The only thing large corporations like M$ care about is their share price (and they should). ESG/DEI was just a fad
Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
51–60 of 128 posts
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#52I'm continually blown away that the modern titans of industry readily bow down to a glorified reality show egomaniac. Allying to price-fix is one thing, but surely they can ally to resist culture war nonsense from making its way into their employee handbooks?
The only reason implemented these measures in the first place was because of pressure from the other side of the political spectrum. It's hardly surprising that pressure from the opposite direction will make them walk it back.
IMO, it's something more cynical. It's not bowing to pressure or whatever. Rather, the guys running marketing have realized a trick to getting attention is making some innocuous political statement that ultimately causes social media to freak out. For example, having a trans person advertise their beer.
These giants know that people are lazy, they aren't likely doing the effort to see all the product holding. And that people will forget the outrage when the next thing comes up. It also helps that a lot of the dumb reactions have been things like people buying their product only to angerly shoot it with a gun or run it over with a truck.
When time passes, so does the outrage. And what they've actually bought is a bit of unearned goodwill and forgotten badwill.
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#53DEI is a blatant violation of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and any company that engages in it or any form of racial discrimination by any other sickening PR sanitized name like "affirmative action" should be aggressively prosecuted.
> It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -
> (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or
> (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#54I'm continually blown away that the modern titans of industry readily bow down to a glorified reality show egomaniac. Allying to price-fix is one thing, but surely they can ally to resist culture war nonsense from making its way into their employee handbooks?
And I'm continually blown away that the modern titans of industry readily bow down to glorified twitter rants and non-technical HR busybodies who pushed DEI internally?
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OP was actually not questioning that at all. It was lamenting that they are bending the knee to someone unworthy of it, in furtherance of a culture war spearheaded by said someone. In particular, a glorified reality show egomaniac who treats their current job as a glorified reality show. It certainly isn't useless information that the person is currently president, but that alone doesn't say much, because no pres…
Again, that said someone is the President of the United States. If he wasnt the president, these companies probably wouldnt be doing this. I still feel thats pretty relevant.
The part which is relevant is that he’s willing to break the law in unprecedented ways and has the full support of the Republican Party in doing so. Americans used to pride ourselves on the government not controlling businesses.
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#56Panem et Circenses.
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a glorified reality show egomaniac He is also.... the president of the United States?
I'm continually blown away that the modern titans of industry readily bow down to the president of the United States. While I don't think "corporations should be in charge", I also don't think a President should be dictating corporate culture or policy short of going through the proper channels of using Congress to write legislation that keeps corporations in check and doesn't allow their power and influence to grow…
> I'm continually blown away that the modern titans of industry readily bow down to the president of the United States.
If you dont, you could suddenly find that the thing you sell has a ridiculous tariff imposed on it. Then that might mean you sell a lot less. He has done much more for much less in the past.
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#58Game File post: https://www.gamefile.news/p/microsoft-skips-diversity-inclus...
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#59Hot take: i'm not sure this is actually bad for actual diversity and inclusion. From my experience (not at msft), companies continue to have many internal goals related to equal pay, gender balance, etc.
Whats changing is how this is communicated externally, and I can see why this would have to change based on the political climate.
Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
MS (or any large company for that matter) didn’t participate in BLM discussions and get speakers to describe themselves and list their pronouns because they thought it was virtuous or right, they were just following the cultural zeitgeist in a way that they thought would make them more money. Walking it back is just the same behaviour manifesting in a different way. Investors don’t value DEI in the same way they did…
Also, increasing efforts to support DEI and also decreasing those efforts can both be good things. You can fail to recognize a problem, and you can also overreact to it.
There has certainly been an overreaction, and it continues to be the case even after efforts have been walked back.
I have yet to hear a good justification for why people who are not interested in programming should be encouraged to become interested purely in the name of equality, yet my institution is still spending huge amounts of public money on trying to achieve exactly that.