I don't want to make too many assumptions here because it's a bit of a minefield, but... perhaps there's an entirely selfish and rational explanation for DEI hiring programs in a tight labor market? If you feel like you've hired all of the labor you can at a given market price (e.g., you're cheap and don't want to pay people more) it might make sense to try and reach out to parts of the labor force that you feel have been underutilized (or historically underrepresented, but we're looking at this from the perspective of a ruthless business), and DEI programs could be a way of achieving this.

I don't think that's an entirely accurate narrative, but I do think it's probably at least part of this (e.g., that all of the best white people were already hired, while many POC people of equal caliber were not or not making as much). The job market was soaring in 2021 and looking for ways to hire new people without having to pay them more would likely be highly attractive. Now that the job market is not so competitive, there's not as much need to do so if you're just trying to find workers.

this is an incredibly misleading statistic skewed by the fact that almost all retiring corporate workers are white so lots of white jobs were “lost”

We are already in the backlash.

If only 25% of people hired for roles requiring professional degrees were white, that's still a remarkable number, given 2/3rds of people receiving professional degrees in 2021 where white, without even considering the total population of professional degree holders

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72

Yes this is a wildly misrepresented statistic that has nothing to do with DEI and everything to do with demographic shifts in the U.S. population (specifically, that the "non Hispanic white" segment of the U.S. population is shrinking).

As a black software engineer, in my entire career working for US companies, I have yet to work with another black software engineer.

But this discussion is about it being a problem with hiring?

There was not a single black student in my graduating class of Software Engineering from college.

So is the problem truly with hiring, or is it earlier on. It could also be both. But if none are graduating with a SE degree...

I've worked directly (that is, either on the same team or with an immediately neighboring team) with two black engineers.

My company historically has had leveling issues and, sadly, they were definitely not meeting expectations for their level, or maybe even for the one below their level.

One was nudged out to another team. One currently on my direct team is being nudged out. One or two people want him to be fired (very curmudgeonly engineers who had worked with him), but me and the manager would rather find him new work within the company suited to his background in data science rather than software engineering. He's been dragging his feet; it's getting more and more difficult.

The company has a strong and vocal DEIB/social justice culture within certain parts of the company (though I suspect much less so among executives). It sometimes comes into play pretty directly in hiring. I've been in panels where someone calls out that the candidate is part of a disadvantaged population who've historically been under-leveled, though I haven't been in a panel where that made a difference in hiring or leveling.

The standard line is that the company doesn't compromise its hiring standards for diversity. I clearly have my doubts about whether that ends up happening in practice.

Northrop Grumman had a lot of folks from Crenshaw/Hawthorne/Carson when I was there, due to a partnership program with the local Cal State (Long Beach). All of the security staff was from that area too. Good folks, would 100% work with them again.

On the other hand, I've seen exactly 1 guy at the FANG I work at. What's the difference? I think it's companies like Northrop realizing that folks from under-represented communities have great value and prioritize that instead of whatever the current HackerRank-based interview process selects for

I'm software, but towards the hardware side of things, for decades, in silicon valley and elsewhere. I've worked with (as in, in the whole org) exactly zero software/firmware, and only one black hardware engineer (born and raised in Nigeria). I've interviewed a couple hundred people at this point, with only one being black.

Where I've been, trying to get some DEI policy to influence who's hired would be impossible, since the panel has to agree, and there's no way they would agree to someone not qualified. Even with pressure like "we really need to hire someone before end of month or we'll lose the req", the response has always been "find better people then".

Idk wtf companies you're working at but in my short career in a small city in the middle of the country where most people are white by a good percentage Ive worked wkth a ton of black developers.

While I can think of at least five people I have worked with who were SDEs and black (two from Africa, three from I-don't-know-where-but-I-presume-American-born).

Depends what the applicant pool looked like, but 94% seems almost certain to be an overcorrection.

I dont think the people of color that got their foot in the door in tech would agree with you.

I think the flaw works like this:

1. Acme Inc. has 40,000 white employees and 10,000 employees of color on payroll. The statistic would be 20%, if Acme were hiring at a constant rate by the same demographics.

2. However, suppose Acme hired the bulk of its employees during its growth phase 10 years ago. Acme's hiring back then was proportional, but the population has changed. Now only 60% of applicants are white, compared to 80% back then.

3. Acme lays off 5,000 staff (at random), and hires 1,000 (proportionally.) So they've laid off 4,000 white people and 1,000 people of color. And they've hired 400 people of color and 600 white people.

I'm too lazy to do the math but I think that works out as hiring a negative % of white people, even though it's just representative of demographic shifts.

1) it sounds crazy because it's actual statistical malpractice. See the many other comments explaining how it's bullshit

2) the significantly backlash is interesting, primarily because it centers around the bullshit statistics that companies pat themselves with. The hiring process is so nebulous and unknowable to the potential hiree that no person can really know whether they were denied a job due to dei policies. Yet we simultaneously assume that all non white people hired are being _hired because_ DEI, which really just undervalues the nonwhite population, as if they truly deserved none of the jobs, wouldn't have gotten any without the help. This combined into the rage that certain people feel about what really appears to be a back pat circle around naming a git branch and changing security terminology.