[microtherion]

It's possible to read the post you're responding to a lot more charitably than that, and I think it would be more along what HN aspires to be to do so.

I understood his point to be that due to the heightened scrutiny given to all questions of discrimination nowadays, any sort of "holistic" evaluation was abandoned in favor of supposedly objective "Spreadsheet Mentality" evaluations.

This certainly has advantages, not only against conscious discrimination, but also unconscious biases (the infamous "team fit" ending up in homogeneous team composition). But it has large disadvantages as well, in that all employee contributions which do NOT easily fit into the few "objective" metrics are disregarded, which can lead to employees' value to an organization being substantially distorted. I find the rating scales I've seen a highly imperfect fit to the entire contribution an employee can bring.

And the underlying assumption that such rating scales are objective and not subject to manipulation or biases is highly questionable. Ultimately, it all comes down to a manager's judgement, and a bias does not disappear if you dress it up with a numerical weight.

[RHSeeger]

> I understood his point to be that due to the heightened scrutiny given to all questions of discrimination nowadays, any sort of "holistic" evaluation was abandoned in favor of supposedly objective "Spreadsheet Mentality" evaluations.

This is exactly how I read it. Effectively, if you fire someone because you don't think they're doing a good job, you might be accused of racism/sexism/ageism/etc; even if your analysis is completely correct (and, presumably, there was no -ism involved). If you have a spreadsheet (effectively, a paper trail) of their work accomplishments, you're much safer.

[someguydave]

precisely, which ends up (in a large legally threatened corporation ) causing hiring and HR to be a racist quota system in a spreadsheet mentality with all kinds of unspoken and unrecorded workarounds in reality

[burnished]

I think their rephrase was the charitable version. Now at least if that person did not realize how they were coming across they do now.

[someguydave]

I understood both readings of my post and left it vague.

For instance: consider the plight of an all-white all-Muslim company who would face a possible lawsuit for not hiring a black guy who says he loves to eat well barbequed Southern-style pork in the office for lunch daily. Is hiring discrimination in this case racial, religious, dietary or “team fit”?

To me, any answer other than “it is none of your damn business why we hire anyone” is against the First Amendment’s assembly clause.

[burnished]

Oh, so you're intentionally mixing up traits that are intrinsic with actions or beliefs that people choose. It looks like you're trying to construct a 'gotcha!' and I dislike it.

[someguydave]

I dislike it too, which is why I am against the law as currently drafted.