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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#211

Post by reducesuffering »

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

"I am so, so tired of socialists who admit that the current system is a helltopian torturescape, then argue that we must prevent anyone from ever being able to escape it. Who promise that once the last alternative is closed off, once the last nice green place where a few people manage to hold off the miseries of the world is crushed, why then the helltopian torturescape will become a lovely utopia full of rainbows and unicorns. If you can make your system less miserable, make your system less miserable! Do it before forcing everyone else to participate in it under pain of imprisonment if they refuse! Forcing everyone to participate in your system and then making your system something other than a meat-grinder that takes in happy children and spits out dead-eyed traumatized eighteen-year-olds who have written 10,000 pages on symbolism in To Kill A Mockingbird and had zero normal happy experiences - is doing things super, super backwards!" ~Scott Alexander

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#212

Post by muaytimbo »

thegrimmest wrote: post #50
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…

You're writing with the implicit assumption that private companies ought to be meritocratic above all. I don't think that's the case. I think private people and orgs ought to be free to choose whom they associate with, hire, and promote based on any criteria they can come up with. Nepotism? No problem. Height/weight/age/beauty/culture/hair colour discrimination? You bet. Then these orgs all compete and the most effic…

MSFT is not private, it's public. It's responsibility is to create value for the shareholders. Part of that deal is to hire the best talent.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#213

Post by etchalon »

outside1234 wrote: post #29

This is a real thing. It is hard for anyone that is not "diverse" to get promoted at the highest levels of Microsoft. Almost all CVP promotions are "diverse" now in a way that is pretty overt. I am a huge proponent of D&I, but it is hard not to feel discriminated against and feel like there isn't much of a career trajectory for me.

The majority of managers at Microsoft remain white, and male (page 13):

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/a...

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#214

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

fallingknife wrote: post #139
mikkergp wrote: post #103

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. 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

20 minutes might just be interview anxiety, especially if it’s a first question in the interview.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#215

Post by omegaworks »

tablespoon wrote: post #176
omegaworks wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that will reject the whole D&I concept This is already the norm in Silicon Valley. D&I awareness is a brand new thing, and mediocre reactionaries like the author pervade existing leadership structures. Over 50 years ago the US Military recognized that segregation and entrenched racial biases lead to inefficiencies and lack of readiness.[1] In an economy where hiring pipelines for skilled technical people are stretch…

> Over 50 years ago the US Military recognized that segregation and entrenched racial biases lead to inefficiencies and lack of readiness.[1] In an economy where hiring pipelines for skilled technical people are stretched incredibly thin, we need to be taking a hard look at why we're only getting people that look a certain way through our hiring process. That doesn't follow, at all. For one, you're comparing apples a…

The norm in Silicon Valley is treat D&I with an inordinate level of skepticism, if not reject it outright as "anti-meritocratic." What we have here is not explicit racial segregation, but a system operating via capital and clout that has elevated a small group of mostly white men into positions of extreme power and influence over the most vibrant segment of the American economy. This creates huge bind spots and carries the risk of building systems that reinforce oppression.

>D&I may very well be operating at the wrong end of the pipe.

Then that should be the argument at hand. Not rejecting the idea outright.

>she was pressured into hiring an incompetent person

That there is no system in place for addressing concrete performance issues in any employee is the failing of the organization. The requirements for any role you hire for should be clear, expectations should be set and when they are not met there should be consequences. If this is not the case at the organization she worked at, she was bound to burn out, irrespective of the DEI objectives.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#216

Post by weakfish »

kardianos wrote: post #193
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…

> Reactionary, anti-intellectual. "The Cultural Revolution: A people's history" is a good read. Lot's of people got called reactionary and anti- then too. Yes, you can measure merit. But then, I'm not a Communist.

This seems like a very large leap in logic, if I follow… are you saying the parent is communist for using the term reactionary?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#217

Post by badpun »

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…

> but still have to prove themselves qualified for the job by doing well in interviews.

This notion of "qualified for the job" is really blurry in our field though. For example, is someone fresh out of a three months bootcamp qualified for a job at Microsoft?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#218

Post by peter422 »

purpleblue wrote: post #202
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…

It's not those with a disadvantage. It's strictly based on skin color. That's the problem. You have no idea if they are disadvantaged or not. There are plenty of middle-class and upper-class Black families these days. Unless you think that all Black people are disadvantaged. To me, it's a "ruinous empathy" form of racism if you think "Oh look at that poor Black person!" without knowing anything about her background.

So even if we have aggregate statistics showing how certain groups of people are disadvantaged, the fact that the rules do not apply universally means we should just ignore them?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#219

Post by DebtDeflation »

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…

This is how literally everything in corporate America works. You start with a good idea. It gets turned into a metric. Targets for this metric are assigned at various levels in the management hierarchy. Bonuses are made dependent upon meeting the target for the metric. Eventually everyone forgets the initial objective and just focuses on managing the metric. I work in consulting, client satisfaction is obviously very important, leadership made the determination that NPS is the best way to measure csat, we all have NPS targets, our bonuses are tied to them, so what does everyone do? They only send NPS surveys to specific clients they know will give a good score and then they spend time and effort to make sure the client follows up and does in fact give a good score. Everyone manages the metric, same as with the DE&I stuff.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#220

Post by mmmpop »

purpleblue wrote: post #202
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…

It's not those with a disadvantage. It's strictly based on skin color. That's the problem. You have no idea if they are disadvantaged or not. There are plenty of middle-class and upper-class Black families these days. Unless you think that all Black people are disadvantaged. To me, it's a "ruinous empathy" form of racism if you think "Oh look at that poor Black person!" without knowing anything about her background.

You're about to get downvoted to hell but I'll add in that I love when big, fat, ugly White people think sees a Black person that may have their shit otherwise together and go "wow they really need my help and compassion." Because that's not racist lol
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