Supporting pipeline programs (middle and high school education, summer programs, internship programs, bootcamps and other career-change programs, etc.) seems to be the obvious paths for companies to exert lasting positive influence on the industry and world.
Sure, there's some fringe backlash when some company supports a program that is targeted at underrepresented groups, but I think that's the way to create lasting change.
Unfortunately, it doesn't move the needle on D&I OKRs this quarter or next. Poaching from someone else is the fastest way to move a key result metric.
"Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."
It's not "fringe backlash". It's a recognition that success in the job market isn't determined by skill despite what's claimed but by quota. The companies partaking in these diversity and inclusion ventures however don't want to admit the full depths of their assessment regarding the "underrepresented" but still try to keep the PR benefits that come with it.
>>Unfortunately, it doesn't move the needle on hiring OKRs this quarter or next. Poaching from someone else is the fastest way to move a key result metric. "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."
Yes. Because any sensible business would take the least risk needed to produce highest payoff. Showing proof of success at a major competitor is a great indicator of that and that also works wonders for employees in the form of massive pay raises.
I'm 100% supportive of these programs, while being opposed to quota-based hiring models.
But railing against any of the bootcamps you named above would be career suicide.
These are fringe concerns?
Fuck me then I guess.
Just wondering though: Are we assuming that the youth are too stupid to notice what we're doing? Or are we assuming they already know the score well enough to bite their tongues when we deliberately foist more of their parents culture war into their faces?
Were you not exposed to hamfisted intervention programs growing up?
They say that you never notice the propaganda that works, and I think there are lots of programs that are just outright good that even a cynic can't cut down, but I remember lots of insulting messaging baked into "lets fix X" initiatives too.
“Girls who code” and similar programs don’t strike me as the 2020s version of the war on drugs, though.