Microsoft diversity policies questioned

From mspoweruser we have a piece on Microsoft employees questioning the need for more diversity in the company.

It is being reported that there are discussions on an internal online messaging board where some Microsoft employees are voicing their opinions about the company’s efforts to employ more women and minorities. The company’s efforts to be more diverse are being called “discriminatory”, and comments on the threads, which now exceed 800, both agree and disagree with the the views of the posts.

“Does Microsoft have any plans to end the current policy that financially incentivizes discriminatory hiring practices? To be clear, I am referring to the fact that senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men,” read one of the posts made by a female engineer.

“We still lack any empirical evidence that the demographic distribution in tech is rationally and logically detrimental to the success of the business in this industry….We have a plethora of data available that demonstrate women are less likely to be interested in engineering AT ALL than men, and it’s not because of any *ism or *phobia or ‘unconscious bias’- it’s because men and women think very differently from each other, and the specific types of thought process and problem solving required for engineering of all kinds (software or otherwise) are simply less prevalent among women. This is an established fact.”