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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#591

Post by abigail95 »

thegrimmest wrote: post #50
mikkergp wrote: post #18

Posts like this seem reactionary and equally anti-intellectual. Sure I know that a lot of the DE&I stuff is frustrating for people. But it seems like if you really want to dig into this you need to take broader approach. Can you actually prove that people are in any way capable of measuring merit, especially for leadership decisions, which is pretty squishy to begin with? It seems to me like throwing some extra diver…

You're writing with the implicit assumption that private companies ought to be meritocratic above all. I don't think that's the case. I think private people and orgs ought to be free to choose whom they associate with, hire, and promote based on any criteria they can come up with. Nepotism? No problem. Height/weight/age/beauty/culture/hair colour discrimination? You bet. Then these orgs all compete and the most effic…

Sure that's a nice libertarian framing of the issue. I would love to be able to hire whoever I want, with no say from anyone else, for my companies.

But that's not what the law says.

Title VII of the CRA 1964 says:

> 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.

So I guess you want to repeal the law?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#592

Post by pedrosorio »

omegaworks wrote: post #578
pedrosorio wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what's the mechanism here? The white Americans in power are fans of the caste system established by the British colonizers and decided to make an exception to their white supremacy to allow some Brahmins to control some of the most important US tech companies?

I'm simply pointing out that your three examples don't negate the fact that we have a system here that taken whole rewards and uplifts whiteness. White colonialism literally crafted the system that elevated those three non-white people. Do you think that that influence is not relevant just because those three people are not white?

Working in tech, I don't see a system that rewards and uplifts whiteness. Asians (both East and from the subcontinent) are greatly overrepresented relative to their fraction of the US population in SWE jobs. Their skin color was never a factor. Most of the ones I've worked with/interviewed, were hired due to merit, not the color of their skin.

That richer and more well educated Indians are over-represented in tech jobs and as CEOs of major tech companies relative to those with fewer resources and less well educated is not surprising.

I am not sure what's the relevance of the skin color of those who allegedly imposed the system that led to this particular group being at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy in India today. How did that result in "uplifting whiteness"?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#593

Post by dijonman2 »

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.

It absolutely is racist and dividing the country more and more. It’s not ok to hate white people.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#594

Post by Georgelemental »

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…

> It’s no longer about equality of opportunity, it’s about equality of outcome.

Perfect equality of opportunity can only be achieved if everyone has 0 opportunity and the same outcome. Because if you can work hard to give your children a better life, that means that someone with parents who don't work hard will start worse off, with fewer opportunities. Optimizing solely for equality of opportunity inevitably leads to commie hellhole; instead, optimize for absolute opportunity (both average and minimum).

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#595

Post by etchalon »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #361
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 not the gotcha you think it is. Sibling already pointed some things out. Specifically for doctors, go ahead and look up what specializations men go into primarily and what specializations women go into primarily. The only high paying one I noticed being particularly female-dominated is dermatology, and it's not that much of a difference. The male-dominated specialties tend to have far more high earning specia…

It has not occurred to you that the historical data shows evidence of bias instead of evidence of choice and that's fascinating.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#596

Post by Manuel_D »

etchalon wrote: post #581
Manuel_D wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a good case for anonymizing resumes in the interview process. I'm not sure why that wasn't considered over setting minimum representation requirements. An easy way to eliminate discrimination is to make it impossible to discriminate between protected classes.

Reducing everyone to a list of past experience and skills would produce knock-on effects such as preferring people with specific existing experience over talented beginners. And in an industry with an extensive, existing problem of discrimination you'd just be maintaining the status quo. It's also essentially impossible to anonymize resumes in a way that would provide meaningful distinction between people. Resume des…

But people's work history is visible regardless of whether their resume is anonymized. If what you wrote in your previous comment is true, then anonymizing resumes should be strictly better for black applicants. Sure, it won't "solve" disparities in past work experience. But non-anonymous resumes still have that disparity and racial discrimination - anonymous resumes at least eliminate the latter. So if what you wrote about in your previous comment is true, companies should see some increases in hiring rates among black applicants under an anonymous hiring regime.

More broadly, I think you're confusing "non-discriminatory" with "equal chances". A blind audition doesn't mean all participants have equal chances of success. Someone who's been playing the violent for 25 years is probably going to have a better shot than someone who has only a few years of experience - and the lattice has better chances than me, who has zero experience. The fact that we have unequal chances of landing a spot in the orchestra isn't evidence of discrimnation. It's the system working as intended: the more skilled musician has greater chances of getting a spot, regardless of factors like race, gender, etc.

In the context of tech hiring, the purpose of the hiring process is to confer greater chances of success for candidates with relevant skills and ability. If someone is hiring for a position demanding C++ experience, then candidates who are C++ wizards are more likely to succeed at this job opening than people who occasionally dabble in C++.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#597

Post by [deleted] »

therusskiy wrote: post #460

I find it puzzling why people are split by their skin color rather than their country of origin. There are only marginal differences between a white and a black person born in US, while myself, being a white male born in Russia, cultural experiences and background have barely anything in common with a white person born in US except for the color of my skin. The same applies for a black guy from US and a black guy fro…

[deleted]

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#598

Post by int_19h »

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…

The beauty of it is that you don't have to figure out what the underlying mechanism is. You just need to help people on the basis of those measurable metrics - poverty, access to education etc - while ignoring other factors. If it so happens that those other factors have a causal correlation with poverty etc, well, you've just mitigated that.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#599

Post by abigail95 »

The civil rights act, as written makes this form of discrimination illegal.

However the supreme court undid this in United Steelworkers v Weber.

I do not understand how Americans find it acceptable that you can vote for people, they can pass clear statutory language that says you cannot discriminate and then SCOTUS can come along, and read the complete opposite meaning into the statute.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#600

Post by km3r »

yashap wrote: post #200

Affirmative Action is always going to be a very controversial topic. Personally I'm for it, but I understand why people dislike it. I do strongly believe that, even with Affirmative Action policies, it's still a lot harder to succeed as a non white male than it is as a white male, today. For example, no matter how you slice it, white Americans are ~3-4x more likely to become millionaires than black or hispanic Americ…

> but IMO most of them have to do with "momentum". 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

If this is the issue, why are we targeting certain races rather than all those whose family is lacking momentum?

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