Something seems off.

Is there an implication here that DEI hiring practices yield higher quality employees?

And yes, I have been involved in the hiring process. It was an entire team and everyone contributed. We sifted resumes, sat in on the interviews, made our recommendations.  It wasn't perfect... one candidate that I liked was blackballed by someone else because he had graduated from West Point but had not gone on to an Army career. Her preferred candidate was female. The final choice was basically made by consensus.  This was back in the 90's.

Hook

2 hours ago, Luke said:

Dave, have you or others here actually been a hiring manager in a DEI situation? Because I have.

Two ground rules that are worth mentioning. First, no sane hiring manager would ever hire someone incompetent.

I don't need to have been a hiring manager to know that hiring someone based on anything other than education/qualifications, experience, competence, and former employer reviews and/or recommendations simply makes no sense.

What does gender or race have to do with anything, really?  Why should it matter at all?

And yet, the very people who are promoting DEI are actually doing the very thing that they criticized people for what was done in the past(and it was, which was wrong).

You say that no sane hiring manager would hire someone incompetent, but this is naive.  The promoters of DEI are quite radical and don't care about competence or qualifications.  They only care about "righting past wrongs" and giving certain people an advantage that they don't deserve.

It's pretty simple really.  Just common sense.

Dave

31 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

I don't need to have been a hiring manager to know that hiring someone based on anything other than education/qualifications, experience, competence, and former employer reviews and/or recommendations simply makes no sense.

...

It's pretty simple really.  Just common sense.

I struggle to determine what you're actually advocating for, Dave. You suggest that it's important that people have experience and skills in a certain area to be effective, but when it comes to your own opinions then your admitted lack of said skills and experience is completely irrelevant. I suppose I should be hiring lots of people with no experience and strong opinions?

You remind me of my 93yo mother. As a retired physician, she complains to me about not diagnosing myself and leaving medical opinions to those with training in the field. Then she claims that she is suffering from heart failure because of a few dizzy spells and tells her son-in-law that he is wrong when he claims her diagnosis is incorrect. You guessed it - he has been a practicing cardiologist for the past 30 years.

I should be grateful that I am surrounded by so many brilliant people who always seem to be right and just need "common sense".

1 hour ago, Luke said:

I struggle to determine what you're actually advocating for, Dave. You suggest that it's important that people have experience and skills in a certain area to be effective, but when it comes to your own opinions then your admitted lack of said skills and experience is completely irrelevant. I suppose I should be hiring lots of people with no experience and strong opinions?

What I'm advocating for is not hiring or promoting anyone for anything other than their education/qualifications, experience, competence, accomplishments, job performance, and employer reviews/recommendations based on performance.

Race and gender should play no role at all, not only in hiring and promoting, but in any decision, period.  These are attributes which 1)one has no control over and 2)which make no difference in ability or talent, with the sole exception of physical strength.  Is this not one of the big things that society has been striving for for decades now?  Just like with justice which should be blind, we should also be blind to race and gender when it comes to how we treat others.

How is that so hard to understand?

BTW, I have been involved in hiring a few people over the years, and although I was never a "hiring manager", I did participate in the hiring process.

Dave

5 hours ago, Luke said:

I didn't change any of my criteria. I didn't lower the standards. I just changed the top of the funnel - I ensured that our recruiting department (and one or two of our female employees) reached out in online communities focusing around women in STEM, in addition to what we already did recruiting-wise. The applicants I got from one of them were so good that I said that we'd just focus on people from here unless someone truly exceptional came along. I got not one but two good hires out of it, one of whom was quite exceptional. When you have jobs with hundreds of applicants, just ensuring that the top of the funnel is opened a little more to under-represented groups is all it often takes. And in a collaborative job, having different perspectives makes a huge and positive difference.

You did what you should have always been doing, IE opening the pool of candidates to *everyone*, and then weeding out those who were not qualified or had problems such as previous poor job performance, bad behavior, criminal activity, etc.  Then you go through what's left and select those who have the overall best combination of traits you're looking for, then finally you conduct interviews.

Focusing on a particular gender or race should have never even been considered.  For example, why did you make it a point to have "one or two of your female employees" reach out?  Why did it have to be two women?  Could a man not have reached out to women candidates in STEM?  This just demonstrates you made a biased decision based on gender.  I thought that the whole point of DEI was to end this kind of thinking, whereas in reality it encourages and justifies discrimination.

Dave

This "chatter about DEI" is what got the first post on the Endeavor Air 4819 accident shut down.

Imagine if the film Dude, Where's My Car was made today....

it would go like this:

• [Jesse and Chester have tattoos on their backs that say "they" and "them."]
• Jesse: They! You got a tattoo!
• Chester: So do you, them, what does my tattoo say?
• Jesse: "They!" What about mine?
• Chester: "Them!" What does mine say?
• Jesse: "They!" What about mine?
• Chester: "Them!" What does mine say?
• Jesse: "They!" What about mine?
• Chester: "Them!" What does mine say?
• Jesse: "They!" What about mine?
• Chester: "Them!" But what does mine say?
• Jesse: "They!" What about mine?
• Chester: "Them!" What does mine say?
• Jesse: "Th - ee - y!" What about mine?

 

On 2/25/2025 at 8:17 PM, Mike A said:

… with genuine Roman numerals.

Only the best. They were gold plated!

22 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Imagine if the film Dude, Where's My Car was made today....

it would go like this:

Totally in the spirit of 2025 😄