Writing a thread on onboarding here, because I don't want to write it in the other place.
Context:
Good engineer onboarding *is* DEI. Teams that have great onboarding, tend to be more diverse and inclusive. Teams that have poor onboarding, tend to be more homogeneous and less diverse.
That's because poor onboarding makes life harder for junior employees and remote employees. Underrepresented groups benefit disproportionately from remote work options. Junior employees are a more diverse group.
Poor onboarding leads to more "beginner questions" for longer. Underrepresented groups experience higher social threat. So if 3 employees start working at Tech Corp on the same day, and they are:
* A white man
* A white woman
* A Black man
And they all have the same beginner questions 6 months after their start date, then the Black man and white woman are more likely to be perceived as "slow ramp up" people, and face career consequences as a result.
@mekkaokereke yup, and age is eventually a factor. At my age, 57, I have to be 5x better at what I do than someone in their 20s solely to avoid being seen as “too d to know this computer stuff.”
And I’m one of the whitest (Irish/luxembourgian) of white guys. Add being Black/Indigenous/POC and/or woman to that, and it gets *so* much worse.
@virtualinanity @bynkii @mekkaokereke
Indeed.
The other side of the coin is that those who hate and fear DEI efforts are generally willing to tolerate poorer conditions for themselves in order to make things even worse for those they hate.
I think it's a mental illness.
Reminds me of the joke where a genie offered a man a wish, but with the condition that his worst enemy would get twice the benefit, and the guy says, "Give me just HALF a fatal heart attack."
It's not at all amusing to come across this in the real world.
mekka okereke 
Bynkii
wasabi brain
Steve Hersey