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Microsoft employees use an internal discussion forum to criticize the company's efforts to promote diversity, calling the recruitment of women and minorities "discriminatory" to white and Asian men, according to a report by Quartz. Microsoft has left these discussions intact, drawing criticism from other employees who feel the company is talking about its diversity and inclusion efforts, but is taking little meaningful action to strengthen them. at the cultural level.
Feelings, some of which were shared earlier this year and at the end of last year, highlight tensions within society at a particularly difficult time. Earlier this month, women at Microsoft began sharing stories of badual harbadment and discrimination and claiming that society had done little to solve the problems. Their stories have since made international headlines and prompted a response from CEO Satya Nadella, who says the company is as dedicated as ever to its diversity and inclusion efforts.
But Microsoft's lack of an official response to internal messages against diversity is a testament to the challenges that society faces in bringing its efforts to fruition. The situation is reminiscent of Google's response to James Damore, a software engineer who criticized his employer's diversity efforts and published an internal memo stating that female workers are not as skilled as men in their technical roles.
After several days, Google fired him for violating his code of conduct and for "advancing harmful gender stereotypes," said CEO Sundar Pichai at the time. The situation has earned Google many criticism from the Conservatives, saying that Google punished Damore for his ideology and drowned divergent views. Damore then filed a lawsuit for unfair dismissal against Google, which has since gone out of court and is undergoing arbitration.
In this case, it appears that Microsoft employees disagree that technology-based women and minorities face disproportionate discrimination and harbadment. representative of the technological workforce of each major company in the sector. No disciplinary action appears to have been taken against the employees involved in these discussions.
"Is Microsoft planning to end the current policy that provides financial incentives for discriminatory hiring practices? To be clear, I want to talk about the fact that senior executives receive more money if they discriminate against Asians and Whites, "reads an article that contains hundreds of comments, written by an engineer from the Microsoft group. Yammer business email application, according to Quartz. The messages, and others like them, were made largely on the Yammer channel of "CEO Connection", Quartz These reports, that is, they are designed to address topics that employees want Nadella to address when addressing the wider community.
Many threads like these remain open with the comments intact, Quartz reports. Some include cases of dissident employees in relation to Microsoft's official position on diversity and requiring more evidence that a diverse workforce is beneficial to society.
Microsoft tells The edge senior employees, including a member of the human resources team, indicated in one of the discussion threads that the company did not allow any discrimination, while another manager 39, to clarify misconceptions about the functioning of diversity-based remuneration. Microsoft said a large number of diversity-friendly counterpoints had been expressed in the discussions and that the general discussion had mainly involved a small number of employees, which numbered in the tens. however, Quartz reports that one of the most active anti-diversity threads included more than 800 comments, while another thread separated from last year, lamenting the lack of diversity in the division of Microsoft's Azure cloud computing, had generated more than 1,000.
The company declined to comment further on the disciplinary measures or its policy to allow employees to express such criticism.
The situation highlights a complex compromise on behalf of technology companies who are often reluctant to impose restrictions on employees' internal discourse, but who also tend not to achieve diversity objectives and difficult choices related to culture. in a working environment. According to an email sent by Nadella after women began to report cases of badual harbadment and discrimination in the company, Microsoft informed its employees that opposing its initiatives in favor diversity could have a negative impact on their career.
"Last year, we increased our commitment with a new inclusion priority for every employee. If you do not contribute to creating an inclusion culture, your rewards, your career trajectory and perhaps even your job will be affected, "Nadella wrote, adding that Microsoft's top executives diversity related to their compensation. "Together, I believe these new steps will move us further and faster to create an inclusive culture that values diversity and helps us all to grow in order to learn from each other."
However, some Microsoft employees are now wondering if the commitment of Nadella and her management team for diversity and inclusion is sincere, as it does not appear that criticism of her efforts has negative consequences. "HR, Satya, all leaders send emails asking them to create an inclusive culture, but they do not wish to take any other action than to talk about it," said one employee Quartz. "They allow people to post these damaging stereotypes about women and minorities, and they do not do anything about it."
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