3 out of 4 companies I've worked at, the DEI initiatives were plainly discriminatory. One designated a segment of headcount exclusive to "diverse" candidates. "

3 out of 4 companies I've worked at, the DEI initiatives were plainly discriminatory. One designated a segment of headcount exclusive to "diverse" candidates. "Diverse" was defined as women and URM males. Another set a threshold of 40% in annual OKRs for women in all roles. Including software developers and electrical engineers (20% and 10% women respectively). The last mandated a certain percentage of on-site interviews be "diverse" before an offer was made. This resulted in unqualified candidates being scheduled for on-sites for the sake of fulfilling this requirement (the mandates were well above industry representation of "diverse" workers). Then HR noticed a lower hire rate for "diverse" candidates on the on-site, and not-so-subtly indicated that this was unacceptable. So in effect, it's a quota: X% of on-sites need to be "diverse" and those "diverse" candidates have to be hired a similar rate of non-diverse candidates. I don't know what your personal experiences with DEI have been, but understand that for a lot of people "DEI" is effectively synonymous with "gender and racial discrimination".