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I suspect you missed the point: not "diversity", that is not what the author is blaming. He blames the cultural shift from the revenue creation to revenue manag

I suspect you missed the point: not "diversity", that is not what the author is blaming. He blames the cultural shift from the revenue creation to revenue management with little to no attention outside the firm, as if the prior institutionalized revenue streams are forevermore assets. The author picks "diversity" has his "economic indicator" of this systematic transition.

pjc50 4y ago
> The author picks "diversity" has his "economic indicator" of this systematic transition. .. which is an instant red flag. They could have talked about e.g. Google's many chat apps or tendency to shut down products, or Facebook's abandoned "metaverse" project, as indicators that the company has switched from providing new ways to win revenue and serve users to new ways to spend revenue on conspicuous consumption. Instead they rant about "diversity". To expand on the author's metaphor, the problem with the Wild West is that some of the "building" was in fact theft, murder, and genocide; and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered. The unsympathetic reaction to the SVB crisis is a hint to SV that some of the proletariat might be massing outside the walls. Their approach to "diversity", "ESG", and other social issues is the beginning of a glimmer of recognition that they have a responsibility to broader society, but combined with a very poor ability to actually listen to people they consider not as smart.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  >and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered. The author feels that big corps are not focused on the reason they exist but simply they are concerned to distractions outside of their objective.
  - RandomLensman 4y ago
    Big corporations need to be seen to address certain things at certain times - so they are not in a vacuum. The c-suite doesn't have a free pass to ignore the world around them because their shareholders won't either.
- dash2 4y ago
  I think “red flag” is a bit of a red flag…. Whatever you think about diversity discourse, it’s surely a reasonable point that supporting diversity is not in fact how Google or FB got rich. Presumably now that times are tough, they are having to focus more on their core competencies.
  - RandomLensman 4y ago
    Totally reasonable. But as a large established company their core competencies change a bit: Protecting existing revenue streams is a different skill set from creating new ones - and now they need both and the former might indeed have more of an "Versailles vibe" about it.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Set aside your political bone to pick for a few seconds and think about it. The author isn't "blaming" anything on diversity. Diversity is just the "thing of the minute" in the context in which the author is writing about. In the 1950s he could write the same article and substitute in anticommunism. The "thing of the minute" will probably always be some broadly appealing subset of the culture and politics of the society and time in which the organization exits. It doesn't matter what the virtue everyone is professing is. What matters is that the virtue is at best ancillary to whatever the organization's goals are and resources directed at it are resources not directed at keeping the business running and prepared for the future.
  - RandomLensman 4y ago
    But that is a misunderstanding of the forces acting on a large corporation - they cannot abscond from society so to speak. The resources directed at the thing of the moment are meant to enhance long-term survival probability. Can it become disproportionate, sure. There are also pretty hard elements to this. For example, clients might now start to assume that if your firm cannot attract women then maybe that is a sign of a bigger issue somewhere and that will impede sales.
  - Werewolf255 4y ago
    If this article was written in the 1950s, the author would be blaming people of color and "that damnable civil rights act". I don't think this author is coming from a place of good faith when he starts off the article saying he was among the privileged few who was given a rare chance to possibly be a billionaire, if he just played his cards right. And then frames it as a real shame that his good (if not perfect!!!) ideas were ignored.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      What does he said that makes you think he’s against civil rights?
  - tom_ 4y ago
    Suppose the author wasn't Probably One Of Those People, and didn't apparently have some kind of axe to grind about whatever bee in their bonnet buzzes about, constantly tickling their lips? Then they'd phrase it more like your second paragraph! More meat, less spice. Decent meat doesn't need much spice. But: they didn't. (I also second the other person's comment about anti communism probably not being the example this particular writer would have chosen, were they writing in the 50s.)

pjc50 4y ago

> The author picks "diversity" has his "economic indicator" of this systematic transition. .. which is an instant red flag. They could have talked about e.g. Google's many chat apps or tendency to shut down products, or Facebook's abandoned "metaverse" project, as indicators that the company has switched from providing new ways to win revenue and serve users to new ways to spend revenue on conspicuous consumption. Instead they rant about "diversity". To expand on the author's metaphor, the problem with the Wild West is that some of the "building" was in fact theft, murder, and genocide; and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered. The unsympathetic reaction to the SVB crisis is a hint to SV that some of the proletariat might be massing outside the walls. Their approach to "diversity", "ESG", and other social issues is the beginning of a glimmer of recognition that they have a responsibility to broader society, but combined with a very poor ability to actually listen to people they consider not as smart.

DeathArrow 4y ago
>and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered. The author feels that big corps are not focused on the reason they exist but simply they are concerned to distractions outside of their objective.
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Big corporations need to be seen to address certain things at certain times - so they are not in a vacuum. The c-suite doesn't have a free pass to ignore the world around them because their shareholders won't either.
dash2 4y ago
I think “red flag” is a bit of a red flag…. Whatever you think about diversity discourse, it’s surely a reasonable point that supporting diversity is not in fact how Google or FB got rich. Presumably now that times are tough, they are having to focus more on their core competencies.
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Totally reasonable. But as a large established company their core competencies change a bit: Protecting existing revenue streams is a different skill set from creating new ones - and now they need both and the former might indeed have more of an "Versailles vibe" about it.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Set aside your political bone to pick for a few seconds and think about it. The author isn't "blaming" anything on diversity. Diversity is just the "thing of the minute" in the context in which the author is writing about. In the 1950s he could write the same article and substitute in anticommunism. The "thing of the minute" will probably always be some broadly appealing subset of the culture and politics of the society and time in which the organization exits. It doesn't matter what the virtue everyone is professing is. What matters is that the virtue is at best ancillary to whatever the organization's goals are and resources directed at it are resources not directed at keeping the business running and prepared for the future.
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  But that is a misunderstanding of the forces acting on a large corporation - they cannot abscond from society so to speak. The resources directed at the thing of the moment are meant to enhance long-term survival probability. Can it become disproportionate, sure. There are also pretty hard elements to this. For example, clients might now start to assume that if your firm cannot attract women then maybe that is a sign of a bigger issue somewhere and that will impede sales.
- Werewolf255 4y ago
  If this article was written in the 1950s, the author would be blaming people of color and "that damnable civil rights act". I don't think this author is coming from a place of good faith when he starts off the article saying he was among the privileged few who was given a rare chance to possibly be a billionaire, if he just played his cards right. And then frames it as a real shame that his good (if not perfect!!!) ideas were ignored.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    What does he said that makes you think he’s against civil rights?
- tom_ 4y ago
  Suppose the author wasn't Probably One Of Those People, and didn't apparently have some kind of axe to grind about whatever bee in their bonnet buzzes about, constantly tickling their lips? Then they'd phrase it more like your second paragraph! More meat, less spice. Decent meat doesn't need much spice. But: they didn't. (I also second the other person's comment about anti communism probably not being the example this particular writer would have chosen, were they writing in the 50s.)