This is literally happening as I see my beloved ex-startup is being driven to ground.

I joined a mission oriented startup, sincerely believing that my work would be of great impact, given the mission is good and people are friendly.

For some weird reason, the CEO went all in the DEI stuff and while we had some good candidates, we also hired a lot of people purely because they ticked the boxes. Going against the grain meant that you would risk C-level attention and HR interference.

Routinely, I would see the DEI hires being the aggressor and still going ahead with complaints because they "felt" they were discriminated, without any proof and despite they being the majority in the company at a leadership level. Added to this, the HR essentially did a bunch of workshops on micro-aggressions and fanning the flames further. Things got so bad that I had to hear complaints from others saying that they would like to report a micro aggression because someone smiled during a meeting or someone complimented someone's dress and that made the person uncomfortable.

Eventually, things got bad due to economy and incompetence at the top and now the CEO is stuck with c-level leaders whom he cannot fire because they tick the right boxes in terms of DEI and who in turn doesn't fire his leadership and meanwhile we have taken out the competent engineers and managers who aren't lucky to be ticking all the boxes.