5 ms·

https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-diversity/elon-musk-dei-racist https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-dive... https://

by runako 2y ago

https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-diversity/elon-musk-dei-racist https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-dive... https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity etc. There is a backlash underway against any effort to expand workplace diversity beyond the representative fractions circa 1990.

Jensson 2y ago
Women were a much higher percentage in the field 1990. Women abandoned the field after the IT-bubble and it never recovered.
gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
There is a backlash to the heavy handedness of DEI. You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. You need to remove barriers to entry based on sexism and such, but you can’t exclude a whole large class of people because that class had it good in the past. That gets you South Africa.
- runako 2y ago
  > You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. I agree with this. However, I have been working in tech for quite some time now, and I have not seen any place where white males have been frozen out of employment or funding. More typically, in my personal experience, they represent most of the staff and leadership and materially all of institutional funding recipients. Perhaps my experience is atypical, or my definition of "frozen out" is different.
  - gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
    1 in 6 hiring managers were told to not hire white men. https://www.wsaz.com/2022/11/08/1-6-hiring-managers-have-been-told-stop-hiring-white-men-survey-finds/#:~:text=%2528Gray%2520News%2529%2520%E2%80%93%2520A%2520recent%2520survey%2520of%25201%252C000,also%2520been%2520told%2520to%2520deprioritize%2520hiring%2520white%2520women https://www.wsaz.com/2022/11/08/1-6-hiring-managers-have-bee.... Google getting sued for that. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wilberg-recruiter-hiring-reverse-discrimination-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wi... Same accusation against Microsoft https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-diversity-hiring-inclusion-employee-criticism-claims https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-di... Disney doing it. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/watch-disney-exec-admits-company-openly-discriminates-against-white-males-in-spoken-agreement/ar-BB1oHhaa https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/watch-disney-exec-...
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    I have. In April 2019, when I worked at Dropbox, we instituted what we called "Opportunistic Hiring". 20 heads were reserved to hire "opportunistically". What this meant is that when a diverse candidate was hired, the headcount used for that hire didn't come from the team's headcount. It came from the pool of headcount for "opportunistic hires". Unless the "opportunistic hires" pool was already exhausted, then a diverse hire still counted against the team's headcount. The definition of a "diverse" candidate was a woman of any race, and URM men. If this sounds like an overly-complex way of saying "we're prohibiting Asian and white men from 20 headcount" it's because it is. I can provide the exact wording of the policy if you want. It's not "freezing out" all white males. One, it's also freezing out Asian males. And two, it's only freezing them out of a specific chunk of our headcount. But it still deeply affected me to see a company outright deny employment on the basis of race and gender, even if it was only for part of the headcount.
    - runako 2y ago
      Reading your description of the policy, it looks like what it does is say a team can hire from the "Opportunistic" bucket for "free," but does not freeze out anybody else. Is that a correct read? > 20 heads were reserved I have not studied Dropbox extensively. In 2019, was 20 hires roughly equivalent to the total overall number of new hires? Or are we talking about a small percentage of overall new staffers? If the latter, how does this anecdote respond to my statements?
      - Manuel_D 2y ago
        It's explicit denial of employment on the basis of race and gender. It's illegal no matter what proportion of the headcount this is. If I have 100 headcount and I say "20 of our headcount is off limits to white and Asian men" is that ok? If I have 80 headcount and I create 20 "opportunistic" headcount exclusive to women and URM is that acceptable? You're smart enough to understand that these are identical policies.
        runako 2y ago
        I'm not reading anywhere in there where it says anybody is denied a job under any scenario. Perhaps if Dropbox had fixed hiring numbers like your hypothetical, but that was not data you submitted.
Manuel_D 2y ago
If there's a field that's 80% women and 20% men, is setting a DEI target of 40% men preventing sexism? Or is it perpetrating sexism?
- runako 2y ago
  Nobody can manage anything with this little information. A KPI set at a particular value cannot tell why the KPI has that value. Thus without more information, your hypothetical is not productive. An illustration by way of example. In a field where other firms have a range of net profit margins of 35% - 45%, one firm sets their net profit target at 10%. Is that because they are not competitive? Another illustration by way of example. In a field where other firms have a range of revenue per employee of $200k - $300k, one firm has no RPE target at all and its revenue per employee is $15k. Is that worth examining?
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    > Nobody can manage anything with this little information. I can! Unless you have some reason to believe that one gender is superior at the job than the other, it should match the representation of the field. > In a field where other firms have a range of net profit margins of 35% - 45%, one firm sets their net profit target at 10%. Is that because they are not competitive? Net profit margin is not a protected class. Race and gender are.
    - runako 2y ago
      > it should match the representation of the field Why? You have not supported this at all. If the field is staffed by wildly bigoted hiring managers, why does your assertion follow? Separately, why would this be obviously best for the company? Does matching parity with the field somehow ensure the best quality or cost/performance? Does this still hold at firms that are smaller than the largest (say: under 5k engineers)? Why?
      - Manuel_D 2y ago
        If I'm hiring 20 people in a field that's 80% women and 20% men, why would I expect to hire more than 20% men? Unless I have some evidence to think that one gender is better on average than the other, then we'd expect a non-discriminatory hiring process to hire women and men in equal proportions relative to the field. If a firm is staffed by bigoted hiring managers that favor men, we'd actually expect closer to equal representation amongst those bigoted firms. Because they're bigoted against women and less likely to hire them, they end up with a more "equitable" workforce. If a firm in our hypothetical field is bigoted against women, and hires women at half the rate as men, then it'd actually end up with a representation of ~40% women and 60% men. It's closer to equitable because of its discriminatory policies. This is a great example of why equity isn't evidence of nondiscrimination, and gender disparity isn't evidence of discrimination. > Separately, why would this be obviously best for the company? Illegally discriminating against pregnant women benefits the company: maternity leave is expensive, and avoiding expecting women saves money. Does that make it a good thing? Remember, nondiscrimination is both morally right and the law of the land (in most liberal democracies, at least), even if you have reason to believe that increasing or decreasing the representation of certain groups is advantageous. > Does matching parity with the field somehow ensure the best quality or cost/performance? Hiring the best candidates ensures the best quality and cost to performance ratio. Unless you have some reason to believe that men are better than women, then matching parity of the field is a side-effect of hiring the best candidates. > Does this still hold at firms that are smaller than the largest (say: under 5k engineers)? Why? Sure, a small sample size is going to have more variance. A one-woman consulting firm is going to have 100% women employees. That's not evidence of discrimination. But nor is a one-man consulting firm that's 100% male. Smaller firms have a lower sample size and are naturally going to have larger variance due to smaller sample sizes. But it'll all average out.

by runako 2y ago

Jensson 2y ago

Women were a much higher percentage in the field 1990. Women abandoned the field after the IT-bubble and it never recovered.

gadflyinyoureye 2y ago

There is a backlash to the heavy handedness of DEI. You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. You need to remove barriers to entry based on sexism and such, but you can’t exclude a whole large class of people because that class had it good in the past. That gets you South Africa.

runako 2y ago
> You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. I agree with this. However, I have been working in tech for quite some time now, and I have not seen any place where white males have been frozen out of employment or funding. More typically, in my personal experience, they represent most of the staff and leadership and materially all of institutional funding recipients. Perhaps my experience is atypical, or my definition of "frozen out" is different.
- gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
  1 in 6 hiring managers were told to not hire white men. https://www.wsaz.com/2022/11/08/1-6-hiring-managers-have-been-told-stop-hiring-white-men-survey-finds/#:~:text=%2528Gray%2520News%2529%2520%E2%80%93%2520A%2520recent%2520survey%2520of%25201%252C000,also%2520been%2520told%2520to%2520deprioritize%2520hiring%2520white%2520women https://www.wsaz.com/2022/11/08/1-6-hiring-managers-have-bee.... Google getting sued for that. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wilberg-recruiter-hiring-reverse-discrimination-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wi... Same accusation against Microsoft https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-diversity-hiring-inclusion-employee-criticism-claims https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-di... Disney doing it. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/watch-disney-exec-admits-company-openly-discriminates-against-white-males-in-spoken-agreement/ar-BB1oHhaa https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/watch-disney-exec-...
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  I have. In April 2019, when I worked at Dropbox, we instituted what we called "Opportunistic Hiring". 20 heads were reserved to hire "opportunistically". What this meant is that when a diverse candidate was hired, the headcount used for that hire didn't come from the team's headcount. It came from the pool of headcount for "opportunistic hires". Unless the "opportunistic hires" pool was already exhausted, then a diverse hire still counted against the team's headcount. The definition of a "diverse" candidate was a woman of any race, and URM men. If this sounds like an overly-complex way of saying "we're prohibiting Asian and white men from 20 headcount" it's because it is. I can provide the exact wording of the policy if you want. It's not "freezing out" all white males. One, it's also freezing out Asian males. And two, it's only freezing them out of a specific chunk of our headcount. But it still deeply affected me to see a company outright deny employment on the basis of race and gender, even if it was only for part of the headcount.
  - runako 2y ago
    Reading your description of the policy, it looks like what it does is say a team can hire from the "Opportunistic" bucket for "free," but does not freeze out anybody else. Is that a correct read? > 20 heads were reserved I have not studied Dropbox extensively. In 2019, was 20 hires roughly equivalent to the total overall number of new hires? Or are we talking about a small percentage of overall new staffers? If the latter, how does this anecdote respond to my statements?
    - Manuel_D 2y ago
      It's explicit denial of employment on the basis of race and gender. It's illegal no matter what proportion of the headcount this is. If I have 100 headcount and I say "20 of our headcount is off limits to white and Asian men" is that ok? If I have 80 headcount and I create 20 "opportunistic" headcount exclusive to women and URM is that acceptable? You're smart enough to understand that these are identical policies.
      - runako 2y ago
        I'm not reading anywhere in there where it says anybody is denied a job under any scenario. Perhaps if Dropbox had fixed hiring numbers like your hypothetical, but that was not data you submitted.

Manuel_D 2y ago

If there's a field that's 80% women and 20% men, is setting a DEI target of 40% men preventing sexism? Or is it perpetrating sexism?

runako 2y ago
Nobody can manage anything with this little information. A KPI set at a particular value cannot tell why the KPI has that value. Thus without more information, your hypothetical is not productive. An illustration by way of example. In a field where other firms have a range of net profit margins of 35% - 45%, one firm sets their net profit target at 10%. Is that because they are not competitive? Another illustration by way of example. In a field where other firms have a range of revenue per employee of $200k - $300k, one firm has no RPE target at all and its revenue per employee is $15k. Is that worth examining?
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  > Nobody can manage anything with this little information. I can! Unless you have some reason to believe that one gender is superior at the job than the other, it should match the representation of the field. > In a field where other firms have a range of net profit margins of 35% - 45%, one firm sets their net profit target at 10%. Is that because they are not competitive? Net profit margin is not a protected class. Race and gender are.
  - runako 2y ago
    > it should match the representation of the field Why? You have not supported this at all. If the field is staffed by wildly bigoted hiring managers, why does your assertion follow? Separately, why would this be obviously best for the company? Does matching parity with the field somehow ensure the best quality or cost/performance? Does this still hold at firms that are smaller than the largest (say: under 5k engineers)? Why?
    - Manuel_D 2y ago
      If I'm hiring 20 people in a field that's 80% women and 20% men, why would I expect to hire more than 20% men? Unless I have some evidence to think that one gender is better on average than the other, then we'd expect a non-discriminatory hiring process to hire women and men in equal proportions relative to the field. If a firm is staffed by bigoted hiring managers that favor men, we'd actually expect closer to equal representation amongst those bigoted firms. Because they're bigoted against women and less likely to hire them, they end up with a more "equitable" workforce. If a firm in our hypothetical field is bigoted against women, and hires women at half the rate as men, then it'd actually end up with a representation of ~40% women and 60% men. It's closer to equitable because of its discriminatory policies. This is a great example of why equity isn't evidence of nondiscrimination, and gender disparity isn't evidence of discrimination. > Separately, why would this be obviously best for the company? Illegally discriminating against pregnant women benefits the company: maternity leave is expensive, and avoiding expecting women saves money. Does that make it a good thing? Remember, nondiscrimination is both morally right and the law of the land (in most liberal democracies, at least), even if you have reason to believe that increasing or decreasing the representation of certain groups is advantageous. > Does matching parity with the field somehow ensure the best quality or cost/performance? Hiring the best candidates ensures the best quality and cost to performance ratio. Unless you have some reason to believe that men are better than women, then matching parity of the field is a side-effect of hiring the best candidates. > Does this still hold at firms that are smaller than the largest (say: under 5k engineers)? Why? Sure, a small sample size is going to have more variance. A one-woman consulting firm is going to have 100% women employees. That's not evidence of discrimination. But nor is a one-man consulting firm that's 100% male. Smaller firms have a lower sample size and are naturally going to have larger variance due to smaller sample sizes. But it'll all average out.