a better more pragmatic form.

newsclues 3y ago

[flagged]

fwungy 3y ago

Here's the problem: you can't change the hiring rules for more equity unless it applies to everyone equally. Otherwise you're just trading one arbitrary class for another. You need to basically destroy seniority and job protection for all, to make it fair. Furthermore, the people brought into replace the oppressive class must be held to a high standard so they don't repeat the offending behavior. DEI agendas can only work if the displaced people (i.e. white males), see a genuinely better alternative rising in its place and are not asked to pay the price for their skin color and gender for their entire lives. I suspect white males would be far more accepting of DEI if it wasn't a lifetime penalty they felt they had to struggle against, but just a few years.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
DEI is a way to say you did something, without doing the expensive thing that is really required, which is extensive wealth redistribution. Fixing labor laws, minimum wages, parental leave, cash or securing good housing, etc is way more expensive. And a lot of it is not solvable in a timeline of a few decades, it would be a slow multi generational change.
- Zanneth 3y ago
  I don't think giving a bunch of free money to people is a good solution either.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zozbot234 3y ago

The pipeline problem in "tech" is absolutely massive. Most DEI efforts inside existing firms are doing very little if anything to address this while introducing toxic and prejudiced attitudes of their own, so that part of the 'backlash' is quite understandable. But denying altogether that a problem exists is not.

MightyBuzzard 3y ago
Sure. That's a perfectly legit criticism. It's not, however, an excuse for the terrible way things have been done. If you want to fix a problem, you fix the original cause. You do not come along at the very end and adjust the values to where you think they should be.

lopkeny12ko 3y ago

DEI as a philosophy is fundamentally flawed. Its whole premise is alleviating racism in the workplace, yet its practical effect is giving certain races a favorable edge in the hiring process, independent of merit. Is this not in itself inherently racist? I raised this with colleagues on a few separate ocassions and was promptly shunned, yet they didn't have an answer. Most recently when he hired an engineer from one of these "favorable races" even when half of the interview panel recommended a no-hire.

xvector 3y ago
Yes, hiring a no-hire engineer to meet DEI quotas is completely unacceptable, but who is going to risk their job to suggest that? A culture of fear has been created around speaking out against stuff like this. Your coworkers probably agree with you, but conversations critical of DEI efforts in the workplace are radioactive as HR will come down on you for being racist or whatever. Thus, the DEI bubble in any corporation is completely insulated from checks and balances or internal critical feedback.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anonporridge 3y ago
DEI and affirmative action are systemic racism in a very literal sense.
rglover 3y ago
> Is this not in itself inherently racist? Yes. It's assuming that the non-white person is in some way incompetent or lesser than (soft bigotry of low expectations) and needs a boost from the feigned-benevolence of the white man (or opportunistic "person of color"). FWIW, I'm mixed-race (white/black) and was mouth-agape at how this got as far as it did the past few years.
- Hnrobert42 3y ago
  I don’t think it assumes that the candidate is in any way not as qualified. It assumes the candidate is not as likely to get hired because of bias in the hiring process.

sdsd 3y ago

Oof. I bet people are reticent to post any comments here. That's good - it's hard to post about this topic in a way that doesn't detract from the overall tone and quality of HN. No one wants to post some James Damore screed decrying the longhouse, nor some 2010s style social justice screed. No matter which side you argue, you'll get a 1,000 very uninteresting comments from uncurious ideologues doing their duty to defend The Good Truth. I don't like to talk to these partisan soldiers, but rather, curious scouts having fun exploring ideas. Maybe that's because I have the privilege to not take these ideas so personally, or maybe I'm a brave hero speaking out against the HR scolds. Blegh. It's all so tired. Mom and dad arguing in the other room, about things which are surely much more important than my gameboy, but which nevertheless seem much less interesting to me. By the time I post, others will have gotten here sooner. We'll see if my pessimism is justified. I'm gonna close my laptop, since clearly I'm procrastinating instead of finishing that keylogging article I'm supposed to be writing. I'll write it at home. I miss my babies. Hope you all have a merry Christmas btw!

EA-3167 3y ago
IMO some topics can't be meaningfully discussed between a group of largely anonymous people, especially when the existence of... hostile interlocutors is always present. There are people I know offline who I'd avoid discussing these topics with, never mind millions of people I've never met, who's body language I can't see, and who's sincerity I can't identify. As you said, it's tiring, and there are other things to talk about online that don't inevitably lead to the worst possible outcomes.
- MightyBuzzard 3y ago
  [dead]
- unwise-exe 3y ago
  This seems more like a topic that can only be discussed anonymously, lest someone take offense and start a pressure campaign against one's employer. > hostile interlocutors A strong noise filter is indeed required.

givemeethekeys 3y ago

[flagged]

woodpanel 3y ago

Couple of years ago I've excelled at a lead position interview, we've arrived at the part where I get to just spitball questions about their company, team and overall culture. I just talked about how I think it is important for leaders to have an extra-fine antenna for the psychological well-being of your colleages when in a remote-first environment. The moment I uttered the word "psychological" it triggered the interviewer's DEI-driven buzzword thesaurus and he immediately started talking endlessly about their efforts for "Inclusivity" which of course stands for: if a non-straight, non-white, non-male candidate existed alongside me, they would've of course chosen him/her/... instead of me. I know that this is what it meant because this were his exact words ;-) (which he confided in me thinking I would see statements like these as a good thing and not a massive red-flag) Needless to say I declined.

woodpanel 3y ago
Aww, I can't say I'm surprised that this text of mine (an open confession by a major european tech company to have racist employment standards) would be getting down-votes :-) Or of course that a link criticizing DEI would get flagged on HN. Shocker.
- thinkingemote 3y ago
  HN Guidelines suggest not going on about down votes btw "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." I agree though it's understandable if a bit sad that this submission gets flag killed. Better to stick to safer tech stuff unless there's a big story I guess! Personally I don't believe the hype of this "backlash". It smells manufactured.

blondie9x 3y ago

DEI is truly division and exclusion. It is a euphemism for new types of discrimination. Hopefully Supreme Court rules on this soon as they did on affirmative action. You cannot fix the world by implementing new types of bias and discrimination, even if it is being wrapped up and sold as diversity and inclusion or however else it is pitched. This should be unconstitutional and against the Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution period. We cannot and should not ever judge a book by its cover. We must always focus on merit, ability, and equality first. However, I do think society needs to provide social nets to help people get free education that are not able to afford it if the education has promise to lead to great career opportunities. From the film Lincoln, 'Euclid's first common notion is this: "Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other." That's a rule of mathematical reasoning. It's true because it works; has done and will always will do. In his book, Euclid says this is "self-evident." You see, there it is, even in that two-thousand year old book of mechanical law: it is a self-evident truth of things which are equal to the same thing, are equal to each other. We begin with equality. That's the origin, isn't it? That balance-that's fairness, that's justice.' We are all homo sapiens and need to be treated fairly, equally. No one should be given structural preferential bias on a public or private level. We have fought so hard for equality in this country, DEI is a step backwards in equality by sanctioning new biases.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago
How many centuries do you think is an acceptable timeframe to quote people when they want a problem solved? Right now, we're about a century and half out from when Black Americans were first recognized as people, about 3/4 of a century out from when the last slaves were freed, and less than half a century past living in an overt Apartheid state. If you look at the rich and powerful, the vast majority of them started from a position that was simply impossible for POC at the time. Each generation benefits from the prosperity of the last, giving them a leg up over those without that advantage. Over time, random chance may reduce the resulting advantage to below the noise floor, but how long should those affected be expected to wait? Or maybe we can try to remedy the situation, now, for the living. Overt diversity initiatives try to solve the problem that someone from a marginalized group is likely to be less qualified than their unmarginalized peers because they've had fewer opportunities to become qualified exactly because of that marginalization. If you don't take corrective action, then you just perpetuate the problem. So, if you still are opposed to corrective action: How many centuries is enough?

ta_fang_dei 3y ago

[flagged]

throaweee123 3y ago

"Due to the current economic situation we don't have new headcount for our org however feel free to reach out if you have a diverse candidate that would be interested in joining" From a director during a all-hands. "We have already selected a male candidate for the internship so it'd be best if the next one was a woman" From my manager's manager. "Your no-hire vote should have more justification since the candidate is a woman" The reality is that we need a strong legal ruling against these type of things otherwise it is simply too "problematic" to bring this up and the risk for retaliation is insanely high.

minerva23 3y ago
> diverse candidate Even though some people would call me that, I've always hated that term/ideology. I wish companies would shift their mindset to, "a candidate that adds to our diversity". E.g. my current employer has done a really good job at not discriminating too much against women and attracting women, so we're well above industry average in our woman:NB:man ratio so it's more representative of the source population. We haven't done as well with regard to racial and age non-discrimination. As we do better in either of those two categories, the definition of "a candidate that adds to our diversity" will change. > We have already selected a male candidate for the internship so it'd be best if the next one was a woman This is both true and legal (though I wish it included NBs as well). The more candidates you select from a given demographic, the probability increases that your organization is participating in a discriminatory system. If it makes it more palatable, reword it in your head by tacking on at the end, "... so we can be somewhat reassured we're not contributing to gender discrimination." > Your no-hire vote should have more justification since the candidate is a woman Studies have shown even women evaluate women more harshly than they evaluate men. Extra justification is warranteed when gender is known or implied and the reviewer is likely to have unconscious bias. That's why better hiring systems try to hide gender on the initial application, so you can be reasonably reassured gender is not a factor. (That said, there are a lot of gender implications on many applications, so it can be tough to hide gender completely). > The reality is that we need a strong legal ruling against these type of things Alternatively, guaranteed job placement into one's chosen profession would help everyone indiscriminately. Trying to ban anti-discrimination efforts serves only status quo biases. > too "problematic" to bring this up and the risk for retaliation is insanely high I agree this is a risk. Surely there are some people who "bring this up" in a bigoted way and are rightfully fired, but I suspect there's a number of people who, with a gentle reframing, can see how their views are problematic and can learn the knowledge gaps that caused them to come to the wrong conclusion. From the company's perspective, they're doing anti-discrimination work, and an employee objection sounds like they're pro-discrimination. It's a bilateral failure to communicate in an at-will employment relationship.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

elzbardico 3y ago

DEI is a scam where militants secure jobs, speaking and consulting contracts by exploiting legitimate grievances in a cynical manner. Rent Seeking.

Hnrobert42 3y ago
[flagged]
- aydyn 3y ago
  He’s not cynically accusing, he is accurately accusing.
  - Hnrobert42 3y ago
    Go is making a cynical assumption about their motives.
    - aydyn 3y ago
      Gp is making no such assumption of motives. Lots of people actively peddle scams while believing in the product. For a less controversial example, MLMs.
      - Hnrobert42 3y ago
        GP literally says, “in a cynical manner.”
        aydyn 3y ago
        The fact that you’re trying to read the tea leaves on gp’s post rather than discuss them correctly calling out the DEI corporate scam tells all you need to know about the bad faith of this discussion.
        Hnrobert42 3y ago

KaiserPro 3y ago

I don't quite understand the anger that DEI gets, unless people assume that people are only hired because they belong to a certain group. I'm not US based, so I only see that "safe for UK" view of what $Company blast over to us. Musk and Thiel see the world in very specific ways. Because they are who they are, and the people that surround them, they will not change their view unless something drastic happens. They simply don't have to, because they are rich enough to weather any storm that requires anyone else to change tack. They have opinion gravity, where anything they say will become true, because people with the same opinions will gravitate towards them (see Taylor Swift & Kanye) Don't get me wrong, there are parts of DEI that grate my balls: the performative celebration, the "days of action" and the tedious celebrations where we pretend that we've not got a problem with women in the workplace. However, applying a bit of data to change a few procedures so that we get a better more diverse set of people joining and thriving, is fucking great. Done properly, most people wont notice.

nvm0n2 3y ago
It's not a US thing. If you think it is, you're just not being told about it by the news sources you read. Just a few days ago the head of a large UK insurance company stated directly to Parliament that she insisted on personally reviewing any attempt to hire a "non diverse" person, whilst "diverse" (i.e. non male British) could be hired more easily. This is by far not the only such example in British life. So this type of discrimination is rampant and out in the open. If you only read the Guardian you may not be aware of it.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  > If you only read the Guardian come on, the gruaniad ceased to be a newspaper many years ago. the source: https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14007/html/ https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14007/html/ q141 actually makes a fair bit of sense, as its a insurance company who are the generally masters of hiring Henno who went to a good school, not Terry who's talented. Moreover, its not "we directly discriminate" its "I question to make sure that the procedure is followed". Which is different. Bear in mind, this is for rich senior insurance execs, who have a fucktonne of money to take people to court, you're sure as shit going to be sure that the policies they are talking about are going to be water fucking tight. Also, as its insurance, there are about 5 women who are that senior, so the CEO is going to be doing a lot of asking if the procedure is being followed.

lacker 3y ago

One great things about the tech industry is that it includes people from many sorts of backgrounds. People from many different countries and many different cultures, especially immigrants. China, India, and eastern Europe are heavily represented, but so are immigrants from other places, and second-generation immigrants. This is real diversity, and it's wrong to evaluate diversity in a way that ignores this.

justinclift 3y ago

This article submission has already been flagged. :( Seems like it's a valid thing to discuss though, as it affects a lot of people.

gitfan86 3y ago
[flagged]
rurp 3y ago
This seems to be happening more often on HN. I wish there were a way to vouch for stories that get flagged, like how we can for comments. As it stands, a small group of passionate flaggers can shut down a lot of articles on a topic they want to block.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > I wish there were a way to vouch for stories that get flagged, like how we can for comments. It's a bit manual, but emailing "hn@ycombinator.com" to ask about unflagging a particular submission can work. :)

verdverm 3y ago

My $0.02 DEI is good in principle but poorly executed. Diversity is good for business. You want people from different backgrounds and different ways of thinking. But we have had a problem in tech of hiring only people like we already have, whether it be age, attitude, or race. At the same time, the DEI initiatives went too far. I am ok with racial targets that try to bring the company numbers closer to the local geography, but not the national statistics. We also have to be mindful that the qualified candidate pool may not yet allow us to reach parity. We should also be investing in the pipeline much earlier so that the qualified candidate pool has parity with the local geography. The DEI effort we saw was an over reaction to our self created self similar selection bias. The pendulum is swinging back now, but we should not throw everything away. Maybe we can think about it like we do our software... rapid cycles of iteration and learning

annexrichmond 3y ago
> Diversity is good for business. It's not clear to me that it is either good or bad for business. Why is this stated as a matter of fact. And please spare me links to studies funded by special interest groups. > You want people from different backgrounds and different ways of thinking. Define "different backgrounds". Why is only reduced to the color of someone's skin or sex? Why not people who grow up as Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, etc? Or those who grew up as a single child? Or played team sports? Don't all these things play a role in shaping who someone is? Some people just like to worth with really intelligent, hard working people and don't care anything else about the person. And some people want to work with people like themselves. I probably fall into the former, but who am I to dictate what model creates the most success for a business (assuming that's the goal) If you are hiring the first 5 employees of a company you started, I think DEI will be the last thing on your mind. So why does DEI suddenly become so important 50+ employees later?
- narutosasuke 3y ago
  > It's not clear to me that it is either good or bad for business. Why is this stated as a matter of fact. And please spare me links to studies funded by special interest groups. Not the poster and going to try to read the last sentence with positive intent. You can find the benefits in most industries where you are providing a product to be used by the general public. The design of products come from the vantage of who is designing them. Historically this has been products designed by men and made for men. From male crash test dummies, to PPE, and even medical treatments. The designers were not looking to exclude women in these cases, everyone simply has blind spots or things that they don't consider, leading to worse/less safe products. Going back to tech. How many demographic text boxes are designed by people who are not accustomed to long surnames? Security/Admin controls by someone who has never been in an abusive relationship? UX that is unusable by anyone with a disability, or simply not accustomed to technology. If you don't care about these groups using your product effectively, then it's likely fine for business. Heck, many companies don't see a problem and conclude that their customers are "wrong" or "dumb" when features are left unused or bugs are reported. > Define "different backgrounds". Why is only reduced to the color of someone's skin or sex? Why not people who grow up as Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, etc? Or those who grew up as a single child? Or played team sports? Don't all these things play a role in shaping who someone is? Everyone is different but I statistically have more in common with a white male 21-35 than any other group (even if he played team sports). Could a particular person be a deeply different 25 year old white man born in Thailand, deeply poor, and raised Jewish? I suppose, but we're all doing heuristics out there. So we use the heuristics that are both good proxies to determine "diversity of thoughts and experiences" and are easy to know. We all know that a leetcode question, or a system design interview, or a take home project isn't a perfect show of someone's technical skills, why should heuristics around diversity be any different? > Some people just like to worth with really intelligent, hard working people and don't care anything else about the person. And some people want to work with people like themselves. I probably fall into the former, but who am I to dictate what model creates the most success for a business (assuming that's the goal) It's easy to say that in the abstract, hard to actually live that. You ask most people on the street and few will say they judge people beyond their character/actions/intelligence/whatever. But we know that isn't true, people aren't that logical and detached. It also ignores what intelligent/hardworking means to each of us. Let's even ignore gender/race. I know many engineers that view front end code as "beneath them" and "not real software engineering". Are they really going to view me as a hardworking, intelligent engineer if that's what I'm doing? Heck, am I a hard working, intelligent engineer if I focus some of my time on DEI initiatives? What if I can't invert a B-tree? What if I still got hired, what would you think of me?

brvsft 3y ago

One side-effect of DEI is that I take HR even less seriously than ever. Any HR-hosted event is most likely a hard pass for me. Even if it's something I am slightly interested in (say, company event to celebrate Diwali because we do have Indian employees, and despite not being Indian, I have some tangential interest in it partly because I respect and like many of my coworkers and partly just out of curiosity), if it's hosted by HR, I am not going to bother. We had an All Hands once where they actually spent 20+ minutes talking about the Genderbread Cookie, which I found especially egregious. Not that I have a problem with the Genderbread Cookie, but an All Hands is the most expensive meeting a company can host. Why are we learning about sex and gender identity vocabulary in that meeting? Of course, this all matters a lot less than hiring and promotion processes. I don't work at a larger company, so I don't think I've seen the worst of it. Smaller businesses still have to take what they can get, and if that means the pipeline is mostly Asian men and white men, that's who gets hired.

refulgentis 3y ago
It's sort of weird, I (used to) work at a very large company and saw pretty much none of this, at all, over last 3 years. Even people ranting anonymously in Blind would admit we had ~nothing extreme like this. Nothing even close. Yet we were famous for it. For them, the issue was feeling they couldn't share their politic opinions without derision because their coworkers were uniformly liberal. If you tweeted this and tweeted about DEI a lot I'd say you were making it up completely. You aren't. That's very very very strange. I've never even heard of the Genderbread Cookie. I've been wondering if maybe mid-small corporation try-hards were ending up doing some distorted funhouse mirror version of "let's try to interview more minorities and champion them more publicly?" and ended up doing crazy stuff.
- unwise-exe 3y ago
  > never even heard of the Genderbread Cookie. https://www.samkillermann.com/work/ https://www.samkillermann.com/work/ You can find it on that ^^ list, along with other projects by the same person.

AlexandrB 3y ago

I like how this debate never changes. 20 years ago everything I see in the comments was being said about "affirmative action". The only thing that's really changed is the terminology. affirmative action -> DEI PC (political correctness) -> "woke" Can't wait to see what the language for the next iteration of this looks like, because I doubt the debate itself is going away anytime soon.

NewsyHacker 3y ago
1990s-era affirmative action in the US was purely a decision made by company management and HR when hiring though, wasn’t it? That is, it wasn’t something that involved the average employee. So much of the frustration about DEI that I have seen on HN and elsewhere, is about all employees having to attend boring meetings or events.
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
SCOTUS ruling changed a lot So have the lawsuits, and the IBM lawsuit will change even more
Always_Anon 3y ago
Affirmative Action != DEI PC != Woke These are different terms for different concepts, even if there's some overlap.

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fwungy 3y ago

The problem of DEI is that it creates an environment of what psychologists refer to as 'Secondary Gain' Secondary Gain In psychoanalytic theory, the advantage derived from a neurosis in addition to the primary gain of relief from anxiety or internal conflict. Advantages may include extra attention, sympathy, avoidance of work, and domination of others. Such gains are secondary in that they are derived from others’ reactions to the neurosis instead of from causal factors. They often prolong the neurosis and create resistance to therapy. Also called advantage by illness. https://dictionary.apa.org/secondary-gain https://dictionary.apa.org/secondary-gain Once a hindrance becomes a benefit all sorts of incentive problems begin to arise.

yieldcrv 3y ago

Its all been poorly implemented, and would be supporters are invalidated for disagreeing with the implementation Of course those days were numbered amongst organizations that have to focus on revenue instead of social justice

ryandv 3y ago

[self-censoring for wrongthink]

zozbot234 3y ago
Very good point. "DEI" as commonly practiced is nothing more than the soft bigotry of low expectations, enshrined as official company policy. The outcomes are pretty much what you'd expect: Divisive, Exclusionary and Inequitable.

Always_Anon 3y ago

This is paywalled and archives are not able to get around said paywall. I am unable to view this article. This is quite an important topic go discuss because the ramifications of its implementation are everywhere. Does anyone have a link handy so that I may read the article?

Manuel_D 3y ago

One thing that's irked me about Tech DEI is that it overwhelmingly benefitting non-URM women, while I really only see the justifications for benefitting racial minorities on Dei grounds. The justifications for benefitting underrepresented racial minorities seem way, way stronger than gender. Black and Latin students are less likely to go to college, while women are more likely to go to college than men. Some try to justify affirmative action for women in tech on the grounds of ameliorating the pay gap, but that too has reversed and now favors women. The idea that favoring women over men is justified to the same degree as favoring disadvantaged ethnic minorities seems absurd to me. I'd be way more motivated to spend time mentoring or otherwise helping aspiring high school and college students from underprivileged backgrounds. But instead effectively all of the "DEI" I've seen has been preferences for well off White and Asian women, rather than people coming from underprivileged backgrounds I want to be clear I don't fault or resent non-URM women. Many (most?) agree that diversity initiatives ought to be focused on ethnic disparities. These women also had no agency over these policies, they are institutions by leadership, often over the objections of the supposed beneficiaries.

hightrix 3y ago
Pardon my ignorance, what does URM refer to in this context?
- AwaAwa 3y ago
  Underrepresented Racial Minority
  - hightrix 3y ago
    Thank you!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Underrepresented Racial Minority. Basically Black, Latin, or Native American. The last is a bit hand-wavy because there's huge rates of intermarriage in Native families, and many ethnically identify as white. Ideally I'd prefer if there was some mechanism to actually examine people's backgrounds. I'm Latin myself, but had educated parents, went to a top 10 school, and basically not disadvantaged in any way. But aggregate disparities do exist and I see reason to take action on them.

deleted 3y ago

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jnaina 3y ago

I support merit based DEI. What worries me is that for "diversity" candidates, the hiring bar is usually set low (at least in my company). And nobody is brave enough to talk about the consequences of these decisions. Have lost lucrative projects due to poor delivery, team mates having to do additional work to cover for the lapses, overall team performance pulled down leading to variable compensation impact, etc. One other observation. Some of these "diversity" candidates seem to have found a way to leverage this DEI 'movement' to advance their careers (at the risk of generalizing, but I'm only talking about extreme cases here). They put in a maybe 2 years of mediocre work, while spending an inordinate time on LinkedIn on relentless self-promotion to build up their profile for their next DEI entry point into another tech company on the DEI virtue signalling bandwagon.

crop_rotation 3y ago
The thing is the hiring bar is never explicitly lowered, but during any such DEI initiative hiring the HR leaders championing the program would informally send wink, wink messages while explicitly saying at public meetings that bar can not and will not be lowered.
unwise-exe 3y ago
> merit based DEI what even does this mean
- xvector 3y ago
  It means you prioritize hiring diverse candidates over regular candidates, but without lowering your hiring bar.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    > It means you prioritize hiring diverse candidates over regular candidates, but without lowering your hiring bar. This is still illegal. You cannot, outside of bona fide occupational qualification [1], prioritize the hiring any any protected class (race, gender, religion, etc.) over another. Also, care to explain the criteria for "diverse"? Answer that question and swap out "diverse" in the sentence above with your answer. Then read it aloud, and ask yourself if that's something that's legal. There's a reason why companies hide behind euphemisms like "diverse". 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifi...

pdimitar 3y ago

As a guy in Eastern European who has worked 99% of the time in the EU market, I am very happy that I have almost never seen any DEI actions in person. But the very few times that I did it left a very bitter taste; that otherwise well-sounding initiative was hijacked to hire much less capable people who were commanding almost the same salary as mine or the other team members' while doing barely 10% of the work (vetted via code output and team discussion collaboration; nobody knew what that person was doing, even his direct supervisor who was also their coach buddy). And it was doubly strange because the company actively went out of its way to look for these people, easily spending times more on hiring even single such person as compared to, you know, posting on several reputable job boards and filtering resumes. I suspect it was investor pressure. Or the CEO getting a "life-changing experience" after watching a few videos. Oh and you know what happened to those forced hires? Months later the CTO and two other seniors said "it's me or them" and had their resignation ready on the same day. Turns out business interests do override some nebulous diversity targets after all. Take a guess who actually left / was fired? Exercise for the reader.

DebtDeflation 3y ago

IMO, an approach to DEI that would be both ethical and effective in meeting its objectives would include the following: primary school initiatives to get young girls and minorities interested in STEM topics, secondary school initiatives to encourage the same to choose (and prepare them for) a STEM major in college, corporate recruiting initiatives to broaden the pool of applicants beyond the typical target schools, employee support initiatives to give them the tools they need to succeed and advance in their careers. It has to start early. Instead we get quotas for college admission, hiring, and promotion. Then, when the quotas aren't met because the candidate pools are way too small, we tell admissions officers and hiring managers to "stop putting up white males". Like everything else in corporate America, it just becomes a metric to be gamed.

nec4b 3y ago
[flagged]
- gmm1990 3y ago
  If a young woman was interested in STEM and saw your comment it would be a reason for them not to go into STEM. That is bad. It pushes someone away from what they might be interested in.
  - nec4b 3y ago
    Why? I'm saying they can do what they want. You are basically pushing them into something.
    - gmm1990 3y ago
      Things that are considered normal in society like women not being interested in it and engineering are self reinforcing. I don't know of any studies that indicate they shouldn't be doing those jobs, just that they are more likely not too. This robs women of higher paying stem jobs and society of more people to do those jobs.

gedy 3y ago

What I've seen and hate in recent years is HR taking control of pipeline and interview panels so that individual interviewers or hiring managers don't see all applicants or interview feedback. They don't want teams recruiting from their network or discussing openly. This basically results in a lot of mediocre "diverse" candidates, and many hiring objections being ignored or not shared with others. It’s ironic, because my teams typically were the most diverse when you look at their economic backgrounds, graduating from state schools, older people, veterans, etc. - while other teams I worked with were very frequently monocultures of young attractive people from good schools and backgrounds. But somehow skin color makes things “diverse“.

snapplebobapple 3y ago

It's not really fair to call it a backlash when the pendulum is swinging from far in the field of racism/sexism/ism land back towards the normalcy of the center with an emphasis on equality rather than the thinly veiled isms of equity.