Comment by softwaredoug
6 days ago
I sadly suspect we’re going to see some risk adverse hiring of boring white dudes in all positions of leadership. Regardless of competence.
We’re already seeing DEI weaponized. Any non white male person in charge of an organization that makes a mistake will be labeled a “DEI Hire” accurately or not. Organizations will be risk adverse and only hire the most boring white dude they can find from central casting. Whatever you want to say about diversity initiatives this will be a pretty terrible outcome.
> Any non white male person in charge of an organization that makes a mistake will be labeled a “DEI Hire” accurately or not.
That sentiment ("any mistake is because they're a DEI hire") is obviously wrong. But didn't DEI open itself up for that accusation by lending it some truth? It's a fact that black doctors have lower GPAs than Asian doctors on average.
I think a lot of people would argue against DEI because it takes the easy way out of a real problem. The result we want is more black doctors, but the way you should get to that is not changing standards that are not inherently racist.
I think a lot of people would argue against DEI because it takes the easy way out of a real problem. The result we want is more black doctors, but the way you should get to that is not changing standards that are not inherently racist.
The easy (and right) way out was to hire the most competent doctors, not the blackest doctors. I don't want more black doctors, I want the best doctors, regardless of their skin color. If you want more black doctors, you should train better black doctors. However, if you're going to do that, don't be surprised when white trainees band together to work harder too. If it's fair for your side, it's fair for every side.
I have no idea why we went backwards from "discrimination based on skin color is never okay" to "it's okay if they're black" but there's no reason not to simply recognize the mistake, fix it, and move on.
> The easy (and right) way out was to hire the most competent doctors
What I mean by "easy" is "quick and superficial." Hiring the most competent doctors delays achieving the statistic of "more black doctors," so it's not the "easy way" I'm talking about. It takes time for education to come up to par in black communities, because they're poorer for historical reasons. The right (and harder, because it's not doable via a means that the DEI people directly control---hiring) way is to put money where it's needed for education, and "more black doctors" will be a ripple effect achieved without discrimination.
If you are going to train black doctors, then you need to enrol them in universities. If you don’t want tu use scholarships or quotas, then you must make sure that those black candidates actually do good in high school, otherwise it’s DEI.
If you are giving scholarships or subsidies to black teenagers so they can eventually get into a university, that’s also DEI, so better subsidise their families so they can get a better primary education and upbringing… but that’s also DEI.
So you keep going back and the “solution” is basically to do nothing and keep the status quo.
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> Any non white male person in charge of an organization that makes a mistake will be labeled a “DEI Hire” accurately or not.
This isn't restricted to tech.
"I'm French when I score, Arab when I don't" - Karim Benzema.
LinkedIn has a DEI jobs category in their Jobs section. How is that a qualification to do a job?
Why exactly is that a terrible outcome? What's wrong with boring white dudes?
Nothing. But if people are afraid of NOT hiring boring white dudes it becomes not about competence but about avoiding the optics of not wanting to look like you’re doing a DEI thing
Things will play out differently in the public and private sectors. But if you take Trump's cabinet selections as a bellwether then there are people of a variety of races, sexes, and backgrounds.
I find it hard to take seriously the notion that anybody serious is arguing for "let's go back to all white dudes" as a response to DEI. Sure...it's going to happen because nepotism and cliques aren't going away. But on the whole, it seems people want to move towards competence/merit being the only factors in play.
Will it get there? Time will tell, but there will invariably be issues. Your execution can be wrong, even if your philosophy is right. But if your philosophy is wrong (we need x% minority engineers, x% trans engineers, x% female engineers), you'd be hard pressed to avoid bad implementation.
"We are having a hard time hiring all the people we want. It doesn't matter what they look like" John Carmack
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The whole "pale, male and stale" narrative is antiwhite racism. I don't think people should perpetuate it.
White men hold almost all the power in America. I can't reconcile this fact with the idea that there is some conspiracy against white men. Can you provide some more context on what you mean?
Nobody alleged a conspiracy.
The claim is simple: using words to mock a group, hurts that group.
This is still true when the group is one that you consider to "hold almost all the power".
Holding power is irrelevant to the harm caused by actions like insulting people or discriminating against them.