[cyclist222]

D&I is trendy in the bay area these days. For diversity, the recommendation is to provide a monetary incentive with regards to diversity metrics, i.e. use discrimination in an effort to have a more diverse employee pool. Why this is seen as okay is beyond me.

[johan_larson]

It's not about diversity in general. The software industry is plenty diverse. It's about achieving equitable treatment for historically mistreated groups, in particular blacks and women. There are some who would be willing to take very strong measures to get there, including outright hiring and promotion quotas, justifying them on the basis of compensation for past wrongs and countervailing preferences in a racist and sexist society.

But American society has a pretty strong streak of individualism, so these sorts of group-based measures are politically unpopular or even illegal, which means the folks trying to improve the lot of blacks and women have to find softer, fuzzier measures and justifications.

That's why there's all this talk about "diversity" and "inclusion". The words aren't quite wrong; they're more like understatements of larger goals to make them as presentable as possible. But ultimately this whole issue wouldn't even exist if we were 12% black and 50% female. Heck, it might not even exist if we were 6% black and 25% female. But we're closer to 1%/15%, and quite a few people think that's a real problem.