It's a big assumption to suppose that the 'failing up' guy was only able to do so 'because he was white'.
'Buddies with the execs' - that's easy to believe. But 'because white' ... much harder to convince me there.
The amount of easy and assumptive bigotry going on around these things makes me dismissive of all of it unless there's evidence otherwise.
Paradoxically, you may have highlighted one of the issues with DEI policies, in that people may be encouraged to perceive their lack of progress up the ladder as somehow 'racially oriented'.
This is pernicious, because it's a pyramid and it gets narrow quickly.
Everyone has a beef, everyone has a 'reason' for why they aren't at some stage higher than they are, it's the perennial social issue of middle management.
So that makes it hard to sort out the legitimate cases where DEI would be relevant, to just the standard 'beefs' that lie just below surface level in every office environment.
At about the Director level and above, it's very political and 'talent' is not only just a small part of the equation, but it also means something else at that level.
DEI is a really complicated subject, and I suggest 1990's progressives, with a focus on 'treating people equally' or 'equal opportunity' (ideals which are dismissed these days as actually being systematically racist) ... should be the rule.
A dude 'failing up' if that's the case, is just unfair all around and that's it.
It's 10x more complicated if you step into another cultural context i.e. outside of the US.
To the point where I think Google should actively trying to avoid having too much of a posture on anything really. Aside from 'genocide' etc.
'Buddies with the execs' - that's easy to believe. But 'because white' ... much harder to convince me there.
The amount of easy and assumptive bigotry going on around these things makes me dismissive of all of it unless there's evidence otherwise.
Paradoxically, you may have highlighted one of the issues with DEI policies, in that people may be encouraged to perceive their lack of progress up the ladder as somehow 'racially oriented'.
This is pernicious, because it's a pyramid and it gets narrow quickly.
Everyone has a beef, everyone has a 'reason' for why they aren't at some stage higher than they are, it's the perennial social issue of middle management.
So that makes it hard to sort out the legitimate cases where DEI would be relevant, to just the standard 'beefs' that lie just below surface level in every office environment.
At about the Director level and above, it's very political and 'talent' is not only just a small part of the equation, but it also means something else at that level.
DEI is a really complicated subject, and I suggest 1990's progressives, with a focus on 'treating people equally' or 'equal opportunity' (ideals which are dismissed these days as actually being systematically racist) ... should be the rule.
A dude 'failing up' if that's the case, is just unfair all around and that's it.
It's 10x more complicated if you step into another cultural context i.e. outside of the US.
To the point where I think Google should actively trying to avoid having too much of a posture on anything really. Aside from 'genocide' etc.