Several Microsoft employees have been questioning whether diversity is important and slammed the tech giant for ‘discriminatory hiring’ against Asians and white men.
The employees have been debating the company’s pro-diversity push on an internal online message board meant for communicating with Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella.
Two posts that have been heavily argued were written by a female Microsoft program manager, Quartz reports.
One of those posts questioned Microsoft’s push to hire more women and minorities, arguing that it discriminates against white and Asian men.
The employees have been debating the company’s pro-diversity push on an internal online message board meant for communicating with Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella
It also criticizes the monetary incentives senior leadership are awarded if they hire female or minority employees.
‘Does Microsoft have any plans to end the current policy that financially incentivizes discriminatory hiring practices? To be clear, I am referring to the fact that senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men,’ one post reads.
‘I have an ever-increasing file of white male Microsoft employees who have faced outright and overt discrimination because they had the misfortune of being born both white and male. This is unacceptable,’ she wrote in a follow up post on the thread.
Another post on the message board suggests women aren’t as suited to engineering roles as men are.
It also says there is a ‘misguided belief’ that women should be working full-time now and there is something wrong if they choose not too.
‘Many women simply aren’t cut out for the corporate rat race, so to speak, and that’s not because of ‘the patriarchy,’ it’s because men and women aren’t identical, and women are much more inclined to gain fulfillment elsewhere,’ the employee’s post read.
‘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…. 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.
‘This is an established fact. However, this established fact makes people very uncomfortable, because it suggests that the gender distribution in engineering might not actually be a problem (and thus women can no longer bleat about being victims of sexism in the workplace).
Two posts that have been heavily argued were written by a female Microsoft program manager. One of those posts questioned Microsoft’s push to hire more women and minorities, arguing that it discriminates against white and Asian men
‘We must immediately cease the practice of attaching financial incentives and performance metrics to ‘diversity hiring’ – as long as we give more money and higher annual reviews explicitly for not hiring/promoting white men and Asians, this will continue to be a serious problem at the company.’
According to Microsoft’s recent diversity report, 87 percent of employees are Asian or white and 73 percent are men.
Several employees told Quartz that the posts had been reported to human resources. The posts attracted more than 800 comments from employees who both agreed and disagreed with the arguments.
Microsoft haven’t commented on the specific posts but said three executives responded on the message board at the time.
Some employees have criticized the tech-giant for not removing the posts.
‘HR, Satya, all the leadership are sending out emails that they want to have an inclusive culture, but they’re not willing to take any action other than talk about it,’ one employee said.
‘They allow people to post these damaging, stereotypical things about women and minorities, and they do nothing about it.’
It comes after Google fired software engineer James Damore in 2017 after he wrote a controversial 10-page internal memo claiming that women were ‘biologically’ less likely to succeed in the realm of technology.
Some female employees at Microsoft recently shared stories on the internal message board of harassment, discrimination and unequal pay and claimed the company had done nothing to resolve these issues.
In response, the CEO sent out a company-wide email last week vowing a greater commitment to diversity and inclusion.
‘I’m disappointed to hear about any behavior in our workplace that falls short of the diverse and inclusive culture we are striving to create… But I’m encouraged that people feel empowered to speak up and demand change,’ Nadella wrote.
‘This past year, we increased our commitment with a new core priority on inclusion for every employee. If you are not helping to create an inclusive culture, your rewards, your career trajectory and possibly even your employment will be impacted.’
