The situation in Europe and the UK is at odds with the changes taking place at the headquarters of some big tech companies.

As with all US corporations in Europe, policy changes which might not even make any sense will be implemented anyway. If it's not legal, local HR will pretend it's all legal. Those countries which have codetermination or union representation in the workplace might even manage to get some of the nonsense which comes from the US blocked or overturned.

And the us hr person will be shocked when head office rules/processes are found to be not legal. The company gets taken to court/tribunal and gets a big bill and embarrassment.

Positive discrimination is illegal in most European countries. However, it should be noted, that where there is anti-discriminatory legislation, violating it is either way a criminal offence. This has kept Europe largely free of the civil suits asserting discrimination and seeking compensation: they do occur, but normally after a violation has been deemed to have occurred by a court and rewards are much lower than are possible in the more litigious US.

I've never been a fan of flag-waving "social justice" employment practices, which are often little more than window-dressing. But I think many good employers have learned to think beyond their bias (we all have one) and maybe give some candidates a second look. But they're also likely to engage in active outreach campaigns to the more socio-economically disadvantaged parts of the society, something that it often conspicuous by its absence the US. Are you poor and from a racial minority? Then why not join the army? McDonalds and the like should be given credit for sometimes actively giving chances to such people, though normally after working them, ahem, like slaves for a while, but at least they've learned to promote from within.

This is what The Register thinks equal opportunities is about, though: Recruiting people with the most appropriate skills for a role irrespective of race, gender, or background.

Against

US President Donald Trump's orders terminating DEI initiatives center on the federal government, yet Attorney General Pam Bondi dispatched a memorandum stating that the Department of Justice is prepared to "investigate, eliminate, and penalize illegal DEI and DEIA [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility] preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities in the private sector."

It seems Trumps order matches the regs thoughts. Best for the job, not hiring based on race, sex, etc. As we saw when people looked into the hiring practices after the plane/helicopter air crash and found a shortage of workers but a DEI filter excluding experienced and qualified people based on DEI.

Got source for that that isn't Twitter or Facebook?

DEI done right means that if there are two equal candidates, one who has a disability or is in a minority might get a bonus point. That's all it is. There's no need to tear that down.

@AC

"DEI done right means that if there are two equal candidates"

That you had to say "done right" is very much the point

"DEI done right " so bascially hiring based on merit and nothing else.

In other words DEI does not need to exist. It is purely an ideology that was developed in order to create division. It has had the opposite effect of that which is pretended to be.

Anectode : The non-whites in my company hate DEI, the idea that people are hired solely for their skin colour appals them.. They weren't hired for that reason thankfully.

Recently our compliance officer who is a DEI advocate asked if we shoudl'nt hire a female for an IT position that his currently available, I want to know why she even asked the question. We want good people in our service, end of story, we dont care who they are as long as they can do the job. And just as an aside, we got 50 CVs, none of whom were from girls/women and yet we make it very clear that we accept both genders.

I will be happy that we go back to a sane position.

Try and cite something positive that has happened in the US since all these ideological movements started, outside of creating divison ? It's not an easy task.

"In other words DEI does not need to exist. "

Except for the "similarity bias" that makes people to select those like themselves. Techbros hiring techbros etc.

Also, there is rampant racism and misogyny in the US (and Europe) that lets minorities get filtered out at the lowest possible level. Having a "female" or "non-christian religious" name will make sure you won't even be invited to an interview.

"Techbros hiring techbros"

Be fair. They deserve each other.

You advertised a position stating you accept male and female applicants - OK.

If you had had a female applicant and she was the top candidate, she would have got in - OK.

If you had had a female applicant and she wasn't the top candidate, she wouldn't have got in - OK.

If you had had a female applicant and she was joint top candidate and the other candidate was a man, in that case she would have got in - according to your post this wouldn't really be a problem. Idem for race or disability which doesn't affect work.

So why does your post argue that this is not a sane position?

I think it's pretty rare that two candidates would be exactly equal in their abilities. If it isn't rare, then it suggests that the hiring decision is not sufficiently detailed / granular e.g. rating everyone on a scale of integers between 1 and 5.

It's rarer still for those candidates to be of different genders, given the rarity of female applicants to engineering roles in the first place

So you are right, in an infinitesimal proportion of cases.

But, for the sake of sanity, I would just improve the detail of the hiring process to make sure that these cases don't happen, i.e. find out who is truly the better candidate, and hire them.

"You advertised a position stating you accept male and female applicants"

Does the ad state that? Isn't that DEI?

Even if the ad says so, will women or "minorities" actually be accepted? Will being gay be accepted?

Somehow, being a woman or other "minority" does make you never fit the team, eg, the Uber scandal. Unless it is a low paying job, that is.

Would Marko Elez, hand picked by The Musk for a central position in DOGE, ever hire a Native American? Under any circumstances?

"So why does your post argue that this is not a sane position"

Because we don't adhere to the DEI ideological nonsense that was so trendy in the last few years.

The recent ideologies are now breaking down.

The blacks want police back in their communities. Defunding the police has a very negative effect... Black on Black death is on the rise...

The LGBs are now dissociating from the other letters.

Companies are moving away from DEI. Disney has understood that appealing to the woke crowd is losing them Billions (literally Billions).

The Amercian People voted Trump to get away from the nonsense. (They don't really care about it being Trump, I think Ron Desantis would have had the same effect.).

Wokeism is on its last legs. Anyone that remains within the ideology will simply be seen as being a radical fool, no-one will employ them as they have become toxic for their companies, ironic huh. It was basically a fad for upper middle-class white women to get attention.

There are far more important subjects to deal with ..

Globalism is causing major division. China, Russia the USA are on a fragile cliff edge.

Ecology, no-one is taking it seriosly ( None of the huge companies are doing anything except greenwashing) Plastic is as prevalant today as it was yesterday. Electric Power is not a solution, we have known that for quite some time. Germany has gone back to Coal Powered solution, lol , they were some of the most active greenies... Cheap Chinese stuff uses highly polluting ships and no-one says stop using Amazon, AliBaba etc....

AI is going to be used to keep the population even dumber. And it a massive ecological nightmare that is unnecessary and also has the effect of lowering education levels ( DEI played a part in this - lower SAT scores for entry etc.. )

We no longer encourage hard work.

Yup , the last four years has been truly positive .... Thank you very much to those Democrats that pushed it hard down our throats. (Their only actual goal was to become the Elite ; they don't give a damn about the population )

Remind us again how the Woke Ideologies have helped the majority ?

DEI done right means that if there are two equal candidates, one who has a disability or is in a minority might get a bonus point. That's all it is. There's no need to tear that down.

What you describe is bad enough, i.e. discrimination based on someone's physical characteristics, however equity is much worse and something you, like many people, appear ignorant about.

Equity means equality of outcome , as opposed to equality of opportunity - the latter being the only fair metric of assessing a person's competence.

Equity means selecting an inferior candidate ahead of a more competent one, based upon the unproven assertion that one or more of their physical characteristics has held them back in life.

Oh and when it comes to ethnicity, let's just say certain minorities are heavily favored over others.

Take the oft-quoted example of college entry in the US.

"The Asian penalty in applying to elite colleges is well known in Chinese American, Korean American and Indian American circles. For years, I contemplated whether my daughter should have had to check the Asian box when it came time to apply to college. After all, with her auburn hair and her father's surname, she could pass for white.

According to research from Princeton University, students who identify as Asian must score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites and 450 points higher than Blacks to have the same chance of admission to private colleges. "

https://eu.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/2022/11/03/race-based-college-admissions-and-its-impact-on-asian-americans/69614232007/

DEI is all about social engineering and absolutely at odds with merit-based recruitment.

"DEI done right means that if there are two equal candidates"

Thing is, they're almost never exactly equal. There's almost always a swarm of plus and minus factors for each candidate. DEI says that race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, etc should always be considered among those factors. As opposed to the Bad Old Days, when race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, etc were always considered among those factors.

I believe in the Bad Old Days, all of those things you listed were negatives.

So, in your opinion a professional hockey team in NHL not including people with disabilities is horrible discrimination and a bonus point might help them join the team ?

If their disability is to an extent which affects their work then they wouldn't be the top candidate or the joint top candidate, therefore they wouldn't get in.

I hate to break your bubble but in the US, both constitutionally and by statute, it is illegal to use a protected characteristic for **any** reason. That includes as a bonus point, tie breaker, additional area of consideration, or any other euphemism you wish to employ.

This means that in the statistically impossible situation that you had two equal candidates, you need to find a non-protected characteristic to use as a tie breaker.

DEI done right means that you discriminate against white, male, and increasingly successful Asian candidates. Throw some anti-Christian and anti-Jewish discrimination in these days as well.

Diversity is no one's strength. Equity (equal outcomes) is a bad LSD trip, the best we can achieve is equality (of opportunity). Inclusion follows equality of opportunity naturally.

Anyone who's honest knows what DEI *actually* is. There's never a call for hiring more white men in areas that are dominated by blacks (see: NBA), or hiring more men in areas dominated by women (see: elementary ed teachers, nurses). What DEI leads to are quotas, companies even publish them. They proudly announce that this quarter they want to hire X more blacks, and Y more women, and Z more LGBTQ+++.

In a region that is 80% white, 15% black, and 5% everyone else, DEI proponents use that fact there are only 16% black employees as evidence of racism. If there aren't at least 50% non-whites, that's apparent proof of both immediate and systemic racism.

There is much more than a need to tear it all down, it should have never been allowed to fester and metastasize. Previous administrations refused to enforce the applicable laws, the current one is. Add to that recent SCOTUS rulings confirming that affirmative action and other similar mechanisms are in fact illegal gives hopes that we can cure America of this disease.

DEI is a disastrous racist, sexist academic ideology that attempted to grant a veneer of respectability to this abomination.

The sooner we get back to a pure merit based colorblind society the better.

"The sooner we get back to a pure merit based colorblind society the better."

Oh please. When was the USA ever a pure merit based cocorblind society, in your view? When white men controlled literally everything?

When was it ever a **pure** merit based colorblind society, sadly never. It's an aspiration, something to strive for and toward. American society was making lots of progress toward that goal until the CEI/CRT/gender ideologists hijacked the country with a more openly divisive, discriminatory, racist, sexist ideology than at any point in modern American history.

White people currently make up about 76% of the US population, as high as 93% in some states as low as 35% in others. In some areas most of the levers of power are held by black individuals. Chicago for example has a black mayor, black city council, black chief of police, black school boards, etc. Women make up over 50% of the population and our gynocentric society means that women are treated more favorably legally. So I believe that your statement that "...white men controlled literally everything.." is incorrect.

Reality means that equity is an impossibility. People differ in ability, in temperament, in desires among others. You appear to be an anti-white racist, I feel sorry for you.

People should be given equality, treated the same. This naturally means that you will never have the same number of people an any position. Lowering standards, or eliminating testing doesn't help struggling people, it just increases the suffering of everyone around them.

If you want less black individuals in prison, you convince them to commit less crimes. Simply choosing not to prosecute them only encourages them to commit more crimes and needlessly spreads the suffering to others. Just because the numbers do match the ones in your head says absolutely nothing about racism, immediate or systemic.

Or are you going to make the argument that society is much better if you ignore merit and base all decisions on characteristics that no one had any control over; race, sex, etc.?

"This means that in the statistically impossible situation that you had two equal candidates, you need to find a non-protected characteristic to use as a tie breaker."

Measures of quality are very far from objective to begin with. I can select the best runner for the Olympics easily. But who is the best accountant or engineer? It depends.

In reality, the selection goes along the lines: "As I would be the perfect candidate, anyone who looks like me must be good."

The "tie breaker" is well known: We select the one that looks like me.

In reality, during to CRT/DEI/gender ideology dark ages, the "tie breaker" was (and still is unfortunately in far too many places is) whichever isn't :

a white male

an Asian male

a Christian

a Jew

once those undesirables were eliminated from the applicant pool, the position was given to whichever racial/sexual/orientation was missing on the CRT/DEI/gender ideology bingo card.

while you might not have thought so, most of those decisions to hire are made by individuals whose characteristics definitely does *not* match those of the person being hired. White members of the cult consistently preferentially hire non-whites, even when the white candidates were objectively more qualified for the position.

unless of course you mean that black hiring managers consistently hire lesser qualified black individuals, which folks like yourself never seem to have a problem with.

"We select the one that looks like me."

Do you?

"Best for the job" is a relative requirement. For hundreds of years it has meant "white men" and in many industries in the west it clearly still does.

> For hundreds of years it has meant "white men" and in many industries in the west it clearly still does.

I would bracket that by pointing out that this is a very Amero-centric viewpoint. This is not been the case in most of Europe for a long time.

And I would challenge you to expand on what you mean by "...and in many industries in the west it clearly still does.". Which industries and where? This is the problem with a lot of these claims. They are so non-specific that they are impossible to refute because they aren't making a falsifiable claim.

What the White House has actually done in the last three weeks is to hire the whitest, richest, least qualified, most obsequious, and if possible closest family member for basically everything.

It's grift, at the expense of all USians.

Oh, it's you. Crap, I fed the idiot troll.

But the whitest richest billionaires regardless of nationality or religion

Remind us again what color the following billionaires are ( yes Billionaires)

Robert F. Smith

David Steward ( WWT)

Jay-Z (Shawn Carter)

Rihanna (Robyn Fenty)

Michael Jordan

Opra Winfrey

And then tell us again the oppportunity doesn't exist for all.

And what color was Obama ? I seem to remember that he wasn't very white.

I won't add in the Asians as they are considered the same as White for some strange reason

"And what color was Obama ?"

How hated was Obama for being black?

The current Felon in Charge based his political career on claiming he wasn't a real American for it.

How hated was Obama for being black?

So hated, the American people voted for him twice.

> How hated was Obama for being black?

He was absolutely reviled by many in the black communities of the US as being an Uncle Tom. You really can't make this stuff up.

Could you briefly list the Silicon Valley techbro billionaires and let us know what they've all got in common?

Satya Nadella : Very clever man.

David Stewart : Very clever man

Ime Archibong : Very clever man

Tope Awotona Very clever man

Stacy Brown-Philpot : Very clever woman

Your right they do have some things in common , they are clever people, and if you stop seeing their skin colour for just two minutes you might become a little bit less rascist...

Morgan Freeman said perfectly, If you want to stop rascism, just stop talking about it....

If you want to stop rascism, just stop talking about race . It's quite an important distinction. Don't talk about race , and race can't become a factor. Don't talk about racism and you're abetting it by burying your head in the sand.

Ah, the don't test for covid approach

> Don't talk about racism and you're abetting it by burying your head in the sand.

Talking about racism is explicitly talking about race. WTF? Listen to yourself. Whether or not it is true is beside the point if what you are saying is complete nonsense.

The other thing they have in common is not being part of the oval office club

@Yet Another Anonymous coward

"The other thing they have in common is not being part of the oval office club"

Should they? Which ones should? Why? And what about the millions of other people in the country?

@Yet Another Anonymous coward

Not everyone notices you leave off the /sarc from some of your comments. It is funny to see people call Trump racist and sexist as he hires across race and sex.

There are some quarters of the population that have taken to substituting 'DEI' for the old school slang for peoples with ancestry in Nigeria and Niger. They've been working hard to cover their unpopular (abhorrent) beliefs with code words and to use as dog whistles.

Much like the earlier push to use the ''' triple quotes ''' to signify that the person referred to inside them was Jewish.

Anon, as i have to live there

Tom Lehrer had it nailed in the 60's, although in his case it was in relation to the US Army.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0L_rD7CCe4

DEI is one of those areas of life where legislation to stop wrong practices takes over. Instead of stopping what shouldn't be done, it stops what was being done right by regulating outputs instead of outcomes. When performance measures (especially those deemed KPIs) are used as targets and, as such, they put blinkers on good practice. Many years ago W Edwards Deming wrote "If management sets quantitative targets and makes people's jobs depend on them - they will meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it." DEI, when used as a principle for removing discriminatory bias, is beneficial to any enterprise. When it's used to set artificial targets it can end up being counter-productive.

You can't game-theory prejudice as it precludes rational self interest.

For the most part I agree with you, but when you talk about the "Equity" of DEI (as opposed to Equality), this is explicitly a call to rebalance the scales through intervention. This is the main reason why people hate DEI so much.

There is no call for Equity in the NBA and it is very obviously unbalanced in terms of racial representation. But then it is *extremely* merit-based so we accept it.

in the trend of commoditising everything in sight. Because commoditising something tends to be the way the elite can suck the value from it.

See also: housing, food, health, education.

DEI commoditised the hiring process.

It reminded me about the Liar Liar's elevator scene*: "- Do you like it so far? - Yeah! Everyone has been real nice. - Well, that's because you have big jugs".

Personal attractiveness, including youthfulness matter. That's the reason why Americans, in particular, are obsessed with own looks. Because it impacts their careers and income. And why stable gov jobs may do the opposite in motivation and work environment.

So it is often (?) about boss's personal preferences that trickle down to racial and gender specifics. Or to, as simple as, pleasant smell. Everyone has probably experienced an overly perfumed or unhygienic coworker. Competence being only number 3 in the list, unless no alternatives for sophisticated important roles.

*https://youtu.be/ic7aZk1Tb0s?t=5

We are a highly successful tech company and want to hire a developer.

The successful candidate will:

Be a straight white male, a top college graduate, in their 20's, have 10 years experience, be healthy, free from any disabilities, of average height and build (no fatties), be clean shaven, smartly dressed and free from body odour, have a good head of hair, excellent social skills, vote republican, attend church every Sunday (except when required to work), be a workaholic with no family commitments and require minimum wage. Ability to kiss ass an advantage.

Same as it always was, just no longer hiding it under the guise of "cultural fit." Churchgoing is probably regarded as a little gauche when they can get the same sort of "culture" from Atlas Shrugged.

I think it's a shame to lose the illusion however.

"Same as it always was"

The NBA confirms your point.