What is Meritocracy / merit-based hiring? Does DEI preclude or replace merit?

[roostra]

In my job, I both hire for my direct staff and oversee my staff hiring their staff members down through the agency.

While we have never called it "DEI", we do have standards about doing everything reasonable to have a diverse (in a multitude of ways) staff at all levels.

What kills me about these discussions is that Republicans act like that when you're hiring for any position, that you can somehow identify an objective "THE BEST" candidate across a wide variety of inputs like technical skills, people skills, project management, leadership abilities, common sense, and many more. As if there is a way to feed all of the candidate resumes into a computer program and the program can spit out, without fail, a numerical score for each candidate that points to the absolute best applicant. (And, yes, such programs exist, but they typically do not do a great job with soft skills and non-technical skills.)

And while occasionally you'll go to hire for a job and have one candidate who stands out far beyond the remaining candidates, in most hiring situations you end up with a small number of final candidates who are all capable of filling the position and doing the job reasonably well, each with specific strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis the positional requirements plus agency needs, and you are left to select one candidate from this small pool in which any will likely be reasonably successful. In these cases, we strongly favor candidates who bring diversity that we don't currently have to the table because of the greater benefits they will bring to our entire agency. And while we don't call it DEI, it's within the spirit and practice of it.

The other thing we do within our practices toward diversity is seeking out and considering candidates who may not quite the educational opportunities as other candidates when those educational achievements are not critical for the position. That took us going through all of our position descriptions to determine for each the level of educational/degree level we felt was truly required for each position. It also means that we don't default to assuming that a more prestigious college inherently means a "better" candidate before we have looked at other achievements or gone through at least an initial screening interview. On the whole, it has helped us to not only have a more diverse staff, but to also find candidates who turned out to be amazing in their positions whom we would have otherwise missed if we had hired largely based on details on a resume.

Snoop, 100% this. I am not sure I have seen a better description of how DEI recruiting/hiring should work.

I often think of the choice of Supreme Court Justices. There are probably hundreds of people (maybe dozens? but probably at least a hundred) In the United States who are well-qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice and there is no way to rank order them like basketball recruits. So when Biden picked Judge Ketanji-Brown Jackson and the right cried out "He just picked her because she is a black woman." Well so, what if he did? As long as she met the cut-off of "Is she well-qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice" it doesn't matter if that is the reason he picked her if there was value in selecting her for that reason. There was no "How could you not pick Justice So-and-So? Their legal reasoning is six rankings higher than hers." That is just as arbitrary as any other reason to pick from that elite pool of judges. Now, if there was an argument that she was not part of that elite pool of judges, that is another matter entirely, but I have never seen a reasonable argument that she wasn't.

 

[SnoopRob]

Also, as an somewhat humorous aside, as I work in the non-profit social services sector, my staff and our applicant pool tend to be both heavily female and lean pretty strongly center-left to very liberal on social issues. Our diversity efforts have led us to considering & hiring more men and folks center-right on social issues.

 

[Zoo_View]

Been on both sides of this fence. A couple of anecdotes:

-Whenever I've been a manager (headed up a department of 70 persons), I looked to hire a diverse team. Down in CR race is not as big a deal, but obviously diversity goes beyond race. We aimed for diversity of experience (internal promotions vs external hires), geography (including foreigners), age, and lifestyle (including LGBQ). I was proud to have an extremely diverse team. Our overriding principle, though was to hire the person most qualified for the job.

-Prior to COVID, we had a rather large restructuring. I was passed over for a job even though my experience in the field was significantly greater than the lady who ended up as my boss. The general manager explicitly told me that he picked her over me because he had too many men reporting to him and needed to have an even amount of women on the senior manager team.

-During COVID we had another large restructuring. When the round pf cuts came to management ranks, it was almost exclusively among guys 50+. We were probably the more expensive part of management, but the coincidence that we were all men in that 50-57 range was an uncomfortable coincidence. No women were let go in that round (at the senior level).

-While job hunting I applied to a position with a fortune 500 company. I knew the manager, sent in my resume. He tells me..."This is exactly what we need, if anything you're overqualified. Only problem is that I need to fill this with a woman to hit my Diversity Score target."

-My wife was a corporate warrior for 25 years at a Fortune 500 company. She was eventually one of the highest ranked women in the Latin American unit. She absolutely hated diversity quotas, which in LatAm usually boil down to gender. She always felt like people thought she was diversity hire when in reality she had two advanced degrees and was a high-level performer. She hated she had to promote some women who weren't ready for positions because of their gender. But she also hated that the cheese maze at her company was set up to favor men and was antithetic to having a family.

Any chance the manager said he was forced to hire a woman rather than telling you he/the company thought you weren’t the best/right person for the job?

 

[Bobfripp]

Also, as an somewhat humorous aside, as I work in the non-profit social services sector, my staff and our applicant pool tend to be both heavily female and lean pretty strongly center-left to very liberal on social issues. Our diversity efforts have led us to considering & hiring more men and folks center-right on social issues.

You mean you're going 'dumb down' your workplace?

 

[Zoo_View]

I know right. When I’m shopping for a doctor I always look for gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation first. Then I hope they are the best in their field.

Please describe your method of shopping for a doctor.

 

[SnoopRob]

You mean you're going 'dumb down' your workplace?

Yes, but more by my presence than anything else.

 

[superrific]

Any chance the manager said he was forced to hire a woman rather than telling you he/the company thought you weren’t the best/right person for the job?

Sonia Sotomayor told me she would have hired me, but she had only one slot left and it was for XX.

I choose to believe that story. It's probably true, as she was famous for having a two-girl, two-boy clerk pool. But I've also never spent any time wondering if it actually went down that way.

 

[thebruinbleedstarheelblue]

DEI Will Not Be Missed in the Military

Uncover the progress of gender equality in combat roles. Learn how women have excelled as Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, and tank commanders.

gvwire.com

Women having a different test/role is dei? The same people who whine about trans in sports, want the ranger test to be the same for women and men? You have to give a specific example as their are different roles.

You did not respond to the Trump appointees and their relative lack of experience.

Pete Hedgesth vs Lloyd Austin and all other secretaries of defense. Matt Gaetz...why is the bar lower for Trump appointees?

 

[thebruinbleedstarheelblue]

Sonia Sotomayor told me she would have hired me, but she had only one slot left and it was for XX.

I choose to believe that story. It's probably true, as she was famous for having a two-girl, two-boy clerk pool. But I've also never spent any time wondering if it actually went down that way.

I let down failed job candidates and romantic interests the same way if they were pretty good.

 

[finesse]

I know right. When I’m shopping for a doctor I always look for gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation first. Then I hope they are the best in their field.

You know, like most people these days, I didn't actually have any oncologists on file. These were the ones that I was assigned to, as it happened. I am able to recognize that their bedside manner was superior as was their performance and the fact that they saved my life. For that matter, the surgeon out of the Lineberger Center who closed the stoma for my trach because the tissue highly irradiated during treatment wouldn't properly heal has a national reputation among her peers for dealing with that specific condition wasn't picked by me but by my doctors because of that fact and not because of her sex.

And yeah, their attitudes were a welcome change from the many of the male doctors I had for the previous 65 years that acted like their shit didn't stink.

 

[BlooVooDoo]

You know, like most people these days, I didn't actually have any oncologists on file. These were the ones that I was assigned to, as it happened. I am able to recognize that their bedside manner was superior as was their performance and the fact that they saved my life. For that matter, the surgeon out of the Lineberger Center who closed the stoma for my trach because the tissue highly irradiated during treatment wouldn't properly heal has a national reputation among her peers for dealing with that specific condition wasn't picked by me but by my doctors because of that fact and not because of her sex.

And yeah, their attitudes were a welcome change from the many of the male doctors I had for the previous 65 years that acted like their shit didn't stink.

I chose my PCP in large part because she was a woman. In that particular clinical role, I want someone who listens well and engages in real dialogue. Sure, I looked into her education and experience but I wasn’t prioritizing that over someone that would interact with me as an equal partner in my health.

 

[CRHeel94]

Any chance the manager said he was forced to hire a woman rather than telling you he/the company thought you weren’t the best/right person for the job?

I've wondered about that. He didn't say he was forced, said he wanted that balance. Sure could be a possibility...kind of a dumb decision on his part if that's the case. The thing is a month before it happened he told me he was going to give me the job. The details are a little more complicated...lots of office politics at work.

I was so angry when he told me (that really spooked him), because on top of that I had to now report to this lady. I was direct in my first meeting with her: "I lost my shit when I heard about this. The reasons I felt like this were A, B and C...but I'm committed to do a good job." I can say with a clear conscience that once I started reporting to her I kept doing my job to the best of my abilities, never trying to undercut her or anything shady.

 

[StrangePackage]

That Maine Wire article is atrocious. It is little more than a series of poorly-sourced anecdotes. You can do better than that.

The GOACTA article is a little more serious, but has no relevance to what we are discussing.

ACTA is also on the advisory council for Project 2025. While not immediately disqualifying it does mean that we should seriously evaluate the methods that they use to reach their conclusions, as well as their conclusions themselves.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

Can you give specific examples of "DEI programs [that] have not followed that model"?

Here's another one. Pfizer just settled a lawsuit yesterday where they agreed to stop discriminating against whites and Asians in some of their fellowship programs.

Pfizer Agrees to End Racially Discriminatory Fellowship, Resolving Anti-DEI Lawsuit | National Review

The plaintiff alleged that Pfizer illegally barred whites and Asians from applying for its Breakthrough Fellowship Program.

www.nationalreview.com

 

[AlbionAmerican]

I think the main problem with DEI is its really not resolving the primary social and historical tensions between Blacks and Whites. Nor is it resolving the serious class issues this country has (among all races, but particularly for the 20% of Black Americans who are still classified as impoverished, economically speaking). I wish Democrats would see through this corporate nonsense because its really done nothing but perpetuate the same exact class problems while dividing people even further along racial lines than we needed to be. DEI may help some Black Americans in the upper middle class or the rich, but let's be honest here, other minorities use this classification as a way to climb up the social latter pretending they are some historical racialized victim in this country when they really aren't, and claiming this is very likely advancing other upper middle class / wealthy minority groups to jump over both Black and White Americans or generally exploit this well intentioned idea, which is undermining what its about. It also isn't even resolving this idea of racial tension between Blacks and Whites, other than the ones in Corporate America. I'm not even sure White vs. Black is the right frame here either considering when I was growing up nobody considered their heritage "White", it was almost always Irish or Italian or whichever mix of White that people identified with, so this whole framing as well is flawed.

The people who exploit this though who I'm talking about are the d!ckheads like Vivek. I have no racial animosity against groups of people, but I do think we have a major problem with exploitation of our system of laws and governance when we racialize EVERYTHING, as we're now seeing with the Silicon Valley douchbags. I dont see why Brahmin Indians who come from highly educated families and relocate to America, maybe even become a citizen, get to be put in the same bucket as a Black American whose ancestry goes back 400 years and continues to be stepped on by elite Whites with programs like DEI. I'm not just singling out Indians nor am I saying they all abuse this, far from it, but it is happening and it is a problem, and does need to be considered in these discussions, otherwise it just gets revealed as a racket, even if it does show SOME good results on the margins.

Furthermore, DEI becomes weaponized from corporate America against small business America. I guarantee small businesses aren't implementing these kinds of policies in the aggregate and they still account for 60m jobs in this country. That is of course unless the bank or private equity firm financing them is forcing diversity hiring quotas, which I'm not sure is or is not happening, but if it were would just compound the class problems we're talking about. Black Americans deserve a real chance to improve their status in this country and honestly reparations makes more sense to me to resolve historic inequities if that is the goal, but its obviously not because DEI doesn't do anything for the 20% or so of Black Americans who are still considered impoverished. More and more it just becomes about enriching the oligarchs who dont seem to care about American people much at all, who play the game of politics to deceive average middle America while they plunder the wealth of the country. Framing this as Merit vs. DEI is already missing the point of this whole thing, because it's already making a statement that these are the only two ways this country can be and that is absolutely absurd. America wasn't set up to be a "meritocracy" by the founders. The very idea we should even be a "meritocracy" bakes into the cake that we are going to be dominated by corporate interests above the general welfare of the American people. It's seriously stupid to even involve yourself in this when we should be calling out the fact that people don't want to perpetuate an economic system that screws over the VAST majority of middle class Americans of all races, and turning more and more into something akin to Brazil.