…new research published Friday and shared exclusively with the Guardian found that companies that resisted the pressure and kept their DEI practices, including Costco, Apple and Delta Air Lines, performed just as well as their competitors who pulled back.
US firms that kept DEI policies despite ‘go woke, go broke’ threats thrived
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/dei-policy-company-performance
33 Comments
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 103 pts · 3d
Company A: "We're done with this DEI shit. Fire everyone browner than a paper bag and promote only the most nepotistic failkids during White Boy Summer"
Company B: "We're going to continue hiring and promoting on merit and... oh wow, we've got a bumper crop of talented, motivated LGBTQ and POC suddenly lining up outside the door."
Wonder what happens next
TheGoldenGod@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 3d
Company A starts what we’ve discovered is essentially an inbreeding program, with extra steps. Generations of it will fail and live off large corporate bailouts, which it will later use to try eating smaller companies to appear successful from the outside to the less educated public.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 3d
The Habsburgs prove you can keep grinding on for a while even when you're inbreed to shit. But the notion that you need to inbreed in order to get ahead in business is borderline superstitious. Rather, large and entrenched businesses have the luxury of doing this inbred bullshit so long as their social networks can support a steady business income from monopolized industry and captured markets.
sodiumbromley@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 25 pts · 3d
And as a trans person I'll also say my Costco membership isn't going anywhere. That'd also because I have a big dog and she can't afford est anywhere else.
Dultas@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 3d
Even though they're cheap you shouldn't feed dogs hotdogs /s
BassTurd@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
Coincidentally, I had to give a past dog pain meds after an ACL surgery, and the pills were notoriously bitter and awful. Hiding them in hotdogs worked for a little while until she tasted a pill once. We also did cheese and chicken, which again worked until she tasted a pill then didn't trust us anymore. It was a long couple weeks.
Dultas@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Our cat was the same way. Pill pockets worked until they tasted it once. Then we'd have to switch flavors or brands.
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 3d
... Did people taste them? How do we know the dog meds tasted bad?
BassTurd@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Often times dog meds are just people meds. I just looked it up and in my case we were giving her Tramadol. Once upon a time we were giving our dogs Zyrtec for allergies, but the dose was like 6x the human equivalent. We found an alternative that maybe was new at the time that was much cheaper and was a single pill dose.
VAK@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
Didn't make a difference as per the article
ceenote@lemmy.world · 68 pts · 3d
It's probably not just the policies themselves. Caving to that type of pressure raises a big red flag about leadership competence.
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social · 14 pts · 3d
Companies didn't adopt DEI to "go woke" they adopted it because it gave them access to a larger talent pool, which was often cheaper because they had not previously been recognized and therefore didn't have the work history to command higher wages. There was always a business case to be made for this kind of program and its why it was so broadly implemented.
No one abandoned programs like this because they were costly or harmful, the only companies that did so were trying to score political points with jerks. And the outcome of that is pretty predictable.
BassTurd@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 3d
I've walked into a Target one time since they used the excuse of political pressure to drop their dei initiatives, and haven't made a purchase. I can't control a lot of things, but what I can do is not give money to shitty people and companies (short of taxes and other legally required payments). The list keeps growing, and I'm far from perfect at avoiding places, but the spend has definitely gone down at most of these places that I'm aware of.
yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 3d
Target has completely changed direction, btw. They fired the asshole CEO and flipped 180. Public is understandably hesitant to trust, but keep in mind Target is based in Minneapolis and they were not happy.
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social · 28 pts · 3d
Target actually has an entire surveillance and video forensic side business based in Minneapolis that works closely with Federal law enforcement and almost certainly worked directly with ICE and their operations in Minneapolis and is likely why they were exceptionally aggressive in that city.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/01/29/retailer-target-branches-out-into-police-work-span-classbankheadminneapolis-forensics-lab-donations-help-law-enforcement-agenciesspan/32273b10-40fa-4db4-a4a1-88b77eafb891/
https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/the-hidden-side-of-target-surveillance-policing-and-a-call-for-scrutiny/
https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/237917.pdf
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-25/how-target-tgt-police-surveilled-black-neighbors-in-inner-cities
Target is the tip of the fucking spear when it comes to fascist corporate/state law enforcement collaboration. They are NOT on our side and never have been.
Most, if not all, large corporations are inherently evil. Target is exceptional in that they have made a deliberate choice to make evil a core element of their business operations.
yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 3d
Awful and depressing. Target is a giant company and I can only speak to what I can see. Needless to say, I didn’t know about this.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
I would like to include large partnerships and sole propietorships for sake of pedanting
partofthevoice@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 3d
It’s not that corporations are inherently evil. It’s that profit optimizing algorithms are inherently non-empathetic. These companies are basically algorithms, in the same way that a computer is basically a calculator (bad analogy, I know).
Every company has a value stream in which capital is produced through labor. The working components are the protocols, the procedure is the algorithm. The algorithm gets optimized by C-suite for the benefit of stakeholders. Benefit, meaning profit.
We’ve always known that corporation interests only sometimes align with social interests, because there’s a difference. Socially, you want a good life. Corporations want good profit. Sometimes having good profit means capitulating to society, but most often it actually doesn’t.
I’d like to see more worker owned businesses. The problem is that we don’t really have a culture where groups of people come together in order to form democratically run worker collectives. How can we build this culture?
If we could build that culture, I’d favor worker collectives over traditional corps any day of the week. It would fit into my mind much like preferring open source over SaaS.
I want to see groups of people with entrepreneurial spirits that get excited about the idea of building a worker collective to compete in the various sectors of the economy. We could create a “hit list,” containing some of the most shitty companies that we’d like to displace. We can target them while prioritizing collectives to produce.
4am@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 3d
That’s a really long, roundabout way to say “the system is working exactly as intended and must be dismantled” 🤔
chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Nuh-uh. They had the benefit of the doubt before, no longer. Have they brought back DEI initiatives? No, so they can fucking burn in a hole for all I care. They not getting my money.
Grainne@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 3d
Headline: “Thrived”
Body: “Performed just as well”
Hmmmm
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
By definition a company must thrive or be stamped out. There are no other options.
AgentSeven@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 3d
CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
LOL, not all that surprising.
jim_v@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Tartco™.
aceshigh@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
So this is saying that pulling back dei practices did not negatively impact the companies. I would love to see the comparison of projected revenue and benchmarks.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
I'm surprised it's only just as well. DEI is meant to help the cream rise to the top
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social · 4 pts · 3d
Yep. These practices were not adopted because corporations are nice people that wanted to help improve society. They were implemented because they are good at identifying talent at bargain prices.
lemmyng@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 3d
Apple supports DEI?
lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 3d
Incorrectly searched for “tim cook trump,” when it seems like the intent was to search for Apple’s hiring and retention practices
n4ch1sm0@piefed.social · 15 pts · 3d
That being said, Tim Cook kissing the ring and Trump's ass puts just as bad a taste in my mouth about Apple as it does companies that did strip their DEI policies.
NoForwadSlashS@piefed.social · 4 pts · 3d
I can't imagine Trump's ass tasting good to anyone
n4ch1sm0@piefed.social · 1 pts · 3d
Must be pretty tasty to kiss that diaper if you're a billionaire willing to pay for a bribe.