CGTN Europe interviewed Rob Kniaz, founding partner of Hoxton Ventures.
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00:00Apple's decision to keep DEI policies is in contrast to many major companies which have
00:06cut back similar initiatives after Trump branded them dangerous and demeaning.
00:12This month alone, Google sent an email saying the company will no longer have hiring targets
00:19to improve diversity in the workforce.
00:23Amazon's annual report has cut out a section it used to have on the company's focus on
00:28inclusion and diversity in hiring.
00:32Goldman Sachs dropped a requirement that a company it takes public must have at least
00:37two diverse members on its board of directors, one of whom has to be a woman.
00:42Pepsi will no longer use representation goals in hiring and will shift its supply diversity
00:48program to focus on all small businesses.
00:52And Citigroup is changing its diversity, equity, inclusion and talent management team into
00:58a talent management and engagement team amid reports it's ending diversity hiring goals.
01:07Rob Nyers is a founding partner at tech venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures and he joins
01:12us now.
01:13Hello, Rob.
01:14Great to chat to you.
01:15So, good idea by Apple to stand by its DEI.
01:19Does DEI help productivity and the bottom line?
01:25I think Apple is a very unique company and I think they bring true to their roots.
01:29I mean, it's always been sort of a hippie culture kind of company, so I'm not surprised
01:33if any company out there, they're the one that's going to stick to what they believe
01:37is true, just like Ben and Jerry did back in the day before they sold out.
01:41I think in terms of benefit, you have to look at who your customers are and, you know, does
01:45your employee base match what your customers look like?
01:47So, for a company like Apple, they are selling around the world to lots of different kinds
01:51of people.
01:52So, there probably is some value in having people that can speak different languages
01:55or recognize different accents or diacritics on letters, things like that.
02:00I think it's a very Apple type move to fight back hard on this.
02:04You know, other companies, you know, I think there's probably less of a clear logical value.
02:10I think, again, there's still not a lot of empirical evidence one way or another.
02:13So, it's for each company, I think, to figure out on their own what's right for them or
02:16what's right for their employees and what delivers best customer experience.
02:21At the same time, Tim Cook has voiced his concern that this decision to stick by the
02:26DEI policy at Apple could be challenged legally.
02:30Can you imagine how that might happen and on what grounds, bearing in mind a lot of
02:34these policies were born out of the civil rights movement in the 1960s?
02:39Yeah, I think the change is that, you know, once you start setting goals, goals become
02:44rules and then things become hard-coded that we have to hire X no matter what and people
02:49start, you know, letting the tail wag the dog.
02:51So, you know, in the U.S., you know, fundamentally, I think American culture doesn't like this
02:55sort of sense of unfairness.
02:57One thing is, you know, given the one group of people of entitlement, you know, there's
03:02always been a natural kind of American individualism but also that mentality of, you know, no special
03:07privileges for anyone.
03:08You know, we don't have a king.
03:09So I think that, you know, in general, this is a pendulum swing back towards the center
03:14that for companies, some of them went a bit overboard with, you know, making this very
03:18prescriptive what they had to hire, you know, two female board members or whatever it might
03:22be.
03:23I think, you know, there's a bit more of a common sense swing backward.
03:25Maybe it swings too far in that direction and people start, you know, going the opposite
03:29direction.
03:30But to me, this is a very kind of natural correction that people are realizing took
03:34a while but it's not what the public really likes.
03:37Do you think that the tech industry is sufficiently transformed in terms of including previously
03:44marginalized groups to let these policies go though?
03:48I think it's hard because when you look at the tech industry at the core of it, it's,
03:51you know, engineers and scientists and the people you speak about are also underrepresented
03:56at the core of maths and sciences.
03:58So you have that fundamental issue that the upstream supply doesn't really match the market
04:02itself.
04:03In Silicon Valley, if you look at the executives and the tech folks, you know, a lot of them
04:07don't necessarily look like the rest of the world but, you know, can you solve the problem
04:10by fixing it at the very end of the pipeline?
04:12No, I think you have to start at the beginning, which is the STEM programs, the maths and
04:16science and getting people into the industry organically, it just takes a lot of time to
04:20do that.
04:21All right.
04:22Thank you so much for sharing your views today.
04:23Much appreciated.
04:24Rob Nye is founding partner at tech venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures.