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Microsoft probed by US government over aim to double black staff numbers
- umvi 6y ago> "We are clear that the law prohibits us from discriminating on the basis of race," the firm's lawyer Dev Stahlkopf blogged. Pardon my ignorance... But I thought in the case of affirmative action, discrimination based on race was legal? Reading on... > It has informed the tech giant that while companies can set affirmative action goals to boost employment of "minorities and women", they "must not engage in discriminatory practices" to achieve them. How is an "affirmative action goal" different from just a diversity goal? How can you achieve affirmative action if you can't discriminate on the basis of race?
- cyberlurker 6y agoHire from historically black schools could be one legal method.
- umvi 6y agoDiscriminating which schools you hire from based on racial demographics of said schools just seems like racial discrimination by proxy
- lallysingh 6y agoDude that's a rabbit hole as deep as American history.
- awakeasleep 6y agoI think discrimination happened even before America was founded!
- marcinzm 6y ago>How can you achieve affirmative action if you can't discriminate on the basis of race? Interview training to minimize implicit bias in the interview process. Interview training to minimize acts that make certain groups uncomfortable. Removing employees from the interview pool who show a racial bias. Resume review that omits names and other racial indicators. Etc.
- emodendroket 6y ago> Interview training to minimize implicit bias in the interview process. Interview training to minimize acts that make certain groups uncomfortable. I would like to see some evidence that this actually achieves the desired outcome.
- one2know 6y agoInterview training does nothing. The people who are pushing affirmative action are doing it on purpose because of their political ideology. These people think that if they have more women, LGBTQ, and minorities in the company, those people will support them politically and they will have more power. There is no way you can train away that. Second, you can't remove employees when their bias is in support of the managers and the company board members. Managers are selectively choosing interviewers because of their racial bias. At a previous job managers would have new hire LGBTQ or minority junior employees conduct interviews instead of senior employees who had been at the company for years. Activist board members set CEO bonus goals that scale with race and gender quotas as well. Resume doesn't matter because they recruit through special minority, women, or LGBTQ invite only recruiting events where SWM's are not even allowed in.
- PureParadigm 6y agoI think the idea is that you can achieve the diversity goal while still hiring the most qualified people by broadening the recruiting pool. This way you're not discriminating based on race because you are still hiring the most qualified people. To do this, you might increase recruiting at other colleges that didn't have recruiting before (especially if those colleges have different demographics than the colleges you already recruit from), or similar measures.
- tashoecraft 6y agoLet’s say you have hiring events at colleges with say 10% black population. You start focused on colleges with higher percentages, this you should have more black candidates. You can change your recruiting strategies to target a more diverse range of candidates without discriminating on the basis of race.
- wang_li 6y agoIf you are recruiting at colleges you’re going to have a hard time getting many black candidates, since only 7% of STEM majors are black. Which is an under representation based on their proportion of al college students. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/african-american-majors/ https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/african-american-majo...
- GreenHeuristics 6y agoIf discriminating on the basis of race is morally incorrect then discriminating (collages) on the basis of race is also morally incorrect.
- athenot 6y agoI used to wonder the same, until it hit me that current status quo is actually NOT the meritocracy it pretends to be. There are many individuals with both talent and potential who are currently getting passed over simply because of unacknowledged negative bias. So it's not about picking someone less talented to make numbers on diversity, it's about revisiting the criteria that make us overlook talented individuals who happen to not fit the stereotype, and broaden our approach to considering candidates.
- gautamdivgi 6y agoI think you put it very succinctly. In reality this could be as simple as diversifying the people interviewing candidates and getting down to objective hiring criteria. Negative bias is hard to spot and harder to acknowledge. Making an effort to minimize and eliminate negative bias doesn't mean reducing standards.
- xvector 6y agoAffirmative action needs to die. As an Asian, I hate that I have to work harder just to get the same opportunities. Affirmative action is simply racism against minorities that “don’t matter” to the public narrative in favor of minorities that “do matter.” Imagine telling an Asian child that they have to work way harder because of their race. While their friends get to go out and play, they have to sit down and study because of a condition they were born with. It’s abhorrent. Now this same racism is carrying into the job market. No thanks.
- wheresmycraisin 6y agoDon't worry, lower-achieving Asian children will still be able to get into top universities through legacy admissions.
- xvector 6y agoAh, another example of casual racism against Asians. You’re assuming that Asian kids have parents that went to top universities, and to hell with the ones that don’t have an opportunity like that - tough luck. Affirmative action needs to go, legacy admissions need to go. Make the changes you want by providing resources to the under-privileged regardless of race, before admissions. Don’t thrust the burden of your societal failures onto innocent children. Asian kids are not the wastebasket for society’s mistakes.
- thatfrenchguy 6y agoFascinating how this discourse is always done by upper-middle-class people, who already have all the opportunities in the world in the United States.
- andrewstuart2 6y ago"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
- xvector 6y ago
- eplanit 6y agoI guess the best way to defeat perceived "systemic racism" is to institute actual systemic racism. Moral failure.
- tzs 6y agoLook at how Caltech went from 15% women undergraduates when I was a student there in the '80s to 45% now without discriminating on the basis of gender in admission. Rather than making gender a factor in admissions, they concentrated on getting more qualified women to apply. They would contact high school women who were very good in STEM subjects and their parents, and send someone to visit them and try to convince them that Caltech was the place to be. Once they applied, gender wasn't a factor in deciding whether or not to admit them. The top tech companies could do something similar for both race and gender. They have the resources to draw from the entire country. It wouldn't work so well for companies that only have the resources to recruit locally.
- throwawaysea 6y agoCaltech, like other private schools such as Harvard, absolutely does discriminate in the admissions process. They are a fervent advocate of “holistic admissions”, which is modern activist speak for “process involving discrimination, most often against Asian races”. Take a look at http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-year-freshman-applicants/holistic-review http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-year-freshman-..., which says “We have always reviewed students within the context of the opportunities available to them, and we will hold true to that practice.” Unlike Caltech, public schools in California are not permitted to discriminate and have different student demographics from private schools for this reason. Prop 209 from 1996, which banned affirmative action in CA, is unfortunately on the current ballot for a potential repeal as part of Prop 16.
- tzs 6y agoCaltech undergraduates are around 40% Asian, which is about the same as UC Berkeley or UCLA. Whites are about 30% at Caltech.
- paxys 6y agoMicrosoft (and every other tech company) = Jared in this scene https://youtu.be/Dek5HtNdIHY?t=18 https://youtu.be/Dek5HtNdIHY?t=18
- osipov 6y agoNo, Microsoft is like the CEO in this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZy4QXLKHlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZy4QXLKHlI
- nefitty 6y agoHaving just watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo for the first time a week ago, this scene is now 3x more hilarious.
- kjeetgill 6y agoSay what you want to say. No need to devolve comment threads to links on YouTube.
- emodendroket 6y agoProbably a lot of people with their fingers in the air until November.
- whoisjuan 6y agoNot commenting about the merits of this specific probe, but here is a thought. African Americans are 13% of the US Population. Isn't it reasonable to aspire to have at least 13% of African American staff (proportionally adjusted per state/city populations)? This is a rhetoric question, what causes that to not be the case. The article doesn't mention the numbers but when a particular race is disproportionately less represented in corporations than its general population equivalent, then clearly there's a broken piece somewhere in the equation. I'm not even taking a political stance on this one. This is just the mathematical sound interpretation. If every person should have the same opportunities then the corporate populations should be a proxy of the general population proportions.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt depends what you're measuring the proportion against, and depends to such a huge degree that I really feel like we've gotta disregard the idea of detecting discrimination this way. For example, African Americans are only 4% of the population in Microsoft's home state.
- whoisjuan 6y agoThat's fair. I think my point is that a statistical representation allows you to see if one race is being favored over another one. But of course it's not a straight forward analysis as you correctly pointed with the WA black population example.
- zaroth 6y agoWhy would you assume that the racial demographics of a particular corporate entity’s workforce should match the national average demographic breakdown? Can you think of any reasons why a specific workplace’s demographics might deviate from the mean that isn’t rooted in unequal opportunity?
- whoisjuan 6y agoYes, read my comment as it seems that nobody is fully reading it. I'm saying that if the final proportion doesn't reflect the demographics proportion then there's a bottleneck somewhere down the line that produces less black professionals.
- elisbce 6y agoAny affirmative action is by definition discriminating on the basis of race. If you want the best candidate for the job, you don't look at race, you look at their abilities to do the job. Period. Any bias towards hiring one race implies bias against hiring from other races. Why is it okay to have almost no Asian players in the NBA while a small percentage of black people in tech is a big fuss? It is all hypocrisy.
- meroes 6y agoAnd is that mutually exclusive to creating more opportunities for minorities to apply? And what if the current practices sans AA are already discriminatory (e.g. try having certain natural hairstyles at your interview that don't fit the status quo)...
- throwawaysea 6y agoSetting quotas/goals doesn’t seem like the right approach though. We can try to correct for the biases you name without setting numerical targets. The thing is, there isn’t any correct number to aim for. For instance, some cultures emphasize STEM education/careers and it isn’t surprising or incorrect to see them represented in tech at numbers higher than their makeup of the general population. Setting targets like proportional demographic representation for blacks or any other racial group ultimately amounts to racist discrimination against those other races.
- goldenManatee 6y agoWhat are 2 or 3 “right approaches” for improving diversity in tech? Unless, the view is that practices until now have been right? Cultural support for STEM comes through parents who themselves are capable of sitting at the dinner table to help kids with their math and science homework. Parents who encourage careers such as mechanical engineering, not just being a car mechanic because that feels most familiar to people they already know. So what are some “right approaches” for achieving more diverse workforces?
- ausbah 6y ago
- throwawaysea 6y agoThis is clearly an explicitly discriminatory practice that uses race as a factor. No one should be supporting Microsoft in this endeavor.
- kevingadd 6y agoIf the existing system discriminates based on race you're going to have a pretty hard time combating that without using race as a factor to identify who's been discriminated against.
- kthejoker2 6y agoThe practice they're using today is discriminatory and uses race as a factor (see: "disparate impact.") ... how do you suggest they proceed?
- option 6y agoDiscrimination is discrimination no matter how you package it. It has been tried everywhere since probably first humans in a manner which “fit” opinions prevalent during particular times.
- stepsrabbit 6y agoI've worked at places where I ended up realizing I was hired mainly because I'm black. Not that I'm not a good engineer, mind you, but some of these places just wanted a "token black guy" or they actually had quotas as part of some social responsibility/inclusiveness BS. You know what? I absolutely hated those places and didn't last long there. I definitely don't want to be excluded because of how I look, but I don't want to be hired or treated differently because of it either. I'm much happier at my current employer where there is no such BS and black people are a very small minority, which is absolutely fine since we are also a very small minority of CS students where I live. Also on the topic of education - don't create quotas or special programs for people with a certain appearance or ethnic background. Instead, create programs for the disadvantaged.
- john_moscow 6y agoYou need to speak up more about this, man. If a White person publicly advocates for what you just mentioned, they will be labeled racist, canceled and will have hard time finding a job for the rest of their life. As a Black, you have a much higher chance to be heard, and maybe even seen as a role model by other Blacks who would otherwise consider themselves victims. That's the only realistic way to solve the problem.
- stepsrabbit 6y agoFor context I'm European but I did live in the US (TX) for 5 years. I need to go get some sleep, but very briefly: I would say that the focus on race is a real problem over there - there's discrimination, hate, taboo topics and excessive PC, affirmative action, it's a political talking point, you have to identify as one of a few races in all kinds of forms (which is ridiculous - is a Portuguese person white or hispanic? What if they are black or mixed?)... The list goes on. Minorities are generally of a lower socioeconomic status than the majority. People of a lower socioeconomic status are less likely to get a proper education (particularly in the US where university is super expensive). People without an education don't get white collar jobs, and thus have more trouble moving up the societal ladder. Therefore, there's less role models. I think you see where I'm getting at - it's a vicious cycle and I think ensuring everyone has access to proper education should be one of your top priorities. Real racism is also a problem there, of course. But I fear that quotas will not help with that and just compound the problem instead. Maybe I'll blog about this stuff one day.
- Exmoor 6y agoPerhaps this is a cynical view, but as someone who spent a thousands of hours in MS offices throughout the world, they could hit this target essentially overnight if they brought many of the vendor employees on staff as FTE's. Microsoft outsources an astonishing amount of their support roles to external companies and many (perhaps even most) of those employees are minorities. If MS brought some of those jobs in house and worked on creating opportunities for those employees to learn and advance their careers they I think they it could eventually yield some very positive results for all involved.
- DigitallyFidget 6y agoAt my work we simply do not have qualified black people applying very often. At all. We have one single black person in the 50ish management roles because that is all that we could hire. Our problem isn't with them being rejected or discrimination during interviews, but simply that we cannot hire a person who doesn't apply for an open position. Black people are not applying to our company. Does that make us non equal opportunity or discriminating for hiring 98% non-black workers?