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0 pointspurplethinking1y ago0 comments

DEI has not been only for show, I know for a fact that being "diverse" has been a huge benefit in job search for the past 15 years. If you're a "woman of color" in tech you've been basically guaranteed a job, no matter how good or bad you actually are. I've been on several teams where the higher ups demanded we hire women because we were not diverse enough. Various grants and investments require a certain ratio etc. There's no point in denying this, this is what DEI has been pushing for, and this is what happened.

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15 comments · 5 top-level

darth_avocado1y ago· 3 in thread

> If you were a woman of color in tech you’ve been basically guaranteed a job, no matter how good or bad you actually are.

Is that why there are so many women of color software engineers in tech?

RestlessMind1y ago

Many woman of color are simply not entering the pipeline. But those who are there get wildly favorable treatment compared to people from other demographics with similar capabilities.

fzeroracer1y ago

Wildly favorable treatment according to who, exactly? Or are you just being slightly subtle about your actual point here?

Explain it to me since I've been in the industry for quite some time here and I can't say I've seen what you're hinting at.

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gr3ml1n1y ago

One of the solutions to the 'POC Pipeline Problem' was to overhire for non-technical roles that could be used to hit diversity goals.

kccqzy1y ago· 3 in thread

I think there is a difference between diversity initiatives before 2020 and the DEI initiatives since 2020. As far as I can see, the latter is indeed is corporate puffery, where employees maybe join a half-hour seminar to talk about DEI every year, and perhaps there are new DEI groups for employees to discuss this. But the diversity hire initiative before 2020 was much more substantive that resulted in real meaningful changes to company demographics.

code_biologist1y ago

It was always puffery, just money was cheap before 2020. Engineering managers I worked with before then were gung ho to grow their head count, even if it meant hiring iffy engineers. After 2020, they got told new head count would be much more limited and hiring got a lot more selective.

cbsmith1y ago

I think it very much depends. When BLM happened, I had the opportunity to sit in on a number of discussions with executives from a variety of companies about diversity programs, and the things I heard...

"I thought after Obama was elected, that diversity was no longer a problem" "When we thought of diversity, we thought of it in terms of hiring more women" "We just don't get the applicants. There's nothing we can do."

The whole BLM thing really shook up their thinking and approach to diversity. Now, I think a bunch of them did really engage in "corporate puffery", but I did see a lot of cases where tangible changes were made to diversity programs.

...and then more recently they seem to be firing their entire DEI teams. :-(

_factor1y ago

Half hour? Try a two day video on lesson.

naijaboiler1y ago· 3 in thread

are you a woman of color? if you are not, you absolutely do not know for a fact.

Ask a "woman of color" how much of this perceived advantage they actually enjoy in real life, especially from their perspective. You will be shocked the gap between what you presume and what the reality is.

StanislavPetrov1y ago

When you sit in on staff meeting, and the president explicitly says, "we are not hiring or promoting any more white men, only women of color and those of other marginalized groups", you absolutely know it for a fact. This in fact occurred, and continues to occur, as I can personally attest, at a for-profit college in NYC. And in fact, although ~10 people have been hired over the last few years, none of them have been white men.

Obviously that isn't to say women of color have it easy (nobody has it easy these days), but it is beyond dispute that this sort of discrimination is rampant in certain industries (like higher education) and in certain cities.

And for people who say this is illegal (and perhaps it is), when a white man (not me), who was a victim of this policy (many accolades, highest performance reviews, seniority), was repeatedly passed over for promotion by women of color and other "marginalized" people, filed a complaint with the NYC EEOC office, he was met with derision.

purplethinkingOP1y ago

Must be the worst in Universities where there is no reality check in the form of having to make a profit (well, maybe decades later when the reputation craters). I can't imagine trying to be a white man in the humanities today, you've got no chance.

strix_varius1y ago

> are you a woman of color? if you are not, you absolutely do not know for a fact.

As a hiring manager in a fortune 100 who saw firsthand the delta between white men and everyone else in terms of the amount of justification required for hiring, promoting, and firing... yes, I do know this for a fact.

themiddleupper1y ago· 1 in thread

Mentioning that a poc is successful only because of their colour is harsh. Maybe they bring value and have qualities that other candidates did not have. DEI only widens the pipeline, no private company lowers their standards.

zo11y ago

The "well" has been poisoned for all such groups of people, and DEI as a concept will eventually be held accountable to the harm it did to the groups they supposedly aimed to help. DEI as a concept was a leech to society, feeding on good will and injecting itself everywhere. To the detriment of both sides, and almost never to the detriment of actual prejudiced individuals.

xvector1y ago

This perfectly fits my old big tech EM who was totally incompetent and made life miserable for everyone on her team to the point where all but 2 people left (team of 12)

She also took back to back maternity leave throughout her time at the company, 3 times in a row, before leaving. Didn't even know it was possible to have kids that fast.

Conferences bend over backwards to have her speak. She has no clue what she is talking about but at least she gets to put it on her LinkedIn I guess.

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