There is a silver lining. This DEI thing is now causing massive influx of sub-par employees in big tech. This is not because minority is sub-par but because hiring practices incentivize sacrificing quality over diversity to make your numbers and get your bonuses. Everyone winks at others and they say we don't sacrifice quality but it is not possible when you have limited window for headcount and your VP is sending you constant reminders for making your numbers and everyones bonuses are at stake. In my estimate, big tech already had 60% of employees just costing around and now this DEI will push them to almost 80% employees that are mediocre and unable to compete with the best. This is how startups like Google and Microsoft were born that toppled big techs of the day called Yahoo and IBM. A lot of talent will simply not even get opportunity to be interviewed at big tech. Guess what they are going to do?
Not have the same opportunities as the founders of Google and Microsoft due to the mediocre employees abusing their positions to engage in advocacy in the wider world that serves the purpose of keeping them employed.
Stuffing big firms with idiots is one way you get idiocracy, since those firms have influence far beyond what the idiots could get on their own.
That's not a new trend. It's a pretty common path to do a couple of years in big tech, and then use that credential as part of your pitch. "Ex-Google Engineer leaves to Airbnb for Cats"
Assuming you’re right and not unfairly discounting people who look or think different due to your prejudices, this just hurts mega-businesses profitability right? What’s the measurable material harm to you exactly? Can you prove it or do you just feel it? Still assuming you’re right, and not prejudiced, why is giving historically disadvantaged people a crutch to lean on so bad? Won’t at least some of them thrive and blossom thereby paving the way for others who look, think, act, or worship like them? Is this not corporate welfare in a time when social welfare has been whittled so far down that there are generation long waiting lists for public housing vouchers? What exactly is so terrible about helping people grow into roles instead of following the semi recent practice of only hiring perfectly qualified candidates?
>Still assuming you’re right, and not prejudiced, why is giving historically disadvantaged people a crutch to lean on so bad
this is simply not true. Hiring must be all about merit, not handouts for some noble social purpose.
Secondly, lowering bar for one race while keeping the same bar other races is blatant racism. It is conveniently called affirmative action, but in reality it is racism against more qualified candidates (like asians, jews, etc).
Third, just looking at skin color and handing out jobs does not accomplish intended goal (helping disadvantaged people), instead it only reinforces negative perceptions of minorities as unqualified and not deserving of high paying jobs.
Fourth, a lot of people who take advantage of DEI programs to get into high pay jobs/colleges - are not disadvantaged at all. I am talking about people from middle-class/high income families, kids from medium/high net worth families who also happened to be in a minority race. Also middle class/rich immigrants from Africa/Latin America, who never experienced many disadvantages that under represented minorities face in the US.
If you really really want to help underrepresented minorities get into tech - you should specifically target people from low income/poor neighborhoods, poor rating/high crime school districts - and to help them become qualified and deserving of jobs, not just handing out "Chief Diversity Officer" type token jobs that have no real impact, and are not really bona fide jobs. That also obviously includes white kids from poor neighborhoods, and becomes income targeted program, rather than racial profiling program.
>> What exactly is so terrible about helping people grow into roles instead of following the semi recent practice of only hiring perfectly qualified candidates?
Imagine your son was rejected for a job he perfectly was qualified for, and instead someone from another race was hired who was less qualified. Just because of race. Once you flip the situation to yourself and become on the other end of the "affirmative action" you will understand. You can't fix past discrimination with another discrimination.
I’ve actually heard from many friends that even though they are in a “favored” group, because of their skin color or gender, they hate it because they suffer from even worse impostor syndrome than the average developer.
They might genuinely be awesome and yet they sit there and doubt and ask “am I only doing well because of something not related to my work”
I would like to think of it as first, second order effects.
First order effect of DEI:
- Bar is lowered in the name of DEI, to bring more diverse employees
- Managers/CEOs/HRs get their bonuses for meeting DEI metrics
Second order effects:
- Hired minority employees find it hard to perform to the expected(or peer) level
- Because lot more minority candidates were hired than if it were without DEI, performance issues start to become bigger and more noticeable problem. More importantly performance issues cluster around minority candidates
Third order effect:
- Long-term workplace perception of all minority candidates is harmed, regardless of skill.
- We are back to square one, where in order to compensate for 2nd order effects all minorities are subjected to unfair discrimination based on race, regardless of skill
Right you are... I used be a Manager at Volvo (Sweden) and I really like their approach to boost the diversity on the workplace. Instead of targets/or lowering the standards they were moving obstacles (childcare, flex work) and focusing on marketing amongst the diversity groups.
This is something I have always wondered. What are the psychological/mental effects on an employee upon the discovery of the real reason they were hired?
op specifically said about hiring unqualified/less qualified people and "let them grow into jobs", which assumes rejecting more qualified candidate (who doesnt need to grow into a job but has has wrong skin color ) so Op denies merit explicitly and prefers racial nepotism.
No wonder DIE initiatives face pushback as they do not make any sense and are plain harmful to all parties involved
Big tech profitability does not get hurt by hiring mediocre people. They are post-talent businesses. They do not depend on tech talent to drive and keep profit margins but rather depend on established monopoly and maintaining barrier-to-entry to continue their profitability. They show their growth by simply showing more ads or hiking subscription prices or through more sales people - not by developing new ground breaking tech. Apple is likely exception here.
He, this seems to be quite accurate. I wonder how companies come up with that blindness. Internal politics?
I don't believe you have to be the best hacker to start a successful business at all, but some companies try to go out of their way to make working there unattractive.
> why is giving historically disadvantaged people a crutch to lean on so bad?
Policies like this don't really change the number of disadvantaged people who are hired. To do that, they'd have to reduce the number of elites who are hired, and that doesn't happen.
Instead, these policies help disadvantaged people of some races by shutting out disadvantaged people of other races.
You are assuming that people who need hand outs are all not white. That appears to me to be pretty racist in itself.
I know many poor white Americans that don't even have Internet.
I also grew up poor. My grandmom was Italian and treated poorly when she arrived in America. She got called the n word because her skin was dark and couldn't go to school because of it as well.
Well here I am 80 years later. White male that has worked very hard to get myself out of where I was only to be confronted with people talking about the color of skin and not Merritt.
We are all in this together.
I put a lot of work into my life to get where I am. I did a lot of things I didn't want to and sacrificed a lot. I had a really good hour long interview at Microsoft last week and was told at the end that they are looking to diversify their team more and best of luck to you.
