Championing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Tech – Shimmy Says EP9 Part 1
Alan Shimel highlights the critical need for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the tech industry during his address in London. He points out the underrepresentation of women and racially diverse minorities at conferences and criticizes the current administration and major tech companies for their lack of support for DEI initiatives. Shiel urges organizations to resist political pressures and advocates for active support of DEI efforts.
Transcript
Hey everyone, it's Alan Shiel and I'm here in London at CubeCon. And, but it's time for Shimmy says, and I wanted to get this done, get some really important things to talk about today. I actually have a double barrel of shimmy, says we're gonna do one, and then we'll, we'll start up the next feed in about a minute after that.
Let me start with my first subject though, which is what I was gonna talk about anyway. And it's this, it's about DEI, diversity, right? Inclusion.
I know it's not a popular subject amongst some back at home in the us, but all one has to do, and the tech industry is come to a conference like this of 12,000 people and see that no more than 15%, 20% at most are female. See how many are of other racially diverse minorities. To know that DEI is real and there's a reason we lead it.
And it seems just as if we were starting to make some progress. The rug's been called out from under us here in the US at least, uh, with a war against DEI, taking down webpages of heroes because they were blacks or women and so forth that I blame our administration for. And hopefully when people vote next time, we'll put an end to that.
But I have a bigger issue here in the CNCF. The people put on Cube K. They have a DEI policy.
In fact, they have a DEI group. There's several, there's several groups within the DEI group. One is for women, one is for, uh, hearing impaired deaf people.
One is for the, uh, L-B-L-G-B-Q-T community. One is for other minorities, all part of this DEI group. It's been part, it's been something that the CNCF has promoted and supported for as long as I know about CubeCon.
As long as I've been coming here, probably six, seven more years. They had a DEI meeting here in London. It was sponsored by some of the biggest tech companies that usually sponsor it, including Google.
And I'm calling out Google, right? They, they sponsored it in the past. They were sponsoring it this year.
And then I was in, at the DEI hub meeting, but I have friends who were, and they were told, do not take pictures of anything with Google's logo there, because Google is afraid to publicly acknowledge that they support DEI and sponsored that meeting. I think that's disgusting and despicable. Disgusting and despicable.
Our largest tech companies have lined up to kowtow before an administration and philosophy that is, that is foreign to our very being in the US that is against all we stand for. And it's not just the Googles and others of the world who are doing this, right? We see the largest law firms in this country rather than be subject to the executive order because they were, they helped support political enemies of the current administration, kowtowing and pledging tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of pro bono work to support the causes of this administration.
What happened? What happened to our country? Where are people gonna stand up?
Hashtags stand up, right? This is, this is a page out of Nazi Germany in 1933 to 39 where the largest industrial magnets were, were kowtowed into supporting and looking the other way. A, a government, a regime that was, that was inhuman.
And, and here we are, repeating it in the us 75, 80 years later. It's just, it, it boggles my mind as someone who, as someone whose family escaped Europe, or least part of my family, escaped Europe after the war, but were there for the Holocaust and lost members. It, it curdles my blood to the bone that we would in this country allow our very institutions, our largest companies, our leading law firms, our leading journalists, our leading media companies to be kow, to be intimidated from telling the truth, from standing up for what's right.
It's a sad day in America when companies like Google have to be afraid to show their logo for supporting a DEI conference in London. Uh, one more, uh, uh, uh, matter on this. I know for a fact that folks wrote to the CNCF and said, we know you support DEI, but now is the time where you have to make a public statement about your support for DEI.
And you know what? Crickets. Crickets.
Even even the CNCF and Linux Foundation have not come out and explicitly mention their support for DEI programs. I'm telling you right now, I personally support them for me and my people. We support them.
I think it's time. If you support them, now's the time to stand up. You know, it's like that old quote that you hear when they came for so and so.
I didn't say anything 'cause they didn't come for me. And when they came for the next group, I didn't say anything 'cause they didn't come for me. And when they came for the next group, I didn't say anything.
'cause they didn't come for me. And when they came for me, there was no one left to say anything. It's, it's that time in America where we, we can't just shake our head and say, we need to get through these four years.
We need to stand up, stand out, and don't be intimidated with threats from a government that every day just goes well beyond the norm. We've gotta do something. And it starts here.
Stand up. That's it for Shimmy says part one. I'll be back in a minute with part two.
