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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#151

Post by forgomonika »

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.

That doesn't work. There are some really amazing people out there that don't fit the typical tech mold of straight cis (white) guy. They don't stick around if they have to navigate a monoculture that doesn't understand that they are constantly throwing out micro-aggressions to people outside of their view of what acceptable behaviour is. Separating your home life from work life only works for so long before you start to crack.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#152

Post by crackercrews »

kiddz wrote: post #55

Quoted post unavailable.

> a nice thought experiment would be to ask "how much would someone have to pay you to be the same person but black in your organization?"

These days, it would be the other way around. I'd bet many devs would pay a one-time fee of $10k to be a black dev in their organization. The payback period would be very short and would pay dividends for years.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#153

Post by noasaservice »

So, let me guess.... It means in practice hiring BiPOC and women in "diversity positions", all the while keeping them away from engineering and engineering management (you know, the positions that pay $$$$$$).

I've seen BiPOC and women candidates turned down time and again because they "fit" better in the bullshit diversity spots. And then there's a rant about "fit" also known as "we want to discriminate on illegal or unethical things but we cant actually say that".

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#154

Post by winternett »

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…

What kind of statement is this? D&I is supposed to be comparatively balanced to the society is serves. Minorities are essential within companies to prevent bias in their marketing and product development that can be fatal to business success.

D&I is not a terrible paradigm that needs to be dismantled just because some companies take it to far, it's no different than accounting or other functional considerations within big business where it's too easy to lose sight of how balanced a company is internally. If you don't keep reports on finances a company can easily fail. If you don't take steps to make sure minority groups are represented within your company, it will also create situations where bias takes hold, and suddenly discrimination becomes the norm.

What's next? Should we get rid of sexual harassment training and policies?

Only someone from a background that elimination of equal opportunity would serve foremost would think that "complete blindness to race" is possible in our world. It's a childish and a destructive ignorance considering what is currently happening in our world even to this day, as white nationalist groups are growing in numbers, and other groups, a prior US president, and public celebrities are also regularly publicly expressing race based hate.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#155

Post by leveraction »

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 the point was that quite a bit of technolgical progess happened in the world prior to diversity initiatives. The reference to white nerds likely places the comment in an historical US perspective, possibly western European. Advanced technologies developed in other non-diverse cultures as well. China comes to mind in particular. But I feel like you knew that already. "Feel free to let us know what that might be." If we have sarcasm tags, maybe we should have snark tags as well?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#156

Post by noasaservice »

franczesko wrote: post #38
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.

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

That's cause "they're just not a good fit".

(for you who downmodded me, this saying is how management gets away with illegal discrimination without saying the quiet part out loud)

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#158

Post by BiteCode_dev »

The problem is those filters are applied in the wrong order. If it was "promote diversity hiring once you have a pool of talented candidates to pick from", it would work.

But right now, it's the reverse: filter out non diverse candidates, and try to find a good one in the remaining.

Yet, it's already hard to hire talent, even with no filter at all.

So now I have clients I assist for interviews, looking desperately for good devs, but when they find one, which is already a rare event, they often can't hire him (yes, him, because the hiring pool is mostly males in IT in 2022) thanks of those blockers. Of course, they already have a ton of hiring constraints to match for, so this compounds.

This week, I'm going to interview the one candidate that could make it through the diversity policy. His resume is a train wreck, and I already know it's going to be a waste of time.

So they are going to go through those shenanigans for the next year or so before finding their mythical creature, the same one their competitors are fighting for in this very competitive market. Of course, this means their projects are going to be delayed a lot.

It's good for me, I get on the payroll for longer. And I'm a diversity bonus for them, being from another country, so they won't get rid of me any time soon.

But I don't envy them, they are set up for failure.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#159

Post by Manuel_D »

tracker1 wrote: post #116
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…

Agreed, I'd much rather just be honest and transparent with processes. That's not to say there aren't potential down sides. Of course, I still hold that trying to resolve these issues completely on the demand side of careers that often involve an educational component doesn't always work well, it can drive up incomes, but won't necessarily make the implied problem better. What is at least also needed are dealing with…

> What is at least also needed are dealing with the supply side, which is incentivising and cultivating educational paths.

100% this. If companies want to show that they're improving the diversity of the tech field, sponsoring study programs and science olympiad teams in underserved communities are a much better investment than quotas. The only thing that's going to increase the representation in tech as a whole is increasing the number of black, Latin, indigenous tech workers.

Instead, companies seem to only care about signaling diversity. When a company sets a quota and pushes their representation of "diverse" demographics up a few percentage points, they're increasing the diversity within the company. They're doing nothing to actually increase the diversity of the field.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#160

Post by nyxtom »

We seem to have gone full circle somehow. It is ironic that in its intent to ensure employers hire based on merit, academic or physically qualified abilities so that people could obtain those jobs without being discriminated against - we have arrived back at a point where companies consider their identity to make sure they meet "quotas" - thus implementing discriminatory policies.
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