If You Became an MD, or PM -- Would You Really Care If Your Group Was Diverse?

If it benefits p/l yes

otherwise no 

Don’t care whatsoever

Intellectual diversity is important, I'd want people with different ideas, different thought process all on the same team. I think it would lead to some great results. As for skin color, relegion, gender, I don't care that much. I wouldn't deny anyone based on those things, and I wouldn't deliberately create a "boys club" but I also wouldn't create quotas for my group based on those things.

Intellectual diversity is the most important thing....the rest I don't have a preference for either way -- I'd focus purely on hiring the best candidate 

I sure as hell don’t want an entire team of upper middle class white dudes who all went to private school their entire lives 

Firm culture gets totally fucked if you don't, and that makes it hard to retain talent. You are a fool if you don't worry about this.

Normally it is a reflection of your hiring, promoting, and development process (as well as all the filtering that happens before you even find a candidate). Not always, but the outcomes can be helpful to understand whether you are making mistakes in the way you form and structure your team. 

What I’m saying is that when you look at the “best”/“smartest”/etc (including innovation, creativity, etc as attributes) across education and industry the population is diverse. If I were to ask someone to bring me back the 100 “smartest” people I doubt they would all be white men (just using this as an example). 
 

So if I look at my team and it isn’t diverse then either people are being filtered out before they get to me (qualified pool is low in diversity), I am not hiring the best people (there is some bias in how I’m recruiting), or I do not have the right environment and comp structure (best people are finding better opportunities, maybe people don’t want to join a company that isn’t diverse so I miss out on talent). #1 above can be an issue and is hard to address and measure, #2 and #3 are definitely things I worry about. There are obviously other scenarios but those are the 3 that jump to mind. 

I would seek the right people to do the job.

I wouldn’t seek out diversity, but would have no problem if the team became diverse.

Which group of people is more "diverse"?

• A group of Americans of different races
• A group of white people from various European countries

You would be a fool not to care. If your group is homogenous you will have biases that will lead you to overlook big problems- I have seen this happen and cost firms money.
Yes, I am coming at this from an angle of viewpoint diversity. However in my opinion true viewpoint diversity is likely to lead to ethnic/other types of demographic diversity as well. You may end up with a team that is majority white/asian, and I think that is ok. However as some others have pointed out, if your team is 10 white + asian dudes from Greenwich who went to Exeter and H/Y/P, it is very likely to result in groupthink.

No, I wouldn't give a shit about that. I'm not going to lie, if I were the only "brown" person in my group, I would feel slightly uncomfortable at first. But eventually once you start talking to the people you work with, you start to "integrate" and and race doesn't matter anymore.

I would want to have some diversity if possible but I would not hire anyone who was unqualified for the job.  Another factor that would influence the extent of diversity would be demographics of clients.

If I were running an OnlyFans group, perhaps I’d care about what people looked like or their genders. In the real world, don’t care, give me talent.

I would hire people based on their abilities only, which is how it should be, instead of this reverse racism/sexism called affirmative action

I used to oversee contracts of Department of Defense management consulting projects. Some of them had clauses which required we (the consultancy) hire a subcontractor that is diverse in a very unique way. 

Sometimes it was race or gender specific and also we had Indian tribes or even disabled people. Diversity required. 

In an ideal world, you would hire purely based on ability regardless of race, gender or religion.  However, the world is not ideal and people have biases. Some clients might feel comfortable just knowing that the group is willing to diversify a bit.   If you are going to structure a group with everyone being a White Anglosaxon Protestant male, you may lose some business.  A black person might feel more comfortable with giving you money, if you have a black guy on the team.  I could say the same thing about Jewish people or any other group.  It does not have to be some affirmative action approach. It is sometimes good for business to diversify a bit.  

In the insurance industry, sometimes people get hired because he or she is Hispanic or Asian because the clients are Hispanic or Asian.  Language certainly plays a role here but that is not the only reason companies hire specific people.   

There are many interpretations for "diverse". You only look at it from a race perspective it seems. 

Diversity is needed in teams. You need people from different backgrounds, experiences, interests, ideas. I think many people discount that too much on this forum. You also need people that are good at different things. For example have few that are excellent with excel/models. Have people that are great communicators and you can see in a leadership/sales role in the future, etc. 

You should always be seeking to have a diverse group in that regard, I feel like. It is another thing to go out and explicitly look for black or hispanic folks for the sake of "diversity". 

Yes. I wouldn't pursue diversity > talent but having a diverse team with different perspectives, styles, and approach is invaluable. If everybody on a team thinks and operates the same way it is counterproductive. The more perspectives you can have the better equipped you are to be making the type of highly detailed decisions that we have to make in finance/management. 

I'd want people with finance/accounting degrees, eng degrees, and arts degrees, from as many different backgrounds as possible without sacrificing talent quality.

Frankly I see this as a complete no brainer and agree with some of the other commenters saying diversity (not of race) is needed.

Who cares? Your and everyone else's definition of diversity is entirely subjective. Is it race-based? Regional? Cultural? Geographic? Religious? I guarantee you pick me any one of those categories and I can put together a group of acquaintances who will meet one example but fail another (5 brown-haired pasty white guys from different parts of the world with totally different opinions on politics/religion/ethics vs 5 men/women of different ethnicities/cultural backgrounds who will spout the exact same political/religious stances).

Nobody should give a fuck about your demographics when choosing you for a job. They in and of themselves have almost nothing to do with your job unless you're doing business in very monochromatic countries (IE good luck being black and working for a bank in China/Hong Kong). What matters are the following:

• do you sell yourself well?
• are you in the top percentiles of the skills required for your job?
• have multiple interviewers/members of the current team judged you as both a good fit and a quality candidate with potential for growth/to have an outsized impact?
• do you think you are a good fit for the type of team dynamics the leadership is trying to build? (fuck the people who go work for a small startup team then cry about how they hate being a part of a tiny team with lean resources vs a large corporate infrastructure)
• do you bring something of value to the table? (relationships, a niche skill set, capital, knowledge expertise, IP, etc.)
• are you respectable and likeable?

If the answer to all those questions is yes for one candidate and maybe one of them is a no/weaker yes for another, then the first should get the job. The only thing that matters is do you produce? It shouldn't matter if they're a white kid who went to Harvard and is the son of a congressman or a black kid who came from some tiny village in Ghana. Now there's of course the inarguable fact that the latter is probably hungrier and did a lot more work to even get to the plate to be considered for a position in the first place, and THAT will be taken into account during interviews as the employer gets to ask detailed questions about the candidate's background story. But if they don't interview well and can't communicate the effort they've put in and the things they've accomplished up until this point, sorry not sorry, better luck next time.

Anyone who says purely being diverse from an external POV is enough to achieve "superior returns" and will "outperform less diverse teams" is talking out of their ass. They're just regurgitating the same woke studies that argue there's some magical pay gap between the sexes even though the science already established men and women are exactly the same and only separated by a declaration from the individual regarding how they identify. For Christ's sake, how many teams do you think Elizabeth Warren has been on that got to say they were diverse because they had a Native American? It's all bullshit.

Replacing "coding" with finance. Same thing. Hire productive people who create value, not diverse people. The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but people who fall into both groups are unicorns.

If I became an MD, I would not even look at my underlings as human beings (like most MDs).

Does that answer your question?

Kind of disappointing how not diverse firms like Vista is. 

I think you always need a couple people who think differently, but I would largely not care.

Competence is such a rarity in this world. You have to do everything in your power to get/retain those people. It will almost certainly come at the expense of diversity aka efforts by lib HR people to hire people who think exactly like them but have different genitals and skin color.

lol no - hire the ppl I like the most/think are the best. simple stuff here

Big time. I'd want people making money in the morning, people making money in the afternoon, people making money in the evening, and people making money at night.

I am a woman but hate when a firm only looks at me as value for being a woman (happened twice before already). I believe in merit and don't care about what a person is/looks like. It scares me even that statement is considered controversial now and would be sent to HR for that.  

I see a lot of privileged people of color that went to elite private schools, come from money and connections land internships through the diversity programs while I see friends of mine that are white/asian/middle eastern come from little money and no connections not land anything due to not having any diversity programs offered to them.

So the idea of diversity programs is to give equitable opportunity to applicants. Okay.  So shouldn't we instead focus on people in disadvantaged/lower socio-economic positions? It doesn't make sense to me why a poor white/asian kid with no connections struggles more to land a decent internship because it's based on skin color instead of  family money/connections or lack there of...

You're missing the point of diversity. There are lots of very smart, very intelligent people out there. Unfortunately, the way people move into highly coveted roles is by being on the inside. So yes, your team of asians and white people are killing it from a pnl standpoint, but you could get even better returns if you found those smart people who were on the outside. It's the same concept as buying a stock at value.

Hire the best people across the board for P&L, regardless of background, and have an inclusive and healthy team environment with people who mutually respect each other and will make money. Regardless of optics, all upper class white males is not the best way to go and you will create an environment that is unwelcoming for top talent who do not fit this background, having female representation and people of color is important. People tend to hire people with the same background as them because of internal biases. This is not the best way to do things. Diversity is important but talent is what matters most.

And hot-take, as someone who is LGBTQ+, I don't think that that should count as diversity, but that's a discussion for another day. 

If I was an LP looking at a consumer fund, I would be very suspicious if there were no women on the team given the massive blindspots they'll have to major categories. Same if there were no Hispanic people on your team but you're a large CPG-focused firm in the US

You're also going to drive away highly talented people if they see a team of 10 white senior dudes. 3 or 5 or 7 white dudes of 10? I get it, especially if the firm is older. But if it is clear only white men have ever succeeded at your firm, you are going to have really smart people be suspicious about what's going on with your promotion process

You idiots. The goal of IB analyst hiring is just to find another monkey to work to death. It's not rocket science. Being reasonably intelligent, personable, and hard working will get you far. The message is give mediocrity of all color, class, and gender the chance to slave in excel and powerpoint. 

Sure there are probably some analysts that will crush the job. Some analysts will turn into rainmaker MDs later on in their careers. Great candidates come from every background. Let's say EB wants as many of those future MDs as possible. Some of them are "diverse" and are going yeet out of your frat house. To retain diverse talent, you have to not alienate diverse talent.

Look at WSO. If you think that the best "talent" goes to IB instead of a hedge fund or MF PE out of grad, that's hilarious. Quant traders at Citadel earn 250k first year and have work life balance. If you think white bros are more "social", I suggest you isolate one from its people and watch him squirm. People who are genuinely interesting, nice, and social will get in regardless of diversity programs. 

I saw that someone mentioned something about intellectual diversity throughout banking and I think there's something more to be said. 

It seems like almost every post in the last week regarding diversity has revolved around recruiting and the idea that being diverse leads to an "easier" time in recruiting/job placement. And it's possible that a stance like this is founded in some truth. But the operating word here is some.

I think that everyone should be able to agree that it is quite literally impossible to understand how someone else feels. And so, it is also impossible for anyone to have any idea about the way that any individual from a diverse community feels. I don't give a fuck if that so-called diverse person grew up on the upper east side in a fully staffed penthouse with platinum silverware and someone to wipe their ass. It literally doesn't matter, because people from diverse communities live their day to day lives experiencing wildly different things (certain stresses, unique emotions, a need for constant awareness, uncomfortable social interaction) than the rest of the population (the rest of the population being those who aren't traditionally considered diverse). 

Following suit, we should all be able to agree that people with unique experiences have a characteristically unique outlook on the world (forgive me for this seemingly obvious train of thought, it's going somewhere I assure you). And in banking, that fucking matters. Sure, there is an element of diversity recruiting that is rooted in appeasing society, rights groups, certain standard quotas, etc. But diversity goes way, way, WAY beyond a fucking quota.

Diversity in the workplace, quite literally means intellectual diversity. And that's why we should all care about it. I cannot begin to understand why someone would not want to work with a diverse team. You would have unmatched access to an array of experience and insight that is impossible to attain otherwise. Without diversity, you're hearing opinions from people with the same experiences, the same level of professional opportunity, the same feelings. It's bland, and it's fucking useless. I want, no I need a diverse team. Doing anything else begs the question, the fuck are you doing?

Placing a trade, putting together a deal, researching an industry, analyzing a company, cold calling potential clients, I don't care what I'm doing. I want to be surrounded by people with different life experience. I want to be able to turn to my left and then to my right and see two different people with entirely different views/understandings of the world as we live in it. That's what will set you up for success. A workplace without diversity, in this day and age, leads to gross neglect and a failed bank. And perhaps that's a wild oversimplification, but I'm 98% sure of it.

Banking thrives on differing opinions and unique stances. And an emphasis on diversity ensures that those opinions and stances will continue to drive banks forward. Give me a motherfucking smorgasbord. Black, orange, purple, green, gay, straight, woman, man, both, I don't give two fucks. Tell me your opinion and tell me why. Give me your take on the world. Give me your take on business. Give me your experience. Tell me everything, and help me to make the best possible decision. Then let's get fucking rich. 

I don't care if my team ends up becoming all white dudes, all black females, all trannies with fake vaginas and fake dicks, bunch of short dudes, bunch of people on wheelchairs, or even straight up all Martians. I JUST WANT TO WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE CAPABLE AND PROVIDE ME WITH DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT. 

Trying to have diversity for the sake of diversity is the DUMBEST THING EVER. 

And if anybody tells me I'm somehow racist or doing it "wrong" or some shit because I'm not hiring enough "under-represented" minorities. They can kindly go fuck themselves.

There should only be 2 criteria when hiring someone - 1) Can this person do the job?, 2) Is this person gonna think the exact same as the rest of the team or bring new perspectives. That's fucking it

It would concern me if my group was totally homogenous. And it would make me seriously consider how we were hiring. With that said, I do not think "diversity" based on continental origin is very meaningful at all.

FD - I'm biracial (white & black) and never felt like I fit in with any race, so my comments are skewed accordingly.

I understand from a biological standpoint why people want to be around those that look like them (evolution predisposes us to be xenophobic), but I've never quite gotten exactly why fellow black people feel more comfortable with other blacks in the office or feel less comfortable due to an absence of blacks. I've literally never worked with another biracial person, I don't look white, I don't look black, I've never felt uncomfortable in my own skin at the workplace. 

I do think the industry has a bad habit of only recruiting from places that by their nature lack diversity, but that's less of an issue of overt racism and more of banks being stuck in their ways and shortcutting their way to success. it's WAY easier to just hire all of your grads from the south from UNC, Duke, and Emory even though you'd most certainly find cream of the crop talent at Spelman and Morehouse, so HR just sticks to old recruiting channels and spends the money they'd spend on seeing other schools on social media campaigns with black squares and other self fellating imagery to prove wokeness. I think diversity is not about checking a box, it's getting out of our shell of saying everyone needs to be a finance major with a 3.7 GPA from one of these 20 schools to succeed (otherwise you'll be lucky to be the needle in a haystack nontarget). start recruiting from other majors, develop co-ops with schools to do rotations through an organization. educate everyone on what the different parts of financial services are.

if I could wave a magic wand I'd start with changing how HR does recruiting altogether. I believe that if much of the current behaviors are altered and a wider variety of people are educated on careers in financial services, diversity would improve without a reduction in quality. 

now, to specifically answer your question. I'm one of 3 equity partners on my group, and by way of me and several women on our team, we're diverse already. however, this was not an explicit goal and we weren't always diverse. it was 100% white before me, and 0 women were in non-operations roles until about 5y ago. the role we were looking to fill 5y ago was best fit by a candidate who happened to be a female. ditto for the next role.

if I was starting from scratch, I wouldn't focus on saying "well I really need a woman here" I'd focus on what ROLES I needed and then during the interview process attempt to check my biases (I have a natural predisposition to favor women and favor black people, I can't tell you why, it's what Harvard's implicit association test taught me) so if I get an Asian-American candidate, I need to be extra cautious to not be discerning moreso than other candidates, and asking myself constantly "am I favoring this Lebanese woman because I like mediterranean women, or because she's got talent?" "am I subconsciously judging this Taiwanese-American kid harder than the black kid who came before him? I better stop that" and shit like that. becoming aware of one's biases is a key step in allowing diversity to happen organically, without taking away from the ultimate goal of getting DAT BREAD.