mruniverse

I read it was partly inspired by "Local Hero" (Bill Forsyth movie). The visiting Russian singer felt like a direct lift of the visiting Russian fisherman in "Local Hero".

We got rid of QA engineers a few years ago. I think some VP will hear what Nadella is doing and start their innovative initiative to start hiring QA engineers.

It might not be simple. It could be very hard, very expensive. Is it worth doing? Does it have value?

Would it be so bad if most of the CEOs are white men? All the execs are white men?

But I don't want to pick on white men. Let's say would it be so bad to let the incumbents call the shots. Let the incumbents hire only who they want to hire.

What if we don't assume any bias and just look at outcome?

We stipulate that bias should play no part in decision making. Only the outcome should matter. If the outcome doesn't match racial balance of the society we make it so.

I think people can have unconscious bias.

But in hiring, I think it's mostly conscious. What I mean is that I think people will see a long Indian name they can't pronounce and skip that resume or put it off until later. That's conscious. They'll see someone who looks like themselves and feel more comfortable talking to them. That's conscious. Etc.

Should business have freedoms that are good for business but bad for society?

Isn't the whole reason for businesses in the first place is that they improve society? They are an efficient way to allocate resources for the good of everyone involved. It runs by rules that we set. And we tweak those rules. And it seems DEI may be one of those rules that aren't good and we can change it.

But the end goal shouldn't be defined as anything that is good for business is good for society.

The purpose of our state is to provide for its citizens. So we decided to use a market economy because it seems the most efficient way to do that. But we make up the rules that it runs by and we can change the rules as we see fit.

So it seems now we are saying DEI is not a good rule. Can we make a better rule or is the goal of that rule not good?

I think it's more unsaid than unconscious. But putting that aside, if DEI is purposeful and deliberate while the "natural state" of things is not (unconscious bias), is that how we should leave it?

Should businesses have the freedom to exclude if it's unconscious?

I think it's always conscious one way or the other. With or without DEI.

It could be close to blind if communication were only done through writing and the candidate names were not known.

Is the business perspective the right one to go with?

Let's say it's legal to discriminate on race in hiring in the US. Then a Japanese restaurant hires only Japanese workers because they find customers prefer it. Do we want to have this?

The reason people like her is that she gets them interested in the guest. Not many interviewers can do that. She'll interview some blues artist you've never heard of and the next thing you know you're looking them up on Youtube.

I thought Apple's Blue Ocean stuff were:

* Macintosh

* iPhone

* Apple Store

It feels Google phones are very nice prototype projects from a darling business unit. Used to show off cool software for trade shows.

Yes, at the time it was all about desktop publishing and graphic design. It wasn't until the end of the 90s that PCs started to make its way into that niche.

Also it didn't feel like Apple was for consumers until the iPod came out.

Seemed like you always needed a trio of main apps. In the graphic design market of the 90s, it was Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator. To a lesser extent it was Pagemaker, Photoshop and Freehand.