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by notzuck 2428 days ago
I can see value in diversity, I championed diversity from my senior position at Deloitte. It is illegal to reject someone over something they can't control like gender especially when there is no legally valid reason for doing so. I would be annoyed if my daughter couldn't attend her University of choice because she is female just as much as I would if that happened to my Son.

Our laws, morals and ethics have said, for a long time, that we should not discriminate based on gender, race or a multitude of other factors UNLESS there is a clearly defined and accepted reason for doing so for a specific role e.g. a female care worker to look after female patients. Lofty research around diversity of thought amongst gender balanced teams is not a legal reason for gender discrimination.

If you're telling me that I cannot get a job purely because of my gender, you need a very very good reason why and a vague notion that any given team having more women will make everything better is nowhere near a good reason.

I say this as an author of many papers showing the benefits of diverse teams. Papers that have been published in the trade press, academic journals and Deloitte 'thought leadership' publications.

Your current understanding of diversity if very immature and harmful to the overall cause.

2 comments

You have an option you might not have thought of - go work where you are the diversity.

If you apply somewhere that you are the only man or only white person on the team, you will generally not be asked about your commitment to diversity and politically correct thought. The people who want to fight or show off about that sort of thing are elsewhere.

What a great idea, I'll find a software or consulting firm, that pays well, that has openings and is based in my city with flexible work options THAT IS NON-MAJORITY WHITE.

You're telling me to work for a company based mostly (or at least partly) on the other races of people that work there.

I swear to god HN is mostly white Americans that have never left their own country.

You misunderstood me, possibly due to not reading carefully.

I didn't say find a company that is non-majority white, as in 51% non-white over the whole company. I said find a position in a department that is nearly all female, or nearly all non-white. It is entirely possible to find an IT job for a competitive salary in such a place.

And it seems a little ironic to swipe at people who have never left their country if you can't even leave your city. It's true that I have the perspective of an American, who has in the past answered an ad for a job 100 miles away, and after I got it, loaded a U-Haul and put my car on a trailer, and gone there.

What country are you in other than the US that is so oppressed by the forces of political correctness and diversity anyway? Or do you experience American companies as bringing that sort of mentality in an imperialistic way?

So I have to move my kids to a new school and tell my wife her career needs to move to a different town? We've already made 2 big moves in our married life one of which was international. Our kids are stable at school now so not sure why I need to force the family to do another move?

So you're saying I should be able to find a team where I am not the majority (religion, gender, or race etc) and I should apply to work there? How would I go about identifying that company and the composition of their teams?

I've spent over 17 years building my career around consulting to the Oil and Gas industries around operational excellence and software systems implementation. What if I can't find the type of team you are telling me about in that industry? I'm currently working for a strategy consulting firm and I lead the Oil and Gas practice, I'm not sure that I could easily move to another career track and make the same money. Why can't I just continue to work in my current field for the type of companies I have always worked for?

Your advice comes down to this:

1. try and find a team where I am the minority and work there 2. Move to another city if I need to in order to find that job

I have no idea why I should follow any of that advice? I can't even imagine how I would sell this to my wife or kids. There's just no upside for me or my family here. This has to be strangest advice I have ever read. I'm not 24 anymore, I'm in my forties and carry a serious amount of responsibility at home, at work and in my industry. Should I also sell our house at a loss or maybe rent it out and hope the tenants will look after our 1/2 acre properly?

What city should I move my family too? We're doing well in Perth and that's the epicentre of my industry. I think Brisbane has some mining companies so I could try there but there are a lot less jobs and higher house prices. Sydney and Melbourne don't really have many jobs in my industry, I could always move to another practice and take a pay cut but the property is even more expensive in those two cities. Maybe you can call my wife and explain why we need to do this?

Maybe I should move my family back to the UK, my kids don't remember it because they were only 1 and 3 at the time. Maybe my 14 year old daughter can drop all of her friends and just go to the UK though; that would probably require an industry change too.

Are you just trolling me?

>Your current understanding of diversity if very immature and harmful to the overall cause.

Oh that's rich, coming from someone who appears to have a very low effort, white majority view of race and diversity.