Changing Tenor in HR Departments

[Batt Boy]

Another aspect as to the "rainbowing" of Corporate America is that I believe that most American businesses want their employees to "look like" the customers they are serving. And as the customer base gets more diverse, the hiring corporation would be absolute fools if they failed to be sure that their employees "looked like" the customers they were serving.

I've seen and heard this as well. Not sure it makes sense. What if my company makes a drug that treats Gaucher Type I or Tay-Sachs? Should the company "look" Ashkenazi?

 

[superrific]

I've seen and heard this as well. Not sure it makes sense. What if my company makes a drug that treats Gaucher Type I or Tay-Sachs? Should the company "look" Ashkenazi?

I guarantee you that a company with those products hires Jewish community outreach coordinators, and those outreach coordinators are highly likely to be orthodox Jewish.

 

[05C40]

I've seen and heard this as well. Not sure it makes sense. What if my company makes a drug that treats Gaucher Type I or Tay-Sachs? Should the company "look" Ashkenazi?

That's little deeper dive that what I was describing. But if there were such a company that sold the drugs you described directly to the persons using them in some sort of competitive market where the user had a choice, then yes, I do believe the sales force should "look like" the persons to whom they are selling the product.

 

[finesse]

I've seen and heard this as well. Not sure it makes sense. What if my company makes a drug that treats Gaucher Type I or Tay-Sachs? Should the company "look" Ashkenazi?

Well, if your company is doing serious scientific research, you might well have a step up in looking Ashkenazi.

 

[Batt Boy]

Well, if your company is doing serious scientific research, you might well have a step up in looking Ashkenazi.

So I have a Japanese company that is great with INSTIs. I need to "look" like the customers we serve?

 

[sunnyheel]

I agree with super on this one. Whether one agrees with it or not, the author describes a very real source of frustration among young people. It was FAR easier for me to get a great job than it will be for my kids. They don't need to be coddled, but it would do us well to listen to what has them frustrated about the job market. Same thing for the housing market.

Yes this hits on the subtext of my remarks about the condition of boys, but as both Reeves and Galloway have pointed out, the plight of boys shouldn’t erase the value and aims of DEI nor disrespect the achievement of females.

I know the New Right believes that diversity, equity, and inclusion are sinister aims that should be “corrected” by affirmative action for males in college admissions, for example, but no fair minded person would agree.

The solution lies in improving boys’ educational and social skills as well as reorienting their career prospects. One very good idea is to account for boys’ biological disadvantage (delayed brain development) by having them assigned at a grade below the girls. Other angles should be applied to ameliorate the deleterious effects of early access to devices and other bad influences. But bad parenting is hard to fix.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

Meh... DEI was a blow to average performing white guys who expected to move up if they paid their dues (i.e., hung around doing mediocre work).

By that same token, DEI was a boon to mediocre minorities and a blow to talented minorities who weren't given the credit they earned.

 

[finesse]

By that same token, DEI was a boon to mediocre minorities and a blow to talented minorities who weren't given the credit they earned.

Unless there is evidence that DEI carried over to performance reviews that seems ill founded and more an excuse for the so called glass ceiling, a better observed affect although I had no idea how well substantiated that is, either. Performance reviews should stand on their own, imo, and if they don't it's not DEI, it's a general integrity of the whole system question.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

As a father of sons, I’m sensitive to the notion that “affirmative action/DEI” has placed white males at a systemic disadvantage, but in the end I find the argument unpersuasive for the following reasons:

1. This account is scant on the data as well as cherry-picked and overreliant on anecdata that conforms to the writer’s bias. Lay out the overall demographic data, and the story almost always emerges: white men at the top with a more demographically accurate portrayal at the lower rungs. In view of that, it’s not surprising that firms are seeking to diversify.

2. I’ve been following the work of people like Richard Reeves and Prof. Scott Galloway who have chronicled the decline of boys and advocated for efforts to lift them up. Social media and gaming (morphing into gambling and meme investing as career options) have sorely affected their social, educational and employment prospects. And I have my own anecdata to verify. I have been hiring law students as clerks for over 30 years. Of course I’ve witnessed the rise of the female demographic- reflecting both ambition and achievement- and my hiring record reflects that. After years of doing this I can confidently tell you that the female students, as a rule, are far more conscientious, better organized and harder workers. The male students (I am loathe to call them men) on the other hand were far more demanding, often expecting that when an assignment was successfully completed, plaudits and rewards would soon follow. In other words: a sense of entitlement. I literally stopped hiring the boys during the last ten years (so sue me!).

3. As far as I know anti-discrimination laws still exist and given the makeup of the courts, males would likely be perceived as a protected class. Prove you case.

Yes, boys are all kinds of messed up. My message: bootstraps.

Not in law but my experience in corporate business is similar. Young women are absolute beasts early in their careers. They are more ambitious, they work harder, they are more organized, and get things done.

They tend to stall in their 30's, especially if they have a family but sometimes even if they don't have kids.

But the women who push through that into that director level or higher tend to be absolute rock stars.

 

[Bigs23]

What's the board take on this?

Quote:

"Discrimination is wrong. Yet from 2014-2024, discrimination was rebranded to “DEI”, and most major companies normalized it.

Racial and gender quotas were forced and measured from the top down. I heard people say things like “this hire must be [insert race or gender].” Or "we have too many men/white people on the leadership team."

The Lost Generation

For fifteen years I’ve scalped tickets to pay the bills. But in January 2016 I almost managed a real career.

www.compactmag.com

Merit or do the data from only three narrow industry segments (journalism, tenure-track faculty hiring, and the creative room in Hollywoood), not warrant conclusions from the particular to generalizations?

 

[mpaer]

I worked in HR from the mid 70s until-including consulting work-until about 2019. Mostly in some entity of NC State Govt typically in huge organization-like 15,000-or even at the State level, say 100,000 employees
There was never a real Meritocracy and there certainly is not today
Certainly there were technical jobs where 90% of the time folks got to hire the candidates that had those skills-but in general lots of jobs were filled -quasi illegally-through party politics appointments. The candidates parent/uncle gave some money to the bagman to fund campaigns. Or for lesser jobs there was a check off on party registration at least
Always there was informal connections pursued-I know this guy/gal that does this work and I like them
Over my career the diversity of the workforce increased a great deal-in part because of affirmation action type Statutes and in part because the Political influence of minorities/Women increased.
That worked for me-I encountered plenty of good and bad employees of all genders, "races"
Not a meritocracy today?
Lee Roberts never worked at a University-was not an Academic-never had anything to do with a public university
He is Art Popes chosen leader of the future and Art especially wants UNC to be Tech/Business school
So when the Pubs bitch about DEI I laugh

 

[BlooVooDoo]

Here's the penultimate paragraph of the piece:

It’s strange and more than a little poisonous to see yourself buffeted by forces beyond your control. But there’s also a comfort in it. Because it’s less painful to scroll through other people’s IMDb pages late at night, figuring out what shortcut—race, gender, connections—they took to success, than to grapple with the fact that there are white men my age who’ve succeeded, and I am not one of them. I could have worked harder, I could have networked better, I could have been better. The truth is, I’m not some extraordinary talent who was passed over; I’m an ordinary talent—and in ordinary times that would have been enough.

That's a valid point. The job market should work for everyone. It doesn't respond directly to your point, but it does show that the author is aware of that issue. I read it as someone trying not to be bitter, even as their hopes and dreams faded away. That's a good instinct that should be applauded even if the underlying thesis of the article is wrong.

This piece is not the grievance filled diatribe that you might expect.

Did you see Ross Douthat on this? It rubbed me the wrong way and pushed me to read Savage’s piece. There are a lot of things Savage overlooks or, more likely, doesn’t fully grasp given the limited material he’s working with, but taken as a story of how young white men perceive these events rather than a rant about how they’ve been done dirty it’s much more benign than I expected.

 

[superrific]

Did you see Ross Douthat on this? It rubbed me the wrong way and pushed me to read Savage’s piece. There are a lot of things Savage overlooks or, more likely, doesn’t fully grasp given the limited material he’s working with, but taken as a story of how young white men perceive these events rather than a rant about how they’ve been done dirty it’s much more benign than I expected.

That's where I saw the link, but I try to think about Ross Douthat as little as possible.

 

[CarolinaFever]

Meh... DEI was a blow to average performing white guys who expected to move up if they paid their dues (i.e., hung around doing mediocre work).

Exactly. It isn't about making a quota. It's about if you have a job opening and fewer minorities are represented in your company then maybe hire one if they are just as qualified as all the other applicants so there is more diversity in your company. It's about understanding differences in cultures, too, and embracing them instead of feeling uncomfortable because it isn't what your used to. The only people that look down on DEI practices are those who want to live in a bubble where everyone looks and acts like them.

 

[ZenMode]

Bunch of whiny white male millenials. Harden the fuck up.