They are doing a good job. Why create a good product? That's difficult and failure is possible. Much more fun to work on the diversity stats, because quota hiring is an easy win at review time. Who cares if strategic hiring is bad? Big companies have enough process inertia that no one will know if the new hires are working out for years.
The HR department at my previous employment sent out a similar survey last year, with the intention to identify, and remove troublesome individuals during a period of downsizing.
Needless to say it was quite effective.
"Here is a metric about diversity, and everyone keeps talking about how great it is, and look -- we're so much better about it! Promotion plz."
They then included in their quarterly survey questions how connected people feel with that strategy. When the unrelated units scored quite poorly on this subject, they decided the reason was that the line managers had failed to educate their reports on the importance of this strategy enough, so started marking them all on how connected their reports felt and giving out educational material so people could understand the strategy, missing that people understood the strategy well enough, it just there was no meaningful connection to their business unit to understand.
In 2021 they had a slide on the town hall for 'Whiteness down 13%' and the black host said 'we can do better'...
Might as well pack up, clearly unwanted here.
20+ years in the same company, never heard this phrase spoken by HR until the DEI craze.
Now 'we can do better' is Newspeak for more surveys, townhalls, implicit bias training, more 'education' that cuts out working time in the limited hours.
Bureaucracy is a Pyrrhic victory.
Disclaimer: No disrespect or offense to Molossian descendants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molossians meant in usage of the term Pyrrhic
Reminds me of the controversy at Pinterest a year or two ago when an Asian engineering manager asked how we could reduce the % of Asians in the engineering org (which was 68%).
I remember this. Even on Blind today he's referred to as "Mr. 68".
It was an interesting exchange because it revealed to many of the company's Asian engineers that they were overrepresented (which could be visually confirmed at any meeting) and that their overrepresentation was something being thought about behind the scenes by the DEI folks at the company.
The axiom "when the future arrives it's not the future we want" or "when change happens it's not the change we asked for" seems to hold true here. I think most Asians supported these diversity initiatives at first, but now they're getting "Harvard-ed" or "Ive Leagued" and are losing out due to their ? over-performance ? in the tech space.
There was also discussion of over-representation relative to the population around them. In the case of Pinterest they are in the SF Bay Area, which has a lot of Asians but is not made up of 68% Asians leading to the status as over-represented at PINS.
Remember when we just called them racists?
Most people who support "diversity" unsurprisingly withhold support when the numbers are against their particular demographic.
For out-groups looking at the movement, the movement makes you think it's one large movement consisting of women, oppressed, and other minorities - i.e. everyone not including heterosexual white males.
From the inside of that large movement it looks a lot different.
Homosexual males will resent being sidelined in favour of a white heterosexual women while homosexual females will label being passed over in favour of a homosexual man as "sexism".
Almost all heterosexual, and many homosexual, women don't want to share the public bathrooms with any males, even if those males identify as women.
A heterosexual male supports the movement, until he finds out he just slept with a woman who is male.
All the women (homo and hetero) support the movement, until it becomes clear that they need not bother attempting to win any prizes or break any records in sports anymore, because those are all held by women who were boys throughout puberty (and got irreversible physical advantages due to male puberty).
It is quite a fractured movement, and any time dissent is raised it is attributed to the out-group - like the fracas over transgender people in public bathrooms.
"Prevent males going into females bathrooms" is something almost every women agrees with, but the opposition was "those old white men over there!".
"Let female athletes compete amongst themselves because they have less physical strength than men" is an argument from females. Men aren't throwing their toys over women competing with them on the field; women are, and men support them.
In short, you see this large movement as one large movement, but all the participants clearly have goals that are contradictory to other participants' goals.
The largest subgroup within that movement is also the one that is most likely to have members who distance themselves from the movement - as far as who gets best treated by society, it's white heterosexual women, so they have the most to lose if the movement succeeds for any of the other subgroups.
Bill Burr has a great bit about this: https://youtube.com/shorts/AdO9X7Lxzvs?feature=share
Mine had a comment box for each question and for this one I just stated that it's wildly inappropriate to be your home self at work. You should be your work self at work.
If I were a Muslim with one legally recognized wife and two common law wives, could I bring all three of them to a corporate event and introduce them as my wives? Surely such an employee is also entitled to five prayer breaks, with facilities adequate to support the correct movements (this type of fact pattern has lead to much recent litigation and multiple 8-9 figure settlements).
If I were a practitioner of some version reconstructed Roman paganism, would I be permitted to perform the sacrificial augury ritual during a quarterly budget meeting? If not, why not?
Should Scientologists be permitted to administer e-meters to co-workers on company property during mealtimes and other breaks?
Should a Jewish employee be permitted to wear a Star of David flag pin to work if it causes offense to Palestinian employees working at the same facility? If not, why not?
Should a Black Hebrew Israelite be permitted to discuss popular documentary films produced by their co-religionists on religious topics with co-workers on company property, given that such beliefs are intrinsic to their religious identities, or should they be terminated for even mentioning content from such films because it can cause offense to others?
In practice our corporations require a sort of rainbow-neutered-prozac-addicted-egalitarian-Protestant-tinged secularism, but the expansive rhetoric invites a lot of limit-pushing behavior. It cannot possibly be stable, but I think all those fascinating contradictions help to explain why so many corporate employees eat so many pills every single day.
Yes it would probably be permitted, but I think most people would know you are trolling, and I also doubt this hypothetical trans employee would really care much
> If I were a Muslim with one legally recognized wife and two common law wives, could I bring all three of them to a corporate event and introduce them as my wives? Surely such an employee is also entitled to five prayer breaks, with facilities adequate to support the correct movements (this type of fact pattern has lead to much recent litigation and multiple 8-9 figure settlements).
Many corporate campuses have facilities available for use as prayer rooms, this isn’t that unusual. As for “this fact pattern has led to “multiple 8-9 figure settlements,” going to need a citation on that one
> If I were a practitioner of some version reconstructed Roman paganism, would I be permitted to perform the sacrificial augury ritual during a quarterly budget meeting? If not, why not?
This is trolling, not going to bother to respond to this one
> Should Scientologists be permitted to administer e-meters to co-workers on company property during mealtimes and other breaks?
Non-solicitation policies prohibit this sort of thing, which is one reason why most employers have them
> Should a Jewish employee be permitted to wear a Star of David flag pin to work if it causes offense to Palestinian employees working at the same facility? If not, why not?
Permitted? Probably yes, if it follows the corporate dress code, but expressing opinions on controversial political topics at work often has informal implications for one career
> Should a Black Hebrew Israelite be permitted to discuss popular documentary films produced by their co-religionists on religious topics with co-workers on company property, given that such beliefs are intrinsic to their religious identities, or should they be terminated for even mentioning content from such films because it can cause offense to others?
Non-solicitation would prohibit this (also again trolling)
If only there was a term for this
I’ve known many devout Catholics, not one of them ever constructed a devotional shrine at their place of work; it’s not really a part of modern Catholic religious practice, even among more traditional Catholics.
> A Jew mildly expressing their faith should be punished in their career, and "expressing opinions on controversial political topics at work" is career limiting.. but a trans flag is fine, because even though that's a controversial political topic, it's the correct opinion, right?
If you think people who display the trans flag at work don’t experience career limiting consequences informally, even at allegedly inclusive companies, you are very naive. I mean, how many openly LGBTQ tech industry leaders can you name who were out before being at the pinnacle of the industry?
> One might even say that political opinions that are "correct" are fine, like the trans flag, but ones that aren't are obviously trolling.. like wearing a star of David?
OP did not say “Star of David,” they said a “Star of David flag,” ie the flag of the State of Israel, a nation-state. They are not the same thing. People wear religious symbols like the Christian cross, the Star of David, etc all the time at work and it’s not really an issue.
I really don't think praying and having some religious items on your desk is trolling...
For one thing it ignores religion and class.
But it also ignores a good few decades of research into personality disorders, which suggests that the people you absolutely do not want to hire are the Cluster B types.
A "diverse" workplace run by narcissists and sociopaths is going to be toxic and anti-productive no matter what the gender/race balance is.
Don't worry, the borderlines will drive them away. :P
If the program merely existed, that would be one thing. But if the company is spending millions and talking about their dedication to increasing URM representation, that makes it clear that dissent is not welcome.
To go full Godwin, firing people for expressing outright fascist viewpoints is also anti-diversity: it's excluding fascists.
Basically, there's no way to have true diversity and inclusion for all viewpoints, because so many viewpoints are mutually incompatible. There's simply no way to reconcile the viewpoints of two people, one of whom is LGBT (or at least pro-LGBT rights) and one of whom thinks such people should be marched into death camps. This really goes for any kind of viewpoints; you can only accept so much diversity of opinion before you get into an irreconcilable conflict.
In normal polite society, we avoid this problem by simply forbidding discussion of certain topics in certain places. But that means people cannot feel safe expressing themselves fully in those places; there's simply no way to allow that as long as diversity is allowed.
who cares about their viewpoints? it's not even a slippery slope because it's just so absurd that people should be polite and respectful of genocidal ethno-nationalists. /shrug
You'll very quickly be sent for "re-education" if not downright fired.
That might be the worst goal for any workplace. There are clearly parts of ourselves that have no place at work.