This is a story about misaligned incentives and social status.
Having the special programs lowers the social status of the demographic it targets, because it suggests those people are not good enough to climb the ladder through meritocratic means. At the time they do lower the hurdle for the demographic seeking to enter the industry and/or get ahead, fairly or otherwise. In otherwords, there is a tradeoff between social status and initial growth.
Whether this is a favorable trade depends largely on where you sit. If you're high up already, you would likely prefer the programs to go away since they hurt your status by associating you with the low-status newbies while not giving you much. On the other hand if you've just submitted your resume on BigTechCo's website like a thousand others, it's much more likely to get read by a human if they have some kind of affirmative action program (at the cost of somebody else's resume not getting read by a human, of course). Once you get in, extra programs and mentorship would also be valuble.
Finally, from the company's perspective, it just wants the statistics-illiterate social media diversity mob off its back while deviating as little from its current HR formulas as possible (since they obviously worked well enough to get them big enough to have to worry about this). This means it'll optimize for visibility and photo-ops and photogenic suit-clad female interns in its annual reports.
Having the special programs lowers the social status of the demographic it targets, because it suggests those people are not good enough to climb the ladder through meritocratic means. At the time they do lower the hurdle for the demographic seeking to enter the industry and/or get ahead, fairly or otherwise. In otherwords, there is a tradeoff between social status and initial growth.
Whether this is a favorable trade depends largely on where you sit. If you're high up already, you would likely prefer the programs to go away since they hurt your status by associating you with the low-status newbies while not giving you much. On the other hand if you've just submitted your resume on BigTechCo's website like a thousand others, it's much more likely to get read by a human if they have some kind of affirmative action program (at the cost of somebody else's resume not getting read by a human, of course). Once you get in, extra programs and mentorship would also be valuble.
Finally, from the company's perspective, it just wants the statistics-illiterate social media diversity mob off its back while deviating as little from its current HR formulas as possible (since they obviously worked well enough to get them big enough to have to worry about this). This means it'll optimize for visibility and photo-ops and photogenic suit-clad female interns in its annual reports.