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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#141

Post by voidr »

mikkergp wrote: post #18

Posts like this seem reactionary and equally anti-intellectual. Sure I know that a lot of the DE&I stuff is frustrating for people. But it seems like if you really want to dig into this you need to take broader approach. Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions, which is pretty squishy to begin with? It seems to me like throwing some extra diver…

> Sure I know that a lot of the DE&I stuff is frustrating for people.

It's also inherently unfair, that's why nobody likes it, I have seen it first hand that it just leads to a few token hires, with no real change. People who actually care realise that if you want to improve something you start at the beginning, not a the outcome, you would at minimum start at education, however I guess it's cheaper to have a few diversity hires here and there without changing anything that really matters.

> Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions

You can, otherwise we would select leaders by rolling dices, however we don't tend to do that.

> which is pretty squishy to begin with

I guess your narrative is that it doesn't matter who we select as leader, they all have a chance of doing an equally bad job, which diverts from the point, we make decisions without knowing the outcome all the time, if we would take your worldview then every decision where we don't know the outcome would be decided by a dice roll.

> Better this than promoting the CEO's nephew.

You are exchanging one favouritism for another, how is that an improvement? At least the CEO's nephew would have connections in high places and likely more pressure to perform.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#142

Post by giantg2 »

crackercrews wrote: post #111
chrischattin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also illegal.

A recent discussion on HN surfaced this fact. It's legal for higher education for now, but hiring is different. I think a lot of people don't realize this. I didn't. I assumed if you could do it for education you could do it for hiring. Apparently not!

Any source?

This seems to indicate that minority demographics may be targeted for recruitment, advancement, etc.

https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/hiring/affirmativeact

At least at my company, I know they have preferences for minorities over similarly qualified candidates. I've heard a department head specifically tell the managers that we need more women in a specific role. Maybe they're just breaking the law though...

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#143

Post by [deleted] »

thegrimmest wrote: post #94
giantg2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions, which is pretty squishy to begin with?" I'd love to hear answers for this. In my experience, it seems ratings are just the boss's unverified opinion. However, I disagree with the conclusion that adding another flawed metric shouldn't be concerning. "They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membershi…

> They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it? I'm still unclear as to why we're even bothering to ask the question. How many blonde leaders are there vs. brunettes? Are brunettes poorly represented in corporate leadership? Does anyone care ? Why should they.

[deleted]

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#144

Post by tablespoon »

systemvoltage wrote: post #96
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.

True, this is actually happening as we speak. There will be a bifurcation, once enough flywheel speed has picked up; ESG funds will see competitor funds that will outperform. No wasting money on greenwashing or other ESG bullshit. Totalitarianism has to fight a war with reality and facts. It is unsustainable (pardon the pun).

> ESG funds will see competitor funds that will outperform. No wasting money on greenwashing or other ESG bullshit.

Would that work? IIRC, stock prices aren't so much about performance, just who wants to buy your stock. Decreased actual performance from "greenwashing or other ESG bullshit" might be overwhelmed by demand by ESG pots of money.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#146

Post by bioemerl »

jansan wrote: post #128

If you want racial equity, you have to start at school or even earlier. Get rid of private schools, improve the public school system. Then you can actually get good people from all kinds of backgrounds that are not looked upon as "diversity hires".

> Get rid of private schools

There are good steps that can be taken, but objectively harming some students is not the way forward.

Improve public schools and try to get more money into the poor regions. Do not erase private ones.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#147

Post by wyager »

systemvoltage wrote: post #54
Decker87 wrote: post #23

At this moment in time I think companies can gain a major hiring advantage by simply hiring the best regardless of race/gender. So many large companies are shooting themselves in the foot distorting incentives and saying "no" to people who are the wrong color/gender.

I think we're going to see a rise of new companies formed, perhaps not from Silicon Valley, that will reject the whole D&I concept and move forward with complete blindness to race, culture, or gender. They will excel, outperform and form a new age of englightenment. I don't think this will happen because I want it to, it will happen because incentives and fundamentals of operations of a company – i.e., just focus on…

Companies aren't doing DEI because they feel like it. They're doing it because if they don't, they will be punished by the state. The way this works is that there is a patronage relationship between the grievance HR class and certain political actors. If you fail to hire enough DEI HR people to suck revenue from your company, the state prosecutors hit you with all kinds of hiring discrimination lawsuits. It's sort of like a mob protection racket. You hire some of our guys for some no-show jobs, we don't burn your business down.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#148

Post by ifyoubuildit »

stonogo wrote: post #80
chernevik wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If your team looks like that, your team is horrible too, no matter how much you tell yourself it's not." Yes, it's true. There has never been a strong team of young, white nerdy men. Never happened. Technological and engineering progress was at a baffling standstill for centuries until the wisdom of diversity, inclusion and equity dawned upon us.

Your sarcasm would work better if anyone understood what the hell you were trying to refer to. You seem to ascribe "technological and engineering progress" exclusively to teams of young, white, nerdy men in this comment, which is clearly something only an idiot would do, so I presume you are trying to make a different, better point. Feel free to let us know what that might be.

I think op is saying these things:

- We've had major progress over the last however many decades.

- A lot of the teams responsible for that work were probably made up of young white nerdy males (obviously not all, but young nerdy males probably covers a large portion of them, otherwise why would we even be here talking about DEI initiatives?)

- were all of those teams horrible?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#149

Post by wafflestomp »

I’ve seen active encouragement to violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Specifically Title VII section 703, (d) - Training Programs.

“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for any employer, labor organization, or joint labor-­management committee controlling apprenticeship or other training or retraining, including on­-the-­job training programs to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in admission to, or employment in, any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training.”

By specifically allowing Women to attend the Grace Hopper Conference on company time, funded by the company.

Men, are not allowed to attend (unless not male presenting), and thus being discriminated against based upon their sex.

At the Grace Hopper conference, there are plenty of sessions which could be argued are training.

If the attendees were going for recruiting purposes, I could see it not necessarily violating the law. However, Women are attending to go to the conference (training?) without any recruiting duties.

I expect there are similar conferences for POC, which equally violate the Civil rights act.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#150

Post by [deleted] »

CincinnatiMan wrote: post #88

I don’t work at Microsoft, but another large corporation, and have been told by my manager that right now it is difficult for a white male to get promoted and that we may need to do some strange maneuvers to make it happen if I’m interested in a promo. Was kind of taken aback by the bluntness.

[deleted]
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