What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#131

Post by pelasaco » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

pelasaco wrote: post #65

I experienced this in two different roles: - One applying to one role at github/microsoft: After ton of meetings, I would have to talk with their diversity manager, it was a 60 minutes meeting, which i just didn't feel well to go through after some googling. - As hiring manager (in another FAANG) company, I couldn't hire the best candidates, until all other 20 more diverse were interviewed. Everyone, regardless of qu…

note that I quoted "Man" and "White". That's because we don't have a color palette to say how white is ok and we don't ask question to know how Manly someone is. That was so ridiculous, that most our team members didn't want to help me with the interviews...

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#132

Post by comex » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

> You might imagine this policy doesn’t bias the hiring process, since managers are still free to choose who to hire after interviewing the diverse candidates. But because of the number of applicants, most are rejected based on their resumes. Imagine diversity candidates are 1% of the applicants but 15% of those interviewed. This gives those candidates opportunities to do well in interviews that their peers with similar resumes do not get.

So minority candidates are given an advantage in getting their foot in the door, but still have to prove themselves qualified for the job by doing well in interviews.

On average, those candidates would have started with a disadvantage in getting their foot in the door for several reasons – including outright discrimination, and the cumulative effect of past discrimination, but also softer factors such as being less likely to have helpful personal connections. This applies not just to the Microsoft job at issue, but to the previous jobs that would have populated their resumes (and for younger candidates, even schools).

Compensating for that sounds like a good policy to me.

Now, the post also suggests there is pressure to actually hire or promote less-qualified candidates, which might be a problem, but in that area the post is more vague and speculative.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#133

Post by Manuel_D » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

anderskaseorg wrote: post #59

Manuel_D wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to prove that that measurements are reliable to highlight the existence of discrimination. If 10% of applicants are X, and I mandate that 20% of hires are X, then even if my interview results are truly random it's still discriminating in favor of X. Similar deal with tech hiring. What is the pool of candidates for this hire or promotion? If you're setting quotas in excess of the pool's representation y…

The post doesn’t suggest there’s any mandated quota for hiring or promotion—only for interviews or consideration. And it doesn’t suggest any secrecy about this policy.

If I tell my recruiters to never interview black people, it's not discrimination because it's not actually prohibiting them from hiring or promotion? Quotas in choosing who to interview or who to consider for promotion is absolutely a form of discrimination.

I've worked at a company that implemented this. It resulted in a vast double standard: white and asian males only got interviews if they came from elite colleges or well-known companies. Diverse candidates could pretty much come from anywhere. This resulted in a substantial disparity of tech-screen pass rates. Which the company held up as evidence of discrimination, and demanded that we address this disparity. Proposals to anonymize tech-screen, strangely, were ignored. Instead, recruiters (who had bonuses attached to diverse hires) got to decide who advanced from the tech-screen to the on-site instead of engineers.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#134

Post by wyager » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

chrischattin wrote: post #64

franczesko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Saying "no" to people based on their physical appearance is a discrimination.

It's also illegal.

The law doesn't matter except to the degree that the regime will enforce it.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#135

Post by bioemerl » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

milesskorpen wrote: post #22

"I was pretty sure my corporate vice president would be more likely to promote people who had hired more of them and thus made his contribution to the annual D&I report look good." Statements like this carry a lot of weight in this essay: He's "pretty sure" and "assumes" an awful lot. He also seems fairly ineffective at navigating bureaucracy. Taken to extremes, lots of corporate policies can seem a bit overbearing.…

> Statements like this carry a lot of weight in this essay: He's "pretty sure" and "assumes" an awful lot.

Sure. If it wasn't pretty sure or assumes Microsoft could be sued over it, so Microsoft implements these policies as harshly as they can without opening up the path to a clear lawsuit.

It's standard operating procedure for most discrimination.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#136

Post by bergenty » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

epicureanideal wrote: post #87

bergenty wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I don’t appreciate the casual racism in your post.

Every article I’ve ever read on pushback against DEI has been a white male author so it’s just “stats” as the sayings goes.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#137

Post by hardtke » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #32

It's telling that this person posted a job listing, interviewed dozens of candidates, realized they couldn't proceed because they hadn't interviewed any minority candidate, tried for months and were still unsuccessful at finding a single one , and the take away wasn't that they should fix their broken recruiting pipeline but that the corporate policy was what was wrong.

The author says he is in AI, and when I was hiring entry level ML engineers I had similar challenges. As much as we blame the recruiting pipeline, I think it is the educational pipeline that is not creating a sufficiently diverse talent pool. Part of it is "weed out" courses that adversely affect students from less privileged backgrounds[1]. An additional (perhaps controversial) opinion I have is that companies are so aggressive about their individual diversity goals that they often pluck students out of the training pipelines prematurely (e.g. courting Ph.D. students before they finish their dissertation).

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/...

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#138

Post by prewett » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

anderskaseorg wrote: post #59

Manuel_D wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to prove that that measurements are reliable to highlight the existence of discrimination. If 10% of applicants are X, and I mandate that 20% of hires are X, then even if my interview results are truly random it's still discriminating in favor of X. Similar deal with tech hiring. What is the pool of candidates for this hire or promotion? If you're setting quotas in excess of the pool's representation y…

The post doesn’t suggest there’s any mandated quota for hiring or promotion—only for interviews or consideration. And it doesn’t suggest any secrecy about this policy.

The post describes turning down a lot of qualified people because they had not encountered any applicants of required race/gender yet. In fact, they ended up not hiring for the position at all because they never encountered applicants of the required race/gender. So despite the fact that they had qualified applicants, they ended up forced to hire nobody. No individual person was discriminated against, but the group of applicants sure was: none of them got hired, despite the fact that the manager had qualified applicants and wanted--needed--to hire one.

The post also notes that this was invisible to people who weren't a manager, so it was effectively a secret, whether or not it was intentionally so.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#139

Post by fallingknife » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

mikkergp wrote: post #103

fallingknife wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I do an interview, and someone can complete a simple coding exercise in 2 minutes, I feel very good about my ability to say they are better than someone who takes 20 mins on the same question. If you want to argue that it is impossible to judge merit, it is you who needs to provide proof. And even if you were right, doing promotions based on coin flips would be better than on race.

> When I do an interview, and someone can complete a simple coding exercise in 2 minutes, I feel very good about my ability to say they are better than someone who takes 20 mins on the same question. Honestly? My gut reaction is you're not very thorough in measuring abilities if you offer a coding exercise that can be completed in two minutes by anybody. > And even if you were right, doing promotions based on coin fl…

It's not the whole interview. Just the first part of many questions. You have to print a string abcdefghij... like

abcd

efgh

ijkl...

And you would be surprised by the number of people who it takes 20 minutes to do that. Doing it in 2 minutes doesn't mean you're competent, but taking 20 damn sure means you're not

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#140

Post by luckylion » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #112

inglor_cz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also possible that those companies will be suffocated by the fact that banks won't extend credit to them (ESG) or angry Twitter will pressure potential customers not to do business with them.

> It is also possible that those companies will be suffocated by the fact that banks won't extend credit to them (ESG) or angry Twitter will pressure potential customers not to do business with them. I think that would only be an issue if they made a big deal in public about rejecting DEI. Such a statement might also attract a bunch of obnoxious, oppositely-polarized people you don't want either. Probably the best st…

The University of Central Florida has bought an email address I own from some spammers and they're now occasionally asking me to enroll in some program where I can prove my commitment to diversity and inclusion and eventually become a certified supplier to them. "Positive statements" will not be what you need, you'll need to show that you actually have the numbers, and if you don't, you will not be considered.