OMG...I have no trouble understanding the concept of "moving the goalposts", and that sucks when it happens. Doesn't mean that the best decisions aren't made based on merit rather than on.....um....."holistic review". By the way, I just got off the phone with Montrell and he told me to let you know he feels "included" now, so I guess it was at least partly DEI.
Dang, dude. You are cynical to the point of being insufferable. That’s a shame. Guessing you have had lots of disappointment in your life. I’d like to buy you a beer and chat so I could maybe convince you that not everyone is as bad as you seem to think. No one and no system is perfect, but I will put my friends/coworkers and the opportunities here in the good ol’ USA up against any others. (Hoping not to sound condescending.)
A problem with this statement is that folks that are not qualified for a position, especially a technical one, will likely stumble at some point and be exposed. Maybe that isn’t an issue in liberal arts fields, but highly technical fields are more likely to be sink or swim on merit. I think that the lack of gumption/ability to purge marginal performers is a big problem that our current workforce issues exacerbates.
A lot of successes and plenty of disappointments. Such is the nature of life. If you aren't at risk of failure, you aren't pursuing something that is challenging or difficult. But my "cynicism" actually comes from success, having gotten in the doors of places a lot of others wanted to be. What did I realize once there? A few things. Yes, the people are overwhelmingly talented and qualified. But why did they make it and not others? After all, there were a lot of talented and qualified people who tried and failed. Often times, it was because they knew the right people. That's what got them out of the pile and to the top of the list. That's not universally true, but it was true often enough for me to be very skeptical when people tell me they only hire on "merit." That's without even getting into all of the biases we have that infect our decision-making processes. Yeah, you're misconstruing my point here if you think it's a criticism of the United States. It's a criticism of the idea that if we just get rid of X program that is designed to help Y group, we'll suddenly have "merit." It has nothing to do with the United States. If you went to Mexico or France, things wouldn't suddenly be different. As for people being "bad," I don't see it that way either. People are biased. That doesn't make us bad or evil. But it does lead to flaws in our decision-making processes. Part of the goal of DEI is to expose those flaws and try to minimize them.
Ah, but that's what management is for, so good thing for the underqualified rich people is we live in a society which rewards the directing and hiring of labor handsomely while devaluing and deskilling the actual technical tasks.
Well, if you like a society where the people in position to judge "merit" are wealthy patrons, government technocrats, elite school administrators and corporate HR types, we have achieved exactly that. Doesn't seem ideal to me. I believe in a more democratic approach.
I asked what that means. Does it mean you started, own, and run the business? Did you start it with siblings, and y'all run it together? Do I? What about my support for DEI makes you believe that?
Substack: University of Virginia Spends $20 Million On 235 DEI Employees, With Some Making $587,340 Per Year UF was way behind the curve anyway...
I'm done. I don't usually block people, I have just one other poster on ignore in all the years I've been here. I feel sorry for Dugger. Ciao
