Google kills diversity hiring targets

https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-kills-diversity-hiring-targets-04433d7c

by kepler1 • 1 year ago

159 251 1 year ago

wsj.com

kepler14• 1 year ago

https://archive.is/6O8L5

cheeze• 1 year ago

Shows

You have been blocked.

Only me?

dekhn• 1 year ago

I see it too (but I'm a subscriber and read the article online).

There isn't much to see- Google/Alphabet (Pichai) has decided to align itself with the current government and eliminating these programs is a clear signal.

jazzyjackson• 1 year ago

Not just you, archive today has a beef with cloudflare. I wasn’t even using cloudflare intentionally but iirc Firefox has a dns privacy setting that I had to disable.

Since May 2018[35][36] Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service would not resolve archive.today's web addresses, making it inaccessible to users of the Cloudflare DNS service. Both organizations claimed the other was responsible for the issue. Cloudflare staff stated that the problem was on archive.today's DNS infrastructure, as its authoritative nameservers return invalid records when Cloudflare's network systems made requests to archive.today. archive.today countered that the issue was due to Cloudflare requests not being compliant with DNS standards, as Cloudflare does not send EDNS Client Subnet information in its DNS requests

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today

1vuio0pswjnm72• 1 year ago

Works where archive.is is blocked:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/tech-companies/google-k...

No Javascript, text-only:

https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1ytY6x

kepler14• 1 year ago

James Damore must be rolling in his grave

Ozarkian• 1 year ago

He reached some kind of settlement with Google. I have no idea how much Google paid, but my suspicion is that James had the last laugh.

aurareturn4• 1 year ago

I remember reading his memo and agreed with many things he said. I think the public overreacted. He was right that DEI ignore the hard questions and discriminates another group.

I'm no Trump lover. However, I do think DEI was the wrong approach.

Many here work in tech. I'm sure some or many of us here have silently experienced unfair DEI hiring and promotion practices at least once. I've seen some truly incompetent people get hired and promoted purely to meet a certain DEI goal. It reminds me of Affirmative Action but for the work place.

This is coming from someone who absolutely hates the tech bro culture and hates that there aren't enough women in tech. No male tech worker likes environments where there are 10 guys to 1 girl and the insane gender imbalance in tech heavy cities that make dating impossible for a large portion of the population. If I could, I would wave a magic wand and turn the tech industry into 10 women for every 1 man. Believe me.

jjtheblunt• 1 year ago

grave?

kepler14• 1 year ago

it's a joke

kepler14• 1 year ago

This is pretty much the first half of the article (until the archive.is link starts working):

"Google is eliminating its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs, joining other tech giants rethinking their approach to DEI.

In an email to employees Wednesday, Google said it would no longer set hiring targets to improve representation in its workforce.

In 2020, amid calls for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd, Google set a target of increasing by 30% the proportion of “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” by 2025.

Parent company Alphabet’s GOOGL -7.69%decrease; red down pointing triangle annual report released Wednesday omitted a sentence stating the company was “committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve.” The sentence was in its reports from 2021 through 2024.

Google also said it was reviewing recent court decisions and executive orders by President Trump aimed at curbing DEI in the government and federal contractors. The company is “evaluating changes to our programs required to comply,” the email said...

“We’ll continue to invest in states across the U.S.—and in many countries globally—but in the future we will no longer have aspirational goals,” the email said... "

krunck• 1 year ago

"but in the future we will no longer have aspirational goals"

Except making more money with US government and military contracts.

legitster• 1 year ago

The complete rollover on this is kind of disheartening.

Were a lot of these programs a performative kabuki theatre that wasted time and money? Yes. Were companies ever going to fill their ranks with black, lesbian programmers? No.

On the other hand, now having worked my way up in the tech world, the idea that the C-suite decision makers are there through some sort of meritocracy is also equally laughable. These are exclusive circles, and your breeding (family, school, frat) already determines your access more than success ever will.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the ideal of giving more types of people a chance. But it was an issue of execution, not intent.

bc9o• 1 year ago

Read Judge Amit Mehta's ruling on their behavior gaming ad auctions to hit Revenue targets. Then think about non reaction of the Advertising Industry.

Achieving Monopoly and Domination requires kabuki performances.

There is no other route. These are mentally bankrupt one dimensional people. Other than survival and accumulation of status and wealth there is nothing much going on in their head.

stego-tech• 1 year ago

Never listen to their words, only pay attention to their actions.

You hit it dead-on that a lot of these DEI initiatives were performance theater to appease some external force (as is most of business, when you really think about it). The existing leadership had zero intent to actually allow under-represented minorities into their ranks other than as a token or trophy figure who would kiss the ring and not rock the boat.

The real success (or failure) of DEI will be the next crop of leaders, not the current ones. The managers and leaders of tomorrow (who are the ICs and team leads of today) are acutely aware of how much of a Straight White Boy’s Club these leadership ranks are, and the vibe I get is increasing disgust at the proclamation of “merit” as justification for their tenure while (often minority) high performers are routinely exited out in favor of yet another H1B overseas.

I’m hoping this is just the last gasps of relevance from the status quo in the face of generational upheaval. Guess we’ll all find out together.

like_any_other2• 1 year ago

Well, they've already achieved diversity, haven't they? Whites were already under-represented at Google (and at 18/23 tech companies) back in 2017 [1]. If they've rolled over for anyone, it was for the Asian lobby, who is over-represented at 23/23 of those tech companies, and now won't be facing DEI pressures to reduce their numbers.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250127210140/https://informati...

thaumasiotes4• 1 year ago

Well, they've already achieved diversity, haven't they? Whites were already under-represented at Google (and at 18/23 tech companies) back in 2017

For most diversity purposes, Asians and Indians both count as white, if not "even more white".

Government programs, other than schools, are the main exception.

leoqa• 1 year ago

I think the real metric should be childhood household income. That transcends race or gender and universally inhibits the child in almost every measurable way.

tonfreed• 1 year ago

It's telling that culture will instantly lump anyone successful into the "white" category. I feel like this diversity drive was broken from the start

EA-31672• 1 year ago

So... what are the categories then? Black and Everyone Else?! That seems pretty silly on almost every level.

sheepdestroyer2• 1 year ago

Where I'm from, racial statistics and profiling are forbidden since they're antithetic with republican universalism ; but even taking the US culture into account, this point of view seems extremely bigoted.

skywhopper5• 1 year ago

Diversity targets are usually built around under-represented groups, not necessarily specific races.

teractiveodular5• 1 year ago

The referenced Google diversity reports spell out the percentages of "Asian+, Black+, Latinx+, Native American+ and White+" (their terms).

https://about.google/belonging/diversity-annual-report/2023/

Gothmog692• 1 year ago

sounds like we need a working definition of diversity? Usually it just means way less white people.

jaredklewis• 1 year ago

At Harvard (and I assume other places, but those other places were not subjected to the level of discovery that Harvard was in SFFA v Harvard), diversity meant less Asians. Representation of whites was about what you would expect given their test scores and grades.

eastbound2• 1 year ago

In France it’s forbidden to filter by race. Guess how they filter by criteria? Well the population under 25 is incredibly diverse so they don’t care about filtering, they just donate to everyone under 25. Can’t believe we gave up our land like this, they’re not even nice or thankful.

blackeyeblitzar• 1 year ago

DEI programs discriminate significantly against Asians, just like college admissions. If these programs didn’t exist, the proportion of Asian employees would be even higher than it is currently, simply based on merit.

rajnathani• 1 year ago

Well, the top US engineering colleges which they're hiring from also has an under-representation of whites and this is due to the Asian disapora being higher from also international students' representation (thus, analyzing diversity metrics is less so relative to the US population and more so for the global population).

aurareturn4• 1 year ago

If you zoom out far enough, all these companies are making business decisions - not emotional ones. They have to kiss Trump's ring and bend the knee for Elon in order to not get destroyed. When they had DEI, it was created for business reason too - to be seen as socially just so you should buy their products. Now Google thinks it's better for business if they fall in line with what Trump wants.

like_any_other2• 1 year ago

When they had DEI, it was created for business reason too - to be seen as socially just so you should buy their products.

You don't think that was "to not get destroyed" too? Such as when New York city was sued (and lost, having to pay out $1.8 billion) because too many minorities failed its test for teachers:

https://www.thecollegefix.com/nyc-will-pay-out-1-8-billion-t...

nerdjon2• 1 year ago

I think it is more than just Trump. We do have to remember that some companies are currently being sued by shareholders for attempting to keep DEI around. Or at least was threatened to be.

I don’t know if these lawsuits would win or not but given the current political climate I sure wouldn’t bet against it. From a purely business prospective on that alone, I can see why they would do it. And do it so quickly.

This is the latest symptom of a very powerful opposition that just gained almost unlimited power. Or at least unchecked power. To be clear here Trump is also a symptom, this didn’t come out of nowhere with him.

Be mad and hold these companies accountable but we also can’t afford to be distracted by the symptoms when those in power are going to make it so much worse.

kombine2• 1 year ago

Unironically, the comments such as yours are downvoted. I had an idealised view about our industry, but it has now shattered during the course of the last year.

aurareturn4• 1 year ago

College grads have an idealized view of tech industry. But it's all about money at the end of the day and tech is turning into something similar to other industries like oil or pharma.

mfuzzey• 1 year ago

There's a big difference between obeying laws (which all companies pretty much have to do if they want to stay in business) and voluntarilly aligning with what they think a new president wants without there being any specific law forcing them to do that.

I actually think the business reason FOR the DEI stuff (to appeal to customers by coming accross as fair and progressive) made more sense. Have the customers really changed their minds just because someone else is in the Whitehouse?

aurareturn4• 1 year ago

Appealing to customers by coming across as fair and progressive is great. But Google has a huge anti-trust lawsuit that can wreck them. Trump can probably make that go away.

If they stay more "woke", Trump is guaranteed to try to destroy Google.

Google has done the calculus and likely concluded that kissing Trump's ass is better for their shareholders than continuing to align more left.

I think this is a business decision, as it was for Meta, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Blame US citizens for giving so much power to Trump.

silexia• 1 year ago

Diversity hiring targets is a pretty new phrase to describe an ugly old practice: racism.

rvz3• 1 year ago

Exactly. It always has been. A rebranded newspeak to cover for what it really is.

DFHippie2• 1 year ago

There are advantages to diversity by itself. These have been well documented. So setting aside any concern about excluded groups, it was a good business decision to aim for a diverse workforce.

But taking those concerns up again, almost no one perceives their own biases as biases. It's like you don't perceive your own accent, people of different racial backgrounds look similar, you can't smell your own breath, etc. So being a biased person feels just like being an unbiased person, but it makes you make biased decisions. A person against whom you harbor a prejudice applies for a job. Your bias causes you to discount their better qualities and double count their worse qualities. So you hire someone else. This hurts both you and the person you didn't hire.

A policy that works against well-known biases, if implemented correctly, achieves three ends: it reduces the harm to the person biased against, it reduces the harm to the company whose hiring policies are distorted by bias, and it helps the company by producing a more diverse workforce, which is an end in itself regardless of whether you care about harms to others. If implemented correctly, diversity hiring targets can produce the effect of hiring without prejudice despite the prejudice of those hiring.

If you are crossing a river and the wind blows you off course, you don't head to your goal but to the side. The net result is that you reach your goal. The diversity targets are just tacking against the wind.

lofenfew• 1 year ago

There are advantages to diversity by itself. These have been well documented. So setting aside any concern about excluded groups, it was a good business decision to aim for a diverse workforce.

They wanted to have a diverse workforce, and came up with an excuse for it post-hoc. The best defense I've seen of this is that diverse opinions are good for business. Of course, hiring racially diverse people while being antagonistic towards those with different ways of thinking does little to increase diversity of thought.

But taking those concerns up again, almost no one perceives their own biases as biases.

Says the pot to the kettle. The way to prevent bias is to come up with objective factors to evaluate people based on, not intentionally injecting bias of your own.

If you are crossing a river and the wind blows you off course, you don't head to your goal but to the side. The net result is that you reach your goal. The diversity targets are just tacking against the wind.

We have a word for this: racism.

sandworm1012• 1 year ago

The loss of dei programs is bad but isn't the big bad. The big bad comes when businesses start being forced to prove that they arent doing dei. Every hire may soon have to be examined under inverse lenses: to prove that they are not dei. Real evils will then creep back into business culture. Be under no illusions. Those evils still lurk in every back office.

voldacar• 1 year ago

The loss of DEI programs is good, as it reduces the pressure for these companies to discriminate against white and asian men in hiring.

wahnfrieden8• 1 year ago

That’s not how DEI programs operated at places I’ve worked. They were more about expanding candidate searches to look for high quality people at other places than we’d been looking, reducing alcohol at company events etc

qwerpy• 1 year ago

Agree. As a parent to an Asian boy, I’m thankful that steps are being taken to ensure he isn’t discriminated against for school admissions and job applications.

chrislongss5• 1 year ago

This is a fantastical speculation based on no evidence other than political bias. We do have evidence, though, that candidates had to go through performative hiring practices to prove that they support "diversity".

sandworm1012• 1 year ago

A friend once said to me "that road doesnt need a speed limit anymore. It hasnt had a fatal accident for many years. And cars are safer now. Dont burden people with stupid restrictions." Evil is patient.

MeetingsBrowser• 1 year ago

…

skywhopper5• 1 year ago

At Google? Where’s the evidence? Most DEI efforts come down to making sure you give a diverse candidate pool a chance to prove themselves instead of just hiring buddies that look and think and act exactly the same. That’s hardly “performative”.

programmerpass2• 1 year ago

Well, if businesses had to prove that each hire is related to dei, which was the previous state of affairs, many would argue that is when evil creeps into business culture.

So, it goes both ways, supposedly.

skywhopper5• 1 year ago

But this never happened.

xnx3• 1 year ago

Would be great to be more resources put in at the very start of the pipeline (e.g. early childhood education). It's very hard to "solve" "diversity" at the time of hiring when candidates have already had decades of disadvantage.

nlawalker• 1 year ago

I like this. DEI efforts and investments should be at least as much about planting the right seeds as it is about tailoring the current “harvest”.

paxys4• 1 year ago

Well we are shutting down the Department of Education...

goalieca4• 1 year ago

Since education is a state level responsibility, why not handle it there? We don’t have a federal education ministry in Canada for instance.

nxm2• 1 year ago

Which spending and headcount for has increased since its inception, with no actual improvement in education (per Cato Institute). God forbid some accountability and no more wasting of tax dollars.

benatkin• 1 year ago

I think to say that it's very hard to solve it underestimates the development of skills that can be done for adults. I think it's merely hard.

morkalork3• 1 year ago

It's especially a joke when BigCo hires a larger percentage than what the pipeline supplies, it necessarily drops the diversity at smaller companies.

skywhopper5• 1 year ago

The fair way is to do so at all levels of the pipeline because it turns out people can overcome their past if given the support and resources to do so. But it’s far easier and cheaper to invest early on. All that said, real structural racism and sexism and other prejudices continues to exist, and so the pipeline will always be a problem.

But a company like Google, which makes obscene profits every quarter, should be doing far more at all stages to fight the effects of that prejudice, because if whole categories of people are unprepared to work at Google because of societal failures, that’s huge numbers of potentially fantastic employees Google is missing out on.

readthenotes1• 1 year ago

Didn't they find out in Sweden that, given the opportunity, women were not as interested in STEM as they were in other fields?

xnx3• 1 year ago

should be doing far more at all stages to fight the effects of that prejudice

Google is a big company that can do a lot of things, but I wouldn't expect them to solve societal problems that plenty of other very profitable companies are making almost no effort in.

The models Google is developing may end up being the most impactful innovation in learning since the printing press.

nxm2• 1 year ago

I couldn't agree more - I'm not sure why there is no focus on addressing gaps sooner.

relaxing6• 1 year ago

We have programs like Head Start, school meals, etc. but they’re currently being defunded.

kombine2• 1 year ago

It's not that these diversity policies were effective at addressing the underlying issue, they looked ridiculous to someone from the outside. What is hilarious and scary at the same time, is how these global corporations, the supposed progressive forces, are reversing them in quick succession one after another one 2 weeks into Trump's presidency.

coliveira• 1 year ago

That's the grand bargain to escape the monopoly lawsuit. Now we'll have another monopoly protected by Trump.

Quarrelsome7• 1 year ago

When I came over to the states to go to a tech conference at a NASDAQ listed billion dollar corp that bought us, the only black people I met were either working at the hotels (90% of that staff) or living in the nearby inner city.

I don't pretend to understand the USA, and maybe that conference wasn't representative, but to me it was quite shocking that the disparity was so clearly visible. So I think its a bit of a shame they're losing this, because from my perspective there was still a clear gap in terms of education outcomes which feed corporate and I would have liked to think these policies were helping to address that.

wahnfrieden8• 1 year ago

You will be told that any systemic initiatives to address that are racist against whites who deserve more of a share of whatever is being done for others. Likewise any policies or initiatives along class line divisions are taking resources away from others who deserve a share of what may be given for disenfranchised/impoverished classes

paxys4• 1 year ago

What you say is true, but these corporate diversity efforts are mostly used for PR and aren't actually making a difference to any race or community. The simple truth is that tech companies are going to hire any qualified engineer they can find, regardless of whether they are in a minority group or not and whether there is a DEI department at the company or not. So the question that should be asked is – why are black people (5-6% of CS graduates vs 15% of population), women (16-18% of CS graduates vs 50.5% of population), latinos (7% of CS graduates vs 20% of US population) etc. not pursuing STEM education and graduating with engineering degrees at the same rate as white and asian men? And what can we do to fix that? Diversity hiring at the corporate level is not the solution to the problem, education and training is.

teractiveodular5• 1 year ago

You're assuming there is no genetic component whatsoever to human skills and interests, and the only reason women are not studying computer science/car repair/welding is sexism.

Quarrelsome7• 1 year ago

from my very basic reading on the subject I believe the cause is a lack of black students coming through top universities. I have seen it stated that there are many black developers but many of them do not have degrees and learn to program outside of university. I found this particularly interesting because this is my background as well, I come from a nation less hung up on degrees and willing to accept experience as a substitute.

Corporations could help by considering interviewing developers who go to other universities or those with good experience but without degrees.

tommiegannert• 1 year ago

Part of DEI at Google is to engage with universities to understand why some prefer not to study STEM/PR/whatnot. Shutting it down at Google will also affect the education pipeline.

Agreed on PR (or avoidance of negative publicity) being the main driver for Pichai to engage in the discussion, but there are many people at Google who care.

Disclaimer: worked at Google in Europe.

greenchair2• 1 year ago

when you go to a car repair shop, would it shock you to see 99% males working there?

Quarrelsome7• 1 year ago

I was expecting the US office to be more diverse than my UK office, given the large black population in the US, but that wasn't the case which surprised me.

user3939382• 1 year ago

Most of these megacorporations have no beliefs or values except their own profits and growth. Everything else is political expediency. This is just based on a lifetime of observing their behavior.

rvz3• 1 year ago

About time and no more easy rides or passes for anyone. Everyone equally gets the brutal Leetcode hards treatment.

Either you pass the threshold or you don't. No excuses.

wahnfrieden8• 1 year ago

Where have DEI initiatives lowered standards of hiring at Google?

I think you’re making that up! Be specific, don't deflect and shift into general discourse topics. I am not talking about distractions at work, I'm asking about your specific claim that hiring standards were lowered.

rvz3• 1 year ago

Where have DEI initiatives lowered standards of hiring at Google?

Other than DeepMind, almost everywhere at Google. For Google to be wasting time on useless initiatives instead of remaining competitive against other companies would have made the difference between survival in this AI race ever since their CEO (Sundar) panicked.

It is no wonder many ex-Googlers have lost confidence and left for their competitors who are solely focused on destroying Google after they lost the lead and created an opening.

I think you’re making that up!

Really.

How exactly is DEI going to save Google in the very deep trouble that they are already in? Losing lots of *key* talent, potential anti-trust breakup, frontier AI companies like OpenAI going after them.

I don't think you are paying close attention. Will more DEI initiatives and hires save Google and stop their own CEO from panicking?

Be specific, don't deflect and shift into general discourse topics. I am not talking about distractions at work, I'm asking about your specific claim that hiring standards were lowered.

You deflected and did not pay attention. My reply was very specific even after answering your strawman question. My question is very simple:

How is DEI hiring going to save Google right now given all the trouble that they are in?

greenchair2• 1 year ago

how bout the CEO?

Ancalagon• 1 year ago

Yeah! Leetcode hards for everyone! Including the PMs, EMs, Directors, and C-suite hires!

skywhopper5• 1 year ago

The idea that there’s one specific axis on which to judge job candidates that’s 100% objective is a fantasy. Leetcode certainly doesn’t predict how well someone will do at Google, or what they can contribute to a team. If anyone actually believed that they wouldn’t even do interviews.

jncfhnb• 1 year ago

I worked on some DEI programs. The problem was mixed. Most companies (at least the ones with DEI programs) thought they had big DEI issues because minorities had worse outcomes. But if you looked hard, that wasn’t usually the case. It was merely that minorities were more represented at lower levels and lower levels had higher attrition and what not. On the whole, it tended to look like hiring, retention, and even promotions looked surprisingly equitable. That is, while it would take a long time, it did seem as if things would stop being crusty old white men at the top exclusively.

However there are some noteworthy qualifiers. First, the biggest thing these programs did successfully was just diversifying the entry points so that you could even begin to start conversations with people from other backgrounds. That’s huge and effective.

Second, and this one is more anecdata, but I never really felt the hiring pool of diverse candidates was randomly sampled at all. For all the groaning about meritocracy and white candidates getting shat on, I tended to find in my personal hiring that diverse candidates were often MUCH stronger candidates. I rarely saw unmotivated, underqualified minorities and women make it to an interview stage whereas there’s a ton of white and Asian guys that did. Getting these candidates was harder. Which is to say, without putting any intrinsic value on racial or cultural backgrounds, I do think DEI programs somehow greatly streamlined a meritocratic highlighting of talented folks from diverse backgrounds. Which is ironic because that’s often the opposite claim.

That is, given you are a minority applying to an advanced position, odds are you’re really strong.

hondo77• 1 year ago

...the biggest thing these programs did successfully was just diversifying the entry points so that you could even begin to start conversations with people from other backgrounds.

This. This was my experience with DEIA programs in the government. It was always about diverse recruitment, not hiring. People believe what they want to, though.

relaxing6• 1 year ago

I do think DEI programs somehow greatly streamlined a meritocratic highlighting of talented folks from diverse backgrounds.

This has been my experience as well. It’s sad that it feels like the contrarian opinion. Thanks for taking the time to write a sane accounting.

thaumasiotes4• 1 year ago

I was recruited through Google's diversity program twice.

The first time, what that meant was that they invited their diversity candidates to a small pre-interview preparation session which, oddly enough, didn't bother to touch on what they were looking for in interviews. I took the interviews and was informed that I'd failed them.

The second time, I paid for coaching from interviewing.io, and I learned what they were looking for in interviews. This was not cheap. (There are some surprises! For example, they don't care whether you can answer their questions. If you can't, you're supposed to ask them how. This is not a normal testing style.) I took their interviews, and my recruiter informed me that I had passed, wished me congratulations, and told me to expect a job offer by the end of the current hiring cycle (which was about six weeks away). In the meantime, I'd have a set of "team fit" interviews.

Then, they never contacted me again, except to say that they'd realized that on second thought my interview scores were too low for them to hire me. Not a single thing was scheduled until the hiring cycle ended and they let me know that while my scores were good enough to have passed their interviews, they weren't good enough to be hired after passing the interviews.

There was no obvious "diversity" angle to that one, but when I complained to a family friend working at Google, they looked up the recruiter and were surprised to see that she was specialized in diversity hiring.

paxys4• 1 year ago

All the talk about "diversity" in tech companies always reminds me of this Silicon Valley scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY. Still the perfect representation of the entire effort.

nyarlathotep_• 1 year ago

Probably primarily a business and cost-cutting measure (certain there's loads of DEI-related staff; NOT DEI hires, roles that exist to foster DEI policies).

I've a prediction somewhat related to this.

We'll see, in the coming year(s), a large portion of positions at the FAANG(s) being moved overseas as cost-cutting measures. Paired with the impression that LLMs reduce the need for programmers, we (domestically) will see a substantial reduction in the number of developer (and related roles) in the States.

From what I've heard/seen wrt roles at these companies there's a substantial imbalance in locations for hiring (huge increases in India, Mexico, Brazil, and others) and less and less in the States.

impish9208• 1 year ago

Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-kills-diversity-hiring-targe...

TriangleEdge2• 1 year ago

Isn't "communism = bad" part of the American culture? Why are all of these private companies immediately kissing the govts ass?

mvdtnz• 1 year ago

What on earth does communism have to do with it?

TriangleEdge2• 1 year ago

I could be wrong, but on earth, communists tend to control their companies with an iron grip.

strangeloops85• 1 year ago

Independent of whether these goals are appropriate or not, these actions (and those of so many other companies) are just so predictably craven.

These executive orders (and what "DEIA" exactly means or constitutes, legally speaking) have not been litigated or clarified yet. Is Google going to avoid interviewing anyone from a HBCU now?

At least Costco seems to have a logical reason for what they do and stood by it.

likeabatterycar• 1 year ago

Is Google going to avoid interviewing anyone from a HBCU now?

No, because that would obviously be racist.

DEI would be favoring one candidate over another specifically due to immutable personal characteristics, not their qualifications for the job.

The just thing would be students from HBCUs having a level playing field along with everyone else.

It's no different than hiring managers selectively preferring graduates from Stanford or based on their surname's ethnicity, but it's hard to prove those things happen.

scblock• 1 year ago

You misunderstand what Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is. It's not about favoring anyone despite qualifications and never has been. Using it as a pejorative in the way you are is how the right wants to use it, but it is also racist, sexist, and ablist. It doesn't reflect the purpose of the concept at all. In fact your description of "favoring one candidate over another specifically due to immutable personal characteristics, not their qualifications for the job" is exactly what the concept hopes to prevent, not enable.

DEI is not "reverse racism" as so many want to put it, it is more about considering diversity and recognizing personal and institutional bias, and working to ensure that bias does not negatively affect people, whether that be in hiring, consideration for roles or promotions, and so on.

All the things we've seen both in government and in companies suddenly dumping DEI programs is craven, and if you actually look you can see it's already doing damage. There seem to be a lot of assumptions that women or people of color in high positions are "DEI hires" when they likely had to work harder than white men to get where they are. I mean firing a 4-star admiral because she's a woman and then claiming she was a DEI hire is insane, but that's where we are. Automatically assuming a black or trans pilot is a DEI hire is insane, but that's where we are.

AlotOfReading3• 1 year ago

DEI is nominally about adjusting the situation so that the end result is equal. For example, paying women equally even if they don't negotiate as aggressively as men.

The nominal case doesn't always match the reality, but the reality is that no one has a level playing field to begin with.

jszymborski• 1 year ago

No, because that would obviously be racist.

And doing obviously racist things is unheard of, particularly in tech. /s

fzeroracer• 1 year ago

I mean, considering West Point Academy is closing clubs like the National Society of Black Engineers or the Japanese Forum Club due to the anti-DEI order [1] I think that should tell you everything you need to know about what this change signals.

[1] https://time.com/7212911/west-point-disbands-cadet-clubs-aff...

UncleMeat3• 1 year ago

How do you feel about recruiting efforts at all-women's colleges? What if those were stopped?

bufferoverflow4• 1 year ago

Is Google going to avoid interviewing anyone from a HBCU now?

Why won't they?

It's not like black people can't be hired anymore. It's just they have to compete like everyone else without being treated like disabled people.

pkulak3• 1 year ago

That’s not how DEI works at all, and you probably know that, but being “short, quippy and wrong” is just so easy.

pacomerh• 1 year ago

You have been misinformed of how DEI works. Its goal is basically equal access to resources, addressing systemic inequities, and fostering an inclusive culture where everyone feels valued.

AlotOfReading3• 1 year ago

Imagine that someone decides recruiting needs a budget cut and shrinks the travel budget a bit. Managers shift to local career fairs instead. No one notices the complete lack of bay area HBCUs and a couple years down the road the pipeline is filled with people from Stanford with internships and internal recommendations competing against people from HBCUs that don't have either of them. One of these populations will look vastly more qualified on paper.

rob74• 1 year ago

Well, if they prefer a black candidate to a white one, the white one can complain of being discriminated against and accuse them of promoting DEI, which under the new administration can have all sorts of bad consequences for them. So they'd better play it safe and hire the white candidate...

MadcapJake• 1 year ago

It's just they have to compete like everyone else

That's the whole point of DEI to ensure that *no one* is getting an unfair advantage because:

- their name is white https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2024/04/17/new-res... - recruitment is only occurring at certain places - or any other ways that bias can filter out perfectly good candidates

DEI is not about picking lesser candidates to fill quotas, it's about ensuring the human recruiters don't get in the way of the best talent joining your company.

piker2• 1 year ago

How deep in the talent pool does Google usually go? It seems to me many HBCUs end up somewhere in the middle of the rankings. I don’t think Google went out of its way to interview at my middling state school. Should HBCUs get a boost?

scarab926• 1 year ago

It surprises me that these programs were ever legal.

It is strictly illegal in Australia to consider factors like gender or race when hiring. Even capturing these details from applicants is problematic in most cases.

The compensation payable if caught can be enormous, in the order of a years salary per applicant. It’s not even necessary to prove that a specific applicant was discriminated against, simply having a process which is likely to discriminate is sufficient.

protocolture2• 1 year ago

I recall we have a specific carve out for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders, and I recall seeing specific hiring drives especially around the public service (I also am aware that elements of the federal government had a program specifically targeting autistic people too, which is also a protected characteristic)

Theres also 2 forms these DEI programs took.

1. (The FAA Thing) where they specifically manipulated their hiring system to ensure a greater percentage of african americans.

2. (What a lot of the tech companies did) Write tons of new HR documentation, and add checks and balances to ensure that the implicit bias of the hiring manager didn't result in a biased outcome.

Theres really nothing wrong with 2 in an Australian context other than the extra overhead. The overhead was carried for a while as it allowed companies to signal alignment with political stances. They are shelving these programs to signal differently.

Honestly I cant completely hate the idea of 2 either. I despise the idea of more HR people drawing paychecks, but I recall an incident 20 years ago where our team couldn't hire a woman because the all female HR team unilaterally decided she wasn't technical enough, and bounced her out of the running without telling the hiring manager. (The applicant was conventionally attractive and younger than the HR team)

baggy_trough• 1 year ago

They never were legal, but people looked the other way. Now that will come back to haunt them.

Tuna-Fish• 1 year ago

This is precisely why the programs got so weird.

It is, and always was, illegal to hire or not hire someone based on their race (or other protected class). You cannot legally just use quotas. At the same time, the EEOC will find a way to sue you if you are a large company with a lower proportion of minority employees than population. So companies had to get creative.

Trump EEOC will not do that. It's questionable if the EEOC even has the power to do that anymore after recent supreme court decisions that weaken regulators in general.

SilverBirch2• 1 year ago

The truth is it comes down to the exact details of the policy whether it's legal. There's tonnes of things you can do to increase diversity in legal ways. For example, Google recruits at college campuses, they must have selection criteria for which campuses they visit, no matter what that policy is it's de facto a diversity strategy.

As for whether it's fair. It seems pretty dependent on your view of the world. If your base case is that without any regulations you'll just get the best person for the job, then these programs all look like an aberration. But if your base case is that hiring isn't fair - people hire their family, their friends, people from their alma mater, people from their church etc. Then putting in a programme to mitigate the biases that do exist seems like a reasonable thing to do.

breakyerself• 1 year ago

DEI programs favoring a specific race is the exception to the norm. DEI is supposed to be about stopping discrimination and bias. A common recommendation of DEI programs is to replace names with numbers so people looking at the resumes racial biases can't influence decisions.

atestu• 1 year ago

It is also illegal in the US to consider race or gender when hiring.

https://www.eeoc.gov/prohibited-employment-policiespractices

vlasky• 1 year ago

It's not "strictly illegal" in Australia. Our anti-discrimination bodies across the country frequently grant exemptions to employers allowing sex-based or race-based discrimination in favour of certain groups (e.g. women, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people), in order to "improve access to specific jobs, programs or services".

Here is a list of the current exemptions in NSW:

https://antidiscrimination.nsw.gov.au/organisations-and-comm...

Ferret74462• 1 year ago

I'm not sure "craven" is the right word, but it's definitely something.

These executive orders (and what "DEIA" exactly means or constitutes, legally speaking) have not been litigated or clarified yet.

All of these DEI efforts were and are blatantly illegal. They were just never litigated for long enough that everyone was comfortable with doing them openly. The point of the executive orders isn't necessarily the orders themselves, but a clear signal the new administration will litigate these efforts that have always been illegal.

So many of these companies are backing away from the efforts and hoping that show of goodwill will ameliorate their potential upcoming legal risk. If they play ball, the new administration might accept the peace offering and not go full legal scorched earth.

ilrwbwrkhv• 1 year ago

"we will no longer have aspirational goals" - google in a nutshell

marricks• 1 year ago

Perhaps aspirational in using AI to help the military :)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/business/google-ai-weapons-su...

mobiuscog3• 1 year ago

I bet they still expect their employees to write 'aspirational goals' each review, just as every tech company seems to do now.

moi23882• 1 year ago

Every pro DEI argument is “no true Scotsman”.

Whereas in practice it’s just plain racism and discrimination.

I’m sure in theory it’s all very nice. Just like communism.

Eextra9532• 1 year ago

Ya and every anti-DEI argument really boils down to it's not fair that a better candidate who isn't white got hired over me.

moi23882• 1 year ago

No. It boils down to “it’s not fair that a worse candidate got hired just because (s)he wasn’t white or Asian”

roomey3• 1 year ago

Take a breath and take this from first principles...

People tend to be tribal. People, when interviewing and select, will tend to hire people that look like them. A white guy from a white school from a white neighbourhood is far more likely to hire another white guy because that's what the've spent their whole lives surrounded by. This is justified a million ways, but what it boils down to is favouring someone who is a certain race.

And when tech is already full of white guys, it just means more white guys will be hired in tech... Cause maths.

All DEI was doing in the tech world was saying, "try interview at least one woman/ black person etc". Also maybe some training on how to avoid the pitfall in an interview of just hiring someone the same as you.

But look around you in the office. How many women are there? How many black people? How many... Black women?!?! Yea, I thought so.

If you are talking about "merit based" then that is "DEI". If you are talking about "people who look and act like me", then you are racist.

Anyway, excluding people leads to worse outcomes. Unfortunately, it makes life harder for people on the way.

mitthrowaway22• 1 year ago

All DEI was doing in the tech world was saying, "try interview at least one woman/ black person etc". Also maybe some training on how to avoid the pitfall in an interview of just hiring someone the same as you.

A lot of people are strongly in favour of this, of course, including me. But are you sure that's all that it was doing?

roomey3• 1 year ago

Kind of yes. This was what it was attempting to do.

Now I must say, in practice. In over 12 years of working in two large multinationals as a "tech interviewer" (That is, once someone went through the management interview and HR interview), I never interviewed a black person or a woman. Anicdotal? Yes. But 12 years is a loooooong time.

Anyway, just literally look around an office, or look at a leadership tree, and you can see for yourself. This isn't hard to demonstrate.

p0w3n3d4• 1 year ago

Idea sounds great but the realisation sounds like "I will make peace! Let the bloodshed begin"

rijoja• 1 year ago

What makes you believe that just because there is X percent of category 1 in set A it is "unjust" if there is not X percent of category 1 in an unrelated set B?

Also why do you think this principle applies to the categories Women and Blacks, and not for instance people with diabetes, psychopaths and people who like Taylor swift?

Jensson2• 1 year ago

And when tech is already full of white guys

Its also full of Asian guys, so its way more diverse than most sectors in USA.

roomey3• 1 year ago

It's not diverse, it's just not. Everyone who works in tech can see it's not diverse.

You can tell because pretty soon people start in with the justifications of why it is so

p0w3n3d4• 1 year ago

DEI is fun and games until I am the person that won't be hired because I am not the niche to be de-discriminated. I remember coming to a Google stand on a conference, where they gave me form asking besides my email address, what is my ethnic background (strange word they used in my language, which I associated with gender etc, whatever would make me a minority) and would I mind share. I chose not to share and they even didn't drop me a line...

Eextra9532• 1 year ago

Ya maybe cause you refused to fill out a form that everyone else could fill out just fine. They probably thought you couldn't follow instructions and thought if they can't do this why would we proceed? You ever consider that?

dazilcher• 1 year ago

Unless you know more about that incident than the op, it sounds like they didn't refuse to fill anything but instead chose to skip and optional section.

relaxing6• 1 year ago

Or maybe Google rejects the vast majority of applicants, so there’s no way to know.

p0w3n3d4• 1 year ago

They virtually didn't ask of anything else: mail, and discriminatory information

rib3ye• 1 year ago

One lesser known DEI policies that I think aligns with current conservative thinking:

- Parental Leave & Caregiving Support: Providing paid maternity and paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, and childcare support

relaxing6• 1 year ago

You would think family support aligns with conservative values, but no.

The conservative value they’re most interested in the freedom to be homeless and starve on the streets if you can’t stay employed.

thinkingemote• 1 year ago

Is Microsoft next? Will they dig out and shampoo the old GitHub meritocracy rug?

srid• 1 year ago

This was brewing from last year.

From their "Mission First" post on Apr 18, 2024 https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/buil...

“ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.”

Paul Graham had predicted it back in 2020: https://x.com/paulg/status/1781329523155357914

https://www.piratewires.com/p/mission-accomplished

And this was happening elsewhere too, for e.g.,

Microsoft: https://archive.is/p5Ewk

and

Meta: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/10/meta-dei-programs-employees... & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42700134 ... even as early as 2022: https://world.hey.com/dhh/meta-goes-no-politics-at-work-and-...

For larger context, see https://www.wsj.com/business/c-suite/chief-diversity-officer...

somedude895• 1 year ago

This certainly has been brewing under the surface for quite some time now, not just in business, but in most of society. What's changed is that now the dominoes have started to fall, people are finally comfortable expressing it in clear terms.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 1 year ago

Commenters may be missing that Google, Amazon, etc., as US government contractors, are required to follow the legal requirements for all such contractors. Previously contractors were required to follow rules based on a policy set by a Johnson administration EO in the 1960's. That policy has been replaced by a new EO. Online commenters might prefer to focus on recent changes as representative of corporate culture, management ideology, etc. instead of business judgment (as in the "business judgment rule" followed by the US courts), e.g., meeting the necessary legal requirements to secure/retain government contracts.

https://www.ebglaw.com/insights/publications/dei-and-affirma...

aristofun• 1 year ago

Isn’t it obvious that any artificial forced attempt to “balance” a very complex system from within by a primitive set of rules is gonna sooner or later fail and eventually cause even more imbalance and chaos?

The only way is to “naturally” help create conditions that hopefully will slowly yield. Sure there aarea many vague lines there, but at least we should be rational enough to choose the right attitude, right general approach.

What could be more racist and stupid then these “hiring targets”?

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Google kills diversity hiring targets

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