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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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The government instituted a 'volume management strategy' to comply with the government's policy on 'employment equity', and that strategy was to just ignore people with the wrong skin colour or genitals because the government says they (the government) can't do anything else and you see no mention of quotas or hiring equity?

I work in the public service and agree that equity was probably not the (main) motivation for the strategy they picked. Most of what you hear about equity is signalling buzz. Most managers I've asked told me they face no pressure to hire for diversity. Seems like this team just found a hack (which I doubt is common) to shorten their screening process. Mostly likely they don't care who will be hired anyway. People here seem doubtful, but the public service and hiring processes are so heavily decentralized. It's totally plausible for a team to do this without being motivated by equity.

Of course, there is obvious bias because they could never get away doing the opposite strategy (e.g, filtering out equity groups). That said, there are policies which increase the proportion of white workers, like requiring citizenship and the ability to speak french.

Most managers I've asked told me they face no pressure to hire for diversity.

There's enough examples now of a) hiring managers being explicitly told not to hire white men, and b) hiring managers' bonuses relying on meeting diversity hiring requirements that I have a very hard time believing this.

Is the pressure bimodal: extreme in some extremely converged companies and totally absent in others? Or are people just reluctant to admit they're under pressure?

In a world of 750 million people (Europe + US + Canada) that's supposedly dominated by wokeness, there are going to be enough businesses for the 'man bites dog' story of 'we're not hiring white dudes' story to pop up as much as people interested in that story wants, even if 95% of businesses are hiring relatively meritocratically, putting aside diversity initiatives that even the vast majority of right-leaning people would shrug at.

I also think, that most people at a high level in corporations legitimately believe they've missed out on talent due to structural issues, and since they're greedy capitalists, that's costing them money, which is why they're investing in diversity initiatives. Why not find the gay Latinx trans woman who will find a better way to increase production targets by 3% and earn me a bonus?