{"id":23051,"date":"2019-04-22T11:52:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T15:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=23051"},"modified":"2019-04-22T11:55:57","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T15:55:57","slug":"microsoft-is-out-of-step-with-silicon-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/22\/microsoft-is-out-of-step-with-silicon-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft is out of step with Silicon Valley?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Microsoft staff are openly questioning the value of diversity” <\/a>(Quartz) quotes from an internal Microsoft discussion forum:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause women used to be actively prohibited from full-time employment many decades ago, there is now the misguided belief that women SHOULD work, and if women AREN\u2019T working, there\u2019s something wrong\u2026. Many women simply aren\u2019t cut out for the corporate rat race, so to speak, and that\u2019s not because of \u2018the patriarchy,\u2019 it\u2019s because men and women aren\u2019t identical, and women are much more inclined to gain fulfillment elsewhere.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

James Damore was the Google heretic<\/em><\/a> <\/em>because he shared the company’s goal of increasing the number of women doing the dreary job of coding, but suggested that they go about the project in a different way. It seems that Microsoft is nurturing actual infidels who reject the entire religion of gender diversity. It is just one step from the above quote to the Harvard undergraduate who told us “I used to want to be an investment banker, but then I realized that I could just marry an investment banker.” (Presumably nobody could survive at the company after asking “Why would an intelligent person want to work 80 hours\/week at Microsoft when having sex with two Microsoft employees can yield roughly the same spending power<\/a>?”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Anecdote: Our suburb is packed with women who have elite professional degrees and yet work part-time or do no W-2 wage labor at all. These women worked full time for 5-10 years following the completion of their education and then, as suggested by the Microsoft infidel, decided to “gain fulfillment elsewhere”. Most of their current spending power is derived from the wages of someone else, either a current spouse or a person whom they sued for alimony and\/or child support.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers: Measured against the coastal elite pillars of faith, are these Microsoft programmers more severely deviant than were the Googlers who questioned the company’s diversity schemes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n