Under the Trump administration, the results for 2025 look essentially disappointing. He has promised to invest in such an economy anti awakening, Strengthening his cabinet with agitators – e.g. Brendan CarrHis choice for Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission – which has been promised end DEIProject 2025, a 900-page conservative policy agenda on which Trump could base much of his governance, takes aim at organizations that enforce “racial classification and quotas” and promises to rescind an executive order Which calls for federal contractors to be guaranteed a level playing field. (And big tech companies were already Cuts to DEI programsEven without threats from a hostile president.)
Maryland Governor Wes Moore, the only state representative present, said, “The idea that DEI is hurting productivity is silly.” “Look at the numbers.” A 2020 report For example, McKinsey & Company shows that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are actually good for business. “Authenticity” was the hottest word of the week—repeated emphatically in every discussion I attended—which felt both on-brand and extremely strange, considering that authenticity will be a goal the business will pursue over the next four years.
Artist will.i.am said on stage, “We never saw what was going to happen,” and it was very much true.
The recruiting expo featured all the big players – Netflix, American Express, Exxon, Meta, Google, Oracle – as people stood in snacking lines that were sometimes longer than the night's parties. As I took in the grandeur of the exhibition space, with huge signs in every direction, I remembered my first day in Houston when a Microsoft recruiter joked that I shouldn't tell anyone what he did , I was worried that they might overwhelm him. With resumes and questions about vacancies in the company.
Still, it was hard to say how effectively the conference was preparing its next generation of heroes. It was not a question of programming but of impact. Naturally, all eyes are on AI, but other people's concerns were clearly elsewhere, in the here and now – and that means getting a job.
“I have always been conscious of job security. “I've always had to deal with uncertainty,” said Candace Madison, who works in legal technology at Relativity, a data organization software company in Chicago. This was her first time at AfroTech. “I don't think the election has driven it up, but with the election and DEI not being a priority, you have to be more vigilant,” he said. Still, she was optimistic. “The way to stay ahead of what's happening now is networking,” even though she admitted she has met very few people in her field so far.
In an elevator at Le Meridien in downtown Houston, a graduate student completing her PhD in data science who was looking for a job described her experience differently. “This is my eighth conference this year,” he said. “I'm doing my best networking, but I'm not getting much from them.”
On Instagram, the conference was promoted as a success. In a Story post, a product engineer at a Fortune 50 company poignantly described how the conference was a “full circle moment” for him, landing him his current job after interning at the expo in 2017. Another post from a high-ranking marketing executive described this year's experience as “a balm in Gilead.”
As might be expected, everyone at AfroTech had their eyes set on the future – only, no one could say what was coming next, or how much of a role they would have in it. It seemed that everyone wanted a part of what they felt they were owed: the promise of a stable tomorrow. How they get there is a different matter entirely.