Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever been involved with hiring? The first stage - reading CVs - is not exactly the greatest point in time to judge people as individuals, if they're even read beyond a short skim. It is the biggest opportunity for unconscious bias to reject a candidate.
I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that we shouldn't consider people as individuals when reading their CV because that's when unconscious bias may lead to their rejection? If the latter is true, then shouldn't we do the former all the more?
What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
741–750 of 972 posts
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#742Earlier 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.
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.
You've given the exact reason why your statement is a completely useless red herring. Say there was a minority in the U.S., the Romulans. Let's say literally every single Romulan in the U.S. was impoverished due to hundreds of years of systemic, intentional racism. But there's only, say, 500,000 of them. Half a million.
Your argument is "we shouldn't give more opportunities to the Romulans to counteract the very obvious and intentional systemic racism that put them in the shitty position they're in, because way more white people are in that shitty position. We should only focus on poverty, so that we help 36 white people for every 1 Romulan helped. Even though the Romulans are impoverished because of intentional, systemic racism. Even though their towns were literally bombed if they dared get too successful. Nope, we have to help 36 white people each time we help 1 Romulan." Do you see why that sounds racist?
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#743Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
#744Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#745Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#746I 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…
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#747Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 you…
> if your hiring funnel doesn't represent the general population then it is biased So 0.1% of engineers in the funnel should be Amish and 18% should be younger than 14. There might be a flaw in your logic. Jokes aside, this is maliciously reductive. There's too many factors contributing to the funnel (location, sourcing channels, employer, job preference, hiring market state) that makes predictions about funnel virtu…
> I'm supposed to pay the price for your crimes
Whose crimes, the person you're replying to? Do you believe in some sort of original sin handed down by your ancestors? Your blood is pure because your ancestors were victims, but GP's blood is tainted because their ancestors were slave owners? You're making some seriously insane judgements based on a person's ancestry.
And who's paying any price anyway? Hiring from a limited pool of candidates is sub-optimal. What price are you even talking about?
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#748Maybe 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…
The alt-right likes to call progressives "cucks". There are tumblerinas who call conservatives "fascists". That's what HN calls "free speech" - if you want to cry about it, try Facebook
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#749Earlier 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.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#750Earlier 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…
You should read some Thomas Sowell. He should help cure you of your "cosmic justice" aspirations. https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas-Sowell/dp... https://www.amazon.com/Discrimination-Disparities-Thomas-Sow... https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell... https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Politics-Thomas-Sowell... The very idea that, in a just world, outcomes along various lines…
Actually it has as much evidence as you have time. Take a big bag of fair dice, and split them randomly into two groups. Actually, split them however you want, whatever "lines of demarcation" you choose. Then roll them and apply literally any measure of literally any statistical outcome you want.
Oh shit, it turns out: in a just world, outcomes along arbitrary lines of demarcation are roughly even! Every time!
> Never has there ever been equal outcomes between any groups in history.
So? You need to assert that history has been just to different groups for this to be evidence to support your statement about what happens in a just world. Are you asserting that history has been just? Think hard before you answer this one.
> What leftists like to do is over-simplify the world to fit their pre-conceived notions.
Sure, like my dice example. Except the problem is, for my dice example to be wrong, you need to specify a reason why some dice roll differently than others, and you need to split the groups based on this reason. Remember: any arbitrary split must necessarily have roughly equal outcomes in a just world. If the world is just, any clear variance from equal outcomes must be due to some intrinsic differences in the dice themselves.
Let's say we split humans into two groups based on whether their birthday is an even or odd number (day of the month). This is a line of demarcation between groups of humans. Let's use your first sentence here:
> The very idea that, in a just world, outcomes along various lines of demarcation between groups of humans would be roughly even has zero evidence to support it.
So this is where we disagree, right? I assert that these two groups would have roughly the same outcome in almost any measure. It's a clearly arbitrary line. But you say there's no evidence to support that. Really? Really? Do you really believe that the odd-birthday group would be significantly different in outcome than the even-numbered, in any way? Of course not. In literally any "outcome" measure you could come up with, these two groups are indistinguishable.
Let's say we split humans into two groups based on biological sex. Would we expect to see any differences in any outcomes? Of course: there are differences in average height, muscle mass, sexual preferences, arrangement of sex organs, etc. There are actual intrinsic differences between these groups that account for some differences in outcomes, even in a just world.
Now let's say we split humans into two groups based on skin color. Uh-oh. We see huge differences in outcomes here. Can we explain it by intrinsic differences? Careful. There are really only two options here: either the world is not just, or skin color is not arbitrary. Asserting the second is literal racism: you're saying there's something naturally different about people with black skin that accounts for their vastly greater rates of poverty even in a just world. That's textbook racism, and, even worse, plain-old incorrect. It's also simply not logically necessary, because we know the world has not been just. Very, very not-just to that particular group, in fact.
> If there is racial disparity, it must have been caused by systemic racism!
Such a vapid strawman argument. This bullshit only works if we've never actually observed systemic racism. Slavery, the Greenwood bombing, segregation, Jim Crow, police slayings -- those are not hypothetical events dreamed up by "leftists" to account for racial disparity we observe. Systemic racism did happen, and in many cases is still happening, and then later we observe that there is also racial disparity. These "leftists" go "hey, maybe the racial disparity we see now has something to do with all that systemic racism that was going on for hundreds of years" and you pretend like this is some unfounded conclusion-jumping?
Your train of pseudo-reasoning, like that of so many other racism-apologists, only works if you conveniently ignore the actual multi-hundred year history of actual racism that actually happened. So many of your points sound completely asinine when you re-read them with that in mind.