Well, they've already achieved diversity, haven't they? Whites were already under-represented at Google (and at 18/23 tech companies) back in 2017 [1]. If they've rolled over for anyone, it was for the Asian lobby, who is over-represented at 23/23 of those tech companies, and now won't be facing DEI pressures to reduce their numbers.
DEI programs discriminate significantly against Asians, just like college admissions. If these programs didn’t exist, the proportion of Asian employees would be even higher than it is currently, simply based on merit.
Well, the top US engineering colleges which they're hiring from also has an under-representation of whites and this is due to the Asian disapora being higher from also international students' representation (thus, analyzing diversity metrics is less so relative to the US population and more so for the global population).
Independent of whether these goals are appropriate or not, these actions (and those of so many other companies) are just so predictably craven.
These executive orders (and what "DEIA" exactly means or constitutes, legally speaking) have not been litigated or clarified yet. Is Google going to avoid interviewing anyone from a HBCU now?
At least Costco seems to have a logical reason for what they do and stood by it.
It surprises me that these programs were ever legal.
It is strictly illegal in Australia to consider factors like gender or race when hiring. Even capturing these details from applicants is problematic in most cases.
The compensation payable if caught can be enormous, in the order of a years salary per applicant. It’s not even necessary to prove that a specific applicant was discriminated against, simply having a process which is likely to discriminate is sufficient.
> Is Google going to avoid interviewing anyone from a HBCU now?
No, because that would obviously be racist.
DEI would be favoring one candidate over another specifically due to immutable personal characteristics, not their qualifications for the job.
The just thing would be students from HBCUs having a level playing field along with everyone else.
It's no different than hiring managers selectively preferring graduates from Stanford or based on their surname's ethnicity, but it's hard to prove those things happen.
How deep in the talent pool does Google usually go? It seems to me many HBCUs end up somewhere in the middle of the rankings. I don’t think Google went out of its way to interview at my middling state school. Should HBCUs get a boost?
I'm not sure "craven" is the right word, but it's definitely something.
> These executive orders (and what "DEIA" exactly means or constitutes, legally speaking) have not been litigated or clarified yet.
All of these DEI efforts were and are blatantly illegal. They were just never litigated for long enough that everyone was comfortable with doing them openly. The point of the executive orders isn't necessarily the orders themselves, but a clear signal the new administration will litigate these efforts that have always been illegal.
So many of these companies are backing away from the efforts and hoping that show of goodwill will ameliorate their potential upcoming legal risk. If they play ball, the new administration might accept the peace offering and not go full legal scorched earth.
Would be great to be more resources put in at the very start of the pipeline (e.g. early childhood education). It's very hard to "solve" "diversity" at the time of hiring when candidates have already had decades of disadvantage.
The fair way is to do so at all levels of the pipeline because it turns out people can overcome their past if given the support and resources to do so. But it’s far easier and cheaper to invest early on. All that said, real structural racism and sexism and other prejudices continues to exist, and so the pipeline will always be a problem.
But a company like Google, which makes obscene profits every quarter, should be doing far more at all stages to fight the effects of that prejudice, because if whole categories of people are unprepared to work at Google because of societal failures, that’s huge numbers of potentially fantastic employees Google is missing out on.
I was recruited through Google's diversity program twice.
The first time, what that meant was that they invited their diversity candidates to a small pre-interview preparation session which, oddly enough, didn't bother to touch on what they were looking for in interviews. I took the interviews and was informed that I'd failed them.
The second time, I paid for coaching from interviewing.io, and I learned what they were looking for in interviews. This was not cheap. (There are some surprises! For example, they don't care whether you can answer their questions. If you can't, you're supposed to ask them how. This is not a normal testing style.) I took their interviews, and my recruiter informed me that I had passed, wished me congratulations, and told me to expect a job offer by the end of the current hiring cycle (which was about six weeks away). In the meantime, I'd have a set of "team fit" interviews.
Then, they never contacted me again, except to say that they'd realized that on second thought my interview scores were too low for them to hire me. Not a single thing was scheduled until the hiring cycle ended and they let me know that while my scores were good enough to have passed their interviews, they weren't good enough to be hired after passing the interviews.
There was no obvious "diversity" angle to that one, but when I complained to a family friend working at Google, they looked up the recruiter and were surprised to see that she was specialized in diversity hiring.
When I came over to the states to go to a tech conference at a NASDAQ listed billion dollar corp that bought us, the only black people I met were either working at the hotels (90% of that staff) or living in the nearby inner city.
I don't pretend to understand the USA, and maybe that conference wasn't representative, but to me it was quite shocking that the disparity was so clearly visible. So I think its a bit of a shame they're losing this, because from my perspective there was still a clear gap in terms of education outcomes which feed corporate and I would have liked to think these policies were helping to address that.
What you say is true, but these corporate diversity efforts are mostly used for PR and aren't actually making a difference to any race or community. The simple truth is that tech companies are going to hire any qualified engineer they can find, regardless of whether they are in a minority group or not and whether there is a DEI department at the company or not. So the question that should be asked is – why are black people (5-6% of CS graduates vs 15% of population), women (16-18% of CS graduates vs 50.5% of population), latinos (7% of CS graduates vs 20% of US population) etc. not pursuing STEM education and graduating with engineering degrees at the same rate as white and asian men? And what can we do to fix that? Diversity hiring at the corporate level is not the solution to the problem, education and training is.
You will be told that any systemic initiatives to address that are racist against whites who deserve more of a share of whatever is being done for others. Likewise any policies or initiatives along class line divisions are taking resources away from others who deserve a share of what may be given for disenfranchised/impoverished classes
DEI is fun and games until I am the person that won't be hired because I am not the niche to be de-discriminated. I remember coming to a Google stand on a conference, where they gave me form asking besides my email address, what is my ethnic background (strange word they used in my language, which I associated with gender etc, whatever would make me a minority) and would I mind share. I chose not to share and they even didn't drop me a line...
Ya maybe cause you refused to fill out a form that everyone else could fill out just fine. They probably thought you couldn't follow instructions and thought if they can't do this why would we proceed? You ever consider that?
Commenters may be missing that Google, Amazon, etc., as US government contractors, are required to follow the legal requirements for all such contractors. Previously contractors were required to follow rules based on a policy set by a Johnson administration EO in the 1960's. That policy has been replaced by a new EO. Online commenters might prefer to focus on recent changes as representative of corporate culture, management ideology, etc. instead of business judgment (as in the "business judgment rule" followed by the US courts), e.g., meeting the necessary legal requirements to secure/retain government contracts.
There are advantages to diversity by itself. These have been well documented. So setting aside any concern about excluded groups, it was a good business decision to aim for a diverse workforce.
But taking those concerns up again, almost no one perceives their own biases as biases. It's like you don't perceive your own accent, people of different racial backgrounds look similar, you can't smell your own breath, etc. So being a biased person feels just like being an unbiased person, but it makes you make biased decisions. A person against whom you harbor a prejudice applies for a job. Your bias causes you to discount their better qualities and double count their worse qualities. So you hire someone else. This hurts both you and the person you didn't hire.
A policy that works against well-known biases, if implemented correctly, achieves three ends: it reduces the harm to the person biased against, it reduces the harm to the company whose hiring policies are distorted by bias, and it helps the company by producing a more diverse workforce, which is an end in itself regardless of whether you care about harms to others. If implemented correctly, diversity hiring targets can produce the effect of hiring without prejudice despite the prejudice of those hiring.
If you are crossing a river and the wind blows you off course, you don't head to your goal but to the side. The net result is that you reach your goal. The diversity targets are just tacking against the wind.
Probably primarily a business and cost-cutting measure (certain there's loads of DEI-related staff; NOT DEI hires, roles that exist to foster DEI policies).
I've a prediction somewhat related to this.
We'll see, in the coming year(s), a large portion of positions at the FAANG(s) being moved overseas as cost-cutting measures. Paired with the impression that LLMs reduce the need for programmers, we (domestically) will see a substantial reduction in the number of developer (and related roles) in the States.
From what I've heard/seen wrt roles at these companies there's a substantial imbalance in locations for hiring (huge increases in India, Mexico, Brazil, and others) and less and less in the States.
I worked on some DEI programs. The problem was mixed. Most companies (at least the ones with DEI programs) thought they had big DEI issues because minorities had worse outcomes. But if you looked hard, that wasn’t usually the case. It was merely that minorities were more represented at lower levels and lower levels had higher attrition and what not. On the whole, it tended to look like hiring, retention, and even promotions looked surprisingly equitable. That is, while it would take a long time, it did seem as if things would stop being crusty old white men at the top exclusively.
However there are some noteworthy qualifiers. First, the biggest thing these programs did successfully was just diversifying the entry points so that you could even begin to start conversations with people from other backgrounds. That’s huge and effective.
Second, and this one is more anecdata, but I never really felt the hiring pool of diverse candidates was randomly sampled at all. For all the groaning about meritocracy and white candidates getting shat on, I tended to find in my personal hiring that diverse candidates were often MUCH stronger candidates. I rarely saw unmotivated, underqualified minorities and women make it to an interview stage whereas there’s a ton of white and Asian guys that did. Getting these candidates was harder. Which is to say, without putting any intrinsic value on racial or cultural backgrounds, I do think DEI programs somehow greatly streamlined a meritocratic highlighting of talented folks from diverse backgrounds. Which is ironic because that’s often the opposite claim.
That is, given you are a minority applying to an advanced position, odds are you’re really strong.
> ...the biggest thing these programs did successfully was just diversifying the entry points so that you could even begin to start conversations with people from other backgrounds.
This. This was my experience with DEIA programs in the government. It was always about diverse recruitment, not hiring. People believe what they want to, though.
Most of these megacorporations have no beliefs or values except their own profits and growth. Everything else is political expediency. This is just based on a lifetime of observing their behavior.
Isn’t it obvious that any artificial forced attempt to “balance” a very complex system from within by a primitive set of rules is gonna sooner or later fail and eventually cause even more imbalance and chaos?
The only way is to “naturally” help create conditions that hopefully will slowly yield. Sure there aarea many vague lines there, but at least we should be rational enough to choose the right attitude, right general approach.
What could be more racist and stupid then these “hiring targets”?
All the talk about "diversity" in tech companies always reminds me of this Silicon Valley scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY. Still the perfect representation of the entire effort.
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This is pretty much the first half of the article (until the archive.is link starts working):
"Google is eliminating its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs, joining other tech giants rethinking their approach to DEI.
In an email to employees Wednesday, Google said it would no longer set hiring targets to improve representation in its workforce.
In 2020, amid calls for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd, Google set a target of increasing by 30% the proportion of “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” by 2025.
Parent company Alphabet’s GOOGL -7.69%decrease; red down pointing triangle annual report released Wednesday omitted a sentence stating the company was “committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve.” The sentence was in its reports from 2021 through 2024.
Google also said it was reviewing recent court decisions and executive orders by President Trump aimed at curbing DEI in the government and federal contractors. The company is “evaluating changes to our programs required to comply,” the email said...
“We’ll continue to invest in states across the U.S.—and in many countries globally—but in the future we will no longer have aspirational goals,” the email said... "
It's not that these diversity policies were effective at addressing the underlying issue, they looked ridiculous to someone from the outside. What is hilarious and scary at the same time, is how these global corporations, the supposed progressive forces, are reversing them in quick succession one after another one 2 weeks into Trump's presidency.
> “ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.”
This certainly has been brewing under the surface for quite some time now, not just in business, but in most of society. What's changed is that now the dominoes have started to fall, people are finally comfortable expressing it in clear terms.
If you zoom out far enough, all these companies are making business decisions - not emotional ones. They have to kiss Trump's ring and bend the knee for Elon in order to not get destroyed. When they had DEI, it was created for business reason too - to be seen as socially just so you should buy their products. Now Google thinks it's better for business if they fall in line with what Trump wants.
> When they had DEI, it was created for business reason too - to be seen as socially just so you should buy their products.
You don't think that was "to not get destroyed" too? Such as when New York city was sued (and lost, having to pay out $1.8 billion) because too many minorities failed its test for teachers:
There's a big difference between obeying laws (which all companies pretty much have to do if they want to stay in business) and voluntarilly aligning with what they think a new president wants without there being any specific law forcing them to do that.
I actually think the business reason FOR the DEI stuff (to appeal to customers by coming accross as fair and progressive) made more sense. Have the customers really changed their minds just because someone else is in the Whitehouse?
I think it is more than just Trump. We do have to remember that some companies are currently being sued by shareholders for attempting to keep DEI around. Or at least was threatened to be.
I don’t know if these lawsuits would win or not but given the current political climate I sure wouldn’t bet against it. From a purely business prospective on that alone, I can see why they would do it. And do it so quickly.
This is the latest symptom of a very powerful opposition that just gained almost unlimited power. Or at least unchecked power. To be clear here Trump is also a symptom, this didn’t come out of nowhere with him.
Be mad and hold these companies accountable but we also can’t afford to be distracted by the symptoms when those in power are going to make it so much worse.
Unironically, the comments such as yours are downvoted. I had an idealised view about our industry, but it has now shattered during the course of the last year.
The complete rollover on this is kind of disheartening.
Were a lot of these programs a performative kabuki theatre that wasted time and money? Yes. Were companies ever going to fill their ranks with black, lesbian programmers? No.
On the other hand, now having worked my way up in the tech world, the idea that the C-suite decision makers are there through some sort of meritocracy is also equally laughable. These are exclusive circles, and your breeding (family, school, frat) already determines your access more than success ever will.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the ideal of giving more types of people a chance. But it was an issue of execution, not intent.
Read Judge Amit Mehta's ruling on their behavior gaming ad auctions to hit Revenue targets. Then think about non reaction of the Advertising Industry.
Achieving Monopoly and Domination requires kabuki performances.
There is no other route. These are mentally bankrupt one dimensional people. Other than survival and accumulation of status and wealth there is nothing much going on in their head.
Never listen to their words, only pay attention to their actions.
You hit it dead-on that a lot of these DEI initiatives were performance theater to appease some external force (as is most of business, when you really think about it). The existing leadership had zero intent to actually allow under-represented minorities into their ranks other than as a token or trophy figure who would kiss the ring and not rock the boat.
The real success (or failure) of DEI will be the next crop of leaders, not the current ones. The managers and leaders of tomorrow (who are the ICs and team leads of today) are acutely aware of how much of a Straight White Boy’s Club these leadership ranks are, and the vibe I get is increasing disgust at the proclamation of “merit” as justification for their tenure while (often minority) high performers are routinely exited out in favor of yet another H1B overseas.
I’m hoping this is just the last gasps of relevance from the status quo in the face of generational upheaval. Guess we’ll all find out together.
Take a breath and take this from first principles...
People tend to be tribal. People, when interviewing and select, will tend to hire people that look like them. A white guy from a white school from a white neighbourhood is far more likely to hire another white guy because that's what the've spent their whole lives surrounded by. This is justified a million ways, but what it boils down to is favouring someone who is a certain race.
And when tech is already full of white guys, it just means more white guys will be hired in tech... Cause maths.
All DEI was doing in the tech world was saying, "try interview at least one woman/ black person etc". Also maybe some training on how to avoid the pitfall in an interview of just hiring someone the same as you.
But look around you in the office. How many women are there? How many black people? How many... Black women?!?! Yea, I thought so.
If you are talking about "merit based" then that is "DEI". If you are talking about "people who look and act like me", then you are racist.
Anyway, excluding people leads to worse outcomes. Unfortunately, it makes life harder for people on the way.
> All DEI was doing in the tech world was saying, "try interview at least one woman/ black person etc". Also maybe some training on how to avoid the pitfall in an interview of just hiring someone the same as you.
A lot of people are strongly in favour of this, of course, including me. But are you sure that's all that it was doing?
What makes you believe that just because there is X percent of category 1 in set A it is "unjust" if there is not X percent of category 1 in an unrelated set B?
Also why do you think this principle applies to the categories Women and Blacks, and not for instance people with diabetes, psychopaths and people who like Taylor swift?
The idea that there’s one specific axis on which to judge job candidates that’s 100% objective is a fantasy. Leetcode certainly doesn’t predict how well someone will do at Google, or what they can contribute to a team. If anyone actually believed that they wouldn’t even do interviews.
Where have DEI initiatives lowered standards of hiring at Google?
I think you’re making that up! Be specific, don't deflect and shift into general discourse topics. I am not talking about distractions at work, I'm asking about your specific claim that hiring standards were lowered.
The loss of dei programs is bad but isn't the big bad. The big bad comes when businesses start being forced to prove that they arent doing dei. Every hire may soon have to be examined under inverse lenses: to prove that they are not dei. Real evils will then creep back into business culture. Be under no illusions. Those evils still lurk in every back office.
This is a fantastical speculation based on no evidence other than political bias. We do have evidence, though, that candidates had to go through performative hiring practices to prove that they support "diversity".
Well, if businesses had to prove that each hire is related to dei, which was the previous state of affairs, many would argue that is when evil creeps into business culture.
kepler1|1 year ago
cheeze|1 year ago
> You have been blocked.
Only me?
like_any_other|1 year ago
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250127210140/https://informati...
blackeyeblitzar|1 year ago
thaumasiotes|1 year ago
For most diversity purposes, Asians and Indians both count as white, if not "even more white".
Government programs, other than schools, are the main exception.
Gothmog69|1 year ago
rajnathani|1 year ago
benatkin|1 year ago
[deleted]
almostdeadguy|1 year ago
[deleted]
skywhopper|1 year ago
strangeloops85|1 year ago
These executive orders (and what "DEIA" exactly means or constitutes, legally speaking) have not been litigated or clarified yet. Is Google going to avoid interviewing anyone from a HBCU now?
At least Costco seems to have a logical reason for what they do and stood by it.
scarab92|1 year ago
It is strictly illegal in Australia to consider factors like gender or race when hiring. Even capturing these details from applicants is problematic in most cases.
The compensation payable if caught can be enormous, in the order of a years salary per applicant. It’s not even necessary to prove that a specific applicant was discriminated against, simply having a process which is likely to discriminate is sufficient.
likeabatterycar|1 year ago
No, because that would obviously be racist.
DEI would be favoring one candidate over another specifically due to immutable personal characteristics, not their qualifications for the job.
The just thing would be students from HBCUs having a level playing field along with everyone else.
It's no different than hiring managers selectively preferring graduates from Stanford or based on their surname's ethnicity, but it's hard to prove those things happen.
bufferoverflow|1 year ago
Why won't they?
It's not like black people can't be hired anymore. It's just they have to compete like everyone else without being treated like disabled people.
piker|1 year ago
Ferret7446|1 year ago
> These executive orders (and what "DEIA" exactly means or constitutes, legally speaking) have not been litigated or clarified yet.
All of these DEI efforts were and are blatantly illegal. They were just never litigated for long enough that everyone was comfortable with doing them openly. The point of the executive orders isn't necessarily the orders themselves, but a clear signal the new administration will litigate these efforts that have always been illegal.
So many of these companies are backing away from the efforts and hoping that show of goodwill will ameliorate their potential upcoming legal risk. If they play ball, the new administration might accept the peace offering and not go full legal scorched earth.
xnx|1 year ago
paxys|1 year ago
nlawalker|1 year ago
morkalork|1 year ago
skywhopper|1 year ago
But a company like Google, which makes obscene profits every quarter, should be doing far more at all stages to fight the effects of that prejudice, because if whole categories of people are unprepared to work at Google because of societal failures, that’s huge numbers of potentially fantastic employees Google is missing out on.
benatkin|1 year ago
relaxing|1 year ago
nxm|1 year ago
b59831|1 year ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes|1 year ago
The first time, what that meant was that they invited their diversity candidates to a small pre-interview preparation session which, oddly enough, didn't bother to touch on what they were looking for in interviews. I took the interviews and was informed that I'd failed them.
The second time, I paid for coaching from interviewing.io, and I learned what they were looking for in interviews. This was not cheap. (There are some surprises! For example, they don't care whether you can answer their questions. If you can't, you're supposed to ask them how. This is not a normal testing style.) I took their interviews, and my recruiter informed me that I had passed, wished me congratulations, and told me to expect a job offer by the end of the current hiring cycle (which was about six weeks away). In the meantime, I'd have a set of "team fit" interviews.
Then, they never contacted me again, except to say that they'd realized that on second thought my interview scores were too low for them to hire me. Not a single thing was scheduled until the hiring cycle ended and they let me know that while my scores were good enough to have passed their interviews, they weren't good enough to be hired after passing the interviews.
There was no obvious "diversity" angle to that one, but when I complained to a family friend working at Google, they looked up the recruiter and were surprised to see that she was specialized in diversity hiring.
unknown|1 year ago
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Quarrelsome|1 year ago
I don't pretend to understand the USA, and maybe that conference wasn't representative, but to me it was quite shocking that the disparity was so clearly visible. So I think its a bit of a shame they're losing this, because from my perspective there was still a clear gap in terms of education outcomes which feed corporate and I would have liked to think these policies were helping to address that.
paxys|1 year ago
greenchair|1 year ago
wahnfrieden|1 year ago
p0w3n3d|1 year ago
relaxing|1 year ago
Eextra953|1 year ago
1vuio0pswjnm7|1 year ago
https://www.ebglaw.com/insights/publications/dei-and-affirma...
silexia|1 year ago
DFHippie|1 year ago
But taking those concerns up again, almost no one perceives their own biases as biases. It's like you don't perceive your own accent, people of different racial backgrounds look similar, you can't smell your own breath, etc. So being a biased person feels just like being an unbiased person, but it makes you make biased decisions. A person against whom you harbor a prejudice applies for a job. Your bias causes you to discount their better qualities and double count their worse qualities. So you hire someone else. This hurts both you and the person you didn't hire.
A policy that works against well-known biases, if implemented correctly, achieves three ends: it reduces the harm to the person biased against, it reduces the harm to the company whose hiring policies are distorted by bias, and it helps the company by producing a more diverse workforce, which is an end in itself regardless of whether you care about harms to others. If implemented correctly, diversity hiring targets can produce the effect of hiring without prejudice despite the prejudice of those hiring.
If you are crossing a river and the wind blows you off course, you don't head to your goal but to the side. The net result is that you reach your goal. The diversity targets are just tacking against the wind.
rvz|1 year ago
nyarlathotep_|1 year ago
I've a prediction somewhat related to this.
We'll see, in the coming year(s), a large portion of positions at the FAANG(s) being moved overseas as cost-cutting measures. Paired with the impression that LLMs reduce the need for programmers, we (domestically) will see a substantial reduction in the number of developer (and related roles) in the States.
From what I've heard/seen wrt roles at these companies there's a substantial imbalance in locations for hiring (huge increases in India, Mexico, Brazil, and others) and less and less in the States.
jncfhnb|1 year ago
However there are some noteworthy qualifiers. First, the biggest thing these programs did successfully was just diversifying the entry points so that you could even begin to start conversations with people from other backgrounds. That’s huge and effective.
Second, and this one is more anecdata, but I never really felt the hiring pool of diverse candidates was randomly sampled at all. For all the groaning about meritocracy and white candidates getting shat on, I tended to find in my personal hiring that diverse candidates were often MUCH stronger candidates. I rarely saw unmotivated, underqualified minorities and women make it to an interview stage whereas there’s a ton of white and Asian guys that did. Getting these candidates was harder. Which is to say, without putting any intrinsic value on racial or cultural backgrounds, I do think DEI programs somehow greatly streamlined a meritocratic highlighting of talented folks from diverse backgrounds. Which is ironic because that’s often the opposite claim.
That is, given you are a minority applying to an advanced position, odds are you’re really strong.
hondo77|1 year ago
This. This was my experience with DEIA programs in the government. It was always about diverse recruitment, not hiring. People believe what they want to, though.
relaxing|1 year ago
This has been my experience as well. It’s sad that it feels like the contrarian opinion. Thanks for taking the time to write a sane accounting.
user3939382|1 year ago
aristofun|1 year ago
The only way is to “naturally” help create conditions that hopefully will slowly yield. Sure there aarea many vague lines there, but at least we should be rational enough to choose the right attitude, right general approach.
What could be more racist and stupid then these “hiring targets”?
paxys|1 year ago
katehenshaw|1 year ago
kepler1|1 year ago
"Google is eliminating its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs, joining other tech giants rethinking their approach to DEI.
In an email to employees Wednesday, Google said it would no longer set hiring targets to improve representation in its workforce.
In 2020, amid calls for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd, Google set a target of increasing by 30% the proportion of “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” by 2025.
Parent company Alphabet’s GOOGL -7.69%decrease; red down pointing triangle annual report released Wednesday omitted a sentence stating the company was “committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve.” The sentence was in its reports from 2021 through 2024.
Google also said it was reviewing recent court decisions and executive orders by President Trump aimed at curbing DEI in the government and federal contractors. The company is “evaluating changes to our programs required to comply,” the email said...
“We’ll continue to invest in states across the U.S.—and in many countries globally—but in the future we will no longer have aspirational goals,” the email said... "
krunck|1 year ago
Except making more money with US government and military contracts.
impish9208|1 year ago
ilrwbwrkhv|1 year ago
marricks|1 year ago
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/business/google-ai-weapons-su...
mobiuscog|1 year ago
kombine|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
srid|1 year ago
From their "Mission First" post on Apr 18, 2024 https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/buil...
> “ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.”
Paul Graham had predicted it back in 2020: https://x.com/paulg/status/1781329523155357914
https://www.piratewires.com/p/mission-accomplished
And this was happening elsewhere too, for e.g.,
Microsoft: https://archive.is/p5Ewk
and
Meta: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/10/meta-dei-programs-employees... & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42700134 ... even as early as 2022: https://world.hey.com/dhh/meta-goes-no-politics-at-work-and-...
For larger context, see https://www.wsj.com/business/c-suite/chief-diversity-officer...
somedude895|1 year ago
moi2388|1 year ago
Whereas in practice it’s just plain racism and discrimination.
I’m sure in theory it’s all very nice. Just like communism.
Eextra953|1 year ago
kepler1|1 year ago
Ozarkian|1 year ago
jjtheblunt|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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nipponese|1 year ago
- Parental Leave & Caregiving Support: Providing paid maternity and paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, and childcare support
relaxing|1 year ago
The conservative value they’re most interested in the freedom to be homeless and starve on the streets if you can’t stay employed.
coliveira|1 year ago
thinkingemote|1 year ago
TriangleEdge|1 year ago
mvdtnz|1 year ago
aurareturn|1 year ago
like_any_other|1 year ago
You don't think that was "to not get destroyed" too? Such as when New York city was sued (and lost, having to pay out $1.8 billion) because too many minorities failed its test for teachers:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/nyc-will-pay-out-1-8-billion-t...
mfuzzey|1 year ago
I actually think the business reason FOR the DEI stuff (to appeal to customers by coming accross as fair and progressive) made more sense. Have the customers really changed their minds just because someone else is in the Whitehouse?
nerdjon|1 year ago
I don’t know if these lawsuits would win or not but given the current political climate I sure wouldn’t bet against it. From a purely business prospective on that alone, I can see why they would do it. And do it so quickly.
This is the latest symptom of a very powerful opposition that just gained almost unlimited power. Or at least unchecked power. To be clear here Trump is also a symptom, this didn’t come out of nowhere with him.
Be mad and hold these companies accountable but we also can’t afford to be distracted by the symptoms when those in power are going to make it so much worse.
kombine|1 year ago
bitwize|1 year ago
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unification_fan|1 year ago
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janice1999|1 year ago
oulipo|1 year ago
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jfkrrorj|1 year ago
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profunctor|1 year ago
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unknown|1 year ago
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jfkrrorj|1 year ago
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cindybrey|1 year ago
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legitster|1 year ago
Were a lot of these programs a performative kabuki theatre that wasted time and money? Yes. Were companies ever going to fill their ranks with black, lesbian programmers? No.
On the other hand, now having worked my way up in the tech world, the idea that the C-suite decision makers are there through some sort of meritocracy is also equally laughable. These are exclusive circles, and your breeding (family, school, frat) already determines your access more than success ever will.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the ideal of giving more types of people a chance. But it was an issue of execution, not intent.
bc9o|1 year ago
Achieving Monopoly and Domination requires kabuki performances.
There is no other route. These are mentally bankrupt one dimensional people. Other than survival and accumulation of status and wealth there is nothing much going on in their head.
stego-tech|1 year ago
You hit it dead-on that a lot of these DEI initiatives were performance theater to appease some external force (as is most of business, when you really think about it). The existing leadership had zero intent to actually allow under-represented minorities into their ranks other than as a token or trophy figure who would kiss the ring and not rock the boat.
The real success (or failure) of DEI will be the next crop of leaders, not the current ones. The managers and leaders of tomorrow (who are the ICs and team leads of today) are acutely aware of how much of a Straight White Boy’s Club these leadership ranks are, and the vibe I get is increasing disgust at the proclamation of “merit” as justification for their tenure while (often minority) high performers are routinely exited out in favor of yet another H1B overseas.
I’m hoping this is just the last gasps of relevance from the status quo in the face of generational upheaval. Guess we’ll all find out together.
zmgsabst|1 year ago
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roomey|1 year ago
People tend to be tribal. People, when interviewing and select, will tend to hire people that look like them. A white guy from a white school from a white neighbourhood is far more likely to hire another white guy because that's what the've spent their whole lives surrounded by. This is justified a million ways, but what it boils down to is favouring someone who is a certain race.
And when tech is already full of white guys, it just means more white guys will be hired in tech... Cause maths.
All DEI was doing in the tech world was saying, "try interview at least one woman/ black person etc". Also maybe some training on how to avoid the pitfall in an interview of just hiring someone the same as you.
But look around you in the office. How many women are there? How many black people? How many... Black women?!?! Yea, I thought so.
If you are talking about "merit based" then that is "DEI". If you are talking about "people who look and act like me", then you are racist.
Anyway, excluding people leads to worse outcomes. Unfortunately, it makes life harder for people on the way.
mitthrowaway2|1 year ago
A lot of people are strongly in favour of this, of course, including me. But are you sure that's all that it was doing?
Jensson|1 year ago
Its also full of Asian guys, so its way more diverse than most sectors in USA.
rijoja|1 year ago
Also why do you think this principle applies to the categories Women and Blacks, and not for instance people with diabetes, psychopaths and people who like Taylor swift?
p0w3n3d|1 year ago
rvz|1 year ago
Either you pass the threshold or you don't. No excuses.
skywhopper|1 year ago
wahnfrieden|1 year ago
I think you’re making that up! Be specific, don't deflect and shift into general discourse topics. I am not talking about distractions at work, I'm asking about your specific claim that hiring standards were lowered.
Ancalagon|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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sandworm101|1 year ago
chrislongss|1 year ago
voldacar|1 year ago
programmerpass|1 year ago
So, it goes both ways, supposedly.