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> 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 in

> 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.

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.