The amount of focus we do on DEI , self congratulatory, first world mental health, RADIO, OCTO, EPIC, VMC, VCF, and many other things that don't result in new innovations. We did hypervisor and vMotion, and that's it. Anything else was acquired or assisted by Dell (e.g vSAN).
What happens to game changing innovation. Nothing. Hence a scavenger like Broadcom came a long.
The irony that true DEI discussions happen on an anonymous message board vs. internal VMware DEI programs should tell you all you need to know about the effectiveness of DEI programs.
Our natural reaction is to hire people who look like us, talk like us, and are mirror images of ourselves
Let’s apply that logic to hair color. So my natural reaction is to hire people with the same hair color as I have. Ok, so this is bad. I’ll make a mental effort to overcome my 100,000 years of evolutionary bias. I succeed!
Now who is before me is evaluated on what? Well it can’t be hair color because I’m cured of that sin. So what criteria do I pick?
Shall weinterview as they do in music, with a blind audition? Sounds great! So then my criteria would be based on my evaluation of skill, since I am blind to hair color - that is the morally correct position. Sounds like the society you want to live in - post hair color society - post racist society.
But instead, the arguments I hear is that we must explicitly not be a post racist society, we must make explicit affirmative action decisions based on race to adjust for past discrimination.
At what point do we not do that? After an African American was elected President? Not enough progress? Do you have an end game here or just a perpetual airing of grievances for the end of time?
management push for the less qualified candidate
Let's pause right there. This is a commonly spread belief that is not true. As a hiring manager, I see this issue on every req I hire for.
There is no truly perfect candidate. Most are 70-80% there and we expect them to learn the rest on the job. Every now and then someone is 90% close, and we jump on them. DEI is not hiring a less qualified person. It's saying that you have two candidates who are each 70% matched for the job. Both need room to grow into the role. Our natural reaction is to hire people who look like us, talk like us, and are mirror images of ourselves. DEI breaks you of that and tells you there are equally qualified people that you would not initially choose.
Signed,
A white, straight, cisgender male.
Let it go. None of this affects your job.
DEI is a great goal, but when it becomes forced (say, 15% of management target bonus), and management push for the less qualified candidate so they make their bonus -- the company suffers.
This prompts one to ask: Is vmware hiring people because they are the best candidate to do the job, or not?
Its really sad how many people are on here making nasty comments about DEI. Do any of you ever stop to think about why this exists in the first place? Its because it wasn't that long ago when in the tech industry as well as white collar jobs in general that the workforce was almost exclusively, 100% white male. If you were a person of color, a woman, or heaven forbid- g-y, well good luck because chances are you weren't getting in. And even now we are so far off from treating people equally. And as seen what has been happening lately, many people, including many on the right are trying to push back and now using members of the LGBT community as their scapegoats.
Let it go. None of this affects your job. And if you have a problem with it then you might want to ask yourself why. The answer might reveal something about yourself.
Yawn. Go Woke Go Broke is not a thing. You may be politically triggered by DEI, and it may be exciting to daydream about it causing the company to implode, but the company is still moving along.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/woke-companies-broke-profits-1234710724/
Luckily for VMware, we won't go broke because we go woke. vSphere and VCF are such huge innovations that they are literally bankrolling everything. DEI is fine. But this unhealthy activism should stop.
vmware is not alone in the DEI vision quest. It arrived in Silicon Valley all at once and affected all companies at once. The management at vmware is not common to any other company. One must look at the commonalities.
Could it be Venture Capitalists.
Or maybe the board of directors?
Both are shared across many companies.
As a valley-wide phenomenon, it cannot be driven by the management at a single company.