this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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[–] daltotron@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

DEI initiatives, which are really only thinly veiled plots to maximize profits

How do they make a company more money? Is it that it makes them more morally acceptable to buy from, giving them a larger audience? I always thought that the common argument against DEI, and shit like it, was that some morally neutral omnipotent objective third party somewhere wouldn't be able to hire all of the extremely highly qualified straight white men, and would be forced to hire everyone else who are by implication, less qualified, and that would tank productivity metrics.

Edit: which, by extension, ruins the economy, something something yadda yadda crushes western civilization, because now every company is run by some trans woman that wears programming socks, and has replaced everyone with a highly efficient system of different spreadsheets, connected to one another in some sort of chain, which generates free energy.

[–] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

Studies done by Amazon and others show that diverse groups of workers are less likely to unionize. Other studies show workplace education on things like unconscious bias and racism actually increase our awareness of the differences between us and not in a good way.

Make of that what you will.

[–] Jknaraa@lemmy.ml -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The big problem facing the corporate world is that they're running out of space to expand, and so the new rage is all about rearranging what already exists into a more profitable configuration. The big hurdle to this is that we already have large segments of society which are arranged socially for the benefit and enjoyment of the population instead of maximizing profit metrics.

[–] daltotron@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

so the idea is basically that they're using DEI to restructure corporations along like. profit metrics, right? sort of along the same lines as laying off the lower 10% of your workforce every year or whatever stupid thing that it is, which I've just been reminded of in a different lemmy post. so is the idea that DEI would basically just provide like a socially acceptable, progressive lens for that process to function through?

you know, that sounds more like you just dislike how corporations work, more than you dislike, necessarily, the idea of DEI initiatives. Like, if DEI initiatives were applied to a less flawed university system, to get more diversity in tech sectors at the beginning of someone's journey into those sectors, at the beginning of their journey into capability and compoetence, would that be, would you speak out against that, or would that be acceptable? I guess what I'm asking is, is it the framework of the system which is flawed, or is it this specific piece that you've called out as flawed, which is flawed? because it seems like the framework of the system, to me.

I also would like to point out that this POV doesn't really speak out against the narrative that like. if we get rid of/hire in their stead, all the capable straight white men everything, that would be bad. here's the point of what I'm saying, I guess. basically, right, if DEI initiatives are applied just to new hires, that would be fine, right? it's just that other people are getting fired, and then they are churning through people, and using DEI to launder that. if that's the case, you should probably, instead of calling out DEI and lumping that in, right, you should be calling out the churn, and calling out the fact that corporate likes to restructure everything every five years to get more short term performance indicators out of it for stockholders.

the DEI is maybe a way to launder that, but people, on hearing you disagree with that, are probably going to think more along the lines of "this guy is calling out DEI because he hates X kind of people", as most people who disagree with it do. what you would need to do is establish credibility first, with the preceding opinion, and then make sure that other people understand the perspective you're arguing from, since they will tend to assume the worst. by having DEI be the main point of contention, corporate has gotten another benefit out of it, which is that now everyone's arguing about stupid bullshit instead of arguing about how it sucks that we're all driven around at the behest of bean counters and their rich gambling addicted lords.