What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

Spot on. I wonder if daughters of Barrack Obama will get preferrential treatment as diversity hires. As women of color, they definitely should, according to many companies' policies.

That's part of the problem. The other part is the networks you are tapping into to find candidates. People tend to collect others that look, act, and think like them. That's one reason why people group up into subgroups that all have similar traits, past experiences, and belief systems.

When it comes to a recruiting pipeline this is critical. If you are tapping members of your team to help finding candidates from their networks and your team lacks diversity, you are going to just build out your team with more of the same.

The same goes for where you are looking for candidates outside of your team. If you are only targeting a small number of schools it's really easy to end up with a homogenized set to pull from. I know from experience working at some of the big tech powerhouses, they'd target a handful of schools and only hire college grads from there - which means they miss out on recruiting from state schools, historically black colleges, and other pockets where things are more diverse.

I've experienced this too, and in practice DI&E reminds me of the kind of rules advocated for by people who live on a lake, ostensibly to protect the lake but in reality to preserve their own property value and make sure nobody can build near them. Making rules than mean explicit support and sponsorship are needed to get somebody though means that employees end up serving and being promoted at the pleasure of whoever is currently in power, giving them more power. There are many ways this works but all-in, it ends up just consolidating power, not achieving any of the ostensible aims (whether or not you think those aims are worthy)

What always bothered me about DE&I initiatives is that they are trying to wring diversity out of their existing hiring pool.

If your indeed job posts didn't bring diverse candidates then, why do you think it would now? Because you added a "Please apply if you're DiVeRsE" line to it? Don't be ridiculous.

If you want diversity of candidates you can't keep going back to the same talent pools. You have to diversify where you're drawing talent.

If your college program is primarily getting white/asian males, you can't suddenly expect it to start throwing in women & poc as well. You can't suddenly expect it to start giving you LGBTQ+ candidates.

If you want diverse candidates, you have to look at diverse hiring pools. Look at the bootcamps that focus on diverse groups you're targeting. Look at schools that focus on diverse groups you're targeting.

If you're really interested in diverse candidates, you can't keep expecting them to just show up if you add a "We want diversity!" to your job description - you have to change where you look for them.

> it's still a lot harder to succeed as a non white male than it is as a white male.

Part of the issue is that you're presupposing a uniform definition of success. Different cultures have different priorities, and not everyone wants to spend 80 hrs a week in the office to climb the ladder and become a millionaire. Some cultures prioritize family/social relationships, sports, or a connection with nature. Unsurprisingly, these different cultures can often be racially affinitized. Sure, most people wouldn't mind being rich, but many do mind the hustle often accompanying that form of success.

I think part of what you describe around momentum holds merit, but I don't think affirmative action goes about the remedy in a constructive manner. It's fighting racism with more (albeit different) racism. You turn it into a zero sum game where your political posturing can be more valuable than your work contributions. That incentive structure is degenerative for all parties.

> If you grow up in a wealthy family, you've got easy access to great education, mentors, role models, capital, etc. If you grow up in a poor family you have way less of all of this.

Genuinely curious, would you support an initiative to shuffle all babies between families at birth? Your argument seems to be "who you're raised by gives an unfair advantage in life, and we should correct for this societally". It seems to me that a random shuffle would equally distribute any inherent bias relative to generational momentum.