Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

[wraper]

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.

[emece67]

5) This is an electronics forum, so try to stay on-topic.

This affects our workplace and livelihood.

As the Ucrania-Russia war does. This is politics, period.

If we cannot discuss this here, among other engineers, scientists and hobbyists with similar mindsets, we cannot discuss this anywhere anymore.

We cannot discuss it here because forum rules forbid it. Amazingly moderators seem happy to also post on this thread.

[sokoloff]

The problem is, discrimination in the opposite direction, known as positive discrimination in the UK or affirmative action over the pond, is now making things worse. It results in unsuitable candidates being selected and a poorer quality workforce.

I literally cannot think of a better way to undermine the perceived ability of a group (any group) and instill an inferiority complex/feelings of imposter syndrome than to openly declare and implement policies that lower the qualifying standards (by rule or in effect) for members of that group.

There has been, and continues to be, a substantial amount of inappropriate discrimination between and among groups of people. That should be eliminated, to be sure. Introducing inappropriate discrimination in an opposing direction is, at a minimum, inelegant, but I believe is just as fundamentally unsound on moral grounds as the previous/extant discrimination. Eliminating, not creating opposing, inappropriate discrimination should be the goal.

[EEVblog]

We cannot discuss it here because forum rules forbid it. Amazingly moderators seem happy to also post on this thread.

Because this thread and topic is ultimately about our workplaces, our institutions, our universities etc And as previous threads on the same topic have discussed, engineering names, documentation, coding, etc. It infiltrates everything.

[Halcyon]

Whilst some people might find this topic "political", it seems to be quite relevant...

Electronics engineering seems to attract some diverse people, including those who are transgender, gender diverse or otherwise. For what reason and I don't know why, but there seems to be a higher proportion of people who have some kind of sexual or gender "quirk", have aspergers, ADHD, whatever.... compared to a lot of other industries.

Now, I guess I'm biased, in that I say this as a gay man myself, but... this whole focus on gender, sexual identity, etc... etc... is a load of shit. The flavour of the month at the moment seems to be people who have a vagina. Tomorrow, it'll be something else, because "society" says so, but society is fucking stupid. This is not to say that there aren't capable women, of course there are, but I have personally seen male candidates (of indiscriminate sexual orientation) overlooked for positions, simply because of their biological gender.

Who you are as a person should have absolutely zero bearing on whether you get a particular job or promotion. Whether you're male, female, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, aboriginal, Vietnamese, Afro-american or any  other combination you can think of... none of that matters when it comes to being suited to a particular role or job.

Quotas don't work. Period. So why enforce them?

And before anyone starts... your personal views on religion have nothing to do with it either.

[ebastler]

Because this thread and topic is ultimately about our workplaces, our institutions, our universities etc And as previous threads on the same topic have discussed, engineering names, documentation, coding, etc. It infiltrates everything.

I beg to differ. Please look back over the last two pages of posts -- I did not see a single one which discussed engineering implications. This is a plain old politics discussion, apparently mostly among middle-aged men. My vote is to lock this thread.

[emece67]

We cannot discuss it here because forum rules forbid it. Amazingly moderators seem happy to also post on this thread.

Because this thread and topic is ultimately about our workplaces, our institutions, our universities etc And as previous threads on the same topic have discussed, engineering names, documentation, coding, etc. It infiltrates everything.

As I said before, the same happens with the Ucrania-Russia war, and also with Lehman brothers, the decisions made by governments against COVID, the decisions made (or not) by governments about climate change, US gun control, capitalism vs. socialism, rise of populism, and so on.

Simply, this is politics, but a question of politics that is of interest for some moderators here.

[Zero999]

Because this thread and topic is ultimately about our workplaces, our institutions, our universities etc And as previous threads on the same topic have discussed, engineering names, documentation, coding, etc. It infiltrates everything.

I beg to differ. Please look back over the last two pages of posts -- I did not see a single one which discussed engineering implications. This is a plain old politics discussion, apparently mostly among middle-aged men. My vote is to lock this thread.

We cannot discuss it here because forum rules forbid it. Amazingly moderators seem happy to also post on this thread.

Because this thread and topic is ultimately about our workplaces, our institutions, our universities etc And as previous threads on the same topic have discussed, engineering names, documentation, coding, etc. It infiltrates everything.

As I said before, the same happens with the Ucrania-Russia war, and also with Lehman brothers, the decisions made by governments against COVID, the decisions made (or not) by governments about climate change, US gun control, capitalism vs. socialism, and so on.

Simply, this is politics, but a question of politics that is of interest for some moderators here.

If you don't like it, then please keep out of this thread. No one is forcing you to participate.

Whilst some people might find this topic "political", it seems to be quite relevant...

Electronics engineering seems to attract some diverse people, including those who are transgender, gender diverse or otherwise. For what reason and I don't know why, but there seems to be a higher proportion of people who have some kind of sexual or gender "quirk", have aspergers, ADHD, whatever.... compared to a lot of other industries.

Now, I guess I'm biased, in that I say this as a gay man myself, but... this whole focus on gender, sexual identity, etc... etc... is a load of shit. The flavour of the month at the moment seems to be people who have a vagina. Tomorrow, it'll be something else, because "society" says so, but society is fucking stupid. This is not to say that there aren't capable women, of course there are, but I have personally seen male candidates (of indiscriminate sexual orientation) overlooked for positions, simply because of their biological gender.

Who you are as a person should have absolutely zero bearing on whether you get a particular job or promotion. Whether you're male, female, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, aboriginal, Vietnamese, Afro-american or any  other combination you can think of... none of that matters when it comes to being suited to a particular role or job.

Quotas don't work. Period. So why enforce them?

And before anyone starts... your personal views on religion have nothing to do with it either.

I agree.  Given the current trans craze, many people can no longer define the term woman. Do you know many people would consider you to be bigoted if you refuse to date a transman i.e. a biological female, who identifies as a man? It's absurd. And no, of course I know this doesn't apply to most trans people, just the rabid activists.

If you think that we can just walk away from the issue, and let it blow over, than you are in for a surprise.
There is something called ESG credit score: https://esg.moodys.io/esg-credit It's a scoring system, where the S social and G Governance score is given based on your company's willingness to subscribe to these radical left ideas. I gave you a Moodys link, where they clearly state that they are incorporating this score into your company's credit rating. Black Rock and other huge institutions follow this.
What does this mean? If your company is not compliant, doesn't want equity over equality, doesn't want to implement CRT, or deals with other companies with low ESG score, you will not get funded. You will not get the necessary credits to expand, to grow, or to avoid a bankruptcy. As time goes on, there will be less and less companies surviving on the long term, who are not radical leftist.
Every single time, the radical left was left unchecked, millions of people died who disagreed, or were in the way.
So we cannot be complacent and leave them to just bark on their own turf. They are coming to your independent companies, and your movies and your social media posts and then they just cancel you. In their book it is not enough to not have an opinion about this. Why do you think companies are organizing brainwashing sessions about social justice?

I've heard of that before. Again, it appears to be something started with good intentions. Historically companies have treated people and the environment badly, because it's often not profitable to act in an ethical manner and this was an attempt to rectify the situation. Unfortunately feature creep and extremism setting in are inevitable, due to human nature. It's not going to do any good. Companies will still treat their employees badly, just in a different way and they'll greenwash, in a bid to appear environmentally friendly.

We live in a global market though. What do other companies operating in countries where this woke rubbish has yet to catch on go?

There are still other sources of funding such as crowd and peer to peer, so there's still a way round it.

If I were in charge of a company and had to tick this box, I'd be fully transparent with the employees I thought it was a load of bollocks. I'd choose an online diversity course and tell them all the answers, then have a big session afterwards taking the piss out of it all.

[paulca]

Because this thread and topic is ultimately about our workplaces, our institutions, our universities etc And as previous threads on the same topic have discussed, engineering names, documentation, coding, etc. It infiltrates everything.

I beg to differ. Please look back over the last two pages of posts -- I did not see a single one which discussed engineering implications. This is a plain old politics discussion, apparently mostly among middle-aged men. My vote is to lock this thread.

It's been running through it.

I am a 20 year + software engineer.   I am telling you the industry is reaching an all time low because it's being overstretched with demand and the Universities are not producing enough graduates.  We are picking from EVERYWHERE and ANYWHERE now.  We hire globally.  People don't need degrees, they don't even need a related qualification anymore, if they do a good interview and have "compatible values" we hire them.

The trouble with this is, it puts the senior engineers under more and more pressure trying to fill in gaps, bring people up to speed, rework peoples work, etc. etc. etc.

Those senior engineers, are predominantly male, because that is the legacy of the past 20, 30, 40 years for whatever reasons.

If those engineers start to feel uncomfortable in the new regime of social ostracization of them as people, they will leave.

This is already happening in other industries and professions.  People are just saying "No.  No More.  I am out.".

Experience is bleeding out of the industry, code complexity is sky rocketing, the younger graduates and juniors have roughly ZERO experience in the lower levels of platforms and systems and are absolutely helpless without the old timers and grey beards.

That is why this is relevant.  If people like myself consider a career change away from this toxic mess, the industry WILL fail.  Software related blackouts will run rampant.

Is THAT relevant enough?

EDIT:
I'm not the best engineer by far.  However I feel increasingly isolated and alone in my roles because the more I look around as I get older the less possible "mentors" I see in my peer group.  The more the business turn to me and that's rather worrying.  That I am now one of the seniors and the mentor.  I keep telling them to stop pushing me upwards, I don't want to go upwards, I want to become excellent where I am first.  But they are running out of senior people, so people are almost being forced to fail upwards.

[Nominal Animal]

This is a plain old politics discussion, apparently mostly among middle-aged men. My vote is to lock this thread.

How very decolonial of you.  Have you already tweeted how you voted to silence ugly white old middle-aged men griping about politically-motivated irrational unfairness affecting their professions?  You should.  I'm sure you'll get brownie rainbow points from your fellow ideolobots there.

[ebastler]

This is a plain old politics discussion, apparently mostly among middle-aged men. My vote is to lock this thread.

How very decolonial of you.  Have you already tweeted how you voted to silence ugly white old middle-aged men griping about politically-motivated irrational unfairness affecting their professions?  You should.  I'm sure you'll get brownie rainbow points from your fellow ideolobots there.

Oh come on. I have no problem with middle-aged men, being one myself. (And on the upper end of the "middle aged" spectrum.) But I don't enjoy being inside an echo chamber full of us guys. I can develop my own biases and don't need a group to help me develop or reconfirm those.

[paulca]

There is a fair amount of diversity here.  We have already had comments to that effect.  I'd honestly love to here the opinion of women engineers, there are some on here.

I hope we aren't excluding them?  Are we?

[magic]

Simply, this is politics, but a question of politics that is of interest for some moderators here.

It also appears to be of interest to the owner of this forum who set the rules in the first place.

It's not really a political discussion when a few liberals pat each others' backs and lament the demise of liberalism together It takes some, excuse the pun, diversity to turn a thread into trainwreck.

Lastly, put your tinfoil hat on: you are witnessing the power structure maintaining itself.

That is why this is relevant.  If people like myself consider a career change away from this toxic mess, the industry WILL fail.  Software related blackouts will run rampant.

Is THAT relevant enough?

Speaking of Jordan Peterson, remember that those who looked back at the burning Sodom turned into stone

Software should have never been allowed that much importance in the first place. This Sci-Fi fad needs to die, the sooner the better.

If you truly believe it, you will do what needs to be done. If you don't, people will see through your drama theater and ignore you. There is a long queue of volunteers to fill the space you'd leave.

[Miyuki]

Yesterday I read an article about how bad gender income inequality is.
And there was a "surprising" conclusion that females without children have roughly the same income as their male colleagues.

In my experience, there is no discrimination in IT, EE, and other engineering jobs.
The school experience will differ slightly, but it is so because girls are uncommon in some schools, that there can easily be ratios like 50-100:1
The only real difference I can see is mothers pushing their daughters to "girly stuff".

This is a very open industry because it is created by diverse (mostly neurodiverse) creatures.
I can clearly see it in myself, as an autistic weirdo with little interest in human contact. I naturally gravitate towards computers and electronics.
Plenty of people there can openly present their quirks and even fetishes. Colleagues are open and "other" just thinks about us that we are that weird IT guys and Engineers.

The same applies to most technical stuff. For example, female welders tend to be superior to their male colleagues.
It makes sense, they do it because they are interested in it and like it, so it is their hobby. Whereas men do it because it is a "manly job".
It will work the same in the opposite way for jobs that are naturally attractive for girls.

[tszaboo]

And these attacks are always in the one direction from extreme left to supposed right.

It feels like someone connected a very, very left voltage source to that scale and while I thought I was slightly left of centre, I now find myself out on the right apparently.  They shifted the scale under me and now I feel a little unsafe.

That's called a shift in the Overton Window, and it is a much analysed and discussed topic. People (like me) who considered themselves left (even far left in many regards) now find themsleves in the "centre", because the Overton Window has well and truly shifted to the left. But to the new extreme left you are now marked as a right wing nutjob, alt-right, or something to that effect. That's why the new left are eating themselves, with J.K.Rowing being a classic high profile example.

Interesting concept this Window. I can see this being manipulated worldwide in different ways. I think there is actually a crisis, where the window for two population has shifted so radically, that there is very little overlap, and common ground left, that we can agree on.
The other similar concept that I saw mentioned was called "Luxury beliefs". The concept is that rich/powerful people have the tendency to have different ideas about common things, just to differentiate themselves from the "downtrotten common".
I think that most people are sensible, and don't subscribe extremist ideas, and this is advocated by a small, but very loud and powerful group of people.
How can we have a discussion, if A party say: "I think we should treat everyone equally" and the reply to this from B is: "You are a colonist nazi".

[jonpaul]

Bonjour à tous
Happily,  I am retired and very far from the entire horrible topic...

Still in my carrier as an EE, I have seen most Firms hiring Discrimination for decades  against Seniors ( anyone over 50 ) ,discrimination against American engineers in favor of cheap offshore.

What about illegal Discrimination nowadays against Asians, Europeans, by  Government, schools, media?

just my thoughts....

From a optimist in the nuclear age

Bon courage et bon journée

Jon

[EEVblog]

There is a fair amount of diversity here.  We have already had comments to that effect.  I'd honestly love to here the opinion of women engineers, there are some on here.
I hope we aren't excluding them?  Are we?

That has been claimed publicly about this forum before by those with a woke agenda.
And if you try and defend it the response is always some variation of "You are driving women away with your inherent misognistic undertone you fail to acknowledge" etc

The number of women here is just typical of other engineering forums for *insert reasons here*. Just like my channel gets the same male/female ratio as other more woke creators (I've been called too "blokey" before), and even female engineering creators. Funny that, what are the odds. Most people simply don't care about all this intersectional woke BS, it's just a small extremely loud mob, and it's trendy to virtue signal when they cry out about something, especially on Twitter where all the action happens.

I've been running this forum for what, 13 years now? And I can't recall any woman who came on here and got harrassed or anything to that effect, and I certainly wouldn't allow it, I'll ban anyones arse in a second if they do. They are just another forum poster who is interested in electronics. I like to think the forum is actually a great equalliser in this regard. Put woman in your bio and no one really cares, you are behind a keyboard and your tech knowledge and personality does the talking.
As for trans people, there are a huge number on this forum, I think I even did a survey once, and IIRC many said it's one of the best forums around.

[EEVblog]

Still in my carrier as an EE, I have seen most Firms hiring Discrimination for decades  against Seniors ( anyone over 50 ) ,discrimination against American engineers in favor of cheap offshore.
What about illegal Discrimination nowadays against Asians, Europeans, by  Government, schools, media?

I had a bunch of uni students (UTS ironically) visit my lab once as part of some assignment to talk to industry people, and there were questions on women and discrimination in engineering.
I told them that you will be discriminated against based on whole bunch of things, and gender is waaaay down the list. I think I rattled off a list of a dozen things that weren't sex or race based.
They seemed genuinely shocked to hear this, as I think it's been drummed into them that the industry is rife with sexual and racial discrimination. It's BS.
I don't like the post videos, but it's an appropriate time to bring in Morgan Freeman for his view which I also hold. Just stop talking about it. But of course we have to because the whole subject has invaded every aspect of our industry, let alone society.

[tom66]

I will say this, we really struggle to find engineering candidates who are skilled.

If someone from a diverse background came to us, and they were a qualified candidate, why would we turn them down?  Their skin colour, sexuality, gender, transition-or-not -- it doesn't matter.  The question is can they do the job?  And that's all there is.

Engineering and software fields are almost continuously hiring because of high demand and competitive nature of the market, to exclude say 10-20% of all candidates because of racism or sexism or some other -ism would only put the organisation at a competitive disadvantage.

This is not to say it did not exist in the past: of course it did.  But, I'd like to believe we've moved on in our society now.

[KaneTW]

this whole focus on gender, sexual identity, etc... etc... is a load of shit.

Yes, yes it is. It's infuriating especially since it's a fundamentally broken approach.

[EEVblog]

If someone from a diverse background came to us, and they were a qualified candidate, why would we turn them down?  Their skin colour, sexuality, gender, transition-or-not -- it doesn't matter.  The question is can they do the job?  And that's all there is.

IME this is one of the great aspects of the engineering field. If it's engineers hiring engineers, then zero shits are given about anything other than competency to do the job. Enginneers are famously practical like  that
I was interviewed by and hired for my first job by a female tech. Zero shits given about giving the job to another (rare) woman. She liked me and my attitude and hobby background, I'm hired, the end.

[madires]

Quotas don't work. Period. So why enforce them?

Exactly! Quotas are basically trying to force a group of people into a specific role, no matter if they like it or not. It's the wrong way! Simply ignore anything not related to qualifications and social skills, and hire the best candidate. You can try to encourage women to become engineers, but you should't force them. Today's quotas, wokeism, diversity and so on seems to be the lack of common sense. 20 years ago I worked in multinational teams with people from all over the world, women, people of color, gays, transgender, and any religion you can think of. We got the job done, and this is what matters. However, there are some issues which need to be addressed, e.g. equal pay for men and women, a topic top managements like to ignore while riding the diversity train.

[Nominal Animal]

This is a plain old politics discussion, apparently mostly among middle-aged men. My vote is to lock this thread.

How very decolonial of you.  Have you already tweeted how you voted to silence ugly white old middle-aged men griping about politically-motivated irrational unfairness affecting their professions?  You should.  I'm sure you'll get brownie rainbow points from your fellow ideolobots there.

Oh come on. I have no problem with middle-aged men, being one myself. (And on the upper end of the "middle aged" spectrum.) But I don't enjoy being inside an echo chamber full of us guys. I can develop my own biases and don't need a group to help me develop or reconfirm those.

Why, then, do you insist on voting to lock this thread, i.e. silence everybody, when you could simply not read this thread?

Wouldn't it be more rational for you to do something else, instead of demanding voting to stop others talking?

You should take particular note that I am not demanding the closing of the identitarian leftie echo chambers like Twatter.  I just ridicule them.
I want everyone, even those whose opinions I completely disagree with, to be able to express themselves and their ideas freely.  Occasionally, when I'm up to it, I go there and listen for a while, because even if I disagree, I do want to know what they want to say.

Why is it that you have such a big problem with "middle-aged men" expressing themselves, even if you consider yourself one?  Self-hatred?

[Zero999]

this whole focus on gender, sexual identity, etc... etc... is a load of shit.

Yes, yes it is. It's infuriating especially since it's a fundamentally broken approach.

Yes, I follow Big Clive and Fran on YouTube, not because they're gay and trans, but for the content, which centres around electronics, rather than homosexuality/transgenderism.

If someone from a diverse background came to us, and they were a qualified candidate, why would we turn them down?  Their skin colour, sexuality, gender, transition-or-not -- it doesn't matter.  The question is can they do the job?  And that's all there is.

IME this is one of the great aspects of the engineering field. If it's engineers hiring engineers, then zero shits are given about anything other than competency to do the job. Enginneers are famously practical like  that
I was interviewed by and hired for my first job by a female tech. Zero shits given about giving the job to another (rare) woman. She liked me and my attitude and hobby background, I'm hired, the end.

It is true though that everyone is biased and it does play a role, but it would increase the likelihood of employing women. I'm pretty sure a straight man is more likely to employ a young woman, than man, because he finds her attractive. Heck, this could have even been a factor in you getting the job. If she found you attractive, it's more likely she would have given you the job. Of course I'm not saying, that's purely why you were offered it, but it's impossible not to dismiss it as being a factor. If you were a pretty woman, it might've even meant you were less likely to be hired by a female boss.

Obviously I'm not an advocate for unconscious bias training, which is not proven to work. Managers might as well send their engineers on dowsing/divining courses to fault find circuits by holding metal rods over the PCB, or a crystal pendulum over the schematic. Oh, I forgot, some people here believe dowsing works, so such an initiative might get some support: palm:

[james_s]

And these attacks are always in the one direction from extreme left to supposed right.

It feels like someone connected a very, very left voltage source to that scale and while I thought I was slightly left of centre, I now find myself out on the right apparently.  They shifted the scale under me and now I feel a little unsafe.

For most of my life I considered myself to be somewhere in the middle of the left, I don't think my position has changed very much over time, but the left has moved SO FAR to the left that now I'm probably somewhere slightly to the right of center. The whole identity politics thing simply doesn't make any sense to me, it has the appearance of absolute insanity. I was taught growing up that race is irrelevant and yet today much of the far left is absolutely obsessed with race and other immutable traits and they make a great many assumptions. I just don't even get it.