> “Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic.”
> “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”
> “A section of the white population, perceiving Negro pressure for change, misconstrues it as a demand for privileges rather than as a desperate quest for existence. The ensuing white backlash intimidates government officials who are already too timorous.”
DEI initiatives, when executed correctly, show substantially and consistently superior outcomes for the people and organizations who implement them. You will see more, and more successful, DEI initiatives for the rest of your life, because they work. Companies who are successful will tend to be companies who execute DEI initiatives well (I can post many high quality sources if folks are interested).
It's completely fair to criticize bad implementations of DEI, and we all know there are a lot of those, but to throw the baby out with the bath water here would be a mistake, and not one corporations will make willingly. You'd have to be pretty militant and aggressive with the law in order to stop companies from pursuing a win/win like DEI.
One crucial detail to note with the research showing diversity improves company performance: Asians were categorized as diverse in these studies. But in all the DEI initiatives I've seen, Asians were either non-diverse and in some they were "negative diversity" and treated even worse than whites. So there's a mismatched between the definitions of diversity used in research and used in DEI discrimination.
Ed: I'm just going to keep creating accounts and reposting this dang, you can remove it as much as you like but I will never stop.
This is a false statement, and considering you have no clue what studies I'm citing, completely speculative.
Here, I challenge you to be specific in your criticism:
> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]
> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]
> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
All of your links are either paywalled studies, or lead to 404 pages, except for the first one.
> The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%.
Right, so any diversity of ethnicity - including Asians - was associated with this "diversity boost".
> They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity,
And again, what was the criteria used to measure diversity? Did it count Asians as diverse? You keep citing excerpts from these studies, but don't include anything relevant to my comment: are Asians considered diverse or not?
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams.
And for the third time are Asians considered diverse? That's the crux of the question that you continuously fail to answer.
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits.
And again, were Asians included in the definition of "racial diversity"?
> Find it! You keep posing these questions, but refuse to do the work of arriving at the solution yourself, which you are entirely capable of doing. Go answer your own questions!
I can't find it because most of your links are either broken or paywalled. Go post the excerpts that say "we define racial diversity as...".
Here's an example of mismatch between one of your working links and our diversity policies:
> To draw an example from this study, if all of the teachers in a given district were white, the Blau index would be 0, indicating perfect homogeneity. If 25 percent of the teachers were white, 25 percent were black, 25 percent were Latino/a, and 25 percent were Asian or Native American (grouped as “other” for my purposes here), then the Blau index would be 0.75, indicating the highest level of heterogeneity achievable in a situation with four categories. As the number of categories increases, the highest possible Blau score increases.
By comparison, my company's diversity policies target equity. So Asian representation of 25% is not considered diverse, as they are only 6% of the population and thus 25% is nearly a 5x overrepresentation.
> Why are you discriminating against Asians this blatantly and obviously? It's wild, how you think this is okay.
I'm not! DEI policies are. But the research showing the benefits of diversity overwhelmingly do count Asians as diverse, hence the mismatch between the research and our DEI policies.
Your link to McKinsey still fails. As does the one to UC Denver. And other than your 2nd link, the papers are paywalled.
> And your company misimplementing DEI is not a reflection of DEI itself, just a reflection of how difficult it is to get these kinds of things right.
Exactly the point I was making all along. The criteria for "diversity" used in research does not match what's almost always used in company DEI discrimination.
You cut off your link in the first comment. It read: "www(dot)mckinsey(dot)com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc"
I also removed "https://" in addition to substituting (dot) to trick HN formatting.
This one works because it points to the full link: "www(dot)mckinsey(dot)com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters"
You can't just drag-select links on HN, since it truncates links. Do right-click, copy link address.
Anyway, the McKinsey study just examined the representation of "ethnic minorities" which would include Asians:
> Similarly, the representation of ethnic-minorities on UK and US executive teams stood at only 13 percent in 2019, up from just 7 percent in 2014. For our global data set, this proportion was 14 percent in 2019, up from 12 percent in 2017 (Exhibit 2).
It matters because I pointed out the mismatch between Asians being considered diverse the the bulk of the diversity research, but not in DEI discrimination policies:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34695045
> Schulman realized he had to do something about the large gap between the lower-paid employees and the rest of the company. “Imagine asking people to double down on serving customers when they’re more financially stressed than ever before, when they don’t even have healthcare benefits,” he told Insider. So PayPal raised wages for lower-level workers by about 7 percent – not a huge amount, but enough to ease money worries – and gave them restricted stock units so they could share in PayPal’s success. The company also covered more healthcare costs, cutting the amount lower-level employees contribute by around 58 percent.
> Discrimination based on hair texture, type and hairstyles such as braids, locks and twists will be illegal in Virginia starting July 1. Gov. Ralph Northam signed a bill on March 4 that “clarifies” that when the law bans discrimination “on the basis of race,” that includes “traits historically associated with race, including hair texture, hair type, and protective hairstyles such as braids, locks, and twists.”
I'm sure I could fine more examples if I didn't have a meeting in 5 minutes.
My impression is that the mechanism is that racial/gender/etc diversity proxies for some amount of viewpoint diversity, and it's the viewpoint diversity which is improving outcomes. Assuming I'm correct on that point, my strong suspicion is that a lot of DEI programs in the US are not resulting in much more diverse hiring than their peer groups while simultaneously limiting viewpoint diversity pretty considerably (or if they're not limiting the viewpoint diversity of the people they hire, they're limiting the willingness of those people to express diverse views--probably a combination of the two).
I'm also vaguely of the impression that at least some research is finding DEI initiatives to be neutral or perhaps even counter-productive, but I'm having a hard time finding those papers--if this is jogging anyone's memory, I would appreciate links.
Just… stop. DEI works when well executed. Accept that.
If you want to police DEI initiatives to ensure they’re properly implemented, go for it, but the constant aversion to a so thoroughly researched concept is bordering on flat earther level conspiracy.
Considering all of science is having a replication crisis, you are going full flat earther, then.
I really cannot overemphasize how detrimental to your argument what you just wrote is to any thinking human being. Blindly claiming all research, from literally every institution in the world, is both inaccurate and rigged somehow on a widely studied topic, is an insane claim only made when you've given up on the entire concept of rationality.
You really would rather throw all of science under the bus before you let black people get an even footing in society, wouldn't you? Incredible.
STEM fields don’t have a replication crisis in the same way that humanities do.
The issue in STEM fields is that essential elements to replicate (like the code) are not being published, yet the underlying science is solid enough for production technology people rely on every day to be built on it.
In the humanities the replication crisis is that a significant amount of published “research” is essentially made up whole cloth.
One of these things is not like the other.
Also, nice edit calling me racist with zero basis. This behavior, by the way, is why this /entire/ thread exists on HN. DEI zealots will libel, slander, and insult anyone who doesn’t follow their ideology. Criticizing it, even with clear evidence, or pointing out lack of evidence supporting it is treated the same as taking the most extreme position in opposition.
You’re ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself. Take a breath and reconsider your life choices.
Your response to me is utterly uncalled for, and you continue to double down after I pointed this out. There is no point in having a discussion with you, as you are determined to straw man me, libel me, and otherwise behave in a manner which is inappropriate for HN and civil discourse generally.
You know nothing about me, and your claims about me are not only wrong, they’re laughably so. I hope I never have to work with you or otherwise interact with you off the Internet, you have made it clear by your behavior here that you’re truly a horrid person.
What's "uncalled for" about what I said? Is this an outrage copypasta you got from somewhere? You could paste what you wrote in reply to nearly any comment on this platform and it'd be about as valid.
And I didn't say I knew anything about you? I said things that are true for any thinking, breathing human.
Honestly, what a weird reaction. You clearly feel attacked, which I guess makes sense if you genuinely are the worst possible parts of what I wrote about (choosing to be a racist asshole rather than a person of reason), but you're opting into those designations for some reason.
The things people will do to justify hatred are wild, thank you for reminding me of that.
A collection of openly hostile remarks you've made in this thread:
> shut the fuck up and take in the knowledge.
> You get called racist for saying racist things; if you don’t like it, stop doing it
> I really cannot overemphasize how detrimental to your argument what you just wrote is to any thinking human being.
> Blindly claiming all research, from literally every institution in the world, is both inaccurate and rigged somehow on a widely studied topic, is an insane claim only made when you've given up on the entire concept of rationality.
(note that the parent never made this claim, you're falsely imputing it on him)
> You really would rather throw all of science under the bus before you let black people get an even footing in society, wouldn't you? Incredible.
I suspect these comments likely violate even a very narrow reading of the site guidelines. Your account is relatively new, so maybe you aren't aware but you might want to take a look before mods intervene (guidelines are linked at the bottom of the page).
(same person, different account, HN is trying to throttle me)
None of those lines are in any way openly hostile, unless you fall into the worst category of what I wrote, which is the racist who is trying to find any excuse to remove black people from the conversation.
You're welcome to litigate your comments with the moderators, I'm just giving you a friendly heads-up that I don't think the mods will agree with you (and the fact that you've been throttled suggests you've probably been warned by the mods before). I'm also not sure they'll take kindly to creating throwaway accounts for the purpose of circumventing the rate limit, but I'll let them speak for themselves.
Criticizing DEI programs (as the parent was clearly doing) isn't "spouting bigotry". You can certainly challenge bigotry on this site without violating the site guidelines (and "challenging bigotry" is hardly unpopular here).
> Criticizing the concept of DEI is spouting bigotry, and it's anti-fact.
Not at all. For example, I believe that selecting for viewpoint diversity directly is a better way to achieve viewpoint diversity than via DEI. Moreover, I firmly reject that race or gender confer any special abilities (and frankly this gets me into more hot water with DEI advocates than anyone else). These two positions aren't in conflict in any way. This example constitutes incontrovertible proof that "criticizing the concept of DEI is spouting bigotry" is incorrect.
> And no, you cannot support the concept of DEI and remain on this site without resorting to the tricks I've had to.
This is factually incorrect as well. I debate with lots of people who argue vocally for DEI (even strongly implying personal attacks) who have been on this site for a long time (and have lots of karma!). They just stay within the guidelines or at least they don't flout them as egregiously as you seem to be doing.
Continuously asserting that they are “thoroughly researched” does not make them so. Comparing “criticizing DEI” with “advocating flat earth” is pretty absurd, not least of all because DEI programs are incredibly diverse (of course, you are unhelpfully referring only to the “good ones”).
Criticizing DEI is fine. Acting as if it isn't effective when properly implemented is on the same level as "advocating flat earth" theories, as they both fly in the face of a whole lot of data.
And you're right, claiming something does not make it so. What makes it so is all of the data supporting it, which is readily available to anyone who actually cares about this topic (up to you if that's you).
> Acting as if it isn't effective when properly implemented is on the same level as "advocating flat earth" theories
Who is arguing that DEI is ineffective when properly implemented (what does "properly implemented" even mean, concretely?).
> they both fly in the face of a whole lot of data
You keep referencing this data... Where are the metanalyses that show concretely that DEI programs are effective? To be clear, I'm aware of and believe that increased diversity makes organizations more robust, but again that's attributed to viewpoint diversity and it's not at all clear to me that modern DEI programs deliver on that viewpoint diversity. It's not even clear to me that there is widespread consensus that "viewpoint diversity" or "organizational robustness" is a goal of these programs--one definitely gets the impression that the primary goal is diversity of identities with little mind paid to the impact on viewpoint diversity or organizational robustness.
Here's HBR (https://hbr.org/2019/07/does-diversity-training-work-the-way...) talking about whether or not diversity training programs are effective; note that the implication here is that the goal is ideological agreement--they're not even looking for viewpoint diversity:
> What did we find? Let’s start with the good news. The bias-focused trainings had a positive effect on the attitudes of one important group: employees who we believe were the least supportive of women prior to training. We found that after completing training, these employees were more likely to acknowledge discrimination against women, express support for policies designed to help women, and acknowledge their own racial and gender biases, compared to similar employees in the control group. For employees who were already supportive of women, we found no evidence that the training produced a backlash.
> First, what evidence do we have that diversity does result in a company performing better, or gaining that amazing employee? He argues that this is an unfounded assumption.
It's not an assumption.
> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]
> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]
> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
This is just the tip. Study after study shows diversity improves outcomes of group work, it's really hard to justify believing otherwise, in light of the overwhelming data.
I haven't read all these studies but wonder if they claim causality or mere correlation. I see lots of correlation, which could be reverse correlation in disguise. Companies that are on a good trajectory decide to engage in more DEI than companies that are fighting to survive. Analysts conclude that DEI and success are correlated. They don't consider the possibility that the causal arrow runs the other way.
True, and it could even be as simple as: well-educated people make companies more successful, and they pursue diversity more, compared to other people -- i.e., one input has these two outputs.
A pattern I'm seeing here is the possibility that these beneficial outcomes could be rooted in racism/sexism/etc.: having enough diversity among staff such that you can easily pair up people (provider and patient, fiduciary and client, or whatever scenario) who share personal characteristics can increase trust and synergy between them? Ugh!
A problem a lot of tech/math minded people make is that there is some set of metrics, some set of tests or achievements or qualifications that make a candidate "objectively" the best. There isn't, not even a tiny little bit.
The argument goes like: There's some objective rubric, and hiring a black person despite that rubric's indication that they're 2.345312% repeating below the best candidate, is DEI gone wrong!
Anyone here who's ever hired for a technical role knows how wildly wrong that idea of recruitment is, but for engineers, we want to put a model to a system, and then we want to worship that model, so it's hard for some folks to grasp.
Counterpoint: some might consider a lot of the aspects of many faiths as exacerbating to a mental health disorder. Plenty of mental health issues center around faith and specific religions, even.
I think society is at a net positive for leaving "faith" behind, but spirituality can exist in the absence of any specific religion [0].
Yeah, a different friend of mine from another comment I made went from observant-religous to fanatical while losing weight and generating tons of work. Bipolar, obviously, and when he crashed it was very hard on him. He then became an atheist because the experience of being godspoken and then abandoned, and realizing it's just bipolar disorder, brings into question the basis of prophets, etc.
Other people, perhaps, would look at the same example and say that bipolar is what happens when someone is being used as the mouthpiece of a god, but my friend ended up with the opposite conclusion.
Well, you’re simply wrong, arguably justifiably bigoted. I don’t think bigotry on (race or) creed is justified however. I speak from experience on this matter but if you don’t like personal testimony and prefer hard data, you can do the math. Spiritual woo or claims of being a prophet or the messiah himself, as another commenter related, ie hyperreligiosity are a classic symptom of bipolar mania. Worship within well established denominations, according to traditions and social norms that are hundreds of years old is what helps people. There are hundreds of years of historical data, big data if you will, from which you can draw pretty solid conclusions, but only if you put your bigotry aside and look at it objectively.
No, I'm not wrong. The only "solid" conclusions I can draw over the last hundreds of years are the systemic abuses, the bigotry and the hate that emanates from the practice of every major religion.
Religion has irreparably harmed society, and only recently have we finally begun to eschew the completely unnecessary worship of sky beings in favor of experiencing reality for what it is. That doesn't mean we have to abandon spirituality, but it does mean we can be more sophisticated than to suggest people pick back up an ancient tool that has no use for us anymore.
No one should be forced to put themselves through the awfulness that is religion just to experience being a human with spirituality.
You and I will disagree because, in my opinion, you ignore data and draw conclusion that stem from your own bigotry rather than an objective view of available information. Also, you should become friends with more Jews, Muslims, Christian’s, Buddhists and ask them whether their religion is a net positive in their lives. You may learn your perspective is narrow and poorly informed by people’s lived experience.
You immediately started calling me a bigot in your very first reply. I wonder why you had to resort to name calling so quickly, if your position is so strong...
Any positive traits I would encounter from knowing a religious person would be in spite of their religion, not because of it. There are great, wonderful people who are religious, but not because of religion.
Sorry but you can’t opt out; you’re either part of it and therefore part of the team, or you’re not and first on the chopping block when tough decisions get made.
Punch in/punch out mentality has its place, but if you don’t have one of those jobs, the mismatch will eventually become unbearable for one side or the other.
I think that’s where all this is leading; WFH roles will be smaller in scope, lower in salary (not CoL but lower responsibility), and much more focused on churning out work decided by the folks in the office who work as a team to grow the company.
Actually I own the company and everyone is remote (hundreds of people). I have lost entry level hires because they didn’t like remote only. Now we don’t hire recent college grads anymore. I want everyone to work hard when they are working and enjoy their life when they aren’t working.
That’s pretty interesting as the owner to switch to not hiring juniors after they expressed trouble with remote work. Is this sustainable?
Wrt your top comment, it’s probably worth acknowledging that work mentoring and water-cooler banter are two completely different work-social activities. People do need mentoring, even senior level hires, and without it, people are not going to succeed as often. How do you ensure mentoring is working with all-remote work? (I do think there are things you can do remotely, but as a senior developer, I have watched juniors struggling during the pandemic, and I don’t have the choice to stop hiring juniors.)
If their budget allows for it, there will always be enough seniors to hire that they don’t have to eat the cost of training juniors who aren’t compatible with their operating model. Let that be someone else’s problem if you can (and then hire who’ve they’ve developed away with the offer of remote work).
It has not been my experience that senior folks need mentoring, only culture and people ops guidance (as every org is different in that regard). Coaching (distinctly different than mentoring) can be done between peers remotely.
That’s definitely true for one company, but of course can’t work for all companies. And even so, mentoring is still an important task, not to mention many other aspects of work communication that aren’t automatically enabled with Slack and email, so I’m genuinely curious how to make it as good remotely as it used to be in-person.
Sure. What I have seen work is the mentor sitting in on video or conf calls as a regular participant, taking notes, and then coaching room for improvement one on one with those being coached. Praise in public, constructively critique in private.
There’s a bunch of reasons I don’t want entry level people around, in general the drama is a lot higher and the dice rolling is more significant on whether they work out. We do 6 month internships and students either take a sabbatical or their college has co-op programs for longer interns, and if they are good and can work remote effectively, we will hire them once they graduate. Otherwise it’s 2+ years experience and up only and we strongly prefer more experienced people. You need to be self-motivated as no one is watching you, and the people in their 30s+ are typically much better at this.
How would you know? The very nature of that communication is that it’s private.
How would I know that these conversations happen over Slack? Because I've participated in them, either in DM's or small private channels. And this was commonplace well before the pandemic and WFH started.
Maybe nobody talks to you in person, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
It's hard to have a private in-person conversation outside of a meeting room in a typical open-office setup -- breakroom conversations tend to get heard by people that you don't want to hear them.
I find it hard to have any conversations at all in an open office setup, just like it's hard to get work done in that environment. Open office setups amplify all of the downsides of working in an office.
Technical folks simply cannot do their jobs without solid working relationships, and those are not as well formed digitally.
Remote work will continue to reduce over the next couple of years. If you don’t have a real reason for being at home during the work day, expect to be back in the office soon.
"Technical folks simply cannot do their jobs without solid working relationships, and those are not as well formed digitally."
Any real data on this? All the data our company has shows increased performance during WFH, such as an increase in deliveries and decrease in cycle time. So even if it's not as well formed, it seems it's formed sufficiently.
I think you focusing on delivery and cycle time is kind of emblematic of my point; none of that matters if you ship the wrong thing, and don’t correct over time, but to you that’s where the conversation ends.
That’s not where it actually ends, however. How do you know what to work on? How do you know if you built a profitable thing? Being remote lets you ignore those things in ways that are harder to do in person.
Hybrid is probably here to stay, but “remote first” was a pandemic only thing.
"I think you focusing on delivery and cycle time is kind of emblematic of my point; none of that matters if you ship the wrong thing, and don’t correct over time, but to you that’s where the conversation ends."
Lol don't tell me what I think. Those are the metrics that our management uses. That's their focus, and are pervasive in the industry. Sure, you can talk about shipping the wrong thing. What's the metric called for that, or would it fall under rework? Our rework has not gone up. There's no noticeable increase in failed projects either.
"Being remote lets you ignore those things in ways that are harder to do in person."
No, it really doesn't. These same ritual and due diligence conversations take place remotely. Or maybe your org doesn't have good procedures?
If you don’t know why or how your management figures out what to build or if what you’re building is what they need, and don’t see how that’s related to remote work, there’s not much I can do to help you.
What are you even going on about? Discussing what to build isn't what we are talking about here. Mor to mention, my management doesn't talk about that. The business side does. And this topic is covered via meeting. Whether those meeting are remote or not do not matter. Now please stop trolling this topic.
Not trolling, I just know in difficult conversations it’s sometimes helpful to restate what the other person is saying to try and figure out the disconnect.
I mean sure, but there’s no real way of knowing what you’ve left on the table by working remotely.
And I say this as someone who was also working remotely before the pandemic. I’m always wary of people who refuse to acknowledge the downsides of ideas they support…
There's not, but I do know what's on my table: a career doing things I find reasonably stimulating that provides me more material comfort than I know what to do with. I am doubtful these hallway conversations I keep hearing about could provide me anything else that I would want, and I'm definitely not willing to give up my freedom and flexibility just to find out.
It's not really yours to give up, is my point. You're not looking at this from the employer's perspective, and it's making it hard for you to understand that what you want is only part of the equation.
It’s not some solvable, technocratic equation, it’s a conflict between labor and management. I don’t look at it from my employers’ perspectives because I don’t care about their outcomes.
If I expect my employer to care about my outcomes, 9 times out of 10 I'll be disappointed, no matter what I'm doing or how much I'm caring about theirs.
You may have had a better experience. If so, then, with all sincerity, I congratulate you on your luck; I bear no ill will to those who happen to find genuinely good employers.
Just don't take your experiences as typical and use them to argue that the rest of us should act as if our experiences either didn't happen, or aren't common.
I feel like with a lot of the hardcore anti return to the office people the arguments are disingenuous. People have built their lives (and in some cases moved entirely) based on being able to work remotely 99% of the time, and they refuse to accept there are any disadvantages. I saw Sam Altman say the other day that he didn’t think any of the important companies in the next period of time will be fully remote, and I would agree.
I’ve found that folks who are attached to parts of the business that are focused on growing the business want to be in person more than parts of the business that “punch in/punch out” and don’t take full ownership of their role in the bigger picture.
I’m betting you can imagine who is helpful and who is less so, and further I bet it’s pretty obvious in most cases, which makes the folks who are on the bad end of it defensive.
I disagree and while I think I understand what you're saying I'm surprised by it.
News is often intentionally devicive, misleading, and salacious for a reason. Being affected by propaganda does not come anywhere near a need for therapy. In fact I'd say it is a sign someone has critical thinking and a likely a fair base of information. In the face of the facade of trust clearly lying or engaging in rhetoric, hyperbole, or passive language, the only rational response os to be bothered by it. The contrary runs the risk of being manipulated by whomever for whatever reason. I've switched to a nonpartisian news source and its had a simialar benefit for me.
I think you’re saying you don’t trust yourself to be an adult. Which is a healthy observation if you struggle with that, or an unhealthy one if you can process biased info.
I think it's a key skill for an adult to have, to be aware of one's own emotional state and be able to self regulate based on that awareness.
If someone struggles to apply that to the consumption of news media, I worry about their ability to apply this skill to events in life that are much more impactful, like a speeding ticket or the loss of a job.
I suspect we have different ideas of both consumption and "pleasant". Almost without a doubt no one but my wife would pick up on changes when I do not consume politics, news, media, etc.. I am more pleasant to be around because I listen more and pay more attention.
If, for example, I took the three hours a week I dedicate to news consumption and gave that time to my wife, and if I have fewer worries and distractions, of course I would be more pleasant to be around. You give some more of your time and attention and they'll think you're more pleasant too.
No need to call names or be rude, maybe your media consumption is detrimental to your wellbeing :)
If your mood is improved, to the degree that someone comments on it, by reducing general news media consumption, you’re not in control of your emotions to a degree an adult should be in control of their emotions, and should seek professional help to regain that control.
The fact that you believe I’ve called anyone a name or insulted anyone by saying that is a good example of what I’m talking about, as I did no such thing.
Even in this convo you’re struggling to not get emotional; that’s not great! You don’t have to live like that. Don’t avoid therapy to spite a random person on the Internet… at least consider it.
Is it?
Here's what MLK has written:
> “Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic.”
> “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”
> “A section of the white population, perceiving Negro pressure for change, misconstrues it as a demand for privileges rather than as a desperate quest for existence. The ensuing white backlash intimidates government officials who are already too timorous.”
DEI initiatives, when executed correctly, show substantially and consistently superior outcomes for the people and organizations who implement them. You will see more, and more successful, DEI initiatives for the rest of your life, because they work. Companies who are successful will tend to be companies who execute DEI initiatives well (I can post many high quality sources if folks are interested).
It's completely fair to criticize bad implementations of DEI, and we all know there are a lot of those, but to throw the baby out with the bath water here would be a mistake, and not one corporations will make willingly. You'd have to be pretty militant and aggressive with the law in order to stop companies from pursuing a win/win like DEI.