Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

[paulca]

So the almost daily emails I get in work now are starting to become "uncomfortable".

I fully support the objectives.  I just question the narrative on grounds of irony/contradiction and hypocrisy.

First, since when did it become "Equity", rather than "Equality".

Second, since when was it inclusive to have an advert for a women's only event in same email, to discuss incentivising women in tech.

I really have to start questioning their definitions of these words they use as all I am seeing is latent discrimination becoming blatant discrimination.

A recent email highlighted women's success by increasing the hiring rate for women to 47%!  Did the applicant ratio of men to women change?  Nope.  Is 47% about 1000% over representative?  Yep.

Then they have the irrelevant discriminators.  Sex, sexuality, race, nationality, gender, preferred gender, preferred pro-noun and asking everyone to put their preferred pro-noun on their email signatures! 

It seems they are looking at diversity and equality in a completely different way these days.  It seems to be more about discriminating, labelling, asking people to identify and box themselves, counting them and publishing metrics on "diversity" to managers and hirers, so that they might avoid the "Straight white males" that are holding the company back!

However.  I already tried to raise this as an honest discussion somewhere else and it just got locked instantly.  This is not surprising me.  It's facism.  If you don't tow the party line, if you don't sing with their narrative you are obviously a right wing bigot who should be silenced quickly.

I'm honestly in fear that if I raised it in work with HR I would get disciplined.

I don't feel comfortable as a straight white male anymore in work.  I feel like I'm unwelcome.  I feel like promotions and pay rises are going to pass me by and go to women or "diverse" people instead.  Look I know some men have and continue to be assholes to women, but I don't think it's fair punishing the entire sex, especially not in work.  Keep that shit on Facebook and Twitter.

Where are the discussions on skills diversity?  Ability diversity?  Teamwork diversity?  Diversity in leadership styles, methodologies, approaches....    it seems the whole point has been forgotten in this wave of virtue signalling non-sense over less than 10% of the population in one hand and blatant discrimination of male employees to boot.

[paulca]

Oh and all 8 people awarded the highest company award this year were..... women.

[wraper]

I guess the best thing you can do is finding a new job or at least explore the job market, take some interviews even if do not intend changing the job yet. Your current company will probably implode anyway unless they abandon this nonsense politics. Replacing workers with best skills by those who match their woke quotas does not bode well with productivity. Or you could start "identifying" as woman for work purposes, and chose pronoun accordingly 

[sokoloff]

In engineering (software engineering in my specific case), I think there is an observable outcome that suggests a strong possibility that some effects are happening to cause the profile of working engineers to be very different from the profile of the overall population.

Now, that could happen from a bunch of reasons that might be completely okay, supportable, understandable, or even beneficial.
Or it might be from biases or filters that we should work to reduce.

For my own actions, I'm very supportive of examining the questions and working to reduce apparent biases (or even introducing offsetting biases) when they involve groups of people.
As a concrete example: I fully support adding all-women's or historically-black colleges with strong tech programs to the set of campuses that we recruit at. I also support something like the "Rooney Rule" for professional hiring levels.

I do not support introducing "offsetting biases" when it comes down to individual people.
As a concrete example: While I fully support recruiting at Wellesley College or Florian A&M, I don't support having a different hiring bar for candidates from those schools versus others. Similarly, while I support the Rooney Rule (or equivalent), I don't support differences in promotion or hiring criteria to give "diverse candidates" an advantage. I find the desire to award such advantages understandable but still significantly undesirable.

IMO, you fix inappropriate discrimination with a strong move towards fairness and impartiality, not with counterbalancing/offsetting discrimination.

Inappropriate discrimination is unfair, undesirable, and value-destroying regardless of the motivations of the people practicing that discrimination.

[paulca]

Or you could start "identifying" as woman for work purposes, and chose pronoun accordingly 

Officer thinking.

Moving won't help.  I've been working for one company contracted out to three different companies. Over the past few years and they are all the same.

Straight white male.  Do not apply.  We want diverse people and women.

[paulca]

In engineering (software engineering in my specific case), I think there is an observable outcome that suggests a strong possibility that some effects are happening to cause the profile of working engineers to be very different from the profile of the overall population.

Now, that could happen from a bunch of reasons that might be completely okay, supportable, understandable, or even beneficial.
Or it might be from biases or filters that we should work to reduce.

Absolutely agree.  It can even expand to include not just bias towards "types of people", but also bias towards (or away from) various jobs, sectors and roles.  In that women in university and through lower schooling and somehow being steered clear of STEM/Tech.  Are they being steered or are they steering themselves?  These are good questions.  Finding answers would be beneficial and if anything need correcting, work on it.

However, if you have a 5% applicant rate being women and you start hiring 20% women to try and force address the issue artificially ... I stop agreeing with the narrative/agenda.  Two wrongs don't make a right.

The meme that went around where they had to career fairs stalls, one with "STEM" and one with "gender studies" and stood outside the gender studies booth were 4 women with placards complaining about there being too few women in tech.   I found it concise to the point and ironically accurate.  If you want more women in tech, have more women study and apply to tech.  Period.  If they aren't applying, find out why and fix THAT.  Stop discriminating to artificially increase your "diversity score".

[jonpaul]

Do you prefer that your Surgeon, Airline Pilot or Lawyer be selected on the basis of their color or ethnicity, or on the baisis of their skill and experience?

I could give a @#%^$%% about the color or ethnicity, I WANT A GREAT EXPERIENCE SURGEN , AIRLINE PILOT,

not selected for DEI/political/donations  by a government beurocrat



J

[paulca]

A different opinion on why they are doing this came from a senior recruiter.  He told me they are marketing to the young people in or just leaving university.  Surprisingly one of the first things they ask is about the LGBT+ policies and whether they can change their pro-nouns in work. etc.  Apparently that even comes before "What is the salary?"

So these large companies have all poured money into this initiative to try and attract more of the younger talent.

[wraper]

Absolutely agree.  It can even expand to include not just bias towards "types of people", but also bias towards (or away from) various jobs, sectors and roles.  In that women in university and through lower schooling and somehow being steered clear of STEM/Tech.  Are they being steered or are they steering themselves?  These are good questions.  Finding answers would be beneficial and if anything need correcting, work on it.

Norway as example of equality and freedom of choice at their pinnacle shows that disproportion only grows when people are given a free choice. Women simply don't want these types of jobs if want to work at all. This garbage is not only oppressing men, it also coerces women into something they won't be happy with. https://en.unesco.org/EQUALS/ICT-GE-paradox

[sokoloff]

However, if you have a 5% applicant rate being women and you start hiring 20% women to try and force address the issue artificially ... I stop agreeing with the narrative/agenda.  Two wrongs don't make a right.

I'm virtually sure that I agree with you in philosophy, but I think this example is flawed.

Imagine a field (say, software engineering) that both pays very well and is inherently interesting to some people who have an aptitude for it. That 19:1 male to female ratio might exist because all of the people who find it interesting and have an aptitude apply and (in addition) a bunch of men apply because it pays well and, since most jobs suck anyway, you might as well try to work at one that pays well.

Further imagine the applicant pool consists of 4 women with aptitude, skill, and interest for software engineering, 16 men with aptitude, skill, and interest for software engineering, and 60 men who picked software because they liked video games and Google or their high school guidance counselor gave them a list of the highest paying professions.

In such a situation, you might very well find that the average female candidate is better than the average male candidate (by virtue of a bunch of the addition of that last group of men to the pool). It doesn't even have to be that 4x as many men are trying to join the field because of pay. The candidates who have lesser skills, interview poorly, and aren't selected don't just dematerialize; they keep applying for jobs, meaning they keep showing up and not getting selected until one day they wiggle a little higher on the interview performance or click a little better with the interviewer and get hired. When they do land a job, they might be fired more frequently (and thus be over-represented in the applicant pool from this effect).

Just because a group is hired at a higher rate doesn't mean there's inappropriate discrimination at play. In the example above, an ideal interviewing process would hire all 4 women and the 16 men with aptitude, skill, and interest for software engineering. That would result in 20% of hires being women from a pool that was only 5% women applicants, but would be an entirely "correct" outcome.

Anecdotally, in 30 years of working in software, I almost never run across a female software engineer who is terrible. I've run across quite a few men who are terrible at it. It's quite possible that the women who would be terrible at it are filtered out earlier in the pipeline (or alternatively, that the men who are terrible at it were attracted to it for reasons other than inherent interest and competence).

[paulca]

Please, please, please, do not project that on me, I am not saying anything bad about women engineers.  I think every single lady engineer I have worked with has been diligent and skilled.  I really, do honestly value them.


Your point cheers me up no end.  You are asking me to consider that women are better at the job and they are only now realising this and will be taking over the work place in the next decade.

I have 20 years to retirement, do you think I'll make it?

Maybe I can pick up a late career in health care.

EDIT:  In one of my tech classes for software, around age 19, the class had 12 people in it.  Only 1 woman.  She left after the first of 4 semesters stating that she felt uncomfortable as the only girl.  The senior lecturer was a little frank one day with me and pointed out that the pattern repeats that every time there is only 1 woman in a class they leave.  If you can manage to get 2 of them into a class at least, they tend to stay.

[HuronKing]

I'm going to be the one to take what will likely be the unpopular position in this forum...

Women have been actively excluded from the general workforce, but especially STEM disciplines and jobs, for literally thousands of years. The first black woman ever to get a Ph.D. from MIT didn't happen until 1973. MIT has been in existence since 1861:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Ann_Jackson

The first woman to ever get a mechanical engineering Ph.D. in the United States happened in 1959!!! This isn't ancient history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Graham#First_woman_in_US_to_earn_mechanical_engineering_PhD

Say nothing for trans/gay people in which it was literally a crime to be gay within living memory (the USA did not start to even begin decriminalizing it until 1962 starting with Illinois).

Y'all whining so much about 'unfair discrimination...' the fact is that there is a LOT of work to be done to undo thousands of years of holding back human civilization. We've kept at least half our available brainpower away from learning STEM because they have vaginas and kept even more by discriminating against people they are gay, or have the wrong color skin.

I've met a lot of incompetent white men who fail upwards - and met a lot of hyper-competent minorities and women (and I remember them because there are so few in the STEM field in the first place) who are expected to work twice as hard to earn what's been historically awarded to certain demographics by discrimination and even by law.

FYI I'm a straight white male.

[HuronKing]

Here's something else to ponder. Companies that have used AI to find candidates, even in the efforts of perfect equality, often just end up perpetuating the racist stereotypes that built out the makeup of their workforce in the first place (because the AI is trained on data of a workforce that was historically built on discrimination by race, gender, or sexual orientation):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_hiring#Controversies

And of course, this:
https://xkcd.com/385/

[paulca]

Fun fact, on diversity and working with others.  My employer asked me if I was going to start coming back into the office.  I said, "Why, I don't work in Belfast."

They said, "What do you mean?"

"You are the first Irish voice I have heard since last Tuesday.  I work in Singapore."

"What do you mean you work in Singapore?"

"The first person I speak to, my customer side manager is in Singapore, his manager is in Singapore and 95% of the larger team are in Singapore, with the other 5% being in India.  Even my team in the UK are all Indians.  Not being awkward, but when the last company recognition email went out I was on page 3 before I spotted a single white guy.  But that's perfectly normal, as I am working in Singapore after all.  But come into the office in Belfast?  Why?  And sit on my own?"

I've started to have to learn a bit of Indian words, sometimes the emails slip in translation, but I learnt a lahk is 100,000, which was interesting after I had to google it.

Lovely people, completely different ways of working and completely different work and life ethics, but hey, I'm easy going.  I do somewhat feel like I'm working in a foreign country while sitting in my office at home.  Quite strange.  Nothing against them, but I do feel a little disassociated from my own people out here.

Am I the asshole?

[free_electron]

The biggest problem is the labeling in itself. men/women black/white gay/straight . we are all HUMAN. stop using those classifications and stop this endless i/he/she/we classify as xyz. Stop putting people in boxes. And stop putting yourself in a box. and most of all stop telling other people to put you in a box you want to be put in. there would be a lot less noise in the world.

[MarginallyStable]

and most of all stop telling other people to put you in a box you want to be put in

 

[Simon]

Looking for another job is the best option. Where I work we have non of this BS. My manager employs people firstly on the basis of competence and secondly if he feels they will fit in within the company. We don't even care for degrees. We do have one Asian colleague, he was hired for his ability not because of his ethnicity. We would take a female engineer, not a female, but a female engineer, no issues there but we don't have a silly policy about it.

We are a small company.

Any time I fill out a form that asks about my ethnicity I refuse to give it, particularly if it says some crap like "in order to make sure we are serving everyone please tell us what you are". I don't see how them knowing helps. I will only disclose ethnicity for medical reasons.

[paulca]

The biggest problem is the labeling in itself. men/women black/white gay/straight . we are all HUMAN. stop using those classifications and stop this endless i/he/she/we classify as xyz. Stop putting people in boxes. And stop putting yourself in a box. and most of all stop telling other people to put you in a box you want to be put in. there would be a lot less noise in the world.

Hear'Hear!  (old speak for 'wat e said')

[paulca]

Any time I fill out a form that asks about my ethnicity I refuse to give it, particularly if it says some crap like "in order to make sure we are serving everyone please tell us what you are". I don't see how them knowing helps. I will only disclose ethnicity for medical reasons.

Absolutely.  I never fill in the ones that are legally optional.  Unfortunately there are reglatory filtered biases where I live.  Around race, religion and 'background of up bringing'.  They leave the option "I consider myself to be a member of neither Protestant or Catholic communities.", however anyone who has read the government guidance documents knows, when you put that, they just look up your "probably alignment" from your postal code, used to be your primary school.

Looking for another job won't help.  They all have this agenda these day.  It just depends on how much they can force it in the locale they are working in.  I don't think the UK/EU/Ireland based company I am actually employed in are that bad, although literally every top award and most promotions were women.  The big US company I spent my days for in Singapore are going nuts with it.  It is them who have completely abandoned all vale of fairness and equality and literally reworded it:

"Diversity, Equity and Inclusion"

Apparently it's the entire department (1000s of people) has been rebranded with the emblem tag line:  "Digitization, Innovation, Diversity Control"

That really sounds like "All animals are inclusive, but some animals are more inclusive than others."

Logical puzzle.  Excluding people for not being inclusive enough, is that the same as the tolerating intolerance paradox thing?

[paulca]

Couldn't have put this better myself!

[Simon]

As Jordan Paterson puts it: Men are interested in things and women are interested in people. Some will try to use the excuse that it is upbringing that forces women to choose certain roles, I think that reasoning is outdated. Yes some women will be interested in tech but it's just a matter of whatever you want to call it that most are more interested in other things. Of course we have a few notable cases of renowned women it tech that turned out to be con artists whilst celebrating them being women in tech. I bet the interviewers of Elizabeth Holmes are felling rather stupid, or are just too stupid to see that they were had.

[james_s]

Use of the word "equity" rather than "equality" is very deliberate, many people do not know the difference but they mean very different things. DEI is an entire industry in itself these days, and it is an openly sexist and racist industry that is anything but inclusive. It is pushed by the people that are obsessed with identity politics and value group membership above individuality. As an individual first and member of various groups *very* distant second, I loathe this mentality. These people are absolutely obsessed with race and gender and everything else that divides us, they will freely and openly discriminate in order to try to force equality of outcome. I too am afraid to even mention any of this at work, because I know I will be labeled and discriminated against for merely questioning the narrative.

[EEVblog]

So the almost daily emails I get in work now are starting to become "uncomfortable".
*snip*
I'm honestly in fear that if I raised it in work with HR I would get disciplined.

There are only two options:

1) If you are not happy with the policies at work and/or the movement in society in this direction then you have to speak up about it. Yes, you may get disciplined, be outright fired, or secretly demoted and
have your life made more difficult until you quit. But that seems to be the price paid these days. Even when explicitly asked for your feedback on the topic, look at what happened to James Damore. You can try and do this delicately or forcefully of course, IME it doesn't seem to make much difference to the outcome, but it may.

2) Don't say a thing and live with it. Changing jobs may not help, it's very pervasive these days, especially in larger organisations.

Pick your poison.

[SiliconWizard]

Use of the word "equity" rather than "equality" is very deliberate, many people do not know the difference but they mean very different things. DEI is an entire industry in itself these days, and it is an openly sexist and racist industry that is anything but inclusive. It is pushed by the people that are obsessed with identity politics and value group membership above individuality. As an individual first and member of various groups *very* distant second, I loathe this mentality. These people are absolutely obsessed with race and gender and everything else that divides us, they will freely and openly discriminate in order to try to force equality of outcome. I too am afraid to even mention any of this at work, because I know I will be labeled and discriminated against for merely questioning the narrative.

Yep.

And as always, there is ultimately just one question to ask: who exactly benefits from this whole movement?
The answers may not be all that pleasing.

[magic]

Men benefit from feminism because even feminists admit that men rule the world.
If you don't benefit from feminism, perhaps you aren't man enough