Comment by zer8k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zer8k | Hacker News Reader

It's difficult to talk about the problem of these diversity efforts without sounding like a bigot. But I'll give it a shot.

In the last 3-4 years the amount of, what I will term, "bullshit diversity" has spiked dramatically. The internal politics involved (at least where I have worked) do nothing but create division among the employees. No one will voice it but the term "diversity hire" gets thrown around in one of several reworded forms regularly. I have been at two companies with Chief Diversity Officers whom I lovingly refer to as "Chief of Racism". It's not uncommon for these people to go into company meetings throwing around all sorts of language implying preference of one race over the other. They never say it outright, but imply it with "poorly performing diversity metrics" and "efforts to reach out to marginalized communities". It's nonsense in the strictest sense. Perhaps it's some savior complex.

I think these diversity efforts are doing the exact opposite of what they intend to do. I, and likely many others, view these bullshit positions as manifestations of identity politics. Due to the riots in 2020 companies are focused on driving home this non-sense language about inclusion wherever they can. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like other diversity initiatives, and personally I'm glad to see this position being rendered moot.

I have no idea how to say "diversity of thought doesn't exclude diversity of traits". I've tried before and have been labeled everything from right-wing extremist to white supremacist. The zeitgeist effectively prevents actual discussion on what diversity means. I am puzzled how simply selecting on race/sexuality/whatever somehow brings better engineering/sales/leadership to a company.

All I know is I never hear this charlatans talk about how this improves the quality of the product. The metric they appear to be chasing is putting brown people in company photos (for the optics) and this seems like the opposite of the alleged intention. I've worked with engineers from all background, races, and other traits. A common thread seems to be everyone is tired of this. It would be nice if this noise was relegated to Tumblr and Twitter where it belongs.

I agree with you that misuse of DEI aims has become rampant, and I've seen it become counterproductive in ways that make my head spin.

However, I've also seen cases of outright bigotry — sexism, racism, agism — where having a DEI office was a godsend and immediately nipped a different variety of bullshit in the bud.

Ideally I'd like to see these DEI efforts settle on some reasonable application of goals and practices that reflect values that most people can agree on. I worry that having it bundled into HR will actually make it worse, as it will just become part of the unaccountable faceless bureaucracy that HR has evolved into, at least typically in the US.

But such is my experience of modern life in the US — well-intended ideas become abused and performative, and then are either ingrained in Kafkaesque bureaucracy, or thrown out like the baby in the bathwater, and we go from one extreme to another.

> I think these diversity efforts are doing the exact opposite of what they intend to do.

They intend to neuter any opposition by ensuring every organization is riddled with politically-approved agents.

Prove you don't discriminate by having a chief diversity officer, then that officer makes sure only the like-minded can get/keep jobs. It is after all their job description - the not like-minded contribute to a "hostile atmosphere".

I think hiring more women has powerfully positive effects throughout an org. I agree hiring "races" is counter-productive. It creates more racism and division than it intends to solve. The idea that I am uniquely Black or you are uniquely Asian doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It's a broad spectrum we insist on reifying. How Black should I be to claim the Black experience?

Leaning on the common struggle as the wage class is what unites. The unique focus on how oppressed each of us are turns us all into victims. It's not really something I've seen in my lifetime before the last ten years and I think it's garbage in, garbage out.

>I think hiring more women has powerfully positive effects throughout an org. I agree hiring "races" is counter-productive. It creates more racism and division than it intends to solve. The idea that I am uniquely Black or you are uniquely Asian doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It's a broad spectrum we insist on reifying. How Black should I be to claim the Black experience?

All the points you raised against hiring based on race can also be used to be against based on gender. Why do you think one is "powerfully positive" and the other is "counter-productive"?

Well, for one, they're 51% of the world's population. We also have studies that demonstrate positive influence in more gender-equal workplaces. "The lowest overall occurrence of psychological distress as well as same occurrence for women and men was found on the most gender equal workplaces." [1]

The distinction of sex occurs everywhere throughout nature. At a broad level, it's consistent.

The amount of melanin in your skin is not. There is a spectrum of mind-blowing diversity in facial features among Black, Hispanic, Asian, White, whatever. In this category, what divides us spans a multitude. It's a cudgel we heft to beat our fellow human being with.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541387/

>Well, for one, they're 51% of the world's population.

Asia makes up 59.4% of the world population, and Africa makes up 17.6%. Europe and North America by comparison only makes up 9.4% and 7.5% respectively.

>We also have studies that demonstrate positive influence in more gender-equal workplaces.

There are studies that do the same for ethnicity. With a cursory search I found:

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...

"In the case of ethnic and cultural diversity, our business-case findings are equally compelling: in 2019, top-quartile companies outperformed those in the fourth one by 36 percent in profitability, slightly up from 33 percent in 2017 and 35 percent in 2014. As we have previously found, the likelihood of outperformance continues to be higher for diversity in ethnicity than for gender."

>The distinction of sex occurs everywhere throughout nature. At a broad level, it's consistent.

>The amount of melanin in your skin is not.

But no ethnic/racial diversity proponent would claim that the benefits comes from the difference in amounts of melanin in someone's skin, just like no pro gender diversity proponent would claim the benefits come from the shape of someone's genitals. The equivalent would be something like "distinction of cultures/language" occurs everywhere throughout nature, which as so far as we know is true. Whales of the same species have different calls depending on where they're from, for instance.

It seems like you were more interested in setting me up for a trap than steel-manning me.

My primary objection is to the reification of race, which drives us to compete for ideas of purity that don't really exist. And that is happening, especially in American workplaces. It's contributing to more outrage, not less. I don't think that's healthy for anyone.

I believe that current approach to diversity is too focused on race\gender\orientation issues. I suspect that this rather brings more imbalance. To make things truly shine the scope must be widened. The first criterions which come to mind are general intelligence and skills. I strongly believe that the current sad state of Google search which everybody complains about can be easily attributed to their policy of hiring smart and skillful employees.

I think I see what you mean, but "hire stupid and incompetent people" seems like a hard sell.

And I don't think it'll pay off.

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