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It seems like a number of the "DEI is anti-merit discrimination" messages in this thread are overlooking how DEI work usually works. A relevant tweet from 2016

• endomorphosis 11mo ago
  Disparate treatment on the basis of protected and usually immutable characteristics, is literally illegal, all the sort of mental gymnastics do not matter, that's literally what the law is.
  • Dylan16807 11mo ago
    Encouraging specific people to submit applications is not illegal. Even based on those characteristics.
    • endomorphosis 11mo ago
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      • deleted 11mo ago
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      • lutoma 11mo ago
        Spamming the same bad-faith argument over and over in this thread on an account you clearly solely created for this purpose does not make it more true.
        • endomorphosis 11mo ago
          I’m sorry do you operate a legal business and go to weekly meetings at Stanford law schook
      • array_key_first 11mo ago
        It's literally not illegal. Me telling my friends they should apply to some job is not illegal.
        • judahmeek 11mo ago
          You telling certain friends, but not others, based on characteristics named in the 1964 civil rights act, as part of your job requirements, would likely be illegal. In your free time without occupational incentive? Sure.
          • array_key_first 11mo ago
            No it would not be illegal. What happens if all my friends happen to be black? I can never tell anyone about a job opportunity ever again? Have we taken a step back and actually thought about the things we're saying?
            • judahmeek 11mo ago
              When is it ever a job responsibility to tell your friends about job opportunities & no one else?
    • polski-g 11mo ago
      No that is also illegal. You can not target advertisements based on protected characteristics. > the Justice Department secured a settlement agreement with Meta (formerly Facebook) in February 2025, alleging that Meta’s ad delivery system used machine-learning algorithms relying on Fair Housing Act (FHA)-protected characteristics such as race, national origin, and sex to determine who saw housing ads
      • judahmeek 11mo ago
        Securement of a settlement proves literally nothing.
      • KPGv2 11mo ago
        It would take a lengthy essay to explain all the ways you've misunderstood how the law works in the United States, but in summary FHA rules only apply to FHA cases, Furthermore, you seem to be conflating different meanings of the word "advertisement" where the one you've chosen to support your point is a broad meaning that would seem to make Barbie commercials that feature only girls illegal (which is obviously not the case).
      • seattle_spring 11mo ago
        You're asserting that the Fair Housing Act applies to tech recruiting?
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• zb3 11mo ago
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  • array_key_first 11mo ago
    Yeah you know all those "women" and their "liberal views". I'm a strong republican, that's why I only want to be around men. And touch them and smell them.
    • WesolyKubeczek 11mo ago
      Nothing wrong with touching and smelling men if they consent.
• anal_reactor 11mo ago
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  • adriand 11mo ago
    > DEI is at its heart a type of discrimination. You might argue that the end justifies the means, but if intermediate step is that a person gets different treatment depending on their sex or skin colour, then it is discrimination. The purpose of DEI is to rectify the discrimination that is already present. It isn't as though we live in a discrimination-free world and then DEI arrived on the scene and suddenly started creating discrimination. Rather, the opposite is true. There is rampant discrimination on the basis of race, gender and other characteristics across society. DEI is an attempt to fix that. Like all human endeavours, it is not perfect, and some organizations did it better than others. You state that you were in a situation where you were denied opportunities due to your sex. This experience is entirely commonplace for women, particularly women who are in male-dominated fields. You say what happened to you wasn't okay, so I have to assume you also believe it isn't okay that it happens to women every day. You don't think DEI is the solution - so what solution do you propose?
    • sophrosyne42 11mo ago
      The purpose of DEI is to enforce what is idealized as the equal outcome, assuming that all observed differences are the result of discrimination. The problem is that it has not been shown that all observed differences are the result of discrimination as opposed to preference, ability, or other uncontrollable factors not related to discrimination but which are reasonable bases for the difference. There are many cases where differences have been shown exist for reasons other than discrimination. The blanket approach of DEI essentially is a move back to medieval policies which afford certain groups special legal privileges. We should be removing special privileges that can cause discrimination and not creating more, because a new special privilege can never reverse but will only compound the negative social effects of them.
      • maddmann 11mo ago
        “The purpose of DEI is to enforce what is idealized as the equal outcome, assuming that all observed differences are the result of discrimination“ I don’t think a single proponent of DEI has ever said this, and it is telling to me that you are misinterpreting it with such a politicized slant. Maybe you need to think about reading some other opinion pieces on this from a much broader spectrum of perspectives? I’ve been through many DEI programs while I worked in non profits in Upstate NY. The core focus of those programs was often to bring awareness to historical discrimination, and attempt to create environments in organizations where that does not reoccur. I’m sure the approach differs across the spectrum but to me it was a good faith attempt at righting historical wrongs and attempting to avoid the historical discrimination.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 11mo ago
  This is how DEI should work, and probably does in some, or maybe many, cases. In other cases, it boiled down to "this quarter, we only have headcount for 'diverse' candidates", metrics for DEI hiring that turn into goals, and e-mails stating "only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups". I expect that I'll get accused of making this up, which is why the latter is an exact quote shown on page 28 in this court case: https://www.scribd.com/document/372802863/18-CIV-00442-ARNE-WILBERG-vs-GOOGLE-INC-et-al https://www.scribd.com/document/372802863/18-CIV-00442-ARNE-...
  • the_sleaze_ 11mo ago
    I sat in an all hands where the vice president of HR proudly crowed to the company that they had hired 75% non-whites that quarter.
    • epistasis 11mo ago
      Seems like a lawsuit right there... is this happened I sure hope that there was a lawsuit! Or at least HR implementing new hiring practices company wide afterwards...
      • mensetmanusman 11mo ago
        No one is brave enough to start such lawsuits. Likelihood of winning too low, first mover disadvantage at play.
      • tick_tock_tick 11mo ago
        Who's going to start a lawsuit and get blacklisted? HR is normally pushing for this.
    • analog31 11mo ago
      That's a lot of whites for a roofing company.
    • gcanyon 11mo ago
      In your mind, if the company had researched their past hiring and found that whites/males had been favored for the previous history of the company, how long would it be reasonable for them to favor minorities and other underrepresented groups to balance the scales?
• gatvol 11mo ago
  "The world doesn't run on merit. " Critical systems do.
  • userbinator 11mo ago
    And we are seeing a slow collapse as a result of the past decade of identity politics.
• klipt 11mo ago
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  • KPGv2 11mo ago
    This seems like a disingenuous link to me. It's not a research paper, it's weakly sourced (and many citations are to non-academic outlets such as Quillette. And the author is highly incestuous, linking to her own casual articles (not academic, peer-reviewed papers) as evidence for her secondary claims. At one point, her "proof" that anti-male bias is accumulating is a City Journal article by John Tierney, who is employed by the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank. In this article he makes such bold claims as "Women aren’t discriminated against in twenty-first-century America" "“Toxic masculinity” and “testosterone poisoning” are widely blamed for many problems, but you don’t hear much about “toxic femininity” or “estrogen poisoning.”" <-- you actually do hear about toxic femininity all the time, it's just packaged up with slick marketing terms like "tradwife" "Who criticizes “femsplaining” or pretends to “believe all men”?" Well, "femsplaining" has historically just called "being a bitch," and "believe all men" seems to be the default position of most people considering how rarely sexual assault victims are, historically, taken seriously. (Also, not for nothing, the slogan he's alluding to is "believe women" not "believe all women." And the thrust of the catchphrase is not that we should automatically believe every claim out of a woman's mouth, but that we should believe rather than dismiss-by-default women when they say something. So, on the matter of getting basic facts about the subject matter correct, he's already getting off on the wrong foot, being propagandistically wrong here. I'm actually shocked at how terrible your link is. I really had a higher opinion of HN users (although lately it's felt like all anyone wants to talk about is AI slop). I recommend you read things more closely before linking them. Your reputation is at stake.
    • klipt 11mo ago
      https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/38/3/337/6412759 https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/38/3/337/6412759 > Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women’s disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers’ callbacks to fictitious male and female applicants. The countries included vary in a number of key institutional, economic, and cultural dimensions, yet we found no sign of discrimination against women. This cross-national finding constitutes an important and robust piece of evidence. Second, we found discrimination against men in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK, and no discrimination against men in Norway and the United States. However, in the pooled data the gender gradient hardly differs across countries. Our findings suggest that although employers operate in quite different institutional contexts, they regard female applicants as more suitable for jobs in female-dominated occupations, ceteris paribus, while we find no evidence that they regard male applicants as more suitable anywhere. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33513171/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33513171/ > Male applicants were about half as likely as female applicants to receive a positive employer response in female-dominated occupations. For male-dominated and mixed occupations we found no significant differences in positive employer responses between male and female applicants. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597823000560 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074959782... > both scientists and laypeople overestimated the continuation of bias against female candidates. Instead, selection bias in favor of male over female candidates was eliminated and, if anything, slightly reversed in sign starting in 2009 for mixed-gender and male-stereotypical jobs in our sample. Forecasters further failed to anticipate that discrimination against male candidates for stereotypically female jobs would remain stable across the decades.
• deleted 11mo ago
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• eadmund 11mo ago
  Reaching out only to members of certain groups rather than others is still invidious discrimination. When based on characteristics like race, sex or national origin it is probably illegal, although I am not a lawyer.
  • roumenguha 11mo ago
    Not that this is a wholesale defense of DEI initiatives, but what you're describing was exactly the state of affairs before DEI policies. If I misunderstood your comment as being critical of DEI policies on the basis of being discriminatory along protected characteristics, I apologize in advance.
• epicureanideal 11mo ago
  > unusually homogenous communities Which can be socioeconomic rather than racial.. It’s hard to break into the club of people who know CEOs or have parents or relatives who are VPs of major companies and can provide access for startups by people they know, for example.
  • throwaway743 11mo ago
    Imo DEI should have always been based on socioeconomic status over anything else. It'd likely address the other forms of diversity, and would provide way less homogeneity in thought while at the same time providing a sense of inclusion/belonging.
  • nroets 11mo ago
    No, it's not hard compared having a good combination of STEM and marketing skills. Many emigrants to the US had no or very few connections: Elon Musk, Sergei Brin, a long list of Indians, Chinese and other Asians.
    • thunderfork 11mo ago
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• xdennis 11mo ago
  >> (2011: 1%), (2012: 7%), (2013: 15%), (2014/15: 33%), (2016: 40%). #pycon2016 > Increased diversity in communities usually comes from active outreach work. PyCon's talk selection process starts blinded. There is no world in which 40% of programmers are women. 1% in 2011 is also probably evidence of discrimination. But too few people are willing to admit that if 40% of the speakers are women that represents a drop in the quality of the talks. There just aren't that many women programmers. If DEI is all about promoting women in the hopes that they'll succeed later, I could get behind that. But often DEI goes to absurd lengths like lowering standards for female firemen or combat soldiers.
  • seattle_spring 11mo ago
    > But often DEI goes to absurd lengths like lowering standards for female firemen or combat soldiers. I've certainly heard that claim manu times, but never seen it backed up with actual data or even reputable anecdotes. Can you share the sources that led you to this conclusion?
    • userbinator 11mo ago
      Look at the FAA ATC hiring controversy. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
      • sagarm 11mo ago
        If you want to make an argument, make it here and cite some primary sources.
      • kelnos 11mo ago
        Everything I've read (that isn't from a blubbering MAGA source) suggests that the "controversy" is entirely manufactured.
        • inemesitaffia 11mo ago
• userbinator 11mo ago
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  • throwawaykf10 11mo ago
    At least in the US, it seems to be the lower-educated, rabidly anti-DEI faction that seems to be dragging everyone else down with them. > DEI has given the unintelligent a platform on which they can attack the intelligent. The effects of diversity quotas on code quality are horrifying. Very, very curious on what basis these claims are being made. Empirical studies would be ideal, but even some anecdotes would be illuminating at this point.
    • userbinator 11mo ago
      Look at what happened to software in the early 2010s. There are already plenty of anecdotes by others here where sub-par work was given a blind eye because of its creator's identity.
  • kelnos 11mo ago
    > We have seen what happens when groups become "more diverse and welcoming" --- they become filled with lowest-common-denominator stupidity that drags everyone else down with them. Funny, I've seen the exact opposite. Nice anecdotes we have here, maybe some real data would be more appropriate in arguments such as these. And on the flip side, if I look at the state of my (US) government, seems like we've managed to fill it up with lowest-common-denominator stupidity, and most of it is white men (with a smattering of white women here and there). And it certainly seems we're dragging everyone else down with us...
  • saagarjha 11mo ago
    And surely you are on the intelligent side?
• yibg 11mo ago
  There is a also merit at the individual level vs merit at the organizational level. e.g. most tech companies are male dominated, but many serve primarily women (Amazon retail, Pinterest, Etsy etc). So having more women in the companies, especially in positions to directly impact the customer experience is important even if we disregard individual merit. Ditto for products that serve primarily minority populations etc.
• Mars008 11mo ago
  > It seems like a number of the "DEI is anti-merit discrimination" messages in this thread are overlooking how DEI work usually works. It has two sides, one promoting, and one denying. Based on race. DEI activists are always talking about the first. How great it is. And never talks about second, to not to ruin the rosy picture. Just recently I visited a hospital in mostly white area. Inside it looked like african consulate. There are still DEI stickers on the wals. What they did they denied jobs to all white applicants. Looks like Python foundation decided to promote exactly this. Well, you will not get a penny from me till you change the course.
  • sagarm 11mo ago
    Mostly white probably means rural. These are undesirable hospital jobs. There are incentives for doctors to work in underserved areas, like rural hospitals, and those incentives are disproportionately used by J1s. I'd like to point out that this commenter assumed these doctors did not earn their positions purely based on skin color. I don't see how this is functionally different than classic racism. "DEI" complaints often seem to fit this fact pattern. In particular, I've never heard a white man described as a DEI hire.
• roenxi 11mo ago
  I personally agree with the PSF that the risk of weird political things happening is too high to risk taking the money under any circumstances. And I have no objection at all if they want to have whoever at PyCon. But there is a double-perspective in the situation you are describing - if this is an unbiased selection process that could reasonably turn up 98% male speakers could be classified as a DEI program. 98% male isn't very diverse. But on the other hand if the PyCon is achieving 40% female speakers, how could it not be said that there is some pretty heavy bias going on introduced by the outreach process? Unless I turn out to live in a very isolated community of programmers (and internet for that matter) the Python community is far more male skewed than that. Diversity of gender at PyCon almost has to be excluding the actual Python community from the speaker selection process if it has that sort of gender balance. Might be good or bad, but if that is a neutral sampling process then it'd be really interesting to learn where all these python girls are hiding because they aren't applying for developer positions.
  • WesolyKubeczek 11mo ago
    Would be fun to also pull up the metric of how many “devrel”, “developer evangelists”, and other professional PR talkers got the stage — versus the actual programmers.
  • JuniperMesos 11mo ago
    I assume that many of those female speakers are transwomen, and transwomen are not underrepresented in the Python or similar programming communities (in some of them, they're conspicuously overrepresented).
• fzeroracer 11mo ago
  Realistically, the whole 'DEI is anti-merit discrimination' argument falls incredibly flat in the year of the current admin, where they openly and brazenly admit to both racially discriminating against individuals and casually committing sexism. Said argument should simply just be tossed away in the garbage where it belongs. Notably none of the people that act like they give a shit ever show up when the Supreme Court says it's completely okay to racially profile people or when the US government attempts to kick out otherwise fit members of the military. They're arguing like it's 2022, not 2025. The PSF not taking the deal is the right play because as we've seen repeatedly over the past few months the current admin has zero issue using these things as leverage for harassment and politically motivated gain, which never ends no matter how much you try and appease them.
• rjaT25hja 11mo ago
  DEI in practice works like this: You have a ruling class of affluent white males and a Harvard educated Executive Director. None of these have ever been suppressed in their lives. If anyone points out that fact on PSF infrastructure, you ban them (yes, this has happened). You create a couple of programs that are mostly ineffective but good for PR. You never mention any economic or other injustices that could upset the corporate sponsors. You support and promote job replacement by AI while blogging about redistributing jobs via DEI.
• throwaway091025 11mo ago
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  • throw10287 11mo ago
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• IshKebab 11mo ago
  That stat is basically meaningless on its own. It could mean anything from they've done an amazing job on engaging women, to they've bodged the numbers by unfairly discriminating against men, or anything in between. Annoyingly they actually do have the data to answer which it is, because Pycon's review process has a first stage which is blind, and a second stage which isn't. So if they published how many talks get rejected at each stage, by year and vendor, then we could draw actual conclusions. I couldn't find where they have published those numbers though so we can't draw any conclusions here.
• deleted 11mo ago
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