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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#761

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

lordleft wrote: post #412
tomp wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nice way to excuse your racism. A lot of people use this perverted logic. But at the end of the day, it's still evil racism. Different "worlds" (neighbourhoods, schools, health care) doesn't happen because of skin color, it happens because of wealth/poverty. So if you apply a racist filter on top of the (implicit) wealth filter, you're just being racist against poor Asian & white people.

> Different "worlds" (neighbourhoods, schools, health care) doesn't happen because of skin color, it happens because of wealth/poverty. This is false. But let me charitably engage your argument and ask you the following -- if your premise is correct, that means that lower access to education and economic attainment among under represented people of color has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with...some…

Why should there be any one, single thing? Maybe it's the aggregate of a million small factors which don't add up to any compact story. That's not a terribly exciting hypothesis, and I don't have any great answers for what to do about it, but it seems a lot more plausible than the epicycles required to explain how overrepresented people of color and Indian CEOs are compatible with a white-led racial hierarchy.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#762

Post by bloak »

nonethewiser wrote: post #414
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…

> 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…

> 1. A single person cannot be diverse or not diverse.

Compare and contrast with people saying "neurodiverse" when they mean "neurodivergent". I think there is general agreement that a single person should be described as "neurodivergent" rather than "neurodiverse". Some people say the wrong word just because the two words are so similar and are happy to be corrected.

On the other hand, if we're talking about other kinds of diversity then I don't think there's a similar pair of terms. "The addition of this gender-divergent person increases the gender-diversity of the team"? I don't think so!

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#763

Post by cuteboy19 »

psd1 wrote: post #753

_sigh_ The common theme I see in all these happy HN contributors getting their panties in a twist over affirmative action is that transactions exist in America that discriminate against white people: for a given promotion, a black person is advanced over a white person who is better qualified. It's like some idiot plugging away at debugging a single query timing out, while the cluster is down. Just take a step back.…

If you think of AA as restitution, fine, that is a noble goal.

Now the issue is that there are not two races. So what about the Asians? They are discriminated against both by actual racism AND affirmative action. In fact AA discriminates harder against Asians than whites. Mixed race Asian (white+Asian) are regularly recommended to report their race as white. Surely this is doubly unfair?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#764

Post by [deleted] »

nsxwolf wrote: post #456

I shut my mouth at work and go along with this stuff because I have no choice. I have a family to take care of. I've accepted this. But man, why do they always throw in the line about striving to make the workplace a "diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can bring their full and authentic self"? Everyone knows that's a goddamn lie. I almost want to cry when I read that - it makes me so angry. I haven't been a…

[deleted]

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#765

Post by juliendorra »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #646
paperwasp42 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also worry that this nonsense will erode support for the kind of diversity I do defend, or worse, prompt some kind of revanchist backlash against visible minorities in general. As a women in tech, I am feeling the backlash. I have seen a huge increase in the amount of skepticism of my abilities that I face from people who haven't worked with me before. And the worst part of it is that there's actually logic behin…

>I continue to hear sexist comments from people who never would have said those sorts of things just five years ago. As a man in tech, I've been a part of countless hush-hush conversations that would never be repeated within earshot of a woman or untrusted man. It's as grim as you say, and worse. I'm really sorry that things have become like this.

What do you mean by "things have become like this"? I obviously don’t know your age but the software industry (and other fields) has been extremely sexist since decades (at least the 80s).

The efforts to explicitly reign in the sexism in tech are quite recent (late 2000, early 2010, and even later in France where I live).

My point is that what you perceive as a recent reaction might be the same old sexist culture continuing to spread, ruin life’s and block careers (which is a definition of backlash: reactionary fight against feminist advances)

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#766

Post by ngc248 »

omginternets wrote: post #419
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…

Relatedly: I cannot defend the kind of "diversity" that would rather hire a rich brahmin than an inner-city American kid in need of a leg-up, just to fulfill some backwards skin-color quota. It's obscene, and insulting to all parties involved. I also worry that this nonsense will erode support for the kind of diversity I do defend, or worse, prompt some kind of revanchist backlash against visible minorities in genera…

wow .... when was a rich brahmin hired instead of an inner city American kid .... are you really sure ... that the Indians working in the US tech industry have gotten those positions thru affirmative action?

I keep seeing this being repeated everywhere. let me clarify Indians are NOT getting into US companies because of a colour quota.

I will tell you how they are getting in. There are two ways 1. Thru outsourcing/body shopping 2. A lot of Indians get in by doing Masters courses in the US. Most of them would have already worked for tech in India. For US companies they can hire experienced people at US fresher salaries.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#767

Post by andrepd »

omginternets wrote: post #419
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…

Relatedly: I cannot defend the kind of "diversity" that would rather hire a rich brahmin than an inner-city American kid in need of a leg-up, just to fulfill some backwards skin-color quota. It's obscene, and insulting to all parties involved. I also worry that this nonsense will erode support for the kind of diversity I do defend, or worse, prompt some kind of revanchist backlash against visible minorities in genera…

Putting identity over class is the main sin of the modern "woke" movement, in my opinion. Seeing how much that identitarian, exclusionary, and sectarian thinking is promoted by mainstream media, I cannot help but think it is intentional, as a distraction.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#768

Post by polski-g »

slt2021 wrote: post #664
chrismcb wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is illegal (assuming you are in the us)

it is not, almost all big employers happily announce that they are Affirmative Action employers and this provides shield for their actions

Private sector affirmative action is illegal in the US.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#769

Post by wildrhythms »

inglor_cz wrote: post #415
mikkergp wrote: post #18

Posts 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…

By now, America is so racially mixed that "race" of a certain person is even harder to quantify than "merit".

In America it is not 'harder to quantify' because much of contemporary American society still follows the 'One Drop Rule': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
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