What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

Evolution does work. Assuming people are free to try everything out, usually the strategies that become the norm are the strategies that work better than the other ones. If you know better then the market, you could theoretically go in, make your own company execute your own strategy and start dominating the market, this has been done in history multiple times.

> it may be that our ways are the equivalent of rolling dice

Would you try this out if your own money or health was on the line?

> I mean hilariously there are all like endemic complaints about interview processes.

I have a lot of complaints against democracy, however that does not mean I desire fascism, it means I want a better democracy.

> Why is it that all of a sudden you turn against the criticism and act like our decision making is sacrosanct?

Assuming we want the people who can best perform, we should be looking at ways how to better identify the best performers instead of actively sabotaging the process by adding arbitrary discrimination into it that is proven to work against the goal.

> It's often "trust" and "reputation" and other sticky things like that that make the decision. I seem to hear all sorts of stories of people hiring leaders because "I had a good feeling about him"

Would you give keys to your house to someone you don't trust? Would you give the keys to your car to someone who has a reputation of crashing cars?

Democracy is based on trust as well, you don't know if your favourite politician is actually going to do what they say they are going to do or if it's actually a good idea, yet you are likely going to go with your feelings and cast your vote.

How do you think a CEO would fare if that CEO would not have the respect of their subordinates?

> Among relatively equal candidates I think this is true.

For highly skilled roles, I doubt that this happens often in real life, usually you will have candidates with different qualities and you have to figure out which are the ones you believe to be more valuable.

> You could probably roll the dice among this group, otherwise, maybe you're not that great at training senior managers?

I would probably try to see who would do the job for less, but sure, if that's the case you could also choose at random, however the higher the skill requirement, the less likely you will get into this situation.

I did not come from a family of engineers. For most of their lives, my parents had to struggle to survive as immigrants, living in a fairly rough area, and making ends meet.

I was lucky enough to go to university for STEM. I saw the huge difference between myself and students who came from families that had even one parent experienced in any sort of engineering (let alone both parents). Not only did they always have someone to consult, but they knew what they were getting into, they were much better prepared, and for the most part, they were building the toolset from their early teens.

It dawned on me that similarly, people coming from very wealthy families are likely to be better prepared to create or at least sustain wealth, in a way that might be completely taken for granted, but is actually the result of years and years of mentoring and picking up on behavioral hints at home.

This is the meaning of inequality. It's literally the family you're born into. Your kids will make it either way way because you have already paved much of the path and can show them the way. For schools and jobs to insist on hiring people who are not born into this circle, is a good thing.

Another thing to mention is that I am far from being a touchy politically correct person. I don't really care about minutiae such as naming your git brach this way or that. But in inclusion I feel I've seen inequality from both sides of the coin. And I definitely support letting more people into the party.

1) You are correct, but this does not speak to the need for Microsoft to have sub-optimal processes in any aspect of its business.

Separately, all of the big tech companies including Microsoft pay significantly more than typical employers in places where there are no big tech offices (this is most of the country).

2) This is just incorrect. Those firms cannot sweep the labor market because their US cultures have historically been so dependent on face-time. Microsoft is able to hire engineers in Atlanta in part because Facebook and Google have yet to put down significant engineering presences here, for example. Most medium-to-large US cities do not have significant FAANMG presence and so are also ripe for picking. This is why e.g. Target is able to get great talent in Minneapolis.

3) This is a claim that is difficult to evaluate given that engineering has had essentially full employment for going on 20 years.