Ancestors

Written by Lesley Carhart :unverified: on 2025-01-30 at 02:59

IDK man, but this DEI hire is teaching a 6 day class on industrial cybersecurity while also keeping up with a DFIR job while also selling a house and doing two visa applications alone while all this shit waves is going on. And even cleaned the gutters. But it’s probably because I have t**s.

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Written by Lesley Carhart :unverified: on 2025-01-30 at 14:33

This shit hurts extra because I had zero legs up in just about anything I have achieved in my career or hobbies, and doing it all before substantial DEI initiatives made it so a lot of people in authority told me to fuck off no matter how hard I worked. It took me years to break into professional cybersecurity. Nobody would mentor me. Professional groups made it purposefully uncomfortable to join. My degree program was 95% men. I had to room with another career in Air Force training. I smiled and shut up through rape jokes and studied alone.

I’ve dedicated so much of my life to making sure nobody else hit those same real road blocks in mentoring and finding jobs, but almost all the progress we have made in my lifetime in the US is just gone, overnight.

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Toot

Written by Lesley Carhart :unverified: on 2025-01-30 at 14:44

Talking about a meritocracy just because you think you hire and promote equally at your personal organization based on only skill is painfully naive. The pipeline is the problem. Breaking in is the problem.

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Descendants

Written by Mathaetaes on 2025-01-30 at 14:55

@hacks4pancakes the belief that it’s possible to set aside socially-ingrained biases and actually promote based solely on skill is also pretty naive. Studies have repeatedly shown that different demographics exhibiting the same traits get scored differently based on their demographic. E.g., Strong leadership is good in men, but in women it’s “bossy.”

Bias is unconscious and pervasive. Without recognition of that fact, and deliberate steps to mitigate it, a true meritocracy is not possible.

This is in addition to (or possibly contributing to) the pipeline problem.

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Written by demofox on 2025-01-30 at 21:30

@mathaetaes @hacks4pancakes I've seen so many useless nepo hires, and people who were neither kind nor all that smart or skilled promoted to team leads and higher. It's all just so gross and disfunctional.

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Written by demofox on 2025-01-30 at 21:33

@mathaetaes @hacks4pancakes ... and the only people with the ability to change it think it's working just fine. For you to say otherwise erodes their ego psychologically, which isn't a great start :P

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Written by noplasticshower on 2025-01-30 at 15:08

@hacks4pancakes this is absolutely right. We tried very hard to hire underrepresented people and had to compete with the pipeline (tiny straw) produced trickle which had us in direct competition with Google and Microsoft and Netscape. The pipeline was a huge problem.

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Written by firebreathingduck on 2025-01-30 at 15:27

@hacks4pancakes

The financial catastrophe of the mortgage-backed securities crisis was completely caused by white men. They were considered the best of the financial elites in the world, worth every penny of their million dollar salaries and billion dollar stock grants. And the financial collapse was everywhere, none of them saw it coming.

Anyone can tank an investment bank as CEO, a preschooler with a magic eight ball could do it.

And somehow people still believe in meritocracy.

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Written by Paul_IPv6 on 2025-01-30 at 17:39

@firebreathingduck @hacks4pancakes

meritocracy is one of those concepts, like democracy, that is lovely in theory but tends to break down when it depends on being done correctly and honestly by human beings.

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Written by staringatclouds on 2025-01-30 at 18:10

@paul_ipv6 @firebreathingduck @hacks4pancakes

The problem with meritocracy

Trump & the rest of his meritocrats think it means you are given something like a job or money because you deserve it

And you deserve it because you are somehow superior to people who don't deserve it

And this superiority is derived from a number of factors, but mainly that you are rich, white & know other rich white people

To them, it does not mean you earned or are qualified for whatever your given

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Written by Paul_IPv6 on 2025-01-30 at 18:11

@staringatclouds @firebreathingduck @hacks4pancakes

indeed. i think those folks have confused "merit" with "inherent privilege"....

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Written by firebreathingduck on 2025-01-30 at 18:14

@staringatclouds @paul_ipv6 @hacks4pancakes

No, I disagree. I think they're so blind to the privilege they're born into that they actually think their intelligence and work ethic is the sole cause of their success.

I bet Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and countless other billionaires have unshakable faith that if they had been born to a single white woman in rural Kentucky, they would still have reached their exact current position.

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Written by Paul_IPv6 on 2025-01-30 at 18:15

@firebreathingduck @staringatclouds @hacks4pancakes

that's my point. what they think is "merit" is actually "inherent privilege".

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Written by firebreathingduck on 2025-01-30 at 18:27

@paul_ipv6 @staringatclouds @hacks4pancakes

I'm sorry, I misunderstood the part of your post

And this superiority is derived from a number of factors, but mainly that you are rich, white & know other rich white people

to be meant literally. Since you also meant it as blindness to privilege, we're in total agreement.

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Written by Man aging with style on 2025-01-30 at 19:47

@paul_ipv6 @firebreathingduck @staringatclouds @hacks4pancakes

"Inherit privilege," if you will ..

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Written by ghost on 2025-01-30 at 19:36

@paul_ipv6 @firebreathingduck @hacks4pancakes Democracy is bloody challenging in theory and practice, it’s not “nice” at all. Just much better than how every alternative system has played out, in practice.

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Written by csh on 2025-01-31 at 01:02

@paul_ipv6

@firebreathingduck @hacks4pancakes

The biggest problem is that merit is always in the eyes of the beholder.

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Written by Mark T. Tomczak on 2025-01-30 at 15:49

@hacks4pancakes "The pipeline is leaky and full of acid," as the saying went some 10 years ago.

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Written by b4ux1t3 :trek_ds9_sisko:#1️⃣ on 2025-01-30 at 15:59

@hacks4pancakes I will say.

..Hiring based on merit is a valid way to hire.

It's just that, like, assuming a person has merit because they're a white dude is fucking stupid.

Speaking as a white dude who's good at specific things, no one should listen to me about financial systems.

Need a computer fixed, from the hardware up through layer 8? I'm your guy. Or, you know, any of the millions of non-white-male folks out there who are easily as competent as I am (often moreso). I did network and application security work, but if someone came to me on the topic and you and I were in the same room, I might just get a little angry that they assumed the bearded white guy knew more than Lesley fucking Carhart.

Need a pipe fixed? Call a plumber, not a programmer. Don't just grab the nearest white guy you see and assume he can fix it. (For example, I'll fix it, and then in six months you'll have to call a real plumber. Not that, uh, that exact thing happened to me recently or anything)

The notorious cheeto is glomming on to this concept of meritocracy, but the thing is: DEI is a meritocracy. It gives everyone the chance to demonstrate they have merit,and,surprise surprise, humans of all shapes, sizes, colors and identities are good at things, it's sort of what defines us as a species.

(sorry, that got a little ranty, I've been festering about this for too long I think)

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Written by Kevin Bowersox on 2025-01-30 at 16:01

@hacks4pancakes Their talk of a meritocracy is smoke and mirrors. If they really intended to hire on merit, there would be no reason to revoke an executive order that prevents them from discriminating based on race, sex, etc. They revoked it because the know damned well that they will be discriminating based on all of them!

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Written by Jeremy Kahn on 2025-01-30 at 17:13

@hacks4pancakes

Also the sheer chutzpah of complaining that "DEI means less competent people get hired" when survivorship means that experienced "diverse" hires are always f-ckin amazing and resilient

https://newsie.social/@TheNeedling/113915559973485581

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Written by Michael Weiss on 2025-01-30 at 17:38

@hacks4pancakes exactly. By the time I see a job application, so much damage has already been done. So much great talent potential has been crushed.

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Written by Eleanor Saitta on 2025-01-30 at 18:23

@hacks4pancakes

Honestly, I'm not going to believe someone when they say they do it. If they say they try and then want to talk about the ways in which they know they fail and the places where they probably have blind spots? Yeah, maybe. But I've seen too many "progressive" employers where the pipeline ends in a dumpster of broken glass.

Like, to the point where I'm genuinely unsure about the ethics of working to improve the pipeline when even most of the best folks are forced out of the industry by 35.

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Written by Paul Cantrell on 2025-01-30 at 18:29

@dymaxion @hacks4pancakes

Yeah, I mean, in what context does “It’s not MY fault so it’s not MY problem!!” ever actually build confidence in the person saying it?

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Written by Nonya Bidniss :CIAverified: on 2025-01-30 at 18:23

@hacks4pancakes The pipeline definitely is a problem. While in the IC I observed that we had at least 95%+ resumes from only white men for our openings. If we got a resume from a woman or minority we'd interview, but it just happened so rarely. The field was scientific and technical intelligence, not geopolitical. Which surely was an underlying issue.

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Written by HTTP 1.1/418 [volts/amps] Teapot on 2025-01-30 at 20:13

@hacks4pancakes Nevermind "DEI hires." "Conformity hires" are the problem.

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Written by Dan W on 2025-01-30 at 23:00

@hacks4pancakes

Communism is to Corruption and Meritocracy is to Personal Biases.

They both look good on paper, but implementation is impossible.

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Written by David Pollak on 2025-01-31 at 03:06

@hacks4pancakes I wrote this a decade ago… https://blog.goodstuff.im/filling_the_pipeline

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