Just got feedback that I need to hire a more diverse team. My team is 70% women and I am an Asian women myself. What exactly are they looking for? This is the main feedback in my promo case and I have no idea how to fix it but don’t want to sound combative.

You should ask. My take is that it seems that they want you to hire a diverse team like men, different races, etc. You seem to have a pretty homogeneous team.

Are you having conversations with HR about getting these candidates in the interview pool.

You also have to ask yourself? Are you turning off these candidates with your management style? Do other managers have diverse (in other ways) candidates? Is there back chatter that says you aren't favorable to diverse (in other ways) employees? If you have 70% women, that would be considered diverse in many tech companies, so they are trying to tell you something in a round about way. Ask probing questions to figure out what they are saying.

Don't get down though it may also just mean that they want you to have men and that makes them comfortable.

Diversity: Race, sex, socioeconomic status, disability etc.

In the context of corporate America - Black, Hispanics, and Indigenous populations are the populations that lack representation in tech and leadership roles. I am Hispanic and my entire org is 90% Asian with a few Blacks at lower levels - while that may scream “diversity” for some - the issue itself still remains. I would not consider my team diverse because they’ve sprinkled a few people in to meet a PR quota.

However being that this “diversity goal” stems from years of systematic issues it’s not that easy to find talent that is needed for the job. It takes time to level the playing field. As well as inclusion being the focus not just diversity 🤦🏻‍♀️ People do not want a ‘seat at the table’ when the still have to fight to be heard and accepted.

Fun fact: Woman are 100% of the time being asked to lead diversity efforts in addition to their current roles. Hate it 🙃

Black and Hispanic people

I think they have the wrong focus. HR should work with hiring managers to ensure you have a diverse pool of candidates then hire to most qualified. This will help increase diversity and have an awesome team. It also means taking away pointless parameters like having an MBA or xyz vanity qualifications that aren’t necessary or could easily be learned.

Hire more men. Should be 50/50 to optimize diversity

You have to hire more ivy league white men.

Serious thought. You're a leader of people, and can't answer this question yourself? Perhaps that's what's stopping the promotion.

At your level I suspect you should know 1) what it means to build a diverse team and why diversity matters in business beyond a tick box or a 'diversity team ranking' exercise within the org. And if you don't know that then 2) know that you need to clarify expectations with your manager (not be told on a forum by strangers).

You should ask them to clarify diverse by what measure? Gender? Race? Politically? Sexual orientation wise? What if you for example hire more gay men but then it skews the team politically? It feels like an impossibly vague standard that's set up for you to fail, so basically you should get it clarified in writing what the objective standard is so that you can actually hope to meet it some day.

They are probably looking for you to hire from underrepresented groups in the US that’s Black, Latin X and Native American.

Pretty sure hiring based on sex, race, or any other protected class is highly illegal.

Hire more white men lol

Isn't the whole Diversity Hire thing a slippery slope though?

"Diversity" is not a well defined goal. Since there are so many different ways to classify people such as skin-color, sex, sexual-orientation, country-of-origin, and socio-economic status etc to name a few; the permutations just explode very quickly. With a finite team size, how can you ever be objectively "Diverse"?

No one knows the answer, obviously. The decision therefore is generally just left to be a subjective one in the hands of someone, most likely with their own biases one way or the other.

Doesn't sound like a good way to run anything IMHO.

Just to be clear, I'm not a white guy, so keep your "white male defence" comments to yourselves. I have suffered prejudice all my life and continue to do so. But adjudication of "diversity" does more harm than good in my experience.

LOL, this is hilarious. The 'diversity' BS strikes again. It will slowly but steadily drag any team/company down until it can no longer function. Good luck.

Hello all - went and had a chat with the head of my group. He mentioned that I needed to recruit more engineers from underrepresented racial backgrounds. He praised me for my team’s existing diversity and mentioned my team is in a prime spot to recruit more diverse talent - more than other teams, hence the feedback I got.

He acknowledged the pipeline issue I mentioned, but told me it’s my responsibility to get involved in earlier part of the process (ie sourcing at events, HBCU, etc) and push for their candidacy with the hiring committee.

It was fair feedback and there are some concrete next steps, anyone here know of any android engineers from underrepresented racial backgrounds please let me know!

Know what else promotes diversity and encourages diverse candidates? When they see diversity in leadership, not just at the lower levels. SO, they should promote YOU if they actually care about diversity instead of this attempt to hire for the sake of diversity alone.

It looks like you discriminate against men. There should be no reason if you look on the qualification itself only to be 70% of women on the team.

Also promotion driven hiring is adorable. Big tech at it’s best.

Ask yourself what other minorities exist in the world

How about you just hire the best person for for job regardless of any other identifying characteristic? We've been telling people to stop being racists, sexists, and homophobes for decades, but now we tell them it's ok to discriminate as long as it's in favor of the right groups. I hope that one day humanity sees all of this DEI stuff for the hypocrisy it is.

I’d ask for what diversity they mean specifically in writing

How did you manage to hire 70% women?

Hire me a brown guy 😂 middle eastern story of my life :)