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Comment by voldacar | Hacker News Reader

The loss of DEI programs is good, as it reduces the pressure for these companies to discriminate against white and asian men in hiring.

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Agree. As a parent to an Asian boy, I’m thankful that steps are being taken to ensure he isn’t discriminated against for school admissions and job applications.

That’s not how DEI programs operated at places I’ve worked. They were more about expanding candidate searches to look for high quality people at other places than we’d been looking, reducing alcohol at company events etc

This is a minor detail but reducing or removing alcohol all together (my company) from social events for inclusion reasons is excluding people who like consuming alcohol at social events. We somehow pivoted to embracing restrictions in order to accommodate small groups of people, instead of offering alternatives (e.g. vegan options). This will always irritate other groups of people and is not a sustainable way to improve inclusion.

Sure and one answer to that was simply to ensure soft beverage availability in addition to alcohol. Which was an initiative borne from a DEI program. We’re debating specifics of DEI-relevant initiatives. What I’m saying is these discussions only happen when there is space for DEI consideration

I am not nitpicking and in general am in support of offering more diverse options. However, in my experience I can't remember a single event where soft drinks where not offered in additional to alcohol: pre DEI or during the DEI era.

As a vegetarian, I really struggled finding good non-meat options though.

> reducing or removing alcohol all together (my company) from social events for inclusion reasons is excluding people who like consuming alcohol at social events

Reducing or removing alcohol at social events is not done for "inclusion reasons" but for straightforward legal liability reasons: a drunk employee often has poor impulse control and may do or say shitty things that they wouldn't if they were sober, and with some probability this results in lawsuits against the company. No drunk people at social events -> fewer lawsuits.

Off topic

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