[cmcaleer]

MS (or any large company for that matter) didn’t participate in BLM discussions and get speakers to describe themselves and list their pronouns because they thought it was virtuous or right, they were just following the cultural zeitgeist in a way that they thought would make them more money.

Walking it back is just the same behaviour manifesting in a different way. Investors don’t value DEI in the same way they did before so it becomes an expense with no value to shareholders, so it gets cut.

It’s very cynical but nothing about this should be particularly shocking.

[ericmay]

Also, increasing efforts to support DEI and also decreasing those efforts can both be good things.

You can fail to recognize a problem, and you can also overreact to it.

[biofox]

There has certainly been an overreaction, and it continues to be the case even after efforts have been walked back.

I have yet to hear a good justification for why people who are not interested in programming should be encouraged to become interested purely in the name of equality, yet my institution is still spending huge amounts of public money on trying to achieve exactly that.

[mariusor]

Because "not being interested in programming" might not be the only cause for the lack of representation.