[Manuel_D]

> scoring people fairly and literally against interview questions, that form a fraction of the whole candidate ranking process, are literally exactly what “DEI initiatives” in HR were meant to do.

I don't doubt your lived experience, but in 3 out of 4 companies DEI initiatives took the form of explicitly discriminating on the basis of candidates' protected class. Practices like giving "diverse" candidates multiple chances go pass interviews where white and Asian men got one. Another straight up created a reservation system for diverse candidates.

I acknowledge that some people have had better experience DEI, but I'd encourage you to consider the possibility that many have witnessed explicit discrimination under the banner of DEI.

[nxobject]

Can you say more about where the "3 out of 4" comes from? I'll admit that I've worked on hiring committees in exactly four places, so it's been a straight 0 out of 4 for me. (One at a small liberal arts college; one at a tech consultancy; one at a state agency; another one at at govtech consultancy.)

We can haggle over how many is enough to make a sweeping generalization, if you'd like. But I don't think that's productive for any of us if we want to debate whether loyalty tests actually existed, or whether "DEI" reduces to religion, as the parents have claimed.

[Manuel_D]

One company outright designated a segment of engineering headcount as exclusive to women and URM candidates. Managers were prohibited from fulfilling this headcount with Asian and white men. This was done despite having an overrepresentation of women in engineering roles relative to their representation in the field. Another allowed diverse candidates multiple attempts to pass technical interviews where white and Asian men got one chance. A third company set a quota of 40% women in engineering hires in OKRs (contrast this with ~20% of software developers and ~10% of electrical engineers that are women, those two fields made up almost all engineering roles at the company).