Ms. Powell smartly recognizes a truth that many in the industry elide: A lack of diversity is not just one of several issues for Silicon Valley to fix, but is i

Ms. Powell smartly recognizes a truth that many in the industry elide: A lack of diversity is not just one of several issues for Silicon Valley to fix, but is instead the keystone problem — the source of much else that ails tech, from its recklessly expansionist zeal to the ways its brightest companies keep stepping in problems of their own making. This article is working from a presumption that companies should be subject to a standard of political representation; and if they aren’t then they don’t — and can’t — function. Where did this idea come from, I wonder? It seems at odds both with recent history (many non-representative companies have done a lot of good) and it seems to not admit of any distinction between business institutions and political ones. Even if Google had broader representation of identity-related protected classes, it would not be a representative sample of the US or the world when considering things like education or other life history factors. What kind of diversity is the author talking about, and what relationship does it have to any legitimate standard of representativeness?