Email: Google eliminates its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and is reviewing some DEI programs after Donald Trump's EOs

Search giant is eliminating goals to hire more minority employees and reviewing DEI programs, part of a pullback across Silicon Valley

Wall Street Journal 2025-02-06 Miles Kruppa

Context & Ripple Effects

Google’s move reverses the direction set by its earlier commitment to increase representation among underrepresented executives, including a stated 2025 target in Google’s prior executive-representation pledge. The company had also faced a persistent retention challenge: its diversity reporting showed rising attrition among Black employees, particularly Black women, even as hiring increased its earlier diversity-report findings.

The decision sits within a broader reassessment of corporate DEI work after the executive orders. Subsequent coverage described tech companies shifting the language used for such efforts, including toward “learning” and “hiring” the wider tech-sector rebranding of DEI programs.

First-order effects

Google removes a formal hiring objective for historically underrepresented groups and subjects some DEI programs to review, changing the operating mandate for its recruiting and people teams.
Employees and candidates who viewed measurable representation goals as an accountability mechanism lose a visible benchmark for evaluating Google’s progress.

Second-order effects

Other Silicon Valley employers undertaking similar pullbacks gain a prominent reference point for replacing explicit targets with less formal or differently labeled programs.
Recruiting, retention, and internal reporting may become harder to compare over time if firms move away from public, goal-based diversity commitments.

Third-order effects

If this pattern persists, corporate DEI could shift from quantified representation targets toward narrower compliance- and risk-managed people programs, with less externally legible accountability.
The key uncertainty is whether companies preserve the underlying recruiting and retention work after changing its goals and branding, or reduce it materially.

The trend: Big Tech is recalibrating explicit DEI commitments under a policy environment that raises the perceived legal and political cost of formal diversity targets.

Discussion

@jeffreyatucker Jeffrey A Tucker on x
You get to Google and it becomes real. Google is eliminating its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
@parissathena @parissathena on x
Google mentions that they want to make sure they're complying with Supreme Court anti-DEI orders. Mind you, Google does not need to comply because right now, DEI removal mandates only apply to the federal government and federally funded institutions. Google is not one.
@meridithmcgraw Meridith McGraw on x
WSJ: Google is eliminating its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs, joining other tech giants rethinking their approach to DEI. https://www.wsj.com/...
@joshuaogundu Josh on x
At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement back in 2020, Google publicly said it would aim to increase “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” by 30 percent — a goal it achieved in 2022
@tjmoe28 T.J. Moe on x
Google is eliminating DEI programs. Very few companies are standing by their DEI stuff. None of them actually believed in it. No one likes it. It destroys companies. Now that Trump is in office and has changed the cultural current, they can all go back to a meritocracy, how …
@alexeheath Alex Heath on x
I'm publishing Google's internal memo to employees explaining why it's ending DEI hiring goals across the company The rationale is linked to Google being a federal contractor and “recent court decisions and U.S. Executive Orders on this topic” Full memo here:
r/politics r on reddit
Google Kills Diversity Hiring Targets
r/technology r on reddit
Google tells employees why it's ending DEI hiring goals. The company says it's ‘carefully evaluating’ other DEI initiatives that ‘raise risk.’
r/womenintech r on reddit
Bye bye Google

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