Business
Google and Meta used to champion DEI efforts. Why Big Tech is pulling back
More than a decade ago, outcries about the lack of diversity in the tech industry reverberated across major Silicon Valley companies from Facebook to Google.
Women and minorities spoke out about feeling out of place in male-dominated professions, civil rights activists urged businesses to do more and tech workers like Tracy Chou, who was a software engineer at Pinterest at the time, pushed companies to release diversity data.
“There was already some movement in that direction, at least a feeling like we should do this,” said Chou, who wrote a viral Medium post in 2013 about the lack of female engineers. “What I happened to crystallize was a line of thinking that really resonated with the more data-driven side of the industry.”
For diversity advocates like Chou, the tide has now turned. Facing more political pressure and legal risks during President Trump’s second administration, tech companies that previously championed diversity including Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) and Amazon are scaling back, scrapping or rethinking their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
It’s part of a broader retrenchment across the business community. About 20% of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 100 have retreated from DEI commitments since Trump was elected, according to a Bloomberg News analysis. Those include Target Corp., McDonald’s Corp. and Disney.
Trump and Elon Musk, who spent more than $200 million to help elect the president to a second term, have been vocal critics of DEI programs. In a fact sheet about Trump’s executive order, the White House said many corporations use DEI as “an excuse for biased and unlawful employment practices,” sending a message to businesses that they could get sued. Companies such as Google and Amazon also contract with federal agencies.
“They’re reading the room, especially with Trump and Elon running the country,” said Chou, now the chief executive of Block Party, a tool that helps users combat online harassment.
Corporate pledges to fight racism including from Musk’s company Tesla heightened after the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, sparking massive protests against police brutality.
But legal threats emerged in 2023 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions. As tech companies cut thousands of jobs, the massive cuts also hit DEI teams.
Spending on DEI roles at S&P 500 companies started to fall in 2022 as mass layoffs swept the tech industry, data from Revelio Labs show. In November 2024, these businesses spent an estimated $1.3 billion on DEI roles, down 10% compared to the same month in 2022.
From December 2022 to December 2024, tech companies including Google’s parent company Alphabet, Netflix and Amazon spent less on roles that promoted diversity and inclusion.
During this period, Tesla’s DEI spending was down by 84% and Meta’s DEI spending declined by 53%, according to Revelio Labs, which analyzes data from various sources including online profiles on sites like LinkedIn or Jobcase.
Tech companies have pointed to legal risks in internal memos about why they’re rethinking how they approach their DEI programs.
“They wanted to keep President Trump on their good side, because they don’t want to deal with any legal ramifications from the federal government,” said Jared Slater, partner at Ervin Cohen & Jessup.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Meta’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, a former Trump critic who also said previously that improving diversity in tech is important, has in recent months aligned himself with the president and talked about the benefits of “masculine energy.” The company told its employees in an internal memo that the legal and policy landscape surrounding DEI changed and pointed to Supreme Court decisions.
“The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others,” said Janelle Gale, Meta’s head of human resources, in an internal memo.
The company said it wanted to serve everyone and would no longer use its “diversity slate approach” in which hiring managers consider candidates from underrepresented backgrounds when interviewing for an open role.
Meta also ended representation goals for women and minorities, a program to source supplies from diverse-owned businesses and scrapped its DEI teams. Maxine Williams, Meta’s chief diversity officer, became the vice president of accessibility and engagement.
Websites for Meta’s unconscious bias training and TechPrep, a resource hub for underrepresented people and their parents to learn about computer science, are no longer online.
Meta declined to comment but confirmed the memo, first published by Axios.
Google said this month it was reevaluating its DEI programs “following recent court decisions and executive orders on this topic.” The company said it would no longer set hiring targets tied to improving diversity after previously setting a goal of increasing by 30% the proportion of “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” by 2025.
And Amazon told its employees that it’s “winding down” certain programs after evaluating their “effectiveness, impact and ROI [return on investment]” but didn’t specify which ones.
In a December memo to employees reviewed by The Times, the company’s Vice President of inclusive experiences and technology Candi Castleberry told employees that the company is focused on “programs with proven outcomes” while also aiming to “foster a more truly inclusive culture.” Amazon shared the memo.
Amazon Studios — which announced a series of ambitious inclusion goals in June 2021 — also has been making changes. Last September, the Culver City-based studio removed a public-facing inclusion playbook from its website along with a goal that films or series with three or more people in above-line roles such as directors and producers included at least 30% women and 30% members of an underrepresented group.
“We’ve said from the beginning that our efforts to ensure diverse and inclusive storytelling would be fluid and change over time,” Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said in a statement. He added that the company strives to “tell the very best stories, while empowering diverse voices in our storytelling wherever possible.”
Meanwhile, some tech companies such as Apple are fighting back against anti-DEI proposals from conservative shareholders. The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, is asking that Apple consider ending its DEI programs, policies, departments and goals.
“The risks to the company’s bottom line stem from potentially getting sued by individuals for discrimination, potentially getting legal action from the government for violating civil rights law, and then the market backlash,” said Stefan Padfield, executive director of the center’s Free Enterprise Project.
Apple recommended that shareholders reject the proposal at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Feb. 25.
Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment, but the company said in a document to shareholders that the anti-DEI proposal was “unnecessary” partly because its board and management oversee legal and regulatory risks.
Netflix has remained committed to DEI after Trump’s executive order, stating in its annual report that a “major focus” is “fostering a work environment that is culturally diverse, inclusive and equitable” because it wants more people and cultures to see themselves reflected on screen.
The Los Gatos-based streaming giant said in its annual report released in January that it educates its recruiters on how to hire more inclusively.
A Netflix spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“What we need to do in this moment in time is to stand up, to speak up, to be strategic and to keep moving forward,” said Vernā Myers, former Netflix vice president of inclusion strategy and founder of the Vernā Myers Co., a consultancy on diversity, equity and inclusion. “We can’t allow this kind of bullying to make us so fearful that we are paralyzed and that we draw back from our core values.”
The backlash against DEI is not only affecting workplace culture, but nonprofits focused on recruiting more women and minorities into the tech industry.
Last year, Women Who Code, a nonprofit that got its start in California, closed because of a lack of funding. AnitaB.org, which brings together women in tech at its annual Grace Hopper Celebration, cut its workforce in 2024 and pointed to a downturn in corporate DEI investments.
Some diversity advocates like Freada Kapor Klein, co-chair of the Kapor Center, question whether some tech companies ever took DEI that seriously.
Tech giants seemed more open to diversity efforts in times of talent shortages because it helps open up a pool of potential hires, she said. Now they’re rolling back DEI efforts amid layoffs and a political climate in which Republicans hold more power.
“It is now fashionable to be anti-DEI. It’s now fashionable to talk about masculine energy. It’s now fashionable … to align oneself with MAGA interests,” she said. “So you have to kind of ask, what is it that people actually, really and truly believe?”
Early in April, Ruben Hallali got an unusual alert on his phone: The evening temperature at Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport had jumped about 6 degrees Fahrenheit in seconds.
Mr. Hallali, the chief executive of the weather risk company Sereno, had set up notifications for extreme weather swings. Then, nine days later, it happened again.
“It was an isolated jump, at one single station, early in the evening,” said Mr. Hallali, who added that he noticed another strange coincidence about the spikes: The timing was just right for somebody to reap a windfall on the betting site Polymarket.
He wasn’t the only one who sensed a problem. Météo-France, the country’s national meteorological service, filed a complaint last week with the police and local prosecutors, saying it had evidence that a weather sensor at Charles de Gaulle, the country’s largest airport, may have been tampered with.
The temperature swings, experts said, coincided with a period of unusual activity on Polymarket, one of the leading online prediction markets, which allow users to wager on the outcome of virtually anything.
One increasingly popular area is weather betting, where speculators can make real-time wagers on temperature readings, rainfall totals, the number of Atlantic hurricanes in a year and much more — with payouts in the thousands of dollars and higher.
As the stakes rise, so has the temptation to tamper with the instruments used to generate weather readings in hopes of engineering a lucrative outcome. Experts warn that this could have dangerous ripple effects, like degrading the information that underpins safe air travel.
Temperature data is used in a host of calculations at airports, helping determine correct takeoff distance, climb rate and whether crews need to apply frost treatment to planes. It’s crucial to airport safety, Mr. Hallali said.
“The Charles de Gaulle incident is not an isolated curiosity,” Mr. Hallali said. “It is what happens when financial incentives meet fragile data infrastructure.”
On April 6, the temperature reading at Charles de Gaulle jumped from 64 degrees Fahrenheit to 70 degrees at 7 p.m., before slowly falling over the next hour, according to data from Météo-France.
On April 15, the recorded temperature climbed even more sharply, from 61 degrees at 9 p.m. to 72 at 9:30 p.m., then dropping back to 61 a half-hour later.
In both instances, the spikes set the high temperature for the day, the metric on which some Polymarket wagers rest.
Laurent Becler, a spokesman for Météo-France, said the service contacted the police after noticing the discrepancies in temperature data. He declined to comment further on the case, saying it was under investigation.
Mr. Hallali said that after the first instance, experts and commenters on the French weather forum Infoclimat began to search answers. Theories were floated, including user error. But after the second spike, commenters zeroed in on the unusual Polymarket wagers, which totaled nearly $1.4 million over the two days, according to the company’s data.
The sums bet on April 6 and 15 were hundreds of thousands of dollars higher than on typical days this month.
It is not the first time that strange bets on prediction markets have raised accusations of insider trading.
On Thursday, a U.S. Army special forces soldier who helped capture President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in January was charged with using classified information to bet on outcomes related to Venezuela, making more than $400,000 on Polymarket. Late last year, another trader on the site made roughly $300,000 betting on last-minute pardons from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. before he left office.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While the site used to tie some bets to temperature readings at Charles de Gaulle, this week, after Météo-France filed its complaint, the platform began using temperatures taken at another airport near the city, Paris-Le Bourget, according to recent bets on the site.
Representatives for Charles de Gaulle airport declined to comment beyond saying that the case was under investigation. The airport police also declined to comment. The Bobigny Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is handling the case, declined to answer questions about the investigation but said that no complaint had been filed against Polymarket.
As to how the instruments could have been tampered with, a number of theories have been offered online, including by use of a hair dryer or a lighter. Mr. Hallali said that the precision of the spike on April 15 suggested the use of a calibrated portable heating device, although he declined to speculate about what kind.
“Markets are expanding into every domain where an outcome can be observed, measured, and settled,” he said. “As these markets multiply, so does the surface area for manipulation.”
As the war in Iran strangles the flow of oil around the globe, California’s jet fuel reservoirs are running low.
The state — which refines much of its own fuel in El Segundo and elsewhere but still relies on crude oil imports — has seen its jet fuel stock decline by more than 25% from last year’s peak to a level not seen since 2023, according to data from the California Energy Commission.
The supply is shrinking as a global shortage is already affecting travelers’ summer plans with canceled flights and higher fares. It could even affect plans for people coming to Los Angeles for the 2026 World Cup, which starts in June, said Mike Duignan, a hospitality expert and professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.
“People don’t know exactly how this is going to escalate,” he said. “There’s a huge black cloud over the sea for the World Cup and the travel slump that we’re seeing is all linked to this oil shortage.”
As fuel supplies shrink, flight prices are rising. Airlines are adding baggage surcharges to cover fuel costs. Several routes leaving from smaller California hubs, including Sacramento and Burbank, have already been canceled.
Air Canada has suspended flights for this summer, cutting routes from JFK to Toronto and Montreal.
“Jet fuel prices have doubled since the start of the Iran conflict, affecting some lower profitability routes and flights which now are no longer economically feasible,” the airline said in a statement last week.
Europe had just more than a month’s supply of jet fuel left last week, the International Energy Agency said. In an effort to cut costs, the German airline Lufthansa slashed 20,000 flights from its summer schedule this week.
Without a fresh oil supply flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, the situation is unlikely to improve, experts said. The oil reserves countries and companies have in storage are helping fill shortfalls, but the squeezed supply chain could still wreak economic havoc.
“When there’s a shortage somewhere, everything is affected,” said Alan Fyall, an associate dean of the University of Central Florida Rosen College of Hospitality Management. “Airlines are being cautious, and I would say that is a very wise strategy at the moment.”
California’s jet fuel stock reached its lowest levels in two and a half years at 2.6 million barrels last week, down from a peak of more than 3.5 million barrels last year.
The California Energy Commission, which tracks fuel inventory, said the state’s current jet fuel stock is sill sufficient.
“Current production and inventory levels of jet fuel are within historical ranges,” a spokesperson said. “Although supply is tight, no structural deficit has emerged yet. The present tightness reflects short‑term global market stress. As long as refinery operations remain stable, California is positioned to meet regional jet fuel needs.”
Europe has been affected more directly because it relies on the Middle East for the vast majority of its crude oil and many refined products, experts said. California gets crude oil from the Middle East but also from Canada, Argentina and Guyana.
The state has the capacity to refine around 200,000 barrels of jet fuel per day, most of it from refineries in El Segundo and Richmond.
The amount of crude oil originating in the state has been declining since the early 2000s, as state regulations and drilling costs have led to more imports.
California has become particularly vulnerable to supply-chain shocks like the war in Iran, says Chevron, one of the companies that provides jet fuel in the state.
“The conflict in the Mideast Gulf has exposed the danger of California’s decision to offshore energy production,” said Ross Allen, a Chevron spokesperson. “Taxes, red tape and burdensome regulations cost the state nearly 18% of its refinery capacity in just the past year, and we urge policymakers to protect the remaining manufacturing capacity.”
In 2025, 61% of crude oil supply to California’s refineries came from foreign sources, according to the California Energy Commission. Around 23% came from inside the state, down from 35% five years ago.
The state’s refining capacity has also been declining, said Jesus David, senior vice president of Energy at IIR Energy. The West Coast region’s refining capacity has decreased from 2.9 million to 2.3 million barrels a day since 2019, he said.
“California’s had issues prior to the war,” David said. “Nothing new has been built over the past 30 years, and California has closed a lot of capacity.”
The result is higher prices for both gasoline and jet fuel in the state. Jet fuel at LAX costs close to $15 per gallon this week, compared with almost $10 at Denver International Airport and $11 at Newark International Airport.
Gasoline prices have also been hit hard by the global conflict. Average gas prices in California are close to $6 a gallon, around $2 higher than the national average.
The West Coast is a “fuel island” because it’s not connected by pipelines to the rest of the country, United Airlines chief executive Scott Kirby said in an interview last month. That means oil and refined products have to be brought in by ships.
“Fuel price is more susceptible to supply weakness on the West Coast than anywhere else in the country,” Kirby said.
Some airlines might not survive the turmoil if oil prices don’t level out soon, he said. Spirit Airlines, a budget carrier based in Florida, is reportedly facing imminent liquidation if it isn’t bailed out by the Trump administration.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
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