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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#161

Post by mikkergp »

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.

People should care because big companies are constantly competing on talent and it would be a competitive advantage to leverage a larger talent pool.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#162

Post by andirk »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #52
bedobi wrote: post #19

I hate articles like these and their appeals to "meritocracy". Before my current team, my whole career, every single team I worked in was pretty much exclusively young, white, nerdy men. Maybe each person on those teams was objectively the "best" candidate for their respective hiring round! (though I doubt it) But they make horrible teams. If your team looks like that, your team is horrible too, no matter how much yo…

> Before my current team, my whole career, every single team I worked in was pretty much exclusively young, white, nerdy men. Maybe each person on those teams was objectively the "best" candidate for their respective hiring round! (though I doubt it) But they make horrible teams. If your team looks like that, your team is horrible too, no matter how much you tell yourself it's not. Do you think this would be true if…

Dare they go to another country that is heavily one demographic and hence the tech teams are. All those countries' teams are "horrible"? God forbid a family be of shared blood.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#163

Post by yellsatclouds »

creato wrote: post #58
yellsatclouds wrote: post #41

this person seem to not understand how microsoft's business stays on track. they seem to really think that individual contributions truly affect Microsoft's fullfilment of their self-appointed mission; but I highly doubt this. Microsoft is really huge. No single individual can really detract, nor add too much, to the company's overall mission.

I guess MS should just pick people to hire in a lottery then.

I somehow suspect they wouln't fare any worse.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#164

Post by mmmpop »

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.

No post body was provided.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#165

Post by gnerkus »

comex wrote: post #132

> 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 simi…

How would this policy work for non-minority candidates who start with a disadvantage?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#166

Post by tflinton »

fallingknife wrote: post #27

These practices are explicitly against federal law. When are judges going to start enforcing the law? > It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer - (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, o…

Just curious; where's the source on this? Is this in the US? If so, is it state or federal law, and which law?

Edit: Nevermind, it's the 1964 Title VII [Section 703] of the Civil Rights Act.

https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-196...

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#167

Post by luckylion »

bigbacaloa wrote: post #40
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…

It's clear as day that some culturally contingent notion of race isn't a good way of measuring merit.

No post body was provided.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#168

Post by balls187 »

"Imagine you work under a black executive at Microsoft. Does a graph like this one make you more or less likely to think they got to where they are because of their accomplishments? "

This is the same "affirmative action hire" argument conservatives have been making since affirmative action was implemented.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#169

Post by throwingitaway9 »

kiddz wrote: post #55

Quoted post unavailable.

> White people are over represented across the workforce because America is not a meritocracy -- benefits of economic class are correlated with race because of white supremacy.

Be careful because white people are actually under-represented[1] at Microsoft relative to their makeup of American population[2] (48% at Microsoft vs 75% country-wide). It's really important to understand this because otherwise DEI initiatives may counter-intuitively increase representation of white people. See school admissions for an example: https://apnews.com/article/hispanics-racial-injustice-scienc...

[1] Page 9 of https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RW...

[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045221

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#170

Post by omegaworks »

Manuel_D wrote: post #93
bergenty wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> This results in some people (mainly white men) feeling like they are being left out when they really weren’t the best fit but in the past may have picked over someone else. There would be merit to this line of thinking, if the diversity initiatives came in the form of anonymizing resumes and interviews (which is easier to do with remote interviews). But that's not the case. More often than not, diversity initiative…

>More often than not, diversity initiatives come in the form of quotas or penalties for hiring or promoting too many "non-diverse" people.

This is literally not the case for the author. From the article:

>I told HR that I had considered it and I believed my recommendation was correct. HR said “OK, then we don’t need to change anything. I just wanted to check that you had considered them.”

That's literally all the author had to do. He made up the idea that it had an impact on his ability to advance in his career in his own mind.

>Again, there was no quota, but it seemed clear that promoting this person would have made HR and my corporate vice president happy.

It only "seemed clear." Weasel words. Engaging in the hyperbolic. This entire discussion is predicated on the fabrication that there is some racialized penalization system in place. It is scaremongering, nothing more than balking at the requirement to do the bare minimum.

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