Thread regarding Charles Schwab Corp. layoffs

You don't fix discrimination with more discrimination.

If you promote someone to "address past racial inequities" over someone who is more qualified, or don't even CONSIDER anyone outside a particular racial group, you definitely are taking away opportunities from someone.

Congrats on graduating. What’s interesting about this blog?

For your internship, it sounds like you had to fund a move to Westlake. And tuition. And other expenses. $4000/mo helps, but that’s not covering everything. Did you have financial aid, scholarships or savings? Thanks.

I doubt that.

Stipend means paid.

Wait, people thought that the interns at Schwab were not paid? Holy smokes

Former intern here. I was a Senior at Baylor, and had to relocate for 9 weeks to Dallas, worked in SLK. Paid $25 per hour and upon graduation I was offered a full time position in STS, about 6 months after my internship. Seeing this blog by the way has been… interesting.

“I was an intern and I was paid.”

How much? And if you don’t mind, what were your circumstances. Is OP right that you needed to be in school, full time with us, were you working elsewhere or did you have enough…

I was an intern and I was paid.

Interns at Schwab are paid.

A must-watch documentary on Netflix, Watch/81321341, sheds light on the challenges faced by a community suppressed in the name of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). The documentary highlights the struggles and pain inflicted upon this group, which has never truly benefited from these initiatives, while the world has often belittled their experiences

Many here are focused on DEI and race. That is a problem.

How about our internship program? Is that discriminatory? You better believe it.

Kids have to go to a school in our system and apply. Then they have to be able to get to the internship and work, unpaid, for months during normal business hours. That eliminates kids not going to university or who do not have disposable income.

No race involved. Although demographic data consistently shows black, Hispanic and single parent households have less disposable income. And then our locations. Lone Tree, Domain and Westlake are not cheap neighborhoods.

I'm not saying we have to give stipends, although we have and should. And I'm not saying we have to provide transportation and housing, but we could. I am saying that we are, consciously or not, filtering out thousands of prospects who will never overcome that barrier without extra effort. And the applicant differences had nothing to do with their qualifications. There was no merit in picking Buffy over Jamal. It was purely circumstances they had little control over.

As a woman, member of an inferior race, I can say DEI has not helped me at all.

You may not have benefited from change in your lifetime. But some of us had to fight for you to be able to have your own bank account.

As a woman, member of an inferior race, I can say DEI has not helped me at all.

There is not an ERG for whites. Discrimination.

There is not accessible parking for the healthy. Grateful.

Not everything has to be equal for equality.

At the end of the day, DEI helps combat the “it is not what you know but who you know”. People are more likely to hire people who think like them, look like them, act like them or they could see a son/daughter/grandchild in that person. If you were not part of the good ol’ boys club decades ago, guess what - you weren’t getting hired. DEI came along to give veterans, women, and people not running in certain circles a chance to compete. At the end of the day, your brain is lazy and it is easier to seek someone out like you vs. learning how to work with someone who is different. I am so tired of people saying how terrible it is when it is really giving people opportunities they may never had because they were not born male and the right skin color

Minorities are not disabled. Let’s truly be colorblind, DEI is not colorblind.

Ah yes, the “I don’t; see color” argument.

Sounds great. Except it’s complete nonsense.

We aren’t colorblind. Police arrest blacks at 3-5 times that of whites. And when prosecuted, sentencing is much softer for whites. For example, a white woman was pulled over for a traffic stop, resisted, drove off and hit the officer. Debra Hamil Was apologized to and pled to $50 fines and a suspended sentence. A black man? One body cam excerpt shows him being shot within 1.2 seconds of the first interaction.

Those are big examples. How about looking around the office Wednesday?

DEI isn’t about fixing inequality. It isn’t quota. It absolutely isn’t about unqualified. But it is about awareness and empathy. Sure, anyone can have difficult circumstances growing up. I did. I did great. But this isn’t a zero sum game and there’s nothing wrong with appreciating other’s circumstances.

Walmart buying from black owned suppliers

You’re conflating quotas and DEI. They are not the same.

Minorities are not disabled. Let’s truly be colorblind, DEI is not colorblind.

@e0+1jm18h8yc

Why? Wheelchair ramps are not the same. A person in a wheelchair needs them for accessibility. A minority or LGBTQ person does not need artificial help to access opportunities. Doing so makes the conversation about race and s-xual orientation, which I thought we were trying to get away from as a society (it shouldn’t matter, who cares what they are, right?).

Make sure companies are not discriminating, absolutely, I agree with that. However, please don’t artificially prop up minorities (ie Walmart buying from black owned suppliers) just because you think they need that to be successful. That is telling them they cannot do it otherwise and reinforces victim mentality.

What confuses me about DEI initiatives is that I always thought the equality goal was for race, etc to not “matter” (aka be a factor in how we make decisions).

However, DEI places an inordinate amount of focus on race, s-xual orientation, etc. so, that’s where you lose me.

Why?

Are wheelchair ramps bad? Left-handed scissors? Braille on signs?

Any problem?

It is an oversimplification to say DEI is about focus on race or s-xual orientation. That's the manifestation from those who object. "I don't want to support them."

And it's tempered in logical arguments. "Just because they are black doesn't mean they are disadvantaged."

By making it about race or s-x, opponents can use bigotry to ignore evidence. The data shows that black employees, women and non-conformant s-xes are discriminated against systematically. So are other groups. Remember the "how many _____ does it take to sc--w in a lightbulb" so-called jokes?

DEI, at its core, is about raising awareness. This is hard. No one wants to be told they are a bigot. Most of the people I work with daily are. They don't mean to be. Sometimes it isn't injury towards "minorities" as much as it is favoritism towards others. A man in my department was sleeping with a director. No one ever said he was sleeping around. He was praised for sleeping with a "hottie". A woman in that position would have been vilified.

You shouldn't care if someone is a particular race or orientation. That's DEI. The moment you do, whether as being against DEI or not, you highlight the need for awareness.

So, are wheelchair ramps bad? Left-handed scissors? Braille on signs?

If you answer no to those examples you should have no problem with DEI even when it includes a black woman or a transgender person.

And if you have a problem with the handicapped or left-handed, can you share why?

As a woman, I can’t say dei helped me.

Going to push back on this. DEI may not have helped you as called DEI, but similar efforts certainly did. Women couldn't vote. Women couldn't have a bank account. Women needed their husband to approve their working. Women couldn't get credit. Women couldn't divorce and had to endure spousal abuse.

All of those things, and many more, are part of DEI. It's just a branding term.

And your examples of quotas and favoritism highlight the why it's needed, whether called DEI or something else.

As for HR and companies being feckless in supporting women and others, again, that's the reason to fight for such things even if you believe you made it on your own. Look at Tesla. They've been a racist company since the beginning. Sued. Fined. Still racist.

We aren't as bad. But when I look at a white board and white or Asian co-workers with few women? We can do better and clearly cannot get there without conscious effort.

There is not an ERG for whites. Discrimination.

That isn't true. It wasn't true prior to Muldrow in most cases either.

The idea of discrimination when the objective is equality is laughable. It's akin to objecting when malls provide wheelchairs to people with mobility challenges. Yes, they can be availed to those who can walk, but as a finite resource it would be cruel to have able-bodied people hoard them.

The question is why an ERG would bother those who don't attend. I don't get upset when I don't attend a call center stress management forum.

The only reason for ERG, DEI and other programs is to address systemic challenges that people haven't fixed naturally. Consider the 100 years between the Civil War and Brown. Every single thing whites could do against blacks was done. Mu---r, arson, segregation. And when things finally improved, the white population wants to get back to that by claiming they are the injured party.

Do you want those not-of-your-tribe to be lesser? Anti-DEI says yes! Why would anyone support that unless they're a bigot?

There is not an ERG for whites. Discrimination.

As a woman, I can’t say dei helped me. Every single time I got an award, recognition, or a promotion, there were talks about either favoritism (thinly veiled to be about romantic/s-xual interest) or that I received them because of some DEI quota. This came from both men and other women. It never could have been about what I actually delivered (which was significantly better , measurably, than anyone on my team), instead, DEI became a way to discredit any thing I could do because I’m a woman. I was told that I should apply to jobs because “they’re looking for women and minorities anyways”—which, made me not want to move up in my career ever.

I am not discrediting DEI, but when you have such a backwards, conservative culture, it doesn’t work. There is no teeth in reporting such things to HR either, so I don’t understand the point. I guess it at least forced these same kind of dudes to hire women all else considered, although I’m sure in their mind women are unqualified and not suited to a career (actual things I have heard in the workplace). So yeah, I guess if the difference is in me not being able to get promoted vs me getting promoted and everyone claiming it’s because of some nebulous DEI “quota,” I’d take the latter.

But as a whole, Schwabs culture, at least in my department, is absolutely counter to ANY initiative that works towards “diversity and inclusion.”

All of us have much more in common with each other, than we have in common with members of the EC.

They do not care about you, Mr. Very Good White Employee. Just remain easily controlled, my man.

Is the "DEI training" actually effective? Clearly not, and I don't think it fools many people, when white guys run the place ...

I think we're seeing frustration with USA corporate culture from all walks of life. Some of you have simply chosen to put the blame on people of color and women (especially the mythical army of trans women) rather than on your actual oppressors.

Old white guys want to hold on to power. It's not complicated. Inherent in our present oligarchy.

What confuses me about DEI initiatives is that I always thought the equality goal was for race, etc to not “matter” (aka be a factor in how we make decisions).

However, DEI places an inordinate amount of focus on race, s-xual orientation, etc. so, that’s where you lose me.

The author lost me when I read, "underrepresented groups." Blah. DEI speak.

If you have to meet quotas how are you hiring the best person based on merit?

DEI isn’t about quotas.

And those programs that have quotas do so when awareness and hiring practices are still out of sync with the population. The reality is that there is a lot of bigotry in the workplace. Search “Tesla racism” as an example.

It took a literal war to address slavery in this nation. And then another 100 years and more laws to really make things close. They still aren’t. Red lining still exists. Black families have 1/10 th the assets of white. Look at our customers! Sit in a branch office for a couple hours.

The only folks worrying about quotas are frequently the same ones that required them.

Bigots gonna bigot. Call it affirmative action, DEI (which is very different), BLM or just not being a male appendage. These clowns need to feel that their white maleness isn’t an advantage and they struggled with all the same issues that everyone else did. All the while they know people unlike them deal with harassment and exclusion daily. That’s why they don’t want equality or equity. They don’t want to lose that white privilege card. Or the new Trump Card that trumps everything.

If you have to meet quotas how are you hiring the best person based on merit?