Any suggestions on how to successfully avoid being targeted/canceled, say because one chooses not to support current D-E-I efforts because they will not lead to the results and effects their proponents claim?
I have no good suggestions myself.
Dave already mentioned some cancellation attempts; hearing about known working strategies to defend oneself would be encouraging.
Any suggestions on how to successfully avoid being targeted/canceled [..]?I would be curious to hear about personal experiences of engineers being "canceled" in the workplace.
I am working for a US company myself, which is encouraging diversity, non-discrimination, awareness of biases etc., on what I consider a reasonable level.
Any suggestions on how to successfully avoid being targeted/canceled, say because one chooses not to support current D-E-I efforts because they will not lead to the results and effects their proponents claim?
I have no good suggestions myself.
Dave already mentioned some cancellation attempts; hearing about known working strategies to defend oneself would be encouraging.
IMHO the best you can really do is just smile and nod, go through the motions and write it off as just another useless meeting. Treat everyone with respect and try to avoid interacting any more than absolutely necessary with the ones that have a chip on their shoulder. Staying off of social media helps too, especially Twitter, nothing good comes from posting anything on there. If politics comes up at work, try to just not engage in the discussion.
There are many companies that have this stuff well in hand. Like I said, of D-E-I, I only object to equity; I'm definitely for non-discrimination; and I definitely believe diversity is useful and beneficial although I do not believe it more important than skill and knowledge –– that is, I disagree with "extra points", but do accept diversity as a tie breaker; and I definitely disagree performance bonuses and such given to only minority group members, as paulca described.
I would respectfully suggest that perhaps nudging it back towards the impacts on engineering, the workforce/jobs, and related may help to keep it productive and in-range for the site.
About "Idiocracy" it was on TV a while back and I recorded it due to someone stating it was a good comedy. Was not able to watch it to the end Talking about bad acting and nonsense it scored very high. The premise somewhat ok though. The future might steer that way.
Now, in spite of STEM programs and DEI, the kids seem to be much less enthusiastic about the tech fields. I sometimes help out at the local High School STEM center and the student participation is quite low. Why is this? So much has changed in the last 50 years that it's hard to identify the main factors. I do find it a bit troubling that in my experience, STEM focuses more on project management than on the underlying tech. If it were up to me, I would say to hell with the project, just learn enough to build stuff and see what happens.
Now, in spite of STEM programs and DEI, the kids seem to be much less enthusiastic about the tech fields. I sometimes help out at the local High School STEM center and the student participation is quite low. Why is this? So much has changed in the last 50 years that it's hard to identify the main factors. I do find it a bit troubling that in my experience, STEM focuses more on project management than on the underlying tech. If it were up to me, I would say to hell with the project, just learn enough to build stuff and see what happens.
This is a good point to bring up. The number of applicants and graduates from both genders is falling. The software industry in particular is no longer requiring IT degrees. We exhausted that pool over a decade ago.
Part of this might be due to something I have felt myself as a "hobbyist" programmer. ie. the core personal interest from which I draw my strength and passion for engineering. He's bored.
Why? Because the speed of software development and advancement is so vast now that almost any small personal project will appear completely contrived and boring, because every kid in the class can download an app that does just that 100 times better. Even if they select something that hasn't been done, it will be so complex and by the time a small team of student's writes it, it's old hat and you can get it FREE as an online service with a mobile app.
For non-important topics, I try not to take a hardline approach.
- As above in thread, I'm 100% fine with stopping calling things "master" and "slave". I never owned a slave; no one I know was ever a slave, but it doesn't offend my engineering sensibilities to call them "leader" and "follower" or "primary" and "replica" or whatever.
- Likewise, it doesn't bother me to put pronouns on my Zoom name. Yes, it's blindingly obvious to anyone who has seen me or heard me speak.
If there is one thing I would suggest when promoting STEM in schools, it is to give the message that STEM is not computers. Just look around you and think of everything you encounter, use, touch or consume, from buildings, furniture, water, transport, infrastructure, fuel, vehicles, paints, plastics, food, anything man-made you can imagine. How did that stuff get designed and made? STEM. All of it, STEM. Wouldn't it be fun to be involved in that?
If there is one thing I would suggest when promoting STEM in schools, it is to give the message that STEM is not computers. Just look around you and think of everything you encounter, use, touch or consume, from buildings, furniture, water, transport, infrastructure, fuel, vehicles, paints, plastics, food, anything man-made you can imagine. How did that stuff get designed and made? STEM. All of it, STEM. Wouldn't it be fun to be involved in that?
But you try and do any of those things today, commercially and effectively, without software. That applies to many areas/sectors, but is it not very prevalent in STEM?
What does stop calling things "master" and "slave" achieve? How does it help anyone? You do realise those who support this are typically white academics? I could post videos of black people complaining about this sort thing because they think it's patronising. It's also not free: time = money.
How do you feel stating your pronouns helps anyone? I see it as a form of compelled speech.
Those who give into it are unwillingly saying they don't have a problem with gender ideology which responsible for killing women's sports and mutilating children. The person who dreamed all of this up, John Money, was a sicko. He did an experiment on Davie Reimer a boy who had been mutilated due to a botched circumcision when he was a baby. Money decided it would be a good idea to perform gender reassignment on him and persuade his parents to raise him as a girl. It went very badly, with Reimer committing suicide when he found out when he was a teenager and his twin brother killed himself soon after.
What does stop calling things "master" and "slave" achieve? How does it help anyone? You do realise those who support this are typically white academics? I could post videos of black people complaining about this sort thing because they think it's patronising. It's also not free: time = money.Of course you can find such videos. Not everyone (of any race) agrees that this is a major sticking point along the path towards equality of opportunity. We're not proposing abandoning the functional concept of devices who are in control and devices who follow. We're proposing abandoning the use of language that some people claim offense to. Just as giving in could be seen as giving power to those who agitate for the change, adamantly resisting could be seen as giving them even more power. It's a molehill. Don't get goaded into letting someone else make it into a mountain.How do you feel stating your pronouns helps anyone? I see it as a form of compelled speech.Stating my pronouns is approximately as helpful (and likewise approximately as harmful) as confirming that my username has three o characters in it.Those who give into it are unwillingly saying they don't have a problem with gender ideology which responsible for killing women's sports and mutilating children. The person who dreamed all of this up, John Money, was a sicko. He did an experiment on Davie Reimer a boy who had been mutilated due to a botched circumcision when he was a baby. Money decided it would be a good idea to perform gender reassignment on him and persuade his parents to raise him as a girl. It went very badly, with Reimer committing suicide when he found out when he was a teenager and his twin brother killed himself soon after.See, now you're compelling me to state clearly and for the record that I do have a problem with that chain of events and do not support it, even though I'm willing to voluntarily confirm that I'm a man and that I have three o's in my username.
I accept language changes as a natural process of evolution, but that's not what's happening here. It's forced to keep a tiny minority happy and it's mostly the privileged few sitting in their ivory towers, who are demanding it, rather than those who it's supposed to benefit.
There was a recent ad from "family planning" over here which stated that "Men too can get pregnant", with two stylized characters, one allegedly pregnant, the two being seemingly "women" with beards.
Oh, and they took it very seriously that it became polemic, too. Yeah.
I accept language changes as a natural process of evolution, but that's not what's happening here. It's forced to keep a tiny minority happy and it's mostly the privileged few sitting in their ivory towers, who are demanding it, rather than those who it's supposed to benefit.
My experience is it's not the minority in question actually doing the complaining. It's the cloud of virtue signalling students/hang wringers/do-gooders/exploitational media/exploitation companies who think it's the latest "Up YOU!" to "the man" to support and broadcast, it's popular, it gets views, it creates interactions, positive and negative interactions sell adverts.
In universities, in fringe groups, fine. But it's leaked out somehow (social media) and needs to be re-contained. These young minds in University are opened in many ways and often run amock with fantastical ideologies or re-inventing old ideologies. This should not be discouraged. But it should be contained. Social media has allowed these radical views of a small subset of students to become a mainstream global public debate. If it was my day we would all be forcing people to be socialists and demand policies to legalise all the drugs, if the student union got it's political say. No, real violence came from it in my day, because it was CONTAINED in university to be discussed with other "opening" intelligent people, in class, in the pub, in the common room, discussion was open. Heated, but open. The world, the world's media and social media should not be exposed to that raw emerging intellect. Somehow that got missed. So now rampant, fringe, student ideologies are being spread and enforced as a kind of "ploughing of all established comprehension of humanity", turning it over.
Easiest option isn't available really, or maybe it's coming and that is to wipe that smug little smile off their face and give them something a LITTLE more important to think about such as a world war. But that might mess up the rest of us a bit too. Something to make them realise they take for granted so much in the world and to stump on it ALL and criticise it, en-mass, without any academic credit or rigour or understanding of what it even means.... to reject all established understanding of gender, sex, etc.
Replace Gender and Sex with "Flat Earth and Science deniers".... except these people have got POWER and that is the FRIGHTENING thing.
In my day it was resistance to "the machine", "the system", refusal to be labelled, stamped, filed, categorised, classified or numbered! The fear that credit card companies would start tracking us. That forces unseen would start to try and control our birth rate and control fertility. Lots of heavy metal and lots of SciFi from the 70s, 80s, 90s touches on this. How that (or those points) aged.
The absurdity is that a lot of the transphobic comments are coming from trans people, who themselves are being counter invalidated by more modern ideologies. I think we stand back and wait on it eating itself and hope it happens before we lose an entire generation of inspiring young adults to life long regret caused by a fad. I know a lot of kids who got tatoo'd young, who have them surgically removed in their 20s. What ARE we doing?
I have ended up watching far too much "actual" right wing content in my research these past few days, and a lot of far left content too. I'm please to come back reporting that while I agree and can follow their points, there is smoke where there is fire, I can still smell bullshit off bullshit. Sky New Australia in particular, present stories more "default left" media wouldn't, but they also post a load of utter garbage in the same light. Unfortunately, nobody is going to take people seriously, when their line up is "Child gender mutilation, anti-science BS, anti-medicine BS, anti-vaxx BS. However, I found BBC Newsnight and other documentaries, so I'm comfortable it is surfacing and might get heard by the remaining sane.
There was a recent ad from "family planning" over here which stated that "Men too can get pregnant", with two stylized characters, one allegedly pregnant, the two being seemingly "women" with beards.
Oh, and they took it very seriously that it became polemic, too. Yeah.It's true. Some women have penises, some men have vaginas, according to someone who gets paid more than me.
The idea is gender is a social construct, not related to DNA or sexual organs, so a female can transition to a man, then get pregnant.
There was a scandal in the NHS awhile ago which involved training midwives to care for males, including catheterisation. There were a few videos and articles which went viral.
I think you are perhaps doing what many commentators seem to do today, in equating STEM with "Tech" (ugh, horrible term), in other words computers and software
The class was building submersible ROVs, using mostly off-the-shelf Arduino-compatible stuff for the motor controllers and grappling gear.
The emphasis on project management, including assigned management roles, seems out of place at this early stage.
In universities, in fringe groups, fine. But it's leaked out somehow (social media) and needs to be re-contained. These young minds in University are opened in many ways and often run amock with fantastical ideologies or re-inventing old ideologies. This should not be discouraged. But it should be contained. Social media has allowed these radical views of a small subset of students to become a mainstream global public debate.
And big tech also got a huge issue with extreme leftism.
And big tech also got a huge issue with extreme leftism.
If you equate donations to the Democrats with "extreme leftism", then there is either something wrong with U.S. politics or with your understanding thereof.
By the way -- how can that chart list "employee donations" by company?! Do individuals who donate to a party have to declare which company they work for?!