IBM Sues Microsoft's New Chief Diversity Officer To Protect Diversity Trade Secrets (geekwire.com) 197
theodp writes: GeekWire reports that IBM has filed suit against longtime exec Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, alleging that her new position as Microsoft's chief diversity officer violates a year-long non-compete agreement, allowing Microsoft to use IBM's internal secrets to boost its own diversity efforts. A hearing is set for Feb. 22, but in the meantime, a U.S. District Judge has temporarily barred McIntyre from working at Microsoft. "IBM has gone to great lengths to safeguard as secret the confidential information that McIntyre possesses," Big Blue explained in a court filing, citing its repeated success (in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017) in getting the U.S. government to quash FOIA requests for IBM's EEO-1 Reports on the grounds that the mandatory race/ethnicity and gender filings represent "confidential proprietary trade secret information." IBM's argument may raise some eyebrows, considering that other tech giants -- including Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook -- voluntarily disclosed their EEO-1s years ago after coming under pressure from Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus. In 2010, IBM stopped disclosing U.S. headcount data in its annual report as it accelerated overseas hiring.
Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think that on diversity issues (or any social issue for that matter) there is no profit to be made or lost and that everybody would put their best tactics forward for everyone to use and receive praise for being at the forefront of equality. But no... Let's send the lawyers in. We shall have great diversity, but everybody else can suck it.
Maybe they secretly wish for an outside diversity agency or charity (paid for by anybody else but them, the government if possible) keeping an eye on their policies and making sure everything runs smoothly. Then they cry government encroachment, of course.
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Yeah, this should not be about a corporate competitive advantage, but about the betterment of society. I'm trying to think of an analogy. The best I can think of is if a city gets a new major or police chief, and that person manages to drastically reduce crime in their city. Should they keep their crime prevention techniques private so their city can have a competitive advantage over other nearby cities, thus drawing more people to want to live/work/shop there? No, because this isn't really a zero sum game.
Companies only care about profits (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, this should not be about a corporate competitive advantage, but about the betterment of society.
That's admirable sentiment but let's be real. As a general proposition, corporations only care about the betterment of society insofar as it also helps their bottom line. You can make a pretty good argument that a diverse workforce chosen for their capabilities will increase chances for corporate profits AND also better society. But if a corporation's management perceives (true or not) advantage in having a work force that isn't diverse then they are likely to oppose diversity efforts and just pay lip service to diversity for PR purposes. The people in the company might mean well but the pressure for profits tends to drown out even well intended other priorities.
Diversity can be a huge asset. There is plenty of evidence that having people with different backgrounds and ideas results in better outcomes for companies. If everyone looks the same and has the same background there is a strong tendency towards group think and important ideas get overlooked. The bigger the company and the more diverse the customer base the more important this tends to become. I know I've learned a lot from my colleagues who come from different backgrounds and cultures and I'm more effective in my job because they bring me a different perspective that I might not have considered.
Maybe in an ideal world... (Score:2, Interesting)
From my experience with companies, "diversity" means getting people of a specific race/nationality who live overseas, either by offshoring to them or getting them via H-1Bs, or at one place I worked at, B-1/B-2 visas, and paying the rather infinitesimal visa fraud fines when it gets found out. (They rotated "tourists on training" every 3-6 months to US offices by the hundreds.)
In a perfect world, it means diversity. Realistically, it is a way to do immigration fraud and get bargain basement workers who wi
Re:Companies only care about profits (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right - diversity can be a good thing.
But today that means "people of a different identity to the majority", whereas the reality if you wanted the creativity of different ideas, you'd hire people without college degrees, poor people, criminals (no, other that the CEO :-) ), right-wingers, conservatives, and all sorts of other people who might well match your physical characteristics but possess different mental and social ones.
Diversity is not hiring black, asian, female, disabled staff who all have the same social, economic and political views as each other.
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My company hires all those except for conservatives/right wingers. And the sole reason for that is that none of them have passed the basic logic test in over 10 years. I've read lots of studies that explain how a conservative world view can lead to a narrow focus, especially when it comes to logic or problem solving; and I must admit those studies seem extremely accurate.
I believe conservatives have placed themselves out of high tech roles because their world view necessarily must discard actual logic to
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Hmmm...either a troll or a bot. In either case, there's no, zero, zip, evidence to indicate that "conservatives/right wingers" can't pass a basic logic test. If you disagree, please point to any documented evidence before you chime in. with your opinion of over 40% of the population.
hall-monitor Spock (Score:2)
As a general proposition, women only give sex for money.
Money: the abstract quantity which motivates an animal to engage in any pro-social behaviour whatsoever.
Even Adam Smith thought that definit
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That's what your hand said!
Re:Companies only care about profits (Score:4, Interesting)
There is plenty of evidence that having people with different backgrounds and ideas results in better outcomes for companies.
And look at how that turned out for Damore.
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There's definitely evidence of that, but only really in the sense of diversity of skills and ideas, not current day meaning of "diversity" which of race, gender, sexual orientation and other superficial traits.
"Superficial"? Race, gender and sexual orienation are not superficial traits.
The benefits of the type of diversity most commonly talked about these days is actually on pretty shaky ground, with most studies finding no benefit or a very minor benefit/detriment.
Only if you are cherry picking your "evidence" to support your confirmation bias and/or getting it from Fox News.
Re: Companies only care about profits (Score:2)
"Superficial"? Race, gender and sexual orienation are not superficial traits.
You are absolutely correct; race, gender, and sexual orientation are what sperate the ubermenschen from the untermenschen.
Re: Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:2)
Likewise, diversity is not supposed to be about competitive advantage, but about the betterment of society and the fair treatment of all people.
But it is a competition. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc... already employ a higher percentage of minorities than are graduating from college. The only way for a company to hire more minorities is to steal them from a different company.
The only other alternative is to start much younger possibly even grade school and change the funnels there but that doesn't directly benefit individual corporations.
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What he said.
At my company, we were getting pressure from upper management to bring in more females, and when we pushed back saying that we interviewed every one that applied, that wasn't an acceptable answer. So, we got creative. And yes, it is a competition, and no, we shouldn't share it with out competitors. This isn't, as someone else attempted to compare, a life and death/crime prevention...it's more SJ, which I'm personally against because it harms as many individuals as it helps, but it's okay bec
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And another reason to live in California where non-compete agreements are illegal (with very few exceptions).
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...Likewise, diversity is not supposed to be about competitive advantage, but about the betterment of society and the fair treatment of all people.
Careful, the last diversity officer that said that had to step down. Diversity has been nakedly about promoting favored classes for some time. If you even suggest that a white male might be more than an evil oppressor you will be punished.
Citation:
https://nypost.com/2017/11/17/... [nypost.com]
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There are huge profits to be made from diversity.
Diversity policies can help companies fill positions that they would otherwise struggle to, and retain staff for longer. It can help them develop better products, e.g. the recent story about facial recognition that doesn't work with dark skin.
In IBM's case it looks a lot like they are trying to cover up offshoring and the use of skilled worker visas (H1B in the US). Not really anything to do with diversity, except perhaps that she knows about using this trick
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:4, Interesting)
Otherwise I'm not sure how someone's skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or any of the other characteristics that typically get lumped in with "diversity" allow a company to develop facial recognition algorithms that work better for darker skin colors. It sounds more like the testing or QA team didn't use a good sample of images when testing the product. Or they did and were aware of it but would rather get the product to market sooner.
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I'm not really sure how a diversity policy helps anything unless you've got a bunch of racists in HR or upper management
Then allow me to explain.
Data out today [equalityhumanrights.com] shows that a lot of employers have pretty regressive policies towards women and particularly mothers. That makes it harder for them to hire women and to retain women, which means they have a smaller pool of available talent to draw on.
Another example is lack of understanding about disabilities. A lot of people worry that having a disabled person work for/with them will be costly, that they will need a lot of time off sick, that they will be unproductive or that they m
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:4, Interesting)
Data out today [equalityhumanrights.com] shows that a lot of employers have pretty regressive policies towards women and particularly mothers. That makes it harder for them to hire women and to retain women, which means they have a smaller pool of available talent to draw on.
It's funny because Damore made exactly the same observations about Google's workplace being unfavorable to women and how to improve it to better retain women in his memo, but for whatever reason you seemed to want to rake him over the coals for it. I'm also not sure that the article you cite applies in the U.S. as it's illegal to ask if someone has children or even if they're married. The same holds true for "where are you from" questions as well. I'm rather surprised that the UK apparently doesn't have such laws. Alternatively I would think that they do and that they just need to be enforced.
Also, I remember when microaggressions used to be called pet peeves, with the implication being that they were rather silly things to get upset about. I've had people ask about my ancestry before based on my last name. It's not really difficult to tell someone that "I grew up a few states over, but that my grandparents came over from Poland" or that "I'm from Birmingham, but my father is Iranian" or whatever the case may be. Maybe it's another British thing where people are sensitive about it for some reason, whereas in the U.S. almost everyone is from somewhere else ancestrally.
However, I still don't see this potential for huge profits as people who are being spurned from one company are being hired at another. If everyone were recruiting purely based on talent with no biases at all, then some companies that are doing a better job would actually be worse off since their competition isn't ignoring candidates any more and they can't get as good of a deal. Similarly, companies who ignore that which is profitable for too long tend to be out of business quickly.
I think that you also have to admit that diversity efforts can go too far in the other direction when quotas get imposed which are almost a guarantee that there's a smaller pool of available talent to draw on or that in order to maintain the same level of quality it would be necessary to pay more to only hire the absolute best individuals from some category while hitting some quota.
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny because Damore made exactly the same observations about Google's workplace being unfavorable to women and how to improve it to better retain women in his memo
Unfortunately he got it so catastrophically wrong that he actually put women off working for Google. Check the Labour Board investigation of the issue, at least two women dropped out of the recruitment process citing his memo as the reason.
I'm also not sure that the article you cite applies in the U.S. as it's illegal to ask if someone has children or even if they're married.
It's legally problematic in the UK as well, but of course difficult to prove and often not enforced. In any case, an employer doesn't necessarily need to ask, they can just throw any application from a woman under the age of 45 in the bin.
I've had people ask about my ancestry before based on my last name.
For me it's about 90% of the people I've ever been introduced to. Seriously, people hear my last name and seem to automatically ask about its origin. I don't blame them or get offended, but it is beyond annoying. Sometimes it can even get problematic, like when they can't hide their concern that I might be a Muslim. I can't imagine what replying "yes" would be like, but I'm tempted to try it.
So it's a bit more than a pet peeve, and it's exactly the sort of thing that HR should be helping with. If it's less common in the US then that's a good thing, whatever the reason. In the UK it depends where you are - in London it's much less of an issue than in deepest Somerset.
If everyone were recruiting purely based on talent
companies who ignore that which is profitable for too long tend to be out of business quickly.
Unrelated to the real world.
I think that you also have to admit that diversity efforts can go too far in the other direction
It's not really an admission, because it requires you to assume that I think all diversity efforts are automatically good and there can be no incompetency. I think you have to admit that would be a rather strange assumption.
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately he got it so catastrophically wrong that he actually put women off working for Google. Check the Labour Board investigation of the issue, at least two women dropped out of the recruitment process citing his memo as the reason.
Despite what you and other people who share your beliefs try to purport, he actually got it reasonably correct. Just because you don't want to believe that there are biological differences between men and women that lead them to make different decisions related to careers, doesn't mean that they don't exist in much the same way that someone who chooses to ignore science related to the effects of carbon dioxide or methane on climate does not stop them from occurring.
Also, anyone so emotionally fragile that has to drop out of a recruiting process after a company not only fires, but goes out of their way to publicly rebuke the cause probably needs therapy. It sounds like Google probably dodged a bullet with those particular individuals.
It's legally problematic in the UK as well, but of course difficult to prove and often not enforced. In any case, an employer doesn't necessarily need to ask, they can just throw any application from a woman under the age of 45 in the bin.
The legal headache from even being accused is probably enough to get the hiring personnel or manager fired. I suppose you can't stop one person from throwing away applications, but any large company doing that is going to have a paper trail if someone were to actually request it. Also, if you wanted to ensure that your recruitment isn't biased, you would remove that kind of information from an application to start with and only know if a candidate is female when doing an interview. Doing that essentially prevents anyone in HR with some kind of secret axe to grind from causing problems as well.
If someone really wants to be that biased that they turn away potential talent, then they do so to their own detriment. I can't imagine the shareholders being too happy with that unless their own personal biases somehow align and are greater than their own greed. History tends to show that people in large care more about money than anything else.
Sometimes it can even get problematic, like when they can't hide their concern that I might be a Muslim. I can't imagine what replying "yes" would be like, but I'm tempted to try it.
Have you considered that they may want to know something like that so as no to offend you in some way related to your religion. If I know that someone is a Muslim, I'm probably less inclined to ask them out for drinks after work and if I have them over for dinner, I'd probably want to take their dietary restrictions into consideration. I think you might just have too much of a chip on your shoulder where you're mistaking people's curiosity or desire to know a little more about you for something more sinister or malicious. I don't really think that has anything to do with skin color as it just sounds like a common case of tech geeks being bad at reading people and social situations. Perhaps that's all a bit presumptuous of me, but take it as food for thought instead of something to get incensed about.
Unrelated to the real world.
I'm not sure how companies ignoring things which are profitable is unrelated to the real world. That's all that matters. Companies that refuse to update their business models fail. Companies that refused to off shore labor and to take advantage of lower costs in China or other developing countries failed. Any company that's living with some 1950's mentality that women belong at home and in the kitchen that hasn't already failed is on their way there.
It's not really an admission, because it requires you to assume that I think all diversity efforts are automatically good and there can be no incompetency. I think you have to admit that would be a rather strange assumption.
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:4, Insightful)
It's telling that the only response left to pointing out the flaws in Damore's memo is to bring it the straw men. As I've told you over and over, I know there are biological differences, the Labour Board knows there are biological differences, the studies are about biological differences. That's not in dispute by anyone except for you.
The issue, the one you refuse to address because you know it's devastating and impossible to dispute, is that the authors of those same studies said that the conclusions Damore drew were unwarranted.
If you claim they are wrong then the memo is built on flawed studies. If you accept they are right then Damore is wrong. If you try to claim that Damore knows better than the experts who did the studies and his conclusions are more valid, you look foolish.
So you go to the straw man. You know it's not what I said, you know it's not the argument being made, but you pretend it is.
That's how bad the memo is. We went from "you didn't read it" to "you didn't read the studies" to pretending not to understand the argument put to you.
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It's legally problematic in the UK as well, but of course difficult to prove and often not enforced. In any case, an employer doesn't necessarily need to ask, they can just throw any application from a woman under the age of 45 in the bin
In the UK, you but your age on applications?
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, catastrophically wrong? DIdn't know you had unassailable evidence to issues that have evidence in both directions and so ins't clear.
I've read hundreds of studies in psychology about the biological differences between men and women and there's evidence both ways. I don't think it matters one way or another; Damore's point was that people should be treated as individuals rather than groups to be targeted for equity, and that differences, socially caused or otherwise, shouldn't be solved at the corporate level.
And there will always be politically charged job candidates who decide to make statements, just for attention and their own advantage. Big fucking deal that candidates dropped out. I certainly wouldn't want to work at Google either after their reaction to Damore's essay. In fact, I'm applying for jobs now and I've been purposely avoiding Google.
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I've read hundreds of studies in psychology about the biological differences between men and women and there's evidence both ways.
This seems to be a common misunderstanding. Just because Damore can google some studies to support your position doesn't really help him. The Labour Board and the court will look at the memo he distributed. They will note that the authors of the studies he cites don't agree with his conclusions, so even if he can cite other sources he has already undermined his cased by selecting support material he clearly didn't understand.
However well meaning his point may have been, saying that women are biologically le
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Re: (Score:2)
So it's a bit more than a pet peeve, and it's exactly the sort of thing that HR should be helping with.
You clearly don't understand HR's role. They are not there to protect you against micro aggressions (feeling triggered, huh?). They are there to protect the company from lawsuits. If you think HR is there for the employee's benefit, you're sadly mistaken.
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It's hilarious because just the other day, Ars Technica in their article on him "losing", despite dropped the NLRB bit a long time ago, linked people to what they claimed was the "full" version on Gizmodo. Yes, the one with no citations... And now that I check back, I find there's no longer any link to the memo at all, so I'm wondering if they did a stealth edit or there's another story.
So they're STILL pulling this same damned trick.
That said, it's funny how they highlight that the NLRB decided that two,
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My guess is the broad benefit is determining new ways of identifying good hires.
The traditional signaling methods for competency revolve around big-ticket University degrees, narrow social and employment networks and so on. In a future where we realistically may need to greatly expand technology hiring there's only so many MIT/Stanford/Caltech/etc graduates to be had, regardless of diversity factors.
In many ways, these companies need to break out of the traditional signaling factors of good hiring prospect
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The technical term is "microagreession" but that seems to trigger people
That's funny, because the term is really only used by the people who had chips on their shoulders to begin with.
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Some do, some not. Some do more mistakes, some less. And if diversity made corporations more competitive, we would see the corporations that are more diverse winning over those that are less diverse. Like in a natural selection process. But this is not happening.
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>It can help them develop better products, e.g. the recent story about facial recognition that doesn't work with dark skin.
Please explain EXACTLY how an algorithm failing to recognize darker skinned people would be DIRECTLY addressed by a Diversity Officer.
- Do they know every project in the company and would have raised the alarm?
- Would they require "prove you're not racist" reports from every project team?
- Are you assuming them sending everyone to "don't be racist" seminars wo
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:5, Insightful)
There are huge profits to be made from diversity.
If that were true, it would be entirely unnecessary to have a huge government apparatus trying to enforce it, and a huge "non profit" sector doing shakedowns and intimidation about it.
Re: Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. I hate it when people "helping" minorities trying to represent as a good business model.
It's a good business model because if you do not follow it either government will crack down on you or liberal media will scare off all your advertisement or customers.
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You know why there is a burgeoning quasi-governmental industry in diversity - it so those people unable to get useful jobs can make a fortune employed in it!
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All the "liberal media" does is publicize the fact that a company is having problems in the diversity area. If that's able to "scare off all your advertisement or customers", it's probably because the majority of the company's advertisers and/or customers find that information to be risky or objectionable. And, if you're the company with this risky and/or objectionable attribute, you might want to consider doing better in the diversity area rather than digging in.your corporate heels.
However, I'm not quite
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controversy is almost never good. introduces variability into the profit model.
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It's a good business model not to dump toxic waste into the river because of government regulation.
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:4, Insightful)
If that were true, it would be entirely unnecessary to have a huge government apparatus trying to enforce it
That argument holds true only if the same people who profit unequally from and consequently control the current system are prepared to relinquish their relative status. History, however, is littered with examples of huge government apparatuses being used to maintain the privilege of a specific group relative to another, even if everyone would be benefit in absolute terms from that privilege being removed.
The reason people argue against diversity is not that they consciously defy economic sense, but because they don't want that economic sense to benefit someone else more than it benefits them - it's not about the size of the pie but about the current slicing arrangements.
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Diversity is also a popular target for demagogues and populists. It's easy to point to it and generate some outrage that other people are getting something extra, while simply ignoring the fact that they also started in a much worse position too.
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There are huge profits to be made from diversity.
If that were true, it would be entirely unnecessary to have a huge government apparatus trying to enforce it
That argument holds true only if the same people who profit unequally from and consequently control the current system are prepared to relinquish their relative status.
I'm not sure that even you know what you are saying here, but in any case I don't think that Silicon Valley tech companies are so racist (it feels nonsensical even typing that) that they are going to leave "huge profits" out there (that's the claim, remember), when they could simply scoop those huge profits up with "diversity".
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes companies a while to realize that it's profitable. As the big, successful ones start throwing serious money at the problem (like Intel's $300m investment) more and more start getting on-board.
Companies don't behave rationally. They are as prone to fads, dogma and incompetence just like people are, only worse because the hive mind tends to be a bit sociopathic. Actually, a lot sociopathic.
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There are huge profits to be made from diversity.
If that were true, it would be entirely unnecessary to have a huge government apparatus trying to enforce it
Good news! The program that "told" you about that gubermint apparatus wasn't news, it was newsvertainment , that's fictional reports on the same topic as the days news. For entertainment.
No such apparatus even exists.
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There are huge profits to be made from diversity...In IBM's case it looks a lot like they are trying to cover up offshoring and the use of skilled worker visas (H1B in the US). Not really anything to do with diversity, except perhaps that she knows about using this trick to make the numbers look better while also cutting costs and quality.
Uh, it kind of has everything to do with a lack of diversity, and "cutting costs" is another way of creating "huge profits".
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using this trick to make the numbers look better while also cutting costs and quality.
Want to make sure everyone catches this gem of careful wording.
Re: Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you kidding?
The entirety of the "diversity" push is marketing, virtue signaling, white guilt, and social welfare.
Of course there's proprietary information. It's literally a marketing scam, and IBM doesn't want competition to have their secrets.
That you have been duped into thinking it was a social benefit is the point. You also thought Crystal Pepsi was better for the environment... Dipshit.
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The proposition that these companies arent trying to hire the best people for the money, aside from a small number of cases of nepotism and quid pro quo, is absurd. Everything about promoting diversity at the point of hire is promoting a deviation from optimal hiring practices, so any strategy that can boost diversity numbers with only minimal harm to the bottom line is valuable.
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Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:5, Informative)
Diversity jobs aren't about diversity. It's about profit. Maximizing public good will. It's PR. It's plausible deniability for a corporation to drop hundreds of grand to get you to give them the benefit of the doubt when a scandal comes out.
If diversity is "obvious" and we need "50-50" party and all that shit, and Salon et al minimum-wage journalists know what's best for us, then why do you need someone making over half-a-million a year just to tell you that? Is "not hiring black people = bad" something so profound you need a dedicated "scientist" to reveal that gem?
And if you ARE discriminating, congratulations, it's already illegal to discriminate based on age, sex, religion, or sexual orientation. So if your lawyers aren't stopping that, they should all be fired.
I mean, has anyone ever actually asked themselves what this person would DO on the job? Compute Maxwell equations? Run Monte Carlo simulations? Nah. You know exactly what it is. Talking out of your ass with feel good initiatives. Making people run through sexual harassment seminars, and inviting other feel good speakers that all help in the plausible "we take #OutrageFlavorOfTheWeek seriously."
Even the wikipedia says exactly what I'm saying:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
>A cultural diversity practitioner has expertise in managing and leading programs designed to foster productive relationships among people of different cultures.
Meanwhile, notice a complete lack of any formulas, philosophies or anything you'd see from a real degree or position. Even business wikis list things like basic accounting formulas, and organizational management rules, and other "laws".
We might as well have a senior level job for "Chief Pizza Officer" for addressing serious concerns about whether people are eating enough quality food while they work. I'd love to see the college that gives *that* degree. I'd even get one--in spite of the inevitable intense rigor required to survive the class load.
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:4)
I commend you, and hope you continue
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We might as well have a senior level job for "Chief Pizza Officer" for addressing serious concerns about whether people are eating enough quality food while they work. I'd love to see the college that gives *that* degree. I'd even get one--in spite of the inevitable intense rigor required to survive the class load.
You jest but if you're big enough I wouldn't be surprised to find Apple/Google/Microsoft has some nutritional experts on staff to promote a healthier lifestyle on the company campus. And yes multinationals have often struggled to make different work and business cultures function well together as a team. But on like a broad cultural basis? I don't care what naughty bits you have or who you're sleeping with, what god(s) you pray to, how you lean politically, what your idea of a good time is or whatever. Or w
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So it's a bit more than a pet peeve, and it's exactly the sort of thing that HR should be helping with.
This! And if they believed in real diversity, than they would believe in diversity of opinion, and be accepting of it. But what they really want is to be in a world where everyone agrees with their worldview, otherwise it's a "hostile workplace".
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Crap, responded to the wrong message...above.
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If diversity is "obvious" and we need "50-50" party and all that shit, and Salon et al minimum-wage journalists know what's best for us, then why do you need someone making over half-a-million a year just to tell you that? Is "not hiring black people = bad" something so profound you need a dedicated "scientist" to reveal that gem?
That paragraph actually demonstrates why you need someone to explain this to you.
Obsession with goals like 50-50 isn't going to get you anywhere. And the problem is far more complex than overt racism like simply refusing to hire non-white people. Simply saying "okay, from today no more discrimination" won't make much difference either... I mean, it's been illegal for a long time already and a lot of problems still persist.
Meanwhile, notice a complete lack of any formulas, philosophies
Really, are you totally unaware of the many decades of research and the vast body of w
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And the problem is far more complex than overt racism like simply refusing to hire non-white people.
Dunning-Kruger in action here. "I know nothing about this, but I'm plenty smart enough to tell you that it's stupid and here's why..."
I wish everyone who gets their panties all in a twist about fostering diversity in organizations could be forced to at least learn some very basic facts about it. It's hard to have a rational discussion with people foaming at the mouth over their ignorant perception of something. Although that does speak volumes about who they are as individuals.
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Well, when people already consider basic human decency in public language to be "political" there might not be any hope at all about having a rational discussion. You can already predict from the first time they use the phrase "politically correct" that they'll be upset not only about fostering diversity, but about any other response to real-world horribles that contain -ists or -isms.
Because ethics in gaming, or some shit.
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Invoking Dunning-Kruger is just like calling out virtue signalling. You have no arguments left, and are probably a victim of it yourself.
Re: Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:2)
Really, are you totally unaware of the many decades of research and the vast body of work on "alternative medicine", and the various philosophies that incorporate it? Have you never heard of homeopathy, for example?
FTFY.
Re:Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to have all the pieces, so I'm not sure why you aren't putting this together. A "Diversity Officer" is a compliance officer, similar to a safety officer or a similar position. They are there to:
The only difference is that public opinion is far more relevant than it would be in an industrial safety situation. They need a level of seniority to accomplish goals A and C specifically, if they were a peon nobody would listen to them and they wouldn't be a satisfactory example/sacrifice to regulators or the public at large when something happened that needed accounting for.
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Jobs aren't about whatever you want them to be about. They're about profit. For the employer.
If you knew that, you wouldn't have even had to be leaning over the cesspit, you might not even have fallen in!
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There would be a profit made or lost by companies stealing others diversity planning.
Diversity planning and policy isn't just a hippy feel good thing. It is about (especially in a time where there is an employment shortage) keeping and retaining skilled employees in your organization. If your organization has a reputation fairly or not, of not being diverse, there will be a lot of talent that will not apply, or worse talent who has been hired, to leave shortly after being hired, due to an unpleasant work e
Re: (Score:2)
MS can avoid overpaying Jesse Jackson by knowing what IBM's payoff amount was.
Re: Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:2)
With the demographics of the world getting more diverse
Wtf does this nonsense even mean? How exactly can global demographics be getting "more diverse"? Is our planet importing aliens from alpha centauri?
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It means we can no longer live in our little groups of like minded people. Nearly every portion of the world will need to deal with everyone else.
People in China needs to deal with Americans and Europeans. People in Africa need to deal with people from Asia... We can no longer afford to live in our little boxes.
Re: Douchebag manoeuvre (Score:2)
So you're using "diversity" to mean "globalisation"?
Interesting. Not sure how exactly you're associating a larger potential applicant pool with more difficulty finding candidates, but OK.
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People in China needs to deal with Americans and Europeans. People in Africa need to deal with people from Asia... We can no longer afford to live in our little boxes.
Which has been the case for thousands of years. For example, demographically speaking, Genghis Khan spread his Mongolian seed among numerous diverse cultures, such that 0.5% of all men today have potential Y-chromosomal lineage.
Buzzwords: string enough of them together and you too can be a Chief Diversity Officer.
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everybody would put their best tactics forward for everyone to use
The problem here is that IBM's tactic is 'identify the competent people that represent demographics we find hard to recruit and target those'.
The lady in question knows who those targeted individuals are, and IBM probably fear Microsoft recruiting them first.
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You'd think that on diversity issues (or any social issue for that matter) there is no profit to be made or lost and that everybody would put their best tactics forward for everyone to use and receive praise for being at the forefront of equality. But no... Let's send the lawyers in. We shall have great diversity, but everybody else can suck it.
Diversity is a zero sum game. Diversity demands that 50% of your employees, in every position, are female, and that in every position there's equal representation of all races. But then James Damore rears his head and says "Hey, maybe there's just not equal interest, in all genders and all minorities in all positions." This means that there's less qualified, diversity quota filling, candidates than what diversity goals says there should be. So if your company can suck up all of the good ones, you've checked
wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If they are secretly doing something illegal, for diversity reasons, that would be something they would want to keep secret.
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I'm guessing it's just a worthless lawsuit as a show of force to keep other people who sign non-compete clauses in line.
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No, they just don't want everyone knowing that they were using a magic 8 ball.
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No, they just don't want everyone knowing that they were using a magic 8 ball.
It said OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD so they bought Lotus. Sadly, they didn't consult the geek tarot, which could have told them NOTES IS GARBAGE TOO
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What kind of trade secrets could there possibly be involved in a useless made up position like diversity officer anyway? (or maybe that is the secret...that its all bogus?)
IBM has developed a secret genetic modification energy power gaurana and psilocybin drink that turns normal employees into diverse ones. When the Feds come around to check up on the global diversity climate change, IBM rounds up a bunch of white guys and force feeds them the drink, and the entangled diversity quantum energy entropy level at IBM increases.
There are still a few minor problems. One white guy turned into a sheep growing human organs, IBM CEO Ginny Rometty reportedly has mice ears growing on
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Again? Yeesh.
Re:wait what? (Score:4, Interesting)
It sounds dumb, but maybe they've worked out some formula for finding diversity hires or filtering out *good* diversity hires. I'd imagine the latter would be very useful and probably controversial.
My guess is that one challenge with wanting to do diversity hiring is that many diversity hire categories may be broad but shallow talent pools. Not that the categories have dumb people, but general social forces may result in them having weaker educational backgrounds or work histories. Filtering through this to get good candidates when conventional signaling metrics (schools, work history, etc) aren't sufficient would really be a meaningful HR trade secret and probably broadly beneficial for finding high-quality prospects in all backgrounds, as it's not like every MIT grad is a perfect hire and it's not like IBM couldn't cut its compensation load by hiring really talented people not demanding deep six figures because they had high-end degrees.
And no doubt highly controversial -- you can just see the headline "IBM rejects more $diversity_category candidates than it hires" when the reality may be that they are hiring well above the industry rate. It may even open themselves to lawsuits when $diversity_group feels like they were filtered out because of their group membership rather than actually being subjected to a superior hiring methodology that ignores the kinds of traditional qualification signalling. Or the reverse, white/male candidates being upset because their part-time state college degree was a rejection standard but some black woman got hired because they had an algorithm that looked differently at her.
Then there's just generally sensitive information, like IBM has bad discrimination patterns or whatever.
Re:wait what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:wait what? (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of quality systems aren't about producing "high quality" product. Because believe it or not, that doesn't matter.
What matters most is consistency. Lot of people will chose a consistently crap product over one where one item might work great, but the next 3 are marginal, and 1 fail completely. Or even one where 90 out of 100 are up to spec but 10 are complete fails spec wise.
Easier to design around the flaws of a consistently bad item than have to implement part screening to filter out the bad ones from a bunch of good ones, or having to loosen your specifications so the bad ones also work fine
And that's really what quality systems measure - how consistent is your product. Not that your product has an excellent set of specifications that will pass everything you throw at it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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Knowing IBM, they’ll somehow find a way to patent them.
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Knowing what IBM paid to make the charges go away will help MS negotiate with the likes of Jesse Jackson.
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I’d imagine that she also has a hard copy of the official IBM diversity policy telling resource managers to both hire and promote based off of ethnicity targets instead of actual skills or ability.
Of course, anyone who actually worked at IBM in the last 20 years already knows that this policy exists, but written proof of it might help start a discrimation lawsuit. Maybe.
The 7th Seal has been Broken (Score:5, Funny)
The end of days, somehow as a result of lawyers (not a surprise) and diversity (didn't see that coming), will be upon us shortly.
This is a great read for a Monday morning, along with Russian doping and curling. Didn't see that coming either.
alternate headline (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM sues former employee for violating contract
But that doesn't quite have the same clickbait headline as TFS.
And yes, while it does seem weird as to what data they are trying to protect, but you can't just get out of a contract by saying "well the other cool kids don't do what IBM does".
Re: (Score:2)
Top Secret diversity trade secrets - leaked list (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Hiring SJWs for PR and allowing them to bully the people who actually like writing code into attending diversity training instead
2) Sacking harmless autists for writing heartfelt but painfully naive memos complaining about the diversity training after you asked them for their comments
3) Leaking the details of autist's memos to the SJWs at in the tech press, who will completely lie about the contents.
4) Getting sued by sacked autists
5) Convincing people who actually want to write code and not spend time in diversity training to work somewhere else
6) Convincing SJWs in the tech press they can make more money running diversity training at Google than acting as its sock puppets.
7) Becoming a world leader in diversity training and giving up completely on the idea of actually releasing any software.
8) Still having a workforce that is noticably less diverse than the fucking Alt Right Reactosphere.
9) Winning the PR battle in the tech press that all this is justified.
10) Banning competitors that allow free speech from your app store while claiming you support Net Neutrality
11) Winning the PR battle in the tech press that that is justified because those competitors are 'Alt Right'.
12) Getting accused by the Democrats of hosting fake news, the Republicans of censoring conservatives and everyone of being anti competitive
13) See your profits fall despite having vast numbers of users
Re: (Score:2)
Had Damore made a short, churish post on the forum that said something like "Diversity sucks, all hiring and promotions should be made on merit" he probably would've survived. But he published a long manifesto that practically demanded response from HR and senior management.
If you think of your job as a right that you have as long as you're reasonably productive compared with your peers, you're going to have a tough time. A job isn't a basic right. Damore put his employer in an embarrassing position by c
Re: (Score:3)
So? Never breakup a circle jerk. Just excuse yourself and don't come back. Works for most indoctrination.
He really should have known better. Kids these days lack cynicism.
They are trying to steal our precious minorities (Score:2)
Write your own (Score:2)
Don't copy our sh*t. Fool me once,shame on you.
Fool me twice?
I don't think so.
What, Microsoft, innovate your way out of this.
Duration correlation? (Score:2)
I don’t see the connection between the duration of the non-compete and the likelihood of secrets being revealed.
If she had waited longer before accepting the new position she would then not be using these precious secrets? That makes no sense.
Transparency (Score:2)
Old grudges die hard (Score:2)
IBM is... (Score:2)
I used to work for IBM, and there were a million posters saying so (in other words, verified).
It's a secret? (Score:2)
Seriously - a trade secret for Diversity. Diversity in corporations now is just another word for "Affirmative Action". Every company I have worked for was PLENTY diverse! heck the best project manager I EVER had was from India. The best UX person I worked with was a women. I worked with an AWESOME Java developer who was from East Asia.
This new push of "diversity" in corporations is nothing but a load of CRAP!
IBMs idea of diversity (Score:2)
Force all the long-term employees to office in regional centers - after encouraging them to work from home for over a decade.
Strategically re-home existing projects staffed by older, more expensive employees to offshore or H-1B hires.
Make sure to discourage long-term employees from internal mobility, preferring instead to lay them off as their projects are re-homed (see above)
Sue anyone who claims to know better.
Retaliation (Score:2)
This sounds like retaliation for something we do not know the details of...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They're sending in the lawyers because all diversity efforts are anti-white propaganda paid for by George Soros and they don't want the normies to find out.