The DEI team was cut first. All of us. In one round.
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☕☕☕☕☕ Scalding
AN
Anonymous
I led diversity and inclusion programmes for one of Google's product divisions. Mentorship pipelines, sponsorship initiatives, HBCUs partnerships. Things that were genuinely working.
When the layoffs came, our entire team was cut in one round. Every single person. The initiatives were "paused." The partnerships quietly lapsed.
When you need to show cost savings fast and you want to avoid visible discrimination claims, you cut the teams that exist to prevent discrimination. Those teams have the least political capital to fight back.
The press release said the company remained "deeply committed to diversity." The people who made that commitment happen were all on LinkedIn that afternoon.
Community-sourced account
This story has been paraphrased from a publicly shared account on Axios / The Guardian (2023) — documented DEI team cuts. The original words are not reproduced; the account is paraphrased to preserve the experience while protecting the original poster. We do not claim this as a first-person Office Tea submission.