Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

[paulca]

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

Your not far off the mark with that.  Often you just get called in and given a pay rise.  When you ask why, they say, the market is changing, we want to keep you.  It's pro-active retention "pay increases to remain competitive in the market and limit attrition".  Take a look at what the new startups in town are paying while poaching staff and bump the employees you want to keep close to that figure.   

I once openly referred to it (my end of year bonus), as "danger pay" and got a wry smile out of the senior delivery manager of understanding, and then asked not to call it that.

[tom66]

Your not far off the mark with that.  Often you just get called in and given a pay rise.  When you ask why, they say, the market is changing, we want to keep you.  It's pro-active retention "pay increases to remain competitive in the market and limit attrition".  Take a look at what the new startups in town are paying while poaching staff and bump the employees you want to keep close to that figure.   

I once openly referred to it (my end of year bonus), as "danger pay" and got a wry smile out of the senior delivery manager of understanding, and then asked not to call it that.

Don't know what companies you work at, but I've always had to negotiate my raises.  At best I've had 3% without asking.  I've never lagged inflation (as far as I'm aware) and managed to get 20-30% at a time, but it usually requires a bit of haggling and pressing the boss.

[Nominal Animal]

I would like to draw your attention to the parallels in academia, how the quality of research has dropped during the last two decades, because of the skewed pressure applied by the administration.  The quality of a paper does not matter, only the number of publications does.  This has lead to a huge increase in retractions and errors, and what is called the "reproducibility crisis": it looks like increasing amounts of the "results" cited in peer-reviewed articles are actually completely manipulated garbage, in the hopes of ensuring funding.

In other words, the vast majority of scientists have been conditioned to accept that the numbers have been tweaked "slightly" in order to secure the research financially.  Not all do it, perhaps not even the majority, but it's pretty close, considering a quarter to half of papers will be retracted or be shown incorrect in two or three decades on average, or something like that (depends highly on the exact field).

Extrapolating to engineering, when the D-E-I gains a proper foothold, the fight is over, lost.  Instead of engineering products you can stand behind and put your name into, you will be conditioned to value appearance and emotional reactions over everything else.  If you try to fight that, you will find yourself being punished financially –– with rewards and pay rises withheld –– because at that point, your employers are no longer interested in the product; they will be interested in the optics only.

I cannot in good conscience recommend any of my young relatives to go to university anymore.  They no longer teach the things they were founded for, and instead concentrate on indoctrination and bullshit instead.  When they emerge, they would find it obvious and proper that scientific research is unreproducible, because everyone has their own personal facts that are derived from their emotional and social makeup.

This does not mean that the world is doomed, because while humans are stupid on average, we're also immensely resilient.
Just because companies will no longer reward engineers for their efforts, does not mean the world does not need their efforts.
Engineering is what keeps the world functional.  The need exists and will not go away; it's just that we need ways to make sure those in need still know we're here and capable of doing the work needed.

Thus, the question to solve, in my opinion, is how to avoid being trapped by D-E-I, and keep doing the work, with acceptable compensation.

(Alas, I had to admit that in academia, at least in this part of the world, in my own particular field, that is no longer possible.  Nobody is interested in funding anything new, only whatever everyone else is already doing.  So, I will have to try and find a new way to do what I can do.  Because of the importance of commercial factors in engineering, the irrationality hasn't reached that strongly yet, and there likely are still many viable strategies left.  I'm hoping that someone here at EEVblog has found some ways –– other than smiling and nodding and going with the flow and just not giving a shit –– to help those that are seeking such strategies.  The one I know of from my business running days, is tickling the avarice of those who make the decisions.  That is, pointing it out how one can make the business, and therefore the bosses, a shitton of money, while the D-E-I way can realistically only be described as "go woke, go broke".)

[pcprogrammer]

I would like to draw your attention to the parallels in academia, how the quality of research has dropped during the last two decades, because of the skewed pressure applied by the administration.  The quality of a paper does not matter, only the number of publications does.  This has lead to a huge increase in retractions and errors, and what is called the "reproducibility crisis": it looks like increasing amounts of the "results" cited in peer-reviewed articles are actually completely manipulated garbage, in the hopes of ensuring funding.

A friend of ours worked as an administrator for an university professor doing research on Alzheimer's and there it was somewhat normal practice to put out as much publications as possible to secure funding. The content did not matter that much, as long as the money kept pouring in. This was maybe a decade ago, and I guess it is still common practice.

It does show what is wrong with capitalism. Everything is driven by money. Can't come up with a better system though, because all the other ones we know of are also flawed.

[nctnico]

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

Your not far off the mark with that.  Often you just get called in and given a pay rise.  When you ask why, they say, the market is changing, we want to keep you.  It's pro-active retention "pay increases to remain competitive in the market and limit attrition".  Take a look at what the new startups in town are paying while poaching staff and bump the employees you want to keep close to that figure.   

I once openly referred to it (my end of year bonus), as "danger pay" and got a wry smile out of the senior delivery manager of understanding, and then asked not to call it that.

The way out is to become self employed. No more office BS and politics to deal with. But usually you still get invited to BBQs and Christmas dinners.

[IanB]

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

I think you could talk to an employment lawyer about this.

I think that if you are a UK individual working for a UK company, then your personal information is protected under the GDPR. Even if such information becomes known to a foreign entity, GPDR still applies. (Whether it has any teeth or not, is another matter.)

The response of "wow" is because of the intrusive nature of the demands, and the fact that you complied with such intrusions.

You are not personally contracted to any organization other than your UK employer, and you have no personal obligation to other organizations. Your employer is responsible to safeguard any personal information they hold about you, and they could be heavily fined under GDPR if they did not protect it appropriately.

If your employer wants to second you overseas, the arrangement is between your employer and and the other organization. You are just piggy in the middle.

I think many of us reading this feel we would be less compliant than you have been.

[nctnico]

Working on secret stuff is a different ball game.

[IanB]

Working on secret stuff is a different ball game.

Working on American secret stuff for the US government is for Americans, not others. "You have to jump through all these hoops and go through all these background checks to get a security clearance to work on this stuff." Question: why would I do that? Answer: Patriotism! You should do this for love of country! But it is not my country. If I am British, I might do this for the British government, to work on British secret stuff, but why would I do it for America?

In short, you want to impose all these burdens on me so I can get all stressed out and worried for the sake of a few dollars? Go take a hike!

[nctnico]

Understandable but most of the west-European countries work together with the USA on secret stuff so the USA also wants to know who has their hands on their secrets. This is a choice you have to make for yourself if you want to have a job that involves 'state secrets'. I have had such a job myself and I have to say I wasn't to keen on going through the whole clearance process (interviews and allowing access to personal information).

Ofcourse the situation is different if your employer forces you into such a situation (change of job description so to say).

[IanB]

if you want to have a job that...

This is the key point. You have to look a the big picture, quality of life, what really matters to you, and then decide, "Do I really want or need to have a job that...?"

[SiliconWizard]

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

Your not far off the mark with that.  Often you just get called in and given a pay rise.  When you ask why, they say, the market is changing, we want to keep you.  It's pro-active retention "pay increases to remain competitive in the market and limit attrition".  Take a look at what the new startups in town are paying while poaching staff and bump the employees you want to keep close to that figure.   

I once openly referred to it (my end of year bonus), as "danger pay" and got a wry smile out of the senior delivery manager of understanding, and then asked not to call it that.

The way out is to become self employed. No more office BS and politics to deal with. But usually you still get invited to BBQs and Christmas dinners.

Yeah. But still need to be careful and clearly set your limits and your own policies. Because some clients will try to treat you as if you were an employee.

[pcprogrammer]

The whole security business is being taken quite far and not just in the framework paulca is talking about. Go and apply for a bank account and see what kinds of questions get asked there. Or even when you have an account and they want more information from you. This all of course under what ever law to prevent laundering and terrorism.

And when you don't comply they start threatening with blocking or closing your account.

Saw mentioning online of people who had to answer questions about political orientation of them and their friends and relatives, but personally had to answer questions about how much money I make, and how much money I have to spare, and so on. My standard first response is "none of your business, and totally irrelevant on the subject of laundering and terrorism". Only after a while I will cave in and supply somewhat false information, because still none of their business.

The government knows how much money I have and what I earn due to tax declarations, on which I'm honest.

[james_s]

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?

I absolutely love pineapple on pizza and don't understand why some people really do seem to have such a strong emotional response to that. All they have to do is what I do when encountering any number of foods I loathe, I eat something else.

[SiliconWizard]

But people who don't share our own tastes should be silenced, right? Because that's clearly offensive.

[james_s]

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

Your not far off the mark with that.  Often you just get called in and given a pay rise.  When you ask why, they say, the market is changing, we want to keep you.  It's pro-active retention "pay increases to remain competitive in the market and limit attrition".  Take a look at what the new startups in town are paying while poaching staff and bump the employees you want to keep close to that figure.   

I once openly referred to it (my end of year bonus), as "danger pay" and got a wry smile out of the senior delivery manager of understanding, and then asked not to call it that.

The way out is to become self employed. No more office BS and politics to deal with. But usually you still get invited to BBQs and Christmas dinners.

That's much harder in the USA than it is in other parts of the world as our healthcare is mostly employer provided. Getting health insurance as a self employed individual is exorbitantly expensive, as in >$1k/mo. It's definitely an aspect of our system that I'm not fond of.

[nctnico]

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

Your not far off the mark with that.  Often you just get called in and given a pay rise.  When you ask why, they say, the market is changing, we want to keep you.  It's pro-active retention "pay increases to remain competitive in the market and limit attrition".  Take a look at what the new startups in town are paying while poaching staff and bump the employees you want to keep close to that figure.   

I once openly referred to it (my end of year bonus), as "danger pay" and got a wry smile out of the senior delivery manager of understanding, and then asked not to call it that.

The way out is to become self employed. No more office BS and politics to deal with. But usually you still get invited to BBQs and Christmas dinners.

That's much harder in the USA than it is in other parts of the world as our healthcare is mostly employer provided. Getting health insurance as a self employed individual is exorbitantly expensive, as in >$1k/mo. It's definitely an aspect of our system that I'm not fond of.

But how about taxes? What kind of income tax percentage are you looking at? Health care insurance ain't cheap over here either... The bottom line may not be better at this side of the big pond.

[KaneTW]

That's much harder in the USA than it is in other parts of the world as our healthcare is mostly employer provided. Getting health insurance as a self employed individual is exorbitantly expensive, as in >$1k/mo. It's definitely an aspect of our system that I'm not fond of.

Similar in Germany. Here the employer and employee each pay half. If you're self-employed, your bill is double (i pay ~$600/mo + $1200/year deductible for example in private health insurance; govt would be even more expensive (~$900) for worse service).

[nctnico]

That's much harder in the USA than it is in other parts of the world as our healthcare is mostly employer provided. Getting health insurance as a self employed individual is exorbitantly expensive, as in >$1k/mo. It's definitely an aspect of our system that I'm not fond of.

Similar in Germany. Here the employer and employee each pay half. If you're self-employed, your bill is double (i pay ~$600/mo + $1200/year deductible for example in private health insurance; govt would be even more expensive (~$900) for worse service).

Typically you make sure to charge your customer enough. In the end an employer will also need to charge their customer to pay for the health insurance.

[KaneTW]

That's much harder in the USA than it is in other parts of the world as our healthcare is mostly employer provided. Getting health insurance as a self employed individual is exorbitantly expensive, as in >$1k/mo. It's definitely an aspect of our system that I'm not fond of.

Similar in Germany. Here the employer and employee each pay half. If you're self-employed, your bill is double (i pay ~$600/mo + $1200/year deductible for example in private health insurance; govt would be even more expensive (~$900) for worse service).

Typically you make sure to charge your customer enough. In the end an employer will also need to charge their customer to pay for the health insurance.

In the end it's the same sum. I don't know why it's split like that in the first place, probably weird tax reasons.

[pcprogrammer]

To add on to the madness, a little bit off topic, the wife just read somewhere that even the fairy tale snowwhite is under the magnifying glass of political correctness and #metoo movement because "the prince did not ask if he may kiss her" 

[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.

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.

I've watched various people try to put words in his mouth. I gave up watching that channel 4 interview, I rather think less now of the female interviewer. There was this pattern of not giving him a chance to answer once she realized he had an argument, it was all "so you think...... about this other thing.... what is you one ward answer" We have come to a position where you have to be able to give a 3 word answer to a complex question or one that needs context or you are written off.

I suspect that as he has become a bit of a star now some of his later stuff may be more entertainment purposes, maybe he has run out of things to say but needs to keep switching it up a bit in order to keep people interested. This is the problem when your income depends on something like this.

I listened to an interview with Martin Lewis, the UK's money saving expert. He wrote an even handed article on Brexit laying out the pro's and cons of each aspect. For transparencies sake he explained that given all that he had said for his particular circumstances he would vote remain. He was asked to be on a TV debating show and was asked if he wanted to be on the for or against panel. He said that he did not want to be on either, he wanted to be independent and simply answer to the facts. They refused to take him having been very keen to have him because in their view there was no even handed debate, it was half a panel for and half against. Never before did I realize that someone else thought the same as I do!

[Nominal Animal]

I would like to draw your attention to the parallels in academia, how the quality of research has dropped during the last two decades, because of the skewed pressure applied by the administration.  The quality of a paper does not matter, only the number of publications does.  This has lead to a huge increase in retractions and errors, and what is called the "reproducibility crisis": it looks like increasing amounts of the "results" cited in peer-reviewed articles are actually completely manipulated garbage, in the hopes of ensuring funding.

A friend of ours worked as an administrator for an university professor doing research on Alzheimer's and there it was somewhat normal practice to put out as much publications as possible to secure funding. The content did not matter that much, as long as the money kept pouring in. This was maybe a decade ago, and I guess it is still common practice.

It does show what is wrong with capitalism. Everything is driven by money. Can't come up with a better system though, because all the other ones we know of are also flawed.

No, it has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with the metrics used to measure performance!

I definitely support competition (a market economy, if you will) between scientists, and definitely also in engineering too.  The problem is that the metrics are shifting away from the work and work product itself, into secondary or even completely unrelated things that the administration finds preferable.

In a very real sense, it is anticapitalistic and socialist, because it is effectively insisting that the individual performance does not matter, that it is those secondary things –– like the number of publications; if that was an actual goal, wouldn't it be easier to set up your own publication and just publish absolutely the shit out of everything? –– that are somehow more important.  You know, like your abilities and knowledge does not matter, that your worth as a scientist of engineer is somehow defined by your immutable characteristics like the color of your skin, the structure of your genitals, and so on.

I have always considered this a crisis of leadership.  That instead of taking responsibility, administration and business executives do not want to deal with the social pressure, and are completely willing to run the science/business to the ground, if it means they themselves will be generously compensated and will remain unscathed, and to hell with their underlings/workers; they will just have to fend for themselves, as this isn't a daycare anyway.

In Finland, this applies to software engineering and IT projects, most definitely.  As I've mentioned, only about a third of large, multimillion IT projects ever complete producing an useful result.  Yet, somehow, that is not a problem: the same people running those projects to ground keep getting new jobs, again and again, as if utter failure is somehow never their fault.

The question is, what to do to 1) protect oneself against being captured by this, and 2) how to help others being captured by this kind of destructive patterns?

[pcprogrammer]

I would like to draw your attention to the parallels in academia, how the quality of research has dropped during the last two decades, because of the skewed pressure applied by the administration.  The quality of a paper does not matter, only the number of publications does.  This has lead to a huge increase in retractions and errors, and what is called the "reproducibility crisis": it looks like increasing amounts of the "results" cited in peer-reviewed articles are actually completely manipulated garbage, in the hopes of ensuring funding.

A friend of ours worked as an administrator for an university professor doing research on Alzheimer's and there it was somewhat normal practice to put out as much publications as possible to secure funding. The content did not matter that much, as long as the money kept pouring in. This was maybe a decade ago, and I guess it is still common practice.

It does show what is wrong with capitalism. Everything is driven by money. Can't come up with a better system though, because all the other ones we know of are also flawed.

No, it has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with the metrics used to measure performance!

I definitely support competition (a market economy, if you will) between scientists, and definitely also in engineering too.  The problem is that the metrics are shifting away from the work and work product itself, into secondary or even completely unrelated things that the administration finds preferable.

In a very real sense, it is anticapitalistic and socialist, because it is effectively insisting that the individual performance does not matter, that it is those secondary things –– like the number of publications; if that was an actual goal, wouldn't it be easier to set up your own publication and just publish absolutely the shit out of everything? –– that are somehow more important.  You know, like your abilities and knowledge does not matter, that your worth as a scientist of engineer is somehow defined by your immutable characteristics like the color of your skin, the structure of your genitals, and so on.

I have always considered this a crisis of leadership.  That instead of taking responsibility, administration and business executives do not want to deal with the social pressure, and are completely willing to run the science/business to the ground, if it means they themselves will be generously compensated and will remain unscathed, and to hell with their underlings/workers; they will just have to fend for themselves, as this isn't a daycare anyway.

In Finland, this applies to software engineering and IT projects, most definitely.  As I've mentioned, only about a third of large, multimillion IT projects ever complete producing an useful result.  Yet, somehow, that is not a problem: the same people running those projects to ground keep getting new jobs, again and again, as if utter failure is somehow never their fault.

The question is, what to do to 1) protect oneself against being captured by this, and 2) how to help others being captured by this kind of destructive patterns?

I see your point. It is a different take on capitalism then I had in mind. It being the driving force to make money and not the competitive drive between making better and cheaper products to win market share.

There are always different interpretations possible for a term. Take communism, China is pointed to as being a communistic country, but in the basics it is not. It is more a party ruled dictatorship. True communism is very different. Same for democracy. A true democracy can never work, where the greater public has to vote on every issue that comes along. But this is all semantics.

In an ideal world where money would not be an issue and science would not be dependent on it, it could be about science and science alone, but then personal ego's come into play, as they do now too, and turns things into shit again.

With world population growing and more and more people are lead into science without a real affinity with the subject it waters down, and we get what we see now.

Your take on it being a "crisis of leadership" fits the bill for me. It is indeed annoying that the leaders, despite running a business into the ground, still walk a way with lots of money and are employed somewhere else to do it all over again. And society is fine with it, as long as their personal lives are not affected to much.

An argument I heard of lately, that is used to justify the big companies making lots of profit, is that these profits are paying for your pension, because pension funds invest in these big companies. In it self not a bad thing, but the fact that there is such a big difference between the workers salaries and that of the leaders feels bad. I don't feel it to be in balance with the actual work load and stress of the job to justify this difference.

[Nominal Animal]

I see your point. It is a different take on capitalism then I had in mind. It being the driving force to make money and not the competitive drive between making better and cheaper products to win market share.

Yes.  In my view, the driving force is the demand, and the unfortunate fact is that us humans don't want better products, we want cheaper products.

I've heard time and time again, how people first buy cheap tools, become dissatisfied with them, and end up having to buy the expensive tools anyway.
If you have to buy cheap work shoes every year at a price of X, when proper work shoes costing 3X would last four years, you're wasting money irrationally.  Us humans have to spend effort to be rational, because our instincts and biological tendencies are stronger than we think.

(That –– it being somehow okay to completely reject rationality and logic in favour of emotions and perceptions and personal beliefs –– is in my opinion a bigger danger to science and engineering than D-E-I is: the latter affects the humans doing the work, but the former rejects the entire fields themselves.)

In an ideal world where money would not be an issue and science would not be dependent on it, it could be about science and science alone

Nah.. As you say, we'd find some other way to turn it into shit anyway.  I'm fine with science being tied to money.  It's just that the metric used to tie the two together has to be something useful, something verifiable, and not some emotive D-E-I thing.
, but then personal ego's come into play, as they do now too, and turns things into shit again.

With world population growing and more and more people are lead into science without a real affinity with the subject it waters down, and we get what we see now.

Your take on it being a "crisis of leadership" fits the bill for me. It is indeed annoying that the leaders, despite running a business into the ground, still walk a way with lots of money and are employed somewhere else to do it all over again. And society is fine with it, as long as their personal lives are not affected to much.

The Twitter-Elon Musk ongoing debacle is an example of how these things will go on in engineering companies, if not stopped in time.

You'll have very weird biases, like entire product lines being canceled because they used a component whose manufacturer used a conflict mineral sourced from a war zone.  That component manufacturer will not be targeted at all, however; only the product line will be.  And the executives will be Teflon-shielded from any repercussions of their actions, because of course they will be, and line engineers and designers will be thrown to the wolves.

Am I exaggerating?  That is exactly what is happening to scientists.  University admins are sitting in their towers completely untouched, and throwing individual professors to the wolves to keep themselves safe..  At most, they will fire them and let the university lawyers fight a long, protracted battle against unlawful dismissal, because the entire point is to minimise the risk to administration.  To hell with the university itself, if the admin is protected, safe, and well compensated.  How the hell did they manage to raise themselves above the purpose of the organization in the first place?
Here in Finland, executive officers in larger companies have already managed to do the same, with boards being basically cross-populated with friends, so that no matter what happens, the executive officers will be handsomely compensated even if they royally fuck up.  We saw that with Nokia first-hand.

An argument I heard of lately, that is used to justify the big companies making lots of profit, is that these profits are paying for your pension, because pension funds invest in these big companies.

Ah, the good old "too big to fail" argument.  It does not explain why the pay and bonuses for the executives is basically independent of the company bottom line.

I suspect it is the same as a Finnish politician recently admitted.  Because joining the EU massively increased the pay for Finnish politicians, they now are so far above the median income, that they really lose touch with the real life of an average citizen when they start getting the political pay grades.  They immediately jump to the top 10% of yearly wages, and that skews their view; their values change.

They say that power corrupts, but I think more importantly, unearned income makes one completely blind to others' efforts.

Which all comes back to the individual fairness arguments I keep repeating...

[pcprogrammer]

They say that power corrupts, but I think more importantly, unearned income makes one completely blind to others' efforts.

Money is far more a corruption motivator then power. And don't forget with money you can buy power, and also sway justice to some extend.

But that might open the other can of worms I mentioned earlier, about lady justice being blind.