“IBM sues Microsoft’s new chief diversity officer over non-compete agreement” (GeekWire) is a story covering America’s current twin passions:
IBM has filed suit against one of its longtime executives, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, alleging that her new position as Microsoft’s chief diversity officer violates a year-long non-compete agreement, allowing the Redmond company to use IBM’s internal secrets to boost its own diversity efforts.
The suit, filed federal court in New York today, describes McIntyre as one of the company’s “most senior executives with knowledge of IBM’s most closely guarded and competitively sensitive strategic plans and recruitment initiatives,” including “confidential strategies to recruit, retain and promote diverse talent.”
The suit against McIntyre signals the growing significance of diversity initiatives in major tech companies.
The article contains the full 31-page Complaint.
Related:
- No free lunch (at Google) for thought criminals (see the comments for excerpts from the litigation over Google’s attempts to stamp out heresy within its church of diversity)
The hilarious part is the idea that there’s a secret diversity algorithm providing a competitive advantage. IBM has a database “where da black nerds at”? Who knew?
“Diversity” is a medicine that our elites prescribe for others but would never take themselves. Lindsay-Rae McIntyre (who has blonde hair and blue eyes like a pure Aryan maiden) lives in Ridgefield, CT, which is 96% white and .62% black.
Non-compete agreements are common in industry (but unenforceable in California which is one reason why Silicon Valley displaced the Route 128 corridor as the tech hub) but usually they are aimed at not taking away “customers” and not stealing “confidential” information (and indeed McIntyre’s speaks about this, indicating that she signed a generic form even though she was not in a customer facing role nor did it involve say creating new chip designs (not that IBM makes much in the way of hardware nowadays). Technically she did agree not to work for a “competitor” at all for 12 months but courts in general do not favor non-competes – it doesn’t really benefit society to have talented people sitting around unemployed and drawing welfare for the sole benefit of their former employers. Despite their attempt to gin up a case, it is really difficult to see what kind of secret “diversity technology” McIntyre was in possession of (and which won’t be equally valuable and/or worthless 1 year from now). The idea that such a thing exists is pretty dubious. Complaints are by their nature one sided documents which give only the plaintiff’s side of the case but even reading this one sided document I was not persuaded that IBM has a legitimate interest in making McIntyre sit around the house for a year while her knowledge of secret IBM diversity technology goes stale. By its literal words McIntyre’s non-compete applies but courts do not apply non-competes robotically.
By preventing the sharing of best practices when it comes to promoting diversity, isn’t IBM hurting the cause of promoting diversity across the entire tech industry? In other words, by filing this lawsuit, IBM is showing itself to be hostile to the idea of a diverse workforce in STEM fields.
Word of the day: “Baizuo” (白左, “white lefties”).
Defn: a Chinese epithet meaning naive western educated person who advocates for peace and equality only to satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority. A baizuo only cares about topics such as diversity, LGBT, and the environment while being obsessed with political correctness to the extent that they import backwards islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism. The Chinese see baizuo as ignorant and arrogant westerners who pity the rest of the world, and think they are saviours.
What kind of message does it send to hire a white, blond diversity officer?
I would sure love to know those super top secret diversity secrets. Hope Lindsay-Rae spills the beans.
bjdubs,
Why cannot a white blonde female be diverse?
Mark — a white blonde female is not sufficiently “intersectional”.
Intersectionalism is a concept introduced by a black feminist in support of a employment discrimination case. The concept is that various identity-based oppressions intersect to make discrimination more arduous the more oppressed categories the victim is a member of. Being black is bad; being black and female is harder; being black, female, and a lesbian is even worse. If this black lesbian is also disabled she gets another intersection of discrimination, and is even more deserving of special accommodation. Add and combine aggrieved classes *ad infinitum* and you get the idea.
The plaintiff in the original case lost, but the arguments made have lived on and been repeated as accepted wisdom among feminists, so that the argument essentially has become common law by sheer assertion.