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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#471

Post by zozbot234 »

runako wrote: post #452

One of the key insights I think people are missing is that for most roles, not having a diverse slate of applicants in a country as diverse as America is a "process smell." The smell is that you're not casting a wide enough net to even know whether you're getting the best applicants. Some easy examples: if you're hiring for most programming roles and you don't have any qualified women applying, your pipeline sucks. I…

> your pipeline sucks

The pipeline sucks for everyone, we all know that. Let's not pretend that this is just a matter of a single company having substandard processes.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#472

Post by adamwk »

nonethewiser wrote: post #434
guhidalg wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya you are, but you know white people and Asians are less likely to be poor compared to Hispanics and African Americans so reality is fighting against your argument.

> Ya you are, but you know white people and Asians are less likely to be poor compared to Hispanics and African Americans so reality is fighting against your argument. Yet there are more white people in poverty than black people in the US. If we are trying to give opportunity to impoverished people we would judge by poverty. If we want to live in a racist society then we would judge by race.

> Yet there are more white people in poverty than black people in the US

Where are you people getting these stats? This is being repeated elsewhere and is not based in reality at all.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#473

Post by djbebs »

nyuszika7h wrote: post #446
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.

Quoted post unavailable.

But they are systematically oppressed. Just look at college affirmative action policies.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#474

Post by topaz0 »

colordrops wrote: post #439
topaz0 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rules made by society" is exactly why it is relevant here.

Can you explain further? Not getting your meaning.

Society defines racial categories according to made-up rules. The basis of these rules is not biological. All good so far. But, then we have to live with these categories, and they get applied to how we organize society, sometimes explicitly, sometimes less explicitly. And we may wish for these rules to change, or for the ways that they shape the experiences of individuals to change. But then the people who benefit from the status quo have a material interest in having them stay the same. And in fact the people who benefit from the status quo often are in a position to shape society in a way that keeps them the same. You get the idea.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#475

Post by thegrimmest »

implements wrote: post #393
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts >“Men and women are [innately] different from each other in lots of ways” is false, and the differences are cultural and rooted in socialisation that we, the the name of true individualistic inclusivity, should seek to minimise. There is widespread scientific (note: among _scientists_) consensus that this is not correct. Talk to an endocrinologist or a behavioral geneticist, or…

I’m prepared to believe that those differences exist wrt reproductive role ie that humans have some sexed instincts around mating and child care, but, as per what right-thinking people believe about about race and intelligence / personality / emotionality (viz ‘races’ don’t actually have different characters or abilities) I don’t think the sexes are fundamentally different mentally. It used to be the case until fairl…

Lots of it boils down to risk. For sexual/reproductive reasons, men are more prone to risk - both behaviourally and generically. Evolution doesn't tend to favour risk-taking in the sex that carries and rears offspring. The number of women (not men) in a group is also the bottleneck to the group's ability to reproduce/recover population. Males are more fundamentally disposable, and have developed traits to fit into this niche. We have just about all of this in common with our closest ape relatives. I'm no researcher, but I've found the work of Frans de Waal and other primatologists enlightening.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#476

Post by dmarcos »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #309
fzeroracer wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And men care about both money and technical things much more than women Stop this. These arguments are not only making massive assumptions but they are historically and factually wrong. In the history of computing and computer science women formed a large chunk of computer science graduates and programmers. This decline started in 1984 when the culture and advertising shifted to market computers and such as being f…

>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.

Men behavior is at least partially shaped by dating dynamics. Women tend to prefer partners with higher social and economic status than themselves. Men care less. Search term hypergamy

edit: typo

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#477

Post by thegrimmest »

colinmhayes wrote: post #463
thegrimmest wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you suppose that a non-broken recruiting pipeline would result in more diverse candidates? Do you really think all candidate pools in all professions, and in all locations, are as diverse as the population at all times?

> Do you really think all candidate pools in all professions, and in all locations, are as diverse as the population at all times? No but I think you should be able to find a single minority candidate over the course of months.

Why do you think so? I have a hard enough time finding a qualified candidate of any variety.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#478

Post by hbrn »

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…

> or perhaps don't think they're good enough

Or perhaps it is not your business to decide what blacks should think?

Imagine if you're hiring in a region where blacks are 10% of the population, but only 1% of resumes you receive are black folks (and if your pool of candidates is low, 1% can literally mean zero candidates).

Your mindset seems to be "those poor blacks don't understand which jobs they should apply to. I know better than them, I'll help them". You still think you are superior to them. You're not a hateful racist, you're a virtuous racist. Still a racist though.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#479

Post by runako »

zozbot234 wrote: post #471
runako wrote: post #452

One of the key insights I think people are missing is that for most roles, not having a diverse slate of applicants in a country as diverse as America is a "process smell." The smell is that you're not casting a wide enough net to even know whether you're getting the best applicants. Some easy examples: if you're hiring for most programming roles and you don't have any qualified women applying, your pipeline sucks. I…

> your pipeline sucks The pipeline sucks for everyone, we all know that. Let's not pretend that this is just a matter of a single company having substandard processes.

Right, but here we're talking about Microsoft, one of the most valuable/profitable companies on the planet. Microsoft doesn't have to make do with a crappy pipeline. In fact, they have the resources to make it harder for the rest of us to have good pipelines.

And again -- I am talking about process smells. Women, Latinos, Black people, etc. are gainfully employed in roles where they ship software. (If you work in tech, you know the "CS Majors only" objection is a red herring given the breadth of roles at large tech firms.) If your process is unable to find them, that speaks to your process specifically (because someone else did find & hire them!).

Understanding why your process is bad is a good thing that every team should continually work towards.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#480

Post by jrs235 »

omginternets wrote: post #419
Dig1t wrote: post #382

I work at a different FAANG and it seems like more and more the only news that we get from corporate is related to DEI. Also a lot of hiring details are now hidden from ICs. It used to be that you would be apart of the interview panel as an interviewer and then you would get together with your team afterwards and everyone on the team would vote yes/no and that would pretty much be it. Now it’s made by a manager elsew…

Relatedly: I cannot defend the kind of "diversity" that would rather hire a rich brahmin than an inner-city American kid in need of a leg-up, just to fulfill some backwards skin-color quota. It's obscene, and insulting to all parties involved. I also worry that this nonsense will erode support for the kind of diversity I do defend, or worse, prompt some kind of revanchist backlash against visible minorities in genera…

Some of starting to rearrange the letters to be DIE. Companies are going to die as they become paralyzed trying to placate differing views and opinions... or parts of their workforce are going to protest or cause internal strife/trouble...
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