This is a great overview of the financial side of things and what market conditions spurred on initiatives like DEI in the first place. The root is with the banking and finance institutions, and then the corporations. I.e the same ones who quickly co-opted Occupy Wallstreet, the one mass social movement that actually (correctly) pinned economic & societal problems on the ones largely responsible for them (banks, corpos etc.). None of the movement since have been as successful because they've all missed the point and became heavily fueled by identity politics (by design).
FWIW I have no problem with DEI-based initiatives, but they should be at the household & community levels, to give underrepresented groups better education opportunities from childhood and through grade school. Invest more in the schools, stop underpaying teachers, make the curriculum better, invest in after-school programs and education centers (especially in underprivileged communities), stop breaking up 2-parent households, stop tearing down/demonizing churches in communities, etc. That's how you genuinely enable others to be well-geared for these positions in tech-related spaces (and others) when they get older.
AFAIK very few of these corporations ever did any real investments in this way, in fact many gave millions to bogus charities that just padded the payrolls of people running the charities. Remember the lady who ran BLM using much of that money to buy mansions in California? Stuff like that was probably happening regularly. Between that and hiring/promotional practices that had easy grounds of being argued as discriminatory due to excluding certain people (often white) simply because of their skin color, and it's no wonder these DEI initiatives might be getting scaled back. Probably massive lawsuits in the making if they don't make changes now.
Though...it's also a lot to do with groups like Black Rock likely scaling back monetary investments based on ESG scores, and probably cutting back on all the ESG stuff anyway because the market isn't favorable towards it if interest rates are on a sharp rise again and there's no bubble for people to rush investments into that'd create a bunch of promising upstarts at cheap stock prices.
Jamming in political topics into workplaces will eventually piss people off.
Maybe at the beginning where some HR people do some negligible pow-wows like reminding employees about federal holidays (MLK Day), or ordering Mexican food for Cinco De Mayo Day etc.... it's not a big deal. I think people in general can always accept and go with the flow high level federally/mainstream celebrated things. These kinds of things come and go during the calendar year.
But when it comes HR or the DEI dept jamming in tons of nonsense, hiring/promoting quotas, and having people bring their miserable home/life political views to work I can see people having enough. Enough is enough.
Now that DEI and ESG stuff has gone on for years, I think what may have happened is when corporations do those annual employee surveys looking for feedback, I can see employees giving negative feedback. People agitated and leaving (turnover). Every employee feedback recap I see where execs and HR recap what people have submitted have always had people wanting more career options and opportunities. People will stick around more when they know there's chances of getting promoted internally. If a company is big on promotions based on quotas (which will skew to external hires so they can cherry pick what demographic hire they want), people get pissed. People arent stupid and can see what companies are doing.
Another big survey feedback I always see is people truly wanting to do better. Efficiencies, learning, and getting shit done. And to get that (executing fast and effectively), you want people who know what they are doing so the entire floor best as possible is smart, chill to work with and can get things done. I truly think most people want to do a good job for sake of satisfication and trying to boost the company to max out bonus payouts. It's always great to work for a place doing great than one on the downtrend. I've always worked at big places which are giant, profitable and always trending up. It'd be weird to work for a place dumbing down. So people like to work with people who are good at their job (merit based) and not forced to work with DEI hired "roll of the dicers" who might be hired more to check a box than true qualifications.
I have never seen one survey recap where people are all amped up on wanting more culture, ethnic or DEI stuff. And the companies I've worked for arent even big on this stuff to start with. Yet, people focus on careers, pay, business strategy etc...
I think for all the big companies caught up in DEI, it's got to a point the employee feedback is showing they've had enough. Thats my opinion at least,