In all of the interviews I've done as both interviewer and interviewee, not once has "diversity" been mentioned. In fact, it's so strange that it feels oddly hostile to me. It's that weird. I can't fathom asking someone who's interviewing me: "Do you have enough latinos in your team?"
So yes, that's a mostly SF thing from my experince.
It's also interesting that I'm usually considered not diverse (white guy in tech). However, what's interesting is that when we conduct surveys at work, in conferences, school, etc. I usually stick out like a sore thumb. Because I'm from a poor income bracket, in the midwest. Where most "diverse" people get scholarships for school, because I'm white I received next to none (besides for my research / grades). So what people mean isn't really "diverse" they mean, woman and / or other skin color (not even other culture).
Diversity should include states IMO since the U.S. is easily diverse, perhaps not as much as Europe, but enough to be unique. How many people on your office have people from the Midwest or the south? It's actually rarer than I anticipated looking at the figures.
Most "diverse" people don't get scholarships either. These scholarships are either broad, but small (i.e., All Native American students get $500/semester) or generous but targeted (Native American Women Studying Electrical Engineering get $4000/semester). The latter can afford to be so generous because of the complete lack of candidates.
But this attitude completely ignores the silent majority of these "diverse" groups that get nothing (or are actively screwed) while being chastised by the "I'm white so I get nothing crowd."
I had several Asian friends in college that paid $40k+ a year for tuition at a shitty state school (which was $8k/yr for me). One was married to an American since his freshman year and started working a job in the US at the end of his sophomore year, yet, the university refused to give him the in-state tuition rates until his very last semester. He also graduated with a 3.9 GPA.
His parents paid roughly $150,000 for the same education that I would have paid $32k for. Had he been a white American, he would have been eligible for an automatic academic scholarship (like I was).
Having a good distribution of perspectives is much more important than having a multi-ethnic hivemind.
In the company I work at (small, ~30), I didn't even notice we are extremely diverse (the skin color is mostly white, but every person comes from different countries/continents) until someone pointed out that we are.
I just considered everyone "people", that's it? It's not being diverse that is nice, it's the fact that there is no racism that is nice.
No racism = you won't notice you have different people in the team, it's just natural. That's how it should have been since the beginning.
I asked this question in my most recent round and got a variety of answers, which I found illuminating. Some people were caught totally flat-footed and it wasn't a focus, others rattled off a variety of initiatives to address a variety of aspects.
Re: interviews, you're right. It's not brought up very often. Since working on Key Values though for the last several months, I've learned that many women refuse to be the first female engineer at a company. While diversity isn't always visible, many people will simply look at the current team members and draw conclusions themselves.
Who recommends asking this?!