IBM Sues Microsoft's New Chief Diversity Officer To Protect Diversity Trade Secrets (geekwire.com)

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.

Comments

Douchebag manoeuvre

[iTrawl]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[LordKronos]

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. Its a game where everyone can win simultaneously. Likewise, diversity is not supposed to be about competitive advantage, but about the betterment of society and the fair treatment of all people.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[AmiMoJo]

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 to make the numbers look better while also cutting costs and quality.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[alvinrod]

I'm not really sure how a diversity policy helps anything unless you've got a bunch of racists in HR or upper management that are actively refusing to hire minorities and the company is missing out on talented hires because they're discriminating on some basis other than competence. Unless you believe those statistics about women or minorities only making some fractional amount as much as men and assuming they're less expensive to hire which results in this huge profit, I don't see where these huge profits supposedly come from. Perhaps you think consumers care about diversity and will go out of their way to award companies that have diversity policies, but I don't really see that happening either as consumers tend to go for what's cheaper. I suppose if you want to count off-shoring or using H1-B candidates as increasing diversity, then yes it works, but that's just a factor of cost.

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[ckatko]

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/...

>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

[ckatko]

>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 would have automatically prevented this and are 100% fool-proof?

What's the solution? For all you know, they HAD a Diversity Officer.

So I'm honestly, and eagerly, wanting to know what clever trick you know about that would have preemptively prevented this (and not with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight). Because it really sounds like you're just (like most people in SV) saying what you think everyone wants you to say so you can get diversity brownie points for how noble and inclusive you are.

I'm 100% for diversity. But you gotta bring facts to back up your claims. Because simply having "good will" often leads to the opposite of progress.

"In God We Trust, all others present data."

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Better make sure the lawyers aren't all middle aged white men though - as long as that's all covered, then it's all fine.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[cascadingstylesheet]

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

[geekmux]

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".

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Rockoon]

Completely this.

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[AmiMoJo]

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 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 might suddenly get worse and go on long term sick leave. A bit of education and understanding goes a long way. Once a disable person is hired a bit of support (which is legally required anyway in many countries) can help retain them.

To help recruit minority candidates a bit of understanding about why questions like "where are you really from?" are inappropriate goes a long way. Again, it's not really overt racism... The technical term is "microagreession" but that seems to trigger people (oops), so it might be better described as "don't ask the same daft questions they always get asked and respond to with no, really, I'm from Birmingham."

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[jm007]

short and sweet, well said

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[mapkinase]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If diversity benefited the organization than the organization would be diverse. It really is that simple.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[jm007]

calling out the truth is a dangerous game, my friend; despite what everyone says, most can't handle the truth and might consider you a mad dog in need of putting down

I commend you, and hope you continue

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations are perfect and never make mistakes, huh?

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[cardpuncher]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[jellomizer]

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 environment.

For a professional career turnover cost an average of 150% their salary in a year to get a new employee and get them up and running. And each employee who is doing their job is normally an asset to the company who's overall value is greater then their salary, which allows the company to grow and prosper.

With the demographics of the world getting more diverse, good diversity planning is important, unless you want to get stuck and slowly die off.

If IBM had some good plan, they don't want Microsoft to take it from them, IBM spent a lot of resources to come up with such a plan, and it if it is working, it is giving IBM a competitive edge over Microsoft.

That being said, the issues for IBM vs Microsoft in diversity is a bit different. East Coast Companies tend to be overall better with diversity then West Coast companies.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[alvinrod]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

not only the development of new products, but the marketing. Only an all male group of marketers would christen a tablet computer and "iPAD". Why not itab or anything else that doesn't conjure up brands like "Stayfree" and "kotex" in half the population?

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking this through, it's probably an issue with policies or reporting on IBM having moved 10s of thousands of jobs outside of America, while claiming to be an American company.

Outsourcing is diversity:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Having more employees in a country where you were not founded is diverse.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[swb]

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 prospects and look for other factors which may lead to long-term hiring value.

Diversity candidates now represent a minefield. For reasons beyond their control, they've generally had lower-profile education, work experience and don't participate in the social networks associated with finding "good" people. Many of them probably are legitimately less valuable, but probably not "most" and finding the good talent isn't easy and traditional hiring practices just bulk discriminate against all of them.

If you can find a good way to identify quality candidates, you could use it on ANY hiring pool, including white males.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Wycliffe]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Cederic]

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.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations maximize profits.

If it was truly more profitable to hire pregnant women, you'd have companies staffed overwhelmingly with mothers.

They aren't, because obviously it isn't. They demonstrably cost more, and produce less. That's not sexism -- It's a cell in a spreadsheet. They require more time off and are less focused on their job, as a necessity of being a mother. It's not bad. It's not their fault. It's just the way biology and physics are.

The same can be said for diversity efforts. If hiring black women was truly more profitable than asian men, we wouldn't be having this discussion. That's not racism.. It's self-evident. It's cultural. It might even be biological, but we'll never know because it is taboo to research or discuss such forbidden knowledge.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

AmiMojo likes to pretend that Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook, and literally every single successful tech company was built by black lesbians and feminists.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Thanks for the expert legal opinions, and also for explaining in detail how you know fuck all about the laws and legal systems on multiple continents.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Another way to see this is to look at the auto industry and innovations in safety and emissions (even things like better transmissions). Improvements along these lines can have a positive impact for the firm and for the overall populace. If shared the advantage is only for the overall populace and for the firm, not so much (possible residual reputational effects).

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

All women are mothers. And thus should be payed less.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because a job is so complex that it is difficult to formalise does not mean that it should not be done. Or that there cannot be people that are good at it.

The role of a nutrition officer at big companies is not a bad idea, but you'd probably flunk the courses, because you way, way, underestimate the knowledge that is required. Knowledge that is fairly formalised, I should add.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not really sure how a diversity policy helps anything unless you've got a bunch of racists in HR or upper management

A diversity policy is what you get when you already have a bunch of racists in HR or upper management - or at least people willing to bow down to racists. A diversity policy is how they implement their racism.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[AmiMoJo]

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

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Kjella]

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 well that's not really true I do of course look for socially interesting people but if I find out that we have nothing in common and should keep a strictly professional relationship that's cool. If you want to be a bigot, do it on your own time.

Unfortunately the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that now the deviants - for lack of a better word - are the ones playing the bigotry game. Like unless you agree that Adam and Steve is as valid as Adam and Eve I'll raise so much hell you'll be forced to step down. It doesn't matter if they are good social values or bad social values, I think it's fundamentally wrong to blackmail people into altering their social stance - or at least pay lip service to it - through their work relationship. I think the one who can't agree to disagree is the one who should be fired, even when I personally feel they're right.

That doesn't include the right to be a dick though, if Chris wants to be called Christine and addressed as female then call her that even if you on the inside think she's a man with a mental illness who's gone through surgery to cut off his manly bits. I think you're entitled to your opinion, you shouldn't be harmed for voicing it if it's explicitly requested but if you're the one bringing it up it's probably harassment. Everyone should be able to choose what parts of their personal life they bring to the discussion, but if you bring it up as a topic of debate you may get dissenting or negative reactions.

It's amazing how many don't understand that from a freedom of speech perspective a society where you can't have regressive opinions is equally oppressive as a society where you can't have progressive opinions. Not as in a first amendment issue, but as a freedom to form, hold and convey your own opinions. If the lynch mob will hang you from the nearest tree afterwards, there's not really any practical freedom of speech and for most people losing their job is close enough. It doesn't mean that everybody must be your friend and freedom from consequences, but there's being liked and being punished. And very many are eager to punish.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[AmiMoJo]

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 work on diversity, and the various philosophies that incorporate it? Have you never heard of feminism, for example? Never read any papers examining the equal pay gap, complete with formulas for adjusting the raw stats based on education and experience etc?

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

In our company's IT department (which is the only area in my purview), we have a fair amount of diversity - both women and minorities - but for some teams including mine there hasn't been any interest for our open positions in the US except by white males. Our teams responsibilities seemingly aren't cool to most people (we're not a development team), and I can't help but think that maybe the pool of diverse applicants maybe isn't large enough to spread to our team in our physical location.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[whoever57]

Yeah, this should not be about a corporate competitive advantage, but about the betterment of society.Yeah, this should not be about a corporate competitive advantage, but about the betterment of society.

And another reason to live in California where non-compete agreements are illegal (with very few exceptions).

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

calling out the truth is a dangerous game, my friend; despite what everyone says, most can't handle the truth and might consider you a mad dog in need of putting down

Don't worry, AmiMoJo and Servicescope blew all their sockpuppet mod points late last week. Just look at the moderation spread on this article. Both aren't at +3 or +4 ten minutes after posting like last week.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[qaz123]

>>Corporations are perfect and never make mistakes, huh?

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.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep beating the "Damore was wrong" drum, but nowhere in your post history is any actual refutation. You just keep saying he was wrong.

You were fainting and clutching pearls over the memo when Gizmodo tricked you into thinking it was unsourced and with no citations. You've never apologized or mea culpaed for being wrong about that... You've just doubled down on your lie, over and over and over, repeating the same thing as though it absolves you of your
blatant falsehoods.

His memo was an informed opinion, as internal feedback, and a personal interpretation. It wasn't supposed to be a scientific white paper like you want to pretend. It also stated basic facts that anyone who isn't a far left psychopath already knows: Men and women are not biologically identical.

No amount of squealing and ranting on your part will ever change that.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

> A lot of people worry that having a disabled person work for/with them will be costly,

I take you have never priced the cost of either a11y software, or a11y hardware.

To enable a blind person to use our computer network, we ended spending an additional US$9,000 for hardware and software. I thought that was excessive, but the A11Y tech installer said that we were getting inexpensive equipment. He typically installs hardware that comes in at a US$25,000. Software can be easilly double the cost of the hardware.

Were the local motel to hire a blind person, they would spend a minimum of US$500,000 for new hardware. Everything in both front office and back office would have to be replaced. They simply don't have the net profit that would justify a business loan for that expenditure.

As such, small business owners do have legitimate reasons to not want to hire disabled individuals.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I can understand how it might get bothersome if it happens as often as you imply, but I think it's best interpreted as a friendly gesture. I might ask such a thing as a conversation ice breaker, or just being curious in a friendly sort of way, and I would certainly hope not to be annoying. It's just a way to say, "I'm interested enough in you to ask more", which seems like a good thing.

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.

I also think it's best not to interpret motives as such, and wonder how you could know their trying to hide it. I really can't imagine people care that much whether or not you're a Muslim, other than maybe as a conversation point similar to the above. Seriously, other than their saying "I'm concerned you're Muslim", how could you possibly know what people are trying to hide? Maybe their lunch didn't agree with them and you're misreading their intestinal discomfort.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[gbjbaanb]

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!

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[alvinrod]

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

[Headw1nd]

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:

1. A. Make sure relevant laws and rules are followed
2. B. Oversee education to help employees understand the importance of following the rules
3. C. Demonstrate a good faith effort on the part of the company when the rules are inevitably broken

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[apoc.famine]

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.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

aka SJW Mob

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Xenographic]

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, well-studied & supported scientific claims happen to be "sexist" so I wonder if we can even do science now.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you joke. Samsung had an issue where facial recognition asked Asian people to stop squinting. It wasn't because of muh diversity their software has issues with this.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

I like when people talk about the absolute best because this absolute best only exists on paper. In the real world so called skills and talent measures don't necessarily lead to any measurable performance differences. In reality most companies hire based on culture and fit, with skills and talent coming in second. . Fit and culture however is biased to favor the norm in a company and therefore, unfortunately it is necessary to provide additional incentives for diverse hiring practices.

I know it is popular to assume that the only reasons minorities are not hired for jobs is because they aren't as "skilled" as the White male majority but this is just BS.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If two people dropped because they thought he was wrong, how many others (men or women) dropped because they think he is right? Of course in any public conversation the others would be considered misogynist and get fired, so they aren't likely to raise their hand to be counted.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[cascadingstylesheet]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution-style optimization strategies tend to get stuck in local optimums. If everyone is doing things the same way, there is no pressure to change, but more pressure to do it the same way.

Currently we are seeing a shift towards diversity, which is part of the natural selection process, too. We'll see if it'll produce a more stable outcome or whether it'll eventually get tilted to some direction.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[JackieBrown]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

In reality it's probably more like the police chief succeeded by racially profiling suspects, and now that that police chief has moved to another city the mayor is worried that he no longer has any way to exert pressure to prevent the chief from blabing about how the first city is racially profiling suspects.

That is, chances are the "secret" here is "always hire the candidate that bumps your lowest score regardless of relative competence past having the right on paper credentials". Or something similarly counter to the actual stated goal of the social movements that have been applauding the results of the method without knowing the means.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent example of right wing logical capabilities. It's equivalent to saying "If unhealthy people die, then all living people are healthy". It's perfectly and obviously false, even to kindergarteners with no formal logic training, yet the entire base of Trump's support can't understand how that works.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[HornWumpus]

MS can avoid overpaying Jesse Jackson by knowing what IBM's payoff amount was.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory the idea is that if the people doing the hiring are including a bias like "lighter skinned people are smarter" they may misclassify the stronger candidate as the weaker candidate by judging their interview more harshly on the assumption that they'd be the worse caidate and not seeing strong enohg contrary evidence to overcome the bias.

A more subtle and realistic case would be if the interviewer is asking "clueless white guy" questions which annoys the candidate, and the candidate doesn't laugh at the interviewers cultural references gets written off as "abrasive, stuffy and unpersonable" when really they were just annoyed at hearing the same dumb questions every clueless white guy asks and didn't get the jokes. Meanwhile the another candidate who wasn't asked the racially motivated questions and has more shared culture with the interviewer comes off as 'warm and friendly".

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[liquid_schwartz]

...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/...

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you're not smart enough to understand something doesn't mean everyone else is too. The fact that even Damore's citations called him out as wrong never seems to affect your cherry-picking either.

You must come to grips with reality, the one we ALL live in. Not the manufactured one you wish to exist in. Damore was wrong, everyone knows it, and white men just look like even bigger idiots by clinging to his shitty memo. I've personally turned down men who thought highly of him during interviews, because it's quite well known he was a shitty engineer too, we don't need a shitty attitude to go with it.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Aighearach]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

If the QA team had a black guy on it they'd be a lot more likely to catch bugs related to the system failing to identify dark skinned individuals.

The Diversity Officer's job is to make sure the QA team has a black guy. (or less stupidly to ensure the training data set included pictures of black people, and that "works the full variety of naturally occurring human skin tones" is in the requirements documents).

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[c6gunner]

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

[c6gunner]

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?

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Aighearach]

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!

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not. Any literature that doesn't glorify the white man and entitle him to the fruits of all women and other men is cultural marxism aka communism.

I wish I was joking, but the recent firings I've had to make because of provable incompetency said roughly this: "Cultural marxism is why you're firing me! Jews did it!"

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Aighearach]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unfortunately he got it so catastrophically wrong that he actually put women off working for Google"

The women who got more upset were apparently more uh, neurotic...

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong. The problem is that though the overall profit goes up, the profit to those in the establishment goes down. Much of their profit is mystique-based and thus easily threatened.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[frank_adrian314159]

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 sure where the "scaring off" part comes in - withholding one's custom when one is displeased with a company's behavior seems to me to be a prudent and rational response to that information.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[AmiMoJo]

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

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[AmiMoJo]

It's a good business model not to dump toxic waste into the river because of government regulation.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because there is a single natural technology success story that started with two black trans lesbians working out of their garage...

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a woman, I'm not white, and his memo is spot on.

You don't speak for us. You speak for yourself only, and badly at that.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Triklyn]

controversy is almost never good. introduces variability into the profit model.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Source on him being a shitty engineer?

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[thePsychologist]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[thePsychologist]

You are dead wrong here.

Sorry to say, but there is a huge profit to be made from diversity. I don't know about the corporate level, but it's true at the college level. Colleges, especially the liberal arts ones, are promoting diversity big time because catering to groups that have lower education levels (for whatever reason) is a great new source of tuition.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[jellomizer]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

And if diversity made corporations more competitive, we would see ...

... corporations sue each other when a diversity officer from one corporation threatened to take profitable diversity strategies from one corporation to another.

Like in a natural selection process. But this is not happening.

Where natural selection fails, humans have the capacity to intervene to their advantage. Think about that the next time you bite into an apple.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a woman, I'm not white, and his memo is spot on.

You could be a muslim, lesbian, pink and green spotted extra-terristrial and it would no more repair the illogicalities, factual errors and biases of Danmore's memo. Soz.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[c6gunner]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely the salient point of firing Danmore was that his sacking, in itself, constitutes discrimination against those living with a disability. How many other socially retarded engineers would have been turned off even applying for Google after that?

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[jader3rd]

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 that box of. It's zero sum for all companies involved.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

If diversity benefited the organization than the organization would be diverse. It really is that simple.

It really isn't.

Eg. If I offered you the choice between a cheque on the table for $1mill or taking a chance at picking a cheque from an envelope which you know is made out either to the sum of $100 or $2mill and you took the $1mill, it would not follow, as you claim,* that the hidden cheque was made out for $100. [*"if the hidden cheque was made out to a higher amount than $1million then AC would have chosen it."] You are making the unwarranted assumption of perfect knowledge and failing to take risk aversion into account. Then there's the fact that actual humans hiring don't neatly obey the predictions of abstract economic theory.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

If you claim they are wrong then the memo is built on flawed studies.

There's no real reason to make this assumption.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[ShoulderOfOrion]

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.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

this is anti profit. dump waste in people mouths!

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no real reason to make this assumption.

It wasn't an assumption it was a deduction, and a rather irresistible one at that. You cannot validly claim statement A to be both T and F at the same time, no matter how pressing your ideological requirements.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

Top graduating nutritionist masters degree programs in the US for 2017 are at Boston University, Cornell, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins Center for Human Nutrition. Let me know how rigorous they are...if you can get into one.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[AmiMoJo]

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 less suited to the job and then debunking yourself with studies is probably an unrecoverable position. "I meant well but screwed up massively" isn't much of an argument against being fired.

This is quite a common flaw in many self-proclaimed rationalist arguments. You see it on YouTube, Reddit and Slashdot all the time. They have already formed an opinion, so they go googling for evidence. They find a paper, skim the first page and see that it seems to confirm their beliefs, and claim they have scientific proof. Typically if you actually read the paper it's much less conclusive or actually debunks them. King of rationals Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon) does this every single time without fail. It's actually quite incredible, until you realize that the gallery people like him are playing to don't bother check sources either.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[JD-1027]

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

[Kielistic]

Quote where he said "less suited"

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[cthulhu11]

There can be a surprising degree of unconscious bias, so I think there's some benefit in actively examining recruiting and hiring. Do recruiters happen to work mostly with mostly-white colleges? Does a demand for unnecessary relocation discriminate against people who aren't single 20-somethings?

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[Anonymous Coward]

... men and women differ in part due to biological causes and ... these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership

It's right near the top of the memo. What is being argued is that it is not (necessarily) discrimination but biological differences (i.e. women are by nature less suited to those jobs) that account for observed differences.

Re: Douchebag manoeuvre

[dcw3]

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 because those harmed are just older white males.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[dcw3]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[dcw3]

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.

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[dcw3]

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".

Re:Douchebag manoeuvre

[dcw3]

Crap, responded to the wrong message...above.

Misunderstanding

[Anonymous Coward]

The corps really don't get the concept of social responsibility. It's not going to end well.

wait what?

[ganjadude]

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?)

Re:wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are secretly doing something illegal, for diversity reasons, that would be something they would want to keep secret.

Re:wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That their staff are now 50% Indian, 30% other Asian, 19% White, and 1% Black I would guess?

Re:wait what?

[alvinrod]

I don't think a chief diversity officer who was either personally responsible or at least culpable in those illegal actions would be in any hurry to divulge those activities, unless they're getting paid by Microsoft to do essentially the same and IBM is worried about MS stealing some of their pie.

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.

Re:wait what?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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 her back, one guy turned into a diverse Newt, but he got better, and Schrödinger's cat died in the process

Re:wait what?

[swb]

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?

[Woodmeister]

"...and Schrödinger's cat died in the process."
Again? Yeesh.

Re:wait what?

[qzzpjs]

No, they just don't want everyone knowing that they were using a magic 8 ball.

Re:wait what?

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, based on some of my experiences with Quality Managers, the purpose of the Diversity Officer is to find a way to cover up the ways in which you discriminate against certain groups. I have recently discovered that the purpose of a Quality Manager is NOT to ensure the quality of your production. Rather their purpose is to put into place systems and procedures designed to disguise the fact that you don't give a crap about quality. I saw a situation where the Quality Manger did not CARE that the products going out the door were terrible as long as all of the boxes on the proper forms were checked and the right people had signed them. The fact that following those procedures failed to catch the quality defects was irrelevant. It was the Sales and Marketing guys who insisted that people change what they were doing in order to make sure that the stuff going out the door would perform as the customer expected. The Quality Manager fought them on those changes because they would make it harder to pass the Quality Standards audits.

Re:wait what?

[tlhIngan]

Actually, based on some of my experiences with Quality Managers, the purpose of the Diversity Officer is to find a way to cover up the ways in which you discriminate against certain groups. I have recently discovered that the purpose of a Quality Manager is NOT to ensure the quality of your production. Rather their purpose is to put into place systems and procedures designed to disguise the fact that you don't give a crap about quality. I saw a situation where the Quality Manger did not CARE that the products going out the door were terrible as long as all of the boxes on the proper forms were checked and the right people had signed them. The fact that following those procedures failed to catch the quality defects was irrelevant. It was the Sales and Marketing guys who insisted that people change what they were doing in order to make sure that the stuff going out the door would perform as the customer expected. The Quality Manager fought them on those changes because they would make it harder to pass the Quality Standards audits.

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:wait what?

[RightwingNutjob]

Maybe they invented twelve new proprietary genders.

Re:wait what?

[HornWumpus]

Knowing what IBM paid to make the charges go away will help MS negotiate with the likes of Jesse Jackson.

Re:wait what?

[Attila Dimedici]

The quality system I was talking about had nothing to do with consistency either (and it was for a product which was supposed to stand up to just about everything that could be thrown at it and still survive). The Quality Manger was perfectly happy sending out units which would fail before the warranty expired, as long as they passed the inspections as described in the quality procedures. Change the procedures to make sure the products actually last through warranty? Why would we do that? Those procedures would make it harder to get our quality certifications.

Re:wait what?

[supremebob]

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.

Re:wait what?

[supremebob]

Knowing IBM, they’ll somehow find a way to patent them.

Re:wait what?

[drinkypoo]

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

Re: wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

crimes are not protectable as trade secrets

Shipping jobs out

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect they don't publish a lot of this due to the fact that people will see how many US jobs they have shipped out to Asia, South America and Eastern Europe; wherever cheap labor can be found.

The 7th Seal has been Broken

[turp182]

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.

Oh good, it's the 2 minute hate

[Macthorpe]

I cannot wait for the Slashdot comments on this one - I wonder how long it'll be until some AC says that 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.

Re:Oh good, it's the 2 minute hate

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Oh good, it's the 2 minute hate

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like something that Watson would do.

Re:Oh good, it's the 2 minute hate

[Anonymous Coward]

About four minutes. Can I have a cookie?

alternate headline

[OzPeter]

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:alternate headline

[Greyfox]

If it's a competing activity. What trade secrets are at risk here? If she was a diversity person at IBM, I'm gonna guess that IBM's diversity secrets are "Hire white dudes, outsource to countries where people are brown." If she was doing anything else at IBM, well, IBM and Microsoft haven't really been competitors since IBM scrapped OS/2. They very specifically chose not to compete with Microsoft. Microsoft's OSes for the most part does not run on any IBM hardware platforms anymore. Not since IBM sold their laptop business. If IBM still makes any PC hardware, their market penetration is laughable. I mean, IBM might still have Lotus Notes (Haven't worked there since 2005, but I could see them hanging onto that turd for another couple decades,) but no one actually runs that thing other than IBM. And IBM and Microsoft can't be competing over a server market that Linux dominates. So where's the no-compete violation?

Top Secret diversity trade secrets - leaked list

[Hal_Porter]

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

They are trying to steal our precious minorities

[Headw1nd]

Mr. President, we must not allow a diversity gap!

Companies only care about profits

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

I call HR diversity a lot of federally mandated BS like affirmative action -- it was useful for its time, and now a wasted time suck..

Token hires to meet diversity guidelines means we have racially slanted management. 20 years, ago, maybe more true, yet must most of those old foggies and deadwood with 30s, 40s, 50's and 60's mentality are dead or dying - thank goodness.

I have been the at the end of that HR token briefing to C-level and middle management meetings and basically smirked at HR to get the hell out of the way and let us do our job. HR is just the cops of the company, a tool, a service, not the boss or owner.

When HR gets pushing, time to outsource them and remind them who runs and owns the company - and since they are a non-core service and non-revenue generator they can be of value at arms length.

Happy Presidents Day..

Re:Companies only care about profits

[gbjbaanb]

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.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[The Cynical Critic]

Diversity can be a huge asset. There is plenty of evidence that having people with different backgrounds and ideas

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. I point this out because a lot of people misuse this diversity proof as proof that superficial diversity is a good thing and should be pursued trough quotas, different standards and other ultimately counter-productive means. 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.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

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 remain functional. Perhaps once the right realizes they've been dumbing down their base for politic reasons and hurting them in the process, the trend will change and we'll see more right leaning individuals in high tech jobs again.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

s/conservatives\/right wingers/blacks and you can find where he got the material for that post from a KKK website via a google search.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[sjbe]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Race as in skin/hair/eye phenotype certainly is superficial.
Sexual orientation is irrelevant unless you're planning on having sex with your co-workers. and tehre's separate harassment and fraternization policies for that.
Sex is more than superficial but accounting for it is illegal because in the cases where it maters it's almost never better to hire a woman.

Culture, is not superficial and while there are cultural trends correlated with all those superficial traits they're not actually caused by them. Hiring the dark skinned guy may be more likely to get you a hip-hop fan who is the first generation in his family to attend college either of which might bring an additional point of view to the team, but it's hardly guaranteed.

Re: Companies only care about profits

[c6gunner]

"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:Companies only care about profits

[erapert]

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.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahahahahah, best trolling ever!!

Re:Companies only care about profits

[rtb61]

Lets be honest here. Diversity is a pain in the neck and provides way, way more hassle than it is worth. You know what kind of diversity officer I would deem logical and worth while. The kind that could fend off the freaks, those on the outside and those on the inside (quietly fire them). All this for an external appearance, for making, the company, well, when it comes to diversity basically invisible. Why tame the freaks, let the other companies deal with the idiots, they always create more losses than benefits.

Most important question for a company with new staff, how readily do you fit in with others, how easy to get on with are you, you have special needs yes or no (and yes means no), how stoic are you, how agreeable are you, how comfortable, are you masturbating so you leave everyone else the fuck alone (the last one, the other side of the debate).

Uniformity, it simply works better and anything else is a lie (not in every aspect but certainly the ones that allow your company and it's staff to function smoothly). Want some diversity contract it out and let them deal with the bullshit. When you no longer need that bit of diversity contract expires and done, never even needed to be in you safe, stable, uniform workplace, because freaks always cause problems, ALWAYS).

I don't seem to remember hearing much about IBM and diversity issues, perhaps they have some really great PR=B$=Diversity policies in place. The only quota that makes any sense 100% of staff work well togethor, DONE.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex is more than superficial but accounting for it is illegal because in the cases where it maters it's almost never better to hire a woman.

Perhaps where physical strength is required, but what about coding or other intelligence based pursuits where women possess the clear biological advantage over the male? Now that the cultural restraints which traditionally kept women in their place have been gradually eroded one need not look too far (eg academic results among the younger generations) to see the writing on the wall: Left to its own devices (that is without the imperative to maintain approx 50% men in the workforce) the market would eventually see almost all lawyers, doctors and other intellectual professionals as women, with men being relegated to increasingly obsolescent menial physical labour.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

... results in better outcomes for companies.

And look at how that turned out for Damore.

That just proves OP's point. Sloughing off Danmore resulted in in better outcome for Google.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe it. Your thinking has a very narrow focus, especially when it comes to logic and problem solving.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you so sure you're not the one cherry picking evidence?

HUH?

Re: Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

"Diversity" is now a polite way to say "hire more white women to meet quotas, plus a handful of black people to look good on the company website".

Do you think any of those diversity officers fast-track the hiring of morbidly obese Aboriginal lesbians moving around in a Walmart scooter? Of course not. It's all about white women, just look at Microsoft's new chief diversity officer.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Does that include the postmodernist take on logic? The people that invented logic, and logicians today, are among the most conservative in academia.

I believe conservatives have placed themselves out of high tech roles because their world view necessarily must discard actual logic to remain functional.

Here's the trick kid, the vast majority of engineers are conservative and they are smart enough to keep quiet in this age of witch hunts.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[wyHunter]

That's interesting, I know many, many conservatives in high tech roles. Clearly it would benefit you to leave the San Jose bubble.

Re:Companies only care about profits

[dcw3]

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.

Hire the best.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thatâ(TM)s how you get diversity. Donâ(TM)t pay any attention to gender race or anything either positively or negatively and you will get a group of people with diverse backgrounds cultures and world views.

How is that proprietary?

Maybe in an ideal world...

[Anonymous Coward]

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 will get deported if they make a single mis-step.

Re: Maybe in an ideal world...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a perfect world mean diversity? What happened to the good old strategy of hiring the best people available for the job, regardless of their gender or race? Are we becoming a phony society?

Diverse Bacon

[Anonymous Coward]

If diversity officers get re-hired too soon that would that be chop suey?

Re:Top Secret diversity trade secrets - leaked lis

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think any these steps would be very effectiv, so it's a good thing no real companies have implemented them. Or do you have any solid evidence that this is based on real events?

The fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

No you wouldn't. There's plenty of money to be lost by running afoul of the stupidity of the "diversity" crowd.

And it is stupidity. You want to build the best and most profitable corporation possible? Then you hire the best people you can, regardless of race, sex or creed.

But of course, we can't do that, because MUH DIVERSITY - which is a sham to begin with. It has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with filling quotas, and damn the qualifications.

Secret Batsauce

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy B@(^%@!^^ batman! She's gonna leak our secret sauce!

We better stop her right now.. if she spreads this sauce everywhere, they might get confused and think that diversity is suppose to support equal opportunity!!!
And by Mel Gibsons old tunic, i'll be damned if our system would improve social integration!!!!

Short-term greed IS harmful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do pray tell ... where are future slaves ... err, I mean "employees" supposed to come from, without women getting pregnant?
Where are mothers supposed to come from, when women see that they won't get hired when they want to get pregnant?
Germany already has this problem. We barely have children anymore.
And then they are surprised, when immigrants replace them.
Al least those immigrants do something to populate our country! (And since corps are obsessed with infinite exponential growth, even tough that by definition can only end in catastrophe, immigrants, willing to consume and slave away, are very very welcome to ALL of them.)

It's the same idiotic conecpt again, that we see with everyone paying his slaves peanuts, and then being surprised that corporate income goes down.
Who the hell do they think is supposed to pay for their products then?

Business and money are good ideas. Capitalism and profit are cancers.

Re: Short-term greed IS harmful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice strawman. At no point did the post you replied to discuss the ethics or morality of hiring practices.

The assertion was that diversity is profitable. The parent post refuted that assertion.

You attacked a point nobody made, because you couldn't refute the point that was.

Re: Short-term greed IS harmful.

[c6gunner]

Where are mothers supposed to come from, when women see that they won't get hired when they want to get pregnant?

From stay-at-home moms with hard working husbands, like god intended!

And from welfare-for-life trailer trash with a fridge full of beer and a disdain for condoms, like progressives intended.

Re: Short-term greed IS harmful.

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post actually refuted nothing, and that is quite obvious. The point is 100% valid; you can't discard an obvious externality because of spherical cows or some nonsense like that. This is why nobody can hire right wingers for high tech jobs anymore...

Re: Short-term greed IS harmful.

[Anonymous Coward]

corp profits are breaking ath all the time. salaries breaking atls

Write your own

[Provocateur]

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.

Re:Top Secret diversity trade secrets - leaked lis

[Anonymous Coward]

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 carefully trashing the program they were trying to promote for rather important business reasons. For one, Google and its rivals are regularly being bashed for lack of progress in workforce diversity. They want to sell their products and services to everyone, not just to white men.

It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretend you were IBM. And this is your thought process:

Wepaid a bunch of guys in HR to come up with, hiring policies or a code of conduct. They sat down for man-months to put that together. One of them leaves with a copy. But you forget it's our property.
 
Here's a suggestion: Pay a couple of your HR guys to write your own hiring policies. Is that so hard?

hall-monitor Spock

[epine]

As a general proposition among neoliberals who have poured clarified butter over Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations while pushing Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments off to the broccoli side of the ideological plate, corporations only care about the betterment of society insofar as it also helps their bottom line.

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 definition was total baloney.

———

Anthony Gill on Tipping — November 2017

Russ Roberts: I don't want to miss our conversation about tipping in places you never expect to come back to.

Why is it that people tip in restaurants they'll never come back to, cabs they'll never be in again?

And of course many people listening to this would say, 'Only an economist would think this is a puzzle'. But, go ahead.

Anthony Gill: Yeah, it seems like such a horrible thing. But I think only an economist who hasn't read Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments would think that a problem.

Apparently, man invented the corporation so that we could shed our best impulses, once and for all.

Every other human assembly is judged the caliber of people involved; but corporations run true to blood type: green. Only, and always.

———

One of the great things about Spock was his clarity of categorical perception, without constantly being filtered through some half-misremembered Vulcan blowhard.

I would have also enjoyed hall-monitor Spock, who constantly upbraided McCoy by responding "yes, but so-and-so also said X in another book".

And then McCoy would reply "damn your green eyes".

Re:hall-monitor Spock

[Aighearach]

That's what your hand said!

Duration correlation?

[GrahamJ]

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.

Re:Top Secret diversity trade secrets - leaked lis

[Anonymous Coward]

Damore very rightly pointed out that the program was trash and a huge lie. Had Google not been engaging in bullshit faux diversity shenanigans in the first place, there would have been nothing to call them out on.

Transparency

[Locke2005]

The only reason why you wouldn't want everybody to know how you manage diversity is that you know your system is broken and doesn't work, and that anybody analyzing it could also figure that out.

Re:Ever notice that

[Locke2005]

CDOs are for show, not for actual results (diversity is a cost center, not a profit center). They should ALL be crippled Hispanic black lesbian midgets!

Old grudges die hard

[Locke2005]

IBM: still pissed off that Microsoft copied the unsuccessful OS/2 to make Windows!

Re:Top Secret diversity trade secrets - leaked lis

[HornWumpus]

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.

Re: "There are huge profits to be made from divers

[Anonymous Coward]

You're making (often repeated) claims for which there is next to no supporting evidence. Cite the studies or stop making these baseless claims.

IBM is...

[theendlessnow]

IBM is diverse, innovative and building a smarter planet.

I used to work for IBM, and there were a million posters saying so (in other words, verified).

It's a secret?

[gabrieltss]

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!

Just lower your standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any "strategy" besides just lowering your standards?

"Diversity" is fake agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody running a business gives a shit about diversity. This is a Rothschild agenda. Nobody has any diversity "secrets" either because companies are clearly over-hiring brain-dead H-1Bs from Asia to push whites out on purpose. They are practicing demographic changes that are eventually going to be forced on the rest of the U.S. population. Slashdot is hilarious with this fake news and a big hand up its ass like a true sock puppet. Give us 1998 Slashdot over this SJW crap.

Bingo

[Anonymous Coward]

Tech corporations generally just launder central bank money and experiment on destructive demographic change with their large unnecessary and incompetent hires from overseas. Only a few small teams in each such corporation are actually doing the heavy lifting. If you identify and poach those teams, you take down the whole thing. They are ripe for small competitors to destroy them with their own development tools and to hang them with their own weight. P.S. Net Neutrality is an attempt by government to leverage ISPs to censor free speech directly, rather than having to do it by themselves with all the legal paperwork and procedure.

They're hiding their offshoring practices.

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM is shipping every job it can to India, Singapore, China etc. countries with piss poor records on civil rights. BTW: Hiring for diversity means not hiring for skills/experience. Skin tone isn't a skill. If you are more qualified and you get passed over for someone because they are a different skin tone you are experiencing diversity first hand.

Re:Lost.

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the white guy who got replaced by a brown person and is still bitter that his skin color couldn't guarantee him a job.

Citation needed

[Kartu]

There is plenty of evidence that having people with different backgrounds and ideas results in better outcomes for companies.

Results of numerous academic studies of the topic suggest that the presence of more female board members does not much improve — or worsen — a firm’s performance. In this opinion piece, Wharton management professor Katherine Klein summarizes academic research on the topic and discusses the possible reasons and implications for these surprising findings. Klein is also the vice dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative

Research on this subject ins't too consistent either: “Rigorous, peer-reviewed studies suggest that companies do not perform better when they have women on the board. Nor do they perform worse.”

In Related News

[Anonymous Coward]

The tailors who fashioned the Emperor's New Clothes are being sued by their former employer, Duke Narcissus, who claims IP ownership of the design used for said New Clothes.

Seriously, though, Chief Diversity Officer? That is an EVP-level position in tech companies, now? Fuck me.

I used to be bitter about being forced out of tech due to ageism but, damn, reading stuff like this makes me think I should count myself lucky to be out. You people have gone bat-shit insane. I can't imagine what a joy-crushing, soul-sucking experience tech is now.

Re:Top Secret diversity trade secrets - leaked lis

[Anonymous Coward]

False.

Damore wrote an internal communication upon request. It never had to leave the company. It was the choice to release to public that put the employer in an undesired position.

IBMs idea of diversity

[h8sg8s]

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

[herbierobinson]

This sounds like retaliation for something we do not know the details of...