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Comment by blockwriter | Hacker News Reader

Is the first problem not the immediate implication of laying people off through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens? You have to assume that the lens selected not exclusively on merit, but also on factors like race, gender, orientation, or creed, in some measure, or in at least one instance. Otherwise, the lens could be said the exist, ever vigilant in its purpose, and yet was not required in this particular batch of layoffs, thank God. The belief that individuals were affected due to their race, orientation, gender, or religion, may be far more pervasive due to the framing than is actually warranted; that I concede.

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They say anti-racist but they really just mean racist. They are taking race into account when making staffing decisions. It's as illegal as the extra "side pot" of raise money my company has for diverse employees.

Companies care about diversity numbers when they have a lot of cheap funding.

When funding is tough, pure capitalism takes over woke values and it is up to whether your monetary value to the company>your monetary cost to the company.

There are lots of studies claiming that diversity makes companies more successful. But all that I've seen are correlational studies. And those are equally explained by the idea you mentioned. When companies are flush, they spend money on affirmative action. Therefore companies that have heavy affirmative action tend to be more successful.

My employer has specifically called out ESG investments as one of the reasons they have gone super woke.

All the 3 are immediate implications of that statement.

The belief that individuals were affected due to their race, etc will almost certainly be pervasive because the upper management claimed that it's what happened. And that will be despite the fact that upper management is almost certainly not competent enough to decide on the competence of the people they are laying off (they never are).

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