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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#351

Post by antisthenes »

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…

The problem with this reasoning is that you assume you have a perfect view of how disadvantaged every single subgroup is.

Also, given that this a zero-sum game (the company only has a fixed number of hours to interview a single game), you are necessarily making someone else worse off when you give advantage to a sub-group of candidates.

Also consider that many candidates can belong to a privileged group and a disadvantaged group at the same time. Of course none such nuances are being considered. How could they, when all you have on the person is their 1 page work resume? You know literally nothing about them, except a few projects they claim to have completed in the past.

Now you're not actually hiring for skills, but playing disadvantage roulette with your hiring pool. Ok, maybe not, and you're still screening for skills, but at least call a spade a spade.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#352

Post by commandlinefan »

faeriechangling wrote: post #319
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…

I'm so tired of this crap where we pretend discrimination isn't discrimination if we jump through a bunch of hoops. Yes asians being told they can't come to interviews because they're too asian is racism and it does impact their chances of seeking employment because how you do on any given interview is going to be to a degree random. You could get a coding test you've never seen before or one you practiced the night…

> isn't about not being racist

They're not even saying it's not being racist - they freely admit that it is - they just insist that the ends justify the means.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#353

Post by [deleted] »

peter422 wrote: post #321
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they are historically and factually wrong No, the money part is pretty accurate historically. Almost every field with high income historically attracted far more men than women once it became public knowledge. Job status and money are very disproportionately more important to men.

Which is why doctors and lawyers, two of the historically most highly paid and high status jobs, now graduate more women than men. Or wait a second, I guess it isn't public knowledge doctors make a lot of money.

[deleted]

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#354

Post by pjscott »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #230
bioemerl wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get rid of private schools There are good steps that can be taken, but objectively harming some students is not the way forward. Improve public schools and try to get more money into the poor regions. Do not erase private ones.

Nope. Get rid of all of them. Private schools are just legal segregation. Forcing rich people's kids to go to school with poor and average kids will give their parents a huge incentive to lobby for the increased quality of public schools. Lottery systems would make it even better. Education and healthcare being made available to everybody at the exact same availability and quality level would majorly improve both sys…

As a fun historical side note, I've heard this one before in a different context! "Make exit impossible so people will have to focus on fixing the broken system they're forced to deal with" was also the stated rationale for building the Berlin Wall.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#355

Post by badpun »

fzeroracer wrote: post #329
badpun wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both facts that, on average, women are less interested in things (and more interested in people) and also women, on average, are less interested in money, have a solid backing in research. They're not factually wrong. The field of software business changed rapidly in the 80s. It shifted from a fairly boring and low-paying thing, into an unpleasant and high-pressure field where fortunes were made, even for regular emp…

That's also not true regarding the history of the software field. The explosion in engineer salaries is relatively recent. It was only post-2000s when it became a very lucrative field for engineers and by that point the percentage of women developers had dropped off. This was due to both companies shifting hiring strategies to focus specifically on hiring men as well a shift in advertising for home computers and deri…

Can you point me to your sources on companies shifting hiring strategies to focus specifically on hiring men? It's the first time I'm hearing about this.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#356

Post by Manuel_D »

int0x2e wrote: post #349

I absolutely want to work in a diverse team. I want to be challenged by different perspectives and ideas. I want to have the best team members out there, regardless of their backgrounds. I however, think many D&I ideas fail to work when written into policies, and I think many times, higher-ups seem to write policy out of the best of intentions, yet fail to see how they can easily lead to abuse and poor results. Two e…

I've heard of similar diversity backfires. For instance, a company started making bonuses for execs contingent on reaching representation targets. This meant that diverse workers were almost never approved to transfer to a different org, because execs were worried about dropping below their bonus threshold. End result was that Asian and White men had a lot more internal mobility than diverse employees.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#357

Post by bradlys »

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.

I’ve heard from diversity candidates who work at Microsoft and interview at other companies that this part isn’t even true. I’ve been on the hiring side and seen how it isn’t true too…

The bar is truly different at all levels. Recruitment, interviewing, hiring, offers, and management are all very different. To act as if there isn’t this is to truly be naive or just happen to have only worked and interacted in a very small group of people. I’ve worked with hundreds and talked to thousands - this shit happens a lot more than HR wants to admit.

I’m not saying someone always get the preferential treatment - I’m just saying this happens more than people think it does.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#358

Post by sascha_sl »

Manuel_D wrote: post #277
sascha_sl wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> You addressed the wrong argument. The intent is to give groups that are disadvantaged in the hiring process a chance. The intent is equity. Your example distorts that by shifting the balance in favor of an already advantaged group. Then anonymize the resumes so that recruiters can't tell which candidates are men or women, or which is white, Asian, Black, etc. You don't eliminate discrimination by setting caps on ho…

> curious why you focus on whites despite Asians being far more overrepresented, by the way

I picked your example. Also, I'm not in the US. Apologies for failing at the intricacies of US-centrism.

Anonymous CVs are an interesting idea, and indeed how most of the studies measuring biases (not just on gender, but also things like perceived origin of name) are constructed.

But you're not going to get everyone to do them.

> Interviewing.io did an experiment relative to gender with anonymized phone interviews

If voices were so representative gender, we wouldn't have a severely worse pay gap for trans women. These are more systemic issues that start with gender roles and expected acceptable behaviors themselves.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#359

Post by seti0Cha »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #240
seti0Cha wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The claim is that there may be a lack of availability. Lack of availability does not imply lack of merit. Prior discrimination, for example, could explain a lack of availability.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#360

Post by peter422 »

dijit wrote: post #347
peter422 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why doctors and lawyers, two of the historically most highly paid and high status jobs, now graduate more women than men. Or wait a second, I guess it isn't public knowledge doctors make a lot of money.

This is overly hostile and I don't really want to engage with it because of that. To answer the question as coldly as I can: 1) Women are graduating from nearly all University programmes more than men.[0] 2) The role of Doctor is not as highly paid or prestigious as it used to be, at least in Europe.[1] [0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/08/whats-behin... [1]: https://www.paragona.com/healthcare-jobse…

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