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Last week, my company released its 3rd annual DEI report. It consists of a laundry list of DEI achievements, some questionable statistics, and inspiring messages from very well-paid executives.
Performance reviews are another feature of this time of year. Conventional wisdom holds that getting a good review depends on meeting your pseudo-self-defined goals for the year—and, by implication, on setting achievable ones. With that in mind, our executives set measurable, sensible goals with every expectation of meeting them.
That was a joke. The goals were 1/2 women and 1/3 people of color. We were reasonably close on the latter, not that this required any particular change. But our goal for gender parity was hilariously out of line with the ~1/4 we currently have. I could propose various reasons why an engineering- and manufacturing-heavy corporation that makes devices for killing people might not employ so many women, but that’s not really the point. No, this is not a serious goal. It’s advertising.
My company is not particularly woke. It repeats some of the phrases and buys into the aesthetic, but it’s clearly not ideologically captured. If there are true believers, they sure aren’t in charge. DEI is valued insofar as it keeps us from alienating potential talent and potential customers—and no more. At the end of the day it’s not going to shoot itself in the foot in service of equality or equity.
I believe this is true of the vast majority of corporations in the US! Identity politics are a small part of the business signaling that goes on every day. It’s directly proportional to how much the product is a cultural symbol rather than a material good. Apple products or Amazon media or Super Bowl ads are more likely to publicly proclaim their diversity because they’re selling an idea. It does not require true believers, though they help with credibility. The idea itself is what benefits from woke signaling.
This has implications for the trajectory of DEI. Debating whether woke ads are going to increase or alienate support is missing the point. That sort of identity politics is downstream of the culture war, and should not be used to make predictions about “peak woke.” It represents corporate ability to score points off the prevailing winds, not ideologues’ level of infiltration into corporations.
Defense contractors are wildly biased towards veterans. Our hiring is more likely to involve some sort of aggressive patriotism; their scruples are more likely to support selling drones and bombs. Sometimes this even has an advantage of rapport with customers. But this is an end, not a means. It would be a mistake to predict growing evangelism for veterans due to our obvious ideological capture. Likewise, reading DEI reports as a foothold in the culture wars is missing the point. They are a specific form of advertising, and follow the popularity of idpol rather than driving it.
I'd like to get a job in DEI just to get an idea of what these people actually do all day. I know some government agencies compile statistics on things like minority hiring in various industries but I'd think that doing this internally wouldn't take much time, even at the largest companies.
Judging by this report? Graphic design, plus a side of marketing. There were also workshops, outreach groups, and training updates; it’s not clear to me where the line is drawn from normal operations. I don’t think there are a ton of DEI-only employees. Instead you’ve got a management tree that hands down funding and objectives to the HR teams.
I spent most of last spring and fall working on projects that required me to walk past the DEI office for Allegheny County every day. It's a large county, with about 7500 employees, but as far as corporations go, that puts them in a league with American Eagle Outfitters, Domino's Pizza, Winnebago, and Weight Watchers. And this is an entire office, with 8 total staff—a Chief Equity & Inclusion Officer, a Deputy Director, 2 Certification Analysts, a Contract Compliance Specialist, an office manager, and 2 clerks. And while I was looking up that information I found that county Department of Human Services had its own DEI-type office with at least 2 employees. I get the contract specialist, since government contracts are required to comply with certain affirmative action requirements (which are largely more procedural than substantive), but I don't know what everyone else does.
Based on that, the cynical answer is "jobs for the boys" (and gals, we're all equal opportunity now of course). When you have more people with titles on the office door than staff doing administrative work (five officers/directors/whatnots to three office staff) then it's a great way to get local government Joe or Sally who's a reliable party member or otherwise tied in to the local politicians (could be by marriage or family) a nice cushy job as a reward.
And of course, if Joe or Sally happen to be a minority themselves, that means that you've also met the quota for local government increasing its hiring of women and other minorities. Win-win all round!
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