Microblog Memes

I have been a part of interviews (at a computer repair shop, mostly men) where my boss said we had to hire the only woman interviewee because it looked bad to not to, and we needed diversity, even though she wasn't very qualified. So we hired her instead of the person who had excelled in the interview.

At my next job we had some diversity hires. It was pre-DEI, but we had a diversity intern program. We hired a guy because he was black, he was qualified and was amazing. Later we hired a person who was also black and wasn't very qualified, they struggled for months and eventually quit - we had hired them based on skin color too.

Not saying I'm for or against, but I've seen situations where diversity became more important than qualifications. I've also seen where both were equally important, and that was preferred.

I manage a team of about 50. I've been in management for about the past decade. Prior to that, I was a technical lead heavily involved in hiring. I've also run multiple intern programs that hire by the dozen each summer. I've hired hundreds and been in thousands of interviews.

Ive never once seen someone hired because of the color of their skin.

I do however aggressively look for people from different backgrounds to be in my candidate pools when hiring. That can really mean anything. Mono culture is a huge detriment to the org because then everyone ends up thinking the same way. I look for people willing to challenge the status quo and bring unique perspectives while still being a great teammate.

There are probably people I've hired who normally wouldn't have gotten an interview based on their background but then were the best candidate. When I've had candidates that are equal, I've occasionally hired the one who is most dissimilar in skills/thought process/goals to my current team because that helps us grow. The decision was never someone's skin color, but their background certainly could have influenced the items I chose as my hiring decisions.

DEI is not just hiring. DEI is creating a culture where people of different backgrounds can succeed. There are so many different ways to be successful at the vast majority of the roles I hire. It's my job to make sure my org is setup so that people can be successful through as many approaches as possible. This is the part I see most often missed. If your culture only allows the loud, brash to lead, I would have missed many of my best hires over the years who led in varied ways.

Reminds me of that time (as if it was only once) a depressing amount of people, mostly conservatives, didn't know that the ACA and "Obamacare" mean the same thing.

Conservative politics depend heavily on placing labels on everything because it's a built-in way of telling the rubes what they should think and feel.