Jury awards $10M to former exec who said he was fired because he is white male

Originally saw this on RT but definitely an interesting article either way and one that i imagine is going to become all the more common as companies make active decisions to ban straight white men from the work place. As an example, when Clintons campaign was hiring 11 odd advisers for something they expressly stated, the aforementioned, need not apply. Not to mention the negative hiring policies being entrenched in policy now to fill diversity quotas (the less said about ethnic/gender based job programmes - particularly grad ones - the better).

Good for him for actually standing up for his rights not to be discrimnated against though.
Whilst it may be the case that more diversity is welcome in the work place companies should not be hiring based on how someone identifies, what their genitals are or the melanin content.. heaven forfend the idea that they hire based on merit.

As an aside though,. it does raise the interesting point of what type of backlash this sort of behaviour will generate as time goes on? If you find a host of unemployed angry white men who cant get a job because, as they see it, the money is being solely reserved for ethnics and gay people then i rather doubt its going to end particularly well.
Its a shame the activist/lobby crowd have managed to install such perverse policies in the first place that make a mockery of inclusivity by actively excluding people based on said characteristics.

It is little more than bigoted and ironic that to achieve equality, or so they claim, theyre actively seeking exclusionary and divisive means of trying to achieve these goals (i doubt theyll work well in the first place but still) i have yet to hear of a single example of where hiring by tickbox has ever resulted in a good outcome. Aside from treating women/gays/ethnics as nothing more than a quota it leaves others feeling marginalised themselves and, quite rightfully imo, angry at that. That isnt to say, as i noted earlier, that diversity isnt a laudable goal in life but this means of going about it is perverse, racist, sexist and generally rather bigoted

Although to get back to the article itself and off my little hobby horse, its nice to see him sticking two fingers up to the management there if theyre acting in this way. After all, we have no reason to doubt him (those that do, i have no doubt, are also the ones that say we should believe all victims no matter what ) but we shall see what happens on appeal and if this leads to a larger movement of suing companies/employers for racist dismissals/refusal to hire etc.


https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jury-awards-10m-former-exec-who-said-he-was-fired-n1282605

yes, we shouldn't be hiring people based on their ethnicities and beliefs, rather their abilities, qualifications, and experiences. Anyone can be discriminated against, clearly, and in this case it was the reversal of the usual, it being the white man.

If it's not that, it's constructive dismissal if they fired him for not being up to the job but replaced him with two employees.

I think it's good to 'force' companies to consider candidates from a variety of backgrounds, as historically we have had issues, and many companies pride themselves on a certain culture - i.e. the candidates need to fit in with the existing employees as well as be competent at the job. But that's very different from kicking out existing employees who are good at their job.

I think ethnicity isn't important, but culture, politics, age and sex are. People are human and you can't expect them to stop making judgements of others, to draw a hard line between work and everything else, or to magically connect with people with completely different perspectives. Religious belief or extreme political opinions are also red flags to me because I think they tend to indicate poor critical thinking.

At my current company, we have a pretty guy-centric monoculture. We don't have any women employees and honestly I don't think they'd be a good fit. Last friday we went to a hostess club and a boob bar for example. We have a very high level of camaraderie and part of that is a natural result of just being guys with similar perspectives. As a result we work very effectively together - much more effectively than any other company I've been at that has wide diversity of age, sex, etc. The difference is night and day.

I'm probably gonna start my own company soon, and to be honest I don't understand this trend of trying to hire as diversely as possible. Especially when it's flagrantly against the law lol

Hiring is an incredibly important practice to get right, especially the first few hires. If you don't treat it with the appropriate care it will be damaging or even fatal to your company.

Company culture is incredibly important. Hiring for diversity is not only putting the efficacy of your team as a secondary consideration, but done without thought it invites unnecessary conflict and problems. You can see the level of internal conflict at places like Google without even working there. It's cult-like, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is if not everyone buys into it, which is bound to happen when you hire smart people and the cult is blatantly irrational.

I think ethnicity isn't important, but culture, politics, age and sex are. People are human and you can't expect them to stop making judgements of others, to draw a hard line between work and everything else, or to magically connect with people with completely different perspectives. Religious belief or extreme political opinions are also red flags to me because I think they tend to indicate poor critical thinking.

At my current company, we have a pretty guy-centric monoculture. We don't have any women employees and honestly I don't think they'd be a good fit. Last friday we went to a hostess club and a boob bar for example. We have a very high level of camaraderie and part of that is a natural result of just being guys with similar perspectives. As a result we work very effectively together - much more effectively than any other company I've been at that has wide diversity of age, sex, etc. The difference is night and day.

I don't necessarily disagree with laws protecting people from discrimination based on those factors (background, politics, age, sex, etc.), but we should get rid of this notion that diversity is somehow in a company's best interest (outside of PR anyway).

Why is it good to force a company to hire someone because of a quirk of birth or choice i.e. if theyre born a 'minority' or if theyre 'gender diverse'...? Generally speaking, forcing a company to be racist or sexist is frowned upon, no?

I've had the opposite experience. I've always found that being in a diverse team is better than being in a team where people are more or less the same. I'm currently working in a department that's very diverse, being about 50/50 male and female, 50/50 young and old and with people from foreign backgrounds, etc. The department's extremely successful, much of which is because we can pool from the difference experiences, perspectives and temperments of our team members. If we all thought the same way we wouldn't have that strength, not to mention team meetings would be pretty boring! xD

I'm also suspicious of the research many big companies cling to, from some consultancy firms, that it increases profitability. Very suggestive of confounding variables being at play, and motivated reasoning, especially given the figures they sometimes cite. None of these companies would ditch these schemes if the research showed otherwise, not after they've invested so much in them, so why should I believe they'd be transparent about any shortcomings? Personally I think it is a cult, and one trying to masquerade behind the language of business, having now escaped the confines of academia and the civil service. I have found the same as you when it comes to 'diverse' vs homogeneous teams and I get annoyed when the latter is painted as a 'bad' thing. The only diversity I value intrinsically is that of being allowed to diverge in thought, and that is where I think all these corporations so committed rhetorically to 'diversity' fall down flat, and they're not alone there.

I differ somewhat on the topic of ethnicity, and it certainly matters a lot to groups coming into the west even if our elites and middle classes have collectively decided it doesn't, but I view it as one factor among many.

Yeah, I think we're on the same page about it. I haven't looked at any studies about diversity in companies, it just seems pretty obvious that these changes haven't been driven from a place of evidence. It wasn't that someone realised, "oh wait, having a diverse team helps us move faster," it was that woke culture started pressuring companies and socially shaming them for not having token diversity on their boards etc. And, in the case of silicon valley, they were infected from the inside by hiring woke students for years.

At the end of the day, if diversity is all it's cracked up to be, companies will naturally have an incentive to do it. Companies often compete on razor thin margins. They want to hire the best talent available, and they're punished if they let prejudice get in the way of that.

It's kind of ironic because if you look at a company like Facebook or Apple, sure they're diverse when it comes to ethnicity, sexuality, etc., but they're not diverse when it comes to opinion. They're still a monoculture, and if you're not woke you won't fit in.

I think you're spot on that it's all a masquerade.

I can understand that there's some value, and that value probably varies according to the types of problems the team has to solve, but I'm critical of the overly simplistic diversity=good rhetoric we get.

In your team for example, is the team successful because of its diversity, or in spite of its diversity? Maybe the type of problems your team solves requires diversity (for example in marketing, I could see that understanding a lot of perspectives might be important). If there's some glue that keeps your team together, what is it? For my team we have similar perspectives and motivations, so it's natural for us to get along, respect each other and enjoy being part of the team. In previous companies I had different perspectives and motivations to the team, and it made for a different atmosphere.

I think the very premise of diversity essentially requires that everyone be on a different wavelength.

I work in tech and I think there are two categories of problems we have: what we should do, and how we should do it. For what we should do, I believe that should be informed by having a strong relationship with our customers. Our relationship should be so strong that we understand exactly what their problems are. I think diversity of opinion doesn't help with creating the right product, since if it's not obvious to everyone in the team what the customers need then you're taking shots in the dark and have bigger problems than team synchronicity.

For the how we should do it part, again I don't think diversity of opinion or experience is very important. Generally speaking you want the best opinion, not the most popular or diverse opinion, so I think you should hire experts in each skillset you need and empower them to make the decisions relating to their expertise. There might be an exception for creative teams but I don't know a lot about creative teams.

It just seems difficult to see how diversity, in the general case, provides more value than it subtracts.

It's a good thing when the law is applied equally yes. Fair play to that guy.

BUT

I think a better answer and solution is simply for private companies to be able to employ who ever they want. If Google wants to hire exclusively LGBT people that's fine. If Chick Fill A wants to hire only white Christians then that's also fine.

"Equality of opportunity" is just backdoor communism

'Everything I hate is communism'

No not everything.

And there's some thing's I like about communism anyway. The anthem was awesome and they had cool aesthetics.



And of course I'm pro China under honourable chairman Xi ...

So you... don't think communism is bad?

Then why associate equality of opportunity with communism?