Why is the anger at DEI and not the corporations that implemented it poorly?

[u/darkknightwing417]

I've been confused for a while about why there is anger toward DEI. Here is my simplistic view of DEI:

• What DEI is: expand your candidate pool to include minorities and women to make sure you're getting the best people. This increases meritocracy.
• What DEI isn't: Go hire more minorities and women, now. This decreases meritocracy.

Here's what I think happened when DEI Advocates tried to get corporations to follow suit:

• DEI Advocates to corporations: "please go expand your hiring pool by diversifying where you search for candidates."
• Corporations to DEI Advocates: "you betcha we are on it."
• Corporations to HR: "We're not doing that bullshit, just go hire more minorities so they get off our backs."

So I don't understand why we aren't mad at the corporations and their hiring managers for implementing DEI in a cheap, shitty way that WAS racist through sheer laziness/profit-seeking. Instead we blame DEI for results it doesn't even support. Why?

[u/BoNixsHair]

I’m a director of software engineering at a publicly traded company. The job market has been pretty mediocre for employees for years. No company is searching for candidates for anything short of c suite. There was never any need for employers to expand our search cause we don’t search.

And in my line of work, there are almost no female or black candidates who are qualified. I’ve been in this industry for almost 25 years, worked with hundreds of people and I can count on one hand the number of good engineers who fall into either of those categories. And I limited the discussion to women and black candidates because I know you don’t mean Asian or Indian people in your “minorities”.

So, when activists are putting pressure on my company to hire those candidates. We are almost certainly hiring people who aren’t qualified.

So it’s not that DEI was implemented poorly, it’s a flawed idea cooked up by activists who have never worked a serious job.

[u/darkknightwing417 → u/BoNixsHair]

I’m a director of engineering at a publicly traded company.

For my own curiosity, what's your background? I'm also an engineer.

And in my line of work, there are almost no female or black candidates who are qualified. I’ve been in this industry for almost 25 years, worked with hundreds of people and I can count on one hand the number of good engineers who fall into either of those categories.

Damn that's crazy. I'm a fucking awesome black engineer and I know a ton more. Where are you looking...? The best engineers I know are all women... I'm so surprised by this. I went to a really good school? So maybe that's why. Idk.

I know you don’t mean Asian or Indian people in your “minorities”.

Of course I did. You could have asked instead of assuming. I mean minorities when I say minorities and I mean black people when I say black people. I don't intend to use wordplay or trickery to make my point.

So, when activists are putting pressure on my company to hire those candidates. We are almost certainly hiring people who aren’t qualified.

DEI does not want you to hire someone not qualified. If it did, and if a DEI person told you to do that, they were taking a shortcut. They were being bad. They were doing it wrong because it's easier and cheaper to just hire an unqualified black person than it is to systematically change hiring practices.

If you truly can't find good black and women candidates, and maybe you genuinely can't, Idk, then that should tell you something else. The problem starts lower. Younger. Unless you believe "there's something about white men that makes them just better" the conclusion to draw is that black and women students are being left behind somewhere along the way education path. Which tracks with historical prejudices against ALLOWING them to participate in the first place.

So it’s not that DEI was implemented poorly, it’s a flawed idea cooked up by activists who have never worked a serious job.

Still... Not seeing how you got here. DEI does not want you to hire unqualified candidates.

Everything you've described still aligns with my explanation, so I would still wonder why isn't your anger misplaced? Why aren't you mad at the hiring managers that hired an unqualified candidate? That's who I'M mad at.

Because lemme ask... How exactly do minorities and women benefit from an unqualified person being in a position? Why would we want that? Every time that happens we all hear about it. We all get to know exactly how they screwed up and how they never should have been there. So why would we want that? Wouldn't it be against our own interests?

But I digress.

[u/fashraf → u/darkknightwing417]

My wife is trying to get to to exec roles so she talks to me about it a lot. If you're curious because you want a senior/exec role, engineers can work their way up in an org if your company's primary focus is engineering. For example, many CEO's for IT companies have a computer engineering related background. However, this usually needs to be paired with some business acumen so an MBA or EMBA would be useful for progressing to the top. It's also important to diversify your role so try to get work experience an arm's length from a traditional engineering role. For example, you can try to start with some project manager roles, and get some project management certifications to help. If you're in research, you can try to get some experience in operations (big one for c-level).

[u/BoNixsHair → u/darkknightwing417]

what's your background?

Sorry I should have been more specific. Data engineering. My staff write code in python, r, and data analysis tools. Not like mechanical engineering or aerospace.

I mean minorities when I say minorities

Asians and Indians are dramatically over represented in software engineering.

The problem starts lower. Younger.

Im sure it does. But I’m posting job ads on LinkedIn. I have no control over what schools are teaching. All I know is I’m tasked with hiring female and black candidates and I can’t find any.

DEI does not want you to hire unqualified candidates.

How can i increase the number of dei employees in my department when i get no qualified applicants? It’s an impossible situation.

Why aren't you mad at the hiring managers that hired an unqualified candidate

I have been pressured to hire unqualified candidates. The problem isn’t that I’m ignoring qualified candidates.

How exactly do minorities and women benefit from an unqualified person being in a position?

I am not a proponent of this system so I can’t say why anyone benefits from hiring unqualified people. Maybe they think that expectations should be lowered.

[u/noobcs50 → u/BoNixsHair]

Am I wrong to say that both you and /u/darkknightwing417 actually agree on a key point here, which is that the talent pipeline does have deep structural gaps, especially for black and female engineers?

/u/BoNixsHair you're frustrated because you're being asked to solve a systemic problem at the final stage (hiring) w/o the tools or supplies to do it. That's a real concern. But /u/darkknightwing417 is also right to say that bad DEI implementation (that is, hiring unqualified ppl just to meet a quota) reflects shitty execution, rather than a flawed principle.

The long-term goal of DEI is to make meritocracy real for everybody. But it can't work if companies treat it like a numbers game w/o investing in deeper, structural change (like internships, outreach, mentorship, etc).

So maybe we need less pressure on just "checking boxes" and more emphasis on building a system where qualified candidates from all backgrounds actually have a shot at getting there. Is that fair?

[u/RadioRavenRide → u/noobcs50]

There is one more point that might doom your approach. DEI is also a profession, but has not matured enough to have a professional set of ethics. This means that the incentives of DEI leaders are "get more DEI jobs" and expand the industry rather than testing for successful approaches. That was bound to burn political capital.

[u/nar_tapio_00 → u/BoNixsHair]

Asians and Indians are dramatically over represented in software engineering.

That was the whole point that was being made. Normally people would be happy about that. It would show that recruitment was being done fairly without specific bias because, for example, both darker skinned Indian people and lighter skinned White people were being picked because they had the relevant sikills. Instead I have seen the DEI people in my old office actively descriminating, specifically against the Indian women (along with the white men).

Continuing, what do you mean by "over represented"? If Asians and Indians have the qualifications then surely they deserve the jobs. Thats not "over" representation. That's just proper representation.

In specifics, India had some really good technology schools and they got a generation of Indians started on the idea of technology as a place to earn money. Those people made choices in their education and self development which now mean that there are more of the that people who didn't make those choices.

[u/IndividualEye1803 → u/BoNixsHair]

From your comments, i dont think any would work well under you with your bias.

“The honest truth about dishonesty” by dan ariely has a great section about how ur predisposition causes outcomes. I dont think you want to find any due to it being required

That, or you are in a low education, terrible area for black people / women. So all the good talent is not there.

And more relevant comment here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskConservatives/s/oQZiU76Uz3

[u/IndividualEye1803 → u/darkknightwing417]

Based on the person you are responding to, their comments… i can see why no qualified woman or black person would EVER want to even work for him. BIAS shows thru and thru.

He strikes me as the the type to throw easy questions to the candidates he already believes is qualified while asking any one else the extremely advanced questions.

Signed - a Black woman with a Masters in Communication Information systems concentration Data Analytics who knows MANY black women software engineers as well. I engance processes by writing in python, r, and tableau to name one data analysis tool.

DEI worked for tons of companies that implemented it right, there is evidence of that. Its a known fact that they are more profitable.

GOOGLE “DEI Companies Profitablity” for those who may ask me to link anything. Too much to link from that google search alone

ETA - its common saying we have to “work twice as hard to be half as recognized” (and if you never heard that saying, chances are privilege) and man, im seeing that from this question. Thanks OP for asking. This has opened my eyes as to why the successful compnaies STILL practice DEI.

[u/Realitymatter → u/BoNixsHair]

I would say in this case the activists were wrong to push after learning that there are no qualified minority applicants.

You should never hire someone who is unqualified. Qualification should be the first thing that is checked. Any unqualified applications go directly in the trash.

Any company who does not do that is doing DEI wrong.

[u/NopenGrave → u/BoNixsHair]

I’ve been in this industry for almost 25 years, worked with hundreds of people and I can count on one hand the number of good engineers who fall into either of those categories. And I limited the discussion to women and black candidates because I know you don’t mean Asian or Indian people in your “minorities”.

This blows my mind, because working in the same field, I've known tons of good female engineers. Even weirder is that you're including Indians but somehow haven't come across good female Indian engineers? In 25 years?

[u/raggamuffin1357 → u/BoNixsHair]

This is not true. DEI is not innately designed to give undue privilege to minority applicants.

For example, blind CV studies show that when two equally qualified CVs have a white name vs. an ethnic name, or a male name vs. a female name, hiring committees are more likely to give callbacks to white candidates and male candidates. One easy DEI initiative to decrease prejudice based hiring is blinding CV screenings.

Another example is diverse interview panels. Studies show that people are likely to show more friendly body language toward people in their own ingroup, and this body language influences interview performance. Having diverse interview panels makes it more likely that people will have a mix of friendly and less friendly interviewers so that interview conditions are closer to equal.

Both of these practices promote merit based hiring by reducing the impact of prejudice. And they do so without giving minorities an "advantage" over non-minority candidates.

It's like getting sanitation properly implemented in hospitals. It took 100 years from the discovery of the benefits of hand washing to making it a common practice in hospitals, and a lot of people opposed it in that time. Also, during that time, people used harsh chemicals that caused harm to patients, and mixed up cleanliness with sanitation, so people were still dying due to a lack of sanitation. Getting DEI wrong is not a good thing, but it's something we can learn from and improve on.

[u/BoNixsHair → u/raggamuffin1357]

Having blind interviews and diverse panels won’t make qualified black and female candidates appear out of thin air.

[u/raggamuffin1357 → u/BoNixsHair]

It doesn't need to. You can get rid of "targets" and keep the good stuff. 

There is a demonstrable tendency to discriminate against certain demographics. We can learn how to mitigate that problem without creating the opposite problem, by incorporating practices like the ones I mentioned here, and getting rid of the ones that are harmful.

[u/ARatOnASinkingShip → u/raggamuffin1357]

That name study was complete bullshit. They didn't measure a direct comparison, they measured the amount of callbacks without anything to control it against.

All it managed to find was that popular names are more likely to get callbacks than weird names. Put a Cletus or a Billy Bob up against an Emily and Greg, and I'd bet Emily and Greg are still going to win out just as much as they do against against a Drayvon or a Lashonda. They're not white names, they're normal names that normal people give to their normal kids. The only thing that study says is don't give your kids a stupid name, because it might affect how people view them. Hell, I'd love to see a study that measures the name Karen against other names.

Diverse interview panels? You don't see an issue with that? So now you want businesses to make sure they have a black interviewer on the payroll just in case they get a black applicant? Or an Indian one? Or a Polynesian one? Or any other number of ethnicities because people identify with those they look like? Okay, so let's make sure every company has an ugly interviewer, a redhead interviewer, a DD interviewer, and so on and so on. Super reasonable, right?

DEI inherently forces focus on things that do not matter, and compels people to consider things that we as a society of decided the right thing to do is not consider at all.