Didn't many people predict exactly this? Go back to Alex Jones videos from 2010 and apologize.
What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
771–780 of 972 posts
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#772Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. Get rid of all of them. Private schools are just legal segregation. Forcing rich people's kids to go to school with poor and average kids will give their parents a huge incentive to lobby for the increased quality of public schools. Lottery systems would make it even better. Education and healthcare being made available to everybody at the exact same availability and quality level would majorly improve both sys…
What policy do you have in mind? Would it be illegal to pay for tutoring of any kind, or would it just be illegal to not send your kid to the local public school (illegalizing homeschooling as well)? And what about just moving to an area close to better schools, would you write laws to address that? As long as parents raise their own children, you're going to have crazy levels of inequality. If you also continue to r…
Students needing additional tutoring is normal, but it's also a signal that the educators need to reevaluate why students aren't meeting expectations from the existing curriculum. How many broken curriculum have been perpetuated because the top performing students had to spend hours after class filling in the gaps on their own dime?
Wouldn't a better invested (not just money, but also socially) public school system support students so they don't need to seek outside tutoring like what you're describing?
And I do believe homeschooling should be prohibited. Once again, a better invested (money, socially) public school system would solve whatever problem parents think they're addressing by way of homeschooling.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#773Earlier 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…
As a hiring manager I have substantial pressure to hire incompetent people to meet quotas. I confronted my recruiter in front of witnesses and was partially shunned. I have been hiring for many years, and I truly pay no attention to gender or ethnicity. Now I am forced to. It’s an insult to those who earned their position. It’s an insult to me as I am less and less likely to get a new job because I won’t fit quotas.…
> I truly pay no attention to gender or ethnicity
What are your thoughts on implicit bias?
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#774_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.…
I would be up for a points based system like you said.
I had a really difficult childhood; fatherless, impoverished schools, welfare, surrounded by crime (heroin addiction, prostitution, violence), I was quiet and bookish so I got abuse from all angles.
I had food most days and a home made of bricks so I had it better than most.
But if you're going to assume my life is easier because I have a certain skin tone I'm going to be annoyed, because my life was decidedly not easy in the early stages and I only got my "leg up" by being willing to throw myself into extremely uncomfortable situations.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#775Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming you’re right and not unfairly discounting people who look or think different due to your prejudices, this just hurts mega-businesses profitability right? What’s the measurable material harm to you exactly? Can you prove it or do you just feel it? Still assuming you’re right, and not prejudiced, why is giving historically disadvantaged people a crutch to lean on so bad? Won’t at least some of them thrive and…
>Still assuming you’re right, and not prejudiced, why is giving historically disadvantaged people a crutch to lean on so bad this is simply not true. Hiring must be all about merit, not handouts for some noble social purpose. Secondly, lowering bar for one race while keeping the same bar other races is blatant racism. It is conveniently called affirmative action, but in reality it is racism against more qualified can…
> this is simply not true. Hiring must be all about merit,
Assessing merit is something we still suck at.
Implicit bias nearly always plays a part.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#776Earlier 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.
> 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.
Not just optically. Even slightly different cultures can result in novel ways of thinking or world views that bring something new.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#777"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.…
I have worked at MSFT and the author is correct. It’s not explicitly said, but everyone knows you have to hire diverse people if you want to get promoted. And those folks are incredibly hard to find so you end up ignoring hundreds of qualified candidates desperately searching for the diverse one who is at the very least somewhat qualified.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#778Earlier 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…
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.
I've met plenty of white programmers that grew up poor, but not many black programmers who grew up poor.
Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#779Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The people who study this stuff seriously end up concluding that cultural and domestic factors are the biggest predictor." Wasn't there a Harvard study that concluded the biggest factor was a 2 parent household?
> Of all the factors most predictive of economic mobility in America, one factor clearly stands out in their study: family structure. By their reckoning, when it comes to mobility, “the strongest and most robust predictor is the fraction of children with single parents.” They find that children raised in communities with high percentages of single mothers are significantly less likely to experience absolute and relat…
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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft
#780Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> that means that lower access to education and economic attainment But you're not arguing that we give opportunities to people without good access to education and poor finances. You're arguing we give opportunity based off race. In fact, there are far more white people in the US with poor access to education. If you really wanted to increase opportunities for such people you wouldn't accomplish it by judging by rac…
> there are far more white people in the US with poor access to education
More total or more per-capita?