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Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

How well would the tech industry do if they fired all the autistic people for "not being team players"? How many dev teams are there without at least one furry, trans person, or socially awkward geek?

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You are imagining that the opposite of DEI is discrimination, whereas most see the opposite of DEI as merit.

The irony is that DEI promotes merit by forcing companies to justify hiring beyond basic “cultural fit” vibes.

I’ve been in the business and seen a ton of hires on vibes. DEI actually asked people to expand the talent search, not hire anyone unqualified (which is what the anti-DEI folks are desperate to have us believe it did).

I predict some major EEO lawsuits will eventually bring the pendulum back in the other direction because my sense is that the return to vibes hiring (and RIF-ing) is resulting in very actionable discrimination cases.

  > my sense is that the return to vibes hiring (and RIF-ing) is resulting in very actionable discrimination cases.

Your sense? Based on what?

The enthusiasm for disparaging DEI combined with a lack of articulation of how they plan to quantify 'qualifications' in a non-biased manner. My sense is that they don't plan to do this at all, they don't have a plan, and they are going to blunder into patterns of discriminatory practices that DEI frameworks were protecting them against.

Who is “they?” All employers?

With respect, it seems like the hiring managers you were complaining about above weren’t the only ones operating mostly on vibes.

If DEI operated on merit, there would be no need for the special new concept of DEI.

Ive seen many cases where HR stalls hiring until the most qualified candidates move on, prefilter insufficiency "diverse" candidates from the pool presented to teams, or implement internal quotas to meet external funding or contract requirements.

Not to mention the actual external requirements for "diversity" from public tender process, government backed funding bodies, and politically protected mega wealthy.

> If DEI operated on merit, there would be no need for the special new concept of DEI.

Yes, there would, because un-diverse candidates (not white, young males from a handful of schools) would never get their foot in the door. Companies only interview a small fraction of their candidates.

If hiring practices were purely operating on merit and free from discrimination, we wouldn't have studies repeatedly showing that people with the 'wrong' names, and otherwise identical resumes, weren't called back as frequently.

> Ive seen many cases where HR stalls hiring until the most qualified candidates move on

HR departments have screwed around with delays in the interview process long before anyone ever imagined the concept of expanding the candidate pool, doing blind resume screening, and standardizing the interview process. I don't think having fairer hiring processes created this problem.

> How many dev teams are there without at least one furry, trans person

Very weird to include social awkward geek in there. But my guess would be like 99% of dev teams do not have a trans or furry.

I'd say more like 90%

If you're not a team player I'd expect you to be on the chopping block regardless of underlying race, mental, culture, ...

It’s not like we have a term like “individual contributor” or anything in the industry.

I’ve worked with several excellent “just leave me alone” sysadmin types.

I'm not saying there can't be very clear counter examples, I guess the overall sense though is that "being a team player' is generally considered an attractive quality in any employee. If A is a team player and B isn't, and they're otherwise equivalent, you're probably going to take/keep A.

It's not like (most) hiring managers put "not a team player" in the pro column.

> It’s not like we have a term like “individual contributor” or anything in the industry.

Perhaps I'm missing something here.

To me "individual contributor" means anyone who is NOT: A (technical) "Lead", "Chief", "Architect", or (possibly) "Staff" anything, and has no management or team-leader responsibilities.

Yeah, it doesn't mean a 1-person-team, it means your job doesn't include supervising someone else.

Alas, I’ve learned that while everyone wants to hire them to fix their hideously fucked systems, they really don’t enjoy being told that their systems are, in fact, hideously fucked. They’d much prefer you quietly put out fires while biting your tongue about how they aren’t actually fixing any root causes.

The problem is that people are being cut for not being perceived as a team player, because they don't exactly fit the narrow perspective avoided by the dominant social culture. That doesn't mean they aren't team players.

For example: someone not always looking into your eyes while talking can be perceived as "rude". Same for wearing noise-canceling headphones in a talk-heavy environment. Oh, you don't drink alcohol during the "optional" Friday-afternoon company mixer? That's just weird. Want to have a day off for Eid rather than Christmas? Wellll, you did ask for it six months in advance and we did approve it already, buuuuut Dave planned a last-minute meeting which conflicts with the mandatory team meeting, so we moved the mandatory team meeting onto your day off... We'll just pay the hours you spent doing first-line support during Christmas in cash, okay?

Socially awkward geek isn't dei

Including them is.

Not if they are straight and white, which is a disproportionate amount of socially awkward geeks

Exactly, and only if they're politically aligned and don't question the narrative.

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