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by anon291 830 days ago
Vicious cycle:

1. There is a relatively stable job opening with diversity requirements. The 'diverse' hire is made.

2. The 'non-diverse' candidates for the position end up not getting the job. While seemingly inconsequential on its own, this has the effect of 'non-diverse' candidates being over-represented among those who are overqualified for their current position.

3. In order to get a more suitable position for their abilities, these 'non-diverse' candidates are forced to work on higher risk projects, maybe lacking the same prestige, as the position in (1).

4. Due to their ability, these riskier projects take off. Now the risk was higher, so the reward is commensurately higher.

5. As these projects mature and grow and attract more money, they start to have job openings similar to 1.

6. Charges of discrimination are made when only 'non-diverse' candidates seemed to have benefited from this novel technology. And likely those same candidates in 2 are now forced out as more jobs like 1 are opened up in the projects they grew in 4. Then the start at step 3 again.

Personally, I have absolutely seen this play out with AI. I was in the industry before all the LLM / NVDA buzz. Many people thought it was crazy, a pipe dream, etc. Now... everyone wants in and is retconning their stories to talk about how they always supported it. Give me a break.

1 comments

This reflects my career path as well. I worked for a large company and I was impacted by Step 2. Left for a startup (step 3), startup takes off with a competing technology. Fast forward a couple of years, the large company drops technology I was working in at the time as they couldn't compete with the startup (step 4). Startup is now a leader in that technology and is now a more attractive workpalce than the large company. There are now complaints that the leaders with tenure are non-diverse at the startup. We've reached stage 5.