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I wrote about my experience working as a software developer and being black in the industry and I was lucky to have it published on BBC [1]. What immediately f

I wrote about my experience working as a software developer and being black in the industry and I was lucky to have it published on BBC [1]. What immediately followed, every large company reached out to have me work as a consultant for their diversity program. I found it fascinating that they had a team of DEI experts in place already. Like what makes one an expert? In addition to my job, I spent nights developing programs trying to help these companies. Some folks right here on HN shared their successful experiences and I presented it to several companies. I was met with resistance every step of the way. Over the course of a year and hundreds of candidates I presented, I've managed to place just one developer in a company. However, most these companies were happy to change their social media profile to a solid black image or black lives matters. They sent memos, they organized lunches, even sold merch and donated. But hiring, that was too much to ask. A lot of graduates told me they never even got to do a technical interview. Those DEI programs like to produce a show. Something visible that gives the impression that important work is being done. Like Microsoft reading who owned the land where the campus was built [2] in the beginning of every program. It eerily reminds me of "the loyalty oath crusade" in Catch-22. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23669188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23669188 [2]: https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4?si=wtnQtBOE-fs4V7gR https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4?si=wtnQtBOE-fs4V7gR

krainboltgreene 2y ago
Yes and the fun part is a lot of people see this "eager yet resistant" as a damnification of diversity initiatives instead of the calcification of current systemic problems.
ncr100 2y ago
This is saying those businesses all used DEI for show, and suggests their efforts were half-hearted, if I read correctly. Their metrics I assume are zero / flat, around 'success' for DEI, derivatively. To me this suggests the next best focus area for increased fairness of societal fiscal (opportunity) performance is regulation, perhaps driven by social change and social pressure. I have next to no influence. Still I wonder if I'm naive? ALSO, awesome work Ibrahim / firefoxd, you deserve to be honored for your experience and celebrated for meaningful efforts to make society better. I would not know about this without you: > If you are black and take a group picture with your white colleagues [on Zoom] one evening, eventually someone will make the joke that all they see are your teeth. If you are black and hang out with your white colleague, people will always assume you are the subordinate.
- kjellsbells 2y ago
  An alternate take: there are good DEI programs and poor ones. The poor ones fail because the planners dont really know what they are trying to do, but leadership thinks they ought to have one, and so they metric-ize it. And since (again, no clarity of thought) hard numbers in areas like hiring sail perilously close to large legal rocks, they whiff on the metrics and end up measuring something like "engagement". And, concomitantly, deliver a lot of low value chatter that provides ample ammunition to opponents of any kind of DEI programs, even the good ones. A good DEI program should, IMHO, be indistinguishable from good management culture embedded at every level in an org. - It should not be controversial to assert, and product management to insist, say, that products designed for humanity should be usable by humanity: men and women, for example - but we still have medicine and cars tested on male models, and software that is unusable if you have low vision or cant operate a mouse and keyboard simultaneously. That doesn't automatically mean one must hire 50:50 men:women, say (see legal rocks, above), but it certainly starts to smell like a missed opportunity if you don't have a single person on your staff or in your network of consultants who can explain what it feels like to wear a seatbelt when you are 1.5m and 50kg not 2m and 85kg. If you want better products, this seems like a no brainer, but it doesnt seem to happen. - It must absolutely be a mandate for all managers to avoid cliques. All men? All women? All Indians? All Purdue grads? Close watching needed, especially when those groups hire and promote. Doesn't need a mandate, needs better managers of managers. Tldr is that no amount of DEI will fix bad management culture.
  - nradov 2y ago
    The particular issues around medicine and cars were more due to regulatory and liability issues than bad management culture or intentional discrimination. Pharmaceutical companies often didn't include women as subjects in clinical trials over fears that if one got pregnant and then had a baby with serious birth defects because of the drug that would be ethically problematic and potentially lead to huge monetary damages in a civil trial. The FDA has since changed their rules to require broader participation in clinical trials. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/diverse-women-clinical-trials/women-clinical-trials-research-and-policy https://www.fda.gov/consumers/diverse-women-clinical-trials/... Likewise with cars, the NHTSA originally had a single standard crash test dummy designed to mimic an average sized man. So manufacturers optimized around that. Now they are using a more diverse set of dummies. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/improving-safety-for-women-requires-more-than-a-female-crash-test-dummy https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/improving-safety-for-women-... https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies
bko 2y ago
A lot of people say DEI programs were purely performative and just for political points. But these policies did change the corporate landscape and affect hiring decisions. Of 323,092 new jobs added in 2021 by S&P 100 companies, 302,570 (94%) went to people of color This data came from workforce demographic reports submitted to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by 88 S&P 100 companies Hispanic individuals accounted for 40% of new hires, followed by Black (23%) and Asian (22%) workers https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-e...
- linotype 2y ago
  So it was racist?
  - thfuran 2y ago
    Depends what the applicant pool looked like, but 94% seems almost certain to be an overcorrection.
    - eapressoandcats 2y ago
      The way it’s calculated is just based on the net change, so it doesn’t really match overall hiring practices. At the end of it all high status jobs were still disproportionately held by White people and Asian people.
      - dev1ycan 2y ago
        What does that matter when all your newcomers are not white? eventually you'll end up with the polar opposite. You should hire based on skill not race or any other thing you have no control over.
        eapressoandcats 2y ago
        Right but part of that is asking why your workforce isn’t representative of the available workers. If you’re disproportionately hiring some types of people you probably are hiring on race and not skill. And yes, some of this is not solvable at the end of the funnel when hiring but as a society leaving a full class of people in less productive jobs due to race (or caste or whatever) is a waste of human potential.
jlhawn 2y ago
> ... who owned the land ... they didn't use the word "owned", only "occupied". The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concept of land "ownership" and would think of it more like land alienation. As a Georgist, I'm personally very annoyed by these sort of empty indigenous land acknowledgements. I'm more excited about stuff like this Squamish Nation housing development in Vancouver, BC [1] where they actually get rights to use the land how they want even if it doesn't fit local expectations of "indigenous ways of knowing and being". [1] https://senakw.com/ https://senakw.com/
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concept of land "ownership" I doubt they had deeds to land. But they did fight inter-tribal wars over which territory belonged to which tribe. Humans have a very well developed notion of "mine" and "not mine". Saying indigenous peoples did not have this is an extraordinary claim, and would need strong evidence.
  - santoshalper 2y ago
    Also, OUR idea of ownership, at least legally, is based on the idea of usage and access. You may own a piece of land, but not the mineral rights. You can't prevent an aircraft from flying over your property etc. Ownership is a bundle of rights and exclusions. The idea of ownership meaning "who is allowed to hunt on this land" would fit right into our legal framework of ownership.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      I'm also pretty sure that any tribe that built a village and farmed had a very strong notion of my house and my garden. Even animals mark their territory and aggressively defend it.
      - AlotOfReading 2y ago
        You'd be surprised then. Indigenous property rights aren't homogenous. Many lacked the kind of exclusive ownership that we have in Western systems. (Some) Inuit recognized communal band lands for example, where a particular individual within that band might have rights to a particular resource location while they used it, but their usage was governed by complex systems of traditions and they couldn't necessarily exclude others from separate resources in the same physical location. Pueblo groups had extremely strong ideas about property lines, but those properties were often analogous to modern corporations where individual families could own "shares" in the property, and exchange those for other shares in other properties to reallocate ownership. Areas within a property could also be "rented" to others, or the entire property reclaimed by the government. The best way I can summarize it is that native Americans tended to have much more fine-grained ideas about what property rights entail than our Western systems. Capabilities based security vs role based security, to really force the analogy into computing.
niftaystory 2y ago
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- thfuran 2y ago
  That's a bizarre take. Something doesn't have to be useful forever to be of use. And mechanical printing presses were probably one of the most significant inventions ever, even if they're obsolete now.
_yb2s 2y ago
I’ve noticed most academic places I’ve worked perpetually use photos of the same 1-2 black people that ever worked there in marketing materials. Including people that left or were pushed out years ago due to racism and unfair treatment. We have constant trainings and workshops on diversity and inclusion (taught exclusively by perpetually angry and abrasive middle aged white people), but everyone ignores me when I point out how specific aspects of the hiring process and work culture systematically exclude people from diverse backgrounds. In truth, at our supposedly “woke” and “DEI hire” academic institution, a black candidate still needs to be much much better than a white candidate to have any chance… and once they are here they will not feel welcome or included.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Yes, effecting actual change is hard, pulling employees into a meeting room for 45mins to show them some buzzword filled slides is much easier.
mhh__ 2y ago
Crowning yourself as an expert in a politically contentious field is very lucrative if you can make it stick.
gigatree 2y ago
Has anyone asked why so many companies seem to care so much about the appearance of DEI? And all at the same time? I know there’s cultural shifts towards that sort of thing, probably to fill the void left by religion, but does that explain why the world’s largest private equity firms push them so hard? Seems like something everyone just accepts without question, even though it’s completely out of character for people and entities who only exist to increase their own bottom line (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, it’s just so out of character to the point you’d think it would raise suspicion).
- jeffbee 2y ago
  Companies care about attracting all segments of society because if they can expand their applicant pool they will pay less for labor. If I am the only person smart enough to recruit qualified graduates from HBCUs then I get to be more selective in hiring and I also get to offer less wages but still fill the position.
  - energy123 2y ago
    Companies also want to be in the middle of the pack when it comes to sociocultural norms. There is safety in numbers. When everyone was adopting DEI initiatives, it was the safest for you to do it too. Now that everyone is abandoning DEI initiatives, it's also the safest to abandon it. There is no upside in being the fastest when it comes to bucking society's norms.
- iforgot22 2y ago
  Yes, this is asked a lot, and I've always assumed it was legal pressure. If a company doesn't have enough of X demographic, they can be sued for discrimination, while at the same time it has been illegal to hire based on race. This time the legal pressure in the opposite direction is more obvious.
- andrepd 2y ago
  It's marketing, they judge that they will gain more by the good will earned than it costs to hire those "DEI experts". Now that the reaction is in full swing across many territories they start to cut back (see tfa). It's all very exhausting.
jiggawatts 2y ago
Green washing, security theatre, lip service, etc… This is an old phenomenon that keeps reoccurring in many forms.
HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
Jeez, the most I ever got was called aside by the VP of Engineering on my last day to give him my opinion of their Diversity program ("since you're leaving, I figured you could be brutally honest with me"). Loved him for that, BTW :-) But seriously, congratulations! The negative effect of "fake diversity" is that it leaves everyone else wondering if the minority employees actually know what they're doing or if they were hired to make the company look good.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
  > The negative effect of "fake diversity" is that it leaves everyone else wondering if the minority employees actually know what they're doing or if they were hired to make the company look good. This is the most insidious thing, in my opinion. If you're already a hater, now you can unabashedly claim the moral high ground. "Did she interview well, or was she a diversity hire?"
  - fenomas 2y ago
    One of my theories about DEI programs is: the people running the programs see their only failure mode as "we fail to improve our metric", but the much more dangerous failure mode is "current employees see our program as a joke that creates no value and hires unqualified people". And it seems like a lot of DEI teams are just completely blind to the latter mode. You sometimes hear about a team announcing an apparently minor change, like renaming something to sound more inclusive, and then go on about how they spent six months discussing it and gathering feedback, and it's very obvious that nobody involved ever asked themselves "when we announce this are we going to sound like a serious team that does valuable work?"
- deleted 2y ago
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lolinder 2y ago
Yes. What too few people realized was that the rollout of DEI was driven by what was trending at the time, designed to win political points with the groups that were politically ascendant. These programs were never a victory for the principles or the people, they were marketing. So it should come as no shock whatsoever that now that another political group is politically ascendant the marketing that is valuable has changed, so there go the marketing programs that were designed for the old power structure. Change that occurs through fear of your power can only last as long as your power. Lasting change is only possible by actually changing hearts and minds. Progressives have forgotten in the last 10-15 years that the progress which we've won took generations not because our predecessors were weak and slow but because it inherently takes generations to effect lasting change. It's a slow, painful process, and if you think you accomplished it in a decade you're almost certainly wrong.
- seadan83 2y ago
  I agree with most of your points. Though with respect lasting change, where is your impression coming from that the gains are in the last 10 to 15 years? Or even that is a widespread belief? According to reporting at the guardian [1], FBs DEI program increased black and brown employees from 8% to 12%. Seems abysmal. My perspective, US society is still fighting for gains that _started_ 160 years ago. Still painstakingly slow. We take for granted perhaps the first black president is _recent_, the first time having two black senators is now, school integration is about 40 years old in some places - not even one lifetime.i don't think it's an accurate characterization that huge strides were made in just the last decade, or that we were even starting at a "good" place. I fundamentally agree on how slow the progress has been. I don't know if it needs to be that slow. I disagree that there is a wide held belief that everything was done in the last decade. Notably because of how little has been done. It's not like we're in that good of a place, never really were. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/10/meta-ending-dei-program https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/10/meta-ending-...
  - ruined 2y ago
    the last known direct child of an american born into slavery died only a few years ago https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/20/slavery-link-daniel-smith-dead/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/20/slavery...
iforgot22 2y ago
Is this because truly doing race-based hiring has been illegal for a long time? I've noticed they'll target certain demographics for interviews and other opportunities, but identity can't be a factor in the interview itself. It's a fine line.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  maybe race-based hiring has been illegal and you might be able to win a civil case, but the DOJ certainly wasn't going after companies for not hiring enough white people or men.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - iforgot22 2y ago
    Definitely. I think they just had to make sure not to decline a candidate for that reason explicitly. But it trickled down, e.g. interviewers were told not to ask anything remotely related to the candidate's identity and especially not to write it down, even gendered pronouns.
- Aunche 2y ago
  They will target certain demographics in ways that their lawyers can argue are legal such as giving more interviews to Grace Hopper attendees or schools with favorable demographics [1]. This is a great way to poach minorities from different companies without moving bringing any minorities to tech in any significant capacity. This is probably why men are increasingly going to Grace Hopper [2]. [1] https://blog.duolingo.com/how-duolingo-achieved-a-5050-gender-ratio-for-new-software-engineer-hires/ https://blog.duolingo.com/how-duolingo-achieved-a-5050-gende... [2] https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203845886/women-tech-conference-men-grace-hopper https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203845886/women-tech-confere...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
crackercrews 2y ago
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1over137 2y ago
> Like what makes one an expert? Your skin colour of course.
harrall 2y ago
Personally I feel if you want to make an impact, you need to provide resources early on when people are growing up and in school. There’s nothing like gaining inspiration because someone you know growing up is doing it. e.g. It’s much easier to go camping for your first time when someone in your life is “the camping person” and can guide you through it. And the earlier you do it, the higher chance that you end up pursuing it. In a lot of impoverished communities, they don’t have as many as those kinds of people. Especially not compared to a well-connected family in a wealthy suburb. I don’t know how you would provide those resources and maybe these big companies already are, but the availability of professionals that young people surround themselves with should not be overlooked.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Overlooked point but this is very very important. It's hard to understate the importance of good examples and role models while growing up. We are animals which learn essentially by imitation while growing up. We internalise what we see both consciously and subconsciously. It has a massive impact. And in places where good role models are scarce this self-perpetuates. Not discounting the material/economic conditions, obviously.
- scelerat 2y ago
  It's why day care, head start, school lunch and the like are super important. Even before we get to corporate demographics or college graduation, admittance, and application rates, there are millions of children growing up in poverty in the US. Relatively inexpensive social welfare investments can mitigate many of the worst effects, even for those who don't decide to become software engineers.
  - blindriver 2y ago
    None of this matters if the children grow up in a single-parent household. Keeping a two parent household has an outsized influence on the children's development and needs to be a cultural shift in our society.
    - 2y ago
stevage 2y ago
In Australia, that kind of "acknowledgement of country" is extremely common at the start of all kinds of speeches in different contexts. Slightly shorter, and fixed structure, but very similar content. It's just part of the social fabric now, though not without its detractors.
- deleted 2y ago
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cjohnson318 2y ago
To underscore your point, I've met 5 black engineers in 13 years as a software developer. To put this in perspective, my high school was 50% black, and my college was 30% black. Somehow I got where I am, but almost none of my classmates were able to do the same. I don't know what the solution is.
- ArthurStacks 2y ago
  Why is a solution needed? Where is the problem? I hire developers. They are all white because theres no black people around here. It isnt a problem.
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    > Where is the problem? When the inequality gap widens, it has broader long term socioeconomic impact. The civil rights era is not even a century behind us and many fellow Americans are still effectively competing against others that have been given a generational "head start". Does this matter to you? This depends on the type of society you want to live in and be a part of. My take? None of us live in a vacuum in isolation; we live in a country of 300+ million people. My neighbor's are Iranian, Syrian, Turkish/German, French/Moroccan, Indian, East Asian and all lovely people. The problem DEI programs should solve is a systemic one where hiring practices might otherwise pass on qualified minority candidates or may not even be presented to them in the first place. The implementation of many programs is questionable, but the objective and why have some form of policy that focuses on broader inclusivity in the hiring process should not be: I want a better America for everyone and not just some subset of Americans.
    - ArthurStacks 2y ago
      Or maybe theres just less people from certain cultures that want to be a software developer. Whats next, you want to force more white people to become developers because ethnic Indian devs are becoming too populous in the industry. In my country most of the blacks are in London and so we have no black devs in our office. We arent going to go out and find some to hire.
cyanydeez 2y ago
[flagged]
kepler1 2y ago
Since you seem relatively open minded and objective about it let me ask you this: How much did you get paid for doing all those consulting gigs on DEI topics? Just to point out, even as you highlight the hollowness of the trend passing through, you were a part of the industry it created and a beneficiary of people's sudden interest in the symbolism of it even if it achieved little. Tons of people who could justify some kind of vague contribution/expertise were glad to make money off of the political need to pursue this, and be seen doing it. It sounds like you were one of the more respectable contributors. Others were hangers-on, making money or careers off people's fear of being accused of not toeing the new party line, regardless of how hollow it was. VPs/deans/executive directors of diversity and inclusion at whatever institutions they could sell their services to. Whether it was good or not at its core, some people had a vested interest in it continuing. It happens equally with every new trend that is hard to set real goals against. (or achievable ones, until it's found out to be empty).
- firefoxd 2y ago
  I had my day job. This was something I did just to help. I did not request any payment for the work I did. The DEI teams where in house while I was an outside consultant.
JohnMakin 2y ago
Thanks for sharing your experience
AdrianB1 2y ago
Many DEI programs are hit hard by reality: there are only so many people of race X, gender Y or whatever metric Z interested and qualified for a job. The more difficult the job, the less diversity of candidates you have. I did around 1000 interviews for my current company and about 200 for the previous one. I found that in IT in Europe there are not many candidates to meet DEI targetsand still hire the qualified ones. Even expanding to other continents, we barely made it; the last team I hired was one Latino, one Filipino and one white, 2 out of 3 were male. I interviewed around 30 candidates for these positions and I selected the top 3. These 3 were just above the lower limit of expertise to be hired, so I basically had zero choice, the alternative was to pull triple shifts myself to cover for the missing people. Let's say you are the director of a steel plant. DEI targets are totally irrelevant, I never heard about a woman working on the plant floor, but I have many cousins who did. Dying at 45 or 50 years old due to lung or throat cancer is not something many women want to, but all my cousins did. I don't believe in DEI in these circumstances. But if you want DEI in "a day in life of a Microsoft /Twitter employee having free food and pointless meetings all day" videos, that is not fair. So, I don't know why you were not able to place the developers, but think about DEI even more. We have several black people in my department, one of the best PMs I worked with is an older black woman, a good professional will find a place almost anywhere. Morgan Freeman shows that being black does not prevent one from magnificent results, but asking for rewards for being black is not the way.
- torginus 2y ago
  What does DEI even mean in Europe? Do you hire stand-in versions of US racial groups?
  - dijit 2y ago
    European doesn't count unless your skin colour is sufficiently different. (IE; Italians are "White" but Turks are non-white. Romanians ironically get the short end of the stick no matter the situation). Mostly it centers on LGBTQ+ and Women though.
    - torginus 2y ago
bambax 2y ago
> https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4 https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4 I have never seen anything more cringe or ridiculous than this video. Bill Gates has said publicly that he's a fan of Silicon Valley, the tv show that pokes hard fun at the startup culture. But it's Microsoft that's beyond parody...
zombiwoof 2y ago
I worked at Apple. In our org of 1000 people there were/are zero black leaders/senior managers It’s all Indians and Chinese
- 01100011 2y ago
  But we'll call that "diversity" because they're not white. It's like the southern Bay Area in general, the least black place I have ever lived. People call it diverse, but it's really just 4 ethnic groups that rarely intermingle. It's not diverse like LA or NYC are diverse.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    None of the companies I worked for considered Asian tech workers "diverse". One actually carved out a separate category for Asian males: ND. Negative Diversity. I'm not doubting your companies' policies, but just throwing my data point in there too.
    - maeil 2y ago
      Where I was at there surely were internal "Asian" community groups with a budget and so on, for one. Don't think proposing a "White" or even "American" or "European" one would've gone over especially well.
jmyeet 2y ago
Every single socially progressive initiative every company engages in is purely performative. If those initiatives potentially hurt their bottom line or hurt them politically, they will be dropped so fast your head will spin. Years ago, tech companies would promote such moves to improve their image, play intot heir role as being "outsiders" or "disruptors" and to attract staff, who tended to skew towards socially progressive issues. There was genuine belief in the missions of those companies. Google once touted its mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". But now we're talking about trillion dollar companies that move in lockstep with US policy. I tend to believe that every US company eventually becomes a bank, a defense contractor or both. The biggest heel turn politically is probably Mark Zuckerberg, who now makes frequent donations to Republican candidates (and some Democrats, for the record) but we also have Meta donating $1M to Trump's inauguration (by comparison, there was no contribution to Biden's inauguration). Efforts of fighting misinformation are out. DEO is out. If you work for Meta, you're now really no different to Tiwtter. Your employer now actively pushes right-wing propaganda and the right-wing agenda. There is no real support for minorities. But the sad truth is, every other big tech company is on the same path.
- andrekandre 2y ago
  > But the sad truth is, every other big tech company is on the same path. its why relying on companies is no substitute for real social movements; they have their own incentives and will turn on a dime if its prudent
ARandomerDude 2y ago
Yawn. Focus on being a great dev and not what your skin color is. I couldn’t care less where your ancestors were from or whether you have a penis or a vagina. If the code is good, let’s merge it. If it sucks, delete it.
eweise 2y ago
[flagged]
- MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
  You might put "they/them" next to your name if you prefer not to be referred to by a gendered pronoun.
  - eweise 2y ago
    Not putting pronouns next to my name, doesn't mean I don't want to be referred by a gendered pronoun. I'm pretty sure people can guess correctly my gender.
    - MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
      That's fine, too. I typically don't specify a pronoun. Call me what you like. My point is that this is not the case for everybody. Some people prefer not to be called "she" even though I might guess that they're a woman.
  - crackercrews 2y ago
    Can also be helpful for names that are commonly male or female. Or foreign names. But there's not really a need to list multiple pronouns like "they/them/theirs", is there? Doesn't "they" say it all? Only would make sense when it's "she/they" or similar. Otherwise it's just redundant.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  [flagged]
bigmattystyles 2y ago
Your story reminds me of my friend, also Black, went to engineering college with an overwhelmingly white population (me included). He was in more than half of the pamphlets pitching the school they give out to prospective students. It was so blatant.
iaseiadit 2y ago
I can only speak from personal experience, but since about 4 years ago, every candidate I’ve been asked to interview for a software engineering position has been Black, Hispanic, South Asian or East Asian. Not a single white American. Are there no white people studying CS anymore or looking for jobs? Did they all stop applying? Again, it’s only from personal experience. I never asked any of my coworkers a “hey, do you ever interview white people?”, so it could be a coincidence that I was never matched with any. But I don’t think that’s the most likely explanation…
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  If you don't take them can you please forward me their resumes? It's extremely hard for me to find a candidate who isn't a 20s-30s white male named Chad.
  - iaseiadit 2y ago
    My understanding is there’s a lot of outreach at HBCUs, so you may try that. Also H-1Bs. The joke that white men are all named “Chad” is tired. You’ll notice I didn’t say everyone I interviewed was name DeShawn or whatever. Let’s move past that.
- muglug 2y ago
  That has not been my experience working for a big US tech company.
  - iaseiadit 2y ago
    I also work for a big US tech company. If it’s not standard practice, I’m happy to hear it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cplanas 2y ago
  Your experience is very different from mine. I rarely interviewed white candidates, but they were still more common than Hispanic and Black ones. The majority of the candidates were Asian.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
DEI programs are simultaneously for PR and morale. You don't want to be "that company that doesn't even have a DEI program". But also you don't want your employees being pissed off that you don't have a DEI program, because they could leave, or complain and decrease morale, which could become a PR nightmare. But they can be more. Some companies I've worked for used their DEI programs to actively support local communities, organize volunteering efforts, collect donations. Even companies that HN might consider "Evil", I've seen have very strong and engaged DEI groups. It came down to two things: 1) they hired passionate people who took it upon themselves to organize internally and do more with the groups, and 2) they had leadership that (amazingly) gave the support needed for the group to make a positive impact. But also, some companies I've worked for just had a 30 minute "movie lunch hour" and guest speaker and that was it. So it's obvious to me now when a DEI program is a PR dodge, and when it does real work.
linkerdoo 2y ago
[dead]
heresie-dabord 2y ago
> who owned the land where the campus was built I understand that it is important to raise social awareness about some things. People should not be afraid to talk about real issues. Freedom of speech, the need to listen to people/citizens/customers &c. That said, the cheerful, forced vapidity in that video is embarrassing. None of those parroted statements is worth a tinker's cuss historically. And none of it is worth a damn in the present time either unless the corporation is going to give billions in reparation to the tribes that were permanently evicted. Is the Land Acknowledgement Theatre really a strategic attempt to avoid paying damages in many potential class-action law suits? Is that corporate fear really what drives most of these obsequious recognition statements and policies?
Over2Chars 2y ago
Wow. I'm curious why it took hundreds of candidates to not be hired before it dawned on you that it was not sincere? Wouldn't the first dozen have been enough? Unless your financial interests intersected with those of the companies you consulted for this "show"...? But, I applaud your bravery in calling these guys out after they stopped giving you work. Bravo.
renegat0x0 2y ago
At the end of the day companies want employees with talent. Yes, they were using DEI as a marketing, and kept hiring using merit, not DEI principles, which I find nice.
l2silver 2y ago
> Over the course of a year and hundreds of candidates I presented, I've managed to place just one developer in a company I work at pseudo government organization where we take seminars every few months about dei, gender issues, etc... and it has made 0 difference when it comes to hiring. Ultimately my org is trying to reach out more, get to dei events, but that's as far as the effort goes. Once a job application is posted, it's the same old process. Maybe that's fair, but it felt disingenuous, and unnecessary, especially since we weren't great at hiring anyways.
bartread 2y ago
You say you only placed one? Did you get any feedback on the rejections or were they just cold/ghosted? So I don’t positively discriminate but, the most recent role I was looking to fill, I didn’t speak to that many candidates because applicant quality was overall poor, but getting on half of those I did speak with were from minorities. In the end we decided not to hire for the time being because we couldn’t find anyone at the standard we needed (possibly due to time of year - November/December often aren’t great), but I’m surprised that you weren’t even getting people to interview. That, on the face of it, is quite concerning.
weird-eye-issue 2y ago
Maybe the candidates you presented weren't high quality enough?
hedora 2y ago
That reminds me of a big company around that time. They changed master to main in git, which cost each engineer many hours on average, which translated into many engineer years (decades?) of wasted time. It was in the middle of a hiring spree. Why not spend that time interviewing black engineers instead?
perdomon 2y ago
Why hire a candidate because of their skin color? Shouldn’t employees be hiring for skills and company value fit?
freeopinion 2y ago
I sympathize with your frustration. A 1% success rate is extremely discouraging. Do you know what the success rate is for non-DEI candidates? I believe there is some bias in the hiring process including racism, sexism, ageism, etc. But I also think that companies are hiring less than 1% of applicants in general. From what I have seen, companies are very bad at identifying the best candidates. But if you are getting 100 resumes a month and you hire 2-4 people a year, it's a roll of the dice just selecting the 20 resumes out of 400 to invite for an interview. All of that is to say: don't get too discouraged. A 1% success rate would be remarkable. If you can achieve a 0.5% success rate you can increase diversity by 400%. Personally, I'm a fan of meritocracy. I wish the most qualified people were surviving the roll of the dice. But I think it would be ideal if the most qualified people included a lot of diversity. As it is, employers' best chance to hire qualified people is to rely on human networks to help somebody stand out in the sea of resumes. So the more people of diversity you can land, the better chance there is for future candidates. And the better qualified your diverse candidates are, the more voice they'll get in future hiring influence. So keep pushing highly qualified diverse candidates. And while you're at it, push highly qualified non-diverse candidates so you aren't just seen as a diversity advocate. People might take your diverse candidates more seriously if they are perceived less for their diversity and more for their excellence. If 80% of your recommendations are diverse and 50% seem to be very high-quality, the 10% that are very high-quality non-diverse will change the perception of the 40% very high-quality diverse candidates.

krainboltgreene 2y ago

Yes and the fun part is a lot of people see this "eager yet resistant" as a damnification of diversity initiatives instead of the calcification of current systemic problems.

ncr100 2y ago

This is saying those businesses all used DEI for show, and suggests their efforts were half-hearted, if I read correctly. Their metrics I assume are zero / flat, around 'success' for DEI, derivatively. To me this suggests the next best focus area for increased fairness of societal fiscal (opportunity) performance is regulation, perhaps driven by social change and social pressure. I have next to no influence. Still I wonder if I'm naive? ALSO, awesome work Ibrahim / firefoxd, you deserve to be honored for your experience and celebrated for meaningful efforts to make society better. I would not know about this without you: > If you are black and take a group picture with your white colleagues [on Zoom] one evening, eventually someone will make the joke that all they see are your teeth. If you are black and hang out with your white colleague, people will always assume you are the subordinate.

kjellsbells 2y ago
An alternate take: there are good DEI programs and poor ones. The poor ones fail because the planners dont really know what they are trying to do, but leadership thinks they ought to have one, and so they metric-ize it. And since (again, no clarity of thought) hard numbers in areas like hiring sail perilously close to large legal rocks, they whiff on the metrics and end up measuring something like "engagement". And, concomitantly, deliver a lot of low value chatter that provides ample ammunition to opponents of any kind of DEI programs, even the good ones. A good DEI program should, IMHO, be indistinguishable from good management culture embedded at every level in an org. - It should not be controversial to assert, and product management to insist, say, that products designed for humanity should be usable by humanity: men and women, for example - but we still have medicine and cars tested on male models, and software that is unusable if you have low vision or cant operate a mouse and keyboard simultaneously. That doesn't automatically mean one must hire 50:50 men:women, say (see legal rocks, above), but it certainly starts to smell like a missed opportunity if you don't have a single person on your staff or in your network of consultants who can explain what it feels like to wear a seatbelt when you are 1.5m and 50kg not 2m and 85kg. If you want better products, this seems like a no brainer, but it doesnt seem to happen. - It must absolutely be a mandate for all managers to avoid cliques. All men? All women? All Indians? All Purdue grads? Close watching needed, especially when those groups hire and promote. Doesn't need a mandate, needs better managers of managers. Tldr is that no amount of DEI will fix bad management culture.
- nradov 2y ago
  The particular issues around medicine and cars were more due to regulatory and liability issues than bad management culture or intentional discrimination. Pharmaceutical companies often didn't include women as subjects in clinical trials over fears that if one got pregnant and then had a baby with serious birth defects because of the drug that would be ethically problematic and potentially lead to huge monetary damages in a civil trial. The FDA has since changed their rules to require broader participation in clinical trials. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/diverse-women-clinical-trials/women-clinical-trials-research-and-policy https://www.fda.gov/consumers/diverse-women-clinical-trials/... Likewise with cars, the NHTSA originally had a single standard crash test dummy designed to mimic an average sized man. So manufacturers optimized around that. Now they are using a more diverse set of dummies. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/improving-safety-for-women-requires-more-than-a-female-crash-test-dummy https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/improving-safety-for-women-... https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies

bko 2y ago

A lot of people say DEI programs were purely performative and just for political points. But these policies did change the corporate landscape and affect hiring decisions. Of 323,092 new jobs added in 2021 by S&P 100 companies, 302,570 (94%) went to people of color This data came from workforce demographic reports submitted to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by 88 S&P 100 companies Hispanic individuals accounted for 40% of new hires, followed by Black (23%) and Asian (22%) workers https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-e...

linotype 2y ago
So it was racist?
- thfuran 2y ago
  Depends what the applicant pool looked like, but 94% seems almost certain to be an overcorrection.
  - eapressoandcats 2y ago
    The way it’s calculated is just based on the net change, so it doesn’t really match overall hiring practices. At the end of it all high status jobs were still disproportionately held by White people and Asian people.
    - dev1ycan 2y ago
      What does that matter when all your newcomers are not white? eventually you'll end up with the polar opposite. You should hire based on skill not race or any other thing you have no control over.
      - eapressoandcats 2y ago
        Right but part of that is asking why your workforce isn’t representative of the available workers. If you’re disproportionately hiring some types of people you probably are hiring on race and not skill. And yes, some of this is not solvable at the end of the funnel when hiring but as a society leaving a full class of people in less productive jobs due to race (or caste or whatever) is a waste of human potential.

jlhawn 2y ago

> ... who owned the land ... they didn't use the word "owned", only "occupied". The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concept of land "ownership" and would think of it more like land alienation. As a Georgist, I'm personally very annoyed by these sort of empty indigenous land acknowledgements. I'm more excited about stuff like this Squamish Nation housing development in Vancouver, BC [1] where they actually get rights to use the land how they want even if it doesn't fit local expectations of "indigenous ways of knowing and being". [1] https://senakw.com/ https://senakw.com/

WalterBright 2y ago
> The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concept of land "ownership" I doubt they had deeds to land. But they did fight inter-tribal wars over which territory belonged to which tribe. Humans have a very well developed notion of "mine" and "not mine". Saying indigenous peoples did not have this is an extraordinary claim, and would need strong evidence.
- santoshalper 2y ago
  Also, OUR idea of ownership, at least legally, is based on the idea of usage and access. You may own a piece of land, but not the mineral rights. You can't prevent an aircraft from flying over your property etc. Ownership is a bundle of rights and exclusions. The idea of ownership meaning "who is allowed to hunt on this land" would fit right into our legal framework of ownership.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    I'm also pretty sure that any tribe that built a village and farmed had a very strong notion of my house and my garden. Even animals mark their territory and aggressively defend it.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      You'd be surprised then. Indigenous property rights aren't homogenous. Many lacked the kind of exclusive ownership that we have in Western systems. (Some) Inuit recognized communal band lands for example, where a particular individual within that band might have rights to a particular resource location while they used it, but their usage was governed by complex systems of traditions and they couldn't necessarily exclude others from separate resources in the same physical location. Pueblo groups had extremely strong ideas about property lines, but those properties were often analogous to modern corporations where individual families could own "shares" in the property, and exchange those for other shares in other properties to reallocate ownership. Areas within a property could also be "rented" to others, or the entire property reclaimed by the government. The best way I can summarize it is that native Americans tended to have much more fine-grained ideas about what property rights entail than our Western systems. Capabilities based security vs role based security, to really force the analogy into computing.

niftaystory 2y ago

[flagged]

thfuran 2y ago
That's a bizarre take. Something doesn't have to be useful forever to be of use. And mechanical printing presses were probably one of the most significant inventions ever, even if they're obsolete now.

_yb2s 2y ago

I’ve noticed most academic places I’ve worked perpetually use photos of the same 1-2 black people that ever worked there in marketing materials. Including people that left or were pushed out years ago due to racism and unfair treatment. We have constant trainings and workshops on diversity and inclusion (taught exclusively by perpetually angry and abrasive middle aged white people), but everyone ignores me when I point out how specific aspects of the hiring process and work culture systematically exclude people from diverse backgrounds. In truth, at our supposedly “woke” and “DEI hire” academic institution, a black candidate still needs to be much much better than a white candidate to have any chance… and once they are here they will not feel welcome or included.

andrepd 2y ago
Yes, effecting actual change is hard, pulling employees into a meeting room for 45mins to show them some buzzword filled slides is much easier.

mhh__ 2y ago

Crowning yourself as an expert in a politically contentious field is very lucrative if you can make it stick.

gigatree 2y ago

Has anyone asked why so many companies seem to care so much about the appearance of DEI? And all at the same time? I know there’s cultural shifts towards that sort of thing, probably to fill the void left by religion, but does that explain why the world’s largest private equity firms push them so hard? Seems like something everyone just accepts without question, even though it’s completely out of character for people and entities who only exist to increase their own bottom line (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, it’s just so out of character to the point you’d think it would raise suspicion).

jeffbee 2y ago
Companies care about attracting all segments of society because if they can expand their applicant pool they will pay less for labor. If I am the only person smart enough to recruit qualified graduates from HBCUs then I get to be more selective in hiring and I also get to offer less wages but still fill the position.
- energy123 2y ago
  Companies also want to be in the middle of the pack when it comes to sociocultural norms. There is safety in numbers. When everyone was adopting DEI initiatives, it was the safest for you to do it too. Now that everyone is abandoning DEI initiatives, it's also the safest to abandon it. There is no upside in being the fastest when it comes to bucking society's norms.
iforgot22 2y ago
Yes, this is asked a lot, and I've always assumed it was legal pressure. If a company doesn't have enough of X demographic, they can be sued for discrimination, while at the same time it has been illegal to hire based on race. This time the legal pressure in the opposite direction is more obvious.
andrepd 2y ago
It's marketing, they judge that they will gain more by the good will earned than it costs to hire those "DEI experts". Now that the reaction is in full swing across many territories they start to cut back (see tfa). It's all very exhausting.

jiggawatts 2y ago

Green washing, security theatre, lip service, etc… This is an old phenomenon that keeps reoccurring in many forms.

HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago

Jeez, the most I ever got was called aside by the VP of Engineering on my last day to give him my opinion of their Diversity program ("since you're leaving, I figured you could be brutally honest with me"). Loved him for that, BTW :-) But seriously, congratulations! The negative effect of "fake diversity" is that it leaves everyone else wondering if the minority employees actually know what they're doing or if they were hired to make the company look good.

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
> The negative effect of "fake diversity" is that it leaves everyone else wondering if the minority employees actually know what they're doing or if they were hired to make the company look good. This is the most insidious thing, in my opinion. If you're already a hater, now you can unabashedly claim the moral high ground. "Did she interview well, or was she a diversity hire?"
- fenomas 2y ago
  One of my theories about DEI programs is: the people running the programs see their only failure mode as "we fail to improve our metric", but the much more dangerous failure mode is "current employees see our program as a joke that creates no value and hires unqualified people". And it seems like a lot of DEI teams are just completely blind to the latter mode. You sometimes hear about a team announcing an apparently minor change, like renaming something to sound more inclusive, and then go on about how they spent six months discussing it and gathering feedback, and it's very obvious that nobody involved ever asked themselves "when we announce this are we going to sound like a serious team that does valuable work?"
deleted 2y ago
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lolinder 2y ago

Yes. What too few people realized was that the rollout of DEI was driven by what was trending at the time, designed to win political points with the groups that were politically ascendant. These programs were never a victory for the principles or the people, they were marketing. So it should come as no shock whatsoever that now that another political group is politically ascendant the marketing that is valuable has changed, so there go the marketing programs that were designed for the old power structure. Change that occurs through fear of your power can only last as long as your power. Lasting change is only possible by actually changing hearts and minds. Progressives have forgotten in the last 10-15 years that the progress which we've won took generations not because our predecessors were weak and slow but because it inherently takes generations to effect lasting change. It's a slow, painful process, and if you think you accomplished it in a decade you're almost certainly wrong.

seadan83 2y ago
I agree with most of your points. Though with respect lasting change, where is your impression coming from that the gains are in the last 10 to 15 years? Or even that is a widespread belief? According to reporting at the guardian [1], FBs DEI program increased black and brown employees from 8% to 12%. Seems abysmal. My perspective, US society is still fighting for gains that _started_ 160 years ago. Still painstakingly slow. We take for granted perhaps the first black president is _recent_, the first time having two black senators is now, school integration is about 40 years old in some places - not even one lifetime.i don't think it's an accurate characterization that huge strides were made in just the last decade, or that we were even starting at a "good" place. I fundamentally agree on how slow the progress has been. I don't know if it needs to be that slow. I disagree that there is a wide held belief that everything was done in the last decade. Notably because of how little has been done. It's not like we're in that good of a place, never really were. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/10/meta-ending-dei-program https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/10/meta-ending-...
- ruined 2y ago
  the last known direct child of an american born into slavery died only a few years ago https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/20/slavery-link-daniel-smith-dead/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/20/slavery...

iforgot22 2y ago

Is this because truly doing race-based hiring has been illegal for a long time? I've noticed they'll target certain demographics for interviews and other opportunities, but identity can't be a factor in the interview itself. It's a fine line.

whimsicalism 2y ago
maybe race-based hiring has been illegal and you might be able to win a civil case, but the DOJ certainly wasn't going after companies for not hiring enough white people or men.
- deleted 2y ago
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- iforgot22 2y ago
  Definitely. I think they just had to make sure not to decline a candidate for that reason explicitly. But it trickled down, e.g. interviewers were told not to ask anything remotely related to the candidate's identity and especially not to write it down, even gendered pronouns.
Aunche 2y ago
They will target certain demographics in ways that their lawyers can argue are legal such as giving more interviews to Grace Hopper attendees or schools with favorable demographics [1]. This is a great way to poach minorities from different companies without moving bringing any minorities to tech in any significant capacity. This is probably why men are increasingly going to Grace Hopper [2]. [1] https://blog.duolingo.com/how-duolingo-achieved-a-5050-gender-ratio-for-new-software-engineer-hires/ https://blog.duolingo.com/how-duolingo-achieved-a-5050-gende... [2] https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203845886/women-tech-conference-men-grace-hopper https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203845886/women-tech-confere...
- deleted 2y ago
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crackercrews 2y ago

[flagged]

1over137 2y ago

> Like what makes one an expert? Your skin colour of course.

harrall 2y ago

Personally I feel if you want to make an impact, you need to provide resources early on when people are growing up and in school. There’s nothing like gaining inspiration because someone you know growing up is doing it. e.g. It’s much easier to go camping for your first time when someone in your life is “the camping person” and can guide you through it. And the earlier you do it, the higher chance that you end up pursuing it. In a lot of impoverished communities, they don’t have as many as those kinds of people. Especially not compared to a well-connected family in a wealthy suburb. I don’t know how you would provide those resources and maybe these big companies already are, but the availability of professionals that young people surround themselves with should not be overlooked.

andrepd 2y ago
Overlooked point but this is very very important. It's hard to understate the importance of good examples and role models while growing up. We are animals which learn essentially by imitation while growing up. We internalise what we see both consciously and subconsciously. It has a massive impact. And in places where good role models are scarce this self-perpetuates. Not discounting the material/economic conditions, obviously.
scelerat 2y ago
It's why day care, head start, school lunch and the like are super important. Even before we get to corporate demographics or college graduation, admittance, and application rates, there are millions of children growing up in poverty in the US. Relatively inexpensive social welfare investments can mitigate many of the worst effects, even for those who don't decide to become software engineers.
- blindriver 2y ago
  None of this matters if the children grow up in a single-parent household. Keeping a two parent household has an outsized influence on the children's development and needs to be a cultural shift in our society.
  - 2y ago

stevage 2y ago

In Australia, that kind of "acknowledgement of country" is extremely common at the start of all kinds of speeches in different contexts. Slightly shorter, and fixed structure, but very similar content. It's just part of the social fabric now, though not without its detractors.

deleted 2y ago
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cjohnson318 2y ago

To underscore your point, I've met 5 black engineers in 13 years as a software developer. To put this in perspective, my high school was 50% black, and my college was 30% black. Somehow I got where I am, but almost none of my classmates were able to do the same. I don't know what the solution is.

ArthurStacks 2y ago
Why is a solution needed? Where is the problem? I hire developers. They are all white because theres no black people around here. It isnt a problem.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  > Where is the problem? When the inequality gap widens, it has broader long term socioeconomic impact. The civil rights era is not even a century behind us and many fellow Americans are still effectively competing against others that have been given a generational "head start". Does this matter to you? This depends on the type of society you want to live in and be a part of. My take? None of us live in a vacuum in isolation; we live in a country of 300+ million people. My neighbor's are Iranian, Syrian, Turkish/German, French/Moroccan, Indian, East Asian and all lovely people. The problem DEI programs should solve is a systemic one where hiring practices might otherwise pass on qualified minority candidates or may not even be presented to them in the first place. The implementation of many programs is questionable, but the objective and why have some form of policy that focuses on broader inclusivity in the hiring process should not be: I want a better America for everyone and not just some subset of Americans.
  - ArthurStacks 2y ago
    Or maybe theres just less people from certain cultures that want to be a software developer. Whats next, you want to force more white people to become developers because ethnic Indian devs are becoming too populous in the industry. In my country most of the blacks are in London and so we have no black devs in our office. We arent going to go out and find some to hire.

cyanydeez 2y ago

[flagged]

kepler1 2y ago

Since you seem relatively open minded and objective about it let me ask you this: How much did you get paid for doing all those consulting gigs on DEI topics? Just to point out, even as you highlight the hollowness of the trend passing through, you were a part of the industry it created and a beneficiary of people's sudden interest in the symbolism of it even if it achieved little. Tons of people who could justify some kind of vague contribution/expertise were glad to make money off of the political need to pursue this, and be seen doing it. It sounds like you were one of the more respectable contributors. Others were hangers-on, making money or careers off people's fear of being accused of not toeing the new party line, regardless of how hollow it was. VPs/deans/executive directors of diversity and inclusion at whatever institutions they could sell their services to. Whether it was good or not at its core, some people had a vested interest in it continuing. It happens equally with every new trend that is hard to set real goals against. (or achievable ones, until it's found out to be empty).

firefoxd 2y ago
I had my day job. This was something I did just to help. I did not request any payment for the work I did. The DEI teams where in house while I was an outside consultant.

JohnMakin 2y ago

Thanks for sharing your experience

AdrianB1 2y ago

Many DEI programs are hit hard by reality: there are only so many people of race X, gender Y or whatever metric Z interested and qualified for a job. The more difficult the job, the less diversity of candidates you have. I did around 1000 interviews for my current company and about 200 for the previous one. I found that in IT in Europe there are not many candidates to meet DEI targetsand still hire the qualified ones. Even expanding to other continents, we barely made it; the last team I hired was one Latino, one Filipino and one white, 2 out of 3 were male. I interviewed around 30 candidates for these positions and I selected the top 3. These 3 were just above the lower limit of expertise to be hired, so I basically had zero choice, the alternative was to pull triple shifts myself to cover for the missing people. Let's say you are the director of a steel plant. DEI targets are totally irrelevant, I never heard about a woman working on the plant floor, but I have many cousins who did. Dying at 45 or 50 years old due to lung or throat cancer is not something many women want to, but all my cousins did. I don't believe in DEI in these circumstances. But if you want DEI in "a day in life of a Microsoft /Twitter employee having free food and pointless meetings all day" videos, that is not fair. So, I don't know why you were not able to place the developers, but think about DEI even more. We have several black people in my department, one of the best PMs I worked with is an older black woman, a good professional will find a place almost anywhere. Morgan Freeman shows that being black does not prevent one from magnificent results, but asking for rewards for being black is not the way.

torginus 2y ago
What does DEI even mean in Europe? Do you hire stand-in versions of US racial groups?
- dijit 2y ago
  European doesn't count unless your skin colour is sufficiently different. (IE; Italians are "White" but Turks are non-white. Romanians ironically get the short end of the stick no matter the situation). Mostly it centers on LGBTQ+ and Women though.
  - torginus 2y ago

bambax 2y ago

> https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4 https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4 I have never seen anything more cringe or ridiculous than this video. Bill Gates has said publicly that he's a fan of Silicon Valley, the tv show that pokes hard fun at the startup culture. But it's Microsoft that's beyond parody...

zombiwoof 2y ago

I worked at Apple. In our org of 1000 people there were/are zero black leaders/senior managers It’s all Indians and Chinese

01100011 2y ago
But we'll call that "diversity" because they're not white. It's like the southern Bay Area in general, the least black place I have ever lived. People call it diverse, but it's really just 4 ethnic groups that rarely intermingle. It's not diverse like LA or NYC are diverse.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  None of the companies I worked for considered Asian tech workers "diverse". One actually carved out a separate category for Asian males: ND. Negative Diversity. I'm not doubting your companies' policies, but just throwing my data point in there too.
  - maeil 2y ago
    Where I was at there surely were internal "Asian" community groups with a budget and so on, for one. Don't think proposing a "White" or even "American" or "European" one would've gone over especially well.

jmyeet 2y ago

Every single socially progressive initiative every company engages in is purely performative. If those initiatives potentially hurt their bottom line or hurt them politically, they will be dropped so fast your head will spin. Years ago, tech companies would promote such moves to improve their image, play intot heir role as being "outsiders" or "disruptors" and to attract staff, who tended to skew towards socially progressive issues. There was genuine belief in the missions of those companies. Google once touted its mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". But now we're talking about trillion dollar companies that move in lockstep with US policy. I tend to believe that every US company eventually becomes a bank, a defense contractor or both. The biggest heel turn politically is probably Mark Zuckerberg, who now makes frequent donations to Republican candidates (and some Democrats, for the record) but we also have Meta donating $1M to Trump's inauguration (by comparison, there was no contribution to Biden's inauguration). Efforts of fighting misinformation are out. DEO is out. If you work for Meta, you're now really no different to Tiwtter. Your employer now actively pushes right-wing propaganda and the right-wing agenda. There is no real support for minorities. But the sad truth is, every other big tech company is on the same path.

andrekandre 2y ago
> But the sad truth is, every other big tech company is on the same path. its why relying on companies is no substitute for real social movements; they have their own incentives and will turn on a dime if its prudent

ARandomerDude 2y ago

Yawn. Focus on being a great dev and not what your skin color is. I couldn’t care less where your ancestors were from or whether you have a penis or a vagina. If the code is good, let’s merge it. If it sucks, delete it.

eweise 2y ago

[flagged]

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
You might put "they/them" next to your name if you prefer not to be referred to by a gendered pronoun.
- eweise 2y ago
  Not putting pronouns next to my name, doesn't mean I don't want to be referred by a gendered pronoun. I'm pretty sure people can guess correctly my gender.
  - MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
    That's fine, too. I typically don't specify a pronoun. Call me what you like. My point is that this is not the case for everybody. Some people prefer not to be called "she" even though I might guess that they're a woman.
- crackercrews 2y ago
  Can also be helpful for names that are commonly male or female. Or foreign names. But there's not really a need to list multiple pronouns like "they/them/theirs", is there? Doesn't "they" say it all? Only would make sense when it's "she/they" or similar. Otherwise it's just redundant.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
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bigmattystyles 2y ago

Your story reminds me of my friend, also Black, went to engineering college with an overwhelmingly white population (me included). He was in more than half of the pamphlets pitching the school they give out to prospective students. It was so blatant.

iaseiadit 2y ago

I can only speak from personal experience, but since about 4 years ago, every candidate I’ve been asked to interview for a software engineering position has been Black, Hispanic, South Asian or East Asian. Not a single white American. Are there no white people studying CS anymore or looking for jobs? Did they all stop applying? Again, it’s only from personal experience. I never asked any of my coworkers a “hey, do you ever interview white people?”, so it could be a coincidence that I was never matched with any. But I don’t think that’s the most likely explanation…

0xbadcafebee 2y ago
If you don't take them can you please forward me their resumes? It's extremely hard for me to find a candidate who isn't a 20s-30s white male named Chad.
- iaseiadit 2y ago
  My understanding is there’s a lot of outreach at HBCUs, so you may try that. Also H-1Bs. The joke that white men are all named “Chad” is tired. You’ll notice I didn’t say everyone I interviewed was name DeShawn or whatever. Let’s move past that.
muglug 2y ago
That has not been my experience working for a big US tech company.
- iaseiadit 2y ago
  I also work for a big US tech company. If it’s not standard practice, I’m happy to hear it.
deleted 2y ago
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cplanas 2y ago
Your experience is very different from mine. I rarely interviewed white candidates, but they were still more common than Hispanic and Black ones. The majority of the candidates were Asian.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

DEI programs are simultaneously for PR and morale. You don't want to be "that company that doesn't even have a DEI program". But also you don't want your employees being pissed off that you don't have a DEI program, because they could leave, or complain and decrease morale, which could become a PR nightmare. But they can be more. Some companies I've worked for used their DEI programs to actively support local communities, organize volunteering efforts, collect donations. Even companies that HN might consider "Evil", I've seen have very strong and engaged DEI groups. It came down to two things: 1) they hired passionate people who took it upon themselves to organize internally and do more with the groups, and 2) they had leadership that (amazingly) gave the support needed for the group to make a positive impact. But also, some companies I've worked for just had a 30 minute "movie lunch hour" and guest speaker and that was it. So it's obvious to me now when a DEI program is a PR dodge, and when it does real work.

linkerdoo 2y ago

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heresie-dabord 2y ago

> who owned the land where the campus was built I understand that it is important to raise social awareness about some things. People should not be afraid to talk about real issues. Freedom of speech, the need to listen to people/citizens/customers &c. That said, the cheerful, forced vapidity in that video is embarrassing. None of those parroted statements is worth a tinker's cuss historically. And none of it is worth a damn in the present time either unless the corporation is going to give billions in reparation to the tribes that were permanently evicted. Is the Land Acknowledgement Theatre really a strategic attempt to avoid paying damages in many potential class-action law suits? Is that corporate fear really what drives most of these obsequious recognition statements and policies?

Over2Chars 2y ago

Wow. I'm curious why it took hundreds of candidates to not be hired before it dawned on you that it was not sincere? Wouldn't the first dozen have been enough? Unless your financial interests intersected with those of the companies you consulted for this "show"...? But, I applaud your bravery in calling these guys out after they stopped giving you work. Bravo.

renegat0x0 2y ago

At the end of the day companies want employees with talent. Yes, they were using DEI as a marketing, and kept hiring using merit, not DEI principles, which I find nice.

l2silver 2y ago

> Over the course of a year and hundreds of candidates I presented, I've managed to place just one developer in a company I work at pseudo government organization where we take seminars every few months about dei, gender issues, etc... and it has made 0 difference when it comes to hiring. Ultimately my org is trying to reach out more, get to dei events, but that's as far as the effort goes. Once a job application is posted, it's the same old process. Maybe that's fair, but it felt disingenuous, and unnecessary, especially since we weren't great at hiring anyways.

bartread 2y ago

You say you only placed one? Did you get any feedback on the rejections or were they just cold/ghosted? So I don’t positively discriminate but, the most recent role I was looking to fill, I didn’t speak to that many candidates because applicant quality was overall poor, but getting on half of those I did speak with were from minorities. In the end we decided not to hire for the time being because we couldn’t find anyone at the standard we needed (possibly due to time of year - November/December often aren’t great), but I’m surprised that you weren’t even getting people to interview. That, on the face of it, is quite concerning.

weird-eye-issue 2y ago

Maybe the candidates you presented weren't high quality enough?

hedora 2y ago

That reminds me of a big company around that time. They changed master to main in git, which cost each engineer many hours on average, which translated into many engineer years (decades?) of wasted time. It was in the middle of a hiring spree. Why not spend that time interviewing black engineers instead?

perdomon 2y ago

Why hire a candidate because of their skin color? Shouldn’t employees be hiring for skills and company value fit?

freeopinion 2y ago

I sympathize with your frustration. A 1% success rate is extremely discouraging. Do you know what the success rate is for non-DEI candidates? I believe there is some bias in the hiring process including racism, sexism, ageism, etc. But I also think that companies are hiring less than 1% of applicants in general. From what I have seen, companies are very bad at identifying the best candidates. But if you are getting 100 resumes a month and you hire 2-4 people a year, it's a roll of the dice just selecting the 20 resumes out of 400 to invite for an interview. All of that is to say: don't get too discouraged. A 1% success rate would be remarkable. If you can achieve a 0.5% success rate you can increase diversity by 400%. Personally, I'm a fan of meritocracy. I wish the most qualified people were surviving the roll of the dice. But I think it would be ideal if the most qualified people included a lot of diversity. As it is, employers' best chance to hire qualified people is to rely on human networks to help somebody stand out in the sea of resumes. So the more people of diversity you can land, the better chance there is for future candidates. And the better qualified your diverse candidates are, the more voice they'll get in future hiring influence. So keep pushing highly qualified diverse candidates. And while you're at it, push highly qualified non-diverse candidates so you aren't just seen as a diversity advocate. People might take your diverse candidates more seriously if they are perceived less for their diversity and more for their excellence. If 80% of your recommendations are diverse and 50% seem to be very high-quality, the 10% that are very high-quality non-diverse will change the perception of the 40% very high-quality diverse candidates.