I am diversity hire. Very few people will openly admit it, but it is absolutely true in my case. I suspect it is probably true for a lot of other people, even if they are not aware of it. The fact of the matter is that DEI is nowadays not just about fostering a diverse and inclusive environment but is often about hiring and promoting on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, religion etc. It is often about achieving forced diversity through discriminatory hiring practices.
My first experience of DEI occurred when I was at college. I enrolled in a bachelor of computer science in 2017 and received a women's scholarship to pay for my degree. I remember being surprised at that time as I wasn't a top performing student and had no prior experience with technology (in fact I'd never even written a line of code before). Nonetheless, I received a full-scholarship just because I was a woman.
Looking for internships throughout my degree I was told by career counsellors and recruiters alike that I need to emphaze my gender in my applications. That employers were looking to hire female engineers and I should use that to my benefit. For example, I vividly recall one career counsellor telling me I needed to add the tile 'Ms.' to my resume as I have a unisex name and without it employers would not know I am female and want to hire me. Whilst I agreed with her recommendations I felt instinctively uncomfortable. What did my gender have to do with how well I could perform on the job?
One day I received an email from a faang recruiter who had seen my profile listed on a females in stem website. She said the company had internships and were explicitly looking to interview female students for the role. I felt immediately uncomfortable, why am I getting interviewed for a position I didn't even apply for? Despite my discomfort, I took her up on the offer. How could I not? I was a mediocre student at a below-tier college who had no prior experience. This opportunity could change my life.
In 2018 I secured the internship and then started working at faang. I was there for only a few months, just working on personal projects (we weren't allowed to work on client projects) when I was offered a graduate position. Again I was a mediocre performer, spending my days working on things that took my fancy. I have no idea why I was given the offer when the more impressive interns were not, but I do suspect that my gender probably had a lot to do with it. I cringe at the thought of the HR recruiters saying "she did ok but given that she's female we'll obviously have to hire her." I sometimes wonder whether the male interns were secretly resentful for missing out an offer that they certainly deserved more than I did. I'd never been a bad performer but I'd also never been a superstar either.
My experiences with DEI did not end there though. I have reaped numerous benefits over the years including several grants to attend overseas conferences all in the name of "diversity". My friends and family were so confused as to why I had been given so many all-expense paid trips to places to all around the world. They would say "you earn 6 figures as an engineer, you don't deserve it" and they were 100% correct. But I still took every travel grant that I managed to secure. So far, I have been on 3 of these trips, each totalling probably about 6K in flights, accomodation, food and entry to the conference. I expect to get several more in the coming years.
I am a diversity hire. The college scholarship, the women's faang internship (leading to a permanent position), the overseas trips; I got them all because I was a woman. I expect that being a woman will continue to provide me with many more opportunities going into the future.
Working at faang, led me to seeing the worst of DEI. I saw hiring quotas, manager KPIs that were linked to diversity targets, and even in some cases roles that were separately marketed to women. For example, the position of Cloud Support Engineer is a graduate role that requires a relevant degree and industry experience. My company couldn't attract 50% ratio of men and women as there are not enough female CS graduates. So they created a separate pathway for the same role and just removed the degree and experience requirement. A new job ad that says 'women only' and that no experience nor degree is required was released (20 unqualified women from it were hired). A complete mockery given the requirements the only applicants have to have.
Given how much I have benefitted from it, you might be surprised to hear me say that I think DEI needs to die. You might also call me a hypocrite as I've accepted all of these opportunities knowing I didn't deserve them (and you might be right). But the reality is, me saying 'no' to an opportunity I got because of DEI is not going to change the system. The only way to change the system is speak out against it, to loudly say that is wrong to discriminate against someone on the basis of an immutable characteristic and that we, as a community, will no longer accept it.
There are, of course, proponents of DEI out there who argue that we need diversity hiring to correct for the historical oppression that certain groups have experienced, but the truth of the matter is you can't rewrite history; you can't use modern day discrimination to fight historical injustice. Punishing groups of people for something that happened in the past and that they had nothing to do with is absolutely wrong and will only serve to sow resentment and distrust. We can't change the past but we can make for a fairer future in which people are hired on merit and not on race, gender, sexuality or something else that is entirely irrelevant.
A few examples of some of the DEI programs out there (note that all are salaried jobs that are explicitly only open to women):
https://www.rea-group.com/careers/springboard-to-tech-program/
https://mantelgroup.com.au/traineeship-program/
https://au.prosple.com/graduate-employers/myob/jobs-internships/developher-scholarship
Top comments (0)