> DEI conceptually is a really important idea and could lead to really important change or course correction. As implemented today though, it seems to most often be implemented as a much more surface level program that sure feels more like PR or legal protection than anything else.
I suspect that some DEI efforts are helpful and effective, and some DEI efforts are hollow or foolhardy. We probably can’t speak of “DEI today” as a monolith. Also we may be biased to hear about instances of it being stupid and ineffective because that can be a useful talking point to some. Instances where it works well and gets more people hired and engaged are less interesting to a predominantly white society, so maybe aren’t discussed as much outside of non-white communities.
Idk that’s all a load of speculation but I wanted to share these thoughts/observations about your argument.
I do agree that my referring to DEI today may be too broad, that's a great point.
> Instances where it works well and gets more people hired and engaged are less interesting to a predominantly white society, so maybe aren’t discussed as much outside of non-white communities.
This got me curious, have you sewn any examples of DEI programs helping to get more people hired rather than different people hired? Either can be useful, but that distinction would be a big one as the former means DEI is somehow growing the job market rather than refocusing hiring practices.
Nothing wrong with speculation as far as I'm concerned! Reliable and accurate data is hard to come by, I'd argue that most of what is presented as fact is little more than speculation backed by fuzzy data full of assumptions.
Our DEI program was great. It helped us scale from 100 people to 1000 people by scouring HBCU colleges across the US for talent. Had we hired only from Silicon Valley and Stanford, where we were located, things would have sucked during that growth and our previously global hodgepodge of a team that built products bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars would have been White-washed by rich kids, atrophied and died. Instead, we we went on to billions of dollars because we had a group that weren't all fucking Stanford grads with a couple years of Google or Facebook under their belts and mommy and daddy to fall back on.
I suspect that some DEI efforts are helpful and effective, and some DEI efforts are hollow or foolhardy. We probably can’t speak of “DEI today” as a monolith. Also we may be biased to hear about instances of it being stupid and ineffective because that can be a useful talking point to some. Instances where it works well and gets more people hired and engaged are less interesting to a predominantly white society, so maybe aren’t discussed as much outside of non-white communities.
Idk that’s all a load of speculation but I wanted to share these thoughts/observations about your argument.