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Comment by fitchip46 | Hacker News Reader

Im from Twilio, It's out of context on the email to outsiders, It's just a thing thats everywhere in our wording to be an anti-bias/anti-racist company. It's part of the Twilio values/corporate template.

It's not something written for this email in particular.

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> Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens.

You are mistaken. The letter is quite clear.

So it is part of Twilio's corporate culture to virtue signal?

No, it's just to make sure everyone is included, and to be vocal about racist behaviour and biases. There is a lot of engagement for those around this in the company.

No, I disagree from what I've observed. This is a reality and a deliberate agenda.

You can read University of California reports on equity, and what the goals are: https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/ucaade/...

Similar corporate agenda is driven by ESG initiatives.

I never understood the issue with virtue signalling. Why would we discourage both:

A) the act of being nice and showing our virtue

B) showing other people the nice thing we did

...honestly I don't get it? Signalling our virtue seems like a great idea and would encourage others to do the same.

Virtue signaling is all about saying you did the nice thing without showing you did the nice thing.

If a company really did the nice thing then it should be visible and they wouldn't have to tell everyone about it. It's that aspect of virtue signaling language that rubs people the wrong way.

To be fair, that was from an internal email that (I assume) they're legally required to disclose to the SEC. It's hardly shouting about it.

Virtue signalling is normally seen as putting on a façade around a virtue, for example Disney claiming to promote LGBT but only doing so in the US not in nations where doing so would hurt the bottom line

in this context "Anti-Racism" has become movement of actual racism, so when companies us the term "Anti-racist" is perceived by a lot of people (correctly) be anti-white/asian racism, as the main actor(s) in the movement openly claim that is the purpose

This just _isn't_ anti-white racism though. In this case, Twilio are doing the right thing by making sure those groups who are usually disproportionally hit by layoffs _aren't._

That's literally the definition of being anti-racist.

No, that would be called "not racist"

Anti-Racism is a specific philosophy that goes beyond simply not being racist.

I think this is insightful. It’s more reflective of the current moment of DEIJ hyperactivity than anything else. And there is a good reason it is happening, even if it is unsettling sometimes.

https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/us-population-...

I want to point out a population pyramid that explains a lot of the importance of DEIJ right now. It’s because there’s a big demographic transition happening in the US, and older managers and executives are not going to have the same demographics as the younger people with less tenure. The face of corporate America is literally changing and will continue to over the next few decades.

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