You guys all excited for the summit?!?
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And I ask the simple question once more, WTF does this have to do with work ethic, integrity, competence, and ultimately performance? Exactly, nothing!
I liked the balloons
I asked Copilot for a no-BS definition of an inclusion summit and it replied that I should brace for another round of layoffs. It's echoing my cynicism and personality — could someone with different perspectives please try the same query? ....
It is a textbook diversion tactic—just executed with corporate sophistication. When a corporation faces systemic issues—such as stagnant real wages, layoffs, offshoring or intense workload pressures due to lean staffing—addressing those problems requires executive leadership to make hard, expensive choices that impact the bottom line.
Hosting an inclusion summit, funding affinity groups, or rolling out new corporate buzzwords is incredibly cheap by comparison. When you look at Chevron’s scale—operating with an annual capital expenditure (CapEx) budget in the 10's of billions, the line item for funding an internal summit, covering the salaries of HR or DEI personnel is basically rounding error. It’s couch change to a supermajor.
Think of it like a magician's sleight of hand:
The Left Hand (The Reality): Quietly shrinking department budgets, offshoring technical roles, freezing baseline real wages, and letting lean staffing squeeze the remaining workforce to protect margins.
The Right Hand (The Diversion): Highlighting a multi-million dollar inclusion summit, launching flashy internal messaging campaigns, and celebrating cultural milestones on LinkedIn.
By shining a massive spotlight on the right hand, executive leadership shifts the conversation entirely. If the workforce, the media, or the board are busy debating corporate culture, language, and "belonging," they aren't talking about headcount shortages, crushing workloads, or compensation.
It lets leadership claim they are aggressively addressing employee well-being and workforce issues, while the core operational strategy remains completely untouched. It is the definition of a diversion—highly effective, incredibly cheap, and entirely deliberate.
Fracturing collective employee leverage, Creating "In-Groups", "Out-Groups" and Subgrouping the Workforce is how the true "In-Group" Stays in control. Nice shield exec team in circumventing traditional labor and organizational dynamics as the power of the workforce relies on unity.
It's not for whites
Email went to my F U folder
I was Excluded from the Inclusion Summit
Depends. Will I be included?
No