• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

CDPR CEO refutes the company's DEI hiring allegation: We hire based on merit and talent alone

winjer

Gold Member
So some of these companies have gone from proudly affirming they use DEI, to pretending they don't use it.
And companies like SweetBaby Inc, hides their client list.
It's like they know what they are doing is wrong, but they keep on doing it, while trying to hide it from consumers.
This is a cult mentality, of denying reality and substituting with politics.
 
She looks normal for a DEI director.
This is what I expect a DEI director to look like:


LEsJY2y.jpeg
 

GymWolf

Member
They mean they do both. You have DEI programmes and hire based on merit.

Which is the right way to go.

One exclude the other, it you put any requisite unrelated to talent, you are simply not hiring the best person available, full stop.

Of course if you can only hire minorities or women you are gonna chose the most telented people in that group, that was never the point of the discussion

duh-sarcastic.gif


Right way to go if you simply don't want to hire the best people available, i agree.
 

Woopah

Member
One exclude the other, it you put any requisite unrelated to talent, you are simply not hiring the best person available, full stop.

Of course if you can only hire minorities or women you are gonna chose the most telented people in that group, that was never the point of the discussion

duh-sarcastic.gif


Right way to go if you simply don't want to hire the best people available, i agree.
If you hire the best programmers, you can't choose their skin color or their gender. If you hire people based on their skin color or gender, you won't get the best. You can't have it both ways.
Correct. When hiring people, you shouldn't base it on their gender or skin colour. You should hire based on merit.

The misunderstanding people have is that DEI means you have to hire people based on skin colour or gender.

Where I work does DEI and hires based on merit. There's lots of DEI activity that doesn't have anything to do with hiring at all.
 

GymWolf

Member
Correct. When hiring people, you shouldn't base it on their gender or skin colour. You should hire based on merit.

The misunderstanding people have is that DEI means you have to hire people based on skin colour or gender.

Where I work does DEI and hires based on merit. There's lots of DEI activity that doesn't have anything to do with hiring at all.
Why even call it dei program then? I just don't understand.

If you don't exclude any skin color or gender it's just simple hiring.

Is the dei name just performative bullshit then?

It must be one or the other, there is not a middle place.

You have a dei program where you have skin/gender requisites or you don't have one and just hire the best people.
 
Last edited:

KungFucius

King Snowflake
The way DEI works at my company is simple, for all roles, the expectation is that a diverse slate of candidates are interviewed. This is based only on sex and race. For roles that are so specialized, which many are, that there are not enough with the required skills to do so, you can get an exemption after you have waited enough time for applications to come in. That is it. There is no expectation on hiring, just interviewing.

The worst possible outcome here is that they put in token people who meet some diversity criteria because they really want to hire one other person and don't want to wait or get an exemption, or maybe one of 2. Still those people will have made it through some selection gates and meet minimum requirements. It does not remotely result in poor candidates getting a job. Each hiring manager is accountable for bringing in people who work out, they would not hire based on race or gender.

If my past company, semiconductor sector, did similar, they might actually interview some white people, but instead it was mostly Chinese. Seriously the place went from mostly English conversations near cubicles to mostly Mandarin in the 4 years I worked there. Chinese managers were hiring Chinese graduates from the same groups they got their PhDs from. It certainly helped when working with TSMC, but not with Intel (who mattered then) or Samsung. It's a shame really, the work there was challenging and rewarding, just backbreaking and nonstop.
 

HJuggernaut

Neo Member
I honestly don't believe CDPR, it was very clear that a lot of SJW stuff was shoehorned into the game, and I even saw a fat girl with pink hair being part of their promotional crew. The game itself felt like an unfinished mess, non of the promises about the game were kept so its hard to know how poz this game would have been. Also their cafeteria is vegan only so that should tell you a bunch..
 

timothet

Member
Didn't the rumours say no Geralt and you play as Ciri/a woman? 🤔
CDPR were pretty clear since the release of Blood&Wine that this expansion marked end of Geralt's story and further games would get new protagonist. As for Ciri being new main character, it's a rumour, so being mad about it at this point is silly. And tbh it would't really bother me if it turned out to be true as long as story and gameplay is good.
 
Last edited:
Correct. When hiring people, you shouldn't base it on their gender or skin colour. You should hire based on merit.

The misunderstanding people have is that DEI means you have to hire people based on skin colour or gender.

Where I work does DEI and hires based on merit. There's lots of DEI activity that doesn't have anything to do with hiring at all.
I only see 2 options:
1- You were fed lies by your DEI department. It´s standard procedure for them, because if they actually told people what they are all about people wouldn´t accept it.
2- You are trying to gaslight us into believing DEI doesn´t promote discrimination based on skin color and sex
 

geary

Member
I wouldnt mind yo play as Ciri. Feels like a natural progression of the game. If Ciri in W3 was a boy named Cirion, would any of you had any problem to be the main character in W4? Not every women MC is scandalos.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
I only see 2 options:
1- You were fed lies by your DEI department. It´s standard procedure for them, because if they actually told people what they are all about people wouldn´t accept it.
2- You are trying to gaslight us into believing DEI doesn´t promote discrimination based on skin color and sex
You are making stuff up. HR doesn't hire, they facilitate that. Hiring managers hire people to work for them. Do you even work for a company and have any knowledge of hiring practices based on direct experience?

There is a question that all applications must include where applicants can choose to identify racial background and gender. This is a federal requirement that I think is tied to affirmative action. The most HR can do is to create policies about who is considered a candidate. And this isn't even DEI, it is something that predates any of that, but now gets lumped in by ignorant people who are looking for some reason to hate someone. At my company the requirement is to try to interview a diverse slate of candidates based on this information. They do not require it, they require that effort is put in and enough time is given to try to get diverse candidates for all positions. There is no hiring requirement. Managers hire the best candidate because they have to manage them. If you want to cry about this, all you have as a possible bad outcome is that there is a qualified white guy who wasn't interviewed because they choose a few better white guys and a couple of non white men and women to interview instead of this poor mid white guy. No manager is going to hire an inferior candidate. They pick the best that they interviewed, and then the second best if that doesn't work. Their job is to hire and you should assume they are doing their best because that is what most people do for their jobs. They do what they think is best so they can get credit for doing good and move up the chain.

Most DEI whiners think somehow hiring is political. Most candidates keep that shit to themselves and focus on the interview. The only demographic data is the required section and you can choose not to identify. I am not sure how that plays out. I could see some recruiters respecting that, and others tossing the resume in the trash because it could very well be a red flag.
 
You are making stuff up. HR doesn't hire, they facilitate that. Hiring managers hire people to work for them. Do you even work for a company and have any knowledge of hiring practices based on direct experience?

There is a question that all applications must include where applicants can choose to identify racial background and gender. This is a federal requirement that I think is tied to affirmative action. The most HR can do is to create policies about who is considered a candidate. And this isn't even DEI, it is something that predates any of that, but now gets lumped in by ignorant people who are looking for some reason to hate someone. At my company the requirement is to try to interview a diverse slate of candidates based on this information. They do not require it, they require that effort is put in and enough time is given to try to get diverse candidates for all positions. There is no hiring requirement. Managers hire the best candidate because they have to manage them. If you want to cry about this, all you have as a possible bad outcome is that there is a qualified white guy who wasn't interviewed because they choose a few better white guys and a couple of non white men and women to interview instead of this poor mid white guy. No manager is going to hire an inferior candidate. They pick the best that they interviewed, and then the second best if that doesn't work. Their job is to hire and you should assume they are doing their best because that is what most people do for their jobs. They do what they think is best so they can get credit for doing good and move up the chain.

Most DEI whiners think somehow hiring is political. Most candidates keep that shit to themselves and focus on the interview. The only demographic data is the required section and you can choose not to identify. I am not sure how that plays out. I could see some recruiters respecting that, and others tossing the resume in the trash because it could very well be a red flag.
I don´t live in America, but I have heard from somebody there that has first hand info that some big companies are incurring in DEI hiring, giving priority to the sex or race of the employee instead of their skills. And it appears obvious to me that some gaming companies are doing the same thing.
 
Endymion has promised a video directly refuting this. I suspect Endymion is going to rip CDPR a new one. He can be a bit too much to take sometimes, but he's usually right in his criticisms.
 
You are making stuff up. HR doesn't hire, they facilitate that. Hiring managers hire people to work for them. Do you even work for a company and have any knowledge of hiring practices based on direct experience?

There is a question that all applications must include where applicants can choose to identify racial background and gender. This is a federal requirement that I think is tied to affirmative action. The most HR can do is to create policies about who is considered a candidate. And this isn't even DEI, it is something that predates any of that, but now gets lumped in by ignorant people who are looking for some reason to hate someone. At my company the requirement is to try to interview a diverse slate of candidates based on this information. They do not require it, they require that effort is put in and enough time is given to try to get diverse candidates for all positions. There is no hiring requirement. Managers hire the best candidate because they have to manage them. If you want to cry about this, all you have as a possible bad outcome is that there is a qualified white guy who wasn't interviewed because they choose a few better white guys and a couple of non white men and women to interview instead of this poor mid white guy. No manager is going to hire an inferior candidate. They pick the best that they interviewed, and then the second best if that doesn't work. Their job is to hire and you should assume they are doing their best because that is what most people do for their jobs. They do what they think is best so they can get credit for doing good and move up the chain.

Most DEI whiners think somehow hiring is political. Most candidates keep that shit to themselves and focus on the interview. The only demographic data is the required section and you can choose not to identify. I am not sure how that plays out. I could see some recruiters respecting that, and others tossing the resume in the trash because it could very well be a red flag.
The president of Harvard turned out to be a DEI hire that had to resign in disgrace for plagiarism. Do you think she would have gotten anywhere near being the president of Harvard if she weren't a black woman? Her academic credentials barely justified her being a lecturer. If that's what happening at literally the top university in America, you think DEI hiring isn't taking place at other places? There are countless other examples. Several people have literally won lawsuits alleging discrimination based on DEI hiring. Do you think this entire multi-billion dollar bureaucracy that has sprung up in all corporations and academic institutions is just to ensure the right candidates get interviewed? You are completely delusional.
 

MarV0

Member
You are making stuff up. HR doesn't hire, they facilitate that. Hiring managers hire people to work for them. Do you even work for a company and have any knowledge of hiring practices based on direct experience?

There is a question that all applications must include where applicants can choose to identify racial background and gender. This is a federal requirement that I think is tied to affirmative action. The most HR can do is to create policies about who is considered a candidate. And this isn't even DEI, it is something that predates any of that, but now gets lumped in by ignorant people who are looking for some reason to hate someone. At my company the requirement is to try to interview a diverse slate of candidates based on this information. They do not require it, they require that effort is put in and enough time is given to try to get diverse candidates for all positions. There is no hiring requirement. Managers hire the best candidate because they have to manage them. If you want to cry about this, all you have as a possible bad outcome is that there is a qualified white guy who wasn't interviewed because they choose a few better white guys and a couple of non white men and women to interview instead of this poor mid white guy. No manager is going to hire an inferior candidate. They pick the best that they interviewed, and then the second best if that doesn't work. Their job is to hire and you should assume they are doing their best because that is what most people do for their jobs. They do what they think is best so they can get credit for doing good and move up the chain.

Most DEI whiners think somehow hiring is political. Most candidates keep that shit to themselves and focus on the interview. The only demographic data is the required section and you can choose not to identify. I am not sure how that plays out. I could see some recruiters respecting that, and others tossing the resume in the trash because it could very well be a red flag.
You're completely off the mark and I have first hand experience. My gf in HR was asked to try to hire more women and black people. Recruiters do the first stage of interviews and push the ones they approve to further stages. She was literally asked a few times to interview males and females but only push women to the final stages of interviews. Of course she could not maintain the quota as the vast majority of high quality candidates were males, she pushed back and she was told to just try her best because the decisions are coming from higher up.

Her colleague managed to hire only women for a quarter and won an award for that.

I was shocked when she was telling me all that so I did a bit of digging and found major investors that push DEI, have their hands in the company she works for. It all clicked and that was a few years ago. Companies have grown to such sizes and wealth that they think they got complete control of the market and they can just play god. That's why I avoid at all costs to give money to big tech such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon etc. They actually think they are invisible, you think they will care if they discriminate on their hiring practices?

There has been plenty of lawsuits for discrimination from males in my country and all of them have won, even in the army for gods sake.

Nowadays DEI is failing but only on small to medium size companies that need the talent. Microsoft who offshores thousands of male Indian engineers that do all the grunt work is not going to care if they discriminate in the western world.
 
Last edited:

Kings Field

Member
This has been going on in medical school, nursing schools, and PA programs for years. Schools were taking non white and non Asian minorities over them despite lower GPAs and MCAT scores to get more government funding.

It all boils down to money despite having the most qualified people.
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding that having DEI programmes means you can't hire on merit.

This is not true.

You can have DEI initiatives and always give jobs/promotions to the best person for the job. That's the right approach to take.
That’s not what happens at all with DEI programs. Because at that point there are mandates to have certain percentages of diversity hirings. And these programs will exclude White and Asian males from the hiring pool. Hence a lot smaller field of candidates to choose from. And there are additional bonus points so to speak. +1 from desired race demo, +1 of a woman, +1 if LGBT, etc…

And then are programs to increase percentages of diversity hiring in upper management. So the circle continues and quality of hiring falls since the hiring pool is automatically smaller.

Discriminating against particular group of people is terrible. But not discriminating and what these DEI initiatives are doing is not the same thing.

Actively targeting only certain demographics in hiring means you are not getting the best people for the job. And of course that’s not just coding, but culture fit, making sure person would work with the rest of the team, etc…

Plus, you have the whole overhead of additional well paid people who run these initiatives. That’s hundreds of thousands to millions of $ spent (depending on company size) to not hire the best people for the job. It’s craziness.
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
This has been going on in medical school, nursing schools, and PA programs for years. Schools were taking non white and non Asian minorities over them despite lower GPAs and MCAT scores to get more government funding.

It all boils down to money despite having the most qualified people.
Throw in grade inflation on top of that, and quality of some of the doctors coming out from today’s medical schools is a bit ???
 

peek

Member
That’s not what happens at all with DEI programs. Because at that point there are mandates to have certain percentages of diversity hirings. And these programs will exclude White and Asian males from the hiring pool. Hence a lot smaller field of candidates to choose from. And there are additional bonus points so to speak. +1 from desired race demo, +1 of a woman, +1 if LGBT, etc…

And then are programs to increase percentages of diversity hiring in upper management. So the circle continues and quality of hiring falls since the hiring pool is automatically smaller.

Discriminating against particular group of people is terrible. But not discriminating and what these DEI initiatives are doing is not the same thing.

Actively targeting only certain demographics in hiring means you are not getting the best people for the job. And of course that’s not just coding, but culture fit, making sure person would work with the rest of the team, etc…

Plus, you have the whole overhead of additional well paid people who run these initiatives. That’s hundreds of thousands to millions of $ spent (depending on company size) to not hire the best people for the job. It’s craziness.
2 companies ive worked for in the past did this too. One was before 2020, and boy oh boy, after the US riots of 2020 those types of programs (where they specifically boost or help out employees based off their gender/race) really took off. Like things where they help provide exclusive training/resources to boost to upper management.

Feels straight up illegal i would imagine, but probably have to sue first. I dunno.
 

Woopah

Member
I only see 2 options:
1- You were fed lies by your DEI department. It´s standard procedure for them, because if they actually told people what they are all about people wouldn´t accept it.
2- You are trying to gaslight us into believing DEI doesn´t promote discrimination based on skin color and sex
The DEI department is one of the teams I support, so I have good visibility over what they work on, and I've also hired people at the company. No one has ever told me to hire on something other than merit.

That may not be one of your options, but it's the truth.

It might be different in South Africa, as there are some government rules we follow there called Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment. But I'm not too involved in that country.

Below are some of the DEI programmes we've done:
  • Increasing paternity and adoption leave
  • Getting more 50+ colleagues into career development schemes
  • Putting standard accessibility processes and policies in place for people who are dyslexic, colourblind, deaf etc.
  • Running recruitment campaigns to get more women to apply for jobs in our factories.
None of that stops us hiring based on merit.
 

Woopah

Member
That’s not what happens at all with DEI programs. Because at that point there are mandates to have certain percentages of diversity hirings. And these programs will exclude White and Asian males from the hiring pool. Hence a lot smaller field of candidates to choose from. And there are additional bonus points so to speak. +1 from desired race demo, +1 of a woman, +1 if LGBT, etc…

And then are programs to increase percentages of diversity hiring in upper management. So the circle continues and quality of hiring falls since the hiring pool is automatically smaller.

Discriminating against particular group of people is terrible. But not discriminating and what these DEI initiatives are doing is not the same thing.

Actively targeting only certain demographics in hiring means you are not getting the best people for the job. And of course that’s not just coding, but culture fit, making sure person would work with the rest of the team, etc…

Plus, you have the whole overhead of additional well paid people who run these initiatives. That’s hundreds of thousands to millions of $ spent (depending on company size) to not hire the best people for the job. It’s craziness.
But that's what I'm saying. We don't have any hiring programmes that exclude White or Asian people. The last person I hired was white.

When we hire people, there's no points system and I'm not told to exclude or target anyone.

Especially not on sexuality. How would we even know someone's sexuality before we hire them?
 
Last edited:

octos

Member
The DEI department is one of the teams I support, so I have good visibility over what they work on, and I've also hired people at the company. No one has ever told me to hire on something other than merit.

That may not be one of your options, but it's the truth.

It might be different in South Africa, as there are some government rules we follow there called Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment. But I'm not too involved in that country.

Below are some of the DEI programmes we've done:
  • Increasing paternity and adoption leave
  • Getting more 50+ colleagues into career development schemes
  • Putting standard accessibility processes and policies in place for people who are dyslexic, colourblind, deaf etc.
  • Running recruitment campaigns to get more women to apply for jobs in our factories.
None of that stops us hiring based on merit.
Seems like you don't understand what people are trying to explain. For ex that last point "Running recruitment campaigns to get more women to apply for jobs in our factories." illustrates it well.
When you have a DEI programme, it means you're not solely hiring based on merit, in your case your company is trying to adjust the pool of candidates based on other factors than their skills, so imagine that you have 4 groups of such people A, B, C, D, your company is trying to get some % of candidates from all those groups, let's say 25 each (of course in reality the % are different but it doesn't matter) => A 25, B 25, C 25, D 25, and THEN you hire yourself base on skills. The problem is that maybe the best people for the job are all in the D category, and you have to hire 50 people, well instead of A0 B0 C0 D50, you get something like A8 B8 C7 D25. See? You still hired all the best candidates that you met, but by doing the filtering first, you still end up not hiring the very best people that you could have hired if you didn't have the DEI programme. That's what people are saying here. It cannot be both.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Especially not on sexuality. How would we even know someone's sexuality before we hire them?

Well DEI hiring practices often ask if you consider yourself some form of minority, a sexual orientation question is becoming more and more common on job application forms.

The interview panel might not be given your exact orientation at the table, but they will know you are in interview flaged as a DEI, our work calls them "guaranteed interview candidates" that's because as long as they meet the "minimum" criteria they get an interview.

So for example we score each criteria 1-7 say we set the minimum score as 4, that means if you get 4-4-4-3 even if you are DEI flagged you don't get an interview because you failed the minimum level. However you would be guaranteed to get one with 4-4-4-4. However say we have 1000 applicants, so we have people coming in 7-6-7-7 who are white men because we don't have enough time to interview anyone with scores below that. However we get 4-4-4-4 comining in who are "diverse"

So if your a white guy at the end of the table with a 4-4-4-4 application and your not asking me to refer to you as Xir, that means your gay.

also before you ask why don't we just set the minimum to 6 or 7, we did but HR told us we had to stop because we where only ending up with white men from blind testing (we don't see names or identifying details until we score an application and are told by the system to book the candidate an interview at the end of the apllication period) so we had to set it "at highest" to a 4.

This is what they state unironically is best.
 
Last edited:
When a guy says "conspiracy theory" a huge red flag rises in the horizon. That and "bigot" is the biggest dog whistle nowadays.

CD Projekt is so obviously lying, and not because the other moron has any info, just by digging up a bit you find out the company is supporting DEI in many different forms.

Does that mean that their games will get worse? we don't know. But claiming that they aren't applying DEI policies is straight-up lying.
 

MarV0

Member
But that's what I'm saying. We don't have any hiring programmes that exclude White or Asian people. The last person I hired was white.

When we hire people, there's no points system and I'm not told to exclude or target anyone.

Especially not on sexuality. How would we even know someone's sexuality before we hire them?
If your company is not publicly traded with outside investors, offshore departments with cheap labour that do most of the work then it's unlikely that you'll have forced DEI.

DEI sexist and racist practices are also rampant on state departments that have a secure flow of tax payers money.
 
Last edited:

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
That's literally the exact problem that has plagued a large number of Western AAAs, with demonstrably awful results.
And long may those companies implode for being so fucking stupid, the unfortunate thing is I imagine a great many of the Devs and others see this shit for what it is but can't speak up about it for fear of the dreaded middle aged women HR teams
 

Filben

Member
Despite what some people say, talent and merit isn't enough. You have to fit into the team and its work flow and work ethics. Doesn't matter how talented you are if you don't fit and constantly clash with other colleagues.

Why strive for diversity at all? Where does it all coming from?

There have been studies that suggested work proficiency is increased within a non-homogenous group. For the reasons, it's believed
that varied points of view are valued and don’t need to be suppressed for the sake of group cohesion. This attitude encourages employees to rethink how work gets done and how best to achieve their goals.
Furthermore
that cultivating a learning orientation toward diversity—one in which people draw on their experiences as members of particular identity groups to reconceive tasks, products, business processes, and organizational norms—enables companies to increase their effectiveness.
Source: Harvard Business Review.

However, many people, on a personal level, prefer homogeneity, especially if intercultural contact has been low throughout someone's life. This may lead to systematic avoidance of diversity based on personal feelings rather than logical economics. Of course you have to weigh your employees feelings towards new members against the potential economic gains from said members.

To overcome this personal reluctance about different perspectives and backgrounds in a group and to prevent from discrimination against some groups there's been a trend to take on people, if same the same talent and merit exists, who come from a different background because it's seen as a win-win, both economically (see above) and personally.
 

Madonis

Member
"There's a DEI program, so they obviously can't hire based on merit!" is the logical fallacy behind a lot of responses.

For my money, it all depends on the specifics. Does anyone know how that program operates and how does it factor into the hiring process here?

If we don't know, then we shouldn't act like we do. Just a thought.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom