Split Thread DEI in the US

[catsmate]

Take it up with the NY Times' classical music critic, he's the one who pointed it didn't result in racial diversity. And there is at least an argument that the increasing representation of women in symphonies just reflects the increasing representation of women elsewhere in society, like law firms and executive suites.

I find it interesting that you seem to support quotas.
But perhaps you could read one of the numerous rebuttals of Tommasini's ideas?

 

[Darat]

Indeed, the classical music critic for the New York Times opined that while the blind audition process had resulted in increased representation by women in orchestra, it did not appear to be working for minorities, and so he recommended scrapping it:

That's because it was trying to tackle a symptom rather than the root cause.

We have something similar in the UK, once again our actors are being drawn from the comfortable class hardly any from the working class, if you consider that a problem it isn't a problem that can be solved at the audition stage, the problem is further back. And we do see the same issue in regards to who learns a musical instrument in the UK, access when young is not equal which means when you are auditioning adults you will find most are from wealthier families who could afford the instrument and additional tutoring.

 

[Darat]

Blind auditions make the hiring decisions based solely on musicality. The fact that this did not result in a more racially diverse symphony became a reason to object to blind auditions and seek racial consideration. This is the definition of rejecting a purely quality based system in favor of a system which has a race based component.

No it isn't. It can't fix a past problem.

 

[d4m10n]

One article by one reporter from the NY times interviewing one person, who expresses an opinion that is obviously biased towards the privileged, and this is now mainstream?

Where would you look for mainstream pro-DEI opinions on the topic of blind auditions or any other process based on merit-in-the-moment, such as standardized entry exams?

Classical music is not a job you can just decide you want to try.

An indisputable fact which might well be used in support of more affirmative action programs in this field by DEI advocates who are dissatisfied with gender diversity alone.

 

[wareyin]

Pre-screening had a requirement of a minimum of a Bachelors in some STEM field or relevant work experience from cleanroom R&D. It had absolutely no relevance to the job at hand but it was there, normal candidate pool of CVs that ended up to my table was like 50% Masters/PhDs, 35% Bachelors and rest with "enough work experience"

We routinely bypassed recruits with higher credentials (i.e Masters or PhD vs Bachelors) to fill out our diversity target. Getting a CV from a woman was just so rare we actually ended up recruiting some with nurses papers. As said the work was not super complex and as R&D goes, you'll never find people the exact experience with the tools and processes used.

Wait, you "routinely" bypassed recruits with credentials you say had absolutely no relevance to the job? Bypassing a PhD for a "knew English and had a pulse" level job is common sense. Hiring vastly overqualified people for an entry level job is generally avoided because they are a massive flight risk. They will quit the moment something that fits their actual qualifications and pays better comes along.

It is also worth noting that requiring a STEM degree for a job that does not actually need it is exactly the kind of arbitrary barrier that skews an applicant pool. STEM fields are still heavily male dominated, so by setting that unnecessary requirement, companies are often creating their own "lack of female applicants" problem from the very start.

When you looked at nurses or people with relevant work experience instead of just STEM degrees, you were not lowering standards. You were just removing a gatekeeping mechanism that was keeping qualified women out of the pool. The fact that you still only reached 10 percent shows just how much that original, unnecessary requirement was tilting the scales in favor of men.

 

[Blank]

Wait, you "routinely" bypassed recruits with credentials you say had absolutely no relevance to the job?

The pre-screening on a degree was from corporate policy. Requirement for the post was deemed to be a degree of 240 EHTS credits (=Bachelors), STEM area (Bsc. Eng or similar) but the education is organized a bit differently here so it is probably not comparable to US STEM fields. Pretty much just took out some Bachelor of Arts studies. Nurses for example got under STEM field.

Hiring vastly overqualified people for an entry level job is generally avoided because they are a massive flight risk. They will quit the moment something that fits their actual qualifications and pays better comes along.

Bigger turnover factor was the term limit on the employment. Corporate had a 1,5y policy in use so any hiring could only work 1,5 years with us. Job market situation is/was not such that people would leave or find other jobs with similar salaries easily. Sure some did, but that was not a big risk. I think we had to let more people go because the job was not something they could do (uninterrupted 5-shifts and night work just doesn't suit everyone)

STEM fields are still heavily male dominated, so by setting that unnecessary requirement, companies are often creating their own "lack of female applicants" problem from the very start.

Road to hell and all that. In the end we ended up hiring less qualified people because of their gender, that is the bottom line. Routinely passed on the "best" candidate for someone who would fill the team diversity better. Altho with the nature of the work, the qualifications didn't matter that much. Attitude and learning capability was way more important and that was really difficult to determine, but some people were just really good at interviews but limited openings meant that they never got a shot.

When you looked at nurses or people with relevant work experience instead of just STEM degrees, you were not lowering standards. You were just removing a gatekeeping mechanism that was keeping qualified women out of the pool.

As said.. Nurses filled the educational requirements. Also ended up really good at the job, since they were used to high pressure multitasking and different shifts, but we rarely got any applications from women. Probably the larger factor in this was working hours/temporary structure/somewhat manual and physical tasks that were probably thought to be involved, even tho most of the work was really light and not physically demanding.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Well, for a start, see if the company has DEI hiring. Then there'd be a good chance it discriminates based on race and sex.

Let's say DEI did not exist, how do you ensure there is no discrimination of protected classes in hiring practices? So far, you haven't described any policy. You've only stated a goal, which is to eliminate such discrimination.

 

[wareyin]

The pre-screening on a degree was from corporate policy. Requirement for the post was deemed to be a degree of 240 EHTS credits (=Bachelors), STEM area (Bsc. Eng or similar) but the education is organized a bit differently here so it is probably not comparable to US STEM fields. Pretty much just took out some Bachelor of Arts studies. Nurses for example got under STEM field.


Bigger turnover factor was the term limit on the employment. Corporate had a 1,5y policy in use so any hiring could only work 1,5 years with us. Job market situation is/was not such that people would leave or find other jobs with similar salaries easily. Sure some did, but that was not a big risk. I think we had to let more people go because the job was not something they could do (uninterrupted 5-shifts and night work just doesn't suit everyone)



Road to hell and all that. In the end we ended up hiring less qualified people because of their gender, that is the bottom line. Routinely passed on the "best" candidate for someone who would fill the team diversity better. Altho with the nature of the work, the qualifications didn't matter that much. Attitude and learning capability was way more important and that was really difficult to determine, but some people were just really good at interviews but limited openings meant that they never got a shot.



As said.. Nurses filled the educational requirements. Also ended up really good at the job, since they were used to high pressure multitasking and different shifts, but we rarely got any applications from women. Probably the larger factor in this was working hours/temporary structure/somewhat manual and physical tasks that were probably thought to be involved, even tho most of the work was really light and not physically demanding.

You are presenting a bit of a contradiction here. You say you hired "less qualified" people because of their gender, but then you immediately say those same people ended up being "really good at the job" because they were used to high pressure and shift work.

In the real world, being really good at the job is the definition of being qualified.

It sounds like your "diversity target" actually forced you to stop relying on an arbitrary degree requirement that you admitted was irrelevant. By looking at nurses instead of just STEM graduates, you found people whose actual life experience made them a better fit for a high pressure cleanroom environment.

 

[Blank]

You are presenting a bit of a contradiction here. You say you hired "less qualified" people because of their gender, but then you immediately say those same people ended up being "really good at the job" because they were used to high pressure and shift work.

It's not like production is a super high achievement work environment. Really good just means things moved along and nothing broke down.

In the real world, being really good at the job is the definition of being qualified.

In the world of regular work.. Really good means that stuff runs along predictably and on schedule, nothing else. Extremely good would be breaking production quotas with high quality and low yield losses, but that was usually more dictated by tools.

It sounds like your "diversity target" actually forced you to stop relying on an arbitrary degree requirement that you admitted was irrelevant. By looking at nurses instead of just STEM graduates, you found people whose actual life experience made them a better fit for a high pressure cleanroom environment.

No. How our recruitment would usually go is as follows. A team lead with an opening checked up HR db and checked CVs there and looked for whatever was needed to meet the team leads quarterly bonus target. CVs that didn't match the gender/nationality profile needed just got skipped. Then they picked a couple and asked HR to book technical interviews and picked one of them. Not that the gender/nationality was known, but you can guess it pretty well from the name/university or school they studied etc.

No one had time to go thru all the CVs in db for filling a position, not to mention interviewing. It was a revolving door anyway with the 18 month rule in place so every single recruitment was a massive time sink with having to train the new employee and all that.

If several teams had several openings (mass recruiting), we would pick and interview several candidates and each TL would score them on expected competency. After that the most suitable ones got selected, not necessarily the best. I was there in a time when job markets were really rolling, so majority of applicants were immigrants and usually from India/Bangladesh, so the teams always had too many men from that region - thus we basically stopped recruiting them even if they would have been great fits.

 

[gabeygoat]

Costco is in a unique position. It's king of the hill in the warehouse business. It can do these virtue signaling things because it's already a billion dollar company that's cornered the market. The same with the tech companies that said the same thing when there was lots of money to pay the tithe. But when those companies were forced to look at the bottom line, those diversity initiatives were gone.

It hasn't cornered the market, but does significantly out perfrom Sam's Club (owned by walmart). Maybe for good reasons.

 

[wareyin]

It's not like production is a super high achievement work environment. Really good just means things moved along and nothing broke down.



In the world of regular work.. Really good means that stuff runs along predictably and on schedule, nothing else. Extremely good would be breaking production quotas with high quality and low yield losses, but that was usually more dictated by tools.



No. How our recruitment would usually go is as follows. A team lead with an opening checked up HR db and checked CVs there and looked for whatever was needed to meet the team leads quarterly bonus target. CVs that didn't match the gender/nationality profile needed just got skipped. Then they picked a couple and asked HR to book technical interviews and picked one of them. Not that the gender/nationality was known, but you can guess it pretty well from the name/university or school they studied etc.

No one had time to go thru all the CVs in db for filling a position, not to mention interviewing. It was a revolving door anyway with the 18 month rule in place so every single recruitment was a massive time sink with having to train the new employee and all that.

If several teams had several openings (mass recruiting), we would pick and interview several candidates and each TL would score them on expected competency. After that the most suitable ones got selected, not necessarily the best. I was there in a time when job markets were really rolling, so majority of applicants were immigrants and usually from India/Bangladesh, so the teams always had too many men from that region - thus we basically stopped recruiting them even if they would have been great fits.

It sounds like the 18 month "revolving door" policy was a much bigger drain on your efficiency than any diversity target. You are describing a massive time sink caused by a corporate rule that forced you to fire and retrain people regardless of how well they did the job. This seems like a common way for companies in the ECTS system to avoid the long term commitment of permanent contracts, but it clearly hurt your production consistency.

You also keep using the word "best" for a role that you previously described as requiring English and a pulse. If a person does the job so that things run along predictably and on schedule, they are a top tier candidate. There is no higher metric for that kind of production work. If a PhD or a Masters student does not make the line run any better than a nurse does, then they are not "better" for that specific role. In fact, as you previously said, the nurse is likely the better fit for the actual environment.

Finally, you admit that you were guessing people's nationality and gender based on their names to skip their resumes. That is exactly the kind of biased, "gut feeling" hiring that DEI is designed to prevent. It seems your company was not practicing DEI to find the best talent. They were just swapping one form of arbitrary gatekeeping for another to chase a quarterly bonus.

 

[arthwollipot]

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

Scalzi has his head screwed on right.

 

[Brainster]

I find it interesting that you seem to support quotas.
But perhaps you could read one of the numerous rebuttals of Tommasini's ideas?

I don't agree with quotas, I was responding to Arth's rather overly optimistic take:

Diversity means that whoever is qualified gets the job. The "decision" to recruit someone is made without reference to the candidates race, gender, religion, sexuality or anything else but their qualification. Diversity comes naturally when you stop actively trying to make it exclusive.

This is clearly a case where "whoever is qualified gets the job" did not result in racial diversity, and so it is suggested that the decision to recruit someone should be made with reference to the candidate's demographics.

I don't really find Tommasini's argument compelling. First it was written in 2020 shortly after the George Floyd protests as this makes clear:

But in sticking so stubbornly to the practice, unions may be hurting themselves, their orchestras and their art form. Hanging on to a system that has impeded diversity is particularly conspicuous at a moment when the country has been galvanized by revulsion to police brutality against Black Americans — and when orchestras, largely shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic, are brainstorming both how to be more relevant to their communities and how to redress racial inequities among their personnel when they re-emerge.

Second I doubt this:

A typical orchestral audition might end up attracting dozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.

 

[arthwollipot]

This is clearly a case where "whoever is qualified gets the job" did not result in racial diversity, and so it is suggested that the decision to recruit someone should be made with reference to the candidate's demographics.

This is why DEI and Affirmative Action are different subjects despite the fact that some on the right falsely conflate the two and claim that the one always and necessarily implies the other.

 

[d4m10n]

This is why DEI and Affirmative Action are different subjects despite the fact that some on the right falsely conflate the two…

DEI^WP on Wikipedia has apparently been infiltrated by right-wingers.

ETA: OMG the right-wingers got to affirmative action as well. Readers will come to believe that AA is actually one of the tools in the DEI toolbox!

 

[Brainster]

This is why DEI and Affirmative Action are different subjects despite the fact that some on the right falsely conflate the two and claim that the one always and necessarily implies the other.

Do you think the NY Philharmonic passes muster on the DEI front with one black musician out of 108? Would you say changes needed to be made, or "Nope, they are fine since they are hiring whoever is qualified."

 

[arthwollipot]

Readers will come to believe that AA is actually one of the tools in the DEI toolbox!

I didn't say it wasn't. Only that right-wingers falsely characterise DEI as always and necessarily requiring Affirmative Action. That DEI can't exist without AA. Even that AA is the only tool in the DEI toolbox.

This, I think, is the source of the persistent straw argument that diversity necessitates discrimination. This argument comes in two parts. The first part is framing Affirmative Action as discrimination. The second part is characterising diversity as requiring AA in order to exist. Neither part is true, and the whole argument is therefore fallacious.

Do you think the NY Philharmonic passes muster on the DEI front with one black musician out of 108? Would you say changes needed to be made, or "Nope, they are fine since they are hiring whoever is qualified."

I would say that whatever changes need to me made - and some changes need to be made - those changes would likely not be made on the audition stage.

I would also suggest looking at the gender distribution of the NYP. Is that a success story for diversity? I say it is.

 

[d4m10n]

Even that AA is the only tool in the DEI toolbox.

We can agree that this is a serious mischaracterization of DEI.

…right-wingers falsely characterise DEI as always and necessarily requiring Affirmative Action.

Which prominent proponents of DEI have promoted frameworks which leave out affirmative action to boost minority inclusion? I'm genuinely curious to know whom you've been reading on this stuff because I've yet to find a DEI expert who would neglect to pack this particular tool.

 

[Trausti]

Let's say DEI did not exist, how do you ensure there is no discrimination of protected classes in hiring practices? So far, you haven't described any policy. You've only stated a goal, which is to eliminate such discrimination.

Lawyers.

 

[catsmate]

Scalzi has his head screwed on right.

Indeed he's an excellent commentator.