[const_cast]

During this political cycle I learned pretty much nobody knows what DEI is.

No, it's not affirmative action. No, we aren't hiring black people because they're black. It's mostly outreach and employee resource groups. It's completely harmless and no, it doesn't make white people disadvantaged.

[Jensson]

Not all DEI initiatives do all of those, but all of those are DEI initiatives. Do you are wrong, yes affirmative action is DEI, as are hiring black people because they are black. Those actions are done for DEI reasons, so they are DEI policies.

[const_cast]

It is illegal, and has been illegal for quite some time, to hire individuals do to their status as a protected class. Nobody is getting hired because they are black. The reality is these are perfectly qualified individuals.

This rhetoric that black people are being hired and they're unqualified is just not true. There's a lot of qualified people vying for a position, and some of those people will be black and some of them will be hired. That doesn't mean they're hired because they're black.

There's this sort of strange implication that if someone is hired and they're a minority, they must not be qualified. But nobody makes the same argument for white people - we just assume that white people are qualified if they're hired.

This systemic racism is why DEI was implemented in the first place. Merely mimicking that rhetoric is not a stab as DEI - quite the opposite.

[curtisblaine]

From what I've seen, it means that the hiring pool for junior developers is locked into programs for disadvantaged minorities (for example black / female). This means that if you want to hire a junior, you must hire from those pools. How this is not a disadvantage for people outside those pools I don't understand.

[const_cast]

Right, it's not a disadvantage because this isn't happening.

If you look at the statistics, black individuals and women make up an extremely small proportion of software developers. White men are not disadvantaged, I'm sorry to say.

For the record, I myself am a white man. The reality is that simply having a white-sounding name makes your likely hood of getting hired go up by over 50%. I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm some sort of victim because some people got together and made an ERG for black engineers. Who cares.

[curtisblaine]

Again, this is happening. There are organizations that do black women boot camps, or training for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Big firms have contracts with those orgs, and they freeze all junior hiring except from those sources. Hiring managers can of course interview and select candidates, but can't select where those candidates come from.

[const_cast]

Giving black people and women more resources and outreach, and programs to specifically address some of the challenges they will face, is not discrimination.

We don't have ERGs for white engineers because, simply put, white engineers do not face any structured disadvantages in the work place. There's just nothing to talk about there. That's why we have ERGs for gay individuals, and women engineers, and black engineers. Because they face unique challenges in the workplace and education and those spaces give them the opportunity to talk about that.

If you want those programs for white people, that already exists - that's called the workplace. It's very hard to claim a minority position when you're so obviously in the vast majority.

[curtisblaine]

I never said there shouldn't be programs for minorities as an option. I said that when you mandate hiring from these programs, you effectively hire worse (not because these people are inherently worse, but because you're not exposed to the full pool) and build up resentment in the team (this guy was hired only because of his/her skin color etc.)

[roland35]

The problem with your statement here is the "you MUST hire from those pools".

That is not happening. We can hire anybody. Basically, LOOKING at new sources is good! That doesn't mean at all we lower the bar or exclude white men. Of course, for basically all of time it has been a good ol boys club white men hiring their friends up to this point so not sure what the problem even is!

[curtisblaine]

That happens. Literally authorized hiring channels are open only for those sources. All other sources are frozen. If you want to hire a junior, you can only use those programs.