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Comment by bavent | Hacker News Reader

That’s not evidence, that’s someone who thinks everything is a leftist boogeyman and who needs to spend less time on the internet.

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Have you read the entire thread? Do you think one can simultaneously optimize for merit and diversity without making compromises? In other words, do you think merit and diversity are perfectly correlated?

I did, and the writer has a clear and obvious bias against DEI. I personally am not in favor of much DEI stuff too, but I have worked at enough large bureaucracy type businesses that are all about it and it is 90% meaningless HR busy work. I don’t think they are “optimizing” for DEI, they are optimizing for maximum profits and that is the problem. DEI is something they are saying they are doing to appease cultural trends. They are clearly not optimizing for merit, even from before all this DEI stuff started. They are optimizing for extracting as much money as they can and that means cutting costs wherever they think will yield a higher profit margin. DEI shit is just a distraction, to appease those on the cultural lip-service left, and to inflame those on the right.

The thread above contains clear evidence that they in fact do optimize for DEI. Even if they weren't exactly merit-based before, that only makes things worse.

Ok but also, who cares? It is almost assuredly not the reason they are having these issues. I don’t know why you have this crusade against DEI stuff. I also think it’s lame, but the problems with Boeing are more likely that they are run by people who feel the need to make every single dollar they can and will cut costs wherever they need to do that. DEI is a screen they can hide behind.

I think it's quite possible, though by no means certain, DEI is a main reason they are having these issues. See the last post in the Twitter thread about their supplier Spirit Aerosystems.

The argument about cost cutting sounds less convincing to me. Compromising on critical safety will only save cost in the short term. But both Boeing and their suppliers have more incentive to optimize long term cost. They are not in this business for a short period of time.

They have an incentive to optimize long term cost? I’m sorry but what version of idealized capitalism do you live in because it’s not this one.

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