Meta employees usually vote on what questions managers should address at Companywide meetings. Before such a meeting planned for Thursday, several of the most intended questions are related to Dei. But Meta leadership told employees that the popularity of a certain question no longer guarantees that it will be answered by the company’s leadership according to one of the employees. The New York Times reported the change earlier.
A number of US businesses, including in the technology industry, removed mention of diversity goals and programs in their annual filing about a year ago amid the growing public criticism of the initiatives in the form of civil lawsuits and pressure from activist investors . Retailers, restaurants, manufacturers and technical developers announced a new cut -off round when President Donald Trump returned to the White House this month.
Trump repeatedly criticized the DeI policy and programs and called them “nonsense” and “discriminatory”. After being inaugurated on January 20, Trump quickly moved to terminate DeI programs at the federal government agencies.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has been trying to warm his once Frosty relationship with the president over the past few months. On Wednesday, Meta and Trump entered into an agreement to resolve a lawsuit that Trump filed after the Capitol uprising on January 6 on the temporary suspension of his user account, according to a federal court conservation. Meta has agreed to pay about $ 25 million, with most funds going to Trump’s future presidential library, reports The Wall Street Journal. Dani Lever, a Meta spokesman, confirmed the reporting to Wired. Trump’s attorneys in the case did not respond to requests for comment.
Zuckerberg did not recognize the settlement on the company’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, but applauded the president. “We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading businesses, the US win -win and who will defend our values and interests abroad,” he said. “And I’m optimistic about the progress and innovation it can relax.”
At Meta, the effect of the dei cuts can be partly muted, because the company has been working behind the scenes for some time, according to a former Meta employee who is directly familiar with the changes. “It was a slow, painful death,” they say. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, then chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg was the forefront of the company’s increasing commitments to diversity, including the commission of an internal civil rights audit. In his 2022 diversity report, Meta noted that he has doubled the number of women and black staff members since 2019 as part of his diversity goals.
With the support of Sandberg, the former Meta employee says: “There was like this huge rush to make a difference.” But in July 2022, Sandberg announced her departure from the daily operations at the company. About the same time, the technical giant announced that it would start identifying teams to let go during the upcoming widespread layoffs, which occurred a few months later. The ultimate cuts affected about 11,000 people and were for the first time for Meta’s progress with diversity, the former employee claims.