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.
Good example is doing pride month, where companies changes their profile picture and so on. They have branches around the world, and some won’t do anything, like the middle east. Money talks and companies doesn’t give a damn.
Everything a corporation does that’s not outright trying to fuck you out of your time or money is 100% a scam they’re trying to pull to convince you they care.
I really wish people would stop falling for it, because, well, there’s never going to be real progress made unless there’s the force of law behind things like DEI.
I mean the entire purpose of a dei group in a company is to make sure that the company isn’t doing things that will get them fucking sued into the ground, like choosing to only hire young white males for instance.
If they want to disband this group fine, just that’s going to be exhibit A in all of the lawsuits.
You mean the lawsuits that will be tossed out by the totally not corrupt upstanding officials at the “Supreme” Court?
By the supreme absolute and totally incorruptible court of Trumpistan?
Do you realize how difficult it would be to get a simple case like this in front of the supreme court?
Do you realise how easy it will be to get a case in front of the supreme court if it affects the interests of the oligarchy?
There is a set process. Cases do not simply go directly before The supreme Court.
They have to first go through the appropriate venue in whatever jurisdiction they originate in and go through trial and then after that if the results of that trial are not satisfactory then they can be appealed which would mean they would then go to a district court and then if they’re not satisfied with that then they can petition the supreme Court to review the appellate Court’s decision.
You’re talking years and millions of dollars worth of lawyer fees for each case. Anyone with a drop of sense will attempt to settle the case long before it reaches the supreme court.
While I definitely understand your stance and your disenfranchisement with the American political system, as of right now, there are still functioning sections of the American government
Not if we don’t take Uncle Thomas on a fishing trip before they do!
An assessment test I did for a job recently was essentially just an SAT and IQ test. None of it had to do with the position but it was a quick way for them to say “no foreigners.”
If they brag about DEI on marketing pages… That’s all the initiative is for. Virtue signalling for sales.
Y’all need to just chill out and have a Pepsi
I dunno. I’m a believer that there is real benefit to diverse teams and there is some evidence in support of this. Seems like a diverse team could really help a company figure out how to keep fucking the money out of you harder.
Doing good work takes time to make money, execs need those quarterly bonuses right now. Much easier to do a bunch of layoffs and get that line up now.
Which is ultimately the biggest reason companies suck so much worse now than they used to. Over a long enough time frame profit isn’t the worst way to steer an organization. Negative actions have repercussions and companies used to avoid those.
But investors shortened the time frame so that everything and anyone is disposable. We have a handful of rich people hollowing out pretty much all companies in America and stripping them of value as fast as possible. We’re destroying our economic base in a fire sale for like 9 people.
I dunno. I’m a believer that there is real benefit to diverse teams and there is some evidence in support of this.
You’re 100% right! But good luck convincing the bean counters.
It’s the CEOs that drive this decision for and against, not the bean counters.
Most CEOs spend their time counting beans
DEI programs don’t really help diversity, in my experience. They just send emails and have social gatherings and make committees about initiatives about programs about metrics about committees about…
A true DEI program would focus on the grassroots level. Granular. They’d have a rep in every location, they’d have massive coordination with hiring managers and HR, they’d be recruiting volunteers and asking for feedback.
The company I work for is tireless about DEI and at least the CEO is personally a big believer. I think the instant he goes, though, the entire thing goes. We have hundreds of people working on it. And they have produced more backlash against DEI than real progress on it. So yeah, there are true believers out there, but the system as a whole doesn’t give a fuck, never did, and there’s never going to come a time when we all turn some corner and want more, more, more DEI staff at work. In my humble opinion the movement is dead already and will be remembered as an artifact of the last decade or so. The actual problem itself will continue to improve, generationally, just as it has done for a hundred years.
That generational improvement is not the natural order of the universe. It’s the result of individuals putting themselves in harms way to push for change. It’s hard-fought legislation moving the cause forward. It’s constitutional amendments. It’s legal cases won against the odds. It’s corporations jumping on the bandwagon not wanting to be seen to oppose respectable society.
But those who have always fought against the process are racking up wins. That generational change you’ve observed that looked inevitable is under severe threat. You cannot count on it happening by itself.
It’s true that generational improvement in social acceptance of diversity should not be taken for granted. However, I do think it follows fairly predictably with prosperity. When people feel confident in their economic prospects, they are more open to change that benefits others. The opposite is true as well. So, while the universe may not have a strict “natural order” in terms of social progress, the arc of human history shows a strong correlation between economic prosperity and social progress.
And they have produced more backlash against DEI than real progress on it.
That’s the thing…it doesn’t actually work. It doesn’t help anything. It’s just virtue signaling. I understand, hypothetically, how a DEI program could help make a company’s culture more inclusive, but the vast majority of them just add more buzzwords and red tape and performative resume enhancers.
virtue signaling
Stop giving this tired interpretation to everything. Not everyone is performing a dance to impress others. I already said that our CEO is a genuine true believer. And it’s not crazy to think that there are people out there who actually care about equality and inclusion. FUCK I get so tired of this “virtue signaling” bullshit. Do you think I’m cussing you out right now to win points with whoever is watching? I promise you I don’t give a fuck.
Republicans are stupid. Like, deeply, fundamentally stupid in a way that’s difficult for us to comprehend. So sometimes, they see a phrase invented by smarter people, and they start using it ALL THE TIME, because they’re so goddamn stupid that they don’t understand that words have meanings. They think words are like spells in Harry Potter, so if a lib says “oogitty boogitty” to them (and that’s about the level of comprehension they have; everything new and more than a few syllables might as well be “oogitty boogitty”), then if they just shout “oogitty boogitty” back, they can hurt liberals.
“Virtue signaling” is one of those terms.
But don’t let them render the term itself useless, because that’s the insidious secondary goal of the bastards promoting this style of bullshit. The goal is an orwellian control of language by associating important phrases with mouth breathing troglodytes so they can essentially delete them from rational people’s discussions.
“Virtue signalling” is an elegant term that makes a very salient point about how a lot of us on the progressive side do things. People like you and I should feel free to use the term without the association of the swamp people who shout it but don’t know what it means.
Well yeah. The point of a corp is to make a profit. By any means necessary. They are even legally compelled to do so. They are not here to serve us. They are here to take your money. Sometimes even backing you into a corner to force you to do it.
I just got done watching Fallout and I fully believe our corporations would do the same as the ones in the series given the chance.
Edit: after some research and the person below me informing me, I was mistaken about the legal requirement.
Minor niggle: they’re legally compelled to work in the best interests of the shareholders which is usually but not always seeking profit at all costs.
But, in general, I don’t disagree, I merely was mentioning that people keep getting suckered by pretty words and meaningless promises of change and then not bothering to make it have actual legal requirements behind it.
The mistake is looking at a CEO going Trust Me Bro, and trusting them. See: frog and scorpion story.
You are right, I made a correction.
They are not legally compelled to do so. That’s a nonsense myth, even for publicly traded companies.
I corrected my comment. Thanks.
A CEOs job is literally to serve the financial interests of the shareholders.
In fact a CEO can be fired or charged for not doing it.
How is that not legally compelling a company to make the most money possible, when to have their top employee by the balls like that?
A CEO can be fired for anything.
A CEO can absolutely not be criminally charged for not maximizing short term profits at all costs. That’s not what fiduciary duty means.
Fair, charged is the wrong word.
But please explain how you see the fiduciary duty then?
It’s not “how I see it”. It’s a clearly defined legal term, that functionally means that you’re required to act in good faith.
It doesn’t mean more than that, and minority shareholders that have tried to sue on the grounds that they have any additional legal obligation have been laughed out of court.
Serving the financial interests of shareholders doesn’t necessarily mean maximizing short-term profits, as this often leads to less profit in the long term due to things like legal issues, loss of reputation, high turnover, etc. Long term growth and stability can be much more valuable than a couple quarters of unsustainable profit.
A good example of this is Red Lobster, whose new owners sold off all their restaurant real estate holdings to a newly formed shell company and then began charging each individual restaurant massive amounts of rent. Selling these properties gave the company a short-term boost of cash, but now they’re bankrupt because they saddled the company with so much debt and rent that they can’t cover.
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.
This is part of Leonard Leo’s plan to re-mccarthy-ize US society and purge anyone left of fascist, same way he orchestrated the right wing take over of our courts.
For any who missed it, Leonard Leo helped fund the bud light boycott
Nah. DEI just made for good press. Now that is over so are Dei initiatives. Just like that they would burn baby seals alive in an incenerator if it would increase profitability. Line must go up.
Also the DEI officers can be a liability too. If they get too uppity and don’t get their way, they could choose the digital town square to air their grievances. And that’s bad press and makes line go down.
Yeah. I never understood why DEI required a discreet team. It seems like it should just be a function, commitment, and initiative of HR.
I kinda do. It requires a DEI first way of thinking. And HR is company first, avoid lawsuits. And if you want to change culture and way of thinking that is engrained, you need to put in a lot of effort. It does not matter which entrenched thing you want to change… It takes work.
Too bad the people that say they want to do this choose the battering ram approach mostly and that just causes people to dig in deeper. It’s politics.
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.
Goes back way further, almost all the way to the beginning. Seattle Computer Products’ QDOS was bought and rebranded as MS-DOS. They never had any original ideas of their own. Always a day late and a dollar short, and when they finally get around to it, it’s with someone else’s shit they acquired or ripped off.
Au contraire. Their original idea was to close-source code and “license” the software which was a brilliantly evil way to cripple innovation and enforce broken mediocrity.
And they embraced, extended, and extinguished their way to the #1 PC OS.
Dismantle Microsoft.
We should nationalize them and open source all their proprietary code.
open source all their proprietary code.
We did it once with Win2k…good times.
We did what now?
It was leaked in the early 2000s.
Did anyone ever do anything with it? It probably helped emulators I guess, depending on what code leaked.
It makes things worse for projects like emulators, because of any of the leaked code makes its way into their project, they can get sued. Even if it just looks like they used it to develop it, they can get sued. It’s not worth the risk, so projects like emulators will avoid that like the plague.
No, I don’t mean copying code. I mean understanding windows api calls, and how the system works.
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.
we had a series of company lunches where you’d sit at a table with people different from you
Believe or not, most people don’t want to waste anymore of their time a work then necessary. So unless your work load is light enough to where you don’t care about wasting 1 hour like that, I don’t get it.
We are only doing this circle jerk because boomers are bigots and sex pests. I don’t need this bullshit “training” They can stop being bigots and stop harassing women for sex at work!!! Wouldn’t that solve the issue, no grifters needed, management is enough as is.
What I need is more time to spend with family.
Like guy above said, it aint like executives buy into it, it does not change anything besides them getting good PR off wasting MY TIME.
So unless your work load is light enough to where you don’t care about wasting 1 hour like that, I don’t get it.
Exactly. At my company, the only people with the time to participate in DEI are those who have such little workload they need something like this to justify their job.
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Okay… I’ll bite… So what’s wrong with your weird genitalia that makes you like you?
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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.
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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.
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People tend to hire people that they like. You don’t really know who is best for a job unless you’ve hired multiple people and they have been working for a while.
Having employees who happen to have the same background as hiring managers is not the same as having the best employees, but that’s what we have.
If you’d had DEI training you’d know this. 😉
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.
