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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#691

Post by onos »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #379
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…

my assumption is that the left is actually in support for better education in inner cities. i mostly hear about Republicans banning books

Have you also heard of “decolonizing” the libraries?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#692

Post by nullc »

telltruth wrote: post #638
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…

There is a silver lining. This DEI thing is now causing massive influx of sub-par employees in big tech. This is not because minority is sub-par but because hiring practices incentivize sacrificing quality over diversity to make your numbers and get your bonuses. Everyone winks at others and they say we don't sacrifice quality but it is not possible when you have limited window for headcount and your VP is sending yo…

> Guess what they are going to do?

Not have the same opportunities as the founders of Google and Microsoft due to the mediocre employees abusing their positions to engage in advocacy in the wider world that serves the purpose of keeping them employed.

Stuffing big firms with idiots is one way you get idiocracy, since those firms have influence far beyond what the idiots could get on their own.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#693

Post by rrradical »

hbrn wrote: post #424
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…

> Imagine if a slate of candidates were all black. That would seem kind of odd, right? Why would that be odd? It does happen in sport, and nobody cares (nor should they). > So a good thing to do is apply some pressure Why is it good? Author talks about not being able to hire for several months due to lack of DIE candidates in the pipeline. Of course a giant like Microsoft can afford to waste resources, but for a lot…

> Why would that be odd? It does happen in sport, and nobody cares (nor should they).

Why would that be odd? You just quoted the author as saying they looked for months to find non-white candidates and failed. Do you work in tech? That's the norm. If someone tried to hire for a tech position and got a slate of entirely non-white candidates, that would be entirely remarkable.

> Why is it good?

It's good because if your hiring funnel doesn't represent the general population then it is biased and therefore sub-optimal. It's good because we enslaved a population for generations and then tried as hard as possible to keep them out of the middle class, and I think that's a bad thing.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#694

Post by programmarchy »

tanseydavid wrote: post #589
PKop wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We used to argue for equality, a level playing field, for all Think of how impossibly naive and utopian this is though, and I don't mean to personally attack just to condemn the idea this is possible in any way whatsoever. Is it possible economically? How about resource wise, or geographically can we all possess equal territory? How about military power? How about physical attributes such as height or beauty? How ab…

The idea is equality of opportunity. Of course, it is not possible to implement this in any grand, all-encompassing, perfect manner. But that does not mean that it shouldn't be a goal.

A “problem” is the metrics for that goal are unfalsifiable.

However that problem becomes a feature if the actual goal is not the stated goal.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#695

Post by nonethewiser »

adamwk wrote: post #472
nonethewiser wrote: post #434

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. 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.

Why is that statistic even important to you? If it's about solving poverty then judge by how impoverished someone is, not their skin color.

But it also shouldn't be surprising. There are almost 6x as many white people in the US as black people. Poverty rates amongst white people is about half of black people. Do the math.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#696

Post by strix_varius »

runako wrote: post #685
strix_varius wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but this is completely wrong. In 2021, 9% of computer science graduates were black (1). 18% were women (2). These numbers are the ceiling of what you might expect for a senior pipeline, since women attrit at a higher rate than men (3). In a typical senior hiring pipeline for a Microsoft-scale company, while you'll have loads of applicants, you might have a dozen who make it through initial screening and ar…

There are a few common problems in your analysis: - as is frequently noted here, programming positions do not always require CS degrees. - companies that produce software typically are composed of lots of roles. Microsoft has 100k engineers, but even more of their staff is not engineers. (That is: less than half the jobs at Microsoft are "engineers," and some of their engineers do not have CS degrees.) Many/most of t…

> But add them back in using the numbers on your first link. So we could expect 1 Black applicant, 1 Latino applicant, and 2 women (optimistically!). That's a third of your set of 12, using your data sources, for a programming role.

Let's please keep this conversation mathematically honest. I don't know if you're intentionally trying to misrepresent statistics, or if you don't understand them, but:

- for three non-mutually-exclusive groups (black, latino, female)

- given participation in a set (1, 1, 2)

- you cannot sum their independent participation (4) to yield "a third"

Beyond that, you appear to intentionally miss the key terms "ceiling" and "optimistically." Given a sample size of one pipeline (the OP), if you optimistically might get a single applicant that meets a given DI quota, it's very likely that you'll get zero.

The original article explicitly stated zero, and the numbers make it clear that zero is a very likely result.

That's the trouble with small sample sizes. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by arguing that, in some other circumstance, maybe it could have been one... or even two!

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#697

Post by nonethewiser »

rcoveson wrote: post #526
adamwk wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It is ambiguous as written, and false by one interpretation but true by the other. True: There are more white people in poverty (~5.5% of population) than black people [in poverty (~2.5%)] in the US. False: There are more white people in poverty (~5.5%) than black people [in or out of poverty (~13.6%)] in the US.

To be clear, I meant "Yet there are more white people in poverty than black people in poverty in the US."

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#698

Post by nonethewiser »

PKop wrote: post #488
nonethewiser wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do worry that my kids won’t be diverse enough to be able to get into a decent school or get a good job like I was able to when they’re older. 1. A single person cannot be diverse or not diverse. 2. There is nothing wrong with your kids being in a majority demographic. It sounds like you're more worried about the world discriminating based off race and other traits. I suspect you agree with all of this but it's a…

It is always useful and prudent to see things from the perspective of those attacking you. "Know your enemy.." You can argue over definitions and terms as much as you want, but the uniform you wear is often defined by your opposition. In other words, it may not be completely relevant what you or OP think diverse is or isn't. It is very relevant what the power structures and people implementing these policies think it…

I don't mean they shouldn't worry. I mean they shouldn't use language that puts blame on their kid for not being "diverse" (which is also a non-sensical description of 1 person).

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#699

Post by nonethewiser »

massinstall wrote: post #631
uup wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single person can be diverse relative to a group, though. Like a black woman would add diversity to a group of white men, for instance. When we talk about diversity in recruiting, usually we mean diversity of the candidate relative to the makeup of the company.

Optically maybe, if that’s what you’re aiming for. Just assuming that the “group of white men” are “all the same” is not very deep. The truth is that they’re all individuals with individual stories strangers who judge them by their looks know nothing about. It used to be understood as a good thing to not judge people based on their gender or skin color, including the nowadays declared “evil” white men.

DIE initiatives achieve extremely poor diversity of beliefs. The type of diversity that matters. It is outright hostile to it.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#700

Post by nullc »

telltruth wrote: post #663
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…

It's not left or right ideologies but CEO and their desire to be in good standing in social media. During early 2010s, there was whole barrage of books and editorial on income gap, gender gap and biases. News channels regularly picked up authors and circulated them on and on. Talk shows need someone to talk with and what could be better than these topics to energize audience to argue? This built-up a lot of resentmen…

It's also probably why these initiatives focus on skin color and gender rather than things like economic advantage: You can walk into an office and see that it's mostly asian men, you cant walk in and see that it made sure that people who didn't have elite educations got an opportunity.
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