Microsoft admitted their discriminatory practices?

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But you did do something that resulted in someone's death...you were driving the car that hit someone. If you hadn't been driving it, they would've still been alive. But what directly caused the person's death? They did, by stepping in front of the car. You still played a significant role in the matter, but it's not your fault.

Gender and race discrimination situations are not analogous to this one. Gender and race are superficial, they have nothing to do with a person's actual abilities, so to judge based on them is not fair. Is it really the company's fault someone may have a disability that makes them less fit for a job, and makes them harder to employ, which isn't exactly out front for all to see anyway? Not really. It's nice of them to make accommodations, but they don't even really have to do it. Again they might do it for "PR" as you say, but unless these people are going to do good work for their company, they don't owe these people anything...and it's up to them to decide who is good for their company. And yeah maybe those with ASD who they do employ were able to fly under the radar for whatever reason...and more power to them. That doesn't mean every autistic person gets to be hired there, just as every NT person doesn't get to be hired there. It's called competition, you still gotta work for it, right?

Someone who had a limp would have a worse chance getting a physical job, even if he was a really good candidate in other ways. They might have to pass on him because there are other people who are more able-bodied, and it's nothing against the guy. It's not discrimination. It's part of the job to have these skills, that's why they do the interview. Later on if enough people with limps are applying, then they may find a more specific job for all the people who are limping...like maybe sitting down and doing something instead of having to walk around. But it doesn't change the fact that these people aren't as good for the non-limping jobs, and someone has to do those ones. They've made entirely new jobs for people on the spectrum, it sounds like.

It may not be what you want to hear, but it's a fact. All else being equal, there are better candidates out there for at least some of the jobs, as these skills they're looking for do impact the job, these are not just superficial traits like skin or gender. These social skills and diplomacy issues etc are real skills, they do matter, they're important at Microsoft.

"We asked the guy a bunch of questions and he didn't do well on some of the ones we felt were important to us, for this position. So let's not hire him. Ok fine."

Over time they collect data and rethink things. Say "maybe these people are on the spectrum and we can find another use for them and/or use different interviewing procedures to figure out what their strengths are". Maybe someone even complained about it. But they really aren't to blame imo...

It's great for them to do this and find jobs for people on the spectrum, but not all jobs will fundamentally be right for them, even if they're really knowledgeable about some aspects of it. On some level whether they have ASD or not is completely irrelevant. It's just a matter of whether the job is a good fit or not. You really need a good deal of social and EQ kinds of skills for most jobs. That doesn't mean there aren't some for others, but on some level it's up to the candidate to figure that out...and if they can't do it well and are let down, they just have to live with the manager's decision. I'm sure there are lots of sob stories from NTs about how they asked some silly interview question that the person didn't know how to answer blah blah...

Exactly. The reason of the death in this case is not what you did, it's what the other person did.


That's simply not true. Both race and gender mean a lot of differences, including both physical and intellectual properties.


It's a bad analogy. A more correct analogy is a limp guy who wasn't hired for an office job, because the HRs decided that he would be taking more time to get to the conference room from his desk and back, than his healthy colleagues.

Now you're revealing your own biases about gender and race...which is kind of ironic (I don't think I even care to know what those are). Well, at least I have someone else here who agrees with me, and is proving to be another voice of reason amidst your distorted and victimized view of reality. My analogy is not bad, you are just resistant to understanding its relevance here. Good luck to you with that worldview.

I suspected that you would jump this bandwagon, but I'm talking only about scientific facts here. People are different, and your "worldview" is built on lies.
It's truly ironic that people like you make up discrimination where there is none and deny its existence where it does exist.

LOL. Well my, aren't you scientific? I'm not even going to bother, you're wasting my time.

Of course they aren't.

For instance:
Eric Kandel et al, "Principles of Neural Science", Fifth Edition
Part VIII Development and the Emergence of Behavior
58 Sexual Differentiation of the Nervous System

The funny thing here is that I'm well aware people are different, racially, sexually, etc., so don't talk down to me as if I don't understand that.

My point is that when you're hiring people for a job, you don't try to take into account scientific differences between men and women as if you're some kind of brilliant scientist who is able to understand the essence of people. You first treat them as a person because all people are more alike than they are different, and you give them a fair, objective interview and shot at the position. You don't think to yourself "oh, this is a woman, so she is probably going to be better at x", regardless of what you've read in some text book. It's just not ethical.

If you read too far into "men are different from women, asians are different from whites, etc.," then you end up stereotyping them and this leads down a path of discrimination. Yeah it's good to understand there are some differences -- it's not some big mystery why many athletes are African American (they have a genetic advantage in their physiology), but be careful with what you do with that information, because you don't know the degree it applies in individual cases. At the end of the day, there may well be overall differences, but the point isn't whether those differences may or may not be a factor in a given individual...the point is if the person is good for the job or not, regardless of their superficial traits. The point is it doesn't matter a bit what they look like, if they can do the job well.

The same reasoning applies to if someone merely looks good on paper or not. You wouldn't just give someone a job because they seemed highly qualified in an analytic sense, but they didn't get along with your team, or align with the values of your company, or show they could pass the most basic interview questions. You'd be crazy to just hire someone if you didn't use some other judgment as well. You'd not be a very good hiring manager. So that's not what they do, and they're right to do things that way.

... but for some reason unknown, those differences can never result in different ability to perform any particular job. /s


That's exactly what you do, because I wrote that people are different and you immediately started blaming me for having "biases".


And my point is that it can very easily happen that a company judges the candidates only by their ability to perform a particular job - without any discrimination, but ends up hiring people of disproportionately same gender or race.

i.e., there is no difference between gender discrimination and disability discrimination, but for some reason it's ok (and even mandatory) to make a lot of fuss about gender discrimination, but it's not ok even to talk about disability discrimination.

No...they (basic differences like race and gender) *can* impact one's ability to perform a particular job, but they don't *necessarily*, and you can't even really know that (necessarily). So you don't *bias* or *stereotype* people based on that. Did you even read and grasp what I said?

There IS a difference between gender and disability discrimination. They're fundamentally different things. Gender and race are not disabilities, for one.

You think everyone should just get a free pass for a job if they're disabled? Of course not. The same way you wouldn't just hire some random guy for a job because of his race. You might go out of your way to give him more of a chance because he's in the minority and he might be overcoming certain institutional problems. But in the end if he is a bad candidate, you don't give him the job anyway. So can you please tell me what kinds of disabilities make these people qualified to work in these jobs, if they don't have the technical know-how?

They're now going out of their way to help people more. That doesn't mean before they were discriminating. I know for a fact that Microsoft interviews for programmer and scientist positions in particular are based almost entirely on technical questions and knowledge in interviews. To be honest, they're very friendly for people "on the spectrum" because they are so incredibly tech-based. Hence the understanding that the tech-industry is actually a very spectrum-friendly place. Many people working at Microsoft have spectrum traits that benefit them and allow them to get by with fewer social skills. Everything can be done via the computer, face to face interaction is often not even necessary. In short, they often don't really care about your social skills, they mainly care if you make a good programmer, scientist, tech person, whatever. Hence the reason they're now trying to find *even more* people on the spectrum because previously they were missing these people...not due to discrimination, but because they weren't specifically looking for them. It's a well-known fact among people working in these professions that many of their coworkers tend to be a bit eccentric, quirky, out there, nerdy, not socially smooth, and so on...

I feel you have this all backwards. To me it sounds like you're just bitter they didn't hire you, and now you're blaming it on some discrimination...which you have no good evidence for. You're just playing the victim here and you can't see it.

Don't derail the discussion. My point is that it can very easily happen that a company judges the candidates only by their ability to perform a particular job - without any discrimination, but ends up hiring people of disproportionately same gender or race.
Try to disprove it.


Straw man.


Don't tell me what a job in tech industry is, I've been working in software engineering for many years already. And what I know for sure is that tech job is easy for me indeed, but job interviews have always been massive pain in the back. And the only reasonable explanation to this discrepancy is that these interviews are specifically designed to filter out people who aren't "healthy enough".
By the way, don't be so egocentric. ASD is not the only mental problem that people can have.


And people who talk about gender discrimination are simply bitter and are playing victims, right? /s

Well good for you. But are you even something like a senior software engineer, or are you lower down? Because I'm going to be brutally honest here and point out that software engineering jobs are not necessarily that great in terms of pay, respect, qualifications needed, etc. overall in the tech industry. Often times, they're like the grunt workers. Many of my friends and family members are in the tech industry, and range everywhere from people lower down making under 100k, all the way to people near the top making 300k+ a year...and none of them got to where they are because they're merely good at interviewing...it was based on qualifications and ability. You should know you can't keep a job if you aren't any good. So by your logic, people who are hired based only on good interviewing skills would simply lose the job (which would be right)...you don't think there's a hole in your broader view here? You seem to be arguing that you're "better technically" than these other people, but they're "better socially", and it's not fair to you...how can you possibly prove that? Isn't that up to the employer to decide? It's quite possible that a) you're equal technically but they're better socially or b) they're better both technically *and* socially.

People who are lower down in the hierarchy of tech jobs tend to be less happy with where they are. I'm not saying exactly where you are because I don't know specifically, but I do know what the overall hierarchy is like. You don't seem all that happy to me, but of course I could be wrong, you could be ecstatic. I also know that currently it's pretty easy to get software engineer jobs, at Microsoft in particular, now you can take a 6 month course and not need any degree whatsoever...and get a decent software engineer job with them.

Also, why are you trying to attack my mental health without really knowing me? I'm going out of my way here to try to explain to you something that is relevant to your post, which others won't even give you any time for, it's generous of me to give you my time and honest opinion, and I was objective and fair about it from the start, but you escalated it and made it more personal...and you don't want to hear it, and don't like my style and think I'm being egotistical, just because you don't agree with me...but you shouldn't attack my mental health and make personal slights. I find that very immature and petty, and shows what kind of a person you are. My mental health is good. I've worked hard on my life and my situation. I'm a decent, humble person and don't have ego problems. I don't like when people make low blows and jerk comments when I start to explain to them how they can be wrong and they get defensive.

And then you go on to say that people shouldn't be hired based on health? You don't generally want to hire sick people to work, it's not a good idea, for them or for you. You're showing the flaws of your own argument with every post. You are still getting way too confused about discrimination versus not hiring people because they're not good for the job. It's these basic logical distinctions you seem unable and unwilling to accept...that makes me wonder why I'm wasting my time in the first place, and I will not be doing so any more after this.

I still have the same argument I've had this whole time, and you haven't made any progress with it. How can you prove that this was discrimination? The best you can do is make a case that it *might have been* discrimination. That's not the same thing at all. There is also a good possibility that it *was not discrimination* and you just weren't hired because you don't interview well or because you weren't technically good enough, or both, and you wouldn't be alone. But that doesn't mean you should be claiming discrimination. It's their prerogative to do their interviews in that way. And don't try to bring the race and gender card into it again because it's a tired defense, and your conflation of it with your situation is not only selfish but obtuse. I mean hey, you can admit you're not great at interviews...but you feel you're still good at doing the job. That's fine. Being bad at interviews is not the same thing as being discriminated against because of a disability, though. You're at least admitting you're "bad" at something, that is not the same thing as simply *being black* or *being female*.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. People with "ASD" can develop all kinds of skills. Just being bad at interviewing and blaming your ASD and then blaming people for discriminating against you is not right. You can't see it and/or don't want to see it. It's all the same to me in the end, because I could hardly care less about the issue in the grand scheme...I've listened to your side and I've thought about it, and compared notes with other parties as well. You're the one stuck with the bitter, victim, selfish, blaming mindset, and apparently also working a somewhat medial rung of a tech hierarchy...and that's not disability, that's your problem, you're responsible for it, not others.

Btw, don't bother writing anything back you want me to read, I've decided to leave WP for good, because annoying people like you are trolling and ruining this place for me...there are good people on here and I'll miss them, but I need to get on with my life.

So yeah, when you're working at your job as a programmer with your victim "ASD discriminated" mindset, remember that I've retired early, am financially independent...living the good life with my family and friends who are all basically humble, intelligent, successful, and happy people...you can call me egotistical if you want, but unfortunately you've resorted to petty personal attacks and you deserve to hear it, after refusing to see the relevant logic and back down from your self-validated victimhood, and said things that offend me personally and were totally uncalled for.

Good luck to everyone on the forum who reads this post, I know people do like and respect me on here and there are lots of good people here I respect and it's mutual. Again, it's too bad I can't stay due to these trolls and ignorant people ruining it, but that's how it's gotta be...I can't allow this kind of negative interaction in my life and it's taking advantage of me anyway.

If OP does choose to respond, he's just doing it for others, because I'm not going to be reading it, rest assured.

Duh. However, this is what I like doing and I don't imagine myself doing any other job. Not in my circumstances, anyway.


I knew quite a few people who were utterly incompetent and kept their jobs, so apparently no. In many companies it's more about political games than actually getting job done.


I have ASD, focal seizures, major depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Of course I'm ecstatic. (not really. sarcasm)
You assumed that your level of ASD is the worst thing can ever happen to a human being and all what they need to fix it is some training. That's why I called you egocentric. Not an "attack", just a fact.


I can ask you same question. How do you prove that it's discrimination when we're talking about gender discrimination, for instance?

I know of somebody who had severe stuttering but managed to hold down an IT job successfully because his boss and company prided themselves on valuing diversity and social inclusiveness. But when his probation came up another person in the same organisation just said (and I quote) "He doesn't fit into the culture of the company" and he's not able to keep up.

Just because a private company like Microsoft might be marketed as socially inclusive but that doesn't mean management follows these values. Management is governed by KPIs and they can easily find ways to throw people out at a whim to improve their own standing in said organisation.

Agreed.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-aven ... t-of-work/
Discrimination against people with disabilities doesn't exist, huh?

"More than one-third said they've experienced discrimination, or "negative bias." That can mean assumptions like they lack skills needed for a certain assignment, or they'll take too long to do a task, for instance. Those with visible disabilities fared worse, with 44 percent reporting discrimination, while 40 percent with some signs of disability saw discrimination. "
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-hidden ... imination/