>They should be putting their money where their mouth is and sponsoring scholarships/internships/apprenticeships.
I worked at a BigCo that did all the usual DEI garbage and their only initiative that actually had results was the one where they spent a bunch of money sponsoring "women in stem" stuff at the high-school and college level.
I’m unsurprised their only program was for the majority in education.
Weird how there’s programs for the majority (women) when the minority (men) succeed — but no help for the minority (men) in any form. And this isn’t some new issue… men have been the minority in education longer than I’ve been alive.
They had many DEI programs dating back to before it was called DEI. The one targeting women who were predisposed toward stem careers and keeping them on that track was the only one that persisted over time because it was the only one that wasn't asinine when you actually looked at the results. Management basically said as much but less directly whenever they cut other programs but kept that one.
The women hired as a result were far more socially diverse than people from the other hiring pipelines and I think that is of greater value than the fact that they were women.
My company at least used to bring high school students to the company for a women in STEM tour. I believe they stopped it. I have no idea if it worked or not. It certainly didn't work for the company since we weren't seeing any of them join after college.
At least in the case of an intern we had, she went to some other company. Which in fairness, was the better choice. In the conversation we were having, the manager even told her to go to any other company if she has the option because they will pay more. One of the best managers I've seen and he wasn't even my manager. Of course he left for another company shortly after.
Yes, this is one of the funny things about DEI discussions to me.
In a work conversation, a coworker mentioned recruiting more women to work for us. I basically said we're never going to win against FAANG companies competing for the limited pool of women software engineers, and he didn't have a response to that.
Some companies may not be diverse because they don't want to hire from under represented categories, but because candidates from those categories have better offers.
IME, a bunch of them were sweetheart good deals and giveaways to BigCo's own daughters, cousins, sister-in-laws. And the money sloshes around amongst the wealthy inner crowd.
I worked at a BigCo that did all the usual DEI garbage and their only initiative that actually had results was the one where they spent a bunch of money sponsoring "women in stem" stuff at the high-school and college level.