4 ms·

I'm curious, what gives you that kind of deep insight?

AndyNemmity 2y ago
It's not deep insight. I am for real DEI. That is not what is actually happening. The net impacts are essentially marketing, which has value in it's own right for sure, but I'd prefer real change as opposed to marketing impacts, and forced trainings everyone must take.
- whynotminot 2y ago
  I think part of the problem is that no one knows (or agrees on) what “real DEI” is. Is it quotas? Is it bias training? Is it a quarterly presentation from HR?
  - AndyNemmity 2y ago
    That's fair. I guess what I'm communicating is that the goals of larger diversity are worth effort, and attention, and the reality of them is bias training in the long list of mandatory trainings, and marketing at conferences.
  - the_snooze 2y ago
    Even more broadly, what are the normative success and failure visions for DEI? At what point does an organization say "DEI mission accomplished?" To be charitable to the whole idea, it seems to be well-intentioned. But beyond that, it's empty in terms of what pratical outcomes it actually sought to make real. Maybe I'm just not someone cut out to be an activist, but without articulated end-states, it strikes me as just teeing up for a perpetual struggle. That doesn't seem too fulfilling.
    - AndyNemmity 2y ago
      I think the practical outcomes that are your KPIs are higher diversity from a leadership standpoint, and within the organization. There's nothing empty about that. It's measured, and evaluated.
    - AlexandrB 2y ago
      > At what point does an organization say "DEI mission accomplished?" Never, because then the DEI group's budget would be cut. The incentives for the people actually running these programs are completely out of whack with what would be good for the company and for the people they're actually meant to help.
    - kenjackson 2y ago
      The problem is the end-state is complex and nuanced. The qualitative objective for most companies should be something like: "Recruiting and hiring people with no bias against race, gender, religion, age, disability, etc... Treating those same people with no bias once hired, including pay, promotion, opportunities, and respect. Leveraging the diversity of perspective and skills of everyone in the company to maximize success of the company." How do you measure that? If you're a SW company and you have 2% Black engineers is that good or expected? If its not good, how should you improve it? I think these are legitimately important questions, but also exceptionally hard questions. I think the big problem though is that for the majority of the population there is little incentive to actually solve the problem. But I think money will eventually be what does it. Market inefficiencies will eventually lead people to want to solve this, but it can take a LONG time for these inefficiencies to manifest, since there are so many other factors at play. For example, look at college football. Alabama did not integrate black players until the 70s and they were fine until they played an integrated USC team -- and it took that long despite football being probably one of the places where inefficienes are squashed out pretty quickly.
    - whynotminot 2y ago
      > At what point does an organization say "DEI mission accomplished?" I feel like this mindset is the same as CEOs reducing the IT budget because “We’ve recovered from our last critical outage and our systems are working fine now.” I think there’s a valid place for a DEI-like group within HR ensuring a company’s hiring and promoting policies are fair in an ongoing manner.
coldpepper 2y ago
Deep insight? It was completely obvious that it was performative. Why would huge companies like suddently care about black people or women if it was not to seek popular approval and get closer to power?
- DAGdug 2y ago
  Minimization of regulatory risk and lawsuits. Compliance was _always_ about that - if leadership truly valued human dignity you’d see Gaza get a few orders of magnitude as much attention as BLM in corporate America, rather than a few orders of magnitude less.
  - gotoeleven 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      You're conflating Gaza with Hamas. The vast majority of both Gaza and BLM have taken zero hostages and done zero raping.
      - anonfordays 2y ago
        The vast majority of Nazis rounded up zero Jews and killed no one.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        And as a result, we didn’t put most of Germany to death. We fed them, helped rebuild, and they’re now a close ally.
        anonfordays 2y ago
        Glad we're not putting most of Gaza to death either. Maybe after the dust settles, we'll feed, help rebuild, and they'll be a close ally.
kstrauser 2y ago
I'm skeptical too. I've worked at a series of smaller companies with strong DEI programs, and the "enlightened self-interest" part was that it gave us better products. Turns out I have a pretty good idea of how to build products and features that appeal to people with the same regional, race, gender, and other backgrounds as me. Working with people who are in different from me in some substantial way showed me how much of that is arbitrary. For an extreme example, imagine a car company with zero women employees. I could imagine that their designs might look increasingly awesome to people who grew up playing with black, angular, high-powered cars (like me -- that's what I'd want!). And while there are plenty of women who'd like that, too, there are lots of women (and plenty of men!) who'd want something smaller, more brightly colored, and with better gas mileage. It they didn't have those varying opinions, or weren't even aware that people had other opinions, they'd be severely limiting their potential market and leaving huge amounts of money on the table. (My wife's a big F1 fan and wants to own a McLaren some day. I know that many, many women love fast cars, too, and that many, many men do not. That was meant to be illustrative, not a perfect analogy.) I am utterly convinced that getting input from lots of people with various backgrounds makes a company much better and more profitable. Even if I didn't care about the societal ideals behind DEI programs, I'd still happily endorse them as a competitive edge.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Volvo had women design a car once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_YCC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_YCC
  - stickfigure 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      It was generally mocked. Car companies will do anything but build actually diverse teams of Mech Es, EEs, mechanics, human factors psychologists etc.
    - 2y ago

It's not deep insight. I am for real DEI. That is not what is actually happening. The net impacts are essentially marketing, which has value in it's own right for sure, but I'd prefer real change as opposed to marketing impacts, and forced trainings everyone must take.

whynotminot 2y ago
I think part of the problem is that no one knows (or agrees on) what “real DEI” is. Is it quotas? Is it bias training? Is it a quarterly presentation from HR?
- AndyNemmity 2y ago
  That's fair. I guess what I'm communicating is that the goals of larger diversity are worth effort, and attention, and the reality of them is bias training in the long list of mandatory trainings, and marketing at conferences.
- the_snooze 2y ago
  Even more broadly, what are the normative success and failure visions for DEI? At what point does an organization say "DEI mission accomplished?" To be charitable to the whole idea, it seems to be well-intentioned. But beyond that, it's empty in terms of what pratical outcomes it actually sought to make real. Maybe I'm just not someone cut out to be an activist, but without articulated end-states, it strikes me as just teeing up for a perpetual struggle. That doesn't seem too fulfilling.
  - AndyNemmity 2y ago
    I think the practical outcomes that are your KPIs are higher diversity from a leadership standpoint, and within the organization. There's nothing empty about that. It's measured, and evaluated.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    > At what point does an organization say "DEI mission accomplished?" Never, because then the DEI group's budget would be cut. The incentives for the people actually running these programs are completely out of whack with what would be good for the company and for the people they're actually meant to help.
  - kenjackson 2y ago
    The problem is the end-state is complex and nuanced. The qualitative objective for most companies should be something like: "Recruiting and hiring people with no bias against race, gender, religion, age, disability, etc... Treating those same people with no bias once hired, including pay, promotion, opportunities, and respect. Leveraging the diversity of perspective and skills of everyone in the company to maximize success of the company." How do you measure that? If you're a SW company and you have 2% Black engineers is that good or expected? If its not good, how should you improve it? I think these are legitimately important questions, but also exceptionally hard questions. I think the big problem though is that for the majority of the population there is little incentive to actually solve the problem. But I think money will eventually be what does it. Market inefficiencies will eventually lead people to want to solve this, but it can take a LONG time for these inefficiencies to manifest, since there are so many other factors at play. For example, look at college football. Alabama did not integrate black players until the 70s and they were fine until they played an integrated USC team -- and it took that long despite football being probably one of the places where inefficienes are squashed out pretty quickly.
  - whynotminot 2y ago
    > At what point does an organization say "DEI mission accomplished?" I feel like this mindset is the same as CEOs reducing the IT budget because “We’ve recovered from our last critical outage and our systems are working fine now.” I think there’s a valid place for a DEI-like group within HR ensuring a company’s hiring and promoting policies are fair in an ongoing manner.

coldpepper 2y ago

Deep insight? It was completely obvious that it was performative. Why would huge companies like suddently care about black people or women if it was not to seek popular approval and get closer to power?

DAGdug 2y ago
Minimization of regulatory risk and lawsuits. Compliance was _always_ about that - if leadership truly valued human dignity you’d see Gaza get a few orders of magnitude as much attention as BLM in corporate America, rather than a few orders of magnitude less.
- gotoeleven 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    You're conflating Gaza with Hamas. The vast majority of both Gaza and BLM have taken zero hostages and done zero raping.
    - anonfordays 2y ago
      The vast majority of Nazis rounded up zero Jews and killed no one.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        And as a result, we didn’t put most of Germany to death. We fed them, helped rebuild, and they’re now a close ally.
        anonfordays 2y ago
        Glad we're not putting most of Gaza to death either. Maybe after the dust settles, we'll feed, help rebuild, and they'll be a close ally.

kstrauser 2y ago

I'm skeptical too. I've worked at a series of smaller companies with strong DEI programs, and the "enlightened self-interest" part was that it gave us better products. Turns out I have a pretty good idea of how to build products and features that appeal to people with the same regional, race, gender, and other backgrounds as me. Working with people who are in different from me in some substantial way showed me how much of that is arbitrary. For an extreme example, imagine a car company with zero women employees. I could imagine that their designs might look increasingly awesome to people who grew up playing with black, angular, high-powered cars (like me -- that's what I'd want!). And while there are plenty of women who'd like that, too, there are lots of women (and plenty of men!) who'd want something smaller, more brightly colored, and with better gas mileage. It they didn't have those varying opinions, or weren't even aware that people had other opinions, they'd be severely limiting their potential market and leaving huge amounts of money on the table. (My wife's a big F1 fan and wants to own a McLaren some day. I know that many, many women love fast cars, too, and that many, many men do not. That was meant to be illustrative, not a perfect analogy.) I am utterly convinced that getting input from lots of people with various backgrounds makes a company much better and more profitable. Even if I didn't care about the societal ideals behind DEI programs, I'd still happily endorse them as a competitive edge.

throwaway48476 2y ago
Volvo had women design a car once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_YCC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_YCC
- stickfigure 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    It was generally mocked. Car companies will do anything but build actually diverse teams of Mech Es, EEs, mechanics, human factors psychologists etc.
  - 2y ago