Perhaps the most (or maybe not given who owns the company) strange story in the news today is that Grok (Elon Musk's AI tool) has become a Nazi. It made me consider the racism I saw first hand in the workplace.
Once upon a time, I had a proper job. I worked in an office, with responsible adults. We had a highly important job and if we screwed up, the whole country could come to a halt. On one occasion (before I joined the team), we took down the emergency services telephone network in the West Midlands because someone made a silly mistake. Another time we blocked the M1 and caused a 17 mile tailback (again before my time). All of these were caused by basic IT errors in important systems, that had completely unforeseen impacts. On both occasions, the chairman of the company was called by a chief of police and told off, in no uncertain terms. The company was one of the biggest on the FTSE. I wont say what it was or what the system did, but we all use its service on a daily basis and it has nothing to do with either road management or emergency services. I was brought in to fix the cock ups, as a hired IT contractor. Back in the day, when I still had a brain, I was very good at such things. They gave me all the hard jobs and the things that the permanent staff didn't want to do. I figured that if I did the difficult and horrible stuff, I'd have a job and be able to pay the bills. I was taken on for three months. The contract ended up lasting a fair few years. I was on call 24 x 7 for most of that period. When I left, a permanent member of staff took over. After three months, he told me that he couldn't believe the organisation had kept me on for 13 years, and I'd been getting money for old rope, I'd fixed all of the problems and he didn't twig that it was a pretty robust system. After six months, he was gone. They put some new software in, had serious problems and he couldn't hack doing 36 hour shifts fixing it and getting shouted at by everyone.
I wasn't the only contractor doing such work. There was a team of us. We were well renumerated for our efforts, but were expected to put our lives on hold. I had young kids and needed steady money, much of which I was funnelling back into my studios, as we built them up. I still meet up with the team I worked with. For a period, I thought we had the best team of people in the world in our field. Whilst other teams floundered and delivered nothing, we did all manner of leading edge work. But as so often happens in such worlds, you get no recognition for doing a good job. One of my best mates was a West Indian chap. We are still mates, we are meeting up soon for a beer. In our team was a permanent member of staff of Pakistani heritage. She was a maths graduate. We were discussing what aspirations we had for our children. She said something about her the school her daughter was about to start. Another member of the team, who we will call "The Jay Man" said "I don't know why you are worrying, you'll send her off to Pakistan to get married when she's fourteen". My jaw hit the floor. The team leader, an Australian lady, immediately hauled the Jay Man off to an office for a telling off. She then tapped my West Indian mate on the shoulder and dragged him off for a telling off. Apparently he'd laughed at the comment.
Within three months the Aussie lady had gone. She was replaced by The Jay man. Our team had three people from ethnic minorities, my West Indian mate, a Nepali and a Mauritian. Within six months, all had gone. Their contracts had not been renewed. A permanent member of staff also left. The Jay Man made it clear he didn't rate him. After he left, he told us all "If I call up, I don't want The Jay Man knowing its me, so call me Dave". The three departing contractors all muttered that they'd been the victim of ethnic cleansing within the department. I sarcastically noted "How can you possibly think Jay Man is at all racist, what has he ever done to suggest that he has a racist bone in his body". As hired hands on short term contracts, there was no real recourse. I pulled Jay Man up on it in the pub one time. He simply said "I didn't rate any of them".
This all happened a long time ago, DEI policy came and seems to have gone in the intervening period. Almost all of the people I worked with then are either retired or semi retired. The system I worked on is long gone. When I look back on my contract with that organisation, I see the vast majority of my time there as a brilliant time. We had a great team and did some great work. We watched each others backs. the final couple of years were a bit different. We still did some great work. There were still some good moments, but I've always felt really uncomfortable with the fact that something that was completely out of order was going on. As a non permanent employee, who had bills to pay, I was in no position to do anything about it. After leaving that team, I had a short break and then went back to the same organisation in a completely different team. The manager of the new team was an Indian chap, a lovely bloke who I am still good friends with. I mentioned the Jay Man to him and he rolled his eyes. He confessed that the individual was well known amongst the non white employees of the organisation as a 'difficult person'. He then asked me how I got on with him. I said that although I never had any issues with him, I found his attitudes to be very challenging. He was very reliant on me at the time, as I was the last person who really understood the systems I worked on, he'd got rid of everyone else. He knew my opinions on what had happened. My new boss told me something that chilled me to the core. He said "If you want to get on in this place, you learn to keep your mouth shut about such things".
If you'd asked me fie years ago, I'd have said that such things were thankfully, a thing of the past. With the rise of Trump, Farage and the Alt Right, it seems that racism and fascism has come storming back into the world of IT.