cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/3229309
From the Atlanta Daily World:
In a surprising yet increasingly common move, Microsoft has quietly dismantled its team dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The decision, communicated via email to the affected employees on July 1, cited “changing business needs” as the reason for the layoffs. While the exact number of employees impacted remains unclear, the team’s lead didn’t … Continued
The post Microsoft Says Bye-Bye DEI, Joins Growing List Of Corporations Dismantling Diversity Teams appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.
companies experimented with appearing more “socially conscious”, waited for a bit, saw it didn’t generate any extra revenue for them, then axed it to appear more profitable.
capital has gotten really dumb, and if you think any one of these really gave a shit about diversity, you might be dumber.
I think there’s that and there’s also the growing cancel culture of the right. They’re boycotting anything and everything that even smells of equity/diversity. Repugnicans have proved that they can affect businesses and will do so with their army of right wing media viewers so it makes sense that corporations would cater to them.
The left has their grassroots movements, but there is no major media outlet that convinces others to join in on the boycotts. They might report it’s happening, but they don’t go all Sean Hannity with some version of “they’re taking your job prospects and giving it to some undeserving lazy _____ person because they’re the real racists and they hate you!”
This is kind of the thing.
Having DEI committees is now one of several symbols of the political ideologies of a company and its “senior leadership”.
For both sides, I think a lot of people (or at least those that have the privilege of choosing where they work) do not want to work for a company that directly conflicts with their political leanings.
A far left worker who sees their employer axing their DEI programs could see that as a symbol that the company is swinging hard to the right, and may adapt more conservative practices that may effect them directly. See: Hobby Lobby trying to block their health insurance from covering birth control.
Likewise, a far right worker who sees their employer adopting a leftist program like DEI might start to get concerned that their employer may also start swinging more to the left and adopt progressive practices that might impact them directly. Like paying them a living wage, providing all the PPE they could ever need, or hiring a queer person.
…that might impact them directly. Like paying them a living wage, providing all the PPE they could ever need, or hiring a queer person.
Grosssssssss! Ughhh how dare they force their liberal living wage on me!? They’re trying to make me transgender with all that free PPE!
It doesn’t help when things are constructed around DEI as the main design principle rather than being actually inclusive. It seeped into nerd culture and struck out in a massive way.
Look at The Acolyte. It’s genuine shit story, the writing was bad, the actors were one-dimensional, and it took the lore in a direction that made no sense. Star Wars stories have been bad to the same degree, but now people get to grab ahold of DEI and blame it for everything else wrong with the show.
I’ve always thought that trying to address DEI from the top-down is never the right way to do it. This include college admissions. All it actually does is promote unfairness and a non-meritocracy. It takes many years of training to learn the skills needed for certain jobs. Hiring someone because of their skin color instead of their qualifications can actually hurt the bottom line (and top line) and just leads to more resentment. And it also really cheapens and damages the reputation of the minorities who actually worked and earned their way to their spot. Had a super smart Nigerian friend who is a medical doctor who finished very high up in rankings in medical school. But because of DEI policies, people will always wonder if he got to his place because of “quotas”.
You can’t do it from the bottom up because you just get racists who won’t hire people, like the black guy recently who changed his name on job applications and started getting interviews. I’ve seen that happen with friends, too.
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Almost as if it was a bullshit endeavor all along, just corporate marketing. Those departments are never given the funding or staff required to enact functional change within organizations. Unionize, folks!
Their main function was to avoid lawsuits, like the rest of HR. I feel like these companies forgot that they were all sued because they discriminated against women and non-white applicants and employees. This is just going to make it easier to prove discrimination in court.
This is a reflection of them anticipating that discrimination lawsuits will no longer be a thing under a Project 2025 Trump dictatorship.
Lol. Lawsuits are part of America. There’s no way to get rid of them. That’s how minor issues are adjudicated in America.
No, I mean discrimination will be legalized/tolerated again. The Heritage Foundation stacked courts won’t give a fuck.
discrimination will be legalized/tolerated again.
It will be required.
They don’t care about policy, they care about tax cuts. Rich Republicans do not care about social issues. Their judges won’t care about one side or the other.
Rather than thinking of it as a cynical farce that was a total lie, can we think of it as perhaps a genuine impulse which was not strong enough to override other business considerations, and which most companies fumbled, and which no company was willing to make material sacrifices for when it came right down to it. I genuinely think a lot of people would like to see true equity at work, but they have no idea how to bring it about, they are too outmatched by other cultural forces, and ultimately they can’t make a convincing business justification for it.
I call it a well-intentioned but doomed escapade. Not a big fat lie.
I understand your premise but work experience has taught me that corporations don’t give a fuck about their people, equity, and the like. It is all image control. It is all about money and nothing more, those “other business considerations” will always take precedence unless they are regulated to do so.
I don’t think we are disagreeing. It’s like I already said: other business considerations will always win out. But it is not crazy to think that there are individuals out there within corporations who genuinely believe that DEI is a good thing. Tech companies top asset is their people, and those people are not all white males. Having an inclusive workplace is just good business. And especially when it comes to women, having an inclusive workplace fends off lawsuits. I know the CEO of our company personally well enough to know that he is a genuine believer. He was raised liberal by parents who were civil rights activists and he does not want to perpetuate America’s abysmal history of exclusion and exploitation if he can help it. This is not image control. I get very tired of people saying that this is all virtue signaling, some performance, by people who don’t truly care, for some powerful audience who do actually care. Who is that audience supposed to be?? Shareholders??? lol
DEI is like Agile. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
The wrong way is profitable for consultants and easy for the company, so that is what gets implemented in most cases.
The right way requires actual buy-in from C-staff down and needs constant work and adjustment to the specific company. There is no one size fits all solution. More work, less money. Very few companies do this.
Eh that’s the thing. The wrong way isn’t even profitable. Maybe a minor bump in hiring ability and branding, but ultimately not worth the headache.
Companies are stopping because the orange clown supreme court ruled that racists, sexists and bigots could sue companies for not allowing them to hate.
Don’t you love living in the future.
Honestly I haven’t heard any good news about Microsoft in like 10 years. They just keep making awful decisions.
Microsoft is usually a very big player when it comes enabling disabled people to do things they normally couldnt (e. g hands free keyboards, alternative game controllers.) VS Code is also one of the most popular code editors on the market.
It’s like 25 for me. How to half-ass your way atop other’s work to monopolize a new economy.
Dismantle Microsoft.
We should nationalize them and open source all their proprietary code.
Dismantle, destroy, whatever. Seconded.
In the future there will probably white people suing for racism based on the existence of dei and the courts are now so racist those lawsuits will be allowed because the same territories that fought for slave ownership during rhe civil war have political leverage via republicans
Dei is now a legal liability instead of protecting against lawsuits. Many companies that are laying off people cant justify keeping dei in that environment when they are laying off people that do work that is closely aligned with the business. Laying off a senior programmer but keeping dei seems a bit unfair and since dei could be a liability why keep it?
There was also pressure to hire more black people in business back in covid times and post-covid and companies did that, with data showing it probably impacted other races getting hired. It’s risky for them to keep doing that and likely expensive. Dei was also keeping more data allowing them to get sued to more easily either way. Many employees complained about dei and that it was all for show even when the expense was there.
Its also became synonymous with woke and republicans hate the term. Conpanies only do what the prevailing political winds say so they can fit in with legal compliance enough to keep profiting. They don’t care and are mostly an illusion of a logo with greedy people worshipping money behind the veneer.
In the fututre there will probably white people suing for racism based on the existence of dei and the courts are now so racist those lawsuits will be allowed. . .
“No future” about it It’s been happening for a long time
But these are just two recent examples. They’ve always ultimately served the same purpose - to defeat legislation or political effort to support minorities.
Youre right. And… Do you think DEI becoming a buzzword in the Republican culture war makes it more or less likely there will be more of those lawsuits?
But yes, at the end of the day, whatever the reason it just means more racism, because bias is often hard to prove and you often can’t prove that bias accounts for a lack of advancement, you just feel it, and bias can make getting ahead so much harder in so many ways.
I think Republicans especially hated DEI because it could include trans and LGBT people. The existence of trans people means their made up god is fake, because their fantasy book says Adam and Eve, not Adam Eve and They/Them. If trans people are real, then the magical fantasy book is a lie, and then they’ve been lied to and fooled and their magic jebus bread didnt really have magical powers and they can’t possibly admit to that, so here we are.
I think you’re right, it’s become both tainted and a liability.
This is the first time I hear about DEI. I see and understand the acronym as something I should search on a popular search engine that is not the one that starts with a g. As such, I’ve been working for 30 years and I’m perplexed by something I have no clue about which might possibly apply to me as a LGBTQA minority person. But first things first, let’s all go figure out what this acronym means.
Here, have a look at my search results:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-dei-flvLFV4DTHm_I9nR.u73_A
Anything that corporations do, that isn’t directly oriented toward revenue generation, is window dressing, marketing, and bullshit. They don’t actually care about addressing social ailments like inequity, they don’t care about environmental destruction. While individuals within these organizations may believe in these causes, the machine itself is just lying when they parade these initiatives out. They don’t care about their workforce (beyond maintaining functionality), and they certainly don’t care about their society. If these corporations were people, they’d be considered sociopaths, with ZERO exceptions.
I used to be that cynical. But I’ve seen some good things in large orgs. I’m slightly less cynical now.
Just to clarify what I said: I know that there are good people working in these corporations, and I know that good sometimes happens. What I am saying is that the organization itself doesn’t care the way they are often given credit for by their own marketing, media coverage, and public perception. The incentives that are foundational to these organizations are antithetical to achieving anything beyond revenue that is either widespread or long-term in nature. I am all in favor of holding corporations accountable, and pressuring them to be better members of our society, but people should never fool themselves into thinking that meaningful, sustainable change on social or environmental issues will ever result from actions taken by corporations. Those kinds of changes can only come from governments that are open and accountable to their people, and have the confidence to check the actions of private industry.
No I hear you, and largely agree - but I do think corporations can choose to do good things and they can also - actually do good things. Sometimes they’re unrelated, sometimes it really is as simple as, say, choosing less packaging and thereby creating less waste. Or, whatever.
In the case of DEI, I’m guessing (in the case of the companies listed in the article) they adopted the hype without having a plan other than a basic number, i.e. 20% of VP positions will be held by people representing minority groups or whatever their metric was - and the fact is it can’t be tacked-on to hiring, it’s got to be baked into things; a truly successful DEI initiative wouldn’t need DEI, is one way to look at it.
I definitely think DEI initiatives serve a useful purpose that shouldn’t be needed. But it is. How a company deals with diversity could differ, some don’t need to because they’re already doing it; some are run by trumpublican assholes who don’t care. It’s a rich tapestry 😄
If I were Microsoft I too would stop that bullshit virtue-signalling.
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DEI has little to do with hiring.
Of course, of course…
DEI is racist so good
I’m sure it can be, but at least at our company, it was pretty rad. Basically, we had a series of company lunches where you’d sit at a table with people different from you, a speaker would talk about how being different impacts them, and then you’d discuss things at the table after the meal.
I got to know people and saw things from a different perspective. None of it was mandatory, but we had a great turnout.
We didn’t have anything like hiring quotas or any of that nonsense, just a series of optional company meetings with one mandatory training session a as a kickoff that focused on psychological safety with DEI as flavor. We also had some employee-led “diversity groups,” but I don’t think anyone actually went to them.
Good riddance to HR rubbish.
Let me guess, white straight man
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Good.
Okay… I’ll bite… So what’s wrong with your weird genitalia that makes you like you?
I’m the one that’s nothing wrong with. Diversity teams were always a waste of time and resources and hiring based on race, gender or disability will always lead to a worse work force than hiring based on skill.
We don’t live in a perfect meritocracy where people are judged solely in grounds of their skills, we live in a society that is already prejudiced where a lot of minorities don’t get the chance to prove themselves. There’s studies proving how young white men are favored over any other demographics even when other people have equal or better resumes.
That might well be true, but businesses not hiring based on skill shoot themselves in the foot. Call out favouritism and discrimination when you see it, but DEI teams don’t do anyone any favours.
However logical it may or may not be, it’s a reality. Just yesterday we got a stark reminder of how pervasive poor decisions are.
Also, simply “calling out” your boss and HR for making poor decisions is more likely to put them against you than to fix anything.
Frankly feels like this anti-DEI wave is more politically motivated than a matter of results.
You’re never giving the Indians back their land are you.
I couldn’t, because I’m not american. They should have enough land to live by their own culture though, otherwise it will go extinct eventually.
Bad news. They usually don’t hire based on relevant skills either. The skills required to create an appealing resume and do well in a job interview very rarely have anything to do with the skills required for the actual job.
No woke, gets broke.
