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- DINT 85 - 2023 Brought Negative Growth for Black People in the Ranks of Executives and Partners at Microsoft
DINT 85 - 2023 Brought Negative Growth for Black People in the Ranks of Executives and Partners at Microsoft
PLUS: Elon Musk says the quiet part out loud, louder and louder. He now publicly supports anti-semitism on X (formerly Twitter).
Lisa D. Sparks
November 17, 2023
News Briefs
Musk courts controversy ‘white’ now: Media groups revealed Elon Musk backs white pride by supporting anti-semitic tweets on X (formerly Twitter). IBM pulled their ads from the site. New X CEO Linda Yaccarino previously said brands would be protected from having ads posted next to toxic content, which turns out to be untrue.
He has $219B in assets. Here’s what those assets are: Musk owns SpaceX and Tesla, along with a tunnel mining company, an implantable brain to chip interface, and a competitor to ChatGPT called xAI. He also owns Starlink, a satellite telecom filling in gaps in physical infrastructure to give global access to the Internet.
What is Musk’s obsession with X? He named one of his children X. He’s owned the domain X.com since 1999. Two of his companies feature the letter x. And a model of Tesla vehicles is also named, you guessed it, X. Musk says he sees an ‘everything app’ being called X as well. Some industry watchers believe Musk’s 2022 purchase of Twitter is his opening salvo in making the everything app an inescapable reality for us all.
Digital discrimination now comes at a cost for telcos. Wednesday the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created rules to make pricing low-quality services at higher-than-usual prices illegal. Notably, telecom companies employ this tactic in areas where residents have no choice but to use the telecom’s services. These areas also are less advantaged financially.
“There is mounting evidence that low-income families and people of color are more likely to live in monopoly service areas that have just one high-speed internet provider,” Joshua Stager, the policy director of the nonpartisan organization Free Press, says in a statement.
Prison phone service provider hid data breach from 650k users, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed yesterday.
After suffering a data breach, prison telco Global Tel*Link Corp didn’t properly protect user data. When data was stolen, the firm didn’t notify users quickly, and in some cases, not at all.
Their punishment? A consent agreement to secure data and notify users in 30 days if there’s another breach, among other requirements. And if they don’t comply, the firm could be fined $50,120 for each future violation. Global Tel*Link brought in $410 million in revenue in 2022.
Friday Feature
Microsoft Diversity Report Fallout and Follow-up
After our coverage of Microsoft’s 2023 Global Diversity and Inclusion Report, our contacts representing Microsoft did get back to us. I discovered we were wrong about one thing: Microsoft provided the same information about unadjusted pay that they did last year. Here’s how the two stack up:
2022
2023
Comparison Chart of Growth Between 2022 and 2023
White employees in the U.S. still get paid more than their counterparts who are not White (or male). But:
Black people now make $0.78 for every dollar their White counterparts make (that’s up a penny from last year’s $0.77).
For Hispanic employees at Microsoft they now earn $$0.84 on the dollar. That’s a two-cent increase from last year’s numbers.
Women make $0.90 for every dollar their white male counterparts make. That’s a four-cent increase from 2022.
Sad Facts Remain: Black Employees Had Highest Exit Rate Among All Employees
When I asked about this troubling stat, I received no response from those I asked representing Microsoft.
For Black and African American employees, exits representation of 8.7% was 2.0 percentage points greater than headcount representation of 6.7%.
Microsoft representatives pointed me to the blog post accompanying this year’s Diversity and Inclusion Report by Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of Talent Development Lindsay-Rae McIntyre. You may remember McIntyre from our previous coverage on diversity leaders in Big Tech.
Stats Don’t Lie, the Numbers Trend Backwards for Black Employees at Microsoft
A few things stood out to me:
McIntyre highlighted a five-year time period of growth instead of year-over-year/2022 to 2023 comparison for this stat:
The representation of women and most racial and ethnic minority groups (Asian, Black and African American, Hispanic and Latinx, and multiracial employees) has increased at all levels over the past five years.
The years 2020 and 2021 were especially fruitful in boosting representation. But in 2022 and 2023 not so much. Here are the numbers I'm basing this on from data on pages 17 and 18 from the 2023 Global Diversity and Inclusion Report:
Note the red numbers where Black employees have negative growth numbers in exec, and director positions.
Microsoft provided no response for these observations pulled from the data in this year’s Diversity and Inclusion Report.
Why are these key areas showing stagnant or negative growth for Black and African American people at Microsoft? [no response]
From Page 16
Black and African American Director representation grew 0.1 percentage points year over year to 3.8%. Representation growth decreased at the Executive and Partner + Executive levels and was unchanged at the People Manager level.
Why did these numbers decrease? What conclusions can we draw from these facts? What are Microsoft's plans to move these numbers in a positive direction? [no response]
Also from Page 16
While representation grew for women, Black and African American, and Hispanic and Latinx employees year over year, the rate of growth was lower than in 2022.
It's tough not to link these numbers to the layoffs in H1 in the absence of any insights from Microsoft on why the numbers are declining in these key areas for the company.
Black and African American people experienced negative growth between 2022 and 2023 in every area except director (where Microsoft has made a 2025 commitment for increase) and technical roles. Why is this? [no response]
All other ethnic groups experienced growth in 2023.
Here’s why unadjusted median income data is so important. Microsoft highlights what could be impressive numbers on the surface but a deep dive shows it’s no really progress at all.
from the 2023 report
US Black and African American employees earn $1.004; Hispanic and Latinx employees earn $1.004; and Asian employees earn $1.012 for every $1.000 earned by US rewards-eligible white employees with the same job title and level and considering tenure.
The catch here is, there could be one Black person earning $1.004 (notice here that the number is not one dollar and four cents. It is one dollar and four thousandths of a cent/penny) to every dollar their White colleagues earn and the stat above would still hold true. The numbers don’t track if representation isn’t robust in its upward trajectory. This year, there was negative growth for Black employees at Microsoft.
While the 2023 report does not to employee exits, it doesn’t separate out which ones were voluntary and which were forced due to layoffs. And still the numbers for Black employees show more exited than were hired in 2023 … by a full 2 percent. No other ethic group experienced increased exists. Women had .2 percent
Page 26 of Microsoft’s 2023 Global Diversity and Inclusion Report
Where Do We Go From Here?
As accountability journalists, we’ll continue to shine a light on discrepancies and silence in the face of facts surrounding diversity and inclusion efforts in Big Tech. Accountability journalism is important because it sheds a light on company actions and can make a difference for young people, especially, entering the tech industry. Speak up and share these well-reported insights with others.
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