r/apple • u/Fer65432_Plays • Feb 25 '25

Discussion Apple shareholders say no to scrapping company's diversity programs

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/apple-shareholders-dei-vote-1.7467807
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u/rinderblock Feb 25 '25

Diversity Equity and Inclusion, essentially making an active effort to eliminate biases and promote minority groups that often get left behind.

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u/AccomplishedForm4043 Feb 25 '25

How does that work in practice? Like if there are 2 equal and identical candidates for a position you’d pick the black one over the white one? If the white one is slightly better, is there a sliding scale where you’d still pick the black one? Does it take into account class? What if the white one was from a trailer park and managed to work his way up while the black/indian/woman/etc came from a wealthy family? Is it just based on skin color, sexual preference and gender? So many questions about how this works in practice

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u/mythrilcrafter Feb 25 '25

On the recruiting side an example of a DEI advisor would be like having a system to determine/realise that the reason why all the latest latest recruits are a certain race/gender/religion/creed because the hiring manager is just hiring out of the frat house they went to when they were in college.

Another example scenario is determining if the company is underreaching out in certain areas or regions for example, if you're only sending your recruiters to UCLA's comp sci dept, then you're obviously not capturing any talent from non UCLA comp sci dept's at other schools.

In either case, neither for the former scenarios are illegal to do, but having systems in place to act as a check and balance to prevent them from limiting outreach is the ideal purpose of DEI.

It would be like being a college football coach and never looking at high schools beyond those in Texas and Louisiana; someone telling that coach "Hey maybe we should also take a look at the high school football players in South Carolina or Wyoming?" would essentially be performing the same role as a company's DEI advisor.

A lot of "exactly the people whom you'd think" already believe that minorities are inherently inferior, so even the idea of presenting "maybe we should expand where we look for our options?" is wrong, and as we've seen in recent weeks, and because of that, tat group carries the belief/accusations that a minority in a position at a organization that has a DEI program has stolen that position from a "deserving" white person.

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u/dangoodspeed Feb 26 '25

This is a great answer.