Couldn't happen to a better group of people. I've never met a DEI "coordinator" who wasn't condescending and openly racist to the non-focus ethnicities.
Hell, it was only after a TON of hate crimes that people realized Asians may not just be a different flavor of White in the office.
Got hired into a company. Shortly after was told how they hated having to hire a typical white engineer.
But they were desperate for someone that can actually solve problems.
They had a huge number of jr level diversity hires that just could solve the hard problems.
People literally just spent all day looking for reasons to be offended about one thing or another. Barely anyone was actually trying to improve their craft.
Someone got called a valuable resource. Then had to listen to them rage for hours at being labeled a resource.
Of course in the spirit of diversity they mocked their mostly white customers endlessly.
I'm in a very similar situation. What is the incentive for all of these so-called diversity hires? Is there some sort of federal mandate or tax cut or business incentive?
They aren’t just racist to non focus ethnicities, they are racist to the focus ones too. Now I don’t know if it is intentional or unintentional but their policies negatively effect all groups:
I happen to be latino, and only after wasting my time with an entire loop at Microsoft with a bunch of clowns that had no interest in hiring me, did I realize that
1. my recruiter had been a “diversity and inclusion” recruiter
2. Microsoft has policies that require many eng. Managers to check the box of having interviewed a “diverse” candidate before extending an offer.
That’s why they do “hiring events” where everyone who conducts the interview is a hiring manager.
I cannot emphasize enough how disinterested the people who interviewed me where. All the coding questions i had about 20 minutes and they were Leetcode hards. One of them was so fucking incompetent that when I solved it, (most LC hards would take me considerably longer but this was in my wheelhouse) he was confused until I explained it step by step.
Tl;DR
Microsoft DEI policies wasted my time and also Microsoft seems to be staffed by a bunch of clueless clowns.
Yikes? That's what has definitely happened - these companies don't want EEOC complaints. The layoffs were audited to not be racially biased - which is a good thing.
Biased relative to what? The racial makeup of current employees, of local/national demographics, industry average demographics, or demographics of low-performing employees?
Say the fired employees are disproportionately (compared to company demographics) of race X. Responding to accusations of bias, HR defends this with "Employees of race X at our company happened to have more low-performers than average".
Let's close our eyes and imagine the fallout for different values of X.
Twitter layoffs are all the managers and executives at my firm can talk about.
They suspected tech has a lot of bloat, but Twitter surviving such a huge layoff AND pumping new features have made some of our executives start rethinking a lot.
Every two weeks like clockwork since then, I'm being pulled in the restructuring meetings.
It looks like we are going to layoff 20% in a couple months, anyone who doesn't perform in a way that has trackable metrics with a direct relationship to revenue is probably #1 on the chopping block.
It's been demoralizing working on these lists for various executives.
There is a lot of bloat, but the people who should be blamed are the executives who let it happen.
I’ve witnessed it first hand over the last decade, working at a handful of companies. Each year it seems like the # of engineers who don’t serve any purpose increases, and the more layers of abstraction are created (Frameworks on top of frameworks on top of frameworks) that don’t solve any real business problem. It sucks for the people being laid off, but things have gone off the rails and predictably we are now in a correction.
The sentiment I'm hearing is the executives feel like they've been scammed by the Tech Industry and DIE initiatives. They trusted the "experts", and it was all a big scam.
At my firm they are mad, seriously mad. In moments like that, they talk about firing half of my division. I keep having to walk them back to reality.
It's tough really tough right now dealing with personalities.
The people who make these decisions no longer trust the reports,the economy, the experts, and industry guidelines. It's a shitshow at the top right now.
This is one reason I always opt out of "race/ethnic" HR questions that are voluntary. My "race" has nothing to do with my performance, and hopefully nothing to do with my keeping/losing my job. I'm not Caucasian, and I don't think that should have anything to do with my employment.
If you opt out to self identify, and are employed there, the company is actually legally required to make their own evaluation of your ethnicity based on your appearance for reporting purposes
This is probably the best way to think about it. DEI departments seem like they would have the opposite effect: they become an adversarial entity within an organization. Integrating those goals into the organization as a whole seems like it would have a much greater impact.
Where I currently work (academia), it's a litmus test. At least for faculty and management staff, if you don't submit an appropriately florid DEI statement, you won't get hired. This makes me a bit sad.
If you're putting people in the hiring pipeline that are only there to fit a simple rule or process, then that's not really treating people with respect? Someone should only be chased by a recruiter or given an interview if there's actually a desire to hire them for their abilities.
Fundamentally there's no way to engage in any diversity initiatives of any kind that don't require disrespecting people or outright discriminating against them. Which is why DIE needs to die.
Ensuring diversity is obviously a terrible goal. The only sane and ethical goal is ensuring equality. If everyone got exactly the same opportunity and the best based on skill got hired, job done.
Because they were a product of the near-zero interest rate hiring frenzy of late 2020 alongside with the decade long VC fuelled tech bubble of startups.
If there is anything that had to be offloaded to save money, it had to be them; unsurprisingly.
Readit News
Hell, it was only after a TON of hate crimes that people realized Asians may not just be a different flavor of White in the office.
Someone got called a valuable resource. Then had to listen to them rage for hours at being labeled a resource.
Of course in the spirit of diversity they mocked their mostly white customers endlessly.
Was a horrible horrible job.
Deleted Comment
I happen to be latino, and only after wasting my time with an entire loop at Microsoft with a bunch of clowns that had no interest in hiring me, did I realize that
1. my recruiter had been a “diversity and inclusion” recruiter
2. Microsoft has policies that require many eng. Managers to check the box of having interviewed a “diverse” candidate before extending an offer.
That’s why they do “hiring events” where everyone who conducts the interview is a hiring manager.
I cannot emphasize enough how disinterested the people who interviewed me where. All the coding questions i had about 20 minutes and they were Leetcode hards. One of them was so fucking incompetent that when I solved it, (most LC hards would take me considerably longer but this was in my wheelhouse) he was confused until I explained it step by step.
Tl;DR
Microsoft DEI policies wasted my time and also Microsoft seems to be staffed by a bunch of clueless clowns.
Dead Comment
Yikes.
Say the fired employees are disproportionately (compared to company demographics) of race X. Responding to accusations of bias, HR defends this with "Employees of race X at our company happened to have more low-performers than average".
Let's close our eyes and imagine the fallout for different values of X.
Twitter layoffs are all the managers and executives at my firm can talk about. They suspected tech has a lot of bloat, but Twitter surviving such a huge layoff AND pumping new features have made some of our executives start rethinking a lot.
Every two weeks like clockwork since then, I'm being pulled in the restructuring meetings.
It looks like we are going to layoff 20% in a couple months, anyone who doesn't perform in a way that has trackable metrics with a direct relationship to revenue is probably #1 on the chopping block.
It's been demoralizing working on these lists for various executives.
I’ve witnessed it first hand over the last decade, working at a handful of companies. Each year it seems like the # of engineers who don’t serve any purpose increases, and the more layers of abstraction are created (Frameworks on top of frameworks on top of frameworks) that don’t solve any real business problem. It sucks for the people being laid off, but things have gone off the rails and predictably we are now in a correction.
The sentiment I'm hearing is the executives feel like they've been scammed by the Tech Industry and DIE initiatives. They trusted the "experts", and it was all a big scam.
At my firm they are mad, seriously mad. In moments like that, they talk about firing half of my division. I keep having to walk them back to reality. It's tough really tough right now dealing with personalities.
The people who make these decisions no longer trust the reports,the economy, the experts, and industry guidelines. It's a shitshow at the top right now.
The executives got promotions and raises and bonuses for hiring aggressively when times were good.
Now they are going to get promotions and raises and bonuses for aggressively laying off when times are .. bad?
Except we know times are not as bad as the media is saying.
/s
Ensure diversity in the hiring pipeline, treat everyone with respect, check your biases.
Fundamentally there's no way to engage in any diversity initiatives of any kind that don't require disrespecting people or outright discriminating against them. Which is why DIE needs to die.
If there is anything that had to be offloaded to save money, it had to be them; unsurprisingly.
Are they a branch of HR departments? Do they actually interview and hire people, or just write DEI training material?
Dead Comment