Why I’m Woke
February 21, 2025
This is almost certainly the first in a series of Not A Tech Bro posts that could share the same title. Today, I want to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, and why I worked so hard to establish them at Cloudera. MAGA hates DEI, and stole the term “woke” to insult folks who embrace it. I’m stealing it back to explain why they’re wrong.
I am, proudly, pretty damn woke.
If you’re the CEO of a tech company doing innovative work, you are in a constant struggle with every other tech company CEO to recruit and retain top-tier talent. Especially in its early days, the major threat to a start-up isn’t competition. It’s mediocrity.Received wisdom among the MAGA crowd is that DEI programs drive mediocrity. Of course if you elevated skin tone or gender above everything else in hiring, that’d be true. But of course that’s a dumb mistake and easy to avoid. It for sure isn’t how I used DEI at my company.There are three things that concentrating on DEI can do for you.
Source: Why I’m Woke
Right now a lot of incredibly powerful and wealthy folks in technology are distancing themselves from “DEI” initiatives (those terrible terrible things, diversity, equity and inclusion).
But not everyone–Mike Olson, founder of here articulates strongly the value of these initiatives. Initiatives we strongly support and actively embrace.
