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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.

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".

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

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

[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

[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.