Who’s afraid of the big bad DEI? The acronym is now almost poisonous: a word that creates almost instantaneous tension between those who embrace it and those who want it dead.
An excellent example of this division was the response to the founder of the startup Scale AI, Alexandr Wang. mail in X last week. She wrote about moving away from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) to “MEI”: merit, excellence and intelligence.
“The scale is a meritocracy and we must always remain that way,” Wang wrote. “It is very important every time we invite someone to join our mission, and those decisions have never been influenced by orthodoxy or virtue signaling or whatever.” whatever the current current is.”
X commenters, including Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Brian Armstrong, were delighted. On LinkedIn, however, the startup community gave a half-hearted answer. Those commenters noted that Wang’s post made it seem like “meritocracy” was the definitive benchmark for finding qualified candidates for hiring, failing to take into account that the idea of meritocracy is itself subjective. In the days following the post, more and more people shared their thoughts and what Wang’s comments reveal about the current state of DEI in tech.
“The post is wrong because people who support the meritocracy argument are ignoring the structural reasons why some groups are more likely to outperform others,” Mutale Nkonde, one of the founders who works on intelligence policy, told TechCrunch. artificial. “We all want the best people for the job, and there is data to show that diverse teams are more effective.”
Emily Witko, a human resources professional at AI startup Hugging Face, told TechCrunch that the post was a “dangerous oversimplification,” but that it received so much attention on X because it “openly expressed feelings that aren’t always expressed publicly and the “The audience there is hungry to attack DEI.” Wang’s thinking on MEI “makes it very easy to refute or criticize any conversation about the importance of recognizing underrepresentation in technology,” he continued.
But Wang is far from the only Silicon Valley insider to attack DEI in recent months. He joins a chorus of those who feel that the DEI programs implemented in companies over the past few years, which peaked with the Black Lives Matter movement, caused a setback in corporate profitability, and that a return to them is long overdue. the “meritocratic principles”. In fact, much of the tech industry has worked to dismantle recruiting programs that considered candidates who, under previous hiring regimes, were often overlooked in the hiring process.
Aiming to bring about change, in 2020, many powerful organizations and actors came together to promise a greater focus on DEI, which, contrary to widespread debate, is not simply about hiring someone based on the color of their skin, but rather ensure Qualified people from all walks of life, regardless of their skin, gender or ethnicity, are better represented and included in hiring funnels. It’s also about looking at channel disparities and issues, analyzing the reasoning behind why certain candidates They are constantly overlooked in a hiring process.
In 2023, the US data industry recorded new levels of hiring of women drop by two-thirds, from 36% in 2022 to just 12%, according to a report by human resources staffing firm Harnham. Meanwhile, the percentage of Black, Indigenous and professionals of color in vice president positions or above remained by only 38% in 2022.
DEI-related job postings have also fallen out of favor, declining 44% in 2023, according to data from job site Indeed. In the AI industry, a recent Deloitte report survey of women found that more than half said they ended up leaving at least one employer because men and women were treated differently, while 73% considered leaving the tech industry altogether due to pay inequality and the inability to advance in their careers.
Yet for an industry that prides itself on being data-driven, Silicon Valley can’t let go of the idea of a meritocracy, regardless. data and research showing how that thinking is just a belief system that can lead to biased results. The idea of going out and hiring “the best person for the job” without taking into account any human sociology is how pattern matching occurs: teams and companies of people who are similar, when research has long shown more diverse teams perform better. What’s more, it has only raised suspicions about who the Valley considers excellent and why.
The experts we spoke to said this subjectivity revealed other problems with Wang’s letter, mainly that it presents MEI as a revolutionary idea and not one that Silicon Valley and most corporate America have long embraced. The acronym “MEI” appears to be a derogatory nod to DEI, intended to drive home the notion that a company must choose between hiring diverse candidates or candidates who meet certain “objective” qualifications.
Natalie Sue Johnson, co-founder of DEI consulting firm Paradigm, told TechCrunch that Research has shown Meritocracy is a paradox and organizations that focus too much on it actually see an increase in bias. “It frees people from thinking that they have to work hard to be fair in their decision-making,” he continued. “They think meritocracy is inherent, not something that must be achieved.”
As Nkonde mentioned, Johnson noted that Wang’s approach fails to recognize that underrepresented groups face systemic barriers that society is still struggling to address. Ironically, the most deserving person might be the one who has acquired a skill set for a job despite barriers that may have influenced her educational background or prevented her from filling her resume with the kind of college internships that impress Silicon. Valley.
Treating a person as a faceless, nameless candidate, without understanding their unique experiences and therefore their employability, is a mistake, Johnson said. “There are nuances.”
Witko added: “A meritocratic system is based on criteria that reflect the status quo and will therefore perpetuate existing inequalities by continually favoring those who already have advantages.”
Being somewhat charitable to Wang, given how acidic the term DEI has become, developing a new term that still represents the value of fairness for all candidates is not a terrible idea, even if “meritocracy” is wrong. And your post suggests that Scale AI values could align with the spirit of diversity, equity and inclusion even if he doesn’t realize it, Johnson said.
“Creating a broad talent network and making objective hiring decisions that don’t disadvantage candidates based on their identity is exactly what diversity, equity and inclusion work seeks to do,” he explained.
But again, what Wang undermines this is endorsing the mistaken belief that meritocracy will produce results based solely on one’s capabilities and merits.
Maybe it’s all a paradox. If one looks at Scale AI’s treatment of its data annotators (many of whom live in third-world countries and get by on low salaries), it suggests that the company has little real interest in disrupting the status quo.
Scale AI annotators work on tasks over multiple eight-hour workdays, without breaks, for wages as low as $10 (according to The Verge and NY Mag). It is thanks to these annotators that Scale AI has built a business valued at over $13 billion and with over $1.6 billion in cash in the bank.
When asked for comment on the allegations made in the Verge and NY Mag article, a spokesperson noted this blog post, in which he described his human annotator jobs as “work for hire.” The spokesperson did not address TechCrunch’s request to clarify Scale AI’s MEI policy.
Johnson said Wang’s post is a great example of the box many leaders and companies find themselves trapped in.
It was asked: can they trust that having meritocratic ideals is enough to lead to truly meritocratic outcomes and promote diversity?
“Or do they recognize that ideals are not enough and that truly building more diverse workforces where everyone has equal access to opportunities and can do their best work requires intention?”
