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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#961

Post by magic_hamster »

x3qt wrote: post #941
magic_hamster wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well met stranger! I don't understand how your comment is related to anything I said. I never suggested you avoid helping your children. I stated that by being able to help them, you are giving them a significant advantage.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#962

Post by desi_ninja »

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…

What's a rich Brahmin? Where this assumption coming from ? I think you are about to make highly biased and uninformed opinion on Hinduism based on some article you read , so go on...

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#964

Post by silexia »

DEI is the new racism and sexism. It's just as bad as the old racism and sexism.

The fundamental issue is we have lost our freedoms. We live in a socialist society where we have to follow party lines. It all starts with laws that sound fantastic, but took away freedoms of speech.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#965

Post by FrontierPsych »

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #531
FrontierPsych wrote: post #525

Quoted post unavailable.

In the US the EEOC has a standard set of questions to ask applicants: https://attorneyatlawmagazine.com/what-are-eeo-questions-why... Hiring managers shouldn't see individual results for these - they should be used for aggregate reporting to ensure the overall process is unbiased.

OK, but all I see is how companies hiring managers are looking to hire females and minorities - anyone but white men, basically. I read this everywhere, it is ubiquitous how companies seek out women and POC.

Recently, a law was passed in California that corporate board of directors are required to be 50% women. I'm not sure why it was only women, and not equal representative amounts of hispanic, black, asian, middle eastern, Polish, Australian aborigines, gay, trans, atheists, 18-25 year olds, etc. But in any case, it seems like companies can and do screen positively for women and POC.

Is this NOT the case?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#966

Post by thingification »

paperwasp42 wrote: post #565
omginternets wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

Not questioning what you're saying, just adding that I think "prejudice" is a better word for this than bigotry? (to be clear: we're discussing here the results of identity-based hiring practices, as opposed to are there sex differences in programming ability)

Words never have entirely cleanly defined meanings, but broadly I think bigotry is often used to speak specifically of all-out irrational dogmatic beliefs. Prejudice is more often used where there is some partly rational judgement about a group of people, together with moral problems caused by applying that logic to a particular person. Of course, often our prejudices are very fallible: "rational" prejudices turn out to be wrong, and in that sense are functionally equivalent to bigotry. But holding a "rational" belief that all prejudice is irrational also does not make us infallible!

Some prejudice seems hard to criticize morally: for example, everybody makes prejudiced judgements say based partly on clothing, age, and sex if they find themselves in close proximity to a group of young men in a city at night. On the other hand, at work, one tries hard to not judge based on whatever preconceived group notions one has -- I think almost everybody thinks that's a good thing (which as you say can be harmed by identity-based hiring). I don't have a good abstract explanation of what makes the difference between "good" and "bad" prejudice, and I wish I did, so would love to hear of good writing about it if somebody can recommend some!

In the company I worked for recently, perhaps even a majority of the more capable programmers around me happened to be women. But wherever we do start hiring based on identity, it's hard to see how prejudice can be avoided, even if bigotry were entirely absent.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#967

Post by x3qt »

magic_hamster wrote: post #961
x3qt wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well met stranger! I don't understand how your comment is related to anything I said. I never suggested you avoid helping your children. I stated that by being able to help them, you are giving them a significant advantage.

That's how natural selection works and it's natural for a reason, ie was proven to be evolutionary successful, diversity is the king, and when there's a king there's always going to be someone not that much successful. We as society should embrace competition and filtering out because that's healthy when resources isn't infinite, which is our case.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#968

Post by GenerocUsername »

boppo1 wrote: post #929
GenerocUsername wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our recent town hall included not only a "Diversity Up" slide, but also a "Whiteness Down" slide to which the Black host said "whiteness is down 9% but we can do better". I legit turned off my PC for the day. Still haven't fully recovered from that one.

Someone needs to do a screen recording on something light this and give it some sunlight/reveal the company. I hear about this practice frequently, but have never seen video.

Ah, you'll love the zoom feature that watermarks videos and audio with invisible markers to identify leakers.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#970

Post by omginternets »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #955
omginternets wrote: post #907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have seen the opposite of that firsthand several times and, and unlike your observation, it is public policy of many large companies.

Well, if we take each other's experiences at face value, then we would conclude that some places are doing exactly as I claimed.

I'm not sure what your point is, aside from implying that we should take public corporate statements at face value.

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