I think diversity is a good thing, both for the company, as they benefit on having numerous viewpoints, and as a social good of providing opportunities to those overlooked by default hiring tactics. But I take issues with companies that seem to forget that the purpose of the company is to build a business. Companies that fail to do this ultimately fail their customers and their employees.

Please don't read this as "They're just here to make money" and nothing else matters. What I have seen is that for tech startups, there are always 100 things they could focus on, many of which are good and arguably important. But ever-limited resources mean that of those 100 things, a company can focus on at most a handful. Adding to the pressure, success at building a business entails picking the correct 3-5 things of that 100, and then putting all of their effort into those.

I am immediately concerned when I see a growing, unprofitable company putting significant resources into any "social good" area, because that means they've chosen to let some other key area fall by the wayside. This is an enormous red flag as an applicant, because my assumption is that, either purposefully or not, it is the needs of their customers falling by the wayside. And any time you're choosing something else over your customers or your employees, you put the company at risk. So no matter how laudable I see the goal, until a company reaches significant profitability that they can pay people to focus solely on things that don't benefit the end user, significant pursuit of that goal looks to me like management lacks focus and leadership. And I definitely don't want to bet my ability to put food on the table for my family on unfocused leadership.