DEI became the very thing it swore to destroy

DEI has taken some crazy turns. The kind of preferential treatment women get at my bank is out of this world (US bank, London office).

Last summer, we had some female interns who had never heard of a DCF before. Meanwhile, the average male candidate had multiple SAs and OCs under his belt. And still, the offer rate was 50/50.

Sure, some mediocre candidates use DEI as an excuse for their failure. And some women are absolute beasts that fully deserve where they are.

But seeing recruiting from the other side and realizing how serious the double standard is makes me pretty annoyed. It's frustrating to have a charismatic candidate sitting in front of you, with excellent grades and internship experience, and yet the spot goes to a sweetie who spontaneously decided that a career in high finance was right for her after all.

TL;DR: Many candidates out there would have landed a spot if they were born into the other gender. DEI became the very thing it swore to destroy.

8 Comments
 

It didn't become anything. It was always a contradiction from the start.

"If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 

Not long around to have experienced the beginning of DEI. But in theory, it sounds nice - giving everyone an equal chance. Though, that‘s obviously not what it is today…

 
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But it was never about creating an equal chance. It explicitly gives preference towards a  group that's arbitrarily assigned "underrepresented" status despite if being possible to make that statistically true for any group when choosing the unit of measurement. Nothing in life is equal and populations do not behave/perform equally on a broad basis, so why on earth would it make to have "equal representation" in anything, let alone narrowing it to the top ~10% of high paying jobs in a handful of sectors? You won't gender representation called for in trash pickup/construction crews or racial representation in the NBA/NFL. It slants in just one direction and digging past kiddy pool-depth it's easy to see it doesn't make sense on its face.   

"If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 

Gorlock the Destroyer apparently landed top spots at GS and MS. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
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"If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion

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