Microsoft Eliminates DEI Team

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A sea change appears to be coming in the tech industry. In April, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo that the company’s employees were to leave their politics out of the workplace. Now comes news – first reported by Business Insider – that Microsoft is going even further. Starting July 1, 2024, Microsoft “laid off an internal team focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion,” with an unknown number of employees being dismissed. A Microsoft spokesman named Jeff Jones released a statement assuring people that this changed nothing in terms of the company’s goals (which don’t include anything about technology):

“Our D&I commitments remain unchanged… Our focus on diversity and inclusion is unwavering and we are holding firm on our expectations, prioritizing accountability, and continuing to focus on this work.”

A “team leader” from Microsoft was not well pleased with this and expressed his ire at the company in an internal email, saying the elimination of the DEI team was due to “changing business needs” and that “[t]rue systems-change work associated with DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020.”

This follows a report from last year that Google and Meta had slashed their DEI programs, with a representative from a DEI consulting firm saying that tech companies had “cut their DEI budgets by as much as 90%.” Earlier this year, Zoom also laid off its DEI team, saying it would work with outside consultants instead. I don’t want to get ahead of anything, but it does feel like there is a shift going on with a lot of these tech companies. DEI is proving to be a detriment time and again, with poorly received products and customer backlash – they’re effectively paying people to lose them money. And these decisions mark the difference between businessmen and activists, something I talk about a lot regarding Hollywood; Microsoft, Google, Zoom, et al are clearly run by businessmen, or at least guys who are businessmen first. They tried something they thought would be good for business, it was a failure, and they’re changing course. The talk of DEI continuing to be a goal and using outside consulting firms may be an attempt to offset some of the costs of pursuing DEI initiatives, or it may be lip service to quiet those who will be unhappy about this. Either way, this is a scaling down of DEI in the tech world and a hopeful sign that this nonsense is on its way out.