[backzerman]

I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to change the demographics of the company. I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota.

The DEI sessions I've sat through have focused heavily on the I--inclusion. Sure, they were corny, and there was plenty of virtue-signalling. But making a conscious effort to make sure everyone at the company feels socially welcome and fairly treated is a worthwhile effort.

[slackfan]

>actively hiring under-qualified

Oh it's absolutely been done. I have very strict color and gender-blind hiring standards, because I want to hire the actual best people for the job. My filtering of candidates has absolutely been overruled by (white) upper management, because they needed to make the department I was in more $diverse, for whatever that means.

The punchline is that I'm not white.

I've since moved on from that firm, but I've run into this elsewhere. Really leaves a bad taste in ones' mouth, and hits the demoralization hard. The doublespeak is miserable. But I suppose I have literally these policies to thank for forcing me to strike out on my own to build something actually better.

[hunter2_]

I think the idea is that even if blind hiring makes for the best possible employees on an individual basis in the short term, loosening that optimization in favor of diversity is a worthwhile pursuit because the company actually will thrive more when you look at long term collaboration (conversations and opinions that draw from a larger variety of life experiences can improve user advocacy, for example) and the possibility that amazing potential employees down the road might pass on applying to companies that aren't so diverse.

I see the irony in using protected characteristics for profit, but it's a win-win...

[slowmovintarget]

Thomas Sowell pointed out two problems with the "idea" in Discrimination and Disparities.

First, what evidence do we have that diversity does result in a company performing better, or gaining that amazing employee? He argues that this is an unfounded assumption.

Setting that aside, his second point requires deeper consideration. Disparities are often caused by upstream circumstances, like fewer children having adults in the home that value education, leading to fewer candidates that meet diversity criteria to hire from in the first place. By laying quotas on at hiring time, people are wrongly assuming the problem to be occurring where it is detected (in hiring) and not where it originates (in-home attitudes to education and work).

In the meantime, corporations hire consultants that emplace DEI "initiatives" that train workforces to detect "microaggressions," among similar evidence-free curricula. They do this, not because it solves a problem, but because it allows favorable public relations announcements.

How about initiatives funding scholarships, and contributing to in home book programs? How about funding campaigns for supporting community libraries?

These would go at the root of the issue, rather than the cosmetics of the issue. But then, they couldn't gain the indulgences for failing to actually be diverse as a corporate culture.

[SpeedilyDamage]

> First, what evidence do we have that diversity does result in a company performing better, or gaining that amazing employee? He argues that this is an unfounded assumption.

It's not an assumption.

> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]

> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]

> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]

> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]

> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]

> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]

This is just the tip. Study after study shows diversity improves outcomes of group work, it's really hard to justify believing otherwise, in light of the overwhelming data.

[0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend

[1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...

[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/

[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...

[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907400203

[crackercrews]

I haven't read all these studies but wonder if they claim causality or mere correlation. I see lots of correlation, which could be reverse correlation in disguise. Companies that are on a good trajectory decide to engage in more DEI than companies that are fighting to survive. Analysts conclude that DEI and success are correlated. They don't consider the possibility that the causal arrow runs the other way.

[hunter2_]

True, and it could even be as simple as: well-educated people make companies more successful, and they pursue diversity more, compared to other people -- i.e., one input has these two outputs.

[jensensbutton]

> I haven't read anything, but I have opinions.

Great contribution.

[hunter2_]

A pattern I'm seeing here is the possibility that these beneficial outcomes could be rooted in racism/sexism/etc.: having enough diversity among staff such that you can easily pair up people (provider and patient, fiduciary and client, or whatever scenario) who share personal characteristics can increase trust and synergy between them? Ugh!

[slowmovintarget]

Great! All the more reason to focus on the underlying problem and not just where it's detected.

[slackfan]

Yes yes, that is the sales pitch.

In reality DEI in general doesn't give a shit about diversity of experience. There is zero investment into training programs to actually get people from non-traditional backgrounds into $company, because it's significantly less profitable in the short term. And when the training is set up, it is done in the most mealy-mouthed "equitable" way possible, where everybody gets a gold star, and then people act all surprised when the outcome is unproductive, virtually unfireable workers. And god help you if you are a "diverse" person who doesn't toe the DEI line, that is the fastest way to find yourself a pariah in an org.

[voxic11]

Well hiring under-qualified candidates purely for the sake of a quota (relating to a protected class) would be illegal in the United States. So its unlikely you will hear anyone explicitly saying that is what they intend to do.

https://www.aclusocal.org/en/inclusion-targets-whats-legal

[busterarm]

We opened a director level technology position, were encouraged to apply and then we were told explicitly at a company meeting that it was only open to a female PoC (which could only possibly be filled by an outside hire based no our org chart).

[cm2187]

I have seen in several UK firms the need for a waiver from HR to hire a white man for middle management level and up. I am not even sure it is legal, but in any case it is openly discriminatory. Imagine if you did that with any other category in the population.

[908B64B197]

Here in America that would be completely illegal (And a lawyer somewhere would probably buy his next boat with that case!).

[busterarm]

We are here in America, and I was shocked when it happened. But also no lawsuit came of it, because everyone who stood something to lose buys into the idea in the first place.

[nullc]

It's illegal. It's also at least somewhat common now.

It's easier to leave a company for another, probably better paying, job elsewhere than it is to bring a lawsuit.

[busterarm]

Also if you bring a lawsuit, you'll pretty much be blacklisted from any company doing DEI, which is everyone that can pay well.

[908B64B197]

This reads like high school bullying.

[mst]

I've heard anecdotes from nonwhite Intel employees who claimed that that was definitely happening there and it meant they could basically only bother to do any work when they felt like it because nobody expected decent productivity out of them anyway.

I don't claim to have remotely enough knowledge of the situation to know whether they were right or not, mind.

It strikes me that your colleagues being acceptable, you being better but having high enough standards for yourself that they don't seem acceptable, plus a moderately apathetic manager could produce pretty much precisely the same observable results and then if you're already primed to expect diversity stuff to be stupidly implemented it'd be easy enough to draw an incorrect conclusion.

It also strikes me that under the previous leadership Intel was kind of a shitshow in general so given that both possibilities seem depressingly plausible.

[kenjackson]

I’ve heard from white males at Intel that they didn’t need to be productive either. I think this was an Intel problem. But interestingly I suspect POC think it’s about their race. While white males assume this is the case for everyone.

[Manuel_D]

For context, Intel introduced quotas back in the mid 2010s:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...

> Now, of course, the talk is of inclusion, not confrontation. And I was surprised to hear Intel—old-fashioned Intel—mentioned as one of the companies successfully innovating around gender. It had been releasing diversity numbers since 2000, though not with as much fanfare as some of its peers, and without much improvement. But in the past couple of years, Intel decided to try a few other approaches, including hiring quotas.

> Well, not quotas. You can’t say quotas. At least not in the United States. In some European countries, like Norway, real, actual quotas—for example, a rule saying that 40 percent of a public company’s board members must be female—have worked well; qualified women have been found and the Earth has continued turning. However, in the U.S., hiring quotas are illegal. “We never use the word quota at Intel,” says Danielle Brown, the company’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. Rather, Intel set extremely firm hiring goals. For 2015, it wanted 40 percent of hires to be female or underrepresented minorities.

> Now, it’s true that lots of companies have hiring goals. But to make its goals a little more, well, quota-like, Intel introduced money into the equation. In Intel’s annual performance-bonus plan, success in meeting diversity goals factors into whether the company gives employees an across-the-board bonus. (The amounts vary widely but can be substantial.) If diversity efforts succeed, everybody at the company gets a little bit richer.

TL;DR: Intel docked your pay unless you met a quota for women and URM hires.

[sp332]

For government contractors:

"If women and minorities are not being employed at a rate to be expected given their availability in the relevant labor pool, the contractor's affirmative action program includes specific practical steps designed to address this underutilization."

"Where, pursuant to § 60-2.15, a contractor is required to establish a placement goal for a particular job group, the contractor must establish a percentage annual placement goal at least equal to the availability figure derived for women or minorities, as appropriate, for that job group."

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-41/subtitle-B/chapter-60/...

[throwaway35934]

I have absolutely been pressured to "reconsider" when I marked an intern in a diversity target group as a no-hire, and said intern was then switched into a different team.

EDIT 1: The more effective mechanism that my company uses is to verify at the time of hiring a candidate that you can show you at least considered diversity target candidates (in engineering, basically women and non-Indian/Asian/white).

EDIT 2: also definitely see diversity target group employees being flagged for second-look when identifying layoffs, PIPs etc.

[pocman]

>> I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to change the demographics of the company.

DEI efforts try to conflate ethnicity+gender, effectively trying to build the effort on the backs of black, hispanic, and indigenous populations -- but try to count gender as well. Effectively, the DEI outcomes I see at companies end up being wealthy white women getting more opportunities, and the company conveniently checking off DEI as "done"

[dbrueck]

> I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota.

My experience is the opposite, unfortunately. Big companies know where the legal line is and are careful to not cross it too often, but here are some examples I've encountered first-hand:

1) My org's annual score had a prominent section highlighting the fact that our diversity was deemed low. Your org's score affected your annual budget for raises and bonuses, so I'm embarrassed to say that it was definitely a factor in hiring.

2) We'd have an opening to fill and sometimes would get a stack of resumes of just women. This would otherwise be fine (or even great - see #1, above) if there were some good ones, but honestly if you're a woman who is a great dev you'd almost certainly be able to get stellar offers elsewhere (this was a large-but-not-FAANG company). In one particular case, a guy friend of one of my employees applied for the same position and would have been a perfect fit at least on paper, but somehow his resume didn't make it past HR so he didn't get interviewed. We interviewed several from the pool we got and ended up hiring one who was an ok dev. Not great, but ok - we definitely "settled".

3) One time I needed a dev with a somewhat specific skillset and was soon told that they had found someone and had started the hiring process - even without an interview. I asked to at least see this person's resume (woohoo, it was an Asian woman - checking TWO diversity boxes!!). I pointed out that she didn't have the skill set we needed and nothing indicated that she had a background that would be good for it. I also pointed out that she didn't speak much English (it was literally a caveat listed on her resume), so I asked if we could at least interview her to try to assess if she'd be willing to pick up the skills we needed. Nope, the hiring was already done by then, and there she was in our office two weeks later. I have never felt so bad for anyone who has worked for me; she always seemed sad and lost, and I did a really poor job of figuring out how to help her. I'm still haunted by our extremely awkward 1-on-1 meetings (kinda hard to have much of a conversation when, you know, there's not a shared language).

On the flip side, some of the most talented and brilliant and enjoyable people I've worked with have been people who check lots of the diversity boxes, but weren't hired as part of any sort of push to increase diversity.

[bradlys]

We’ve hired people at my jobs (big tech to startups in SV) that were underqualified because of diversity measures. If we had ran them through the typical interview gauntlet with the same rubric, they wouldn’t pass. We often changed the interview format or the rubric when presented with someone who was URT pool.

I’ve talked to enough managers who complain about lackluster employees and how they’re not fireable because the person is URT. It’s a thing - even if we all like to think it isn’t. Your best effort is to manage them out.

[busterarm]

I've had HR force under-qualified people into my interview pipeline completely bypassing our technical pre-screen phone call.

We even had an interviewee who only spoke an obscure language not spoken by anyone on our team _and_ had no work experience. This was for a staff engineer position!

We hired someone despite some misgivings in the interview phase who turned out to be a pathological liar (and identity thief) and they proceeded to torment the entire company with insane false allegations for two years and did zero work while we couldn't get rid of them. Finally they quit on their own and this person just made the news recently for stripping down naked and violently attacking a convenience store's workers with a knife.

[oytis]

IMO the right way to implement diversity is to get more underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the bar. But it requires resources that startups might not have/might be unwilling to allocate.

[m348e912]

>>the right way to implement diversity is to get more underrepresented people into the funnel, not lowering the bar

This is the best comment in the thread. If you have a diverse funnel you will have diverse employees and as long as you maintain standards, they will be well qualified for the job. This includes internships and job training programs.

[bradlys]

Eh, the resume stack is fundamentally flawed. A lot of URT are never going to go into tech because they just don’t want to. It’s a large cultural issue.

[oytis]

Yes, that's why if a company is committed to diversity, it reaches out to candidates, promotes itself on events for underrepresented people etc.

[backzerman]

That's disappointing to hear. It also seems like a mixed bag for these lackluster hires, who get a paycheck but likely have a less-than-stellar work experience and little opportunity for advancement.

Is there any effort at follow-up training? Seems like this interview strategy HAS to be paired with a long-term training strategy for taking less-qualified hires and turning them into very productive employees.

If not, do you end up hiring more people in total? Do these lackluster employees just eat up time and budget, or do they also actively occupy a desk that you need to reclaim to hire more talented replacements?

[slackfan]

>Training Hahahaha, you dare suggest that we hired somebody underqualified? You can't make them feel like they are inferior, you utter racist.

Yes, I have had a slightly less hyperbolic version of this actual conversation about less-than-qualified diversity hires. Good way to end your career.

[BeFlatXIII]

Find the legal definition of hostile workplace and skate just below that until the problems find solutions on someone else’s paycheck.

[John23832]

The solution is simple, hire better minority candidates.

There are minority candidates who can thrive at all levels of tech. Nobody is telling your to hire subpar candidates. That's on your company's lazy implementation of their inclusion efforts, not on DEI.

[willcipriano]

Some places are targeting percentages of certain races that exceed that races representation in the general population, let alone the population within a given field. It may be that the demand exceeds the supply.

[anonymouskimmer]

As an under credentialed, relative to the general population very smart white guy, I doubt the demand for any group exceeds the supply. It just might involve searching outside of the range of the lamppost. Gasp, horror, it might involve internal training as opposed to expecting people to hit all the marks for a position on their prior labor and education. It might involve hiring a lot more entry level positions than advanced positions, regardless of the needs of the moment.

The best I've seen as a person who's not part of the DEI team is cultivating relationships with universities with large numbers of URM students. But that's really still just searching slightly outside of the range of the lamppost.

Are you straight up going to small towns and offering scholarship opportunities? Going to college fairs (no, not hiring fairs at colleges, but the fairs that high school students go to to find a college) and marketing what jobs are available at your company for majors of certain degrees? These are just off the top of my head; I'm sure there are a lot better, and tested ideas out there.

[willcipriano]

Let's say green people are 10% of the population to make the numbers easy and not call out anyone in particular. You have company A and they are killing it on their diversity goals, 20 percent of its employees are green people. Now you have company B, same size and industry as company A, they want to hire green people but their "share" of greens is already working at company A, perhaps they can pull greens from other industries but ultimately someone is going to be left holding the "you don't hire enough green people" bag.

[anonymouskimmer]

> but ultimately someone is going to be left holding the "you don't hire enough green people" bag.

This would be a good argument if we ever get to that point. But we aren't even close, and plenty of smaller companies and startups don't have diversity goals at all. There's plenty of room for some big names to go 100% green without being a tithe of a tithe of the full working population. Or even a tithe of a tithe of the working population of greens.

Even Walmart is less than 1% of the total employed population in the US. Much more so for smaller companies such as Alphabet or Meta.

[seneca]

This is the classic excuse. "Bad outcomes aren't the fault of X, you're just doing X wrong" even though X always leads to the same bad outcomes.

When an initiative fails, the solution is rarely to do more of it.

[ModernMech]

> X always leads to the same bad outcome

X does not always lead to the same bad outcome here though. That is, DEI initiatives that increase diversity while not lowering the hire bar do exist. That some particular company decided to lower their hiring bar doesn't indicate that DEI initiatives always cause companies to lower their hiring bars.

[John23832]

If you don't think you can hire better minority candidates, then the implication is that there are no better minority candidates?

[SpeedilyDamage]

Except study after study shows that good outcomes result from hiring diverse candidates...

[throwaway894345]

My impression is that the mechanism is that racial/gender/etc diversity proxies for some amount of viewpoint diversity, and it's the viewpoint diversity which is improving outcomes. Assuming I'm correct on that point, my strong suspicion is that a lot of DEI programs in the US are not resulting in much more diverse hiring than their peer groups while simultaneously limiting viewpoint diversity pretty considerably (or if they're not limiting the viewpoint diversity of the people they hire, they're limiting the willingness of those people to express diverse views--probably a combination of the two).

I'm also vaguely of the impression that at least some research is finding DEI initiatives to be neutral or perhaps even counter-productive, but I'm having a hard time finding those papers--if this is jogging anyone's memory, I would appreciate links.

[SpeedilyDamage]

Just… stop. DEI works when well executed. Accept that.

If you want to police DEI initiatives to ensure they’re properly implemented, go for it, but the constant aversion to a so thoroughly researched concept is bordering on flat earther level conspiracy.

[nonethewiser]

DEI is about factoring in race. Race should never be part of the decision making process. On top of being morally reprehensible its also illegal.

[anonymouskimmer]

DEI can also be about looking past stereotypes.

A couple of decades worth of research has shown racial bias against URMs in hiring exists. Breaking past it with a requirement to interview and consider URMs is a start, not the finish.

https://hbr.org/2021/02/research-how-companies-committed-to-...

[Manuel_D]

Alternatively, it could be ameliorated in a non-discriminatory way by anonymizing applications.

[anonymouskimmer]

Sure. Which would require a specialized group of trained people at the company. This would involve such things as changing Alma Mater University to "completed degree". It would involve fudging things such as how long it took to graduate (which can be an indicator of familial status, in so far as people from poorer backgrounds are disproportionately likely to take longer to complete due to financial reasons).

Genuinely anonymizing an application is a difficult task without losing pertinent data.

[Manuel_D]

Both of the things you listed are as simple as text replacement.

[anonymouskimmer]

And how do you replace this text without losing important, non-origin context? What you probably need is an entire re-write. But a re-write, or even a bad text replacement, can make it look like the applicant is better or worse at grammar or writing in general.

This is not as easy a task as a simple text replacement.

[seneca]

> I've sat through a lot of DEI sessions at work (as have many of my friends), and I've yet to hear of anyone actually _hiring_ under-qualified candidates for the sake of a quota.

That's because it's often illegal, and most people find it immoral. It's the "quiet part", if you will. I've been in a hiring role for a decade, and I can tell you that it happens at every company I've been at that has a DEI program.

Many of the larger companies even have manager bonuses dependent on diversity metrics of their teams. That's about the biggest weight you can possibly put on the scale.

[kenjackson]

I’ve seen just the opposite. We always hire the best candidate. Sometimes the question will come up. : “why were there no POC brought in to interview?” They want to know about where we recruited from. But our hiring was never questioned.

That said I hired way over industry average in females. But under for POC. But I probably got slack for all the female hires. All of whom were the best we interviewed.

[BeFlatXIII]

> But making a conscious effort to make sure everyone at the company feels socially welcome and fairly treated is a worthwhile effort.

Or it would be worthwhile if it actually worked. Note the use of the subjunctive tense.

[rsj_hn]

> I'm seeing a lot of claims here that DEI initiatives are about actively hiring under-qualified under-represented candidates to change the demographics of the company.

This is exactly what DEI is, and I guarantee you that your own company, if it is of any substantial size, systematically hires under qualified candidates because of DEI. It would require a hermetically sealed reality-avoidance filter to not notice this. While there are some people who walk around with these filters on, the vast majority of people do not, and will readily tell you exactly what DIE is about once they feel safe enough to speak honestly with you. Listen to them.

[SpeedilyDamage]

A problem a lot of tech/math minded people make is that there is some set of metrics, some set of tests or achievements or qualifications that make a candidate "objectively" the best. There isn't, not even a tiny little bit.

The argument goes like: There's some objective rubric, and hiring a black person despite that rubric's indication that they're 2.345312% repeating below the best candidate, is DEI gone wrong!

Anyone here who's ever hired for a technical role knows how wildly wrong that idea of recruitment is, but for engineers, we want to put a model to a system, and then we want to worship that model, so it's hard for some folks to grasp.

[matchbok]

That's not how any of this works. Nor are people saying that.

To say merit doesn't exist is laughable. Get out of here lol.