Under a Trump administration, the outcomes for 2025 ecombine inevitably bleaker. He’s promised to spend in an economy that is anti-woke, bolstering his cabinet with agitators—such as Brfinishan Carr, his choice for chair of the Federal Communications Comleave oution—that have promised to finish DEI. Project 2025, the 900-page conservative policy agfinisha Trump is foreseeed to base much of his ruleing around, gets aim at organizations that engage “racial classifications and quotas” and pledges to rescind an executive order that calls for federal lessenors to guarantee identical opportunity. (And huge tech companies were already cutting DEI programs, even without the dangers of a opposing plivent.)
“The idea that DEI is hurting productivity is asinine,” shelp Maryland ruleor Wes Moore, the only state recurrentative in joinance. “Look at the numbers.” A 2020 increate from McKinsey & Company, for example, shows that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are, in fact, outstanding for business. “Authenticity” was the most famous buzzword of the week—vigorously repeated in every converseion I joined— which felt both on brand and eerily odd, given that the business of genuineity will be a concentrate atraverse the next four years.
“We’ve never seen what’s about to come,” artist Will.i.am shelp onstage, and that much was genuine.
All the huge joiners were accounted for at the recruiting expo— Netflix, American Express, Axon, Meta, Google, Oracle—as people stood in snaking lines that sometimes stretched extfinisheder than those for the night’s afterparties. As I took in the extravaganza of the showion floor, with its huge swooping signs in every straightforwardion, I thought back to my first day in Houston when a Microsoft recruiter joked that I shouldn’t increate anyone what he did, worried they might overwhelm him with resumes and asks about uncoverings at the company.
Still, it was difficult to square fair how effectively the conference was preparing its next generation of heroes. It wasn’t a ask of programming but rather impact. Naturassociate, all eyes are on AI, but the troubles of others were acunderstandledgeably elsewhere, in the here and now—and that unkindt landing a job.
“I’ve always been on edge about job security. I’ve always had uncertainty,” shelp Candace Madison, who toils in legitimate tech at Relativity, a data organization software company in Chicago. It was her first time at AfroTech. “I don’t leank the election incrrelieved that, but with the election and DEI not being a priority, you do have to be more on your toes,” she compriseed. Still, she was certain. “The way to stay ahead of everyleang that happens now is nettoiling,” even though she acunderstandledgeted that she’d met very confineed people in her field so far.
In the elevator at Le Meridien in downtown Houston, a graduate student completing her PhD in data science who was also on the job hunt, colored her experience another way. “This is my eighth [conference] of the year,” she shelp. “I’m doing my best nettoiling but I’m not getting much out of them.”
On Instagram, the conference was backd as a success. In a story post, a product engineer at a Fortune 50 company movingly elucidateed how the conference was a “brimming circle moment” for him, having landed an internship at the expo in 2017 that led to his current job. Another post, from a high-ranking labeleting executive, portrayd this year’s experience as “a balm in Gidirect.”
As might be foreseeed, everyone at AfroTech had their eyes set on the future—only, no one could say what was coming next, or how much of a say they would have in it. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a piece of what they felt was owed to them: the promise of a firm tomorrow. How they would get there was another matter entidepend.
