COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[Eric Schexnayder]

As predicted, the New Mexico gun ban scope has been drastically narrowed to include areas over which the state actually has jurisdiction (public parks, playgrounds). Almost identical to mask mandates.

[Jason Donaldson]

When talking about "diversity hiring", it is important to know how those pursuing it as a goal define the term. I recently worked for a company where the CEO proudly announced at a town hall how great it was that our workforce was finally over 50% diverse, and also over 60% female. It was clear from the slide deck that "diverse" literally meant "non-white, non-male", and in the context of other company initiatives, probably also "non-heterosexual", likely also "non-'cisgendered'". Said CEO also spoke in terms of looking forward to continuing to make more progress in this direction.

This does not address the matter of competence one way or another, of course, but it does illustrate what the D in DEI is taken to mean by its advocates. Make of that what you will.

[UberBabs]

Seconded. Generational values change. I'm sure previous generations would disapprove of aspects of the boomers' lifestyles as well. Doesn't mean society is degrading.

If not dressing like a slob is a "boomer" value then fine. Thanks Senator Fetterman!
Just a moment...

[Mark Rippetoe]

As predicted, the New Mexico gun ban scope has been drastically narrowed to include areas over which the state actually has jurisdiction (public parks, playgrounds). Almost identical to mask mandates.

Except that masks are not mentioned in the Bill of Rights.

_______________________________________


And here's an interesting perspective on things. Hurry, won't be up long: Garbage Human on Instagram

[mkm5]

For about a decade, we’ve been seeing solicitations come through, usually via cold calls, for outsourcing of CAD services to overseas startups, usually located on the subcontinent. A couple of jobs ago, we decided to use them simply because our volume was too high to handle exclusively in our domestic office. It didn’t work. The amount of revision that needed to be done locally outstripped the benefit of the reduced cost. There were a lot of small, but important things, that got left out that could only be known by someone who had on-site knowledge of the given site. We used them sparingly to set things up, but never for final work product, and eventually stopped. I used to get calls even more recently, but told them I wasn’t interested.

mkm5 this is very much true, but not equal across all disciplines. The dirty engineers are still hiring local because of the regional variances; the details matter.

As for DIE practices, I haven’t weighed in recently in this thread. I have yet to see blatant diversity hiring. Perhaps I don’t run in those circles, but the kind of work I do can’t afford it, yet.

Yes, the company I worked for started outsourcing CAD/CAE in addition to the H1B hires in the early 2000s.

Those "small but important things missed" can bite you in the ass pretty hard. I found a few reliable engineers in that mix, but for the most part I was better off just doing the analysis myself. It's much more efficient that way versus gleaning through shit tons of data and programming trying to figure out what they fucked up.

When talking about "diversity hiring", it is important to know how those pursuing it as a goal define the term. I recently worked for a company where the CEO proudly announced at a town hall how great it was that our workforce was finally over 50% diverse, and also over 60% female. It was clear from the slide deck that "diverse" literally meant "non-white, non-male", and in the context of other company initiatives, probably also "non-heterosexual", likely also "non-'cisgendered'". Said CEO also spoke in terms of looking forward to continuing to make more progress in this direction.

This does not address the matter of competence one way or another, of course, but it does illustrate what the D in DEI is taken to mean by its advocates. Make of that what you will.

Yes, white/male/over 50, need not apply. The HR personnel have been infiltrated by DEI for many years. It seemed suspicious to me that every HR Director was a diversity hire (in a company with 7000 engineers), and the subsequent mandated diversity "training" they advocated was the beginning of the end for the non-DEI demographic.

[Eric Schexnayder]

What do you mean by those groups innate interest in a specific field of work?

I mean that not all men want to be nurses, and not all women want to be engineers. There are gender gaps in fields because of innate interest (or maybe social conditioning, that's debatable). Likewise there are probably racial gaps due to geographical location and I daresay cultural influence on career choice. Yes, there are overlaps of the two distributions and always will be. But your assertion that equally distributed competence leads to a naturally diverse workforce needs to be normalized for these effects.

For about a decade, we’ve been seeing solicitations come through, usually via cold calls, for outsourcing of CAD services to overseas startups, usually located on the subcontinent. A couple of jobs ago, we decided to use them simply because our volume was too high to handle exclusively in our domestic office. It didn’t work. The amount of revision that needed to be done locally outstripped the benefit of the reduced cost. There were a lot of small, but important things, that got left out that could only be known by someone who had on-site knowledge of the given site. We used them sparingly to set things up, but never for final work product, and eventually stopped. I used to get calls even more recently, but told them I wasn’t interested.

Have seen this as well. I'm in agreement that the on-site knowledge of whatever is being translated into CAD is critical to a useful final product. Personally, I think the remoteness of the CAD service from the site is the bigger factor here, as opposed to who is doing the work. I've seen it done both well and poorly. General industrial experience tends to help.

[Barry Charles]

Typing in "John Kennedy senate hearings " into YouTube, is a good starting point to prove that above statement, has no basis in reality.
Yes, there are Caucasians who play a starring role too, but less than you would expect.
Or look at the Vice President or the newest Supreme Court Justice.

Assume an entity needs an amount of qualified employees. Hiring by screening for competency produces X competent employees and hiring for diversity produces Y competent employees, X>Y. Agreed?

Therefore, hiring for diversity alone requires additional hiring.

That is absolutely reality.

[Jenni]

Hiring diversity in the federal government may have been an addition to criteria, but it was subsuming competence on the backend. No one gets selected for a government position without someone going "This one? Put their name on the shortlist."

All they changed was going from "this guy is solid" to "they check the most boxes on the demographics spreadsheet."

And it's been that way for a while. It's creeping further and further in. I interact with numerous private and government people doing the same job I am. State, fed, county government people have never been the brightest but now - good lord, I wonder how they tie their shoes in the morning. The transportation department spends our tax dollars buying hundreds of dollars worth of junk food for the people in that office. The Wildlife people cannot handle their own accounting half the time - I'm constantly having to do things for them that should be the job of their people. That's not even discussing the people in my own company who come out with degrees and think they know how things work and create all sorts of destruction, on the road to finding out that what works at the safe space of college doesn't work in private industry. And those people in pajamas and onesies I was fussing about? Yeah, those are often teachers, bus drivers, hospital workers (this area is heavy on the medical personnel.) We've been slipping the less than qualified into jobs for a while now and it's beginning to show. In our city it's a general incompetency in running things. Sometimes we have trash pickup and water and sometimes we don't. The lady in charge at the water plant is a perfect example of a diversity hire and she's been in charge the whole time the thing has gone downhill. Now, everyone is looking around wondering if we're the new Flint. Go outside the blue sea that is Jackson and the tendency to hire based on such things goes down (different political lean, different priorities) and all of a sudden you have drivable roads, clean water, and normal sanitation services. (But sure, it's racism.) Eventually, the damage spreads, though. It's like a cancer growing, metastasizing, quietly. A symptom here and there but no one's concerned until something big and potentially not reversible happens.

The other side of this that I think is important is when someone checks all those boxes but does a bad job it's super hard to get rid of them. They get to claim all sorts of -ism discrimination and even sue. The conversation is almost never about the bad things they did or let happen it's; about how oppressed they are.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Consequences of Government Weaponization

As I think about the underlying meaning of this current cascade of events involving RFKjr., what troubles me most about this is that the decision by the Biden administration to withhold Secret Service protection from Mr. Kennedy might actually be a good thing. Because I have come to the point where I have very little confidence that the US Secret Service would act in completely good faith to protect Mr. Kennedy from physical threats to life and limb. Little faith that, even if a security detail was to be provided by the Biden administration, it would not be weaponized in some way to benefit the current president.

This lack of faith stems from having watched as federal agency after federal agency has been weaponized to support political and economic agendas of corporations and of the administrative state. To my eyes, our permanent government (ergo the Leviathan) no longer even pretends to be a neutral arbiter of truth, a defender of the US constitution, a neutral enforcer of congressional laws, and a positive force committed to maintaining continuity of a civil society.

[David A. Rowe]

And it's been that way for a while. It's creeping further and further in. I interact with numerous private and government people doing the same job I am. State, fed, county government people have never been the brightest but now - good lord, I wonder how they tie their shoes in the morning. The transportation department spends our tax dollars buying hundreds of dollars worth of junk food for the people in that office. The Wildlife people cannot handle their own accounting half the time - I'm constantly having to do things for them that should be the job of their people. That's not even discussing the people in my own company who come out with degrees and think they know how things work and create all sorts of destruction, on the road to finding out that what works at the safe space of college doesn't work in private industry. And those people in pajamas and onesies I was fussing about? Yeah, those are often teachers, bus drivers, hospital workers (this area is heavy on the medical personnel.) We've been slipping the less than qualified into jobs for a while now and it's beginning to show. In our city it's a general incompetency in running things. Sometimes we have trash pickup and water and sometimes we don't. The lady in charge at the water plant is a perfect example of a diversity hire and she's been in charge the whole time the thing has gone downhill. Now, everyone is looking around wondering if we're the new Flint. Go outside the blue sea that is Jackson and the tendency to hire based on such things goes down (different political lean, different priorities) and all of a sudden you have drivable roads, clean water, and normal sanitation services. (But sure, it's racism.) Eventually, the damage spreads, though. It's like a cancer growing, metastasizing, quietly. A symptom here and there but no one's concerned until something big and potentially not reversible happens.

The other side of this that I think is important is when someone checks all those boxes but does a bad job it's super hard to get rid of them. They get to claim all sorts of -ism discrimination and even sue. The conversation is almost never about the bad things they did or let happen it's; about how oppressed they are.

Consequences of Government Weaponization

But, hey... at least the thing they're weaponizing is also the thing they're ruining. It's like that one kid who puts mayonnaise in the toaster.

And beyond the bluster of jail or taking F-15s to a gun fight, consider who they would be removing from productive work. The same population that keeps the economy going.