Our Internet provider here in the Florida Free State is AT&T. I was trying to contact them about changing my name on the bill to “Greenspun” from “Greenstun” and somehow landed on about.att.com. Here’s what’s at the top:
If they stand for equality, should we infer that they don’t stand for equity?
As a child of the 1960s, of course I am all in favor of equality, e.g., Equality Feminism. Nonetheless, this is not why I am an AT&T customer. If I scroll down a little, I find out that the company gives equal weight to “Internet & Fiber” and “Diversity & Inclusion”.
I’m assuming that this is a profit-maximizing behavior, but I wonder why. Are American consumers equally interested in diversity and inclusion from an Internet provider as they are in the Internet service itself? Is it that regulators might stumble on this page and a lot of regulators are themselves affirmative action quota-fillers?
In the case of AT&T I’d also assume that this is primarily for regulators. For example, when they have to justify that some Black neighborhoods do not have fiber yet, they can point to the pictures that clearly show their goodness.
It also helps with customer service to treat the populace as a “community”. It is then harder for a customer to be firm and stand his/her/zir/their ground if a dispute arises. I think con men/womxn use the same psychological tricks to establish rapport and exploit the altruistic impulses of their targets.
Richard Hanania argues convincingly in my opinion that asking the question of why corporations are woke is missing the point. Since corporations are a subset of society institutions the correct question to ask is why institutions are woke ? His (less convincing) answer is that “democracy does not reflect the will of the citizenry, it reflects the will of an activist class, which is not representative of the general population”, and progs are just much more activist than deplorables, He gives the following example:
“let’s say I vote Republican every two years, but otherwise go on with my life and rarely ever think about politics. You, on the other hand, not only vote Democrat, but give money to campaigns, write your Congressman when major legislation comes up, wear pink hats, and march in the streets or write emails to institutions when you’re outraged about something … Most people are relatively indifferent to politics and see it as a small part of their lives, yet a small percentage of the population takes it very seriously and makes it part of its identity. Those people will tend to punch above their weight in influence, and institutions will be more responsive to them.”
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-liberal
Also, there are not many negative economic consequences for going woke (yet), or whatever financial loss there might be due to wokeness, they can afford to absorb it. There may even be some temporary gains, local maxima as it were, e,g. a corp can get on a preferred government vendor list, things like that.
Concerning Silicon Valley, I don’t agree with Hanania.
Wokism was forced on many open source projects: Their bureaucratic foundations, often consisting of non-programmers, were strengthened and showered with money (little of which arrived at the programmers). Microsoft is buying its way into e.g. The Linux Foundation.
In Microsoft’s case the strategy could be “embrace, extend, extinguish”. Officially they want to boost their cloud business.
The other SV companies want cheaper labor and have large HR departments with useless degrees who don’t know what to do, so they invent and promote new religions.
Adherence to a ridiculous religion of the day is a loyalty test in U.S. corporations, so SJW is a convenient power tool.
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Well, you actually agree with him, unawares. The software engineers in your case are playing the role of passive deplorables from my example, offering no pushback, and the activist HR/management that of “progressives”.
Besides, in my experience of dealing with software engineers, both in the Boston and LA areas, the smartest ones were/are irrevocably woke already, so it is hard to commiserate with them — семена упали на благодатную почву (Mark 4:8).
Ivan: I assumed Hanania meant genuine activism, not fake one. I’m rather sure that the people above HR could order MAGA policies at a whim if they wished to filter out the most pliable and loyal employees who would follow that religion, too.
10% would leave, some would rage but prefer their paychecks, some would not care at all.
I’m not sure that the smartest engineers are woke. When I look at actual code and not smart sounding talk on GitHub I don’t see a correlation. Smart and woke ones do exist of course, but I doubt they are the majority.
On about.att.com the white bearded male is the only one performing hard work (disaster recovery). Glitch or another PR agency rebelling?