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A few years ago I worked for a company obsessed with DEI. But, as a 40+, I knew their DEI programs where complete BS because they forgot the most important prot

A few years ago I worked for a company obsessed with DEI. But, as a 40+, I knew their DEI programs where complete BS because they forgot the most important protected group: old people! At this company we had plenty of groups for Muslims, blacks, Jews, Asians, etc, but I was one of the only people over 40. People would laugh when I mentioned that we needed a DEI group for people over 40... but I wasn't entirely kidding. It's frankly bizarre that you can have 1000+ employees and only 2-3 are over 40!? I had worked in industries prior where the median age was > 40 and it did sincerely shock me that a publicly traded company would have almost 0 people in that age range. The funny part is that while I will not ever be black, everyone of my younger coworkers (baring serious tragedy) will be in the 40+ protected group. So in theory, if anyone cares at all about DEI in a sincere way, they should care about people who are 40+ because they will be there. So while we celebrated Ramadan with multiple company activities, there wasn't much respect for "I have to leave a bit early to pick up my teenage kid from my ex-wife's place".

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
If somebody is not a white man, you probably don't have to pay them more than if they were a white man. If somebody is older, then you probably DO have to pay them more than if they were younger, because older candidates likely have more experience and have correspondingly higher salary expectations. So there's that. Now suppose you have an older candidate who is not demanding high seniority pay. In that case they should be on equal footing with the younger candidates, right? Well, no. There's the double standard of "if you're so old, why aren't you above our pay grade? Shouldn't you be a manager or something?" That I don't know how to fix. Then there is the more overtly discriminatory "I'd rather hire the young candidate because old people are slow." Maybe what it really comes down to is "I don't want to work with my dad."
- sethammons 2y ago
  Some of my early unconscious bias interview training helped me realize I assumed older candidates were vastly more experienced, and when they were "normal," then they must not be very good. Logically, that is silly because everyone is at different levels at different times with different areas of interest. 28 or 55, give the same interview against the same rubric and let the best candidate win.
liontwist 2y ago
I know this topic has been beaten to death, but the shallow symbolic form Diversity takes in practice (college recruiting photos) confirms it's merely political. Here are a few forms of "real diversity" I have run into that you will never see initiatives for at big tech, and it would not necessarily be taboo to publicly discriminate against them: - Number of siblings - Asian ethnic minorities (Miao, etc) - Discriminated indian castes - Parents vs childless - University degrees - American 19th century religions (JW, Mormon, 7th day adventists, etc) - Military experience - experience in manual labor jobs - Sunni and Shia Muslims - Russian ethnic distinctions (russkiye vs rossiyane) Obviously we can't create programs for every possible form of identity. But you can look at 2 asian men and say there isn't any diversity, when actually their life experiences couldn't be more different. Similarly, you can have all the skin colors in a room, but if they are all upper middle class, secular humanists, from the same handful of Universities, they aren't bringing new perspectives.

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago

If somebody is not a white man, you probably don't have to pay them more than if they were a white man. If somebody is older, then you probably DO have to pay them more than if they were younger, because older candidates likely have more experience and have correspondingly higher salary expectations. So there's that. Now suppose you have an older candidate who is not demanding high seniority pay. In that case they should be on equal footing with the younger candidates, right? Well, no. There's the double standard of "if you're so old, why aren't you above our pay grade? Shouldn't you be a manager or something?" That I don't know how to fix. Then there is the more overtly discriminatory "I'd rather hire the young candidate because old people are slow." Maybe what it really comes down to is "I don't want to work with my dad."

sethammons 2y ago
Some of my early unconscious bias interview training helped me realize I assumed older candidates were vastly more experienced, and when they were "normal," then they must not be very good. Logically, that is silly because everyone is at different levels at different times with different areas of interest. 28 or 55, give the same interview against the same rubric and let the best candidate win.

liontwist 2y ago

I know this topic has been beaten to death, but the shallow symbolic form Diversity takes in practice (college recruiting photos) confirms it's merely political. Here are a few forms of "real diversity" I have run into that you will never see initiatives for at big tech, and it would not necessarily be taboo to publicly discriminate against them: - Number of siblings - Asian ethnic minorities (Miao, etc) - Discriminated indian castes - Parents vs childless - University degrees - American 19th century religions (JW, Mormon, 7th day adventists, etc) - Military experience - experience in manual labor jobs - Sunni and Shia Muslims - Russian ethnic distinctions (russkiye vs rossiyane) Obviously we can't create programs for every possible form of identity. But you can look at 2 asian men and say there isn't any diversity, when actually their life experiences couldn't be more different. Similarly, you can have all the skin colors in a room, but if they are all upper middle class, secular humanists, from the same handful of Universities, they aren't bringing new perspectives.