Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

[tszaboo]

For me, retiring the usage of “master and slave” falls into the category of “yeah, that’s probably a good thing to do [to avoid dredging up discomforts from over 150 years ago].”

One of may projects was pushed to use "mother/baby" for this use case.... Now even that is being challenged as offensive.

I hope you wanted to write Birthing People.
You really have to update your Wokecabulary.

[SiliconWizard]

Another funny thing is when some people do not want the "slave" term to be used anymore (as though erasing the word would erase the concept, 1984 anyone?), they exactly act as slaves.

"War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength."

[tpowell1830]

"We are all of the same opinion here: The call for diversity is a complete fad."

Am I the only one to see the irony there? Not only is this a poor example of a "discussion", but it is also a beautifully self-referential paradox. You nicely illustrate how a homogeneous group can be quite exclusive, even hostile -- possibly without even realizing it.

Please note that this is the first time I have hinted in any way at my own position on "diversity" in this thread. Which is not that different from that of most other participants, in fact: I certainly find that the "woke" movement has gone off the rails and is putting a strain on society as a whole, including some professional environments.

But I also think that all of us, myself certainly included, have biases which we should be self-aware of and which we should challenge ourselves about. The claims made by Dave and others in this thread -- that engineering is all about strictly objective assessments based only on merit -- don't show that self-awareness.

In an earlier post I have voiced (once) my personal opinion that this forum is not a suitable place for this discussion. In response it has been implied by several members that I am a woke whatsoever, anti-democratic, and unable to tolerate differing opinions. I have also been personally attacked several times by Nominal Animal, in response to posts which never personally attacked him.

But sure, you guys are doing great:

this thread, shows what open discussion looks like in a democratic society. I, for one, am very pleased to see open discussion with minimal emotional outbursts of name calling (except for a few).

 

I can see where my statements may have been misunderstood, so, let me try to make myself clear:

1. I agree that this FORUM should not turn into a place that allows general political discussion.
2. With that said, I have read all of the posts of different people's opinions on regard this original poster and I understand that this particular subject IS of great interest to engineers BECAUSE of its impacts to work life. This is why I said what I said. This is the exception to Dave's rule that he is allowing because there is not a place to discuss this on the open internet because of the tactics that are rained down on those who have dissenting opinions from the left. Here, Dave can control that behavior and still have a general discussion about REAL problems engineers are having with the DEI policies in their work place, which are NOT democratic in nature and are forced on everyone.
3. I have not inferred anything about you or anyone else that your opinion is bad nor have I labelled you in any way.
4. Most free thinking adults that have intelligence will work out that EVERYONE has biases, however, these can't be expelled by training or force. One can only hope that in a polite society of freethinkers that a kinder, more sympathetic approach be taken, however, the general purpose of a working environment is to produce a product, not try and change people's mind. Rules are meant to keep peace and, if they become overbearing, time to leave. This is a vote with your feet that should be noted/observed by your company that these policies are not good.
5. The world is a very hostile place, for everyone. It always has been.
6. Those that think that social engineering will produce good, or better outcomes are mistaken. There is no single Utopia for everyone because there are no groups, only individuals.

Please feel free to present a different POV.

[jpanhalt]

I hope you wanted to write Birthing People.
You really have to update your Wokecabulary.

Perhaps you really meant an egg producing person.  Some 46 XX women need to have surrogates birth their children.  But even that does not include the 46 X0 genotype, who are really women too, but may not produce eggs.  How about Y-chromosome deficient person?  Or, Y-chromosome challenged person? 

My preference?  Female/Woman based on absence of a Y-chromosome.  That was the standard as soon as our chromosomes could be counted.

[paulca]

"War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength."

I now want that printed on a T-Shirt.  Anyone in on a group buy?

[paulca]

Is it time for?


Anyway.  I'm out for now.  Carry on.

[Simon]

Oh yeah, this thread is going to go over well, I can smell it... 

Jordan Peterson, besides generally saying many words with little substance, is widely critiqued and discredited, especially for his association to the alt-right in recent years.  Which tells you all you really need to know about his followers.  Anyway, some salient points here:

Criticized by woke media. He is not associated with alt-right which is another lie. Also far-left really like killing a character of anyone they do not like by naming them alt-right.

The confusion here is really simple. Jordan Paterson is willing to say the uncomfortable stuff and is often quoted by the alt-right as they superficially misunderstand what he is saying or selectively quote him and live under the illusion that he is on their side as they cannot actually understand what he is saying.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Oh yeah, this thread is going to go over well, I can smell it... 

Jordan Peterson, besides generally saying many words with little substance, is widely critiqued and discredited, especially for his association to the alt-right in recent years.  Which tells you all you really need to know about his followers.  Anyway, some salient points here:

Criticized by woke media. He is not associated with alt-right which is another lie. Also far-left really like killing a character of anyone they do not like by naming them alt-right.

The confusion here is really simple. Jordan Paterson is willing to say the uncomfortable stuff and is often quoted by the alt-right as they superficially misunderstand what he is saying or selectively quote him and live under the illusion that he is on their side as they cannot actually understand what he is saying.

Keep in mind the right whingers(sic) gave JP a break from harsh criticism when he got sick. But he's overdue having his wings clipped.

[EEVblog]

Since some here think that this forum is a democracy that can vote (which it is not, and rightly so), I vote that we continue the discussion in much the same manner that has, so far, been conducted.
I only wanted to say that, as threads get longer, at times, the subject gets broader and many times starts sliding off-topic. Can we move back to the subject of the OP please? But by no means stop discussing.

This is thread is no different to any other here on the forum.
Those complainig it exists can stop reading it, and can even add it to their ignore list so they don't accidently see it.
The only people keeping it going are those that continue to post. If no one posts any more the thread vanishes into obscurity. Be the change you want to see.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I realize now that my opinion about some other people on this thread has changed. In some cases dramatically and to worst.

You wouldn't believe the number of people think that pineapple on pizza is a good idea. How can anyone possibly fraternize with these deplorables?

[fourfathom]

Keep in mind the right whingers(sic) gave JP a break from harsh criticism when he got sick. But he's overdue having his wings clipped.

Well if you're going to clip his wings, do try to do a better job than the video in this post: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/msg4364650/#msg4364650
In it the main argument is that JP is comparing male/female pay within the same disciplines and not across the entire male/female population:  Women don't generally get a paycheck for raising their children, and "care" professions usually pay less, so we should apparently embrace socialism to correct this equity problem.

But isn't that the point?  Unless you believe that we are coerced into choosing our professions?  I do believe that peoples interests (for example, things vs people) are deeply rooted, genetically and socially, and last-minute efforts to achieve equity or proportional representation within a field are doomed to failure.  There is room for cultural change, but trying to fit a square peg into a round hole isn't good for either the peg or the hole.

As for the working environment, I am friends with a woman who has a very impressive tech background (physics, optics, business, systems) -- we met at a standards-body meeting and my company ended up hiring her.  When she and I discussed her experience in engineering she told me that she has endured gender-related difficulties.  I haven't pressed her on this so I can't be sure, but I suspect that some of it came from a "women aren't supposed to be good at this stuff" attitude (which I believe is changing), but most of it is because she was a beautiful woman surrounded by men.  And during the later stages of her career she was working with sales and marketing men, and those guys can be animals!  Also, much of her experience was on the USA east coast, and the attitudes there appear to be different than I saw in the Silicon Valley region.

So I believe that the Engineering culture is different than the Sales/Marketing culture (or the Professional Sports culture, or any other culture.)  When I used to go to trade shows I would have a completely different after-hours experience when I hung out with sales/marketing vs with engineering.  And there are regional differences too.  So it's complicated.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Keep in mind the right whingers(sic) gave JP a break from harsh criticism when he got sick. But he's overdue having his wings clipped.

Well if you're going to clip his wings, do try to do a better job than the video in this post: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/msg4364650/#msg4364650
In it the main argument is that JP is comparing male/female pay within the same disciplines and not across the entire male/female population:  Women don't generally get a paycheck for raising their children, and "care" professions usually pay less, so we should apparently embrace socialism to correct this equity problem.

All the different reasons I see for hating on JP get a bit tedious. For me, I think it's funny how he used to go on about the family unit and a woman's place and all that, yet, when you look at his own family circumstances of late... It's easy to take cheap shots at someone so verbose.

I don't particularly like much of JP's greatest hits. What I do appreciate though is his conviction. Right, wrong or otherwise I'll listen to what he has to say because I know he has at least thought about it not just parroting something off twitter.

[Circlotron]

I don't particularly like much of JP's greatest hits. What I do appreciate though is his conviction. Right, wrong or otherwise I'll listen to what he has to say because I know he has at least thought about it not just parroting something off twitter.

Another interesting person who speaks with what seems to me to be well thought out words is Ben Shapiro. He can present quite a case and pull numerous diverse facts and figures out of thin air.

[pcprogrammer]

@paulca, sorry to hear about your depression. If this is caused by your job and the environment surrounding it, my advise is to try and find another job where you can thrive.

I myself have been in a situation where I had a break down, which took over 9 months to recover from and being advised to return to the same job, which was a big mistake. Nothing had changed and within a year I was nearing the point of another break down. I quit that job on medical reasons and luckily received unemployment benefits to pull me through a period of two and a half years to get back on my feet. Unable to find a new job I started my own small company. Did that for 17 years and had enough of it so decided to quit. Sure I had earned enough money to make that decision, but I never regret it.

I'm very glad I don't have to deal with the idiocy the working world is going through at the moment.

This thread is very diverse in issues with a somewhat common ground in discrimination, either positive or negative. To explain my earlier post about slavery still being in existence, it was brought on by the talk about the words master and slave. There are some that already explained that they are just words and it is always important to place them in context of usage.

Looking at modern society slavery still exists in one form or another. Most of us are constantly enslaving our selves by wanting more and as such putting pressure on earning more money to hopefully improve our lives. The master here being money.

But there are many other forms. Think of abusive relations where either the man or the woman oppresses their spouse, often by the use of force. And yes, there are also abusive wives, it is not just a male dominated sector of pain. And many of the slaves here let it happen because they still love their spouse, and he does not mean it that way, etc.

Also take a look at the world of SM. Here it is very normal practice, but there other terms are used to name the participants, but mistress is just the female version of master. Dominatrix is also used to name the same role.

So I join the others in stating that words don't harm, but the intent of the user might.

The human race is somewhat like a pendulum, constantly swinging without finding a balance, going from hype to hype. Maybe one day it will be found, the balance, but I fear not any time soon. Still driven way to much by testosterone and estrogen. Because whether we like it or not there are differences between not just man and women but also between people in general. And I guess that is a good thing. It would get boring real quick if everybody was like me or you.

Edit: fixed a typo

[AnalogueLove1867]

Oh well. I guess every online website open to the public is inevitably going to become another reddit due to current societal pressures.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Oh well. I guess every online website open to the public is inevitably going to become another reddit due to current societal pressures.

Sorry I cannot see the comparison.

There is a supporter's area.

[daqq]

Oh well. I guess every online website open to the public is inevitably going to become another reddit due to current societal pressures.

The thing is that some things are inherently intertwined. The industry does not exist in a vacuum unfortunately.

Ideally we wouldn't need to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine on a technical forum (or at all since ideally it wouldn't have happened), unfortunately it affects the electronics industry in a number of ways.
SJW going rabid and trying to rename master-slave devices to a 'less offensive' name? Ditto - it affects the way we work and what we do and might affect tons of technical documents.
China looking hungrily at Taiwan? The same.
Pressures to prefer diverse applicants to best applicants are affecting the industry and the way we work.

There's a difference between an absolutely general forum with topics like "Is God a blue midget?" and "The finer points in breeding French poodles" to a thematic related general forum with topics like "The Divine Blue Midget sect has blown up a semiconductor fab, anyone know what components to stock up upon?" or "Help, my French poodle keeps eating my scope probes!".

[Nominal Animal]

The reason I believe this particular subject is in scope is that it does not deal with the D-E-I in general, and is limited to how it affects engineering and science, specifically electrical engineering.

Every single person and workplace and company has room and reason to improve, that's for sure.  The point is, the current approach to D-E-I have already been tried before, and historically produced only horrible results, and therefore it looks to be an extremely destructive path for the entire industry.

It is the sort of situation where in the past, scientists and engineers have intervened to point out the fatal flaws in the plan.
We used to be listened to, but no longer; now, we seem to somehow be the enemy instead, and will be (already are) blamed for those flaws and failures.

I do not understand this at all.

[tszaboo]

I don't particularly like much of JP's greatest hits. What I do appreciate though is his conviction. Right, wrong or otherwise I'll listen to what he has to say because I know he has at least thought about it not just parroting something off twitter.

Another interesting person who speaks with what seems to me to be well thought out words is Ben Shapiro. He can present quite a case and pull numerous diverse facts and figures out of thin air.

JP is a professor of clinical psychology and was practicing who has been doing this for 40 years. It's a scientific field, which is based on facts that are agreed upon with the scientific method.
The same way, as I can write a post about how the 74HC595 works, without dissecting PN junctions, the same way he is going to talk about ie gender differences, without citing the source of the information. He tries doing this, and the speech quickly falls apart, because you need to reference obscure studies, or philosophers.
Really imagine talking about electronics without bringing up Volta in every post. And then imagine doing this while the public is interested in what you have to say. And now add a small, but loud minority of people who are shouting from the top of their lungs that you are a racist bigot, because you don't question Maxwell, and they claim that electrons can decide their own charge. You will very quickly find that talking about this is not that easy. And social studies is a very difficult field, with sampling issues, the lack of trusted data. It hasn't been around for that long.
If you listen for more than 5 minute clips that are labelled: "JP destroys feminists", you will find that he is returning to a few axioms, backed by research. One is the famous lobster study, that everyone likes to pick on, which is about social hierarchies, dominance and the importance of hormones regulating it all.
Also people tend to misunderstand what he is saying because, it is overly complicated, but also because they don't have the attention span to listen to it as a whole. He say that something is in a way, and brings reasons why, it doesn't mean that he agrees or prefers it that way.

[paulca]

Question.

I work for a UK company, with a UK contract.

They contract me to a US company.

That US company has information about me.  That US company may, it seems, to be using that information in a way which is not compatible with my UK contract.

I have already asked a related question to HR twice and not received and answer.  "Under what data governance does this PII fall?  Is it GDPR, Safe Harbour?  Who stores it and what are their data control policies and "allowed uses"?

Nothing.

Do you think I can even submit a freedom of information request to the US company for a copy of all PII and non PII they hold about me?  Can I submit a redact request if I find a field like "Cis gender male"?

The last few times this has occurred, like every time they contract me overseas, I protest my personal information being given to customers, but I end up providing it as to not be a blocker.  I mean these days you have background checks, bar checks, criminal report checks, and even working with the vulnerable people checks, apparently I'm squeaky clean or so it seems.  That's all fine, when they request a UK official document that is a public certificate like a recent bar report.  It's when they ask for other identifiable information like social media accounts or personal email addresses, personal mobile numbers and then INSIST that they are personal and not work accounts.  I've had to create "burner email" accounts at request of management and even use an old phone for access a customer system because the app they installed asked for FAR, FAR too many permissions, including the ability to enable your microphone and camera!  It had to be installed from "third party sources" and showed up on our phone as a security risk!  One unnamed extremely large company force connected your personal home computer's microphones and webcams to the remote virtual host and prevented them from being disabled.  The support staff for the software, external to the company (on Reddit) told me to open device manager and disable my devices there if I wanted privacy!!!!

Honestly.  I don't think I need a new job, I just need to continue to suggest that when this current project ramps down, I do not want to work for a US company again.  I want a contract working with local people, in local teams, for local business, ie UK or EU.  The US is rapidly departing the civilized world and I want to distance myself from it for a while.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Holy Moly.

[jpanhalt]

@paulca
I second the wow and cannot comment specifically on much of what you describe for lack of knowledge. 

In the US, "at will" employees (a legal term) have some rights but the employer can do many things.  FOIA requests apply to the government.  I do not believe they apply to companies.  Companies can request and demand many things so long as they do not adversely affect a protected class disproportionately to the majority. 

For example, a company can forbid its employees to use tobacco products (i.e., chew or smoke) even in their private homes and can enforce that by testing for nicotine metabolites in blood.  Testing of illegal/illicit drugs have been going on for a long time, but expansion to dictating otherwise legal lfestyle choices is more recent.  I am not sure whether the question of placing arbitrary restrictions has been tested.*(see edit)  But smoking, vaccination, health physicals, etc. are justified on the basis of costs for healthcare that may pass through to the company or other legitimate business factors, regardless of how lame that excuse is.  Some companies will not allow employees to pilot a private aircraft.

Of course, that applies to at will employees.  Unionized employees are covered by contract, but individual employees may have little input into them.  In Minnesota, a recent teachers union contract allows seniority to be bystepped if a reduction in force (which usually strictly follows seniority) would result in the firing of a less senior minority person over a more senior non-minority person.  That is, the more senior person who is non-minority gets fired.  I am sure the non-minority employees do not like that.

For contracted employees, both sides are bound by contract, but in most cases, the employer has the upper hand.

In your case, it probably boils down to the contract your employer has with the American company and whether you are an at will or contracted employee.  I doubt it will give you a copy of that contract without a battle.  Your grievance probably begins with your employer.  If you are one of the protected groups in the US and can show/claim that you have been illegally discriminated against, you might point that out, but I doubt you will get very far.  More likely, you will end up reassigned and/or recalled home.  You will probably not be part of those discussions.

*Edit: There are rules against actions that violate the "public conscience."  That is, an at will employee cannot be fired if the reason goes against public conscience, such as whistle blowing.  Any smart employer will never give a cause for discharging an at will employee.  Also, employment law in the US is usually at the State level. 

[pcprogrammer]

Holy Moly.

Yes indeed

Edit: On the plus side and to follow Monty Python advise to look on the bright side of life, in another 10 years time experienced and good engineers will have become a minority

[paulca]

@paulca
I second the wow and cannot comment specifically on much of what you describe for lack of knowledge. 

I'm curious if the "wow" is because of the rat's nest of being internationally "seconded"/contracted or because I went there?

It is a rat's nest.  Especially given the sector I work in is a high security information domain.  I am legally bound internationally on many things, including criminal negligence type offenses.  Thankfully I'm nowhere near the front line on those things.  It's meaningless integers, reals, timestamps and strings to me.  I'm thankful for that.  I will talk about my work from a software/systems engineering aspect, but never using empirical business information or specifics.  "Never take it home.", in the first place, policy.  I'll talk about a company, but never mention which.  I'll redact and fabricate specifics to give examples.  I've yet to get in trouble for disclosure or other security related infractions, although I have whistle blown on a few practices and thankfully that was received as the correct professional checks and balances that needed to be addressed.  (Account/password sharing.  Cross/out of channel communications requesting internal company information or contact information).

I hadn't even thought of the "criminal" aspects.  I mean whose law applies?  If I am sitting in Belfast (UK with a big toe stuck in the EU's door), accessing a computer system in London, using it to access systems in the US, working with people from Singapore for a US company.  I'd start by assuming "all of the above", and that's never really been a problem.

It's not really a problem now (limiting scope), but it's like I can hear the shells landing in the distance and a shift between the US and UK legal policies on factors such as discrimination and PII disclosure and protection, could move that front line closer and, not going to the worst case scenario, I could be criminally or civilly charged in the states for a legally allowed action in the UK or vice versa.  I don't know much about US law, but I do know a hell of a lot more about US law than I do Singapore law!

Personal issues with this asides, there are genuine professional information security issues presenting which ARE part of my professional scope of discussion in work.  I am legally/professionally required to understand and adhere to things like GDPR et. al. and encourage enforcement of those policies in software.

I did look at what the "current" safe guards are on employee information transferred from the UK to the US and no surprises Brexit has more or less trashed it and paraphase: "there currently are short comings in the data transfer legislation which leaves UK employees unsatisfactorily protected".  It basically says, "you be boned.", it's mostly up to the companies and their agreements, other more stringent frameworks exist, but they are not mandatory.

The GDPR (and other) 'rights' have a clause on consent.  Consent is everything.  You have to provide people with a real choice to provide or not provide the information.  I don't get that, some times for regulatory reasons, but very often because it's a customer company asking for my details and they don't accept "N/A" and "Undisclosed" as answers in their part of the world.  That has professional implications of refusal.  Always saying "No" to requests for PII from customers would tend to make you inflexible and less valuable to your company.

In Northern Ireland we have been through this.  It still goes on today.  Every year, every employee must submit an FEC (Fair employment commission) disclosure stating their age, sex, religion and community alignment.  These surveys, almost like voting, are meant to be handled in the upmost of privacy and the form does NOT include their name or any identifier which can be associated with an actual person.  This is extremely heavily regulated "diversity" monitoring to highlight, not fix, but highlight "community biases"... the regulation around never attaching that information to PII is important.  However it is of course frequently poorly executed.  This year, a single person in HR emailed the entire Belfast office with a word document and asked to complete it.  It wasn't even a well done Word form, it wasn't editable and you couldn't tick the tick boxes or edit the form text boxes.  I did complete it and return it, but it felt wrong.  In the days when it was a paper form, on site, it went back into a pile instantly, no identifier on it.  But asking for it over email, or asking for it via anything BUT a completely anonymous route is a violation of the principle of it being none PII.  Your name is on the email, your name is in the edit history on the document.  Luckily it was to a single person email address, but you never can tell the actual distribution for monitoring.

The important, related part about this form is how it's processed.  There is the "None of the above" type options.  However the data officer is permitted to know the post code or primary school of the subject and is permitted to put an "assumed community" on the record.  If THIS practice is applied to surveys on topics such as gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. etc.  Many companies may have HR records inappropriately labelling me in a discriminatory way without consent to do so.

To keep your job, you maybe should just shut up and keep smiling, keep taking the salary. 

[madires]

Salery? Shouldn't it be called compensation for personal suffering?