Meritocracy, the anathema of affirmative action.
Merit is ENTIRELY colorblind. Not so “affirmative action”, deliberately hiring incompetents and promoting them far beyond their level of expertise.
Not a recipe for continued success. And especially not for the “affirmative action” hires, who soon flounder and wander around in an endless fever swamp of their own making.
No surprise there. They do expect you to work, to be responsible and to not be on drugs.
I was recently at a high-tech company meeting for the senior technical people. A woman that had been recently promoted to this level was asked to introduce herself and share a bit about her background.
In doing so, she also had the nerve to tell everyone that there’s obviously a problem with diversity if you just look around the room (meaning gender in this case). Stating, “this is obviously something WE must take care of”.
She was reminded, not so subtly, on a couple of occasions that this was a meritocracy - not about diversity for the sake of it. I was glad to hear it. It seems to be the first thing that women focus on, how they need to socially engineer the company. I would never discriminate against a qualified candidate but if all things are equal, that they tend to do this is a negative.