DreamlandLividity @ DreamlandLividity @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

they are the most significant parts. Much of the time, companies have zero DEI policy at the hiring step. It's part of why the griping about it is confusing to me. Most of the companies I am familiar with are already where you seem to want them. But I guess they have to pretend to throw it out and call it something different to appease the complainers.

Yeah, I guess my point in that case is, that perceptions are important. The loudest public promoters and detractors of DEI are probably pushing an extreme version with hiring quotas and so on, so anything labeled DEI gets a bad rep.

Unfortunately, this happens if a community does not push against taking their ideas and positions too far and set a clear boundary of what they want to achieve.

I never said it was a silver bullet. I explained why doing away with an effort like it and achieving a fantasy of background agnostic hiring will not solve the problem in a generation, since you were not sure why generations of institutional racism would go away with one generation of blind hiring practice

Sorry, sounded to me like you vere implying DEI hiring would solve the issue faster than background agnostic hiring, since it was a response to my promotion of background agnostic hiring. I guess I misunderstood.

There is also a very large difference between no college education and just not going to an exclusive institution, which is explicitly what my example was about. The people who go to state schools also get a quality college education believe it or not.

I guess this is true for the US, where I live that is not really a thing. Anyway, I think my argument still holds. Either the more expensive universities are not better, so it is bias. Or they are better but not necessary, so employers are asking for overqualified people. Or they are necessary and in that case, working as expected on hiring level and we need scholarships.

One can be critical and consider if the candidate has some attractive points because they are truly more capable or they just had better opportunities. More questioning beyond that may reveal that they truly are great or just had it easier. The problem is a lot of traditional hiring stops at taking things at face value

I agree.

By suggesting there's no value in trying to get people off of platforms pushing government propaganda, you're essentially saying that there's no point convincing people not to voluntarily be lied to.

You are right that there is value to get people off of social media completely. But I am not convincing enough to make people do that.

As for Lemmy, while it is perhaps better, it is still full of misinformation and propaganda. I guess at least it is not just Government approved propaganda. I just don't feel motivated to try and help for that level of difference. I have little experience with other fediverse platforms.

I prefer to spend my energy on making people care about their privacy and pushing people to Signal, etc.

First of all, I made that comment because I find it distasteful and minimizing towards racism to suggest that I should react the same way or with same intensity to racism and someone using Facebook. My apologies if that is not what you meant, but it is what it sounds like to me.

Second of all, what is the value proposition here? I spend the time and effort, teach them how federation works, how to use it so that at best their propaganda can be more varied?

Gifting a subscription to Groud news or some such would be fraction of the effort with better effect.

Again making weird assumptions.

You cannot find information properly on those websites, American or Chinese, and if you were a critical thinker, you wouldn't use them.

I don't use any social media besides Lemmy when I get bored. Getting important information from any social media including fediverse is dumb, that is why I call it entertainment.

Also, if someone says "racism should not be tolerated," do you tell them that you're not going to dictate what other people's beliefs are too?

And here goes the patented, "you disagree with me so you must be racist" argument.

Or maybe both are unreasonable and neither should be tolerated

Yeah, I am not going to go dictate what other peoples entertainment choices are tolerated. Excuse me from that.

you should be working (like I do all the time) to get them over to the Fediverse.

Putting aside your incorrect assumption I don't bring people I know over when it is appropriate. Why exactly should I do that? Are you under the impression there isn't any propaganda on Lemmy and the wider feddiverse?

My time would be better spent getting people educated on how to think critically and find information properly.

It's still obviously better to use privacy preserving and/or federated services, but that's not something most people know about or understand.

It is perfectly reasonable for people to not know about niche options and understand complex technologies like federated networks. Different people have different interests. I am sure the two of us are making decisions that seem stupid to other people daily, whether choosing bad toothpaste, unrepaiarable washing machines, agreeing to predatory TOS or whatever else. Everyone can't be expert on everything.

So the choice most people see is use another Chinese app or use the other large social media, which are basically all US based. And between those two options, the Chinese apps are not that unreasonable.

What are you even talking about?

I am not saying it is ok. I am saying it is not a factor when choosing between Chinese and US based social media.

You also want companies running towns while we're at it?

I want government to do a better job. In lack of that, training and education is something I don't mind handing over to employers. A lot of job specific training is already provided by employers anyway. Safety trainings, how to work with specific tools and technologies, continuous education, regulatory compliance, business ethics...

You can give all the education you want to women and people of various ethnic backgrounds and the handicapped, in the end the white guy with the same (or sometimes worse) qualifications will get hired in their place unless DEI measures are put in place, that's their whole point, getting companies to recognize that if they don't make a conscious effort to prevent it, there's systemic discrimination happening in all industries.

The whole point of my post is arguing for removing biases by making the hiring process race and background blind, instead of "positive discrimination". The argument isn't to bring back discrimination, but what is the best way to prevent it.

They also affect people after they get hired. Hiring a woman to end up giving her less money for the same work goes against DEI.

I am talking about hiring policies here. I have opinions about wages as well, but if we keep switching topics, we will get nowhere.

Accommodations for people who have physical or mental health challenges affects everyone, even people who believe it's not for them, they're one car running a red light away from needing those and in some States that accident could mean them simply being laid off with no consequence for their employer and no recourse for the employee.

This is actually a good point. I didn't really consider disabilities and health accommodations as part of DEI, since they are protected by law where I live, not part of the voluntary DEI initiatives. These should stay imo.

As if the other socials did not feed you propaganda.

For most people, the personal consequences of China being able to spy on them are nonexistent. The government that can actually abuse such power against them, e.g. prosecute them for out of state abortions, is the US.

So protesting the US banning an app and trying to force people to use their own spyware social media makes some level of sense.

It's still obviously better to use privacy preserving and/or federated services, but that's not something most people know about or understand.

DEI is not just handing out roles to unqualified people because they're not white men. It's about access, outreach, thinking differently, being welcoming.

I was speaking very specifically about DEI hiring policies, not the rest.

Or, if the company has a history of only white men in positions of power and goes background-agnostic with zero outreach to marginalized communities, you're not going to get a lot of applicants from there.

As I mentioned in a different thread, I think outreach or even something of the kind "let's try to get x people from different backgrounds to an interview" is a good idea. Just the final hiring decision should be background-agnostic.

Part of the problem with the hypothetical is not everyone in one of these positions is truly hired. I mean if we completely got rid of inherited wealth so nobody could pass on their company to their kids, that'd certainly accelerate the timeline.

Unless I am missing something, DEI as it currently exists also does not help here? It does not redistribute ownership of companies. And since it is not mandatory, it does not prevent nepotism from company owners either.

If someone goes to a high quality college with a name because their rich parents can afford it that leads to an attractive internship that lands them a career job, on paper they got their current job because they had good qualifications.

Isn't the issue there with the education system? Besides, if you need college education for a spot, you shouldn't hire a person incapable of doing the job. If it is not necessary, then requiring college is problem itself. You just push people to waste money and time getting over-educated for the position.

So they should help, but only in an inefficient, counterproductive way that could also damage their business?

Because why exactly? Who said training and education has to be outside a company's jurisdiction?

Thank you. What a nice comment :)

Ultimately, the only extent I could see a DEI policy actually having merit and being worth talking about would be something sort of like the Rooney Rule. A company saying, "For any position we post, we're committed to interviewing at least X candidates from historically underrepresented minority demographics. We may still end up hiring a white guy...but this will ensure that we don't get so used to seeing nothing but white guys that we forget to look elsewhere."

Yes, I believe this would make sense if done correctly. I also like what company I work for does, that is sponsor a programming courses for women to help them become good candidates.

Because ultimately, anything other than "We'll hire the best person for the job." means, by definition, "We'll pass on the best person based on their, or the other candidates' race, gender, religion, etc."

Yes, we should strive to remove biases from the hiring process in general. It's not like recognized minorities are the only ones disadvantaged by biases.

When the gulf is large, the time period to erase that even with completely background-agnostic selection in any direction is many generations.

Why? Am I missing something? I would expect it to be completely gone in a generation, once every non-blind hire was replaced.

The Employers either should help the less disadvantaged, or they shouldn't. Make up your mind.

If they should, I argue they should do it by sponsoring training opportunities. If they shouldn't do it, then they shouldn't do it at all, including by preferentially hiring the disadvantaged.

I personally think it is not the Employers responsibility, but it is still the right thing to step up when the government fails at its job.

Or you could do the reasonable thing and instead of hiring less qualified people, you can sponsor DEI training programs, scholarships, and followup internships. Help them become qualified.

According to AI, not having a bookshelf in the background of a video call is a deterrent.

But why not do blind remote interviews or similar neutral policy? DEI doesn't help any of the people you mentioned.

"Our new fairness in hiring program ensures we hire strictly on merit by eliminating human biases using cutting edge technology."

You can't argue against that. Compare that with random DEI selling pitch and tell me you don't see how DEI is unnecessarily divisive.

I understand why you would think that, but this is not the case. Not a lawyer though, not legal advice.

There are 2 main types of causes of action for this, let's go over them:

1. Conversion, unjust enrichment: Here, Legal eagle and other creators allege Honey took money that was supposed to go to them. Basically just theft. This does not apply to adblock, since they don't take the money.
2. Tortious interference: Here they claim, that by removing the tracking cookie, they unlawfully interfere with the business relationship between the affiliates and the shopping platform. This could maybe apply to ad-blockers, but it is almost certainly superseded by the user explicitly wanting to remove tracking cookies, and the user has the right to do so. Saying that it is unlawful interference is like saying a builder hired by a land owner to build a fence is interfering with truckers who were using the land as a shortcut. They had no legal right to pass through the land in the first place. So the owner can commission a fence and a builder can build it. A contract between the truckers and amazon would not matter. In case of honey, it is like the builder was not hired by the owner and just built the fence to spite the truckers without owners permission.

you'll pick the one from a disadvantaged/underrepresented background.

So is having that policy even worth it? I would argue doing blind remote interviews without knowing the persons race and background would be almost as effective without giving ammunition to hate-mongers.

It's not like you have roughly equal candidates for a position often in the first place. And it could also help against nepotism and other unfair practices.