> I don’t see how DEI initiatives address any of that. It may actually be regressive in that regard. I don't understand DEI initiatives enough to agree or disa

> I don’t see how DEI initiatives address any of that. It may actually be regressive in that regard. I don't understand DEI initiatives enough to agree or disagree. The poster I was responding to seemed to be speaking of diversity in general so that was what I was intending to address. > I think we agree on that part. But forcing a DEI model on hiring will take on the biases in the model itself. It’s like delegating an individual’s bias to a group of people, who have their own bias. And it seems fruitless to me. I view diversity in general as shifting biases, not eliminating them. It's just not possible to eliminate them. We already know that certain groups are underrepresented based on historical selection criteria so we're going in with the assumption that they are capable of doing the job but are not given the opportunity. To make it less open to misunderstanding I'll just use self-taught software engineer as an example. We can all imagine there is a 100x engineer that is self taught. But due to hiring practices (requires college degree, requires unrelated computer science fundamentals, etc) is never hired and given a chance to reach their potential. Maybe we're not quite sure how to evaluate self taught engineers like we are with engineers that take a more traditional path, it's likely they work and learn differently. All we know is some part of our process is selecting them out. I view the idealized vision of DEI sort of in those ways. We know there are some set of biases that are leading certain groups to be underrepresented in tech. We also know that our interview process isn't some grand objective measure of engineer competence. DEI to me is accepting the existence of biases. While you try to address the ones you can, you cannot eliminate them all so you design processes with assumptions of bias. I don't pretend to know what companies do specifically in their DEI to shift those weights. But let me pretend my company gives everyone score on 100 point scale. Now I'll shift to a genuinely controversial case. The info I have: A black woman received a score of 80 and a white man received a score of 85. My company views anyone that receives a score above 70 as "acceptable to hire". Who do I hire? If I view my measure as completely objective, I should take the higher score. There is even fairness to doing so. But if I think they both can do the job reasonably well, is it right to tip the scales? Do I think my company can benefit from underrepresented people in tech? Is there some bias that caused her to get the lower score in the first place such that she is the better engineer? Etc etc. Sorry that is unorganized stream of consciousness