@hacks4pancakes

The financial catastrophe of the mortgage-backed securities crisis was completely caused by white men. They were considered the best of the financial elites in the world, worth every penny of their million dollar salaries and billion dollar stock grants. And the financial collapse was everywhere, none of them saw it coming.

Anyone can tank an investment bank as CEO, a preschooler with a magic eight ball could do it.

And somehow people still believe in meritocracy.

@hacks4pancakes I will say.
..Hiring based on merit is a valid way to hire.

It's just that, like, assuming a person has merit because they're a white dude is fucking stupid.

Speaking as a white dude who's good at specific things, no one should listen to me about financial systems.

Need a computer fixed, from the hardware up through layer 8? I'm your guy. Or, you know, any of the millions of non-white-male folks out there who are easily as competent as I am (often moreso). I did network and application security work, but if someone came to me on the topic and you and I were in the same room, I might just get a little angry that they assumed the bearded white guy knew more than Lesley fucking Carhart.

Need a pipe fixed? Call a plumber, not a programmer. Don't just grab the nearest white guy you see and assume he can fix it. (For example, I'll fix it, and then in six months you'll have to call a real plumber. Not that, uh, that exact thing happened to me recently or anything)

The notorious cheeto is glomming on to this concept of meritocracy, but the thing is: DEI _is_ a meritocracy. It gives everyone the chance to demonstrate they have merit,and,surprise surprise, humans of all shapes, sizes, colors and identities are good at things, it's sort of what defines us as a species.

(sorry, that got a little ranty, I've been festering about this for too long I think)

@hacks4pancakes

Also the sheer chutzpah of complaining that "DEI means less competent people get hired" when survivorship means that experienced "diverse" hires are always f-ckin amazing and resilient

https://newsie.social/@TheNeedling/113915559973485581

@hacks4pancakes
Honestly, I'm not going to believe someone when they say they do it. If they say they try and then want to talk about the ways in which they know they fail and the places where they probably have blind spots? Yeah, maybe. But I've seen too many "progressive" employers where the pipeline ends in a dumpster of broken glass.

Like, to the point where I'm genuinely unsure about the ethics of working to improve the pipeline when even most of the best folks are forced out of the industry by 35.

@hacks4pancakes
Communism is to Corruption and Meritocracy is to Personal Biases.

They both look good on paper, but implementation is impossible.

@hacks4pancakes

An old job I had did hiring differently.

The systems folk in our team would all review the resumes. Except, we were handed resumes with an ID# instead of name/address/demographics.

We reviewed those in a blind of manner as possible.

We would recommend certain ones to do an in-person assessment. Screen was recorded, but no video of any human. We gave yay/nay from there for hiring decision.

Of all the processes I've seen, it always seemed the most fair and impartial. Sure, it's not a trendy name like "DEI". No, it was more like Justicia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice