Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by blindriver 37 days ago
I don't understand why companies are abandoning DEI so quickly and so decisively. What happens if/when a Democrat president is elected that mandates DEI and ESG all over again, are they going to add them back into their core values as swiftly as they abandoned them?

At least companies like Coinbase made principled stances against forced DEI and employee activism earlier than everyone else. Doing it now seems weird because if it does become mandated again, they're going to look so phony.

4 comments

It always was unprincipled: regardless of whether someone's a fan of DEI or not, these companies are short-sighted, profit-driven, and at best reactive to trends. The only reason any person thought otherwise is that they were either desperately looking for a victory or desperately looking for an enemy to be angry about.
>What happens if/when a Democrat president is elected that mandates DEI and ESG all over again

Mandates? There is this weird revisionist history that DEI was a Biden era invention that all these companies were forced to roll out in January 2021. These programs were simply the latest evolution of prolonged and steady cultural shifts. I remember attending events trying to promote diversity in the computer science department when I was in college 20+ years ago. Killing DEI isn't wiping out four years of progress, it's attempting to wipe out decades.

You mean decades of regression.

The obvious decline started around 2010; coincidentally also the era of the rise of SJW-ism and nontechnical derailing drama. Once the diversity quotas started appearing, the inevitable results were obvious.

I'm not going to get in the argument you clearly want to have, but as I said in my previous comment, I can confirm with my own experience that you're wrong and this trend started earlier than 2010.
I never used the word "Biden" once in my post. You should correct your biases.

Whether or not you are left or right, the objective truth is that a Democrat added DEI mandates and Republican removed the DEI mandates. I didn't say anything about whether or not that is right or wrong, but the fact that companies seemingly embraced DEI and then once a Republican removed it, then they abandoned it so quickly means they really didn't care about DEI at all and it was all phony. It just goes to show you that when they start praising themselves for being "moral" it's not because they actually care, it's because they are forced to and they don't give a shit about anyone.

I said Biden because you're acting like you only remember the last 6 years. Diversity programs predate and survived Trump's first term. You seem to be suggesting that culture naturally swings back and forth as the president changes and I think that's ahistorical which in turn means you're minimizing the extremism of the shift we're currently seeing.
Why is this even a question? Of course they would, they're just companies, they go chase profits and cannot have real values, don't anthropomorphise your lawnmower, yada yada yada.
Trump’s entire administration is all, 100% DEI hires, he is a DEI King (DEI by its pure definition is someone getting a job while many other people are more qualified for said job)