What diversity and inclusion means at Microsoft

Re:What diversity and inclusion means at Microsoft by AngeloR on Tuesday October 11, 2022 @03:15PM (#33167878)

What always bothered me about DE&I initiatives is that they are trying to wring diversity out of their existing hiring pool.

If your indeed job posts didn't bring diverse candidates then, why do you think it would now? Because you added a "Please apply if you're DiVeRsE" line to it? Don't be ridiculous.

If you want diversity of candidates you can't keep going back to the same talent pools. You have to diversify where you're drawing talent.

If your college program is primarily getting white/asian males, you can't suddenly expect it to start throwing in women & poc as well. You can't suddenly expect it to start giving you LGBTQ+ candidates.

If you want diverse candidates, you have to look at diverse hiring pools. Look at the bootcamps that focus on diverse groups you're targeting. Look at schools that focus on diverse groups you're targeting.

If you're really interested in diverse candidates, you can't keep expecting them to just show up if you add a "We want diversity!" to your job description - you have to change where you look for them.

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Re:What diversity and inclusion means at Microsoft by akira2501 on Tuesday October 11, 2022 @03:42PM (#33168254)

> If you want diverse candidates, you have to look at diverse hiring pools.

I would assume the diverse hiring pools come with candidates that are not as qualified as the other pools. That's the flip side to this.

Do business hire from specific pools for biased or performance reasons? I think the assumption is that all hiring inequality is the result of bias. What if it isn't?

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Re:What diversity and inclusion means at Microsoft by ChrisMarshallNY on Tuesday October 11, 2022 @03:38PM (#33168207)

> Look at schools that focus on diverse groups you're targeting.

I believe that Pursuit.org (started by StackExchange) is like that.

NOTE: I am not connected with Pursuit. I did consider working with them, but they weren't interested in my specialty.

Also, a couple of felon-assistance outfits have been mentioned on HN. If you really want diversity, that's a good bet.

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Re:What diversity and inclusion means at Microsoft by NoImmatureAdHom on Tuesday October 11, 2022 @03:40PM (#33168223)

This is making a common but wrong rhetorical move, which is ignoring the fact that qualified candidates of the preferred race, with the preferred genitalia or gender presentation, and with the preferred sexual proclivities just aren't out there.

It's not like there is a large pool of black developer talent that firms just keep missing. It doesn't exist. It could be created, but a separate and totally valid question is: why do that? Why should we want every group of people to be representative of the population down to the smallest scale in race x gender x sexual preference?

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Re:What diversity and inclusion means at Microsoft by Analemma_ on Tuesday October 11, 2022 @03:31PM (#33168107)

A big part of the issue here is that, even though the predomaninance of white and Asian men in CS is very obviously a pipeline problem, for whatever reason Twitter has decided that nobody is allowed to say it's a pipeline problem, and they'll excoriate you if you try. So since most of these initiatives have the primary aim of "keep Twitter happy", they have to undergo these absurd contortions to try and have a DEI program that can't say where the lack of DEI is coming from.

Naturally it ends up being a mess of contradictions and confused thinking, because everyone has to pretend to ignore the obvious root cause.

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Re:What diversity and inclusion means at Microsoft by thaumasiotes on Tuesday October 11, 2022 @03:33PM (#33168143)

> for whatever reason Twitter has decided that nobody is allowed to say it's a pipeline problem, and they'll excoriate you if you try. So since most of these initiatives have the primary aim of "keep Twitter happy"

Given that Twitter takes an active role in censoring particular ideas, I think it's worth being careful to distinguish "Twitter has decided this isn't allowed" from "a lot of Twitter users have decided this isn't allowed".

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