This sounds crazy to me. My last company would freak out if the dev team got together and discussed the person's politics and if we thought they should be hired or not based on that. I hope they do stop this.
The more i think about this the crazier it sounds. Imagine a Houston oil consultancy firm discussing a candidate who applied and asking "when we talked about lowering taxes, did the inflection in his voice sound real or feigned?". This is what an "old boys club" looks like.
I interpreted it as a how a person deals with internal politics not what their political views are. the latter would most definitely be illegal.
It sounds very much like your opinions on current political topics.
Still terrible. Still not illegal.
FWIW I'm very happy at work
Aaron, Serious Question; When were you ever unhappy? I am getting the sense Sadness and Unhappy don't exist in your dictionary.
And first time I see a reply without any pun. ( Or Did I miss it ? )
Wait, what? How is that even legal? Not sure what's the exact meaning of "eq screenings" but anything related to political affiliation should be out of any interview process. At least in Europe discrimination on political views or other belief is completely illegal (with some exception for the church in some countries, e.g: Germany).
Interview responses are monitored for tone and vocabulary everywhere. Insufficient enthusiasm is often a valid reason not to hire someone. It is appropriate to ask questions about diversity and feminism during an interview—those are core values of the company, the first bullet point on their Careers page, even. https://github.com/about/careers
Are you saying github is asking questions about diversity and feminism in their hiring process or that an eq test has these questions ?
Because political opinions have nothing to do with eq testing (see http://myframeworks.org/testmyeq/).
IANAL, and my info may be out of date.
My understanding is that political ideology isn't a protected group at the national level here in America. Although states/cities can write their own laws that effectively add to the list. It's not a protected group in Washington state either, I believe, but it is a protected class in Seattle: https://www.seattle.gov/civilrights/civil-rights#whatisaprot... .
Microsoft does have some presence in Seattle (Microsoft Store, Microsoft Reactor?) so I could see some of their lawyers being made quite nervous by even the hint of discrimination by politics, even where ostensibly legal.