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Racism At Microsoft?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Jan 04, 2001 01:08 PM
from the ya-don't-think-about-it dept.
from the ya-don't-think-about-it dept.
chandas sent in linkage to a story running at ZD Net about
rascism at Microsoft. Apparently seven former and current black employees want $5 billion, saying that Microsoft fosters a hostile work environment. Is racism an issue in the tech industry? I've been reading Chuck D's autobiography (He is smart as hell) and he talks a lot about racism in the sports and music industries so this subject has been on my mind a lot lately, but it never even crossed my mind that it might be an issue in the tech industry. Of course, as a pasty white boy I probably wouldn't even notice even though I've always thought of the internet as colorblind.
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And the 90% asians at my school still "minority". (Score:2)
Thank got the Univ oc Calif. regents and later the state voters voted to simply remove "race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation" from consideration criteria for all jobs, student applications, etc.
An end to racism is a good thing, right?
Guess who is most against and want these laws repealed and the affirmative action programs and admissions rules put back to favoe [ethnic flavors of the day]? It's the ones who run the race based programs, i.e., The minorities who profit from racism (getting state/federal dollars) and don't want it to end. Face it, without hate and racism, what would Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan do for a living? They'd be out of a job, so naturally they don't want racism to end. They need "hate", for their continued existance. And it it's not there anymore, they'll create it themselves.
Re:Engineering is as “white” as hip-hop is “black” (Score:2)
And, most importantly, are you completely sure that your conviction that "Engineering is largely the sport of white males" would never influence your judgment if you had decide between hiring a black applicant and a white applicant who looks like what you think an engineer or project manager should look like? (I don't mean to accuse you of racism; this is just something to think about. Also consider how this question applies to the judgment of other people you know in your company or in the industry.)
The point of the lawsuit is that those blacks who do decide to become engineers should not be discriminated against. (Just as it would be unfair to deny a white guy the opportunity to become a rapper if he wanted to.)
Were these programmers? (Score:2)
Whites score on average about 30 points below Asians on the SAT I math, and blacks score on average about 106 points below whites. [pbs.org] If you look at the distribution curve, it's even more striking. Only a few hundred blacks per year have SAT I math scores above 700. A 700 Math SAT is about the minimum for a serious CS degree.
That's reality, like it or not.
Re:Unlikely, racism is bad for capitalism (Score:3)
Why is there such a large percentage of you people on Slashdot? Is it due to the abnormally large population of kids who, because they're somewhat intelligent, believe they're superior to most of their peers and therefore pretty much capabable of figuring out How Things Work without any real experience?
Companies can be racist, corporations can be evil, freeing the market is not always a good idea, and all this shit has been proven again and again throughout the history of capitalism and in the experience of damn near everyone who's spent some time outside of school. To deny or ignore such realities is dangerously arrogant.
Apologies for the flame, and for the fact that it had to be in reply to your post... I'm just sick of this economic darwinist crap. I was under the impression that we'd stopped using it as justification (or method of denial) of social problems something like a hundred years ago. It disappoints me that this seems not to be the case.
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:3)
It was not that he was rude to white employees -- he just hung around with black employees. All the time.
Now, if a white person were to do the same, he would be labeled as racist. Especially, he would be culpable for exploiting his social relationships with white managers to gain standing. I don't claim to know how to fight this -- or even if it should be fought. I just observe the fact that black people do tend, as you pointed out, to socialize exclusively with other black people. And that they tend to exploit those social connections just as white people exploit theres.
--
When I have jobs open, I'll hire anyone qualified (Score:3)
1: Are their skills appropriate for the job?
2: Are their salary expectations in line with what I can pay, and am willing to pay?
3: Do they have the right amount of experience for the job?
4: Do they have a personality that will enable them to get along with their prospective co-workers on the "team"?
As tie-breakers, I'll look at things like certifications (do they have any, and are they relevant). I don't care about race or gender - send me people that can do the job and they'll get the job, assuming they're the best candidate. Period. And, excepting some troglodytes who are, I'm sure, in some companies, the bulk of IT hiring meets that standard.
Over the years, I've hired white, black, and hispanic, men and women, gay and straight. And there would almost certainly have been more categories represented in that list if I'd had them available to choose from - I've had good people work for me in all those categories! I'd have been an idiot and I'd be doing my company a disservice if I excluded any potentially good employee on the basis of race, or any other irrelevant factor that doesn't affect job performance.
- -Josh Turiel
Re:Bullshit (Score:3)
Racism isn't always as obvious as it is on made-for-TV movies. (Sometimes, unfortunately, it is that obvious, but usually it's a lot more subtle.)
No way (Score:3)
Re:Cross sections (Score:3)
x=percentage of whites at MS
y=percentage of whites in general population
z=percentage of whites who are white supremecists
zx/100=percentage of white supremecists at MS
zy/100=percentage of white supremecists in general population
You'll note that one of the assumptions is that the percentage of whites who are white supremecists remains constant. You can't disprove the statement by saying the number of klansmen may not remain constant, because the statement doesn't apply to that situation.
Any other "factors" that affect the mix of attitudes at Microsoft simply demonstrate my point-- that it's ludicrous to assert that a cross section of Microsoft is the same as a cross section of the general population. For one thing, there are probably fewer technophobes there than in the general population. And fewer people over 65. And. . .
Re:Cross sections (Score:3)
In general, your attitudes can be influenced by your background, including economic status, religion, and race. Therefore, if there are fewer blacks at Microsoft, the mix of attitudes will be different too.
For example, very few blacks are white supremecists. If there are more whites at Microsoft than in the general population, and the percentace of whites who are white supremecists remains constant, there will be more white supremecists at Microsoft than in the general population.
Therefore, the racial mix DOES affect the mix of attitudes. By your own admission, the racial mix at Microsoft differs from that of the general population.
And therefore the cross section of attitudes at Microsoft is different from the cross section of attitudes in the general population.
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:3)
I myself had a black CS friend in college, and he was really intelligent and great to work with. However, if I'd been in your group you probably would have seen a simlar look of surprize on my face - not becuase I thought you were less competent, but simply because people I talk with via e-mail or other electronic means always have a simply "likley profile" built up in my head and if it's different then I have to take a moment to readjust. It doesn't mean I would think less of the person, especially if I'd already worked with them...
I'll admit there are probably people who would react just as you said. But given how many people in the CS field are from various cultures (chinese, japanese, indian, etc.) I don't see how you could really go all that far in the computer field without being pretty open to people that differ from yourself.
My jaw drops... (Score:3)
Here's something that I found to be very interesting. It is an article by a caucasian professor of journalism at UT.
WHITE PRIVILEGE SHAPES THE U.S.
Robert Jensen
Department of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert William Jensen 1998
first appeared in the Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1998
by Robert Jensen
Here's what white privilege sounds like:
I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.
The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.
So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.
He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."
That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.
That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home to me the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us everyday: In a world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.
White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.
I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.
I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.
What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.
My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.
Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.
I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.
But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.
All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor.
There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.
Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit," as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships.
At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special.
I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked in my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose--then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live lets us be.
White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.
Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice about what we do with our success.
Jensen is a professor in the Department of Journalism in the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
And over a network... (Score:3)
How is it I can submit this article as the news is breaking and it's rejected, but once it's old news
This is one of the many reasons I love open source collaboration over the net. None of us have any idea whether each other is white, black, purple, or -- strictly speaking -- even from the same planet. You are judged purely on how you present yourself, and in email that laregly equates to how much time you spend proofreading your messages. :-)
It's much harder to be racist when everybody else is only seen as two-color bitmapped text, and you chose those colors...
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:3)
I don't think the lawsuit says that. If there are some bad apples at Microsoft, Microsoft is responsible for it. If a rogue Microsoft employee put some code into the next version of Word which would at random times replace every other word in all your documents with the word "nigger", Microsoft would be responsible for this and would have to pay out on all the lawsuits brought against it even though it was a single person who did this and not a company policy.
Re:Reverse discrimination (Score:3)
Uh, you must mean reverse discrimination right? Clearly there are no absence of blacks in most of the major sports (except for ice hockey). I'm not trying to be a bigot, but in sports I think it's almost detrimental to be white nowadays
I'm a dev, and don't play sports. but from time to time i watch a game of football or basketball (mainly to feel somewhat masculene). It seems that the players will be >= 80% black, but certain roles are almost always white, quaterbacks, are almost always white, coachs seem to be nearly 95% white. owners are probably 100% white.
I don't know if it's hard for a black man to get a job doing one of those roles, for a black man to be an owner of a major sports team he would have to be pretty damm rich, and unfortantly, there arn't to many rich black folks out there.. huh, does this sound racist?, naww, must be my white liberal guilt.
-Jon
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:3)
I think you mistake arrogance for racism. When I'm up for a promotion or whatever, I always assume I'm the more skilled, it wouldn't matter if my competition was Richie, Pike, and Torvalds. And I expect everyone else around me to believe the same thing about them.
P.S. When I (poor white trailer trash) took freshman engineering, I had zero, zippo, nada experience with a computer. So don't just assume Joe White Boy had a privileged upbringing, either. Some of us worked our asses off too.
Re:Geez (Score:3)
This made me mad. My race as well as the race of the coaches doesn't matter. It's a qualification issue. If the coach of the other race was more qualified then he would have been hired. It's as simple as that.
Tell me this:
If you're on a plane flight would you want your pilot to have been hired because he/she was more qualified or because he was a minority in the field and they thought they should balance everything out? I'd pick qualification _ANYDAY_.
The hiring based on race is racism of another form -- which is exactly what they're trying to stomp out. It seems like a vicious circle to me.
This kind of relates to my previous post. At my current job we have many races. We have "minorities" and "non-minorities". I know for a fact that everyone here was hired because they were damn good in their field -- not because they needed to "balance" things out.
Anyway, this may have been a totally unrelated rambling. I just wanted to vent some steam. Hopefully no one was offended. I don't see how you could be but hey -- no offense was meant if you were
---
Rob Flynn
Re:Reverse discrimination (Score:3)
Yea, it really sucks to be white and in the sports industry right now. After all, that means that you're probably an agent, manager, or executive, making a whole ton of money and not taking any physical risk. Oh, and don't forget how you don't have to worry about trying to make enough money to support you for your entire life during its short, physical peak.
It's just horrible...
So, either you're a clever troll, or a total idiot...
--
Re: Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:3)
This comment is just as racist as the attitude you're trying to portray. Any generalization about a race is racist. (Well except maybe "All white people or white." etc.
I don't deny that racism exists in this industry, it exists in EVERY industry to some degree. Guess what, racism (in general) will probably never completely go away. Someone will always find a reason to hate another group of people (be it race, country or what-not). I do believe people that are more commonly victims of racism have a tendancy to become overly sensitive though.
If you're competing for a job with 5 other white people and you feel you're the best one for the job and you don't get it would your first assumption be that you didn't get the job because you're black? Perphaps your own perceptions of your skills and the skills of other is skewed (it usually is, even mine I'm sure). Perhaps you didn't get the job because the other guy was married and had kids and you were single so he needed the job more (I've been on the shit end of the stick on that one). My point is, racism is only one of a large number of reasons why you could be passed over for a promotion that you think you should've gotten.
-Zane
Re:Not a bad deal (Score:3)
Vancouver Kingsway has the largest non-white population, with 63.4 per cent of residents visible minorities. Vancouver South-Burnaby comes second with 56.2 per cent. Not surprisingly, Kingsway also has the highest percentage of residents who have a mother tongue other than English -- 62.2 per cent.
The least diverse riding in the region is Fraser Valley, where only 5.2 per cent of residents are non-white. The second-least diverse is South Surrey-White Rock-Langley, where only six per cent of residents are a member of a visible minority.
While Kingsway has a higher proportion of minorities, South-Burnaby is be the most diverse riding in the region. It boasts a large Chinese (30.9 per cent), Indo-Canadian (13.1 per cent) and Filipino (3.6 per cent) population. But it also has smaller, but still significant, groups of Korean, Japanese, Southeast Asian and Latin American residents -- all making up between one and two per cent of voters.
In addition to having the most minorities over all, Vancouver Kingsway also has the largest Chinese population in the region, with 39.7 per cent of residents being Chinese.
Richmond is second with 34.1 per cent.
Surrey Central has the largest population of Indo-Canadians with 21.3 per cent identifying themselves to census takers as South Asian. Surrey North is second with 16.6 per cent.
North Vancouver has the largest proportion of Arabs (3.3 per cent), Vancouver Kingsway has the most Filipinos (5.7 per cent) and Vancouver East has the highest number of aboriginals (5.6 per cent)
Re:You don't know what you're talking about (Score:3)
You don't know what you're talking about (Score:3)
Reverse discrimination (Score:3)
Uh, you must mean reverse discrimination right? Clearly there are no absence of blacks in most of the major sports (except for ice hockey). I'm not trying to be a bigot, but in sports I think it's almost detrimental to be white nowadays.
ObLibertarianMention (Score:3)
True. We should implement a libertarian system, where people that sue a company or a person, and lose, have to pay the legal fees for the other party.
BAM! A lot less frivolous lawsuits when you have to think real hard about whether you have a legitimate complaint.
Racism everywhere, not just Microsoft (Score:3)
I'm saddened but not really surprised by the general response of most here, "rascism? Of course not, it's just that very few black people apply for tech jobs / have the qualificiations / yadda yadda yadda". Guess some of you should have bothered to try learning something from the humanities people. Yes, some of sociology is real science too.
Western society is intrinsically rascist, mostly for historical reasons. How anyone in the UK or US could deny it when white people are so much better off across the board (income, life expectancy, social class, education, victims of crime, you name it.) Either society is set up to subtly (or none-to-subtly) discriminate against people on the basis of their skin colour, or black people are intrinsically more stupid / violent / criminal / unhealthy. Which I don't think (I really hope) no-one here actually consciously believes.)
In the last year my brother married Ghanaian woman and they have just had a beautiful baby girl. I've also just started work at a company with a black CEO. (Yes, man-in-black, he has a public school (ie, expensive fee-paying here in the UK) accent.) Watching people getting introduced to either of these two without having been explicitly told 'oh, by the way, s/he's black" has been rather...educational. And rather depressing.
Looking on the bright side: in Western Europe, where we haven't quite the same historical relationship with black people and slavery (yeah yeah, Liverpool and Bristol were built with slave trade blood money, but we never had millions of black slaves *here*) -- there surely is rascism here but (I hope) through hard work & educational efforts & not least legal sanction (like: not letting the police get away with it when yet-another black suspect accidentally falls down some stairs in a policestation and dies on the floor of a cell) -- things are getting better, for black AND white.
Final word for the white folks here who really believe they're too smart to be rascist. How do you think you can grow up in a rascist society and NOT absorb ANY of those attitudes? I know I did. Without lacerating oneself with liberal guilt, it's good to look for the speck in your own eye before denying there's a beam in Microsoft's (or society's at large.)
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
"Plantation Mentality"? Welcome to the IT world! (Score:4)
(and especially larger companies like, oh, say, Microsoft) treated like a slave? 60+ hour work weeks, oppressive management structure, morons getting promoted
over vastly more skilled and competent co-workers
Re:Not a bad deal (Score:4)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/Business/Microsoft_
To answer the question, in the tech industry, it's approx. 6.3%. So yes, it's a little lower.
How many are Indian? How many are Asian? How many are White?
Blinded by color? (Score:4)
Re:"Plantation Mentality"? Welcome to the IT world (Score:4)
Nobody here feels like a slave. None of the MSFT people I've talked to feels like a slave - especially not those who have made millions there.
If you are forced to work a 60 hour week, you should go seek employment elsewhere. If you are oppressed by your manager, passed over for promotion, etc, move on. If you aren't happy, take your skills elsewhere. There are lots and lots of places that need competent people, will treat them right, and pay them well.
$5,000,000,000??? (Score:4)
If you think about it, its like saying that Microsoft have made $5 billion out of these people, and that these people have lost $5 billion because of Microsoft. Maybe these are exceptionally talented individuals, but surely they should only ask for how much they have actually lost?
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:5)
I do not doubt for a second that you have been discriminated against, however the best way to fight discrimination is to not let people think of you as a race/gender/religion but as an individual. Distinguish yourself. Most of my friends are white or indian guys. They talk about "stupid females who got into CS at CMU based on gender," but they don't lump me into that group. Period.
At the risk of sounding racist, I have noticed something about black people in particular, more than indians, chinese, or females, they tend to associate exclusively with members of their race. They are asking to be treated "the same." People who form cliques are not liked by those outside the clique. Think back to high school. Did you like the "popular" people? Did you think all "popular" people were dumb?
It's hard being a female (and I'm sure as bad if not worse being black) in the tech industry, but filing class action lawsuits which lump you back into the same group will do nothing to help.
-Alison
Microsoft != racist, society == racist (Score:5)
To be fair to Microsoft, I don't think this is necessarily indicative of a racist policy at Microsoft. MS may well hire qualified applicants irrespective of race. What it does indicate is a societal problem. I don't know enough black people to have a particularly detailed picture of the challenges they face, but I know enough women to know that from grade school onwards, women are discouraged in various ways from pursuing technical and management careers. I'd be willing to bet blacks face similar pressures.
I was one of a handful of white kids bussed to a predominantly black public school as part of desegregation in Tennessee in the early 80's, and I can say that the mostly black schools I saw were in utter disrepair, short on textbooks, and staffed with teachers who did not compare well to their counterparts in mostly white schools. (In both cases, most of the teachers were white.) Schools in TN are some of the worst in the nation -- I went to what was regarded as the best high school in the area and didn't have to write a single essay in four years -- but the predominately black schools were even worse. We can talk all we want about the role of individual initiative, but not having the opportunity to learn will screw you good.
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Bullshit (Score:5)
I remember one time Jesse Jackson headed to silicon valley to complain about a shortage of blacks being hired.
The resounding response: "Bring 'em in! We are facing a shortage of computer experts and we will hire anybody who is competent!"
oh come on (Score:5)
I worked for MSFT for 4 years and damn - i'd do it again in a second. I've never worked for a compnay that treated it's employees as well. You're going to stay late? Let us order dinner for you..... anything you want to drink. Shuttle buses. Great stock options If you worked your ass off and did good work, expect to get nice fat bonuses (twice annually) and promotions. Nobody I ever met gave a rats ass if you were white, black, purple, straight, gay, male, female, etc. Your work is what mattered - period.
All that aside - racism? Have you seen the racial makeup of any tech company in the US? 'Whites' (whatever that means) are generally in the minority.... in my current company a SUBSTANTIAL minority. People get promoted according to ability, talent, social skills (YES - to manage other people you can't just be a code genius, you have to be able to work with people as well). Just because you are 'qualified' for a promotion doesn't mean you are the MOST qualified. Sorry - that's life.
Don't get me wrong - i'm not about to say that there couldn't possibly be individuals whos actions may be suspect. But they would be just that - individuals. A coroporate racist policy? Give me a friggin break. People forget that MSFT in Redmond is what - 18000 employees? It's a small city! And you'll get the same kind of cross secion of people there that you get anywhere....
And FIVE BILLION? Well, that just speaks for itself...
j
Not a bad deal (Score:5)
--
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:5)
This is true for me too. I'm white. Why do you assume that since all of this happens, that it's racially motivated? This stuff just happens, and it seems to me that office politics is the single most non-discriminatory thing there is.
Again, why do you assume that this is true only for black men on the jobsite? You seem to assume that black people only get on the job through hard work and that everyone else was handed it on a silver platter.
Ok. So your high school didn't challenge you. Which left you with lots of time to do things, like challenge yourself. And it would appear from your own words, that you got something very rewarding from being challenged. My high school challenged me incredibly, but it left me almost no time to do anything else. It would seem to me that we did about the same amount of work. Why assume that you're the only one that worked your A$$ off?
The Look of Surprise (Score:5)
--
OliverWillis.Com [oliverwillis.com]
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:5)
There is obviously racism in our field, because our field is made of PEOPLE, some of whom happen to be racist, or even have subconscious prejudicial tendancies.
The problem with this lawsuit is that it states that microsoft as a _company_ has a corporate policy of discrimination against blacks. This lawsuit isn't saying "there are some bad apples at MS" or "all the people we had to deal with were racist" - it says that "microsoft as a company is run by a secret good old boy network of black-hating people that turn otherwise unbiased managers into agents of the white devil".
How likely do you think that is ?
As someone who has been through Microsoft interviewer training, at what point in the MS hiring process do i get told about the secret "discriminate against blacks" rule ? It sure wasn't in my training packet. It wasn't anywhere listed in the whole section of stuff about actively but tastefully avoiding any questions or issues regarding ethnicity/religion/gender/preference/whatever. As interviewers there are whole lists of things we're not allowed to talk about and anything that could even be used to inferr financial history or caste or racial background or whatever is strictly taboo.
I've worked at a number of tech firms - there is more racial diversity at MS than anywhere else i've worked, both in general and in management.
Although I don't beleive in the government mandating AA programs and quotas, given a hiring choice where all things were equal, if one candidate clearly had an advantage growing up because of racial and financial history, and the other probably had to work _really_ hard against lots of financial and social obsticales, i'd want to try and hire the less priviledged of the two - the one that had to work harder to cover the same distance. But I like to root for the underdog. Unfortuneately, thanks to all the AA and PC stuff thats been forced on institutions, my understanding is that i am not allowed to take into consideration such issues when making those decisions.
Shame really - the very basis to judge who's had the harder climb, a method to really show minorities and those who are disenfranchised with "playing by the rules" that they _can_ win - pulled right out of the whole hiring process.
And for what its worth, I salute you for sticking with it to get to where you are now - I got glimpses of how the black kids at my HS who were really working hard to make the most of their education were treated by others - sometimes whites - but more often than not, the blacks from their very own neighborhoods that seemed to have given up on the system. It was disheartening all around, to say the least.
It's hard to say wether AA type programs or even optional preference given to minorities will do anything to help rekindle the spirit of the kids that see a tunnel with no light at the end. Part of me thinks that people see through AA and minority preference as a cop out, enforcing the idea that minorities _cant_ get ahead without help.
Whats the right answer ? The government says im not allowed to have a preference one way or the other. What do you say ? What should the hiring practice in the tech industry be ?
Racism is Stupid (Score:5)
Very early in my tenure, the hiring criteria was explained to me thus: "it doesn't matter if the candidate goes and pees in the corner of your office in the middle of the interview, if the candidate is a brilliant programmer, we hire him or her". The foolishness of racism or gender bias was even clearer by implication and made explicit through HR training.
Apart from the obvious moral and legal issues, racism is stupid and self-destructive. Success means a lot at Microsoft and discrimination reduces your competitiveness. In my experience, stupid people don't last long at Microsoft.
Obviously Microsoft is a huge company which I left several years ago, and I don't know the specific people involved, but I doubt the corporate culture has changed that much since I was there.
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:5)
Disclaimer: I'm a white guy.
I'm usually surprised to see black guys programming. Why?
At the college I went to (an engineering school) the majority of black men and women attended the liberal arts/Afro-American studies major.
A friend of mine, Tavia, was in the same engineering program as I was. A black woman engineer. She tended to stand out in class :) But, she was an incredibly talented and intelligent person. She got great grades. I often asked her for help, and we worked together on several lab projects. She became friends with a number of the engineering students and we ate lunch together, and just hung out a lot.
The black men and women at our campus tended to eat lunch in their own little cluster in the corner. They took a pretty dim view of Tavia eating lunch with us. They'd come right up to her and say things like "Forget what color you are?" They'd tear decorations off her dorm room door. They physically and verbally harassed her. How can black people who want to advance deal with this kind of pressure? I sure wouldn't know how.
I feel that the black community is just as responsible as the white community for the current conditions.
Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:5)
First, let me be frank: I don't agree with suing for $5billion. Nor do I agree with using the small percentage of MSFT minority workers as leverage. What I DO agree with is the basis behind their argument, which is the EXACT same attitude being reinforced on this board.
Everywhere I've worked (UNIX Systems Admin/Engineering) I've been seen as a remarkably compentent, skilled worker....until I meet the customer face-to-face. Then, suddenly, my decisions are questioned more, people go over my head to ask about things that are my responsibility. Even back to college (University of Michigan), I was faced every day with fellow students who were SO SURE that they were smarter than me, and professors who didn't think that I deserved to be here, assuming that I was only here because of Affirmative Action (I've got that in the workplace as well).
It seems the general consensus among white, male tech workers is that they belong in the industry. If they are up for a promotion against an equally skilled minority, of COURSE they should get the promotion, because they're automatically more skilled. Because the majority of tech managers are ALSO white, this attitude is perpetuated.
Let's set the record straight: My racial group does not choose to be less educated...we simply don't always have access to the same resources growing up as whites. That can't possibly be understood by someone who's never attended public school in a major city (I'm from Detroit). I took freshman EECS with 3 hundred white guys that had been taking C classes since the 9th grade, and the only exposure I'd had to any form of high-level programming was self-taught. Poor K-12 education == Poor SAT/ACT != quality higher education. This uneven playing field is the reason for the small numbers of us in the tech industry.
I'm sick of typing at this point, and I've got Apache modules to code. To sum up, stop with the "Blacks are always complaining...why don't they just get jobs...they have as much access to higher education as we do" crap. Find a black man on your job site, and ask him where he's from, and what high school he attended. I guarantee he's either got parents as priviliged as most of yours, or he worked his ASS off to get to where he is now.
--Just Another Pimp A$$ Perl Hacker
Re:Speaking as a Black Man... (Score:5)
Case in point: When I was taking a high-level operating systems course, the prof randomly assigned us to groups. My group conferred primarily over e-mail, giving each other code examples, arguing about 'better ways' of doing things, etc. I ALWAYS seemed to have the correct answer, so it got to the point where everyone in the group generally agreed with me when I suggested something.
After the midterm, my group got together at the UGLi to go over documentation for an upcoming project. We were supposed to meet in a specific area of the library. My group was there when I got there, and when I got there, they looked up at me, and went right back to what they were doing, like SURELY I wasn't the guy they were waiting on. I introduced myself, and you should have SEEN the look of surprise on their faces.
That's the kind of racism I'm talking about. The automatic assumption that black == less competent.
--Just Another Pimp A$$ Perl Hacker
Re:oh come on (Score:5)
As a past MS intern, I must whole heartedly agree with furiousgeorge. MS does not care about your appearance. All they care about is what you get done and what you'll get done in the future. (Nearly everyday at work I walked around without shoes on... heck, no even cared when I wore my KMFMS [kmfms.com] shirt to work.)
As for the allegations of racial discrimination, all I can say is bah!
The number of Asian people that work for MS is extremely high. In fact my manager was Indian, and half of my team was Chinese. Also my group was at least half female, which is outstandingly high for the tech sector.
Re:Reverse discrimination (Score:5)
I recently moved from Seattle to Washington D.C. and the difference in racial makeup as a whole takes a while to get used to (see below). Whatever the statitistics on programmers' racial makeup might be, the additional statistic that might come into play is the local population as a whole.
Actaully, I just ran to the Census [census.gov] web site and got the following numbers;
Population of Washington State (esitmate): 5756361
Black Population of the state (esitmate): 203853
Percentage: 3.5%
It seems that blacks at Microsoft are slightly "under-represented", but there are so many other variables (education, age, etc., etc.)...
* I would kill for a decent bowl of Pho, an inexpensive vegetarian Phad Thai, or a good sushi restaraunt that doesn't cost an arm and a leg... If they build another goddamned steak house in D.C. I think my colon's gonna blow.
5 BILLion dollars!?!?! I'M THE CA... oops, sorry (Score:5)
As I heard it, it stems from perception of treatment, but as lawyers will do, they play some mean cards when they decide to go for big huge giant money like that. Tossing workforce makeup percentages around, drawing attention to the way one person is treated, overlooking that the same treatment is dished out to everyone, etc.
Reality is, few blacks are in the high tech industry. Period. Has nothing to do with heritage, skin color, religion, etc., but to do with few persuing the skills to the point they would be actively recruited. Perhaps this can be the product of layers of demographics, but you can't blame a company for not hiring enough programmers if most of the applicants decided to study greek literature. It's absurd. And all this bending-over-backward which companies have done to avoid looking racist won't really pay dividends for years.
Down the coast, where Mr. Jesse Jackson raised a big stink, in Silicon Valley, you will find ethnic diversity is the rule. Not because of some quota system, or trying to appease alleged social movement leaders, but because the people brought their skills in and carved out their space. Sadly for some of these complainers, it's not the ethnic diversity they want to see.
I have some serious reservations about the legitimacy of a complaint when I see a party going for enough money to buy the Dakotas.
Maybe they'd have a case if Microsoft forced them to smoke cigarettes...
--
+++ Out Of Cheese Error +++
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++
Racism does exist (Score:5)
If someone has been brought up to think that Black people like me are less intelligent then he is just because of the color of my skin, then the next time I am up for promotion with a White counterpart, even if I might be more qualified than he is, in my superiors eyes, Black people are just not intelligent enough to hold that position, and I will be denied the position. Now, this is Racism. How do I know??? I have experienced it in the Tech field.
All those who are saying that Racism does not exist in the tech field are saying so because they have not experinced it....and would't.
The same goes for stereotypes such as Black people being thought of as being lazy, violent and as one poster put it, the most criminals. Did you ever stop to think how someone felt when he walked into an office for the 1st day at works and was already being treated as if he were lazy or just came out of jail?? Always a suspect when something went missing? answering rediculous questions like "have you ever been to jail?"
Most times it is so subtle that I don't think that most white people realise what they are doing or what effect it has.. but then again thats just me being an optimst. Yes, racism exists.
oh, and the $5B is for the hundreds of former and currnet MS employees, not just 7of them.
*punitive* damages, people (Score:5)
However if we are going to discuss it, we have to at least get the facts straight. First of all, the 7 people are trying to make this a class action suit--which spreads the money out some.
Second, at most importantly, the plaintiffs aren't saying that they personally lost $5 billion due to racism at Microsoft. They want that as *punitive* (means "punishing") damages. If all MS was required to do was give each black person $100k (for lost salary, etc) they wouldn't even notice. The idea is to inflict some pain on the corporation to force them to change.
--
MailOne [openone.com]
Denial : The Enemy Within (Score:5)
First of all, Indians and Asians, though they may still be minorities, do not have the stigmas or problems that blacks and Hispanics do in this country, so pointing at them and saying "see, there's no racism here" is hardly relevant. The fact that these two groups (blacks and Hispanics) are underrepresented in higher income occupations is very serious, and it does not better the situation by shouting out allegations of "reverse discrimination" before their case has even been heard in a court of law. Is the fear that their complaints may actually be justified so overwhelming that it has to be covered up by the web of denial? Please, that is for the justice system to determine. And just remember that every jurer on every court faces that denial as well, which makes their struggles all the more challenging.
Microsoft aside, we face an even bigger problem that 1) blacks and Hispanics live in poorer neighborhoods, 2) blacks and Hispanics are more likely to have undereducated parents, 3) blacks and Hispanics are more likely to go to public versus private schools, 4) living in poorer neighborhoods directly implies substandard educational facilities, 5) computer science is more likely to be taught in college preporatory classes, which are more likely to exclude blacks and Hispanics due to the substandard elementary school facilities, 6) blacks and Hispanics are less likely to make it to college in the first place, 7) get real--show me a list of computer jobs where "bachelors degree" is not a requirement.
And even if one or two are lucky enough to make it through all of those obstacles, they face an even bigger challenge in getting noticed for jobs, promotions, benefits, etc., consciously or unconsciously.
Their case is worth hearing out, we owe them that much. 40 acres and a mule? I'd rather have 40,000 stock options...
Racists suits using percentages are tricky (Score:5)
You can say the same thing for women, there aren't as many women in the computer industry as men, percentage wise.
I think to find their suit substantial, they need something stronger than percentages.
This disturbs me slightly :) (Score:5)
Why, here 5 employees are suing for $5 Billion - Isn't this completely over the top? $50,000 each would be more like it. Doesn't it mean that big companies are in total fear of the very slightest slip up, and are unlikely to take risks and innovate when it could mean that they are likely to lose Billions if it even goes slightly wrong.
Also, I really really find it hard to believe that a company in this day and age would be racist. They are driven by money, and finding the best employee for the job is the absolute bottom line in any company these days.
It'll be very interesting to see more details of this case and see just what happens! ;)