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Who’s afraid of the Big Bad DEI? The acronym is almost toxic now. The term creates almost instant tension between those who support it and those who want to abolish it.
A prime example of this divide is Alexander Wang, founder of the startup ScaleAI. post Last week on X, he wrote about moving away from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and embracing “MEI” (merit, excellence and intelligence) instead.
“Size is a meritocracy, and we must always maintain that attitude,” Wang wrote. “Inviting someone to join our mission has always meant a lot, and the decision has never been driven by orthodoxy, virtue statements, or what’s currently trendy.”
X’s commenters (including Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Brian Armstrong) were excited. But the LinkedIn startup community Not very enthusiastic A: Commenters pointed out that Wang’s post makes it seem like “meritocracy” is a crucial criterion for finding qualified job candidates, but fails to take into account that the concept of meritocracy itself is subjective. In the days since it was posted, more and more people have shared their own thoughts and what Wang’s comments have revealed about the current state of DEI in the tech industry.
“This post is misguided because those who support the meritocracy argument ignore the structural reasons why some groups are more likely to perform better than others,” Mutare Nkonde, founder of AI policy, told TechCrunch. “We all want the best people for the job, and there’s data that proves that diverse teams are more effective.”
Emily Witko, HR director at AI startup Hugging Face, told TechCrunch that the post is “dangerously oversimplified,” but that the reason it got so much attention on X is because it’s “expressing feelings that aren’t always expressed publicly, and the audience there is eager to attack DEI.” Wang’s MEI ideas “make it very easy to refute or criticize any conversation about the importance of acknowledging who is underrepresented in the tech industry,” she continued.
But Wang isn’t the only Silicon Valley insider to attack DEI in recent months. He joins the ranks of those who believe that DEI programs implemented at companies over the past few years, which peaked during the Black Lives Matter movement, have caused a setback in corporate profitability and delayed a return to “meritocratic principles.” Indeed, much of the tech industry has been working to dismantle hiring programs that previously considered candidates who were often overlooked in the hiring process.
In an effort to create change, many organizations and influential people came together in 2020 and committed to placing more emphasis on DEI. This is not simply about hiring people based on their skin color, contrary to mainstream discourse, but about ensuring that talented people from all walks of life are better represented and included in the hiring funnel, regardless of skin color, gender, or ethnic background. It is also important to look at disparities and pipeline issues and analyze the reasons behind them. Why certain candidates It always gets overlooked in the hiring process.
US data industry to see rising employment levels of women by 2023 Drop A report from recruiting firm Harnum predicts that by 2022, the percentage of Black, Indigenous and people of colour employees will fall by two-thirds from 36% to just 12%. Meanwhile, the percentage of Black, Indigenous and people of colour in data roles at or above is was standing By 2022, it will be just 38%.
DEI-related jobs are also declining in popularity and are expected to fall by 44% by 2023, according to data from job site Indeed. In the AI industry, a recent Deloitte survey found that: investigation The survey found that more than half of women said they had left at least one employer because of the way men and women were treated differently, and 73% said they had considered leaving the tech industry altogether due to pay disparities and difficulty in advancing their careers.
But for an industry that prides itself on being data-driven, Silicon Valley cannot let go of the idea of meritocracy. Data and Research This kind of thinking is just a belief system, and shows that it can lead to biased results. The idea of hiring “the best person for the job” without taking into account human sociology is how pattern matching occurs. In teams and companies made up of similar people, As research has long shown, Diverse teams don’t necessarily perform better, and it raises questions about who Silicon Valley considers talented and why.
The experts we spoke to say This subjectivity Wang’s letter revealed other problems, primarily that he presented MEI as a revolutionary idea, not one that Silicon Valley and most of corporate America have supported for years. The acronym “MEI” seems intended to be a pejorative for DEI and to highlight the idea that companies must choose between hiring diverse candidates or those who meet certain “objective” qualifications.
Natalie Sue Johnson, co-founder of DEI consulting firm Paradigm, told TechCrunch: Research suggests Meritocracy is a contradiction, she said, and organizations that place too much emphasis on it actually increase bias. “Meritocracy frees people from the idea that they have to strive to be fair in their decision-making,” she continued. “They think that meritocracy is something you’re born with, not something you have to achieve.”
As Nkonde noted, Johnson noted that Wang’s approach fails to acknowledge that underrepresented groups face systemic barriers that society is still struggling to address. Ironically, the people who achieve the most may be those who acquire the skills they need for the job despite barriers that impacted their educational background or prevented them from putting the kind of college internship that would impress Silicon Valley on their resume.
Johnson said it’s a mistake to treat someone as a faceless, nameless candidate without understanding their unique experience and therefore employability. “There’s a nuance there.”
Witko adds: “Because meritocratic systems are built on standards that reflect the status quo, they perpetuate existing inequalities by continuing to favor those who are already advantaged.”
Let’s be generous to Wang. Given how charged the term DEI has become, developing a new term that captures the value of fairness for all candidates is not a bad idea, even if “meritocracy” is wrong. And his post is a good indication that ScalAI’s values are did it Johnson said he was living up to the spirit of diversity, equity and inclusion, even if he didn’t realize it.
“Searching for a broad range of talent and making objective hiring decisions that don’t penalize candidates based on their identity is exactly what diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are about,” she explained.
But again, Wang undermines this point by endorsing the false belief that meritocracy produces outcomes based solely on individual ability and merit.
Maybe it’s all a contradiction: Scale AI’s treatment of its data annotators, many of whom live in third-world countries and scrape by on shoestring wages, suggests the company has little interest in challenging the status quo.
ScaleAI annotators work on a task in eight-hour shifts with no breaks and are paid a minimum of $10 (According to the Verge and NY MagIt’s thanks to these annotators that Scale AI has built a business worth over $13 billion and has over $1.6 billion in cash in the bank.
When asked to comment on the allegations made in the Verge and NY Mag articles, a spokesperson pointed out: This blog postIn it, the company described the work of its human annotators as “gig work.” A spokesperson for Scale AI did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification on its MEI policy.
Johnson said Wang’s post was a good example of a trap that many leaders and companies fall into.
She wondered whether we could believe that having a meritocratic ideal was enough to lead to truly meritocratic outcomes and promote diversity.
“Or do we recognize that ideals alone are not enough, and that intention is required to truly build a more diverse workforce where everyone has equal access to opportunity and can do their best work?”