This level of political engagement seems kind of out of character for him
Is he just kissing ass, or is there genuine frustration on decaying business culture? It feels like both he and Musk are idealizing some kind of past version of SV where WLB was less of a concern
i imagine they are still close enough, and perhaps she still has enough stock, that she understands he's willing to compromise his own morals for the financial benefit of the company
on a personal level, it is demoralizing to read though
To be clear, Meta's "Diverse Slate Approach" was explicitly discriminatory with regards to protected class. It prohibited hiring managers from proceeding with an offer until at least one of the on-site interviews contained an "underrepresented group", meaning women and URM males. In practice this meant that white and Asian men had to wait a long time to get an offer even after they passed the interview rounds. But women and URM never had to wait for the DSA to be fulfilled because their presence caused it to be fulfilled.
To see how this is discrimination, consider a company that decides to wait 90 days before proceeding with any offer to a Catholic candidate, but no such delay if the candidate is not Catholic. Surely we see that this is discrimination. Even if we argue that the Catholic candidates are still getting their offer eventually it's still plainly discrimination. What if instead we rolled a dice and added 0 to 90 days of delay? Some Catholics have zero delay, just like non-Catholics. Is that still discrimination? Of course.
Now considering how the DSA works. Most candidates are not "diverse". If you look at the sequence of candidates with non-diverse (N) or diverse (D) candidates the sequence looks something like this:
NNNNNNNNNNNNDNNNNNNNNNNND
So if we introduce the requirement that at least one interviewed candidate must be diverse, a non-diverse candidate may get lucky and the next candidate is diverse. Or maybe they'll be waiting a long time until a diverse candidate is interviewed and fulfills the DSA. But a diverse candidate never has to wait for th DSA to be fulfilled. Sounds like a familiar situation where an offer is randomly delayed on the basis of protected class, right?
It's true that the DSA never lowered standards for diverse candidates. But the way it "improved" the demographics of Meta was through systematically delaying offers on the basis of protected class.
What you're describing is not how it works. Chiefly, the hiring pipelines are not set up for a single role, but a whole family of them. They are filled ahead of need. (Or were, at a time when this would've been taking place.)
There are other inaccuracies, but suffice it to say, this comment section is full of comments by people who have never been hiring managers talking about how hiring works.
I re-read the wiki page on the DSA multiple times. It does explicitly spell out that at least one "diverse" candidate must be on the slate for each role. Yes, candidates are considered for multiple roles as they go through the hiring pipeline, but that doesn't change the fact that it prohibits moving forward with a hire if the candidate pool for the role does not include a diverse candidate.
If this is wrong, but all means explain how the DSA actually works.
If the pattern resembles this for a group that represents over 50% of the broader population (women and some subset of males), I'd argue that it's highly possible there are other, possibly discriminatory, factors at play.
Over 60% of the U.S. population don't have college degrees, but you obviously wouldn't expect Facebook's hiring to be proportional to that. The demographics of CS graduates is much closer to what you'd expect the hiring percentages to reflect (and they do)
So we should expect 50% men in elementary schools? How about lumberjacks? Should those be 50% women too?
A non discriminatory hiring process should reflect the demographics of the workers in the given field (other factors like geography matter too). Why would we expect, say, pediatricians (80% female) to have 50% men?
Achieving a 50/50 split between men and women in a field that's 80% one gender requires hiring one gender at 4x the rate of the other. This line of thinking is what leads companies to set up discriminatory hiring practices in pursuit of DEI goals.
> The purpose of affirmative action is to ensure equal employment opportunities for applicants and employees. It is based on the premise that, absent discrimination, over time a contractor’s workforce generally will reflect the demographics of the qualified available workforce in the relevant job market.
Thanks for the link. A bit of clarification: in this context Asian was not in the category of URM since Asians are overrepresented in tech roles at Meta. So URM meant Black, Latin, and American native.
He always has been (literally, due to the share structure of Meta and how much Zuckerberg owns), he is just trying to throw someone under the bus for the change in political winds.
People for some reason have an inability to separate the goals of DEI/EDI from the practice. It's possible that the goals are important and correct, but the implementation sucks. I am of this belief for many DEI programs I've seen. But I'm still pro-DEI. It just gets implemented often too simplistically and naively, enabling the creation of more controversy and also likely many poor outcomes in organizations. As for what percentage of DEI programs result in such poor outcomes, I dare not guess, I have too little data.
However, the comments that Zuckerberg is making makes me think he really thinks that the goals of DEI are themselves intrinsically bad. He seems to be leaning into the stereotypical type of thinking that causes the issues that DEI is trying to address in the first place.
I'm disappointed. I would have hoped that he'd be capable of diving into more nuance.
The goals of most DEI programs can't be achieved without discrimination on the basis of protected class. If software developers are 18% women how can a company achieve 40% women software developers without discrimination? And that was a DEI goal a previous employer used. In fact they had the same goal for electrical engineer too despite being 10% women.
Ambiguous goals like "make people feel welcome" doesn't require discrimination. But those are not the DEI goals people object to. 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked at implemented DEI goals in the form of numeric thresholds, and used discrimination to achieve them. Only one carried out DEI in the innocuous manner.
I'd argue if you're looking to achieve DEI goals in the short-term rather than over decades, you're going to fail because the backlash and other consequences will destroy any progress you think you made. And I think that's what we're seeing. You can work towards DEI goals without achieving them in the short-term and still look to make good changes over the long run. But it requires a systems view of everything, including helping kids from various backgrounds to get access to the education they need and then helping them to be in an environment where they can actually successfully learn stuff. That's a multi-generational multi-decade problem, not a corporate fiscal year problem.
You say that 3/4 of companies you are familiar with used discrimination to achieve numeric thresholds of 40% women software developers. I can't name a single medium or large tech company that is 40% women software developers. Can you?
furthermore, he is blaming the company's decision on his COO and not on himself as CEO. more than almost any other founder, he maintained control over his company and for better or worse it is clear that he alone bears the responsibility for what the company does as a result of that control. blaming one of his most trusted, respected, and successful deputies for what he now describes as a failure does not reflect well on him as a leader in my esteem.
Readit News
Is he just kissing ass, or is there genuine frustration on decaying business culture? It feels like both he and Musk are idealizing some kind of past version of SV where WLB was less of a concern
Maybe he has some political ambitions.
Maybe he's trying to get cred with trump so that he can try to have influence over the tik-tok ban (a huge competitor).
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1xolsJ
on a personal level, it is demoralizing to read though
It's the perfect window of opportunity. Launch, get traction, get funding, scale. It's all teed up.
To see how this is discrimination, consider a company that decides to wait 90 days before proceeding with any offer to a Catholic candidate, but no such delay if the candidate is not Catholic. Surely we see that this is discrimination. Even if we argue that the Catholic candidates are still getting their offer eventually it's still plainly discrimination. What if instead we rolled a dice and added 0 to 90 days of delay? Some Catholics have zero delay, just like non-Catholics. Is that still discrimination? Of course.
Now considering how the DSA works. Most candidates are not "diverse". If you look at the sequence of candidates with non-diverse (N) or diverse (D) candidates the sequence looks something like this:
NNNNNNNNNNNNDNNNNNNNNNNND
So if we introduce the requirement that at least one interviewed candidate must be diverse, a non-diverse candidate may get lucky and the next candidate is diverse. Or maybe they'll be waiting a long time until a diverse candidate is interviewed and fulfills the DSA. But a diverse candidate never has to wait for th DSA to be fulfilled. Sounds like a familiar situation where an offer is randomly delayed on the basis of protected class, right?
It's true that the DSA never lowered standards for diverse candidates. But the way it "improved" the demographics of Meta was through systematically delaying offers on the basis of protected class.
There are other inaccuracies, but suffice it to say, this comment section is full of comments by people who have never been hiring managers talking about how hiring works.
If this is wrong, but all means explain how the DSA actually works.
If the pattern resembles this for a group that represents over 50% of the broader population (women and some subset of males), I'd argue that it's highly possible there are other, possibly discriminatory, factors at play.
A non discriminatory hiring process should reflect the demographics of the workers in the given field (other factors like geography matter too). Why would we expect, say, pediatricians (80% female) to have 50% men?
Achieving a 50/50 split between men and women in a field that's 80% one gender requires hiring one gender at 4x the rate of the other. This line of thinking is what leads companies to set up discriminatory hiring practices in pursuit of DEI goals.
The even government office of non discrimination compliance agrees: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/AAFAQs
> The purpose of affirmative action is to ensure equal employment opportunities for applicants and employees. It is based on the premise that, absent discrimination, over time a contractor’s workforce generally will reflect the demographics of the qualified available workforce in the relevant job market.
https://diversity.ucsf.edu/programs-resources/urm-definition
However, the comments that Zuckerberg is making makes me think he really thinks that the goals of DEI are themselves intrinsically bad. He seems to be leaning into the stereotypical type of thinking that causes the issues that DEI is trying to address in the first place.
I'm disappointed. I would have hoped that he'd be capable of diving into more nuance.
Ambiguous goals like "make people feel welcome" doesn't require discrimination. But those are not the DEI goals people object to. 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked at implemented DEI goals in the form of numeric thresholds, and used discrimination to achieve them. Only one carried out DEI in the innocuous manner.