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

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#231

Post by peter422 » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

badpun wrote: post #224

tqi wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author also ignores the obvious fact that only 1% of candidates being "diverse" is the root problem being addressed...

Not really, it's basically circular. The selection of who does and who doesn't belong to a "diverse" category is based on how frequent these people happen to be in the population (for example, Asians men are not "diverse", because there's plenty of them in tech - but Asian women are, because they're far less frequent). So, by definition, the "diverse" candidates will always be a minority. It can't be fixed. Even if w…

My CS classes in college were literally 98% male and 98% white and Asian.

You are talking about a slippery slope to distract from the obvious existing problem.

There might be a slippery slope in the future, I agree, but that doesn't mean there isn't an active problem now!

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#232

Post by BlargMcLarg » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

peter422 wrote: post #218

purpleblue wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can flip the script and ask why you should apply rules based on the aggregate despite obvious counterexamples. White boonies kid isn't happy to be excluded over the fact they are white, either.

Point being this whole strive for 'ultimate equality' is going to create victims in its fanatical wake. No perfect method exists and no one wants to be on the losing end. But it is easier for those in a position of affluence to decide who is allowed in, as long as they won't get hurt themselves.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#233

Post by rhacker » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

yashap wrote: post #200

Affirmative Action is always going to be a very controversial topic. Personally I'm for it, but I understand why people dislike it. I do strongly believe that, even with Affirmative Action policies, it's still a lot harder to succeed as a non white male than it is as a white male, today. For example, no matter how you slice it, white Americans are ~3-4x more likely to become millionaires than black or hispanic Americ…

What I don't understand is, that if it's purely skin color and upbringing and background, why is most of SV absolutely dominated by Indian people: My dad is Indian and grew up with his family in a single room. He is in his 80s now and has a net worth in California of probably $3M.

I'm half Indian and half white. At my age (42) he was doing way better than myself (accounting for inflation of course). When my dad was going through all the same stuff, 50 years back there was no affirmative action yet he still grew in the ranks. He's not a "black person" but his skin color is the same.

I think there is a lot of perceived racism when in reality people are promoting strong individuals already. Look at head of Google, Twitter, and a series of other companies.

For some reason people shy away from calling out racism when it comes to people from India because of their American success story. But again, if it's about skin color - how did this happen?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#234

Post by danielodievich » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

Back in 2020, I interviewed at Github for a professional services customer facing position. One of the steps in the interview was D&I, where I had 2 white males interview me, another white male, about what I do and will do for diversity, whatever that means. It was clear that they had a scripted checklist that they were going on and it was just a formality. They were visibly uncomfortable which this interview and so was I.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#235

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

crackercrews wrote: post #11

I read the comments then read the article, then came back to find it dead. But why? This post contains new information that is relevant to the tech industry. Its claims are not outlandish. And it brings receipts (screenshots). If this is what a major tech company is doing, isn't it worthy of discussion here? I hope the comments can be civil, and I've seen more contentious topics surface high-quality comments on HN.

[deleted]

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#236

Post by seti0Cha » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

winternett wrote: post #154

systemvoltage wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 withi…

> Minorities are essential within companies to prevent bias in their marketing and product development that can be fatal to business success.

Is there any reason to believe this is true and not just conjecture? This always struck me as kind of far fetched.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#237

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

peter422 wrote: post #218

purpleblue wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#238

Post by tptacek » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

badpun wrote: post #217

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?

Maybe. Many of the elite eng school grads Microsoft hires don't work out. At the upper levels of this industry, "meritocracy" is really just credentialism --- something embedded in your own comment --- which is something you learn quickly when you abandon resumes and interviews and replace them with work sample testing.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#239

Post by notch656a » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

etchalon wrote: post #227

purpleblue wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have objective evidence, through numerous studies, that just "being black" produces disadvantage during the hiring process, and data which shows the outcomes of that disadvantage in fairly straight-forward terms: https://hbr.org/2017/10/hiring-discrimination-against-black-... https://www.americanprogress.org/article/african-americans-f... The discrimination faced by Black Americans is because of their skin color,…

No post body was provided.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#240

Post by PuppyTailWags » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

seti0Cha wrote: post #82

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #56

The increase from 3.7% to 5.6% black executives as a sign of lowering standards, when black people are 14% of the population in the country... Can we first establish what percentage of managers people genuinely think got their job based on merit as a baseline? An equal explanation might be that because Microsoft forced people to actually interview black people at all, more qualified black candidates were hired.

That represents the population at large, not the percentage of job applicants. Without knowing that number, you can't know how reasonable such a rule is.

Yeah, neither can we know how reasonable the implication of lack of merit is in that case.