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.
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.
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.
For any who missed it, Leonard Leo helped fund the bud light boycott
Kinda glad, as a gamer I’m tired of DEI telling me I can’t have a steak because a baby can’t chew it.
I’m all for more diversity and inclusion, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it, how DEI was being used in the gaming industry was definitely the wrong way.
What steaks are you being denied? I don’t understand.
You know what he wants. An all white video game
I’m not trying to make a “did you assume my gender?!” joke, but uh, you actually did assume their gender incorrectly. Which I find a bit ironic.
Hey, hey, hold on. I looked at their comment history, I don’t think that necessarily.
I mean, it’s possible, but I’m trying to be charitable here.
Why would we give someone the benefit of the doubt when we could instead label them as an enemy and then feel no remorse when we assume all their traits are negative? /s
To be fair, I aasumed negatively, too. I was just waiting to see if they would surpise me.
Remasters that remove characters or stages because they’re “problematic content”, redesigns of familiar characters that remove their sex appeal because feminity in and of itself is somehow misogynistic (seriously I’m a lady just wants to play a beautiful woman in my escapist fantasies, ya know cause it’s MY fantasy and we all wanna be more attractive?), risque humor no longer being allowed, localizations that remove or change dialogue seen as sexist (Even if it’s villain dialogue, or done to show that a specific character has flaws that include outdated views), the terms “Male and Female” are now “Body Type A” and “Body Type B” (Look I’m trans, non-binary identity is more common, I get it… but… this feels more patronizing than inclusive…)
Lots of shit like that… and as a gamer it is quite frankly embarrassing. Games are a form of art, and we should not apologize for art.
Btw, I know the Body Type A/B thing sounds pedantic, but it really just feels like trying too hard yet not hard enough… If it’s really too offensive to just have a drop down menu that says “MALE or FEMALE” in current year, just have a character creator that lets me pick masculine/feminine/androgynous traits from menus and ask for my pronouns at the end. That’d be a much better solution (and was fucking awesome when Cyberpunk 2077 did it)
A lot of games are very lazy and have two body types, an overly masculine buff guy (A) and a curvaceous lady (B), then ask if you want to be referred to as “He, She, or They”, while I understand They (Non-Binary individuals exist), can someone tell me who the fuck outside of a Right Wing troll trying (and failing) to be funny is going to pick the buff guy + the “she/her” pronouns?
It’s just one of those situations where I just wanna say “Your attempt at inclusion is so poor, I’d rather you just call me a slur at this point.”
Um. I think there are some kinds we should apologize for. I’m sure you could imagine the kind of hypothetical challenge I might put forward.
But that said, it sounds like your concern is more about that sort of rainbow capitalism / design by committee flavor that would balk at, say, Bayonetta. I get that.
It reminds me of a story that… was it Contrapoints? told about how progressive people will sometimes do this thing where they’ve clocked you as probably trans or something, and they want to ask your pronouns, but they’ll do it by having everyone sit down in a circle and share theirs one at a time, which makes the whole thing very strange because everybody is staring and waiting for your turn to go.
Less conscientious people will be like “she looks like a woman… I’ll go with she.” They can guess wrong, of course, but the casualness of it can also be really freeing in its own way.
A thing I’m not sure about, though: while some of the ideas put forward by these well-meaning but oblivious people might be kind of cringe, I don’t know that they haven’t affected anything positive. Rainbow Six Siege sells the shit out of its diversity characters to an almost distracting degree, but still, I think it’s kind of nice.
So, I guess my hope is not that DEI committees get disbanded, that seems kind of bad, but that the right people get involved in them. Hold back the busybodies when they get too sex-repressed, maybe.
Every single thing you’re complaining about was implemented by game devs themselves, none were mandated by any DEI program. You say that you believe art has value and shouldn’t apologize for itself - and yet when you see the art current creators are making you recoil from it and say that it needs to be changed. You are exactly what you are accusing others of being.
I had heard they were DEI mandates, if they weren’t then I am mistaken and apologize. But as far as I’m aware, this was mandated.
So if you have proof it was a decision of the devs themselves, I’d love to see it.
What you’re complaining about sounds like the symptom of the lack of a DEI team where companies just apply diversity bandaids instead of hiring professionals.
Honestly these “Diversity Bandaids” seem to be more common when DEI is applied than not, it really feels more like a pro-censorship initiative more than actually trying to elevate women and minorities in the workplace.
I’ve worked with DEI. What you’re describing is poor DEI. But yes, it’s unfortunately common specially in large corporations.
That’s not really the fault of DEI, although I share your feelings on the matter. I feel like corporate media has just become a smooth, grey blob of whatever is determined to appeal to the widest audience of people.
Try to appeal to everyone and you’ll end up pleasing no one…
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 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 gwt 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.
I think you’re right, it’s become both tainted and a liability.
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 😄
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.
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 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?
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 Catholic a 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
By the supreme absolute and totally incorruptible court of Trumpistan?
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.”
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.
They are not legally compelled to do so. That’s a nonsense myth, even for publicly traded companies.
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?
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.
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.
I corrected my comment. Thanks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good riddance to HR rubbish.
Let me guess, white straight man
Did you just assume their gender and race?
it is not an insult that you think it is… just another group of people getting fucked by the owner class lol
i am sorry that some boomer white cuck hurt you tho
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.
No woke, gets broke.
If I were Microsoft I too would stop that bullshit virtue-signalling.
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.
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.
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.
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.
DEI is racist so good
Dismantle Microsoft.
Dismantle, destroy, whatever. Seconded.
Good.
