Split Thread Diversity Equity and Inclusion and merit in employment etc

angrysoba said:
Thank you. It's nice to actually have some genuine insight as well as evidence of what firefighters need to be able to do. This is much more useful than a priori armchair surmising of what people on the internet think firefighters should be able to do.
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I think some posters may have been looking at too many firefighter calendars…
 
TomB said:
All firefighter candidates must pass the CPAT test. It's basically an obstacle course while carrying weights and wearing a weighted vest made up of activities meant to simulate the physical needs of the job. The parameters and criteria are the same for all candidates. Here is the test requirement described for Los Angeles.
https://personnel.lacity.gov/exams/FirefighterCPATInformation.pdf
For the record, I was somewhat surprised. I expected to see different weights or time requirements for women.
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It would be interesting to see pass rates by sex, right? No, because they passed.
 
Apple pushes back on call to end diversity programme

Apple's board has asked its investors to vote against a proposal to end its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programmes.

It comes after a conservative group, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), called on the technology giant to abolish its DEI policies, saying they expose firms to "litigation, reputational and financial risks
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Full article

www.bbc.co.uk

Apple board pushes against diversity rollback call

The tech giant has asked investors to reject a proposal from a conservative group to end its DEI policies.
www.bbc.co.uk

".
 
bruto said:
Aside from the question of whether that's an apt comparison regarding who wants to do what, and how opportunity works in the world, I think you may have skipped over the second part of my question. It does not appear that firefighters, on average, are paid quite the same as doctors.
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I don't know what you think your point is. Firefighters don't make as much money as doctors... therefore we should loosen the physical requirements associated with being a firefighter so that more people who want to be firefighters can do so, regardless of whether they can actually do the job of saving people from dying in a fire?
 
Brainster said:
It would be interesting to see pass rates by sex, right? No, because they passed.
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I don't have a link, but one source I read when I was looking that up was that the passing rate was fairly similar: 70% for females and 75% for males.
But that in itself means little because the vast majority of candidates are male. People know about (and prepare for) this test. People of either sex who cannot pass generally filter themselves out before taking it. It's not free, so if you don't think you can pass, you don't try.

By the way, what I read was that you have to have passed the test before you reach any other consideration stages (interview, etc.) Possibly before actually submitting an application.

ETA: I also recall reading that nationwide, about 95% of firefighters are male. I think that's consistent with the expectation of who is able to pass the test.
 
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Emily's Cat said:
Look, I get the desire to just be snippy with someone you feel you're not making headway with... but in this case, you really aren't being clear at all.

Genuinely... you appear to have made the assertion that blind auditions didn't address the damage done to orchestras from discrimination, and thus to support the elimination of blind auditions in order to facilitate a more "hands-on" way of addressing discrimination. But at the same time, you seem to acknowledge that blind auditions resulted in a higher portion of female musicians being hired... and that is clearly addressing the issue of discrimination.

Your arguments seem to be contradictory on the surface. Perhaps you have something more nuanced in mind, but you're not communicating it well at all.

So instead of just handwaving it away and insisting that your interlocutor is just being difficult, how about you try to explain your position better?
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When does one stop feeding trolls, though? Much of the obfuscation is directly due to Zig choosing to act exceedingly badly, after all. From the start, when he chose to throw out a point that I had made and addressed right after what he quoted of what I said as if I hadn't and that it totally contradicted what I said, it was apparent that he had little interest in addressing what was actually said. His repeated refusal to understand the English language in how he chose to argue further solidified this. His history of doing similar counts against him, as well. Had he not been actively obfuscating, well... you would be very unlikely to even be asking.

First, that point that I made and addressed at the start that was in my response to you, no less, and that Zig utterly ignored all along? To restate, again, I specifically said that I do approve of the blind auditions as a measure to address the issue and do not approve of later calls to eliminate them in favor of a more heavy-handed approach to create some arbitrary final composition. Zig decided to both utterly ignore the latter and to actively seek to accuse me of supporting racial discrimination, despite his claim being in direct opposition to what I had actually said. I saw little point in reiterating what he had so blatantly refused to acknowledge in the first place and moved on to pointing out a couple fundamental problems in his attempted argument. Naturally, he handled what I said with as much honesty as he had engaged with all along and you seem to have fallen for his distortion.

To clarify an example of a nuance that should have been perfectly clear from what I actually said, the damage done was not solely to the orchestra. Actually rectifying the damage already done, whether it be to the orchestra, the individuals actually harmed, or to the groups harmed is distinctly different than correcting course and moving forward in a manner that doesn't continue to do that damage. The latter, I'm certainly in support of. The former? That's quite the can of worms that would be extremely difficult to actually achieve a result that would meaningfully be considered just.

Emily's Cat said:
Why the holy hell is it always self-styled progressives who feel entitled to toss out racial epithets and insulting labels with abandon?
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I seem to have an impression of Roger making virtually the same complaints as he bashed people that he claimed were Progressives who disagreed with him.

theprestige said:
So what exactly is the economic argument for DEI programs? Does it improve the recruitment and retention of top talent? Does it increase productivity? Lower costs? Improve customer satisfaction? Contribute to better regulatory compliance?

It's a broad, hand-wavy claim. Every time we try to nail it down, we get told "that's not the claim". So what is the claim @bruto? And why should we accept it?
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Every time? How about this somewhat general and limited assessment -

There are two major areas that DEI policy, as businesses actually practice it, can meaningfully address. Internally and externally. There's some overlap, of course, because that's an arbitrary separation, but it's good enough to work with. Internally, it's how it affects employees. Externally, it's largely the PR effects. There's overlap when it comes to the PR effects on employee matters and sales, of course, but moving on.

As linked to by me before, the most common reasons for DEI in that survey, worldwide, are about employee satisfaction. It was only about 2/3 of the total, of course, so it's not even remotely a universal thing. It's no large stretch to make some reasonably safe assumptions about there being a very real connection between the diversity in both the potential and actual pools of employees and whether DEI would increase overall employee satisfaction. I, at least, certainly wouldn't expect DEI to benefit all companies on this front, depending on the specifics there. For businesses with a larger range of business locations, though, it makes more sense to lean harder into measures to reduce internal friction of all kinds, whatever the label slapped onto such efforts may be. That, in particular, may well be the most major factor in that correlation between companies with higher profits and DEI efforts. It's not really some grand leap to suggest that businesses successful enough to succeed worldwide, which measures to reduce internal frictions of all kinds are quite relevant to, are likely to generally outperform those that aren't. Of some note, the second most common reason was that DEI played a notable role in employees actually getting fair pay. Honestly, that alone virtually guarantees that the right-wing propaganda network would go insane in opposition to DEI, given its nature, and so it has.

Externally, I think I'll poke at two factors related to PR effects briefly. Customers and legal dangers. For the former, creating cause to claim that "we're good people" is generally a positive thing for sales. A number of companies have rather blatantly tried to exploit DEI for this purpose. Many succeeded, at least temporarily, at last check, though some did not. At last check, the ones that did not were largely the ones reliant on customer bases swayed heavily by right-wing media as they quite predictably leaned hard into attacking DEI. The broader effects of that assault are fairly certainly ongoing, either way, as it continues. As for legal dangers, once more, the rise in business DEI was largely a result of trying to take measures that would reduce or avoid legal expenses. Whatever theories were invoked and how effective they may or may not be is of little immediate relevance compared to that bottom line. As right-wing groups have increased their litigation against DEI lately, the calculations about how best to reduce or avoid legal expenses have naturally been altered.

To poke at the overlap momentarily, seriously, is there any good reason to doubt that understanding the intended customer base intimately is a distinct benefit to making effective sales pitches?

With all that said, you seem to be complaining about broad brushes while trying to demand that especially broad brushes be employed to answer, rather than accepting that there are a number of factors that quite meaningfully affect what effect it even can actually have on a particular company and whether the effects would be positive or negative.
 
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arthwollipot said:
When the King names his son as his designated successor you'll be eating those words.
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*IF* Trump magically overturns the entire country, all of the constitutionalists, and the entirety of the military and police forces of the US in order to proclaim themselves king, I'll happily eat a plate of crow.

Until that time, it's disinformation. It's fearmongering and inciteful.
 
If we're in the Trump thread, then I have a prediction to make. I think of the Trump family as being similar to the Roy family in Succession. Some of that is probably not exactly accidental, but they were based more on the Murdochs than the Trumps. The kids will be squabbling over who gets what when the patriach dies, but really they are not that skilled and definintely don't have the same charisma (*charisma is a weird thing, of course because plenty of people claim Donald Trump has none, yet he seems to have a huge hold over a lot of people and if that's not charisma, I don't know what is). When the old man is gone, Junior will be treated as seriously as people treat Kendall Roy. He'll almost certainly be outmaneouvred by smarter people with more charisma and influence.

Anyway, back to DEI, ha! Look at the guys Trump is picking for his cabinet. I mean he has a truly diverse collection of nutjobs. Not just someone with NO qualifications for being in charge of health, Donald Trump has chosen a former heroin addict and person AGAINST anything remotely related to healthcare to be in charge of HHS. That is DEI in action!

And who has he chosen to be in charge of intelligence? A Russian spy! Wow! DEI!

And who is in charge of the military? A drunken Fox News TV and likely criminal.

It's nice that Donny T is giving these reprobates a shot at big jobs. Proving that you don't need to have qualifications, experience or principles to work for the big man.
 
angrysoba said:
Anyway, back to DEI, ha! Look at the guys Trump is picking for his cabinet. I mean he has a truly diverse collection of nutjobs. Not just someone with NO qualifications for being in charge of health, Donald Trump has chosen a former heroin addict and person AGAINST anything remotely related to healthcare to be in charge of HHS. That is DEI in action!
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Heh, just came here to mention that the surest sign DEI is a dead letter is that liberals are now referring to Pete Hegseth as a DEI hire.
 
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