Do we need dei in tech?

That era is over - the majority of unprofitable companies have been purged, what remains makes actual money and is much less exposed to public opinion. Therefore, not only is there much less need to virtue-signal, but said virtue signalling and people behind it is now a major expense deemed unnecessary in what is now a for-profit company whose primary objective is to make profit (and not be a playground). Thus, "DEI" people get the boot.

Is this to say some of the concepts behind DEI are bad or unnecessary? No, but you don'y need "DEI" for that, you just need a competent HR department. It should be HR's job to deal with cases of racism, discrimination or noxious unprofessional conduct.

Bottom line, one cannot build a company consisting of a monoculture, and a healthy company respects all its employees.

Monocultures, especially in leadership groups have similar life experiences, reflected in unresponsive products, and unresponsiveness to employees who don't.

Will never fail to amaze me the folks who don’t grok they are part of the fuzzy algorithm.

On a meta level, attempting to control what and how people think (not just what they do) is totalitarian, and I want no part of such a society. Too much of actually-implemented DEI stuff comes across as attempting to control what we think, not just what we do.

Another result of DEI as implemented is that DEI is just another set of power levers that is used to maintain and reinforce existing power structures. People from the Ivies are making up the DEI jargon and rituals, and gatekeeping (continued) employment using facility with these as one of their tools of control.