I can't comment on DEI, I'm not qualified there. I can comment on software eng culture the past twenty years, however.
My take is we, collectively, pride ourselves on staying up-to-date with the latest and best practices. However, that staying up to date tends to be a rather shallow understanding at best. It's as if we read a short summary of the best practice, then cargo cult it everywhere, fully convinced that we're right because it is the current best practice.
The psychological intent is to outsource accountability and responsibility to these best practices. I'd argue that goal isn't always consciously undertaken. I'm not asserting malevolence, but more a reluctance to dig into the firehose of industrial knowledge that gets spewed at us 24/7.
I suspect this is not just confined to software dev. It's a sort of anti-intellectualism, ultimately. And it's hard to cast it as that, because I don't think we should tell people they're wrong for triaging emotional energy. But it also isn't right that we're okay with people generally checking out as much as possible.
yea, i agree — it’s definitely not just a software thing. good intentions don’t always translate into good execution.
i wonder if/when AGI becomes real, could it help with writing better policies/laws since it would have a broader understanding of issues and (hopefully) no bias so it would be able to predict outcomes we can't
> wow.. our society really has a tendency to overcorrect regarding social issues
I don't agree. You're reacting to a one-sided, very partial critique of a policy change that no longer benefitted a specific group and the only tradeoff was a hypothetical and subjective drop of the hiring bar. This complain can also be equally dismissed as members of the privileged group complaining over the loss of privilege.
The article is very blunt in the way their framed the problem: the in-group felt entitled to a job they felt was assured to them, but once the rules changed to have them compete on equal footing for the same position... That's suddenly a problem.
To make matters worse, this blend of easily arguable nitpicking is being used to kill any action or initiative that jeopardizes the best interests of privileged groups.
Also, it should be stressed that this pitchfork drive against discriminate hiring practices is heard because these privileged groups believe their loss of privilege is a major injustice. In the meantime, society as a whole seemed to have muted any concern voiced by any persecuted and underprivileged group for not even having the chance of having a shot at these opportunities. Where's the outrage there?
> I'm... totally at a loss as to you you can get this takeaway from this piece. The undisputed facts at hand are:
This is exactly the kind of one-sided nitpicking I pointed out. You purposely decided to omit the fact that the "biological questionaire" was in fact a change in the way applicants were evaluated, which eliminated the privilege of an in-group to avoid to compete with "walk-ons", i.e., anyone outside of the privileged group. At best you're trying to dismiss the sheer existence of such an evaluation process by putting up strawmen over the implementation of this evaluation.
> once the rules changed to have them compete on equal footing for the same position... That's suddenly a problem.
It wasn’t on equal footing, so your entire post is based on either a misunderstanding or you’re just blatantly trolling in which case well done, I totally bit.
I can't comment on DEI, I'm not qualified there. I can comment on software eng culture the past twenty years, however.
My take is we, collectively, pride ourselves on staying up-to-date with the latest and best practices. However, that staying up to date tends to be a rather shallow understanding at best. It's as if we read a short summary of the best practice, then cargo cult it everywhere, fully convinced that we're right because it is the current best practice.
The psychological intent is to outsource accountability and responsibility to these best practices. I'd argue that goal isn't always consciously undertaken. I'm not asserting malevolence, but more a reluctance to dig into the firehose of industrial knowledge that gets spewed at us 24/7.
I suspect this is not just confined to software dev. It's a sort of anti-intellectualism, ultimately. And it's hard to cast it as that, because I don't think we should tell people they're wrong for triaging emotional energy. But it also isn't right that we're okay with people generally checking out as much as possible.
yea, i agree — it’s definitely not just a software thing. good intentions don’t always translate into good execution.
i wonder if/when AGI becomes real, could it help with writing better policies/laws since it would have a broader understanding of issues and (hopefully) no bias so it would be able to predict outcomes we can't
> wow.. our society really has a tendency to overcorrect regarding social issues
I don't agree. You're reacting to a one-sided, very partial critique of a policy change that no longer benefitted a specific group and the only tradeoff was a hypothetical and subjective drop of the hiring bar. This complain can also be equally dismissed as members of the privileged group complaining over the loss of privilege.
The article is very blunt in the way their framed the problem: the in-group felt entitled to a job they felt was assured to them, but once the rules changed to have them compete on equal footing for the same position... That's suddenly a problem.
To make matters worse, this blend of easily arguable nitpicking is being used to kill any action or initiative that jeopardizes the best interests of privileged groups.
Also, it should be stressed that this pitchfork drive against discriminate hiring practices is heard because these privileged groups believe their loss of privilege is a major injustice. In the meantime, society as a whole seemed to have muted any concern voiced by any persecuted and underprivileged group for not even having the chance of having a shot at these opportunities. Where's the outrage there?
The undisputed facts at hand are:
* The FAA introduced a bigraphical questionnaire which screened out 90% of applicants.
* The answers to this questionnaire were distributed to members of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees.
* Members were explicitly told not to distribute the answers to other people, to reduce competition for admission.
This is as bad a scandal as though the answers to the SAT were leaked.
> I'm... totally at a loss as to you you can get this takeaway from this piece. The undisputed facts at hand are:
This is exactly the kind of one-sided nitpicking I pointed out. You purposely decided to omit the fact that the "biological questionaire" was in fact a change in the way applicants were evaluated, which eliminated the privilege of an in-group to avoid to compete with "walk-ons", i.e., anyone outside of the privileged group. At best you're trying to dismiss the sheer existence of such an evaluation process by putting up strawmen over the implementation of this evaluation.
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> equal footing
So, the candidates who were not members of some racially based association also got access to the answers to the first test?
> once the rules changed to have them compete on equal footing for the same position... That's suddenly a problem.
It wasn’t on equal footing, so your entire post is based on either a misunderstanding or you’re just blatantly trolling in which case well done, I totally bit.