Amazon To Halt Some of Its DEI Programs (cnbc.com) 117
Amazon said it is halting some of its diversity and inclusion initiatives, joining a growing list of major corporations that have made similar moves in the face of increasing public and legal scrutiny. From a report: In a Dec. 16 internal note to staffers that was obtained by CNBC, Candi Castleberry, Amazon's VP of inclusive experiences and technology, said the company was in the process of "winding down outdated programs and materials" as part of a broader review of hundreds of initiatives.
"Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes -- and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture," Castleberry wrote in the note, which was first reported by Bloomberg. Castleberry's memo doesn't say which programs the company is dropping as a result of its review. Further reading: Meta Kills DEI Programs.
"Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes -- and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture," Castleberry wrote in the note, which was first reported by Bloomberg. Castleberry's memo doesn't say which programs the company is dropping as a result of its review. Further reading: Meta Kills DEI Programs.
Purely a coincidence... (Score:5, Insightful)
Very simple logic. (Score:4, Insightful)
If diversity benefits the company's bottom line, then there is no need for a special program for it. It will happen naturally thanks to the profit motive.
If diversity does not benefit the company's bottom line, then the program was always harmful and unjust towards anyone not included (whites). In that case, anyone who was formerly chosen just because of such programs can work on bettering themselves so they will have legit competitive advantages to win jobs.
In either case, things are better and more fair with this program abolished.
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If diversity benefits the company's bottom line, then there is no need for a special program for it. It will happen naturally thanks to the profit motive.
Since when?
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I'm arguing that companies aren't naturally rational.
The free market is not a panacea that takes a bunch of emotional, rational humans and magically makes them into an army of Vulcans. Companies are made of squishy, unreliable humans doing unbreakable, human things.
Where am efficient market is possible, a free market appropriately regulated gives better results than the alternatives, but "better than communism", for example is not a very high bar and certainly does not imply any kind of perfection.
If you be
Yes, people are Biased. (Score:1)
For example, the women are wonderful effect [wikipedia.org], which motivates both men and women to see women as more honest and more virtuous than their male counterparts, thus giving them unfair social advantages. It's a hard one to fix through law, since we can't pass or enforce laws that require, for example, jurors to distrust women just as much as they would distrust men. Same goes for employers, of course.
Or maybe you are thinking of the documented fact that both men and women prefer to work for male bosses [psychologytoday.com]? This
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In my last job before I retired back in 2012, the women managers were the worst about giving ambiguous and unclear directives (which they could interpret after the fact to their advantage) *and* openly slavered and made sexual comments about one particularly handsome vp who wore slightly translucent linen clothing.
They also had "Hen" lunches with their female reports and gave them business directions which they didn't share with their male subordinates. Which lead to some female managers having only fema
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If you believe your own point then I invite you to invest only in companies with strong anti DEI policies.
FWIW, I work in finance (HFT) and discuss this with very intelligent colleagues often. It is pretty much a consensus that it's possible to outperform the index by investing in companies with strong anti DEI policies, and companies that are dislikes for other reasons (private prisons, oil companies, gambling companies, payday lenders, tobacco companies, alcohol companies, Monsanto before it was bought.
It's not just DEI, but any metric that isn't predictive of future financial performance (i.e. future profit,
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..anyone who was formerly chosen just because of such programs can work on bettering themselves so they will have legit competitive advantages to win jobs.
Is/Was everyone hired under DEI initiatives/affirmative action programs aware they were hired just because of that program? Were they explicitly told?
If not, then their own genuine ignorance will not easily find a sudden need to better themselves. In their mind they already competed, beat every other candidate, and got hired based on that legit competition. They may even see themselves as already better than everyone else that wasn’t hired for the job they won because of their competitive advantag
Re:Very simple logic. (Score:5, Informative)
This is wildly stupid logic. By analogy:
“ If marketing benefits the company's bottom line, then there is no need for a special program for it. It will happen naturally thanks to the profit motive”
“If this iPhone thing benefits Apple’s bottom line, then there is no need for a special program for it. It will happen naturally thanks to the profit motive”
Etc
Companies have distinct initiatives all the time. What do you think “what gets measured, gets managed” means, if not “we can’t focus on everything, so we will direct our attention to certain things and push them”?
It’s also a wildly stupid and reductive understanding of what DEI initiatives actually do, which is far more about, for example, checking that alt text is provided for images, that navigation is possible with a keyboard and not just a mouse, that no one gropes colleagues with impunity, etc etc.
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1. No, arguments by analogy are not inherently logical fallacies. The fact you think this is the case demonstrates your own stupidity.
2. No, I’m not claiming what you said I’m claiming. Are you unaware of the meaning of “reductive”? If so, go spend time with a dictionary. If you are aware of the meaning, then go re-read what I said, and engage with the substance instead of creating strawmen to argue against.
For someone attempting to take the high ground in your debating, it reeks of
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You’re such a fucking tool. I’m a product leader at a giant tech company, and as part of our focus on DEI, I have to ensure we meet accessibility standards, exactly in line with what I said DEI includes. I also arranged for a 17yo female high school student to come give a speech to my team on AI and sexism, in which she was thought-provoking, engaging and coruscating in equal parts, and none of what she said had anything to do with hiring (instead, she traced a history going back to Pygmalion).
Re:Very simple logic. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is as dumb as hoping that the market sorts it climate change, or fixes social media so it's not toxic to humans, or finds a cheap cure for highly profitable diseases.
The ideal corporate solution to hiring is slavery, e.g. prisoners and indentured H1B. We do not want to leave the market to sort stuff out.
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fixes social media so it's not toxic to humans
Or literally toxic things, like tetraethyllead.
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Prejudice will usually win against profit, see the red states for glaring examples. It takes an extraordinary greed to overcome racism, like in el Bunko.
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This analogy of yours makes no sense. Profiting from dumping toxic waste is nothing like profiting by hiring whoever is most qualified for the job. You aren't illuminating, you are deliberately misleading.
What are you getting at here? Are you implying that DEI programs discriminated against men by hiring women who were less qual
It's more due to reduced employee power (Score:5, Insightful)
that the GOP is about to take control of all ends of government.
I think it's more that they're having a lot less trouble finding the engineers they need. When there was a massive shortage, every tech company was acting like a geek day care and doing whatever they could to foster a frat house environment for programmer types. If Amazon had their way, they'd treat their engineers just as poorly as they treat their drivers. It's just that labor market dynamics used to work in favor of the talent and now have changed in the employer's favor.
Interest rates have made it so that borrowing money is no longer as cheap as it use to be and as a result, both big tech and the many smaller startups that were competing for engineering talent have reduced their hiring goals. With less competition, Amazon has more choices.
Nearly every Silicon Valley idiosyncrasy was not a based on the founder's beliefs or the company culture...they're all wealthy sociopaths. It was to create an environment that attracted people who viewed their job as a calling and not just a job. They also noticed their best-performing engineers were progressive. If the top talent came from conservative backgrounds, there's no doubt they'd bend over backwards to cater to them...on-site firing ranges?...on-site mass or religious services?...lots of Toby Keith themed beer parties...I don't know what conservatives are into these days.
DEI was never something those evil sociopaths actually cared about. It was just a recruiting tool to make them choose Google/Apple/Amazon over Morgan Stanley, WallMart, IBM, or a smaller place. "Ooooh...we're not just a job...we're a coveted way of life with beliefs and values making the world a better place!!!!" "No sense in hearing what WalMart is offering compensation-wise....they'll never be as virtuous as Amazon!!!...they don't 'care'...like we do!!!"
Re:It's more due to reduced employee power (Score:5, Insightful)
DEI was a box they needed to tick to get those sweet government contracts.
Re:Purely a coincidence... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking you are confusing correlation with causation.
I believe that it was the rise of the GOP and the demise of DEI that had a shared cause. This opposition to DEI was growing for some time, it has simply reached a point where people weren't putting up with it any more. They decided to act in whatever ways available to put an end to it. One such action was taking DEI policies to court, which was closely followed by an election where voters chose candidates that opposed DEI as part of their platform.
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Tax paid (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.wsj.com/politics/e... [wsj.com]
Ring kissed. H-1B applicants for all!
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Ironically, the H1Bs will probably make them meet DEI targets more than anything else.
Re:Tax paid (Score:4, Insightful)
Ironically, the H1Bs will probably make them meet DEI targets more than anything else.
72% of H-1Bs are Indian.
South Asians are already disproportionately represented in tech firms.
If you measure DEI by the percentage of non-white people, then sure, that will increase.
If you measure DEI by how close each ethnicity matches its percent of the general population, then DEI will decrease.
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If you measure DEI by how close each ethnicity matches its percent of the general population, then DEI will decrease.
Literally no one measures DEI in this way.
The big lie (Score:4, Interesting)
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We have all seen examples of sensors and cameras that don't recognise certain skin colours. Nothing to do with culture.
Re: The big lie (Score:1)
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If your sensor is so bad it can't cope with that contrast
Facial recognition can cope and mostly works with dark skin.
But no tech can change reality. Dark skin has inherently less contrast.
Probably shouldn't release that product.
We should also ban sunscreen lotion. It reduces melanoma rates in white people but has less effect on people with dark skin.
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Facial recognition can cope and mostly works with dark skin.
People have put in effort to fix it after bad publicity. They did this in no small part by not relying on the old, open datasets which had substantial biases in the data.
We should also ban sunscreen lotion. It reduces melanoma rates in white people but has less effect on people with dark skin.
Is there some contest that I'm unaware of for who can make the stupidest comment?
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Well you got your title right
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And don't expect any favors from me.
We didn't expect any, we expected you would treat people fairly. They weren't, they were denied, murdered, redlined, etc. So you got DEI. Don't like it, don't silently abuse people. I treat everyone equally, whereas the reich wing implicitly treated anyone of the "wrong" category as subhuman and filed them away. Maybe when enough boomers are dead (the people were directly members of the Klan and were truly racist scum), and there's not racism behind closed doors, will things not require DEI. Going to be a
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Don't like it, don't silently abuse people.
Where have you been? They loudly abuse people these days.
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Every time you use the word woke, god makes another drag queen.
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this seems to lean into the false dichotomy of woke vs religion.
im an antiwoke atheist who finds the idea of having to affirm other people's belief in a gendered soul one of the most absurdly condecending bullshit ever, far worse than christianity or islam, because at least those bastards know they are a religion. the gender cultists find the observation that their ideology is a belief system to be one of the most genocidal transgressions against transfolk...
each to their own is not good enough for these pe
Re: Okay. So let's say this is about expediency (Score:1)
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Everyone is a minority of one, trying to find enough commonality to work together effectively as a society.
You're such a obvious liar. If you really believed that, then why are you so upset that some people identify as transgender? Why don't you want them to have the same rights as everyone else? Why can't you put your personal hangups aside and try "to find enough commonality to work together effectively as a society"?
1/10 Try harder.
Re: Okay. So let's say this is about expediency (Score:2)
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Science disagrees.
Sorry, kid, reality doesn't align with your bigoted bullshit.
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this seems to lean into the false dichotomy of woke vs religion.
That's ... certainly a take. The parent's comment had nothing to do with religion and certainly wasn't pitting "woke" against it. Being "woke" has nothing to do with religion, though there is a strong case to be made for most flavors of Christianity to embrace "woke" based on their own teachings and values. The parent is poking fun at the right-wing culture-warrior religious hypocrites.
I don't know why I'm explaining this to you. It's obvious from your post that you're really, really, stupid. Tell me
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This didn't start in 2010, this goes way back.
It would be difficult to pin down a date on when this all started since I could make an argument this started back in the mid-1700s. There were many hints of how women viewed their role in society shifted as technology allowed more freedom from domestic duties and offered employment in factories and such than working from home.
The current view on this, where racism became a big part of this effort, likely started in the 1940s as WW2 no longer allowed for the lu
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Wow, you really are stupid. The country didn't reject DEI, dipshit. This is about placating the smelly orange traitor we're about to put in the whitehouse, assuming one of his followers doesn't assassinate him first. The majority of the country is perfectly fine with DEI, woke, and all the other things you're really upset about but can't even come close to correctly defining.
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You could argue that "the country" never really embraced DEI, or that any of these programs were meant to be popular anyway. They were there for ESG scores.
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It's more like this: corpos wanted higher ESG scores to secure investment. Now that's dying off, and their DEI departments aren't as lucrative anymore. Same goes for their Net Zero programs.
Don't forget "legal scrutiny" is the reason. (Score:4, Insightful)
From the fine article:
Amazon is the latest major corporation to alter its DEI programs in the face of growing legal and public scrutiny.
I doubt this has much to do with shifting political winds, this is in large part in response to organizations having their DEI polices deemed as racist in the courts. DEI should lose in the courts out of racism because DEI is quite explicitly racist.
This issue has been beaten quite thoroughly in the comments on Meta dropping their DEI policies, there's not likely to be much added in comments to Amazon doing the same. This isn't going to be some return to prejudice against minorities since the courts have been quite consistent in fighting racism in all forms. I know there will be some that will want to argue against this point, perhaps with examples of racism seen here and there, including racism seen from the courts themselves. I'm not going to claim racism is gone, only that the claims of "systemic" racism isn't likely to hold up any more.
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It's like you're trying to win the dumbest poster of the day award.
Once again, I'll try to explain this shit to the terminally stupid. I'll use a very simple example. See if you can follow along. I'll even use small words:
1. In the morning, all the kids coming into the classroom are give a cookie except for the non-white kids.
2. At lunchtime, all the kids are give a cookie except for the non-white kids.
3. At the end of the day, all the kids are given a cookie except for the non-white kids who are given t
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My kids wouldn't take cookies from strangers. It violates GDPR.
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Let me use your own example to explain to you where DEI went wrong:
1. White kids get more cookies than others.
2. With the goal of equity, we decide to give non-white kids cookies too.
3. The jar only has so many cookies.
4. Tell the white kid who's on his first day of school that he will not be getting any cookies because white kids used to get them all and now he can just sit and watch others eat them like a good boy.
See where the fallacy lies? DEI by default assumes that leveling the field by race or gender
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Bullshit it's more like:
1. White kids get more cookies than others.
2. With the goal of equity, we decide to give non-white kids cookies too.
3. The jar only has so many cookies.
4. People on the internet whine about not getting so many free cookies because they now have to compete on merit to get extra cookies rather than being automatically considered to have merit just for being white.
Re: Don't forget "legal scrutiny" is the reason. (Score:2)
It's like you're trying to win the dumbest poster of the day award.
Obviously he can't because you always win it. By the way, does your parole officer know that you're talking about children on the internet?
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By the way, does your parole officer know that you're talking about children on the internet?
Interesting insinuation there. Does your psychotherapist know about the thoughts you automatically have about children?
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While she calls them her "girls", they're just body parts, not children. Anyways, yes, she knows, and she says it's normal.
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Um pro tip: when you're trying to banter it helps if your reply isn't too much of a non sequitur
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But it was.
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You're talking to one of the dumbest posters on the site. He's right up there with Luckyo and the guy promoting Lindel's frankspeech.
Lower those expectations.
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Fair point.
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What a shock, the right-win incel automatically thinks about sex when someone mentions children.
Castrate yourself, freak.
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Dude you don't need to get so defensive towards your cellmate. I get that you two have a special relationship, and you feel sorry about him being kicked in the face a lot, but he's a big boy.
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I'm not going to claim racism is gone, only that the claims of "systemic" racism isn't likely to hold up any more.
Right. Because the only true "systematic" racism left was ... DEI policies.
"But ... but ... it can't be racism, if it favors our favored races!" Um, yeah, no.
Re: DEI violates the 1866 & 1964 civil rights (Score:2)
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It very obviously does not. I'd tell you to stop being stupid, but I don't want to make fun of someone for an obvious mental disability.
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Become an employer of at least 15 people and see how this goes.
https://www.eeoc.gov/overview [eeoc.gov]
It's a virtue signal (Score:1)
The entire DEI push was an attempt to get women and minorities into programming so that they could have a larger pool of labor and therefore have to pay less for employees. It was always just a scam.
Those women and minorities could see the writing on the wall with the H-1B visa program flooding the market so they wisely stayed away and h
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My company will keep DEI. Instead of hiring the most qualified candidate, we will higher only the gayest.
So ... you believe the most qualified candidates are all straight? You bigots are WAY too transparent.
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So ... you believe the most qualified candidates are all straight? You bigots are WAY too transparent.
ROFLMAO!
No way! This was not serious, right?
Cause if it is, it is nine shades of FUCKING AWESOME!
You let that bad man have it, narcc! He is an anti-ist-phobe! You can just tell by looking at him. I heard he misgendered a bunch of trans-ams and hates women! Unlike you and me who respect bitches and shit!
DEI must DIE (Score:2, Interesting)
Diversity is great! Natural diversity of competent people chosen for their skills who happen to be diverse.
Racism and hate sucks! But forcing people to work with others they hate is a bad strategy.
What's even worse is the insulting crap some of the trainers tell the employees.
They say that a person who is not a racist, expresses no racist views, advocates no racist policies, and advocates for fair treatment for all is secretly, subconsciously racist. This is insulting and insanely wrong. This kind of crap d
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They say that a person who is not a racist, expresses no racist views, advocates no racist policies, and advocates for fair treatment for all is secretly, subconsciously racist.
"Everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes"
Humans make snap judgments about people using mostly subconscious cues. We pretty much have to: you cannot go about your day getting to know every person you bump into well. We evolved to live in small tribes. Are you completely sure you've escaped a few million years of evolution entirely?
M
Re: DEI must DIE (Score:1)
DEI is evil. But this is not how to end it. (Score:1)
This Trump way of back-door threats and pressure is unjust, indecent and anti-democratic.
THIS is exactly the Trump totalitarianism we warned you about.
Re: DEI is evil. But this is not how to end it. (Score:2)
That sort of discrimination is already banned, under the civil rights act of 1964. The 14th amendment equal protection clause also applies.
The discrimination occurs anyway. These types of cases are hard to prove and prosecute. Courts also move very slowly.
DEI policies are mainly an attempt to rein in the discrimination.
Can you think of a better way ?
Re: DEI is evil. But this is not how to end it. (Score:1)
In which case, how do the woke shits go about "proving" companies are hiring white men solely for their dick possession and skin color, and not because they are better at CS?
Answer: They don't. So you disgusting woke racists and sexists can shut up and fuck off.
That should stop the wildfires! (Score:2)
Amazon bowing to fElon and Trump
Will they reverse censorship decisions? (Score:1)
I bought the book at a different ebook seller, and read it from "cover to cover" or whatever one does with an ebook. Its thesis is that it's a bad idea to do gender transition medical interventions on teen-agers, a practice that was rising in popularity at the time of its publication [2018]. As of the date of this comment, 1/
Good. (Score:2)
I got fired for calling it BS.
I was right.
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That all you got?
Re:Racism, misogyny, and homophobia (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a fine line here. DEI programs tend to go farther than treating everyone (such as people of different races or sexual orientations) equally. They tend to prioritize doing business with, and promoting, people who belong to these groups. Everyone *should* be treated equally. But going farther than equal probably *should* be controversial. And controversial isn't good for big business, as Bud Light found out.
Re: Racism, misogyny, and homophobia (Score:2)
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I believe you, that definitely sounds like a thing that happened.
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Now why doesn't it surprise me that you appear to associate Jews with everything you hate. At least you are no longer trying to his your racism, so I can appreciate your honesty. Rather than "I'm not racist but" it's" well I'm a racist and"
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OMG, this is why I love the Internet! You are the third indispensable super genius that I have met today! Except the last guy cock-slapped the DEI instructor until she pleaded with him to come back to work instead of making the company lose a lucrative $56 bajillion contract. You are almost just like that guy, well, except that you do not have a supermodel girlfriend, an 9 inch pecker, and a perfect credit score.
Or do you?
Oh my god, you do! You do! Do you not?
Small request, could you tell it again, only
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>> hiring people through recruitment firms that discriminated based on race and gender (no whites, East Asians, or men allowed)
And which firms were they? Lets check.
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>> They tend to prioritize doing business with, and promoting, people who belong to these groups
And you have evidence of this?
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>> DEI IS DISCRIMINATION.
No it isn't. DEI is about "about building a work environment that benefits all employees, regardless of gender, background, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or mental and physical ability".
https://www.aihr.com/blog/dei-... [aihr.com]