This happening in tech is actually benign. In a lot of countries there are mandated quotas for minorities and socially backward communities in fields such as medicine, civil engineering etc, where the cost of mistakes is much higher. I do feel all this would be temporary in nature and eventually as these sections of society get more prosperity due to these policies, they will end up increasing their competency levels overall (but may not be in the same generation).
What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
721–730 of 972 posts
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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-mu…
> given participation in a set (1, 1, 2) When the set is of 12, that's 4 of 12, which is exactly one third, assuming independent participation (which obviously is what makes the number optimistic/ a ceiling). > Given a sample size of one pipeline Fair! If the OP only ever hires one person, you are correct. At Microsoft's scale, they are more like "the house" at a casino, and so their ratios should more closely approx…
> When the set is of 12, that's 4 of 12, which is exactly one third, assuming independent participation (which obviously is what makes the number optimistic/ a ceiling).
I think this misunderstanding of statistics may be at the core of our disagreement.
Yes, 4 is one-third of 12.
No, you cannot expect overlapping, non-mutually-exclusive sub-populations of 9% and 18% to equal 27% of a total population.
If you're interested in learning why, read (1), but the TL;DR is: given three people, A: black female, B: white male, C: white male, if you sum sub-populations as you're trying to do, you'll get (1 black + 1 female = 2) from a population of 3, and you'll extrapolate (incorrectly) that 2/3rds of this population meets your criteria. I hope that helps explain why your expectation of the gender & racial diversity of CS graduates is inaccurate.
1. https://stats.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_Statis...
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#723Earlier 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…
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.
May be if they are all posing for a stock photo then yes. But how does it add diversity in a workplace. Assuming all the white men are from different countries.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> preferring people with specific existing experience over talented beginners. Well that sure beats institutionalized racism
It just replaces one problem with a different one, or, worse, will mask the actual problem through "facially neutral" policies that are anything but.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is. Portland went from shockingly massively increasing home prices to declining home prices in no small part due to this.
Isn't it generally better to have affordable housing than shockingly massively increasing home prices?
Only if anyone want to live there. Why would anyone want to purchase a house or live in a place how ever affordable it is, where a mob might burn their house down.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
At Google (in Silicon Valley), 7 out of 8 people in my reporting chain were Indian males. Go figure!
This! Somehow diversity at every office means 50% diversity + 50% indian
someone has to do the actual job, so there will be some part of purely merit based hiring to meet baseline needs
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#727I 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…
I share your concern... Started as a manager in a successful scale-up and as usual our engineering staff is white & male (we are hiring from European Timezone). In order to secure the funding round, the higher management has introduced a diversity targets, which is driven aggressively by HR.
Funny enough lots of the European laws forbid asking if the candidate is a member of an "unrepresented" group, so I guess we'll be just eyeballing it??? This won't end good, but one must make a living.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#728Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Not have the same opportunities as the founders of Google and Microsoft
You are seeing a trend of FAANG employees, leaving the company to create their own start-ups. This trend won't slow down that progress at least...
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wrot…
First, anonymized resumes would not create increased in hiring rates. It might increase the candidate pool through the screen, but behold, racial discrimination is a function at every stage of the interview process. I am not confusing "non-discriminatory" with "equal chances". I have no idea why anyone would. Obviously, a person with 12 years experience coding in a specific language or stack would be preferable to hi…
With Zoom interviews, it's possible to anonymize candidates throughout every stage of the interview process. Anonymous resumes, anonymous interviews. This would entirely eliminate racial, or gender, discrimination.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve actually heard from many friends that even though they are in a “favored” group, because of their skin color or gender, they hate it because they suffer from even worse impostor syndrome than the average developer. They might genuinely be awesome and yet they sit there and doubt and ask “am I only doing well because of something not related to my work”
I would like to think of it as first, second order effects. First order effect of DEI: - Bar is lowered in the name of DEI, to bring more diverse employees - Managers/CEOs/HRs get their bonuses for meeting DEI metrics Second order effects: - Hired minority employees find it hard to perform to the expected(or peer) level - Because lot more minority candidates were hired than if it were without DEI, performance issues…
Right you are... I used be a Manager at Volvo (Sweden) and I really like their approach to boost the diversity on the workplace. Instead of targets/or lowering the standards they were moving obstacles (childcare, flex work) and focusing on marketing amongst the diversity groups.