I used to live in a poor rural town for a tech company with a remote office there. The area was fairly poor and experienced a lot of issues with drug use.

We had a lot of low paying entry level jobs and a handful of tech jobs that paid better but there was always a ton of competition for those better jobs. The people I worked with there were amazing at what they did despite making nowhere near FAANG money.

One day a DEI officer came in to talk to our small team of engineers. To paint the picture she was a slightly heavy black lady dressed like she works in HR talking to a room full of mostly white engineers in a town with more cows than people.

She proceeds to lay into us telling us we have privilege we didn't earn or deserve and our existence within the company is a problem that must be urgently fixed. She goes on about our privileged upbringing and reassures all of us we don't belong in our jobs because it was part of our white privilege.

The irony of the situation being that she was the highest paid person in the room despite having no technical qualifications at all and the people she is talking to are largely from poor backgrounds who worked hard to be where they are. In addition to this if any of us were to apply for her position we would probably never be considered but if she had the technical skills of any of the people in the room she would be welcome to be sitting with us.

It's shocking I worked 80 hours a week at times to get into that room only for someone to tell me my skin color is an embarrassment to the company and a problem that needs corrected and not only is it allowed but actively encouraged and considered "progress". Good riddance.