[paperwasp42]

> I also worry that this nonsense will erode support for the kind of diversity I do defend, or worse, prompt some kind of revanchist backlash against visible minorities in general.

As a women in tech, I am feeling the backlash. I have seen a huge increase in the amount of skepticism of my abilities that I face from people who haven't worked with me before. And the worst part of it is that there's actually logic behind the bigotry, because it is extremely true that my company continues to hire incompetent people just because they are women.

Bigotry itself is very difficult to combat, but when you add in a solid logical grounding for the bigotry, it becomes dang near impossible to eradicate. I worry that companies are causing more harm than good with the change in hiring practices these past couple years. I continue to hear sexist comments from people who never would have said those sorts of things just five years ago.

[dijonman2]

As a hiring manager I have substantial pressure to hire incompetent people to meet quotas. I confronted my recruiter in front of witnesses and was partially shunned.

I have been hiring for many years, and I truly pay no attention to gender or ethnicity. Now I am forced to.

It’s an insult to those who earned their position. It’s an insult to me as I am less and less likely to get a new job because I won’t fit quotas.

There is resentment all around.

I feel bad for the minorities who have worked hard to earn their positions, you are right that it undermines their work and trivializes their commitment to their work.

It’s gone way too far.

[raxxorraxor]

> Now I am forced to.

You should think about legal recourse here. If this isn't stomped out it can result in real racism pretty quickly. It has to, because people aren't treated fairly and it creates adversary between people of different skin color.

This is bad management that needs to be replaced.

[ParetoOptimal]

> I truly pay no attention to gender or ethnicity

What are your thoughts on implicit bias?

[chrismcb]

And that is illegal (assuming you are in the us)

[tdeck]

What are the specific quotas? Is there a percentage number you've been given?

[AussieWog93]

>I continue to hear sexist comments from people who never would have said those sorts of things just five years ago.

As a man in tech, I've been a part of countless hush-hush conversations that would never be repeated within earshot of a woman or untrusted man. It's as grim as you say, and worse.

I'm really sorry that things have become like this.

[juliendorra]

What do you mean by "things have become like this"? I obviously don’t know your age but the software industry (and other fields) has been extremely sexist since decades (at least the 80s).

The efforts to explicitly reign in the sexism in tech are quite recent (late 2000, early 2010, and even later in France where I live).

My point is that what you perceive as a recent reaction might be the same old sexist culture continuing to spread, ruin life’s and block careers (which is a definition of backlash: reactionary fight against feminist advances)

[treeman79]

Had a few times in the last 10 years. Where I was pushed very hard to hire someone either completely unqualified, or in we we simply didn’t need.

Like being told to hire a bash programmer for a database admin position. Because person was trans.

Thinking back on if. I’ve never had a regular white woman pushed on me.

I’ve hired woman before. But that was because they were qualified.

Now I’m considered evil for looking at merit.

[thingification]

Not questioning what you're saying, just adding that I think "prejudice" is a better word for this than bigotry? (to be clear: we're discussing here the results of identity-based hiring practices, as opposed to are there sex differences in programming ability)

Words never have entirely cleanly defined meanings, but broadly I think bigotry is often used to speak specifically of all-out irrational dogmatic beliefs. Prejudice is more often used where there is some partly rational judgement about a group of people, together with moral problems caused by applying that logic to a particular person. Of course, often our prejudices are very fallible: "rational" prejudices turn out to be wrong, and in that sense are functionally equivalent to bigotry. But holding a "rational" belief that all prejudice is irrational also does not make us infallible!

Some prejudice seems hard to criticize morally: for example, everybody makes prejudiced judgements say based partly on clothing, age, and sex if they find themselves in close proximity to a group of young men in a city at night. On the other hand, at work, one tries hard to not judge based on whatever preconceived group notions one has -- I think almost everybody thinks that's a good thing (which as you say can be harmed by identity-based hiring). I don't have a good abstract explanation of what makes the difference between "good" and "bad" prejudice, and I wish I did, so would love to hear of good writing about it if somebody can recommend some!

In the company I worked for recently, perhaps even a majority of the more capable programmers around me happened to be women. But wherever we do start hiring based on identity, it's hard to see how prejudice can be avoided, even if bigotry were entirely absent.

[majani]

Of late I have been seeing people going viral for posting some incredible career trajectories. Usually involving someone in another career who made the switch to tech by doing a bootcamp, and within a year they were in FAANG. Now that I think about it, they were all people who fit into diversity quotas and were probably diversity hires