I don't mind hiring practices that put some emphasis on diversity.
However, I don't understand what DEI programs inside a company post hiring are supposed to "DO" and I think a lot of expectations around them start to very quickly expose some absurdities and amorphous nature of the idea surrounding internal private company DEI programs.
In the end private companies can't undo racism, they can't undo the past, that's a human problem that private companies whose job it is to make money just aren't equipped to address in a way that would satisfy folks concerned with other social problems.
For Shopify:
>Wavering internal support turned into concrete action in recent months when entire teams dedicated to helping Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs were laid off.
Is that even helpful? Is Shopify the right choice for Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs? Shopify is just a product. Shopify isn't a charity, they're not necessarily going to produce a positive outcome for every customer ... so emphasizing customers among a minority, is that a net positive for sure?
That's the weird aspect I wonder about DEI and external efforts.
Internally, it feels like a private company having resource groups for specific minorities again runs into a similar issue where that's not the company's motivation, or even competency ...
I think private companies can help, but their reach is very limited and larger social problems are just not theirs to solve and they're the wrong people / not equipped to do it.
tzs · 6h ago
Identifying groups of people that could be customers but aren't because of some external factor and figuring out if you can do something to mitigate that factor is a perfectly normal part of business.
A company doing that isn't trying to solve the underlying issue. That is indeed, as you noted, probably something they cannot do and others are better equipped to handle it.
For instance suppose you find out that many women with young children are not coming to your business because they have no one to look after the kids while the mother is there. You might add a supervised playroom so the mothers can bring the kids and leave them in the playroom.
This doesn't come anywhere near solving the underlying issue of daycare being too expensive for many parents but it could increase your business and make the lives of those mothers tangibly better.
subpixel · 7h ago
DEI is/was predicated on the false assumption that workplace diversity is a solution to societal inequality.
I find it fascinating and frustrating that the taboo around examining DEI critically was so strong it took an autocrat to break it.
duxup · 6h ago
I think the resistance to criticism was really just at the places where you had people invested in it.
I think DEI most places was pretty light / inconsequential… but you only hear about the extreme cases because that’s more interesting.
piva00 · 6h ago
From personal experience working through the early 2000s where there was no talk about DEI, and nowadays where there was a huge PR push for it, I don't feel it was all about solving societal inequality, that was just corporate messaging, the real benefit comparing workplaces that didn't care about diversity vs the ones that cared:
- Men would create a hostile environment for women, I worked in a couple of companies which were 85%+ men, any new hire that was a woman suffered some kind of harassment, over or covert ("locker room talk" bullshit). This constantly pushed women out.
- Diversity of ethnicities/nationalities brought a lot of different perspectives, having different cultures working together always helped teams I worked at to consider points of view that would only have surfaced later. Even ways of working that would cross-pollinate, like living a different culture would make you adopt practices that you think are improvements over yours.
- Inclusion of people with disabilities, in 2005 I would never imagine the company I was working for to hire a blind person, there was an extreme bias they wouldn't be able to do the work. Nowadays I've worked with a few blind people, a few with reduced mobility that didn't even use a keyboard for typing, accommodations were needed but nothing that actually impacted work while improving their lives tremendously. Who would be caring about doing this effort if DEI didn't become a thing?
I find it fascinating how the USA can go to either extreme so quickly, I do understand why it might have become such an annoyance to people opposed to it, feels like activism is so overboard that ended up being detrimental to the cause. I don't work in the USA so I really don't feel this need to push against any of the actions I've experienced in my life, at all points it actually helped people with minimal impact to myself while also helping me to realise biases and work on them, and I feel that's the actual societal change that DEI initiatives helps with: de-estranging others that are not 100% similar to you.
HairySeldon · 8h ago
Post-hire DEI programs are a divide-and-rule strategy for union busting. Prevent class solidarity by encouraging identity politics.
duxup · 8h ago
If that was the case I would expect more support for such programs at union busting / anti union companies… but I don’t think that is the case. Quite the opposite actually.
I don't think your theory makes much sense.
ahaickccjdjdbd · 5h ago
Amazon disagrees with you, and they’re one of the best union busters in the business.
> Store-risk metrics include average store compensation, average total store sales, and a "diversity index" that represents the racial and ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower diversity
Nearly all top tech companies pushed DEI, and nearly all of them were found to be involved in anti worker activities in the past.
Additionally, here’s a quote from Aristotle on diversity: “ And it is a mark of a tyrant to have men of foreign extraction rather than citizens as guests at table and companions, feeling that citizens are hostile but strangers make no claim against him”.
Adding racial diversity is a tried and true tactic over millennia to allow a small group to rule over a larger. It prevents the populace from organizing and keeps them divided. It’s no coincidence the billionaires who are overseeing the ever increasing wealth gap have pushed “diversity is our strength” and convinced a large portion of the population to defend this position.
boringg · 8h ago
Is it me or does this article feels like its left over from the last decade? That era feels over and I'm guessing those programs cost more money then they made - they were bets in zirp era…
MrBuddyCasino · 8h ago
They weren't bets, they were insurance policies against punitive damages after the Griggs v. Duke Power precedent. "Disparate Impact" now meant that unequal outcomes between ethnicities and sexes were to be interpreted as discrimination.
aaronbaugher · 7h ago
Right. Some of us are old enough to remember Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in the 90s[1]. One of the ways they attacked racism was to find a large corporation where the racial diversity of the employees didn't match that of the local community. They couldn't just sue the company yet then, so they would start a media campaign, promising boycotts and demonstrations, unless the corporation changed its ways. Many large corporations did, signing agreements with Jackson's organization promising to do better, and making a kind donation to the organization to help to continue the work.
So even before disparate impact became a legal threat to corporations, executives were feeling the pressure to comply with whatever the current expectations were on the matter.
Fair -- insurance instead of bet is probably a more realistic way to frame it. I like the optimistic approach that it was a bet on it ushering a lot of collective upside for all parties involved.
delichon · 7h ago
If a DEI program reaches equal outcomes and keeps going, to the point where it has positions held by >70% protected class employees, and has a goal of changing that to be >90%, then their mission would seem to be about something other than equality.
True. I don’t think HN is „ready for that conversation“.
Jcampuzano2 · 8h ago
The peoples experiences in the article and describing DEI as a marketing ploy are exactly what it always has been, marketing. If you could not see the writing on the wall that this was just to align with the market trends of the time and political environment, well I have a bridge to sell you.
It is and always has been just a way to gain favor with those who value DEI, almost no company actually cares about it outside gaining brownie points with consumers/users who value DEI and secondary potentially attracting top talent who happen to value DEI themselves. But if DEI programs were never a thing in the first place and they really are top talent the company would have valued them either way.
In my opinion DEI is moreso a way to prop up those who are not actually top talent but think they deserve to be. The reality though, is if you actually were you would not need a DEI program to get hired. Plenty of people from diverse backgrounds succeeded and will continue to succeed despite DEI programs.
I do not think DEI completely bad personally, I just do not believe it accomplishes the goals it claims to - which seem to always include increasing revenue and profits from getting other perspectives. But the reality is most companies became successful despite not having these other perspectives and before they adhered to DEI in the first place. I've never seen or heard of implementing a DEI plan actually having a real ROI outside of marketing. In almost all cases it is probably a money sink outside of being a marketing buzzword.
All this said as someone who would probably fall into the background of somebody who DEI would claim to support as someone from a Latino background.
duxup · 7h ago
The thing about "it's just a marketing ploy" to me is that sometimes folk express astonishment and betrayal over that kinda thing. I don't quite follow that.
It's a private company that exists to make money, of course anything they announce publicly / is there to make them look good.
That's not bad, that's just understanding the nature of these organizations.
Jcampuzano2 · 7h ago
I agree and also find it a bit strange that some people seem to forget that the place they work at for the most part is not there to help them push some social agenda. They are quite literally just there by and large to print money for investors and stakeholders.
NickC25 · 6h ago
It's partially due IMO to people wanting "more" from corporations, which I don't really understand. It's a corporation. It exists to make money for shareholders, and DEI is, at best, marketing. If it has a noticeable positive impact on making money, great. If it doesn't, why are folks so indignant when a corporation says "we're here to make money"? I don't want companies in my stock portfolio spending tons of money without return to placate a few people who really don't generate a congruent amount of money for the corporation.
If you work at a corporation that ditched DEI and are indignant, put your money where your mouth is and just fucking donate to causes that really address societal inequality. Or, work at a company that will match any donation you make to a registered 501c3 charity. I have a buddy that works at Goldman Sachs and know for a fact that any time he makes a donation under a certain $$ limit, Goldman matches it dollar-for-dollar. He's donated to a lot of great charities and Goldman has been all too happy to follow his donation. Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, no-kill animal rescue shelters, soup kitchens, etc - all great causes.
I spent a few months in early 2022 working at a company that had recently hired a DEI team. That team told me my team needed more diversity...which was odd, because my team consisted of me (a WASP, albeit one on the ADHD/Autism spectrum), a young jewish dude from the midwest fresh out of college, a mid-30s jewish guy, an older gay Bahamian guy, 2 hispanic females, a hispanic male, an Egyptian muslim guy and an older gentleman from Boston who was of Irish descent. What were we missing?
southernplaces7 · 4h ago
>What were we missing?
What, no Congolese lepers and Tibetan monks? Terrible diversity failure.
akimbostrawman · 7h ago
DEI was just marketing initally but it has become much more with the whole financial and investment sector using ESG scoring to push there agenda.
Jcampuzano2 · 7h ago
I wouldn't be surprised given changes in political environment recently if there started to be less of a focus on ESG scoring, but only time will tell.
slowmovintarget · 5h ago
Consultants gonna con...sult
This became another extractive huckster industry, attempting to wear the cloak of virtue.
However, I don't understand what DEI programs inside a company post hiring are supposed to "DO" and I think a lot of expectations around them start to very quickly expose some absurdities and amorphous nature of the idea surrounding internal private company DEI programs.
In the end private companies can't undo racism, they can't undo the past, that's a human problem that private companies whose job it is to make money just aren't equipped to address in a way that would satisfy folks concerned with other social problems.
For Shopify:
>Wavering internal support turned into concrete action in recent months when entire teams dedicated to helping Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs were laid off.
Is that even helpful? Is Shopify the right choice for Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs? Shopify is just a product. Shopify isn't a charity, they're not necessarily going to produce a positive outcome for every customer ... so emphasizing customers among a minority, is that a net positive for sure?
That's the weird aspect I wonder about DEI and external efforts.
Internally, it feels like a private company having resource groups for specific minorities again runs into a similar issue where that's not the company's motivation, or even competency ...
I think private companies can help, but their reach is very limited and larger social problems are just not theirs to solve and they're the wrong people / not equipped to do it.
A company doing that isn't trying to solve the underlying issue. That is indeed, as you noted, probably something they cannot do and others are better equipped to handle it.
For instance suppose you find out that many women with young children are not coming to your business because they have no one to look after the kids while the mother is there. You might add a supervised playroom so the mothers can bring the kids and leave them in the playroom.
This doesn't come anywhere near solving the underlying issue of daycare being too expensive for many parents but it could increase your business and make the lives of those mothers tangibly better.
I find it fascinating and frustrating that the taboo around examining DEI critically was so strong it took an autocrat to break it.
I think DEI most places was pretty light / inconsequential… but you only hear about the extreme cases because that’s more interesting.
- Men would create a hostile environment for women, I worked in a couple of companies which were 85%+ men, any new hire that was a woman suffered some kind of harassment, over or covert ("locker room talk" bullshit). This constantly pushed women out.
- Diversity of ethnicities/nationalities brought a lot of different perspectives, having different cultures working together always helped teams I worked at to consider points of view that would only have surfaced later. Even ways of working that would cross-pollinate, like living a different culture would make you adopt practices that you think are improvements over yours.
- Inclusion of people with disabilities, in 2005 I would never imagine the company I was working for to hire a blind person, there was an extreme bias they wouldn't be able to do the work. Nowadays I've worked with a few blind people, a few with reduced mobility that didn't even use a keyboard for typing, accommodations were needed but nothing that actually impacted work while improving their lives tremendously. Who would be caring about doing this effort if DEI didn't become a thing?
I find it fascinating how the USA can go to either extreme so quickly, I do understand why it might have become such an annoyance to people opposed to it, feels like activism is so overboard that ended up being detrimental to the cause. I don't work in the USA so I really don't feel this need to push against any of the actions I've experienced in my life, at all points it actually helped people with minimal impact to myself while also helping me to realise biases and work on them, and I feel that's the actual societal change that DEI initiatives helps with: de-estranging others that are not 100% similar to you.
I don't think your theory makes much sense.
https://archive.is/1khJw
> Store-risk metrics include average store compensation, average total store sales, and a "diversity index" that represents the racial and ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower diversity
Nearly all top tech companies pushed DEI, and nearly all of them were found to be involved in anti worker activities in the past.
On top of that, you can find many books about how diverse democracies fail - here’s one from obamas reading list: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Experiment-Diverse-Democracies-...
Additionally, here’s a quote from Aristotle on diversity: “ And it is a mark of a tyrant to have men of foreign extraction rather than citizens as guests at table and companions, feeling that citizens are hostile but strangers make no claim against him”.
Adding racial diversity is a tried and true tactic over millennia to allow a small group to rule over a larger. It prevents the populace from organizing and keeps them divided. It’s no coincidence the billionaires who are overseeing the ever increasing wealth gap have pushed “diversity is our strength” and convinced a large portion of the population to defend this position.
So even before disparate impact became a legal threat to corporations, executives were feeling the pressure to comply with whatever the current expectations were on the matter.
[1] https://www.rainbowpush.org/push
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gq7le0-XAAANHXX?format=png&name=...
It is and always has been just a way to gain favor with those who value DEI, almost no company actually cares about it outside gaining brownie points with consumers/users who value DEI and secondary potentially attracting top talent who happen to value DEI themselves. But if DEI programs were never a thing in the first place and they really are top talent the company would have valued them either way.
In my opinion DEI is moreso a way to prop up those who are not actually top talent but think they deserve to be. The reality though, is if you actually were you would not need a DEI program to get hired. Plenty of people from diverse backgrounds succeeded and will continue to succeed despite DEI programs.
I do not think DEI completely bad personally, I just do not believe it accomplishes the goals it claims to - which seem to always include increasing revenue and profits from getting other perspectives. But the reality is most companies became successful despite not having these other perspectives and before they adhered to DEI in the first place. I've never seen or heard of implementing a DEI plan actually having a real ROI outside of marketing. In almost all cases it is probably a money sink outside of being a marketing buzzword.
All this said as someone who would probably fall into the background of somebody who DEI would claim to support as someone from a Latino background.
It's a private company that exists to make money, of course anything they announce publicly / is there to make them look good.
That's not bad, that's just understanding the nature of these organizations.
If you work at a corporation that ditched DEI and are indignant, put your money where your mouth is and just fucking donate to causes that really address societal inequality. Or, work at a company that will match any donation you make to a registered 501c3 charity. I have a buddy that works at Goldman Sachs and know for a fact that any time he makes a donation under a certain $$ limit, Goldman matches it dollar-for-dollar. He's donated to a lot of great charities and Goldman has been all too happy to follow his donation. Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, no-kill animal rescue shelters, soup kitchens, etc - all great causes.
I spent a few months in early 2022 working at a company that had recently hired a DEI team. That team told me my team needed more diversity...which was odd, because my team consisted of me (a WASP, albeit one on the ADHD/Autism spectrum), a young jewish dude from the midwest fresh out of college, a mid-30s jewish guy, an older gay Bahamian guy, 2 hispanic females, a hispanic male, an Egyptian muslim guy and an older gentleman from Boston who was of Irish descent. What were we missing?
What, no Congolese lepers and Tibetan monks? Terrible diversity failure.
This became another extractive huckster industry, attempting to wear the cloak of virtue.