If AK is smart, he'll which way the wind is blowing and takes a cue from one of the industry leaders.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-ki-ls-diversity-hiring-targets-04433d7c
Search giant is eliminating goals to hire more minority employees and reviewing DEI programs, part of a pullback across Silicon Valley
By: Miles Kruppa
Updated Feb. 5, 2025 3:48 pm ET
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 ki-ling 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 0.14%increase; green up 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.
Black and Latino people have long been underrepresented in the tech industry. Google’s 2024 diversity report said 5.7% of its U.S. employees were Black and 7.5% were Latino. Four years earlier, those figures were 3.7% and 5.9%, respectively.
Google said it was evaluating whether to continue releasing annual diversity reports, which it has done since 2014. The evaluation is part of a broader review of DEI-related grants, training and initiatives, including those that the email said “raise risk, or that aren’t as impactful as we’d hoped.”
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.
The company said it would continue opening and expanding offices in cities with diverse workforces.
“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.
Google said it would maintain its resource groups for underrepresented employees.
Google’s Chief People Officer Fiona Cicconi said in the email that the company has “always been committed to creating a workplace where we hire the best people wherever we operate, create an environment where everyone can thrive, and treat everyone fairly. That’s exactly what you can expect to see going forward.”
Facebook owner Meta Platforms last month eliminated the team overseeing its diversity efforts and ended its representation goals for interviewing and hiring women and minorities. Meta’s vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, told employees the “legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing.”
Amazon in December told employees it would wind down some of its diversity initiatives by the end of 2024. It has removed from its website the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion are good for business,” while keeping other references to diversity and inclusion.
Several companies have been targeted with shareholder proposals aimed at ending DEI efforts. Apple has recommended that shareholders reject a proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, to end the company’s inclusion and diversity efforts.
And a number of companies have changed or removed language about diversity from their annual reports.