Tech companies like Google and Meta made cuts to DEI programs in 2023 | Hacker News Reader

Tech companies like Google and Meta made cuts to DEI programs in 2023

cnbc.com

26 pointslopkeny12ko26 comments

Good. Maybe they're finally starting to realise what happens when they choose diversity hires over people who are actually qualified.

Hiring committee at google knows none of your demographic information. They never see your face, and make their hiring decision based on the written feedback from interviews. Diversity in this case meant bringing more diverse candidates into the pipeline, rather than lowering criteria for acceptance.

Why would you assume DEI programs led to people who were unqualified being hired? I never saw that. What I saw was a pool of 100 equally qualified people, and recruiting biased towards reaching out only to certain sub-groups of those people. But they didn't lower the hiring bar. They just only actively recruited people from certain groups.

I also saw during rounds of promotions where HR would say "here are all of the diversity candidates in your org. Let's make sure we're evaluating them for promotion and actively working towards giving them work that will get them promoted".

I never saw a case where two people were interviewed and the "diversity candidate" was less qualified but hired. Nor did I ever see a case where a diversity candidate was promoted ahead of someone else. Each was hired or promoted based on their own merits. The DEI part was making sure there were more in the pipeline to look at.

>Why would you assume DEI programs led to people who were unqualified being hired?

Because I have seen it with my own eyes hundreds of times.

Are you talking about your time at Reddit? Because that hiring process produced the hire and defense of one Aimee Challenor - I wouldn't be proud of that.

No I haven't worked at reddit for 12 years now. I had nothing to do with that.

I'm talking about what I've seen at Amazon and at the startups that I advise.

And somehow I'm doubting you saw "hundreds" of hires that you knew well enough to evaluate that they were unqualified compared to the candidates they beat out.

Finally. I hope our company follows their lead.

Not only google and facebook. It's very visible that the amount of divisiveness has been down significantly. Edit: in fact, I don't remember when was the last time I heard the usual divisive lingo.

"With fewer diverse voices represented in AI development, the resulting products could be less accurate or more harmful to users."

DEI has never been about VIEWPOINT diversity.

Hiring should be strictly meritocracy;

But training should be available to everyone.

> Hiring should be strictly meritocracy

I’ve turned down hiring people who had more technical skills than who I did hire, because the more skilled people were assholes who would have ruined the team cohesiveness (which I have seen happen on previous teams). Skills aren’t the only thing that matter and “culture fit” is a real thing.

Or...you're unable to lead high skilled people.

In my team, I always look for the best and manage to make them work well together.

Oh, I’m definitely not the best manager at all! I severely lack in my management skills. Seems like you are a better manager than me. But I wasn’t the manager of those teams I referenced.

Or... sometimes, the amount of time you spend making an asshole work well enough with other people (let alone a bunch of assholes work with each other) could've been vastly better spent on literally anything else.

High-skilled people are not always high-skilled contributors, and it's not a management issue. GP is probably a better manager than most for working to find people that enhance his organization, rather than force-fitting detractors and never looking at the bigger picture.

I usually wonder if this "only skill matters" opinion is purely held by people leading small teams, or new managers. I have never seen it work in practice or with a team of more than one.

The op said "meritocracy" not "technical skills." There are other skills, such as people skills you need to also consider.

Even the stupid?

sure. equal opportunity doesn't mean equal outcome.

The return on investment would likely be quite low. Who should pay for this positive right?

Well, YouTube’s got it 90% of the way there.

I didn’t say the corporations would or should be forced to pay for anyone who knocks on the door.

Oh, then we don't disagree. The internet is indeed wonderful in many ways and YouTube is a part of that -- from Indian videos about how to replace obscure components inside old printers to MIT Courseware and 3Blue1Brown. It's also possible to get a very good start on language learning using only YouTube videos.

I hate artificial barriers -- but I also feel a need to warn about the bad consequences of unrestricted positive rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

If they are stupid, they’ll drop out of the training.

The requirements for passing can always be lowered. Always.

Good

we need higher interest rates.

Good.

Diversity is indeed important, but these DEI departments are useless.

Diversity of thought is important. Diversity of backgrounds is sometimes important. Diversity of skin colour is never -- by itself -- important.

(And diversity of quality of thought is problematic...)

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