Some Microsoft employees allege policies 'discriminate' against Asians, white men
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Graphic: 70-417-questions.blogspot.com
SAN FRANCISCO — The backlash against the tech industry-wide push to hire more women and minorities has flared again — this time at Microsoft.
Some employees on an internal message board questioned the tech giant's efforts to shift the demographics of its largely white and Asian male workforce, asking for evidence that a diverse workforce benefits Microsoft. Eighty-seven percent of Microsoft employees are white or Asian and more than 73 percent are men, according to the company's most recent diversity report.
"Does Microsoft have any plans to end the current policy that financially incentivizes discriminatory hiring practices?" asks one post written by a female engineer on Yammer, the internal message board. "To be clear, I am referring to the fact that senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men."
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The criticism, first reported by online news service Quartz, is similar to a highly publicized dust-up at Google in 2017 when James Damore was fired from his engineering job after writing a controversial memo on an internal message board taking issue with the search company's efforts to address the shortage of women and underrepresented minorities in its ranks, arguing that the low number of women in engineering roles reflected biological differences.
"We still lack any empirical evidence that the demographic distribution in tech is rationally and logically detrimental to the success of the business in this industry," one Microsoft employee posted, according to Quartz.
"We have a plethora of data available that demonstrate women are less likely to be interested in engineering AT ALL than men, and it's not because of any *ism or *phobia or 'unconscious bias' — it's because men and women think very differently from each other, and the specific types of thought process and problem solving required for engineering of all kinds (software or otherwise) are simply less prevalent among women."
Funny how some folks will get all worked up because Microsoft or whoever has more male employees.
Does anyone get upset that about 90% of nurses are female?
There are differences in different professions in the % of each sex-- I believe nursing and elementary school teachers have the highest percentage of females.
In tech there's an overwhelming percentage of men.
In addition, in tech there is an extremely large percentage of Asian-Americans.
All true. I have never seen a shop with a female mechanic (I know there are some, though).
But that won't stop some from claiming prejudice or misogyny or whatever.