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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#251

Post by nathanaldensr »

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.

Assuming you're in the United States, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the EEOC are mere suggestions nowadays. There is no willingness in our DEI-co-opted government to tackle these issues and hold these blatantly illegal and unethical actors accountable.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#252

Post by Manuel_D »

tptacek wrote: post #245
Manuel_D wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So minority candidates are given an advantage in getting their foot in the door, but still have to prove themselves qualified for the job by doing well in interviews. Discrimination in selecting who to interview is absolutely a form of discrimination. Imagine I tell my recruiters to exclusively interview white Catholics, and I respond "well, those white Catholics still had to pass the skill-based interview. Had we…

None of this engages with the comment it replies to. One way to see that is to simply remove the quoted sentence, and read the comment to see if it would remain coherent at the top of the thread.

It absolutely engages with the parent comment. The parent comment is trying to argue that discrimination in selecting which candidates to interview isn't a form of bias. This is incorrect as I explain in my comment.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#253

Post by thegrimmest »

muaytimbo wrote: post #212
thegrimmest wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My reading of the original article tells me that these initiatives were interfering with this manager's ability to accomplish his team's objectives/provide value to shareholders. Indeed an assertion could be made that these initiatives run counter to fiduciary duty.

If you want to accomplish a goal, hire people you trust, given them clear objectives, and then get out of their way. Don't micromanage them with endless bureaucracy. Do you think that these policies will deter a real racist? Do you think an interview requirement or call asking "Did you consider candidate X?" accomplishes anything? Can you describe what?

Also MSFT is publicly traded not publicly owned. It's still a private company.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#254

Post by PKop »

Why would anyone support a system that explicitly dis-empowers them in preference to other identity groups who themselves are perfectly fine to pursue their own self interest?

After years of this, are the "privileged" getting the picture yet? You are a target for elimination in popular society. Either you take your own side, or no one will. There is a clear zero-sum aspect to this.

The cultural brainwashing that there is virtue in supporting this against your own interests is just Nietzschean slave-morality propaganda. You don't have to apologize for or pathologize being capable, successful and doing what is best for yourself, dare I say even for your own identity group. You can simply reject this nonsense; the emperor truly has no clothes here.

Related: my most recent submission [0] titled "Wikimedia is funding political activism" received over 20 points in 30 minutes, but of course was quickly flagged without discussion. Quite a bit of censorship around these parts regarding these particular topics with huge impact on all of us within the tech industry.

[0] https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#255

Post by sascha_sl »

Manuel_D wrote: post #222
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…

> So minority candidates are given an advantage in getting their foot in the door, but still have to prove themselves qualified for the job by doing well in interviews. Discrimination in selecting who to interview is absolutely a form of discrimination. Imagine I tell my recruiters to exclusively interview white Catholics, and I respond "well, those white Catholics still had to pass the skill-based interview. Had we…

No post body was provided.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#256

Post by gnull »

version_five wrote: post #75
chrischattin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also illegal.

I'm not sure about in the US, I know in Canada we've had lots of university faculty positions advertised recently that are explicity for women or some other groups. I don't understand how it's legal but it is.

Some manage to find a workaround even when it's illegal. I was reading somewhere that Lund University in Sweden was cancelling the job opening right before the deadline if the most promising candidate wasn't a woman.

There's so much bullshit in this. Universities are not allowed to advertise positions as "women only", but at the same time they are required to reach certain percentage of female "representation" by law.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#257

Post by omegaworks »

tablespoon wrote: post #246
omegaworks wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 carri…

>> 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. That doesn't follow. If D&I is operating at the wrong end of the pipe, it should be rejected outright because it won't work and will cause pointless problems in the meantime. > That there is no system in place for addressing concrete performance issues in any employee is the fai…

>If D&I is operating at the wrong end of the pipe, it should be rejected outright because it won't work and will cause pointless problems in the meantime.

So instead of discussing ways of making D&I work, we should throw it away. Sounds like a newbie dev throwing a tantrum over having to build on a system with legacy code.

>the bar was far higher for firing a diverse employee with performance issues, which followed from the DEI objectives.

That statement doesn't simply "follow from DEI objectives." Was that bar for performance standards explicit? implicit? or, like a lot of other replies here, hyperbole?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#258

Post by badpun »

tptacek wrote: post #238
badpun wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Companies like Microsoft want the best people. It's not brick laying, there's no "qualified for the job" tick box. The effects in software are non-linear, and one brilliant hire can create more value than 100 mediocre ones. These companies are actively hurt by having to hire second-best diversity hires, even if they're technically qualified for the job (whatever that means).

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#259

Post by spearson23 »

This policy sounds like exactly what it should be. This is to make up for things like this (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-appli...), but having a black sounding name makes you less likely to get an interview.

If society doesn't put some effort into overcoming its biases, those biases will always exist.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#260

Post by yucky »

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…

>They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders.

So now instead of those 3% being seen as having earned their position, all 5% will be seen as having been given an unfair advantage. So now it's not only unfair to the people excluded based on skin color but it's unfair to those who benefitted strictly because of the perception they now have to deal with as having not really earned their position the same as everyone else. It puts them on equal footing with the bosses nephew, who nobody respects.

It's 2022 - maybe we can stop trying to defend race-based favoritism and discrimination?

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