>I thought the point of diversity was about giving equalty of opportunities to all folks indepndently of gender, race, ideas, etc, not about achieving some sort

>I thought the point of diversity was about giving equalty of opportunities to all folks indepndently of gender, race, ideas, etc, not about achieving some sort of colorful mastermind. There can be more than one reason to do something. Yes, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives are often attempting to extend opportunities to groups that are currently denied that opportunity. But there is also an element of D&I that is motivated by the belief that people with different perspectives and backgrounds can bring new and different ideas to the table and that the more ideas you bring to the table the more likely you are to find the best ideas. Empathy is absolutely a common human trait, but let's be honest, but this isn't about understanding other people's feelings, it's about being exposed to other people's feelings. You can have the most empathetic person in the world, but if they're living in a 99.99% white, gated community in the US and you ask them about race relations they're not going to have an informed view. Not because they lack empathy, they lack experience. Facebook has lots of users, and of those users it's not difficult to imagine different people use facebook in different ways. If you don't have an organisation that atleast to some extent reflects those perspectives then they're not truly going to do a good job building products for them. There's a good reason that when you look at successful start ups they're generally founded by people who have experience in the customer base that they're building their product for. It's because they have experience and true understanding for how their customers behave and think. I could say 'Well, surely anyone could use empathy to achieve the same thing' but we don't see that.