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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#941

Post by x3qt »

magic_hamster wrote: post #904
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…

Isn't that the thing though? Being your kids, they already have an advantage. You are their advantage, everything you bring with you, your behavioral habits that will give them a huge head start. 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…

Commies in USSR wanted to take away children from parents and nurture them in special institutions, but luckily didn't succeeded. Do you want the same for yours or is it better to be able to help your children and share your experience with them?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#942

Post by colinmhayes »

boppo1 wrote: post #928
colinmhayes wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s ok to factor race into the criteria that resumes are judged on because it affects the experiences those students have had and I do think thought diversity is valuable in and of itself. It’s a tricky situation obviously. But at the resume level all we're doing is using heuristics to decide who deserves an interview. Are white applicants with a 3.2 gpa more likely to be successful than black ones with a 3.…

>thought diversity And you believe this is a function of skin color?

Yes I think cultural lines are commonly divided along skin color.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#943

Post by KETpXDDzR »

And that's why I tell any employer that I'm LGBTQ+ and identify as black Hispanic. What a clown world we live in...

And while D&I advocates are busy, the reality diverges. There are large teams at Amazon et al that only speak Hindi or Chinese. Imagine what group of persons are not hired because they aren't a "cultural fit". It's good that many (mostly born in a western country) are aware of racism and try to prevent it. However, that usually doesn't apply to people with a different cultural background. E.g., I saw many times that Indians treated other Indians differently based on their caste. That happened in silicon valley companies in the US.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#944

Post by Manuel_D »

etchalon wrote: post #938
Manuel_D wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can alter the audio signal to mask gender: https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma... Similar tech could be used to mask accents. I suspect the real reason people are so hesitant to anonymize interviews is that the disparities will persist - or even grow larger - and it'll be more difficult to ascribe it to racism or sexism.

Accent and pitch are not the only ways in which people sound different. If technology could be developed which masked pitch, accent, idioms, patterns and approach, I suspect it would change hiring rates. I suspect the reason you think such technology wouldn’t improve the situation is because you’re a bigot.

> If technology could be developed which masked pitch, accent

This is already possible. Idioms are more specific, but how often do you encounter an identifying idiom in a technical phone interview? I'm even struggling to think of an idiom that would distinguish, say, an Asian applicant from a white applicant. Idioms are more culturally-specific not racially specific. I encounter greater differences in idioms between urban and rural people than along racial lines.

"Patterns and approach" are part of the software development skills being measured - it's like saying a blind orchestra discriminates between people of different musical skill.

> I suspect the reason you think such technology wouldn’t improve the situation is because you’re a bigot.

Did you miss the empirical evidence to the contrary linked earlier? Regardless, let's start using anonymous hiring tools and find out who's right. I'm all for it, and if it does improve URM and women's pass rates, great! But again, for some reason, those who most ardently claim that interviews are biased against "diverse" candidates are oddly resistant to anonymization.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#945

Post by ngc248 »

geebee wrote: post #936
ngc248 wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/bo…

I'm coming in very late to this conversation, but there may be some ambiguity here. Americans will often use the word "Brahmin" to generally refer to an upper class. For instance, the "Boston Brahmins" is a phrase used to refer to old money WASP families https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Brahmin . So this might not have been in tended specifically as a reference to upper class Indians (it wasn't entirely clear to…

nope ... the post mentions skin color quota ... I doubt they are talking about "boston brahmins"

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#946

Post by etchalon »

Manuel_D wrote: post #944
etchalon wrote: post #938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accent and pitch are not the only ways in which people sound different. If technology could be developed which masked pitch, accent, idioms, patterns and approach, I suspect it would change hiring rates. I suspect the reason you think such technology wouldn’t improve the situation is because you’re a bigot.

> If technology could be developed which masked pitch, accent This is already possible. Idioms are more specific, but how often do you encounter an identifying idiom in a technical phone interview? I'm even struggling to think of an idiom that would distinguish, say, an Asian applicant from a white applicant. Idioms are more culturally-specific not racially specific. I encounter greater differences in idioms between…

> Idioms are more culturally-specific not racially specific. I encounter greater differences in idioms between urban and rural people than along racial lines.

You need to revisit what "culture" means, and how many people of a given race share a culture.

> "Patterns and approach" are part of the software development skills being measured.

This was about speech patterns and conversational approaches, which vary greatly across cultures, both socio-economic, national and internal.

> Did you miss the empirical evidence to the contrary linked earlier?

You posted a blog post, from a startup. It was not peer-reviewed. It was not readily duplicatable. I'm not sure how to have a conversation with a person's whose standard of evidence for "genders and races are inherently inferior" is "a guy on a website said it."

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#947

Post by Manuel_D »

etchalon wrote: post #946
Manuel_D wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If technology could be developed which masked pitch, accent This is already possible. Idioms are more specific, but how often do you encounter an identifying idiom in a technical phone interview? I'm even struggling to think of an idiom that would distinguish, say, an Asian applicant from a white applicant. Idioms are more culturally-specific not racially specific. I encounter greater differences in idioms between…

> Idioms are more culturally-specific not racially specific. I encounter greater differences in idioms between urban and rural people than along racial lines. You need to revisit what "culture" means, and how many people of a given race share a culture. > "Patterns and approach" are part of the software development skills being measured. This was about speech patterns and conversational approaches, which vary greatly…

Culture is vastly variable even inside a given race. Heck even within inside a given race, inside a given country culture is highly variable. It's probably much easier to distinguish between a costal urban educated white person and a rural white person, than distinguishing between two people of different races in the same location.

You can easily test whether anonymization is working: have interviewers try to guess the identity characteristics of the applicant and if they're able to distinguish between them then it's failing. If the interviewer is unable to infer it, then the anonymization is working.

> I'm not sure how to have a conversation with a person's whose standard of evidence for "genders and races are inherently inferior" is "a guy on a website said it."

Who on earth said this? This reads like a complete no sequitur. Who is saying that genders and races are inherently inferior?

I'm not sure how to have a conversation who thinks that the mere notion that not all disparities are due to bias means "genders and races are inherently inferior." Men are vastly overrepresented among murder convictions. If someone says this is not because of bias, but because men commit more murders are you going to accuse them of sexism?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#948

Post by [deleted] »

moistly wrote: post #921
dang wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You broke the site guidelines extremely, horribly, and repeatedly in this thread. If you do that again we will ban you. We've had to ask you this more than once before. You can't vandalize HN like this, no matter how right you are or feel you are. And you've done it elsewhere recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33148354 . That's not ok. I actually banned you just now, but decided to undo it because the oth…

If you ban me, could you also please ban the ignorant racist that kicked off this sub thread. And the one in the other thread. Thanks. Hate to see HN giving these guys a platform.

[deleted]

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#949

Post by cscurmudgeon »

omginternets wrote: post #907
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is preferring Indians in this diversity game. Will you defend “diversity" that would rather hire a rich inner-city American kid versus a poor brahmin in need of a leg-up?

In academic admissions, you're probably right. In tech hiring, I have seen it firsthand, on multiple occasions.

Totally not anecdotal lol

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#950

Post by geebee »

ngc248 wrote: post #945
geebee wrote: post #936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm coming in very late to this conversation, but there may be some ambiguity here. Americans will often use the word "Brahmin" to generally refer to an upper class. For instance, the "Boston Brahmins" is a phrase used to refer to old money WASP families https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Brahmin . So this might not have been in tended specifically as a reference to upper class Indians (it wasn't entirely clear to…

nope ... the post mentions skin color quota ... I doubt they are talking about "boston brahmins"

Yeah it’s there. Should have read it better.
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