There are many, many reactions to the DEI issues that we hear every day, but there's one drawback to it that's hardly ever mentioned.
The basis for all the DEI talk is that hiring based on those aspects compensates for ages of discrimination; it somehow compensates people who weren't hired in the past by hiring someone today who has a superficial resemblance to the original person. The reality is that hiring based on those superficial resemblances hurts the people who get hired based on them the most. The victim of the DEI isn't really the one in the past, it's the less qualified person that gets hired today. That person hired today hurts anyone hired after them.
I retired just over nine years ago, and DEI was far less prominent in everyday use than it is today, but another term was used that had the same effects. That was Affirmative Action. At some point, everyone started to know what it meant to say someone was an affirmative action hire. Everyone besides that affirmative action hire knew it meant taking extra time and effort to get the job done.
The problem, of course, was that as it became apparent that all the affirmative action hires were part of the same ethnic or identity group every member of that group was assumed to be an AA hire until they proved otherwise - by being good at their job.
Being a white dude of obvious European background, I never had to face
this. It was very simple: if you weren't considered the best applicant,
you didn't get the job. Working from the early 1970s through the mid
20-teens, I worked with very competent technicians and engineers of all
backgrounds: black, white, men, women, as well as from many nationalities:
Americans, various South American nations, Indians, Chinese, Japanese and
more. Toward the latter years, a couple of the black engineers I knew would
mention how much they hated hiring based on stuff like skin color and ethnic
group because of the suspicion they were an AA hire. (One was a digital
hardware engineer - designing gate arrays, while the other was a very high
level software engineer). So after climbing the ladder and
accomplishment after accomplishment, or degree after degree, they felt they
had to prove themselves over and over.
If hiring were to openly return to being strictly based on merit, how long
would it be before the last vestiges of suspicion someone was a DEI or
Affirmative Action hire went away?
While it's marginally related to the topic, it's just here because I find it funny:
And before DEI and AA it was EOE. I've had to deal with numerous patently incompetent people at various jobs, and it was a trial. To add insult, they were getting paid more than I was.....
ReplyDeletein all fields we've been afflicted with governmental actions that attempt to "correct" actions taken by people who weren't even our ancestors:
ReplyDeletepeople suffer, the work product suffers
My experience in tech is that a small amount of diversity is OK - maybe a couple of percent. Those few adopt the ways of the majority, become included and achieve equitable results. The problem is too much diversity. The minorities form groups that resist the ways of the majority. They remain separate and hence are not included. That results in conflict without an equitable outcome. Organizations that diverse are not our strength. They are our weakness.
ReplyDeleteAffirmative Action makes perfect sense if you're a communist, and believe all members of society have a collective responsibility for outcomes. Then a virtuous action in the present pays off a moral debt incurred in the past by a bad behavior.
ReplyDeleteAll you have to do is replace your understanding of cause and effect with poetic magical thinking. Then, thinking changes reality outside your mind using the technological method of magic. Magic and Gods worked fine as an epistemology for 5,000 years. Aren't you a Conservative? The old ways are best!
I suspect every white working soul has
ReplyDeleteBack in the early 90s (last century) I was obliged to attend monthly meetings in the company tech center. First item on the agenda was always headcount, focusing on any changes in numbers of black, women and Korean employees. I didn’t understand it then, I still don’t.
ReplyDeleteIn my final years as a systems architect for an outsourcer, the phrase 'you can be replaced by 10s of Mumbai-type persons' was broadcast loud and often. It came to pass eventually, and that portion of the company ran out of people to blame for their incompetence; consequently, fewer customers as contracts expired; consequently, that chunk got phased out. But Corporate still beats the DEI drums, apparently still living on the viable parts of the corpse...
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the "Diversity Is Our Strength!" mantra. Different skin colors and/or XX chromosomes always makes everything better. Somehow...
ReplyDeleteIt is a shame that Affirmative action has tarnished professional of minority backgrounds. It is also a fact that the opposite has happened; let me explain. If I go to a doctor and the doctor is of Asian background I "'know" this person is likely the child of a "Tiger Mom" and they spent their life working hard to be at the top of their field. That assumption "may" not be true but the odds heavily favor it. So in the end whose fault is it if I reject a black doctor and choose an Asian doctor?
ReplyDeleteIn the 90's I worked for the world's sixth largest software development company as a project manager and then senior PM where I was being groomed to step into my director's position when he retired in early 1999. In 95 senior management decided there was not enough diversity in management and supervisor rolls. A female POC was brought in as the replacement director. She did not understand what our division's core product was or the side products it fed into. Thirty five percent of the managers at my level and below had been replaced by diversity hires by that time. I was laid off in 2002 and the company folded in 2003.
ReplyDeleteWith minimal disrespect intended, it sounds like the upper management who brought in the diverse managers should be held responsible, but that never happens. I've never heard of a manager being held liable for damage to the company that they ruined.
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