DEI RIFs

[Anonymous]

Has anyone been able to describe what they do in DEI? I am either missing it or the threads where it is asked are being shut down. It's not a challenge--I really want to know. As I understand it, it also included components of accessibility which is vital and which not enough people understand (in the tech world at least) Thank you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The moving of DEI people to EEO offices in some agencies won't last. The executive orders made that explicitly clear, so those people will most likely be made redundant soon enough. Any agency that attempts to maintain some kind of DEI undercover will be ruthlessly reformed. Best is to accept that DEI is over and done with and move on. It's a brave new world.

I'll have to admit if the Biden administration hadn't gone so overboard with DEI and just kept the standard generations old affirmative action approach, all of this probably wouldn't be happening.

Except for veterans, there has never been affirmative action in government hiring.

Affirmative action was a very real presence in the Federal bureaucracy and Federal contracting. 8(a) had a massive influence on contracting and hiring and it is the instrument by which AA spread from the Feds to the contractors and into the private sector. I have no idea what you are trying to pretend otherwise.

At no point has there been affirmative action in the hiring of federal employees.

... nor employees of contractors. The EO Trump removed actually prohibited that. But he stupidly thought it required that. LOL.

Come off it. You're hiding behind semantics. You're not persuading anyone. Employees were legally required to report hiring data on minorities to the Federal government. There was an entire bureaucracy around AA. And as someone who worked in Federal contracting, over the last four years there was definitely, unquestionably, a push to emphasize DEI across contracting and hiring much more explicitly than before.

I'm not hiding anything and when it comes to law semantics matter -- entirely.

The disinformation you are spreading is that these EO or laws required preferential treatment in hiring or quotas. They didn't. Show me the actual text of a law or EO that allowed or required mandatory hiring quotas or preferences in hiring employees based on race, gender, or national origin. [spoiler alert: the EO that Trump just revoked did neither, and in fact prohibited it].

For those who care to understand, affirmative action here actually meant taking affirmative action to make sure that your job opening information reaches a broad audience (i.e., you don't only publish in a newspaper of 100% homogenous town or exclusively recruit on campuses that are homogenous), and that you track applicant and hiring data to periodically make sure that you are reaching a broad pool of applicants and that your data does not suggest a pattern of discrimination; you form "goals" based on what your data shows and track progress toward goals, but you many not ever make a decision based on discriminatory criteria, even to meat those goals. If you don't meet your goals, there is no penalty, you need to review what you are doing in hiring to make sure your goals are still valid and if so that you are not missing your goals due to discrimination. An Affirmative Action Plan, essentially is a record of where you posted jobs, and list of applicants and hires. Very boring documents, and something HR has to do anyway.

The difference now is they don't have to turn that data over to the government, and they won't be audited on it. There were resources out there that made compliance easy, like posting job openings in certain government data bases. Those may go away, except for the ones exclusive to veterans, which is probably less of a big deal now that most hiring is on line -- but when the government first centralized job data bases like this it was novel. Personally, I think it is much ado about nothing, except for the disinformation being spread about what had actually changed based on this particular EO.

NP. As a federal contractor, we were told by our HR that we had to interview more black candidates and more male candidates, and we were told we had to hire from that group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The moving of DEI people to EEO offices in some agencies won't last. The executive orders made that explicitly clear, so those people will most likely be made redundant soon enough. Any agency that attempts to maintain some kind of DEI undercover will be ruthlessly reformed. Best is to accept that DEI is over and done with and move on. It's a brave new world.

I'll have to admit if the Biden administration hadn't gone so overboard with DEI and just kept the standard generations old affirmative action approach, all of this probably wouldn't be happening.

Except for veterans, there has never been affirmative action in government hiring.

Affirmative action was a very real presence in the Federal bureaucracy and Federal contracting. 8(a) had a massive influence on contracting and hiring and it is the instrument by which AA spread from the Feds to the contractors and into the private sector. I have no idea what you are trying to pretend otherwise.

At no point has there been affirmative action in the hiring of federal employees.

... nor employees of contractors. The EO Trump removed actually prohibited that. But he stupidly thought it required that. LOL.

Come off it. You're hiding behind semantics. You're not persuading anyone. Employees were legally required to report hiring data on minorities to the Federal government. There was an entire bureaucracy around AA. And as someone who worked in Federal contracting, over the last four years there was definitely, unquestionably, a push to emphasize DEI across contracting and hiring much more explicitly than before.

I'm not hiding anything and when it comes to law semantics matter -- entirely.

The disinformation you are spreading is that these EO or laws required preferential treatment in hiring or quotas. They didn't. Show me the actual text of a law or EO that allowed or required mandatory hiring quotas or preferences in hiring employees based on race, gender, or national origin. [spoiler alert: the EO that Trump just revoked did neither, and in fact prohibited it].

For those who care to understand, affirmative action here actually meant taking affirmative action to make sure that your job opening information reaches a broad audience (i.e., you don't only publish in a newspaper of 100% homogenous town or exclusively recruit on campuses that are homogenous), and that you track applicant and hiring data to periodically make sure that you are reaching a broad pool of applicants and that your data does not suggest a pattern of discrimination; you form "goals" based on what your data shows and track progress toward goals, but you many not ever make a decision based on discriminatory criteria, even to meat those goals. If you don't meet your goals, there is no penalty, you need to review what you are doing in hiring to make sure your goals are still valid and if so that you are not missing your goals due to discrimination. An Affirmative Action Plan, essentially is a record of where you posted jobs, and list of applicants and hires. Very boring documents, and something HR has to do anyway.

The difference now is they don't have to turn that data over to the government, and they won't be audited on it. There were resources out there that made compliance easy, like posting job openings in certain government data bases. Those may go away, except for the ones exclusive to veterans, which is probably less of a big deal now that most hiring is on line -- but when the government first centralized job data bases like this it was novel. Personally, I think it is much ado about nothing, except for the disinformation being spread about what had actually changed based on this particular EO.

NP. As a federal contractor, we were told by our HR that we had to interview more black candidates and more male candidates, and we were told we had to hire from that group.

Absolutely. Not sure why someone is trying to pretend there wasn't a huge push to hire more black candidates and less male candidates. I've also had to fill out audits surveying 8(a) set asides in contacting and obtain statistical data on minority employment and hiring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The moving of DEI people to EEO offices in some agencies won't last. The executive orders made that explicitly clear, so those people will most likely be made redundant soon enough. Any agency that attempts to maintain some kind of DEI undercover will be ruthlessly reformed. Best is to accept that DEI is over and done with and move on. It's a brave new world.

I'll have to admit if the Biden administration hadn't gone so overboard with DEI and just kept the standard generations old affirmative action approach, all of this probably wouldn't be happening.

Except for veterans, there has never been affirmative action in government hiring.

Affirmative action was a very real presence in the Federal bureaucracy and Federal contracting. 8(a) had a massive influence on contracting and hiring and it is the instrument by which AA spread from the Feds to the contractors and into the private sector. I have no idea what you are trying to pretend otherwise.

At no point has there been affirmative action in the hiring of federal employees.

... nor employees of contractors. The EO Trump removed actually prohibited that. But he stupidly thought it required that. LOL.

Come off it. You're hiding behind semantics. You're not persuading anyone. Employees were legally required to report hiring data on minorities to the Federal government. There was an entire bureaucracy around AA. And as someone who worked in Federal contracting, over the last four years there was definitely, unquestionably, a push to emphasize DEI across contracting and hiring much more explicitly than before.

Nothing you said allows or requires discriminatory hiring and you know it as well as I do. It is NOT semantics. It is law.

Please. Anyone who deals with federal hiring knows there was a finger on the scale for DEI hires.

There wasn't. You are making this up.

Not my prior post, but I saw this at my agency where it seemed that oftentimes clearly less qualified individuals were moved into high-level roles. The only explanation I could conceive of was the optics of not have a proportional percentage of minorities in executive roles relative to their numbers in the general employee population - it just wouldn't look good to have the top ranks be all Caucasian males and females while other demographics disproportionally populated lower grade positions. And, I believe those klnds of measures were tracked and reported, although to whom I do not know, by the agency EEO office. There must have been a reason, but the only obvious one was to be able to presume that minorities should always be present at high grade levels, without regard to other bases for selecting candidates.

So this is based on a scenario you imagine in your head about the qualifications of black people in your surroundings--they are by default stupid so of course their jobs were handed to them.

[Anonymous]

The simultaneous defense of these EOs and disparaging of DEIA, while also defending veterans preference makes my head spin. Talk about a detriment to meritocracy - hiring managers essentially don’t even have the option to pass over a veteran and the bar to prove one is unqualified is near impossible

Complete hypocrisy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The moving of DEI people to EEO offices in some agencies won't last. The executive orders made that explicitly clear, so those people will most likely be made redundant soon enough. Any agency that attempts to maintain some kind of DEI undercover will be ruthlessly reformed. Best is to accept that DEI is over and done with and move on. It's a brave new world.

I'll have to admit if the Biden administration hadn't gone so overboard with DEI and just kept the standard generations old affirmative action approach, all of this probably wouldn't be happening.

Except for veterans, there has never been affirmative action in government hiring.

Affirmative action was a very real presence in the Federal bureaucracy and Federal contracting. 8(a) had a massive influence on contracting and hiring and it is the instrument by which AA spread from the Feds to the contractors and into the private sector. I have no idea what you are trying to pretend otherwise.

At no point has there been affirmative action in the hiring of federal employees.

... nor employees of contractors. The EO Trump removed actually prohibited that. But he stupidly thought it required that. LOL.

Come off it. You're hiding behind semantics. You're not persuading anyone. Employees were legally required to report hiring data on minorities to the Federal government. There was an entire bureaucracy around AA. And as someone who worked in Federal contracting, over the last four years there was definitely, unquestionably, a push to emphasize DEI across contracting and hiring much more explicitly than before.

I'm not hiding anything and when it comes to law semantics matter -- entirely.

The disinformation you are spreading is that these EO or laws required preferential treatment in hiring or quotas. They didn't. Show me the actual text of a law or EO that allowed or required mandatory hiring quotas or preferences in hiring employees based on race, gender, or national origin. [spoiler alert: the EO that Trump just revoked did neither, and in fact prohibited it].

For those who care to understand, affirmative action here actually meant taking affirmative action to make sure that your job opening information reaches a broad audience (i.e., you don't only publish in a newspaper of 100% homogenous town or exclusively recruit on campuses that are homogenous), and that you track applicant and hiring data to periodically make sure that you are reaching a broad pool of applicants and that your data does not suggest a pattern of discrimination; you form "goals" based on what your data shows and track progress toward goals, but you many not ever make a decision based on discriminatory criteria, even to meat those goals. If you don't meet your goals, there is no penalty, you need to review what you are doing in hiring to make sure your goals are still valid and if so that you are not missing your goals due to discrimination. An Affirmative Action Plan, essentially is a record of where you posted jobs, and list of applicants and hires. Very boring documents, and something HR has to do anyway.

The difference now is they don't have to turn that data over to the government, and they won't be audited on it. There were resources out there that made compliance easy, like posting job openings in certain government data bases. Those may go away, except for the ones exclusive to veterans, which is probably less of a big deal now that most hiring is on line -- but when the government first centralized job data bases like this it was novel. Personally, I think it is much ado about nothing, except for the disinformation being spread about what had actually changed based on this particular EO.

NP. As a federal contractor, we were told by our HR that we had to interview more black candidates and more male candidates, and we were told we had to hire from that group.

Absolutely. Not sure why someone is trying to pretend there wasn't a huge push to hire more black candidates and less male candidates. I've also had to fill out audits surveying 8(a) set asides in contacting and obtain statistical data on minority employment and hiring.

We track everything, but that doesn't mean it's used in hiring. I've never seen someone's demographic info when I'm rating them, even though that's collected when they apply. I also always have a rubric for rating candidates. There's no place on it for race/gender, and I've never had it suggested to me that I should take this into account.

I obviously cannot speak for every hiring federal civilian hiring situation, much less every contractor one. But whatever push there was, I did not see it. By contrast, I've had knowledge of positions that were meant for a particular candidate multiple times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our DEI head resigned before the inauguration. It’s hard to imagine any staying on give how anti-diversity and exclusionary the incoming administration is.

^code for anti-male Caucasians

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The simultaneous defense of these EOs and disparaging of DEIA, while also defending veterans preference makes my head spin. Talk about a detriment to meritocracy - hiring managers essentially don’t even have the option to pass over a veteran and the bar to prove one is unqualified is near impossible

Complete hypocrisy

False equivalency. Veterans come in all race and both genders and always have. There are black veterans, you know.

There is a genuine argument to be made that people who volunteered to serve the country should receive some kind of Federal preference in hiring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The moving of DEI people to EEO offices in some agencies won't last. The executive orders made that explicitly clear, so those people will most likely be made redundant soon enough. Any agency that attempts to maintain some kind of DEI undercover will be ruthlessly reformed. Best is to accept that DEI is over and done with and move on. It's a brave new world.

I'll have to admit if the Biden administration hadn't gone so overboard with DEI and just kept the standard generations old affirmative action approach, all of this probably wouldn't be happening.

Except for veterans, there has never been affirmative action in government hiring.

Affirmative action was a very real presence in the Federal bureaucracy and Federal contracting. 8(a) had a massive influence on contracting and hiring and it is the instrument by which AA spread from the Feds to the contractors and into the private sector. I have no idea what you are trying to pretend otherwise.

At no point has there been affirmative action in the hiring of federal employees.

... nor employees of contractors. The EO Trump removed actually prohibited that. But he stupidly thought it required that. LOL.

Come off it. You're hiding behind semantics. You're not persuading anyone. Employees were legally required to report hiring data on minorities to the Federal government. There was an entire bureaucracy around AA. And as someone who worked in Federal contracting, over the last four years there was definitely, unquestionably, a push to emphasize DEI across contracting and hiring much more explicitly than before.

I'm not hiding anything and when it comes to law semantics matter -- entirely.

The disinformation you are spreading is that these EO or laws required preferential treatment in hiring or quotas. They didn't. Show me the actual text of a law or EO that allowed or required mandatory hiring quotas or preferences in hiring employees based on race, gender, or national origin. [spoiler alert: the EO that Trump just revoked did neither, and in fact prohibited it].

For those who care to understand, affirmative action here actually meant taking affirmative action to make sure that your job opening information reaches a broad audience (i.e., you don't only publish in a newspaper of 100% homogenous town or exclusively recruit on campuses that are homogenous), and that you track applicant and hiring data to periodically make sure that you are reaching a broad pool of applicants and that your data does not suggest a pattern of discrimination; you form "goals" based on what your data shows and track progress toward goals, but you many not ever make a decision based on discriminatory criteria, even to meat those goals. If you don't meet your goals, there is no penalty, you need to review what you are doing in hiring to make sure your goals are still valid and if so that you are not missing your goals due to discrimination. An Affirmative Action Plan, essentially is a record of where you posted jobs, and list of applicants and hires. Very boring documents, and something HR has to do anyway.

The difference now is they don't have to turn that data over to the government, and they won't be audited on it. There were resources out there that made compliance easy, like posting job openings in certain government data bases. Those may go away, except for the ones exclusive to veterans, which is probably less of a big deal now that most hiring is on line -- but when the government first centralized job data bases like this it was novel. Personally, I think it is much ado about nothing, except for the disinformation being spread about what had actually changed based on this particular EO.

NP. As a federal contractor, we were told by our HR that we had to interview more black candidates and more male candidates, and we were told we had to hire from that group.

Absolutely. Not sure why someone is trying to pretend there wasn't a huge push to hire more black candidates and less male candidates. I've also had to fill out audits surveying 8(a) set asides in contacting and obtain statistical data on minority employment and hiring.

We track everything, but that doesn't mean it's used in hiring. I've never seen someone's demographic info when I'm rating them, even though that's collected when they apply. I also always have a rubric for rating candidates. There's no place on it for race/gender, and I've never had it suggested to me that I should take this into account.

I obviously cannot speak for every hiring federal civilian hiring situation, much less every contractor one. But whatever push there was, I did not see it. By contrast, I've had knowledge of positions that were meant for a particular candidate multiple times.

Ask yourself why we were required to track and report this data in the first place.

Are you genuinely pretending or believing that AA wasn't a factor at all in government hiring for decades? And for defense contractors too? And especially in the last four years. Even if it was shuffled around under different terminology? I speak as someone who was broadly supportive of 8(a) contracting requirements and AA in general, but the last four years under Biden were ridiculous. We also had plenty of discussions on here from Feds openly admitting DEI in hiring decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The moving of DEI people to EEO offices in some agencies won't last. The executive orders made that explicitly clear, so those people will most likely be made redundant soon enough. Any agency that attempts to maintain some kind of DEI undercover will be ruthlessly reformed. Best is to accept that DEI is over and done with and move on. It's a brave new world.

I'll have to admit if the Biden administration hadn't gone so overboard with DEI and just kept the standard generations old affirmative action approach, all of this probably wouldn't be happening.

Except for veterans, there has never been affirmative action in government hiring.

Affirmative action was a very real presence in the Federal bureaucracy and Federal contracting. 8(a) had a massive influence on contracting and hiring and it is the instrument by which AA spread from the Feds to the contractors and into the private sector. I have no idea what you are trying to pretend otherwise.

At no point has there been affirmative action in the hiring of federal employees.

... nor employees of contractors. The EO Trump removed actually prohibited that. But he stupidly thought it required that. LOL.

Come off it. You're hiding behind semantics. You're not persuading anyone. Employees were legally required to report hiring data on minorities to the Federal government. There was an entire bureaucracy around AA. And as someone who worked in Federal contracting, over the last four years there was definitely, unquestionably, a push to emphasize DEI across contracting and hiring much more explicitly than before.

I'm not hiding anything and when it comes to law semantics matter -- entirely.

The disinformation you are spreading is that these EO or laws required preferential treatment in hiring or quotas. They didn't. Show me the actual text of a law or EO that allowed or required mandatory hiring quotas or preferences in hiring employees based on race, gender, or national origin. [spoiler alert: the EO that Trump just revoked did neither, and in fact prohibited it].

For those who care to understand, affirmative action here actually meant taking affirmative action to make sure that your job opening information reaches a broad audience (i.e., you don't only publish in a newspaper of 100% homogenous town or exclusively recruit on campuses that are homogenous), and that you track applicant and hiring data to periodically make sure that you are reaching a broad pool of applicants and that your data does not suggest a pattern of discrimination; you form "goals" based on what your data shows and track progress toward goals, but you many not ever make a decision based on discriminatory criteria, even to meat those goals. If you don't meet your goals, there is no penalty, you need to review what you are doing in hiring to make sure your goals are still valid and if so that you are not missing your goals due to discrimination. An Affirmative Action Plan, essentially is a record of where you posted jobs, and list of applicants and hires. Very boring documents, and something HR has to do anyway.

The difference now is they don't have to turn that data over to the government, and they won't be audited on it. There were resources out there that made compliance easy, like posting job openings in certain government data bases. Those may go away, except for the ones exclusive to veterans, which is probably less of a big deal now that most hiring is on line -- but when the government first centralized job data bases like this it was novel. Personally, I think it is much ado about nothing, except for the disinformation being spread about what had actually changed based on this particular EO.

NP. As a federal contractor, we were told by our HR that we had to interview more black candidates and more male candidates, and we were told we had to hire from that group.

Absolutely. Not sure why someone is trying to pretend there wasn't a huge push to hire more black candidates and less male candidates. I've also had to fill out audits surveying 8(a) set asides in contacting and obtain statistical data on minority employment and hiring.

We track everything, but that doesn't mean it's used in hiring. I've never seen someone's demographic info when I'm rating them, even though that's collected when they apply. I also always have a rubric for rating candidates. There's no place on it for race/gender, and I've never had it suggested to me that I should take this into account.

I obviously cannot speak for every hiring federal civilian hiring situation, much less every contractor one. But whatever push there was, I did not see it. By contrast, I've had knowledge of positions that were meant for a particular candidate multiple times.

Ask yourself why we were required to track and report this data in the first place.

Are you genuinely pretending or believing that AA wasn't a factor at all in government hiring for decades? And for defense contractors too? And especially in the last four years. Even if it was shuffled around under different terminology? I speak as someone who was broadly supportive of 8(a) contracting requirements and AA in general, but the last four years under Biden were ridiculous. We also had plenty of discussions on here from Feds openly admitting DEI in hiring decisions.

Do you know how many things Congress makes us track that we do absolutely nothing with?

As has been said, demographics are a big issue in contracting in terms of small business ownership. There are formal policies around this. And I'm not supportive of that, by the way. Contracting requirements should be simplified so small businesses can compete in general.

But when it comes to civil service hiring, which it sounds like I have a lot more experience with than you, this has never been a factor that I've seen. I'm not saying it never happens. But I've sure never seen it.

[Anonymous]

Got emmmm

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Got emmmm

Got what? Her profile is still up on the ATF website?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Got emmmm

Heil Comrade, excellent! Off to the chambers for this dark-skinned member of the weaker sex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The simultaneous defense of these EOs and disparaging of DEIA, while also defending veterans preference makes my head spin. Talk about a detriment to meritocracy - hiring managers essentially don’t even have the option to pass over a veteran and the bar to prove one is unqualified is near impossible

Complete hypocrisy

False equivalency. Veterans come in all race and both genders and always have. There are black veterans, you know.

There is a genuine argument to be made that people who volunteered to serve the country should receive some kind of Federal preference in hiring.

I am as liberal as they come and I fully support veterans benefits over others. They have sacrificed more than I know, and I’m good with them getting a benefit for that.

[Anonymous]

[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The simultaneous defense of these EOs and disparaging of DEIA, while also defending veterans preference makes my head spin. Talk about a detriment to meritocracy - hiring managers essentially don’t even have the option to pass over a veteran and the bar to prove one is unqualified is near impossible

Complete hypocrisy

False equivalency. Veterans come in all race and both genders and always have. There are black veterans, you know.

There is a genuine argument to be made that people who volunteered to serve the country should receive some kind of Federal preference in hiring.

I am as liberal as they come and I fully support veterans benefits over others. They have sacrificed more than I know, and I’m good with them getting a benefit for that.

The vast majority of veterans never served in combat and worked normal office jobs while on active duty. Yes, they probably moved a lot, but so do diplomats and a lot of
other people.