Microsoft tries, fails to crush 'gender bias' lawsuit brought by its own women engineers

Re: Always a one-sided story

The issue is whether Slurp has enough real evidence to have case tossed. The judge ruled they so far have not shown enough. Given the arrogance of Slurp and their incompetent (more accurately criminal) HR systems there is a very real possibility these suits have merit.

Re: Always a one-sided story

"Sure, it could be true. But it could also be an issue of people who got it into their head that they 'deserve' a positive promotion and will now start blaming everything except themselves."

This is all fine until you start looking at how groups work and, in particular how covert or hidden bullying works. A new member of staff doesn't even need to have done anything wrong to be subject to covert bullying. Their only "mistake" is say to have been appointed to a team where the manager, irrespective as to how effective they are, happens to be managing a project that has internal political pressure on it and divided opinions as to the usefulness of the project. Those who dislike that project or that manager will tend to transfer those feelings onto anyone assigned to that team.

Sad to say it doesn't take much to get otherwise reasonable and social people to join in with such back biting. As it is covert the object of the attacks will struggle to work out what is actually going on. This type of situation will inevitably skew any peer review system against the person concerned without them knowing that anything is afoot. Even if that person is then placed in another team.

Sure, it can be down to whining women and gender politics but then again maybe that Trump - Billy Bush video indicates that maybe women have a point. There *are* plenty of ways to exclude women from the type of male bonding that takes place in all-male gatherings. Gatherings that can take place in work time when women on the team are not present. Gatherings that strengthen a male bias in a team by encouraging the airing of negative comments about women.

Re: Always a one-sided story

You've completely missed the point. The plaintiffs are alleging that statistically speaking women are invariably ranked downwards in the their performance reviews compared to men. If its true that can only be the product of bias either conscious or unconscious. "sides of the story" dont come into it in this case as its potentially about all females not the expecations of one or two.

Of course that doesnt rule out demographics and other measures impacting the underlying populations but its certainly not worth dismissing it out of hand.

I really hope that's just a few little typos and not an accurate portrayal of how long it takes the Reg to post a story. :)

I think you misunderstood the article - the dates quoted are, if you like, the "statute of limitations" on the case. In other words, the Judge has said that any evidence dated from Sept 14 2012 onwards will be admissable in the eventual trial (whether the evidence is valid, is of course, for the actual trial to decide). The plaintiffs had requested an earlier cut-off date, which makes me suspect that in at least one of their cases, the "I didn't get the promotion" incident occurred sometime soon after May 2011.

Shame on you for thinking that the Reg would ever be late to file a story! Repent, O ye of little faith!

Re: Unequal opportunities

"as the BOFH said once. You can do the job? You are in. For me this whole age/sex/orientation/whatever is not interesting in a professional context (and if people behave professionally)."

I feel the same. If you have the experience, and can do the job... no matter your sex/age/whatever, as long as the job get done and is done properly.

Re: Flawed assumptions

The entire case is based on the assumption that all men are misogynist and therefore their peers will discriminate against them in these reviews

Flawed assumptions indeed.

The case is based on the assumption that all other things being equal, people tend to prefer members of the same social group. Depending on how and where you were brought up and lived, the specific group boundaries may differ - however, they will always be present. This is a perfectly natural and often useful bias, and it takes a conscious effort to suppress it in situations where it is not approapriate. This effort can be made easier or harder (and therefore more or less effective) by organizing the evaluation in different ways.

The plaintiffs in this case clearly feel that their employer did not do enough to make the process fair. Without knowing the details of the case, it is impossible to tell whether they are right - however, the trial judge, who is in the position to assess all evidence, seems to agree that there is a case to answer.

Re: Flawed assumptions

Your maths is wrong there.

Negative inputs by misogynists are not 'balanced out' by normal guys, but merely diluted by them.

If you have two identical candidates, a man and a woman, who are reviewed by ten peers, and one of those peers is a misogynist, then all else being equal the man will get the better review because the misogynist poisons the well, however slightly. If those two candidates were competing for a post, then that slight disadvantage becomes a binary loss of opportunity.

Microsoft may have had a tricky problem in that in an overwhelmingly male environment, inevitably the few females were reviewed by mostly male peers, and the above problem would (not could) manifest itself. However Microsoft could (at least after being alerted to the problem) have taken reasonable steps to reduce it, such as ensuring feedback was not anonymous, including 'dotted line' review processes where people of similar skills but in different teams participated in review processes, etc.

Such an approach would help all bullying, not just sexism, so isn't positive discrimination or the like.

Hopefully it's clear that all of the above applies regardless of the actual merits of these three individual women.

Re: What performance metrics?

Unkind. Very unkind. Although.....

>So because this 20% chance doesnt come to fruition for 3 people (which doesnt even meet the minimum number required for a 20% chance to actually pay off once), it's automatically gender bias, rather than skills bias.

That is assuming that the selection is entirely random, or all are equally skilled and productive. If one of the female engineers where indeed better than their male colleagues, then this would bring her into contention for the role. That again is assuming that the promotion is solely based on their technical ability and ability to deliver. Itmay well be that the position that they will be promoted to will need other skills that they may not have exhibited.

Re: It's getting to the stage

There will always be those that have an over-inflated view of themselves that feel hard done by when overlooked for opportunities. If you are in a minority in a pool of equally suitable applicants, then the chances of you being given the job is low. That's how equality works. Trying to induce gender balance in senior positions where the pool is not in balance is a positive discrimination scenario - unless you are lucky to have your minorities being more suitable for the role. But would you then have that niggling thought that you only got the role to satisfy a quota?

> if you can't use peer and managerial review/input to decide promotions/rises.... how else do you decide who gets the up and who doesn't?

Algorithms, big-data, data-science.Then you can't be blamed for anything because it's SCIENCE.

ie you invent a bunch of meaningless metrics (lines of code, bugs closed, features implemented) which are then gamed by the same weasels who downrate women - but this time you cant complain because SCIENCE.

Re: It should go to court.

I think that should be "unbiased based on gender / ethnicity / religion / sexual orientation"

Given if we're asserting that a person will be biased based on their gender then everything else is up for questioning too.

However everyone is biased about things to some degree or another the goal is to have the correct set of checks and balances to ensure a fair enough system. I mean I'm biased against people that don't investigate things for themselves and ask me stupid questions, have you not heard of google people! Also I can't help but distrust anyone that mentions crossing your arms is defensive, and anyone that likes physical contact as a form of communication. There is a long long list of other things as well.

I certainly wouldn't imagine anyone suggesting that you can only ever be assessed by someone who perfectly matches the assessed's various cultural, genetic, social and religious parameters. Isn't that called a self assessment? (sorry posing myself a question)

Anyway the outcome should be interesting I assume the answer will be an expert computer system of some sort.

Re: It should go to court.

@sabroni - well said! I'd add that corporate culture can make a huge difference in how fairly any minority group is treated in the workplace, irrespective of bias in the culture in general. I've seen this in my own career.

The issue centres around whether Micorsofts' method of assessing performance was objective or not. Without knowing the precise details of how they assess their employees, it's rather difficult to comment sensibly on that.

It has been interesting though, to see the reaction of commentards here, some of whom clearly do appear to have bigoted attitudes towards women and the feminist movement, and seem to forget that they, like any other group (like, ooh, I dunno - men in general, say?) do number amongst them the flawed, the narrow-minded and the whiny ones. But that doesn't mean that all of them are so, and indeed, the vast majority of them are not. Well done to the rest of you for your more balanced comments!

and that seems to be what you are doing.