
Microsoft to Tie Executive Bonuses to Company Diversity Goals - ingve
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/microsoft-to-tie-executive-bonuses-to-company-diversity-goals
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tuna-piano
If there was an equally qualified man and woman- choosing the man over the
woman because he is a man would be considered sexism. Choosing the woman over
the man because she is a woman is considered progress.

Asians are way over represented at Microsoft vs our country. We need to boost
the white percentage as well.

To me, race "diversity" is a foolish kind of diversity, because of how shallow
it is. I don't think skin color makes you a different person, so I don't
really think that more people of different colors in a company makes anything
better. And I guess that makes me the bigoted one?

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kevingadd
If it's shallow then wouldn't that imply it has no bearing on whether the
person is qualified, and the pools of candidates of a certain race or gender
are all equally qualified? If so, then why are diversity quotas a problem?

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nightski
Just because race or gender has no factor in whether a candidate is qualified
does not mean that qualified candidates are equally represented among races
and/or genders.

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kevingadd
Yes, but the GP suggested that weighting based on race or gender is a
_problem_ , which implies that qualified candidates are unequally represented.
Why would this be so? Is there evidence to support it?

They also suggested that the white percentage needs to be 'boosted', because
there are too many asians? Why would that be? What are the correct numbers?

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tuna-piano
I think it's pretty clear that qualified candidates are not equally
represented. There are probably a lot of reasons for this, socioeconomic,
educational, etc. But take a look at the SAT scores by race, or chosen
academic majors in college. I'm on mobile with bad internet so I can't link to
actual figures now.

And my (sarcastic) logic for white percentage boosting is the same as
Microsoft's black percentage boosting goal. Asians are significantly over
represented at Microsoft (and most of the big tech cos) vs our US population.
Microsoft wants to increase the black/Hispanic employee percentage to get more
in line with the US distribution. They should also want to do the same with
whites, which leaves the Asians set to be decreased significantly.

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kevingadd
I see, that makes sense. If you're certain that qualified candidates are not
equally represented, are you certain that lowering the asian percentage and
raising the white percentage wouldn't lower the overall skill level of the
Microsoft workforce? How do you suggest to counteract this effect?

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AlexB138
Focusing your company on hiring people based on their race and gender, rather
than their ability, seems like a horrible idea. Not to mention a great way to
open yourself to law suits and massive animosity among your employees.

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kevingadd
Why "rather than their ability"? Are you suggesting that hiring diverse
candidates makes it impossible to hire skilled workers? Why would that be so?

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tuna-piano
When the criteria for a job is aptitude, experience, etc then of course it's
ability over diversity.

When diversity is a qualification along with aptitude and experience, people
are right to question.

A parallel discussion (and recent litigation) for college admissions is
happening as well. Many black people admitted to top schools are only admitted
because they are black. The stats show that black people admitted to some top
schools need much lower SAT scores, while Asians need much higher (vs whites).
This might not be the most polite way to phrase the situation, but it is
absolutely true.

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kevingadd
So you're saying the only reason they were admitted is the color of their skin
and no other criteria were considered? What are the criteria that are normally
used to evaluate a white student that were thrown out for these black
students?

Are their grades lower? What about their post-graduation job outcomes? Do they
cost the campus more money? How much money do they make the campus by playing
on basketball and football teams for the university? What do the on-campus
crime and harassment statistics look like if broken down by race and gender -
do the diverse students cause more trouble or less?

If you're going to say something like 'they were only admitted because they
are black' and then 'absolutely true' I hope you're prepared to back it up,
otherwise you just sound racist - and I'm sure that's absolutely not true!

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candiodari
> So you're saying the only reason they were admitted is the color of their
> skin and no other criteria were considered? What are the criteria that are
> normally used to evaluate a white student that were thrown out for these
> black students?

No, he's saying that they were selected over people who performed better in
the interviews and other selection criteria because of the color of their
skin/gender/religion/...

Now in some way that's equivalent, in the sense that they would not have been
selected if not for their skin color (they would have been third or fifth on
the list where the top spot gets hired), but in other ways it's not. It does
not mean they don't have any ability at all, for instance. Just less than
would be required if they were white males. And I'm sure if executive
compensation is tied to this, that there will in fact be cases of no ability
at all, but I doubt it will be the common case.

And we all know the methods executives will use to hit their targets while
lying about this, for instance to make sure it looks fair, when it isn't.
Going in and changing interview reports and scores after the fact to make sure
they "didn't select based on skin color", except it'll be blatantly obvious
for their colleagues that's exactly what happened. And in fact I bet those
other team members will have to work more, harder and ... to compensate for
the lower abilities.

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taurath
Big chance to poison the well - did you not get the promotion or job because
you're not a diversity hire, or was it because the other candidate was better?
I've seen Intel do this and animosity increased by a huge amount.

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tuna-piano
And the reverse - did that person get the job because he/she was the most
qualified, or because he/she was in a certain class of people?

(And would also make the person who got that job question themself)

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kevingadd
This is literally just a sorting problem. Diversity quotas imply using a
candidate's minority status as part of the sorting key, _not the only sorting
key_. You're still picking a highly qualified candidate, not some random dude
off the street. Think about it for five seconds, please :(

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scentedmeat
As soon as you tie a persons bonus money to it, it isn't. You are no longer
looking at the highest quality candidates, but the ones that match the minimal
qualities. And since race/gender has no impact on performance (my asumption),
this is a bad key.

But, as someone that can check the minority checkbox, woo!

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kevingadd
Bonuses at a company like Microsoft are typically based on an employee's
performance - how well they met their stated goals, etc. Obviously, if a
company goal is to have a diverse workforce, whether or not that happens is
going to influence the bonuses of the people responsible for it. If this is an
unacceptable outcome, you're suggesting that diversity can't be a company
goal, period.

Like I've said before, it's a sorting problem - if implementing an algorithm
correctly requires sorting some values to the top and some to the middle, you
shouldn't get full credit if your implementation _doesn 't do that_.

We're not talking about soviet russia production quotas being exploited here,
just about adjusting the way candidates are found and ranked.

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jbuzbee
Of course there's a danger to the company in this. " _My bonus is tied to my
diversity goals. I 've tried hard, but I'm way behind and my reporting period
is almost up! Quick, bypass the standard screening and qualification checks,
and hire a bunch of people in underrepresented groups_"

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samstokes
That's true, but any incentive structure at all has similar hazards. (Ever
seen the software quality bar lowered in order to meet a deadline?) So long as
the company does have standards, and processes it trusts to enforce those
standards, it's possible to guard against that failure mode, just as you'd
guard against any other employee misbehaviour.

If you do have employees (or execs) bypassing the process or lowering their
standards in order to meet short term goals, that in itself is a cultural
problem the company would want to address.

 _Edit_ : it's worth noting that every manager who has more planned work than
they can execute with their current head count _already_ has a short-term
incentive to lower their hiring bar and get someone in the door quickly.
Managers get measured on executing to plan, so that's probably a stronger
incentive than any bonus structure.

So my point isn't that lowering the bar to game the system will never happen,
but that it's a failure mode that already occurs and that the system should
already have defences against.

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codeonfire
Satya Nadella was born in India. I am 100% sure this policy is not going to
apply to Microsoft's nine offices in India which are 100% one race. If you
don't think this is about anything other than using race politics for
corporate power, ask why diversity isn't important in Microsoft's other
locations.

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rosege
I work for a fairly large company and they are doing this too (just for gender
though). The way I see it you can either have diversity goals or you can be a
meritocracy. To be honest Im not 100% sure which is better - I want to say
meritocracy but then you have the Enron's that were meant to be the smartest
guys in the room. But as a white male I see my career here quite limited due
to me not being their preferred demographic.

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mbrodersen
That is already part of their job as managers. So what's next? Getting a bonus
for showing up at work? Or maybe getting a bonus for playing less golf? Or
perhaps a bonus for interrupt people who do real work with more useless
meetings? Actually the last one isn't needed. They already do that. A lot.

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frugalmail
The problem isn't at the executive level, it's at the schools.

The expected levels should be set based on what was happening in the education
system, not the population in general.

I work at a place where this bullshit is happening and it's clear they're
putting barely qualified people based on gender. In the end the company, all
its employees, and the people it serves will be harmed.

Instead they should work on getting more diversity in the STEM degrees and fix
root cause.

If they truely want it to be fair they should use "blind interviews" voice
changers over the phone, written exams, etc... Not bullshit targets and
incentives.

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yuhong
I have dislike anti-discrimination laws for a while now. For example, one of
the methods used to enforce them (particularly in things like hiring) is
statistics, most of which assumes employees are interchangeable commodities.
Not to mention the problems with "performance" reviews and "PIPs" too. They
were designed back in the 1960s for things like manual labor jobs. I am
willing to suggest a compromise to limit them to these kinds of jobs.

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adrenalinelol
Won't this attach a stigma to those hired (who aren't white/asian male)? It's
quite literally a quota.

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fbreduc
lol this is not how you become diverse...

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kevingadd
How do you, then? What's the secret?

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flukus
Bottom up, not top down.

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home_boi
Isn't it illegal to make pay based on a protected class?

