Almost all big companies are doing this now. It's never a good idea to hire someone based on skin color or gender rather than merit.
The predecessor to this was affirmative action in colleges (this is basically affirmative action in the work place).
New Jersey is seeing the direct result of this. Applicants couldn't pass a basic reading/writing/math test, so they were forced to get rid of these requirements. The direct result of this will be teachers that shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place and poor student results.
They call it 'redundant', but I would rather have someone teaching my kids that actually knows the material, rather than someone that went to any number of low-quality colleges where I have no idea if they know the material or not.
I mean I'm speaking for me as a straight, white male, not even living in the US but EU. But some observations from my side:
- no program will get support/taken seriously if it's just to tick a box
- implementing DEI as positive discrimination seems a painfully stupid idea (and yes, large corporations also do that in the EU)
- I'm surprised how many comments are celebrating scrapping this effort
That being said, I don't really get why companies aren't working on actionable goals instead. There've been so many scandals related to this in the last years. One complaint from someone affected being taken seriously by HR seems like a bigger step than a purely box ticking endeavor.
Again, I'm speaking from my non expert point of view but it seems a banal truth that a diverse workspace may also score better on innovation and perhaps offer a larger solution space for certain cultural problems. But this might be just my ignorant point of view.
Because the goal isn’t the actual goal. Which is why James Damore lost his job and created an uproar when he suggested very reasonable steps to achieving more diversity.
The engineer problem solving mindset is very vociferously opposed in these circles and shut down aggressively.
Ok, so assuming for a moment it wasn't that problematic what he said (which it was actually).
So he's sending around angry company-wide memos as an IC which hits the news. And it's not just 100 people who can read it but a significant part of Google which has almost 200,000 employees. Sorry, but this is missing the point.
I've seen people getting fired for less. And it wasn't even related to DEI.
But back to the topic. The content of this memo seems to me a metaphor to what is wrong with "classic IT culture" when talking about DEI etc. I cannot see how implementing this memo would solve anything, on the contrary it would make things worse.
The predecessor to this was affirmative action in colleges (this is basically affirmative action in the work place).
New Jersey is seeing the direct result of this. Applicants couldn't pass a basic reading/writing/math test, so they were forced to get rid of these requirements. The direct result of this will be teachers that shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place and poor student results.
More information here:
https://www.njspotlightnews.org/video/nj-eliminates-redundan...
They call it 'redundant', but I would rather have someone teaching my kids that actually knows the material, rather than someone that went to any number of low-quality colleges where I have no idea if they know the material or not.