I imagine it was upsetting because it showed the depth and breadth of the VP's ignorance. How many times have you wanted to leave a job because you just couldn't deal with the stupidity any longer? It's no fun to be a domain expert who's constantly surrounded by people who know nothing about your area of expertise.
I think it was really because of frustration that this VP was so willfully ignorant about the issue; the author talks about how they kept focusing on the hiring pipeline even after the data clearly showed that the problem is that diverse candidates are never even entering the pipeline.
Yes I think this is heading in the right direction. "Willfully ignorant" Let's assume this person (the SVP) is very bright if only based on the fact he is an SVP at Twitter. So you know from experience that if he puts his mind to it he is capable of solving complex problems. Here's a problem you care about deeply and your super bright problem solving SVP comes back with such a flawed approach to tackle it. It would be disheartening.
Yeah, I'd agree with the OP's reasoning about why the idea wasn't very good, but if that mistaken attempt to help is grounds for quitting, they're going to really struggle at a corporation that's less interested in identity politics.
As ksenzee alludes to in a parallel reply, it could be (to use an American cliche) the straw that broke the camel's back, coming on the heels of a whole host of stupid decisions. I've been there, where no single decision or behavior is enough to quit over, but enough of those add up and one starts looking for the door.
Sure, it's also possible that said VP arrogantly insisted his idea was a panacea and/or vetoed the OP's other ideas to help. We weren't in the meeting.
But I can only go by the arguments the poster who was in the meeting made, and he seemed insistent that Dorsey is sincere about diversity, and decided to focus on why the "tech visionary" VP's idea was notionally sensible but had practical limitations rather than lambast their general attitude. And it's not an idea that ranks particularly high on an ignorance scale, or particularly shocking that a "tech visionary" not expected to have any particular expertise in the area of diversity might gravitate towards a tech solution. Ironically, it sounds like precisely the sort of misguided suggestion a VP is likely to propose after reading articles about name-based studies of hiring biases and being shocked by their findings them rather than the sort of idea that gets proposed out of ignorance or dismissive attitudes towards diverse hiring policies. Certainly sounds like a better response than "go and talk to HR about it. After finishing your work, obviously" that he might find all too common a response elsewhere...
Normally when we're discussing quitting over straws that broke the camel's back it's allegations of subtle workplace bullying rather than not thinking an engineer's idea would work...
Agreed. It seems like this particular idea could have been abandoned, without aborting the entire endeavor (or quitting the company). The words "feasibility study" come to mind...
As an aside, I ran the names Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Morgan Freeman, Ben Carson, and Charlie Rangel against one the tools the author mentioned [1] and also got no correct answers.
George Washington GreaterEuropean, British
John Smith GreaterEuropean, British
Barack Obama GreaterAfrican, Africans
Mike Brown GreaterEuropean, British
Tamir Rice GreaterEuropean, Jewish
Eric Garner GreaterEuropean, British
John Crawford GreaterEuropean, British
Akai Gurley GreaterEuropean, British
Ezell Ford GreaterEuropean, British
Cynical Oogaboogoo Asian, IndianSubContinent
Ya, the idea sounds terrible if you just think about it for a split second:
Most Black Americans are descended from slaves. And their slave owners forced their family name on them. Slave owners were white. So these names will register as white names.
Completely destroys any accuracy concerning Black people.