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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#441

Post by PathOfEclipse »

rrradical wrote: post #287
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…

> Discrimination in selecting who to interview is absolutely a form of discrimination. Exactly. That's what the parent comment is saying. But they are thinking about the entire funnel, not just the end of it. By the time a slate of candidates reaches a company's hiring process, there has already been an immense selection bias against minority candidates. Two people growing up in different places (not different cities…

You should read some Thomas Sowell. He should help cure you of your "cosmic justice" aspirations.

https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas-Sowell/dp...

https://www.amazon.com/Discrimination-Disparities-Thomas-Sow...

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell...

https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Politics-Thomas-Sowell...

The very idea that, in a just world, outcomes along various lines of demarcation between groups of humans would be roughly even has zero evidence to support it. In fact, all of history, as well as the state of the universe itself, testify that this should not be the case! Never has there ever been equal outcomes between any groups in history. The world is complex, and the causes for disparity are too numerous to list and impossible to even attempt to measure or tease apart in their impacts. Sowell has written about numerous causes of disparity between groups that have nothing to do with racism or any societal injustice, and the above book examples are just a small portion of what he has written.

What leftists like to do is over-simplify the world to fit their pre-conceived notions. If there is racial disparity, it must have been caused by systemic racism! Therefore, we must fix it through systemic racism in the opposite direction! This kind of thinking is broken, flawed, and completely incorrect to the core, and acting on it simply leads to more injustice, more unfairness, and more disparity of different kinds. It is an ideology born of intellectual pride, moral vanity, and an utter lack of wisdom.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#442

Post by Vinnl »

csmpltn wrote: post #285
forgomonika wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

But here you have a multi-national corporation, with offices globally and ability to hire from any culture on the planet - and despite waiting months, actively searching for a "diverse" candidate, they were unable to find a single candidate who was "diverse" enough. What conclusions do you draw from this? That "people are racist"? That the pipeline is broken? This feels like ignoring the elephant in the room.

> months, actively searching for a "diverse" candidate

I think it explicitly said they did not do that:

> I spent months waiting for a single person to apply who fulfilled the racial requirement. When no one did, I spent hours trying to find people on LinkedIn who I thought might count as black or Hispanic based on their name or resume.

It seems like a good next step would be to give the author more tools to find more diverse candidates, rather than having them come up with trying to gauge ethnicity by name on LinkedIn and getting those to apply.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#443

Post by nonethewiser »

mikkergp wrote: post #161
thegrimmest wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it? I'm still unclear as to why we're even bothering to ask the question. How many blonde leaders are there vs. brunettes? Are brunettes poorly represented in corporate leadership? Does anyone care ? Why should they.

People should care because big companies are constantly competing on talent and it would be a competitive advantage to leverage a larger talent pool.

This presupposes they are discriminated against for these positions. 3-5% representation is extremely high for a demographic that comprises 1% of college graduates.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#444

Post by BryantD »

hintymad wrote: post #117

Maybe the question is why the leftists are so influential that for-profit companies are willing to comply with their ideology. Isn't the best way to increase the representation of minorities is to increase the funnel? Better schools, better teachers, more rigorous curriculum for all instead of for the elite students, a whole new culture that values curiosity and geekiness in general, and eventually a larger number of…

Oh, that’s easy. Because you wind up with a better, more productive company when you put forth the considerable effort necessary to increase diversity. It’s winning in the marketplace because it’s better.

You’re 100% right about the funnel, but here’s the thing: junior positions are part of the funnel. About ten years ago I realized that I was screwing up massively by interviewing for current skill level instead of potential skill level. Sure, at a certain point you can’t just look for potential; I’m not gonna hire a senior engineer because they might reach senior levels at some point. But I’m sure thinking about my junior to middle levels differently.

And this benefits everyone. Too many FAANGs get obsessed with existing criteria and leetcoding and won’t even look at someone from a small shop, regardless of skin color or gender. Their loss, my gain.

Absolutely anything you can do to increase your pool of potential qualified employees is good. Making up theories which give you an excuse to keep the same small pool hurts your company. Again, my gain.

Further, cultural diversity helps me get my job done because different viewpoints are useful! It’s amusing: the same people who will insist that cancel culture is bad because we have to invite all the viewpoints will also explain that trying to increase diversity in the workplace is terrible. It’s almost like there’s something else going on there.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#445

Post by Manuel_D »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #423
Manuel_D wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big is said interview pool? With a pool of four people, which isn't uncommon in my experience, that means that 50% of the interviews are locked behind racial and gender requirements. My example just made it bluntly obvious that discrimination in the interview stage is still discrimination, there's no "technically correct trick here". Mandating that X% of your interviews be of a particular race or gender is discri…

> Mandating that X% of your interviews “2 of the candidates you interview must meet these gender/racial requirements” is a mandate, but it’s not a percentage mandate. I know that’s a little pedantic, but I think it’s important pedantry, because you keep using percentages: > With a pool of four people, which isn’t uncommon in my experience, that means 50% of the interviews are locked behind racial and gender requireme…

> The former may require you to leave out candidates you think are qualified, the latter does not, for a start, which strikes me as an extremely important distinction in this context.)?

Incorrect. If you mandate that 20% of candidates be Y, but only 10% of candidates in the applicant pool are Y and 90% are X then on average you need to exclude 50% of qualified non-X candidates. If I have a pool of 90 X and 10 Y candidates and I have a quota of 80,20 then even if I include all 10 Y candidates I can only include 40 of the 90 X candidates. Sure, if I said that 100% have to be Y then all of the X candidates would be excluded. But even lower quota values still result in the out-group being limited.

> “2 of the candidates you interview must meet these gender/racial requirements” is a mandate, but it’s not a percentage mandate. I know that’s a little pedantic, but I think it’s important pedantry, because you keep using percentages:

Since there's a finite number of candidates it's still ultimately a percentage. The percentage is variable based on the total number of candidates, but it's still a percentage in the end.

Quotas and caps are two sides of the same coin. Instituting a minimum representation of one group, is fundamentally the same thing as capping the representation of those who don't belong to said group.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#446

Post by nyuszika7h »

tomp wrote: post #365
rrradical wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Discrimination in selecting who to interview is absolutely a form of discrimination. Exactly. That's what the parent comment is saying. But they are thinking about the entire funnel, not just the end of it. By the time a slate of candidates reaches a company's hiring process, there has already been an immense selection bias against minority candidates. Two people growing up in different places (not different cities…

This is a nice way to excuse your racism. A lot of people use this perverted logic. But at the end of the day, it's still evil racism. Different "worlds" (neighbourhoods, schools, health care) doesn't happen because of skin color, it happens because of wealth/poverty. So if you apply a racist filter on top of the (implicit) wealth filter, you're just being racist against poor Asian & white people.

No post body was provided.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#447

Post by dogman144 »

The thing is, there are not many companies or jobs where you can save $1mil+ in under 4 years, especially if you’re Dual Income or pre-kids. Especially at a 9-5 where I am in pajamas more often than not.

Hunker down, leverage to the opp to do boring tech at an interesting large scale and and earn a mountain.

Find your non-enterprise, pure meritocracy Ayn Rand bonanza engineering experience at a pre-Series C.

I can’t understand why engs expect FAANGs to operate like anything but an enterprise now, and then complain about that behavior!

We can save $1mil in under 4 years while wearing pajamas. The blind spots of the extreme relative privilege in this job and anchoring on articles like this as serious grievances blows my mind.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#448

Post by BryantD »

csmpltn wrote: post #285
forgomonika wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

But here you have a multi-national corporation, with offices globally and ability to hire from any culture on the planet - and despite waiting months, actively searching for a "diverse" candidate, they were unable to find a single candidate who was "diverse" enough. What conclusions do you draw from this? That "people are racist"? That the pipeline is broken? This feels like ignoring the elephant in the room.

I think that if he had to do the LinkedIn searches himself, you can conclude that his recruiters weren’t all that great. I’d be annoyed at them in his shoes.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#449

Post by PathOfEclipse »

lordleft wrote: post #412
tomp wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nice way to excuse your racism. A lot of people use this perverted logic. But at the end of the day, it's still evil racism. Different "worlds" (neighbourhoods, schools, health care) doesn't happen because of skin color, it happens because of wealth/poverty. So if you apply a racist filter on top of the (implicit) wealth filter, you're just being racist against poor Asian & white people.

> Different "worlds" (neighbourhoods, schools, health care) doesn't happen because of skin color, it happens because of wealth/poverty. This is false. But let me charitably engage your argument and ask you the following -- if your premise is correct, that means that lower access to education and economic attainment among under represented people of color has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with...some…

No, it's not, What the GP said is true. as I responded to someone else, you really should study Thomas Sowell because he articulates this stuff better than anyone else. I would specifically recommend Black Rednecks and White Liberals for a discussion about negative cultural elements that trace back to rural areas of Scotland, Ireland, and England, were transplanted to the American south, and eventually transplanted to African americans, who themselves eventually migrated from the south for more opportunity. He also talk about how leftists exacerbate the problem.

Wealth, Poverty, and Poltics reads like a textbook, but provides a wealth of information about causes of disparity that have nothing to do with racism. Similarly, conquest and cultures talks a lot about disparate impact throughout history.

One of the foundational tenets of CRT is that all racial disparity is caused by systemic racism, and, therefore, that all racial disparity must be addressed by systemic change until there are equal outcomes. This idea is fundamentally wrong on a billion levels, and also insanely harmful to society. It is one of the main reasons, if not the primary reason, why CRT is so wrong and so dangerous. When you diagnose the illness so completely wrong, and then diagnose the cause of the alleged illness so completely wrong, then, your prognosis is not only going to fail to improve anything, it's going to make things worse for everyone!

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#450

Post by zozbot234 »

omegaworks wrote: post #257
tablespoon wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 f…

> So instead of discussing ways of making D&I work

Parent comment didn't say anything like that. Please assume good faith in discussions. They said that D&I efforts are more likely to work if focused on other parts of the education/industry pipeline, which seems at least plausible.

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