[whynotminot]

While there’s a lot of this era that’s deeply unfortunate, this kind of question on my yearly review would be incredibly vexing to me:

> What impact did your actions have in contributing to a more diverse and inclusive Microsoft?

What does this even mean? How do I show I did this? If I don’t interpret the meaning of this question correctly, do I fail the test and end up some HR watchlist? If I don’t succeed at whatever this is going for, will I not promote?

[metajack]

This isn't that hard. There are various employee groups around identities (Women in Tech, Asian Pacific, Black, LGBTQ, etc). Membership is not exclusive to those groups but also open to allies. As an example, I used to participate in the Women in Tech one at both Mozilla and at LinkedIn. Often I just listened, but I also helped organize a few events with them, contributed ideas for those events, and when they started a structured mentoring program I was one of the mentors.

There are also optional and non-optional hiring trainings that address these kinds of topics which you can do. I was a hiring manager for a while so I also spent some time doing some of these optional things to improve my chances of building a diverse team. This mostly included helping with sourcing candidates and a few times meant speaking up when I could see that identity biases were being used in evaluations.

But often just simple things are all you need. For example, when picking a group dinner destination making sure various culinary requirements are accounted for (either cultural or dietary) or finding team building activities that are inclusive.

I never once had an issue finding some of this to put on these perf reviews. Most of this is just under the category of being a good human who respects and values others.

[ChromaticPanic]

It's a very basic question. You can meet that by simply treating everyone with integrity and respect. This results in an inclusive workplace. It's not a trick question.

[whynotminot]

I feel like there’s already HR processes in place for someone who is creating a hostile workplace?

I prefer my yearly company expectations to be quantifiable with clear metrics.

And instead this is the kind of squishy question that eludes any kind of reasonable metric. And worse, its vagueness could lead to misunderstanding. And even worse, misunderstanding the question in any dimension seems like it could have actual repercussions.

Some commenters have said it’s as simple as being inclusive of dietary restrictions. Ok cool easy enough. Is that actually in a rubric?

What if I have a manager that thinks it means I should run in the annual LGBTQ+ 5K? Ok I’m willing to do that, I like to run and support those causes. But is that expectation written anywhere?

In short, I don’t think these kind of questions are ever as simple as “just don’t be a douchebag.”

[red-iron-pine]

> But is that expectation written anywhere?

in many of the F500 orgs I've worked at -- yes it is. unambiguously so.

diversity / inclusion / team building activities were explicitly called out as part of yearly goals and performance review metrics.

things like go to a women-in-tech event and just listen, or a black history month discussion, read a book about homelessness and minority communities, etc. I went on a postmodern literature spree and ended up reading a bunch of african and middle eastern authors and that qualified for the perf review.

the "LBGTQ 5k" is a laughably bad strawman and would never be required for a bunch of reasons.

[whynotminot]

You guys must really hate running (and love missing the point). It wasn't even intended to be a "bad straw man" -- I literally would be fine running a 5K. If it was a documented example of a way I could meet their expectations for creating an inclusive environment, I would totally run a 5K themed around one of the company-approved causes. Might even lead up a whole group of us from the company to run in it together.

The point was: Do they have actual documented examples of what they want from me when they put this on my performance review:

> What impact did your actions have in contributing to a more diverse and inclusive Microsoft?

I am glad your companies have given you documented examples of what they have wanted in this arena. I'm sure that helped make it easier for you to meet their expectations and avoid any potentially awkward confusion.

[tedivm]

There's a difference between "inclusive" and "not hostile".

It's weird that you're making up scenarios that would obviously never happen like the 5k thing.

[whynotminot]

It’s weird to have vague, non-business expectations built into a yearly performance review.

If you can give me some more examples I’m happy to hear them.

So far, commentators have listed:

(1) dietary considerations for team meals. (2) participation in company ERGs (this has never been compulsory at any company I’ve worked at). (3) making up a series of words they hope will appease managers

None of this seems like it should be part of a yearly performance package?

Personally, if I had celiacs and found out people were using ordering me a gluten-free pizza as a critical input to their yearly performance reviews, I’d probably be a little weirded out. But then maybe I’d be one of the more popular folks in the office come lunch-and-learn day, so pros and cons I guess.

[magicalist]

> I prefer my yearly company expectations to be quantifiable with clear metrics.

lol, yes, annual tech perf reviews. Known for clear and quantifiable metrics that are in no way based on squishy realities.

[whynotminot]

True it’s all kind of hand wavy at the end of the day for a lot of this performance review stuff.

This just seems to be especially hand-wavy, with an additional whiff of ideological litmus testing thrown on, which could go sideways in more problematic ways than “this year I reduced the frontend bundle size by 25%”

[alt227]

I feel like the general answer is going to be 'None', and that Microsft is not really going to care about that very much.

[netruk44]

I used to work at Microsoft and I can tell you this was absolutely not true during my time there.

As an engineer, you needed to have an answer to that question or else you could not be promoted (at least in some parts of the org chart).

It was a box that your skip levels needed to see checked in order to approve promotions. My lead told me as much in exactly those words.

[alt227]

What about now during the current administration and after DEI has just been killed?

[metajack]

When I was at LinkedIn we definitely cared about this. It probably wouldn't be enough to knock you down a peg during your review if you had none during a particular half/quarter, but if you never did anything in this bucket it would be a red flag during promotion consideration.

We wanted leader to be empathetic and respectful.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Imagine the person asking this question to be a soviet commissar, and you get an accurate mental model to work with.

[voidfunc]

Bingo. I used to just write down some words that would appease anybody that looked at it for more than a second...

[heeton]

If you remove a reaction to politics and/or management practice, this is quite an obvious question, no?

Hypothetically: Substitute Microsoft for a company with “zero downtime” as one of their company values.

Now imagine you were asked “What impact did your actions have in contributing to zero downtime at Hostingsoft?”

That wouldn’t be a controversial question.

[whynotminot]

> If you remove a reaction to politics and/or management practice, this is quite an obvious question, no?

Why are we putting questions that could very easily elicit a political reaction into corporate yearly performance reviews?

[marcosdumay]

Imagine you are a salesperson for the hardware division of such a company. Imagine you did your work well through the entire year. How would you answer your question?