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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.
The first generation remembers a time before DEI so they might be able to do it cynically, not make any big changes but just say the slogans and muddle along. The next generation has no memory of anything else. They don't realize that you're not actually supposed to believe that it's feasible to have an engineering department that's 50% women, 30% black and 10% trans. They believe, from the bottom of their hearts, that there are just as many qualified black and women engineers as white and asian men and that it's only sexism and racism that's keeping them out.
And when they try to implement this stuff for real then what can anyone say to stop them? After all, it's right there in mission statement that diversity is a core corporate value, that a diverse company is a more effective company and that it's everyone's responsibility to promote a more equitable society. Anyone who tries to stop them will be not just a racist but also insubordinate.
Your company has AIDS. It's immune system is dead and it's just waiting for pneumonia or strep throat to come in and finish the job.
I’m skeptical that the second generation ever really comes about. There are a lot of financial incentives not to deny the reality beyond what is required for a decent public image. And that image will be insulated from the less visible practices of any company. As long as a company can make the right gestures and set (unrealistic) goals in the favored direction, it can keep doing practical stuff. Or get eaten by someone who does.
Mission statements have been jokes since at least the 90s. Probably since ancient Sumer, but I couldn’t find a source for it. And yet companies keep making them, because the cost-benefit remains low.
In tech, it already has.
You and @Bernd have made similar claims. What exactly do you mean by tech?
I’d argue that the position of tech giants in today’s market puts them more in the category of consumer goods. Phones, social media, etc. are less insulated from personal tastes. That leads to tech as tastemaking, and it makes them relatively vulnerable to social pressure.
I think my industry is insulated not just because I’m not in California, but because we don’t sell to the general public. Same for heavy industry, for big finance, for medicine…who’s going to cancel us? We are not making our money off of the perception of fashion.
Tech. The FAANGs, and the SF startups, and the various companies who aren't startups any more but want to be FAANGs
You can call a tail a leg but it won't make it so. The names of the sectors are somewhat arbitrary but at least they are pretty well agreed on. Consumer goods is e.g. Unilever and Proctor and Gamble... and there's evidence at least of P&G being "second generation".
And I’m saying that the consumer goods category is what’s most responsive to idpol. The market of middle-class liberal consumers is really insulated from heavy industry. Not so much from iPhone trendsetting.
There's no "pull" from consumers in either tech or consumer goods, it's all push from the companies and their ad agencies. No consumers wanted that Gillette (P&G) ad about how men suck, least of all the consumers of men's razors. The "it's consumer demand" thing is just a threadbare fiction told to dismiss complaints, and it's long since worn through.
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