Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#61

Post by gedy » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:35 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #29

RankingMember wrote: post #5

I'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?

Whatever they do, companies should not be doing quotas other than bringing in the people who will propel the mission. Instead, they should put their effort on pipeline. From kindergarten, drive kids to want to participate in a dynamic economy instead of pursuing selling themselves short and perhaps getting involved in the underground economy, dead-end jobs, etc. Go give it a go in all areas of the nation that are und…

> Instead, they should put their effort on pipeline.

Previous company "did that", but what it amounted to was young HR women filtering all candidates before engineering saw them or their resumes, and you had to pick from their not-so-great candidates they got based on gender or race. Also interviewers could not see what other interviewers said - so we got bypassed as well behind the scenes

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#62

Post by metajack » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:35 PM UTC

whynotminot wrote: post #12

While there’s a lot of this era that’s deeply unfortunate, this kind of question on my yearly review would be incredibly vexing to me: > What impact did your actions have in contributing to a more diverse and inclusive Microsoft? What does this even mean? How do I show I did this? If I don’t interpret the meaning of this question correctly, do I fail the test and end up some HR watchlist? If I don’t succeed at whatev…

This isn't that hard. There are various employee groups around identities (Women in Tech, Asian Pacific, Black, LGBTQ, etc). Membership is not exclusive to those groups but also open to allies. As an example, I used to participate in the Women in Tech one at both Mozilla and at LinkedIn. Often I just listened, but I also helped organize a few events with them, contributed ideas for those events, and when they started a structured mentoring program I was one of the mentors.

There are also optional and non-optional hiring trainings that address these kinds of topics which you can do. I was a hiring manager for a while so I also spent some time doing some of these optional things to improve my chances of building a diverse team. This mostly included helping with sourcing candidates and a few times meant speaking up when I could see that identity biases were being used in evaluations.

But often just simple things are all you need. For example, when picking a group dinner destination making sure various culinary requirements are accounted for (either cultural or dietary) or finding team building activities that are inclusive.

I never once had an issue finding some of this to put on these perf reviews. Most of this is just under the category of being a good human who respects and values others.

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#63

Post by mc32 » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:35 PM UTC

Arodex wrote: post #45

mc32 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever they do, companies should not be doing quotas other than bringing in the people who will propel the mission. Instead, they should put their effort on pipeline. From kindergarten, drive kids to want to participate in a dynamic economy instead of pursuing selling themselves short and perhaps getting involved in the underground economy, dead-end jobs, etc. Go give it a go in all areas of the nation that are und…

Oh, yeah, let companies be in charge of education from the kindergarten. You read cyberpunk novels and thought "yeah, I would love my country to be governed by megacorps from cradle to grave".

So instead rely on public education which fails many students in delivering a quality education, or, having given up, just pass them to let them figure life out once they graduate.

It's not necessary that corps own the education, but they they have schools within a school to deliver the education that they are expecting from new graduates.

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#64

Post by metajack » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:37 PM UTC

alt227 wrote: post #22

whynotminot wrote: post #12

While there’s a lot of this era that’s deeply unfortunate, this kind of question on my yearly review would be incredibly vexing to me: > What impact did your actions have in contributing to a more diverse and inclusive Microsoft? What does this even mean? How do I show I did this? If I don’t interpret the meaning of this question correctly, do I fail the test and end up some HR watchlist? If I don’t succeed at whatev…

I feel like the general answer is going to be 'None', and that Microsft is not really going to care about that very much.

When I was at LinkedIn we definitely cared about this. It probably wouldn't be enough to knock you down a peg during your review if you had none during a particular half/quarter, but if you never did anything in this bucket it would be a red flag during promotion consideration.

We wanted leader to be empathetic and respectful.

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#65

Post by nailer » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:41 PM UTC

terminalshort wrote: post #33

RankingMember wrote: post #5

I'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?

[flagged]

I’m not sure why is being modden down. I was pressured to hire candidates based on their race and I’m sure the experience was not unique.

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#66

Post by Arodex » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

terminalshort wrote: post #33

RankingMember wrote: post #5

I'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?

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#67

Post by ndsipa_pomu » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #44

this_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Especially since when implementing them gets them less capable stuff, hired to satisfy token quotas regardless of actual merit

I think you've got it back to front.

DEI is to prevent the kind of favouritism/nepotism that prevails in a lot of society (e.g. "the old boys club"). A suitable example would be the recent hires by the U.S. administration - people are being given high ranking jobs just because they're loyal/friendly to a certain person and nothing at all to do with their competency to do the particular job.

The purpose of DEI is to allow the most qualified person to get the job despite the overt racism and sexism in society.

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#68

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:43 PM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #40

alt227 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP was questioning why these companies are doing what this man is asking them to. I feel the reason is because this man is the president. The fact is relevant to the statement, which is why I wrote it.

However, in the United States, the President is supposed to have very limited unilateral authority over any company.

That's proved to be an idea only held up by the fig leaf of norms like the independence of the DOJ and the idea of the other two branches actually acting as a check on the others. Instead after the 70 year project we now have a compliant Supreme Court rubber stamping practically every action and flirting with ratifying the unitary executive as law. That plus a compliant Congress either ideologically aligned or cowed by the idea of his power over the voters means we very much have a President able to exert huge amounts of influence over companies.

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#69

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:46 PM UTC

terminalshort wrote: post #53

DEI 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 indiv…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

#70

Post by Arodex » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 3:47 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #65

terminalshort wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m not sure why is being modden down. I was pressured to hire candidates based on their race and I’m sure the experience was not unique.

Yeah, because you know best. You never made any hiring mistake and you never have any bias whatsoever when you hire people. Who dared double-guess you, after you put all the effort of spending a few hours with each candidate?