Big Tech Layoffs Are Hitting Diversity and Inclusion Jobs Hard

The one that continually upsets me (as someone who grew up in a predominantly Hispanic community, is married to a Hispanic person, has Hispanic children, and speaks Spanish as a fluent second language and in the home) is the use of the term "LatinX" which has spread through the DEI community and now general HR. I, a white man, despite my involvement in Latin culture cannot push back against this offensive term, which is quite literally colonialistic with white people from other countries (mostly Americans) telling Latin PoC globally what the appropriate term is to self-identify with. I've attempted to do so, and it's gotten me in trouble, despite the truth and cultural basis of my arguments.

DEI would be questionable but not objectionable if it only pushed actual factual truth, but because it's mostly subjective ideological zealotry, it's incredibly objectionable, and actually racist, more racist than those who are in opposition to it, but seems to have been granted a monopoly on determining what is and isn't racist or unacceptable by the Western elites.

That sounds pretty bigoted, so make a complaint to HR. Putting on a 49ers jersey doesn't make me a true fan.

The problem with a lot of the DIE stuff that I've seen is that it is usually targeted at the ICs and first level managers, just like the ethics training, and the sexual harassment training.

Whereas that stuff is very rarely perpetrated by the rank and final, it's usually the execs that need the training. Why is DIE any different, after all if it was really important to the execs there would be easy ways to make it happen, shoving everyone in trainings seems like performative work.

The layoffs happening across all tech companies (including the ones recording record profits and that have extremely large cash reserves) also strikes me as another way of depressing tech salaries.

Maybe this perspective doesn't hold much weight, because why then get rid of D&I?

Maybe because keeping the lights on is more important, or D&I has already done as much as it could do, if that was the ambition.

The top post is someone who's upset because they believe an employee has intentionally moved all the books about feminism and race in the office library to the top shelf where they are out of sight. They also suspect the same person has likely moved a Piers Morgan book down to eye level.

After some angry words they finish their post by explaining they were only able to make this observation because they are an individual of above-average height, and apologise for this fact before ending their post with kisses.

Is it both legal and ethical to prioritise specific groups when hiring, with the aim to improve diversity?

Is it therefore both legal and ethical to use the same metrics when conducting layoffs?

Though this is not my field, it somehow seems more unfair in the latter case?

I apologize if I come off as ignorant...Im not sure how these things work in law. However, I can't think of any way that taking someone's personal attributes that they cannot help into consideration when laying others off would result in anything but resentment towards the company.

To be honest, the context doesn't really help much.

A job that's immune to layoffs, sign me up! /s

Seriously however, it seems to me that DEI positions are mainly about virtue signaling. The positions certainly don't have anything to do with a companies core competencies or products (you know, their actual business). So it's pure overhead. Wasn't this stuff traditionally handled by HR? As other's have pointed out, there are already laws on the books that must be followed, and plenty of precedent showing large $$$ payouts when the rules aren't being followed.

If/when jobs like this become mandatory, then a new bureaucracy will emerge and spread like a cancer, the overhead hanging like a millstone around a companies ability to stay competitive. You're seeing this happen on universities, where the staff/student ratio continues to grow, raising tuition and reducing the value of the education. I worry about the future competitive value American companies will bring to the global economy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

Not saying its true, not saying its not.

> Inclusion programs often trigger an “us versus them” mindset.

> Although diversity and inclusion training is prevalent in corporate America, its impact is inconsistent. According to the evidence, sometimes the programs even have the opposite effect of what they intend.

> One 2016 study of 830 mandatory diversity training programs found that they often triggered a strong backlash against the ideas they promoted. “Trainers tell us that people often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance,” wrote sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in the Harvard Business Review, “and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward.”

Correlation does not imply causality, as you know. Possibly the more successful companies face more social pressure to improve their DEI numbers, whereas no social justice advocates push on the ones who are struggling. Sampling matters.

McKinsey is merely picking some data that supports their case. If you actually want to show something, do a longitudinal study: first of all, pick cohorts that match up in most other respects, then compare their relative performance within the cohort after increasing their DEI numbers. Or not doing so.

Not off to a great start, so a few questions:

1. What's the timeline look like for most companies? Were they successful before, after, or all during diversity efforts? At some point it became the socially desired thing to do, so timing matters.

2. Which countries were surveyed? What are the current diversity/cultural influences there?

3. This seems specific to executive teams - is there any more data on regular staff?

4. The data seems a little old, is there newer data?

5. Were the diversity efforts intentional or organic? Meaning: did the company realize it needed more diversity or just by nature of hiring did the successful companies become diverse?

It's important to understand the nuance in studies like this, and the linked article doesn't seem to provide that.

In a situation like that, would mandating more female executives push the culture towards more worklife balance or preferentially promote women who care less than average about worklife balance? Absent hard data my money would be on the latter.

If it actually increased profitability then we wouldn't need these programs and social coercion, shaming, etc. Companies would be scrambling to hire the magic People of Diversity that bring in the profits.

For instance, maybe companies with a really relatable mission or an open mind at the executive level also tend to attract diverse candidates. Those former factors would explain both the success and the diversity.

If there were a study looking at companies with poor performance metrics who turned things around by pumping their diversity numbers, I'd be really interested in seeing that (since it'd show a nice casual link.)

Without that, it seems plausible that successful companies are the ones able to engage in DEI efforts, even if they don't improve performance, or that minority candidates prefer working at successful companies.

But it seems far more likely the reverse is true. In a world where corporations want to demonstrate they are diverse and inclusive, and systemic forces are limiting the number of minorities who make it up the career ladders into leadership positions, minority leadership becomes a scarce commodity. The more profitable and successful a company, the more attractive the company and the more money they have to offer the limited number of minority executives for compensation, increasing the likelihood said executives join their teams.

I agree, but this will never ever happen, which is one of the many reasons these programs are unethical money pits that only benefit people who make a career out of DEI.

If you're head of DEI at a fortune 500, you're likely getting at least $500k a year in total compensation; more at some companies. Given that reality, it's only human nature to convince yourself that doing that particular job in perpetuity is massively important.

Here's what will happen instead. If they start to hit their initial goals, they'll just move the goalposts. Mostly likely these will be in the form of slicing and dicing workers into ever smaller groups - you can always find a group within a group.

Let's say that the DEI group at $BIG_CORP gets it so that workers from group X are represented at the company in a way that matches the proportion of the overall population they comprise. The folks in DEI will just say, "Oh no, we've made great progress with group X, but we don't have enough people in group X from the LGBTQ community; more work must be done, more money must be spent!" So, they get the LBGTQ numbers up for group X. "Oh, No!", they say, "We don't have enough people from group X who are disabled; more work must be done, more money must be spent!".

The point is not, and never was, to accomplish a goal. It's to make it appear that progress toward a vaguely-state goal of diversity is continuously being made, while also making sure never to actually accomplish the goal; less the make-work jobs and juicy consulting contracts dry up.

And honestly, I can't blame these folks. If I had a half million dollar a year job, I'd also find a way to keep it as long as I possibly could.

> Listings for DEI roles were down 19% last year — a bigger decline than legal or general human resources jobs saw, according to findings from Textio, which helps companies create unbiased job ads. Only software engineering and data science jobs saw larger declines, at 24% and 27%, respectively.

I'm guessing these were listings Textio was paid to analyze, so there are multiple possible causes for the decline.

But does it disgust you when companies discriminate based on age/gender/sexual orientation/race/disability/religion/etc?

Should corporations be accountable to society in some way, or do we trust them to "do the right thing"?