A case can be made for diversity, but the fact that all the big companies were adopting DEI at the same time made it hype.
I personally know an engineering manager who would scoff at MLK Day, but in 2020 starting screaming about how it wasn’t enough and we needed Juneteenth too.
AI isn’t hype at Nvidia, and DEI isn’t hype at Patagonia.
But tech industry-wide, they’re both hype.