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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#91

Post by version_five »

systemvoltage wrote: post #54
Decker87 wrote: post #23

At this moment in time I think companies can gain a major hiring advantage by simply hiring the best regardless of race/gender. So many large companies are shooting themselves in the foot distorting incentives and saying "no" to people who are the wrong color/gender.

I think we're going to see a rise of new companies formed, perhaps not from Silicon Valley, that will reject the whole D&I concept and move forward with complete blindness to race, culture, or gender. They will excel, outperform and form a new age of englightenment. I don't think this will happen because I want it to, it will happen because incentives and fundamentals of operations of a company – i.e., just focus on…

This is optimistic - I certainly hope it works out this way. I think a recent problem is that all the "free" or nearly free money has completely disconnected many operations from actual market forces, so they are not incentivized to build something good and their attention can wander to fitness signaling type activities

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#92

Post by zozbot234 »

paxys wrote: post #32

It's telling that this person posted a job listing, interviewed dozens of candidates, realized they couldn't proceed because they hadn't interviewed any minority candidate, tried for months and were still unsuccessful at finding a single one , and the take away wasn't that they should fix their broken recruiting pipeline but that the corporate policy was what was wrong.

The pipeline is clogged for everyone. Lack of diversity is an industry-wide issue which needs to be addressed throughout the industry and beyond, not a problem with recruiting at any single company.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#93

Post by Manuel_D »

bergenty wrote: post #48
Decker87 wrote: post #23

At this moment in time I think companies can gain a major hiring advantage by simply hiring the best regardless of race/gender. So many large companies are shooting themselves in the foot distorting incentives and saying "no" to people who are the wrong color/gender.

Quoted post unavailable.

> This results in some people (mainly white men) feeling like they are being left out when they really weren’t the best fit but in the past may have picked over someone else.

There would be merit to this line of thinking, if the diversity initiatives came in the form of anonymizing resumes and interviews (which is easier to do with remote interviews). But that's not the case. More often than not, diversity initiatives come in the form of quotas or penalties for hiring or promoting too many "non-diverse" people. And those penalties often kick in at levels of representation lower than "non-diverse" people's representation in the candidate pool. This is why I'm not irked by over-representation of Asians in tech. They're not advantaged relative to whites, if anything they're penalized for their race (at a past company asian males were categorized as "ND", Negative-Diversity even more undesirable than white males).

However, this is often not how diversity initiatives work. More often than not, they're not aimed at eliminating discrimination, they're aimed at mandating it: attaching bonuses to hires and promotions of particular races and genders, or achieving specific representation numbers (AKA quotas). This isn't eliminating discrimination, this is creating it.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#94

Post by thegrimmest »

giantg2 wrote: post #79
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…

"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 membershi…

> They mention an increase of from 3% to 5% of membership of senior black leaders. Do I think those senior black leaders earned it?

I'm still unclear as to why we're even bothering to ask the question. How many blonde leaders are there vs. brunettes? Are brunettes poorly represented in corporate leadership? Does anyone care? Why should they.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#95

Post by BiteCode_dev »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #56

The increase from 3.7% to 5.6% black executives as a sign of lowering standards, when black people are 14% of the population in the country... Can we first establish what percentage of managers people genuinely think got their job based on merit as a baseline? An equal explanation might be that because Microsoft forced people to actually interview black people at all, more qualified black candidates were hired.

Yes, but if you are looking at the population of rust dev with a background in system coding, or telecom engineer with ciso certification, the stats don't look like the ones of the general population at all.

In my university, in the whole class, we had 0 non white, and a single woman.

Now, you may argue that we should fix that.

But that's another debate, the thing is, people are hiring from the pool we have right now.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#96

Post by systemvoltage »

inglor_cz wrote: post #63
systemvoltage wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're going to see a rise of new companies formed, perhaps not from Silicon Valley, that will reject the whole D&I concept and move forward with complete blindness to race, culture, or gender. They will excel, outperform and form a new age of englightenment. I don't think this will happen because I want it to, it will happen because incentives and fundamentals of operations of a company – i.e., just focus on…

It is also possible that those companies will be suffocated by the fact that banks won't extend credit to them (ESG) or angry Twitter will pressure potential customers not to do business with them.

True, this is actually happening as we speak. There will be a bifurcation, once enough flywheel speed has picked up; ESG funds will see competitor funds that will outperform. No wasting money on greenwashing or other ESG bullshit. Totalitarianism has to fight a war with reality and facts. It is unsustainable (pardon the pun).

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#97

Post by chimineycricket »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #36
pengaru wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are Asians doing so well? Why can't we replicate this for other groups? Parents matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_parenting

I actually don't think Tiger parenting is more special than, say, just investing in your kids more broadly. You don't have to be an authoritarian and still get excellent results by caring about the success of your children in society and also having the resources and means in which to perform that investment. More likely is that filters for immigration are very high, which means the average immigrant is more educated…

Tiger parenting is one way of investing in your kid. I agree, there are multiple ways to invest in your kid.

>More likely is that filters for immigration are very high Don't agree with this, there are lots of ways to immigrate and I don't think most of them have a sort of wealth/education filter. For example refugees.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#98

Post by secondcoming »

bedobi wrote: post #19

I 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…

Speechless.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#99

Post by whatshisface »

mikkergp wrote: post #86
whatshisface wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sounds like you're agreeing with the author here, because he says, > I fear that when large companies hire and promote people based on group identities, it discourages individuals from cultivating their abilities. It is only one logical step to go from one to t…

> It is only one logical step to go from one to the other. The idea that the promotion process is so random that the introduction of an additional random factor (D&I status is totally uncorrelated to performance) can't make it any worse would nullify anyone's faith in performance incentives. It is only one logical step to assume the opposite as well, that a company that thinks holistically about the hiring process, a…

The article is a lot more than just complaining about D&I policies, for example you'll notice that the manager spent several months unsuccessfully trying to get even one qualified diverse candidate to interview with Microsoft. What's up with that?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#100

Post by theow7384iri »

franczesko wrote: post #38
Decker87 wrote: post #23

At this moment in time I think companies can gain a major hiring advantage by simply hiring the best regardless of race/gender. So many large companies are shooting themselves in the foot distorting incentives and saying "no" to people who are the wrong color/gender.

This. Saying "no" to people based on their physical appearance is a discrimination.

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