Meta kills diversity programs, claiming DEI has become “too charged”

Meta claims it will find other ways to hire employees from different backgrounds.

See full article...

 

[Trentmoller]

Sitting here thinking about how much I miss forums. Like, yeah, they still exist in some places <gestures at here> but just as a general place to hang out and not be subjected to engagement algorithms and stuff? And have multiple depending on your interests? Yeah those were cool days.

Also thinking about how to keep in touch with people who only have Facebook. I don’t want to give my relatives my phone number because that can lead to some whacked out shit.

Know what's a better place to talk to people than Meta in basically every way? Metafilter.

 

[Resolute]

I'm sure there's plenty of locker room BS going on for women trying to get into tech but I think it has more to do with the fact that there are so few women who go into tech. Guys in an all male team tend to fall into kind of a frat boy type of social dynamic.

The engineering team I'm on has over 20 people, all male, mostly black (so being white, I'm definitely the odd man out). We would definitely give illegal preference to a female applicant if we ever got any who were qualified, but in over 20 years so far we've had a grand total of 1 female apply and she was not even close to qualified. If she had been, things might have gotten awkward for awhile since we'd almost certainly have to watch what we say more than we do now. There are some women on other technical teams that I work with pretty closely and have no issues with but they tend to have kind of a tomboy type of "just one of the guys" sort of attitude so they get along well with teams that usually range from about 80-100% male.

Even among the women I do collaborate with on a regular basis though, there is a lot less joking around than doing the same job with a male colleague. Some of it may just be an abundance of caution, but the general perception is that if I say the wrong thing to a guy he'll shrug it off and ignore it or tell me to F off. If I say the wrong thing to a woman I get to talk to HR. I'm sure that's not the case for plenty of women but it's not worth the risk. So I'm all business with women. I'm much more casual with guys.

I've heard the dynamic is similar for men going into fields dominated by women, like guys going into nursing being laughed at for working a traditionally feminine job, etc. I don't work in health care though so I don't know how true that is.

The amount of misogyny you lace this post with is off the charts. Even with that pathetic attempt at bOtH sIdEsing your issues in your final paragraph. "Yeah, I don't think women are qualified for my group... but also, let me tell you about how bad women are in industries they form a majority in."

I am not even a little bit surprised women don't want to work with or be around you.

 

[mpfaff]

Meta and other large companies, and even Trump & co, doesn't really fit into the category of fascism.

One central theme under fascism is a strong, almost totalitarian, central state. Meta and others wants less regulation, less taxes and less government so they can do what they wan without government interference.

They don't want less regulation, they want regulation favorable to them. Zuckerberg is more than happy to see TikTok banned, Musk really doesn't want Chinese electric cars allowed in American markets. They would have no problem with federal troops going door to door looking for Mexicans and Guatemalans who didn't file the appropriate immigration paperwork, while throwing full support behind opening up the well compensated IT jobs to importing cheap foreign labor.

And Trump is pretty much your garden variety fascist. He openly praises dictators while dumping on our democratically elected allies, he doesn't run a collaborative government by any definition, he had protestors gassed so he could do a photo op and pretend to be Christian.

 

[SomeHandleThatStartsWithS]

Ten years, 486 comments. Anyone want to hazard a guess? Necro account with a stolen login, or sock puppet?

One that’s getting blocked.

 

[gsgrego]

I'm sure there's plenty of locker room BS going on for women trying to get into tech but I think it has more to do with the fact that there are so few women who go into tech. Guys in an all male team tend to fall into kind of a frat boy type of social dynamic.

The engineering team I'm on has over 20 people, all male, mostly black (so being white, I'm definitely the odd man out). We would definitely give illegal preference to a female applicant if we ever got any who were qualified, but in over 20 years so far we've had a grand total of 1 female apply and she was not even close to qualified. If she had been, things might have gotten awkward for awhile since we'd almost certainly have to watch what we say more than we do now. There are some women on other technical teams that I work with pretty closely and have no issues with but they tend to have kind of a tomboy type of "just one of the guys" sort of attitude so they get along well with teams that usually range from about 80-100% male.

Even among the women I do collaborate with on a regular basis though, there is a lot less joking around than doing the same job with a male colleague. Some of it may just be an abundance of caution, but the general perception is that if I say the wrong thing to a guy he'll shrug it off and ignore it or tell me to F off. If I say the wrong thing to a woman I get to talk to HR. I'm sure that's not the case for plenty of women but it's not worth the risk. So I'm all business with women. I'm much more casual with guys.

I've heard the dynamic is similar for men going into fields dominated by women, like guys going into nursing being laughed at for working a traditionally feminine job, etc. I don't work in health care though so I don't know how true that is.

10/10 the programming language you use was based on a programming language women created or inherited features from one.

It's always funny to me how people don't realize that early programming was dominated by computers, human computers, and only after it was viewed as a high paying job instead of menial labor did men push women out.

 

[SomeHandleThatStartsWithS]

The hiring process is too late to address the problem of the birth lottery though. By that point you're stuck with candidates who either do or do not have the required skills. Fixing the birth lottery problem would need to be done at something closer to elementary school age to make sure people have a more even starting condition.

Ironically, the people I know who are most adamantly against DEI are actually minorities. It must be horrible to actually be qualified and have to go through your entire career with everyone assuming you're useless. I had an American Indian friend who worked on a team where literally everyone on the team was a DEI hire and he was the only person who wasn't entirely useless. He eventually got fed up and quit and they had to just disband the entire team because they could no longer function when the only person with any skills quit.

I'm a white guy so I've never been a DEI hire, but I do actually have a similar experience from early in my career. I interviewed for and was offered a technical position that I was qualified for and they pulled a bait and switch on me. Just before I started they said, oh by the way we actually need you to work on THIS team for awhile first and manage this other equipment until we finish decommissioning it. I was nervous about it but I figured I already know everyone on the team so they should be able to train me in a reasonable amount of time.

To my surprise though, I showed up on day 1 to find that they had fired the entire team just before I started. So here I am replacing a team of 5 people and managing equipment I had no experience with without any training. I spent 6 months essentially doing my job by googling how the F do I do XYZ, to find vendor documentation on how to do a job I was clearly unqualified for. I eventually moved into the position I was actually hired for and qualified for but I would not have wished that prior experience on anyone.

Did you… did you just “I’ve got a black/gay/trans friend”???

 

[SunnyD]

This is all about shielding Meta from Trump's crosshairs. Billionaire dick sucking. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

What gets me is seeing how early all this training starts. I, a female, worked at a tech company when I was in college and just graduated. The amount of sexist behavior and unbalanced pay and benefits was astonishing (but not surprising).

Now, I have a 10-year-old daughter who is being told by her 10-year-old male classmates that she isn't able to do math, basic engineering, or any of the sciences as well as them, even though her grades are higher than theirs in all those subjects and she's out-scored them in all the advanced testing done by the school district.

But the simple fact is that these white male 10-year-olds are already being groomed for excelling in the corporate structure because despite every metric proving to them that a female is more qualified in different areas than they are, they are choosing to ignore all those empirical facts in favor of biases handed to them by popular society.

So, as you say, those in charge of hiring are looking for candidates based off their flawed, innate biases. And those biases start at a disgustingly young age--meaning there are decades of ingrained neural pathways formed from this conditioning. Without being forced otherwise, there is no reason for people to ignore their learnt biases and to look at actual, factual qualifications.

If it helps your morale at all, I work in the tech side of an extremely well-known and regarded company and I am the only male on my team, and only half the team is white. We're highly effective, we all communicate well, and we're tightly-knit.

There's good out there.

 

[barich]

Lol, and this response proves my point.

What point would that be, exactly?

 

[yurdle]

The problem with your idea is that the reality is people will consider those things with inherent bias.

That's one problem among many. The same people that complain about hiring minorities are the ones complaining that minorities don't 'work.' Also, they usually act like they earned being white, while interestingly arguing that being white had nothing to do with their station in life.

I'm done listing things -- I'm already getting sad thinking of friends that were normal 25 years ago, and have become the idiots I'm referring to above.

 

[graylshaped]

I was expecting the billionaire class to fall in line, but it's honestly kind of scary just how quickly they're doing it.

Zuck didn't fall in line. He has stopped pretending he isn't who he is, expecting his "dumb fuck" end users not to care.

 

[Litazia]

I'm sure there's plenty of locker room BS going on for women trying to get into tech but I think it has more to do with the fact that there are so few women who go into tech. Guys in an all male team tend to fall into kind of a frat boy type of social dynamic.

Do you ever think about why that is? (Hint: it's not biological, but social)

Even among the women I do collaborate with on a regular basis though, there is a lot less joking around than doing the same job with a male colleague. Some of it may just be an abundance of caution, but the general perception is that if I say the wrong thing to a guy he'll shrug it off and ignore it or tell me to F off. If I say the wrong thing to a woman I get to talk to HR. I'm sure that's not the case for plenty of women but it's not worth the risk. So I'm all business with women. I'm much more casual with guys.

This tells me your "joking" consists of inappropriate for work topics. Why are you making inappropriate for work jokes at work? Regardless of your audience?

 

[Citizenkain]

The engineering team I'm on has over 20 people, all male, mostly black (so being white, I'm definitely the odd man out). We would definitely give illegal preference to a female applicant if we ever got any who were qualified, but in over 20 years so far we've had a grand total of 1 female apply and she was not even close to qualified. If she had been, things might have gotten awkward for awhile since we'd almost certainly have to watch what we say more than we do now. There are some women on other technical teams that I work with pretty closely and have no issues with but they tend to have kind of a tomboy type of "just one of the guys" sort of attitude so they get along well with teams that usually range from about 80-100% male.

Hahaha, you are the diversity hire. Explains so much, you are barely competent at your job, but they need a white guy around to keep from being sued.

 

[pnellesen]

I'll re-iterate what Aurich said elsewhere: make sure you are on at least one of those platforms, and make sure you are subscribed to Ars on it.

THAT is the only change we as a community can effect. If most of the subscribers and/or casual visitors to Ars go to BlueSky and subscribe there, these numbers can be taken to the board as proof that they should be just there and no longer associate with Nazi bars. As long as those numbers are off by an order of magnitude, what do you think will happen?

Be the change, my friends.

Thanks for that info - I just followed Ars on Bluesky. I somehow missed that they had moved there.

 

[johnnoi]

Mark, just so you know: no one looks good in orange lipstick.

Fuckerberg looks perfect with orange lipstick

 

[pnellesen]

Yeah, give it a few years, if not sooner.

Republicans control every branch of government now, and the Supreme Court has declared that Donald Trump is immune from any punishment for anything he does, ever. I think you misspelled the word "weeks"...

 

[Urist]

I really feel like "anytime I say the wrong thing I have to talk to HR!" falls under the same umbrella as "everyone I meet is an asshole!"

 

[johnnoi]

Perhaps you don't really need to keep in touch with as many people as you're now accustomed to. I don't use Facebook because I don't care what my classmates from twenty years ago are doing, what my friends cooked for dinner last night, or see photos of their kids doing this and that. I stay up to date with people who are currently an important part of my life. For the others, I find it really pleasant to sit down and catch up if I haven't seen them in a long time.

And what if they live on the other side of the planet?

 

[Resolute]

My second point was that while some of the complaints women have about harassment are surely justified, a lot of it is just the fact that they're treated with kid gloves by guys who don't want to have to deal with HR if they say the wrong thing. So they have nothing against women, they're fine with working with them, but they don't get the same sort of collaboration that men get because we have to be more guarded with women. I work directly with maybe a few hundred people on a day to day basis and of those few hundred people, exactly 2 are female. So yeah, they the get kid glove treatment just in case.

So here's the thing. I, like most of us on this site I suspect, work in a male dominated environment as well. But neither I, nor any of the other guys I work with, share this opinion as it relates to our few female co-workers. Want to know why? Because none of us are misogynistic enough to be making comments at work that could rise to the level of HR complaint. We treat the women in our group with the same respect that the men get. And, GASP, we all have a good working relationship with free flowing humour and collaboration.

You are sitting here blaming women for your attitude when it is your attitude that is what is causing you to feel this way. You are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of having to treat women with respect, and that is entirely what feeds your issue here: you know damn well that your "banter" leans towards being sexist.

 

[Litazia]

The engineering team I'm on has over 20 people, all male, mostly black (so being white, I'm definitely the odd man out). We would definitely give illegal preference to a female applicant if we ever got any who were qualified, but in over 20 years so far we've had a grand total of 1 female apply and she was not even close to qualified. If she had been, things might have gotten awkward for awhile since we'd almost certainly have to watch what we say more than we do now. There are some women on other technical teams that I work with pretty closely and have no issues with but they tend to have kind of a tomboy type of "just one of the guys" sort of attitude so they get along well with teams that usually range from about 80-100% male.

Oh dear lord, how did I miss this paragraph?

I have a question about the bolded: if she's qualified, how would you be giving illegal preference? Isn't your whole claim that DEI forces you to hire less qualified people? But here you are, saying that if she was qualified, you'd consider her, but it'd be illegal. What?? She's either qualified for the job or not. You certainly don't seem to have any problem not considering unqualified people.

Is it company policy not to hire women in the first place?
Is hiring a woman automatically "illegal?"
Do you think any woman who got a job in your field is only there because she's a woman?

Don't blame me for my interpretation, I'm only basing it on what you said.

 

[Bzored]

Billionaires, barely above pond scum.

 

[Resolute]

Oh dear lord, how did I miss this paragraph?

I have a question about the bolded: if she's qualified, how would you be giving illegal preference? Isn't your whole claim that DEI forces you to hire less qualified people? But here you are, saying that if she was qualified, you'd consider her, but it'd be illegal. What?? She's either qualified for the job or not. You certainly don't seem to have any problem not considering unqualified people.

Is it company policy not to hire women in the first place?
Is hiring a woman automatically "illegal?"
Do you think any woman who got a job in your field is only there because she's a woman?

Don't blame me for my interpretation, I'm only basing it on what you said.

I caught that comment too, but forgot to go back to it.

The answer, based on his post history in this thread, is that he does not feel a woman is capable of being qualified for his role. That comment marked out his inherent belief that he is superior because is a man.

 

[Citizenkain]

See this is the kind of comment that I have no problem laughing about but if I say something like that to the wrong person I get to talk to HR. Work gets pretty dull if I have to walk on eggshells with everyone I talk to. Pretty much nothing offends me, but that's not the case for a lot of people. If I have a project where I have to sit on a 6 hour troubleshooting call with someone, I'm going to request to work with the guy I can have a few laughs with rather than sit there in silence for 6 hours.

I bet most women just find you creepy then. Really filling in the blanks here for the rest of us.

 

[fractl]

The Washington Post would surely then run George Will, who rails against the Endangered Species Act (something Trump & Co will soon burn to the ground, with the helping hand of the Supreme Court if it ends up in their hat — likely as overkill as Trump already, in all caps, shouted that he's going to use executive power to give the biosphere away completely to anyone who can muster a paltry 1.5 billion or whatever the figure was). Will would react to this tale by suggesting that the only species that is endangered is the scholarly American conservative, and not solely due to DEI in HR departments.

Did anyone actually read his article pissing on Jimmy Carter, posted immediately after he died? It was titled something like Jimmy Carter — The Man Who Made Reagan Necessary. I couldn't be bothered. Even my morbid curiosity about how low Pulitzer winners can stoop ran out after his attack of the cave spiders piece.

Let's create a Nude Emperor's prize to award to all of the people, like George Will, who are making "strategic" insanity great again. My first nominee is Mark Zuckerberg. Or, perhaps we should name the prize after Dr. Leaded Gasoline (Midgley), a completely perfect encapsulation of the folly of so-called capitalism and its "profit."

This extremely poisonous compound that I know is extremely poisonous... Well... I'll just wash my hands in it to demonstrate its safety to the public and my safety to my corporate overlords (right along side the Ph.d from Harvard who said radium is absolutely safe for those girls to put into their mouths and the Johns Hopkins black lung expert who never found cases of black lung).

When those 25% of freshwater species go extinct, The George Wills of the world will have articles at the ready to try to jettison the remaining 75. As a gay person, I'm not feeling particularly fresh... a bit like the manatees in Florida after yet another run-in with showboating.

Midgley had found that tellurium, which is much less toxic than lead, also stopped engine knock. However, it had an odor and it was decided that the public (I mean the insane corporate overlords) would be better off if the poisoning could happen silently.

My Google News feed showed me a headline from the National Review after Carter's passing: Jimmy Carter was a terrible President and even worse former President. I'm sure my blood pressure shot up just reading that and I was only 7 when Carter was elected. No, I didn't read the article to see what vitriol the right was going to make up.

I can't say if Carter was a bad President, it seems like maybe there were circumstances beyond his control such as OPEC and Nixon completely abandoning the gold standard, but Carter worked very hard to help people after he was out of office. How many other former Presidents have done the same? Bush paints, BFD.

 

[Citizenkain]

You and I will be downvoted into oblivion, but you're not wrong.

HR: "I have a white guy and a transitioned black girl. The white guy knows their stuff and can help the business overall, and the other candidate will require several months of training and assistance. But I need to hire the other candidate because I have DEI metrics to hit"

This makes no sense.

Definitely a thing that happens in the fantasies of racists and other trash.

 

[Litazia]

What I meant is that if we got a qualified female applicant, she would be a guaranteed hire even if she was less qualified than all other applicants. That's the part that's illegal because it's a discriminatory quota. My team doesn't go so far as to fill quotas with people who have no skill at all though.

So let me understand this:
There are over twenty people on your team, and none of them are women. Hiring one women who's qualified, even if she "only" meets the minimum requirements for the job, is a discriminatory quota and illegal, when you don't have any women on your team in the first place.

This sounds more like you like your little boys' clubhouse more than people who can do the job.

Oh, I bet anything you'd be willing to hire a man with an equivalent resume to the hypothetical "illegal" "discriminatory quota" woman. Even if other people are more qualified. Men do be like that.

 

[abazigal]

Apple is producing Trump propaganda shows for Apple TV. Are you willing to give up your Apple products?

Genuinely curious - what shows are those?

 

[graylshaped]

You and I will be downvoted into oblivion, but you're not wrong.

HR: "I have a white guy and a transitioned black girl. The white guy knows their stuff and can help the business overall, and the other candidate will require several months of training and assistance. But I need to hire the other candidate because I have DEI metrics to hit"

This makes no sense.

Nor is it what happens except in anti-woke minds.

 

[123username]

Child labor laws have become too charged and bothersome... Solution: Ignore

Sexual harassment laws have become too charged..Solution: Ignore

Safe workplace environment regulations have become too charged..
Solution: Ignore

Democracy has become too charged...
Solution: Ignore

The fucking environment has become too charged...Solution: Ignore

Slavery has become too charged.. Solution: Ignore

The law has become too charged....Solution: Ignore

Mr. Zuckerberg, You have reached GOP station this is your final destination. please mind the door.

I'm not saying all of the above are true of meta (yet). I'm sure they will be in good time though.

It was just a few years ago that pictures of nursing mother etc were controversial now it's "team go Nazi."

What an spineless ass.

Where is Google when you need it with all the messaging services?
Time to dust off and spin up Google plus again.

Moving everything off of meta services ASAP.

 

[mpfaff]

So here's the thing. I, like most of us on this site I suspect, work in a male dominated environment as well. But neither I, nor any of the other guys I work with, share this opinion as it relates to our few female co-workers. Want to know why? Because none of us are misogynistic enough to be making comments at work that could rise to the level of HR complaint. We treat the women in our group with the same respect that the men get. And, GASP, we all have a good working relationship with free flowing humour and collaboration.

You are sitting here blaming women for your attitude when it is your attitude that is what is causing you to feel this way. You are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of having to treat women with respect, and that is entirely what feeds your issue here: you know damn well that your "banter" leans towards being sexist.

It all breaks down to knowing your coworkers and don't be a shithead. I know the ones I can be vulgar around and the ones I can't, and it's usually doesn't take that long to work it out. I was once pulled aside by a director when I was in office where she said "Hey, we have a big client coming in for an on-site tomorrow, can you not curse at your computer tomorrow afternoon?". I've also worked on teams where there were a couple people who clearly weren't comfortable with that kind of thing so it was on me to do my small part in not making work worse for them, and I've never noticed it to be a man or woman thing.

I've never been convinced by this "I can't say this around women because I'll get sent to HR" talk, unless the person lacks even the basic empathy most people have. But if you do screw up and make someone uncomfortable, the best thing is just to apologize unconditionally without trying to justify it, everyone usually moves along and you know what not to do.

 

[graylshaped]

I really feel like "anytime I say the wrong thing I have to talk to HR!" falls under the same umbrella as "everyone I meet is an asshole!"

To be fair, it's likely the people saying that probably struggled with grade school math and that common denominator thing.

 

[Marlor_AU]

I'm sure there's plenty of locker room BS going on for women trying to get into tech but I think it has more to do with the fact that there are so few women who go into tech.

I helped coordinate a software engineering degree programme in the early 2000s, and there were a reasonable number of women starting the degree at the time (~20%), but those numbers dropped off suddenly in the first two years, with 75% (or more) of female students transferring to other degrees.

We took this seriously, talking to the students about their reasons for transferring. A depressing number said that it was due to “unwanted attention“ from other students, “patronising behaviour” from colleagues, “creepy leering” in lectures, “not being taken seriously“ in group projects and so on. They felt uncomfortable and concluded that this wasn’t a safe and healthy industry to be in.

The university took this seriously, and did more to educate students on expected behaviour, but when I left, they were still fighting a losing battle.

This kind of problem is insidious because these students would have shared their experience with friends and younger siblings, putting a brake on female enrolments to begin with. The best way to solve this problem is a more equal gender balance, but the toxicity prevents that balance from being established.

Guys in an all male team tend to fall into kind of a frat boy type of social dynamic.

Some guys do, and that’s not just off-putting for women, it’s off-putting for many men too. I’ve been in offices with a misogynistic culture. I didn’t stick around.

 

[ewelch]

Pretty soon Putin is going to be jealous of how cowering sycophantic billionaires can't seem to fellate the president-elect fast enough.