What kind of role did you occupy that you saw "manager leave headcount unfulfilled because the qualified candidates they found were non diverse"? Have you considered it may all just be the appearance you are interpreting in your head, but it doesn't map out to reality?
Nothing about this was ambiguous. The company instituted "outcome based goals" specifying 33% women in engineering. We had hires that passed with flying colors, but were told that proceeding with an offer would put out org below 33%. We'd have to wait until we hired a woman, or just not give an offer.
The incredulousness is valid, but the way you’ve posed this question is so inherently biased it reads as tone deaf, as if the parent couldn’t possibly have witnessed this.
Reality is a lot stranger than you might expect, if you can believe people can hold out for a junior engineer with 5+ years experience and a $50k salary: you can believe this.
