Court of Versailles vs. the Wild West
asleepthinking.com
asleepthinking.com
.. then the author takes a sharp right turn to blame it on "diversity", i.e. the idea that people who aren't white guys should be given a shot at the wealth, and it goes downhill from there. The rest of the blog is devoted to complaining about e.g. the existence of women's basketball or cosplaying aristocracy of the early 20th century.
(diversity discussion on HN is .. not likely to go well)
.. which is an instant red flag.
They could have talked about e.g. Google's many chat apps or tendency to shut down products, or Facebook's abandoned "metaverse" project, as indicators that the company has switched from providing new ways to win revenue and serve users to new ways to spend revenue on conspicuous consumption.
Instead they rant about "diversity".
To expand on the author's metaphor, the problem with the Wild West is that some of the "building" was in fact theft, murder, and genocide; and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered.
The unsympathetic reaction to the SVB crisis is a hint to SV that some of the proletariat might be massing outside the walls. Their approach to "diversity", "ESG", and other social issues is the beginning of a glimmer of recognition that they have a responsibility to broader society, but combined with a very poor ability to actually listen to people they consider not as smart.
Whatever you think about diversity discourse, it’s surely a reasonable point that supporting diversity is not in fact how Google or FB got rich. Presumably now that times are tough, they are having to focus more on their core competencies.
The author feels that big corps are not focused on the reason they exist but simply they are concerned to distractions outside of their objective.
Diversity is just the "thing of the minute" in the context in which the author is writing about. In the 1950s he could write the same article and substitute in anticommunism. The "thing of the minute" will probably always be some broadly appealing subset of the culture and politics of the society and time in which the organization exits. It doesn't matter what the virtue everyone is professing is. What matters is that the virtue is at best ancillary to whatever the organization's goals are and resources directed at it are resources not directed at keeping the business running and prepared for the future.
There are also pretty hard elements to this. For example, clients might now start to assume that if your firm cannot attract women then maybe that is a sign of a bigger issue somewhere and that will impede sales.
But: they didn't.
(I also second the other person's comment about anti communism probably not being the example this particular writer would have chosen, were they writing in the 50s.)
I would probably invest in a company whose overall strategy for achieving wealth sounds the most likely to succeed.
It depends on your investment timeframes, as well. And a presumption of invincibility. Versailles was wealth-maximising until it was cancelled by the woke mob.
I am outright stating that issues affecting the majority are more important than issues not affecting the majority. If you disagree, check which production issue your PO/director prioritizes next.
The same applied to topics that were here before the work term - climate change, religion, violent video games, etc. They paved away for career crusaders, rather than ideological ones.
Gender-neutral bathrooms aren't some theoretical possibility where we have no idea what would happen if we introduce them. They're already a thing in many places, at this point probably for long enough and in sufficient numbers that we can collect actual data on whether this conservative moral panic is justified. So far, I've seen zero hard evidence that this leads to an increase in sexual harassment or assault.
And I want to emphasize the term "conservative moral panic": this really is just current year's iteration of the conservative moral panic over social progress. Moral panics are the standard reaction of conservatives to social change, and their favorite moral panics are those related to children. They pulled the exact same shit against gay people. First they suppressed them on religious grounds. When that stopped working they conjured a moral panic by constructing an unfounded association between homosexuality and pedophilia. When they lost that fight they had to begrudgingly tolerate gay people existing, but then the fight for gay marriage began. First they tried suppressing it on religious grounds again, which once more didn't work out. Their next move was, no points for guessing: constructing a moral panic about gay parenthood. If kids see two men kissing, they might catch the gay themselves! Etc etc.
The strategy against trans people is startlingly similar. They've lost some ground already in that they have to begrudgingly tolerate trans people existing, so now they're in the "will someone think of the children" moral panic phase over how the trans people will trans your kids, or how drag queens are going to groom them, or whatever. All without any evidence to back it up.
And also similarly to how they treated gay people, conservative pundits openly use language laden with disgust and open contempt. It's not just "a trans woman" sexually assaulting your kids, it's a balding sweaty overweight man in a dress and makeup sexually assaulting your kids.
For instance, we can probably agree that slavery was an issue that, in the US, affected a small minority of the population, but that was extremely severe so worth addressing and a "real" problem.
In the same vein, I would state that police brutality towards black people (typically categorized as a "woke" topic) in the US is a problem that affects a minority but that is very severe. Not as severe as slavery, but severe enough to be a "real" problem worth addressing.
Not using preferred pronouns is perhaps another rung down on the severity ladder compared to police brutality, and affects fewer people. But I think it's still a topic worth talking about because it scores very highly on a third axis we've omitted so far: how easy it is to address the problem. Not using preferred pronouns is done exclusively out of callousness. It is similar to other forms of bullying: it only affects a fairly small subset of people and the damage is "only" psychological, but the solution is: just don't bully/misgender people.
> Calling people fighting for REAL issues "woke" is incorrect.
Sure one can overdo "diversity" to the point of hiring incompetent people for diversity's sake. But striving for diversity can also be a way of finding and developing untapped human potential in less represented groups.
Source: I have worked in big tech
As a non-white guy, I find the "diversity" propaganda in SV over the last 5-6 years problematic. If that was truly about giving everyone a shot at wealth and increasing inclusion as you say, I would wholeheartedly support it. But after observing it closely for many years, I just saw empty virtue-signalling and no concrete action. Moreoever, there was no actual "diversity" of inputs and opinions - rather it was all groupthink.
I don't disagree with the authour but isn't this just a nice metaphor for small companies (where you have to be good at doing things) vs large ones (where politics rule).
I've worked at quite a few small/medium/large companies now, and watched companies grow from the former to the latter and it is always that way isn't it?
I've said before that FAANGs used to be start ups. And did very well to keep that mindset for as long as they did. But they are not that anymore. They are corporations. Drucker said the same thing before I was born or most FAANGs existed.
This is just the lifecycle of any enterprise. Even the French nobility were once a rag-tag, battle winning, bunch of Franks. The fact it has taken so much less time for Tech (however you define that) to go from rebels to empire is just modern life...
Upvoted anyway, because it IS a nice metaphor.
If you look at other posts on the site, seems to be a theme with this author. Everything is about how progressive politics are making the world harder for them.
> If you rebel against some of the precepts of this new ideology by espousing a contrary view as James Demore did at Google when he offered an alternative explanation on female representation
Eh.
The company internal wild-west eco system continus to produce more often then not, but the priesthood feels attacked by the idea of other power centers, aka revenue streams emerging inside the company.
Now, I don't care much for diversity/dei stuff, i believe in reasonable (not puritanical) meritocracy but when someone picks on dei it shows you how they think.
Obviously the author is not claiming diversity is the cause of decline at these companies. He is claiming it as an indicator of a court of bersailles culture shift where people pay lip service to DEI but he chose analyst calls which are not by tech workers or producers in FB. This is a call by managers/execs and traders. DEI lip service has been a thing in corporate america long before 2020, I remember having to endure bs DEI townhalls in companies that have nothing to do with tech and that were and still are very profitable as long ago as 2014-15.
The fact is, a public call or company wide townhall is set up to pay lip service to bullshit. You can't take that as a reflection of internal culture. They probably stopped talking about it on analyst calls because they had more pressing items like loss of share value and their plans to reassure shareholders.
If a FB tech worker claimed they get promoted based on attendance of a diversity seminar I would change my mind but the author picked on diversity similar to how republicans say "woke" as a dogwhistle to what they really mean.
It's not that I care about bullshit diversity lipservice bu random corporations but when you use that to make your point about the overall decline of a company now you are not paying lip service, your anti-diversity propaganda will have actual effects in excluding people.
Another HN post was saying things like "you shouldn't have committ hooks for a diversity committee meeting" I keep seeing this as a dogwhistle, the new "maga".
Show me evidence that diversity lipservice, as bullshit as it maybe, is being used in place of actual performance of employees that aren't in HR or managers at the middle-manager and higher level and I will take back what I said. Until then, this is a nicely concealed racial dogwhistle.
I remember clearly my highschool teacher telling the class how corporate america is "is still great, mostly white" and no one batter an eye lol. I know where this sentiment comes from no matter how well it is concealed these days.
The court of versailles vs wild west analogy lacks a lot of nuance. HR will usually be to the versailles extreme and SWEs to the wild west in any company.
What I have noticed on the other hand is execs are influenced by marketing, legal, investors, anyone but their core product people and that's when you see a decline. Google for example became a "buy another company instead of build it in house" type of a company which is why they were caught off guard.
Microsoft got past all that after shedding steve ballmer. They're not the 90s Microsoft but they are very innovative and even when they take over a company they show wisdom in not destroying the culture/people right away.
It's a shame, the article started out nice but I think the author let their bias leak/influence their conclusion.