"Affirmative action" is a vague term. I, too, agree that if you select a White, Asian, Latin, and a Black teenager at random there's substantial barriers to the

"Affirmative action" is a vague term. I, too, agree that if you select a White, Asian, Latin, and a Black teenager at random there's substantial barriers to the latter two training and becoming an engineer or software developer. The latter two are less likely to be exposed to engineering and programming, and are less likely to enter university to study those fields. That said, does discrimination in companies' hiring and promotion process yield improvements? Affirmative action like this just increases the representation within Microsoft, and does nothing to help Black or Latin youths become software developers. The gap isn't actually being closed. The same dismal percentage of Black and Latin people are entering the tech workforce. It's just that they're more likely to end up at Microsoft than some other company. Affirmative action in the form of sponsoring coding camps in underserved communities would actually work towards closing the gap between the rate at which Asian and white people become software developers and Latin and Black people becoming so. Progress will be made when companies leave the mindset of trying to increase their representation by clawing over each other for the limited pool of diverse talent, and instead work towards increasing the diversity of the workforce.