Musk Has Won - DEI Is Dead, Tech Is Bringing Back the Booth Bunny

Now that tech douches like Musk have declared DEI is over, tech companies like Palo Alto are testing how far we can roll the clocks back

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I’ve worked in tech for over 25 years, and I’ve really enjoyed it most of the time. I transitioned from Chemistry to information technology when the internet burst on the scene, and it was an amazing ride.

Everything we did was new. There were unprecedented changes in the way we acquired and exchanged information. Working in the space gave you the chance to be at the forefront of the world's transition into a new era.

Many other things also changed in these 25 years. About 10 years ago, companies decided that women are human beings too and deserve to be treated like men— like a normal cog in the machine, not like a decorative object.

DEI made sure that men now knew to preface sexist jokes with “I know I’m not supposed to say this,” and sometimes I was no longer the only woman in the room.

Tech and boobies - a computer geeks dream come true

When I was young, being a computer geek was an off-mainstream pastime. But with the internet revolution that changed, the tech space boomed.

In that magical time, the first tech empires were built.

Money rained.

All the “geeks” who were ignored or made fun of in school suddenly found out what it’s like to be the center of attention.

Suddenly, they were the ones in the limelight, with the money, the fast cars and, of course, unchecked power.

And they felt entitled to unlimited boobies - to make up for what they missed in high school. They made sure they were everywhere they congregated - as decoration, not as team members, to be clear.

Silicon Valley became a “bro” club where discrimination and sexual harassment were so pervasive that it discouraged most women from working in the tech industry.

Giving unlimited resources and attention to people who aren’t well-adjusted socially is not necessarily the best decision.

Our boy Elon Musk is an extreme example of what happens when someone with no behavioral guardrails has too much money, but his type isn’t uncommon in the field.

I read “Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley” by Emily Chang, and I totally related to the way she described working in Silicon Valley. The book gives you a good idea of what these men got up to.

Secret sex parties, drugs, toxic workplaces, and discrimination against women were the norm.

Sexism was rampant in Silicon Valley. As Emily Chang said in a New York Times interview:

It is systemic. Bad behavior has been tolerated and normalized for far too long. And people simply have a narrow idea of who can do these tech jobs. If you’re a woman in the tech industry, you’re the only woman in the room over and over again.

Work hard, party hard, ignore all the distractions

Working in tech at the time, even outside of Silicon Valley, meant you had to be able to put up with a lot of “boys will be boys” shit.

I’m a brown-skinned woman in a predominantly white European country. Being different from everyone around me since childhood made me immune to feeling awkward about being the odd one out. Hence, I was quite successful.

And I was good at ignoring questionable behavior if it allowed me to do what I loved.

I worked booths at conferences next to scantily clad women - the legendary booth bunnies - who handed out treats, smiles and giveaways to the predominantly male visitors. All while trying to convince passing customers I wasn’t there as decoration, too.

In the evenings at the events, I was treated to more half-naked women dancing on furniture for the entertainment of the crowds. While fending off hands and advances and making sure to leave before the alcohol broke all dams.

The “work hard, party hard” mindset attracted even more men, while the discrimination, the bro mentality, and the bad behavior scared more women away.

Women started to leave in droves to preserve their sanity.

DEI will help you sell better products

Suddenly, companies realized that creating products you want to sell to everyone in an all-boys club doesn’t deliver good results, even if you think men have the best brains.

Money talks. If you want to sell more stuff to women, maybe you should keep some around to ask them what women like. Spoiler usually, it’s not boobies. So they pondered how to make working in tech attractive to women again. Voila DEI.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Initiatives to bring women and underrepresented groups into the door sprung up everywhere.

Women were enthusiastically encouraged to participate in the digital revolution. Men were told not to touch them. Repeatedly.

I was trotted out on all available stages as a shining example of how women could succeed in tech. Talent fairs and job offers specifically targeted women, and managers were incentivized to actually hire them rather than just speak to them.

And it worked to some extent. The parties became slightly less rowdy, and the women present wore more concealing clothes. I was less frequently mistaken for the secretary. Life was good.

DEI makes planes crash?

But then came the pandemic, the lockdowns, working from home and social isolation. Something shifted. Maybe they all forgot that women are human beings without the constant reminder of being in the same room with them.

Maybe the shift in the economy made men fear for their jobs. Or it was reading about how women now outperform men in any metric - education, buying houses, career success - that triggered it.

Or maybe it was all of the above. Suddenly, the worst of the worst sexism offenders, like Musk, started pretending that DEI was Satan’s secret love child. A bridge collapses because a ship hits it - DEI. A plane loses a door midflight - DEI. Can’t shit because you’re constipated - DEI.

Of course, the real answer to all these issues is late-stage capitalism and billionaires squeezing every last penny of profit out of every production process.

But reality aside, the misogynist rantings of Musk and his right-wing cronies are amplified through all media outlets they own.

They use every opportunity to let us know that having women and brown people in tech is the worst thing ever and that we must stop this nonsense lest civilization as we know it will come tumbling down.

Of course, sensible people and closet misogynists came out to refute these claims of doom-by-diversity” publicly.

Back to the roots

But the constant humdrum of anti-diversity voices is taking root.

How else can you explain that Palo Alto, one of the biggest cybersecurity vendors in the world, decided to blatantly objectify women? And use them as decoration at their Black Hat conference drinks events last week.

Hostesses at the Palo Alto drinks event at Black Hat 2024 - yes this are real women

Sure, Palo Alto’s CMO Unnikrishna KP and CEO Nikesh Arora have since publicly declared that turning human women into faceless, sexualized furniture was a “tone-deaf" decision. Not in line with the company’s values. But hindsight is 20/20.

It’s easy to say we made a mistake if everyone is telling you so.

If their teams were more diverse, maybe someone would have noticed that this idea is a big no-no if you want women to feel welcome in your company? But maybe they had originally planned to use naked women disguised as clothes racks, and that idea was scrapped because the woman who brought the coffee complained to HR. Then this was what they landed on.

We’ll never know how this ended up at the top of the list of uncool things we’ll spend our marketing budget on this year. But I now know a lot of women who are no longer interested in working for Palo Alto.

So, if you dislike diversity, it is money well spent, I guess.

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