I think if diversity leads to lower profit but better work experience tech companies will get rid of it.
What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
71–80 of 972 posts
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#72According to the Microsoft 2021 Annual Diversity And Inclusion report, 34.9% of employees identified as Asian in the US, far exceeding their overall representation in the US population. Why are Asians doing so well? Why can't we replicate this for other groups? And doesn't trying to hire more of other races imply that mathematically speaking, fewer Asians must be hired and promoted to achieve greater equality? Please…
> Why are Asians doing so well? Why can't we replicate this for other groups? What _are_ the groups? "Asian" can mean anything. From India, China, Japan, many countries in Oceania, etc. I think the classification is fundamentally flawed.
As an outsider, it's obvious looking in that racial classification in the US is just crazy -- they took some racial stereotypes from 100 years ago, gave them neutral sounding names, and started pretending it's not racist to group everybody south of Texas as "hispanic". And then build official policy on top of these simplistic classes that fail to describe reality in any meaningful way, only serving to reveal to everybody else in the world what the people in the US think about them.
At least the people calling anybody with slanted eyes "Chinese" and anybody that's slightly brown "Mexican" are being sincere in their ignorance.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#73It seems to me that a large nationally sited organisation should be naturally representatively diverse and inclusive, and if it isn’t that organisation should take steps to identify why and address whatever issues lie behind that. But, … another part of me is uneasy with the idea that there is such as thing as a racialised or gendered (for example) engineer - engineers are individuals, and shouldn’t be under an impli…
>It seems to me that a large nationally sited organisation should be naturally representatively diverse and inclusive, and if it isn’t that organisation should take steps to identify why and address whatever issues lie behind that.
This seems to assume that preferences don't vary with race and gender, which isn't true. This is extremely well-documented with respect to gender, and it's called "The paradox of gender equality"[0]. TL;DR: Men and women are different from each other in lots of ways, including what they prefer to work on. As you increase gender equality in a society (moving from, for instance, Saudi Arabia at one extreme to Norway at the other), you see a systematic /increase/ in the difference in what men and women end up working on. More gender equality --> fewer women engineers, more women doing child care.
Edit: oh,and I would encourage anyone looking in to the literature to view it in the correct light: the field is overtly hostile to this data, and that greatly skews what gets published. And here it is anyway.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#74Quoted post unavailable.
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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Saying "no" to people based on their physical appearance is a discrimination.
It's also illegal.
I'm not sure about in the US, I know in Canada we've had lots of university faculty positions advertised recently that are explicity for women or some other groups. I don't understand how it's legal but it is.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#76Maybe Microsoft managers think it's enough if everybody can decide for themselves about their pronouns.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#77According to the Microsoft 2021 Annual Diversity And Inclusion report, 34.9% of employees identified as Asian in the US, far exceeding their overall representation in the US population. Why are Asians doing so well? Why can't we replicate this for other groups? And doesn't trying to hire more of other races imply that mathematically speaking, fewer Asians must be hired and promoted to achieve greater equality? Please…
I think an important question is how many of those Asians are drawn from abroad, vs our American homegrown Asians? If they're homegrown, then clearly they're over-represented. But if they're poached from abroad, they are actually under-reprsented. One would assume 60% of employees of a global workforce would be Asian.
If you're assuming a global workforce this would mean the representative share of African Americans would be 0.5%
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#78"I was pretty sure my corporate vice president would be more likely to promote people who had hired more of them and thus made his contribution to the annual D&I report look good." Statements like this carry a lot of weight in this essay: He's "pretty sure" and "assumes" an awful lot. He also seems fairly ineffective at navigating bureaucracy. Taken to extremes, lots of corporate policies can seem a bit overbearing.…
If you look at the way discrimination was actually carried out a hundred years ago, you'll find that it was primarily done through strong hints rather than through having policemen standing outside. If a department head is sending out memos that cause middle managers to get the message not to hire black people, that is all it takes. It did not even require 100% compliance, as long as there is a strong headwind at every step of the advancement process, nobody will make it to the top that's not being favored.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#79Posts 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…
"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?"
I'd love to hear answers for this. In my experience, it seems ratings are just the boss's unverified opinion.
However, I disagree with the conclusion that adding another flawed metric shouldn't be concerning.
"They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it?"
The biggest thing is that this metric is meaningless. They don't define what the target is and why. They don't dig into the how of the increase either. If it was the policy, they have not taken a systems thinking review of it to see if it's working as expected or causing some other harm. I see no inclusion of the root issue - a pipeline of diverse candidates via schools. If the numbers are underrepresented in school, then they will be in industry too. Maybe you can juice your own company's numbers, but that simply leaving less for other companies. Figuring out diversity discrepancies in the talent pipeline (school, mainly) is the first step. Then figuring out if it's an actual problem and what the proper metrics are, is a step that seems to be glossed over. Without understanding these, there will be no meaningful progress.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#80I hate articles like these and their appeals to "meritocracy". Before my current team, my whole career, every single team I worked in was pretty much exclusively young, white, nerdy men. Maybe each person on those teams was objectively the "best" candidate for their respective hiring round! (though I doubt it) But they make horrible teams. If your team looks like that, your team is horrible too, no matter how much yo…
> "If your team looks like that, your team is horrible too, no matter how much you tell yourself it's not." Yes, it's true. There has never been a strong team of young, white nerdy men. Never happened. Technological and engineering progress was at a baffling standstill for centuries until the wisdom of diversity, inclusion and equity dawned upon us.
Your sarcasm would work better if anyone understood what the hell you were trying to refer to. You seem to ascribe "technological and engineering progress" exclusively to teams of young, white, nerdy men in this comment, which is clearly something only an idiot would do, so I presume you are trying to make a different, better point. Feel free to let us know what that might be.