'A moment of reckoning.' Microsoft grapples with questions, backlash after sexism email thread

On the morning of April 22, Microsoft broadcast a livestream to thousands of employees from Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft’s chief diversity officer. She was there talk about the emails.

“About four weeks ago, a conversation began on email with some of our women's communities and it has grown over four weeks," McIntyre began, "where people have been vulnerable and brave and helping us understand where our ‘aspire-to’ culture and our lived experience aren't quite matching."

She continued: “So we decided to dedicate today's conversation to answering some of the tough questions we're being asked.”

McIntyre was referring to a lengthy internal email chain of detailed and disturbing allegations of sex discrimination and harassment at Microsoft. Over the last month, the chain had amassed more than 90 pages of replies, spun out into conversations – and some backlash – in public and on the company’s internal social networking feeds. It even prompted a response from CEO Satya Nadella.

McIntyre’s short speech prompted the first of three live sessions scheduled by the company to hear employee feedback and answer questions from members of the Women@Microsoft group.

Among them: How do you deal with toxic behaviors when the person is very senior?

How do we deal with brilliant jerks?

Why does it feel like the burden is often on women to change their environment – what about the men?

What can we do about male managers who now say they're afraid to mentor women?

And: How can employees handle backlash to Microsoft's diversity and inclusion initiatives (often referred to as D&I initiatives), including the colleagues who make jokes and look down them?

In recent weeks, some of that backlash had surfaced on Yammer, one of the company’s internal social media feeds. There, employees had been debating whether Microsoft’s diversity and inclusion work actually discriminated against white and Asian men.

In 2018, Microsoft launched an effort to tie executive bonuses to meeting diversity goals, an action some employees felt put those groups at a disadvantage.

“That's not what our data says for sure,” McIntyre said. "That it even feels like that tells me that we have so much more work to do in where we are and where do we have to go.”

As Microsoft leadership held these sessions, feedback came in real-time. On a Yammer page dedicated to getting CEO Nadella’s attention, some employees critiqued the live Q+A sessions for not being helpful enough. Other employees circulated a petition calling for more action from leadership. On the Yammer thread, employees debated whether the company’s diversity and inclusion work was for the better.

Employees who didn’t want their names associated with their comments posted on Blind, an anonymous workplace app that allows verified employees to post concerns without identifying themselves.

One Microsoft employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that this moment at Microsoft felt similar to what happened at Google two years ago, when an engineer named James Damore wrote a manifesto that criticized Google’s diversity initiatives and claimed that biological differences between men and women helped explain tech’s gender gap. Damore was later fired and then sued Google for allegedly discriminating against white men.

“It seems like a very similar moment of reckoning for the company,” the Microsoft employee said. “It's really important to see how the company reacts and moves forward and how seriously they take a lot of this.”

On April 15, Nadella wrote an email to employees saying he was encouraged that people felt empowered to speak up about their experiences. He then pledged to take several steps to accelerate change at the company, including the creation of something called an “Employee Advocacy Team” to help support employees who report bad behavior while their complaints are being investigate as well as after those complaints have been resolved.

Reactions were mixed, however, to the discussions created out of questions from the Women@Microsoft group. On one Yammer page devoted to employees who wanted to connect with Nadella, one employee wrote that she was deeply disappointed by it.

“It was way too controlled, too much talking at the women, rather than a true listening tour,” the employee wrote. “The women asking questions had no opportunity to ask follow-up questions and explore the answers given.”

The employee also felt a question about whether Microsoft should track promotion rates – and an answer that suggested that not everyone wanted one – ignored the “central question, which is that many women are feeling (wrongly or rightly) that their career growth is hampered compared to men.” Several others who responded to her post agreed.

By the third Q+A session, McIntyre took another go at answering the question by saying that the company was committed to greater transparency around promotions, but acknowledged that Microsoft needed to do better at communicating to employees how they might learn and grow.

Others suggested that leadership should take different steps. Some employees circulated a petition demanding that, among other things, Microsoft end forced arbitration, a practice that settles harassment and discrimination claims privately and prevents people from taking those claims to court, for temporary employees and contract workers. In late 2017, Microsoft became one of the first major tech companies to end forced arbitration for full-time employees.

Microsoft employees who didn’t want to put their comments to their names turned to Blind, the anonymous workplace app. “I hate that our leadership seems to think that ending harassment requires more ‘D&I’ initiatives,” one employee wrote. “No, ending harassment requires 1) don’t be an asshole and 2) fire the assholes.”

The employee continued: “All good people are for ending harassment. But they try to both divert and transfer that support to half-baked and discriminatory D&I initiatives by tying the two together.”

Another employee responded: “You do realize that majority of the victims are women, who are a minority at Microsoft and the tech industry. Not only that, but the harassers are usually (white) men who think it’s ok to treat women this way. Harassing women and disrespecting them is absolutely a diversity issue as the harassers are not treating the opposite gender with respect.”

A third employee said this amounted to sexist and racist stereotyping – and that he was being told he didn’t belong in the workforce because he was white and male. A fourth employee said this comment was “smearing white men.” A fifth said the conversation had “turned to keeping white, Indian and Chinese males out.”

Frank Shaw, Microsoft's corporate vice president of communications, told KUOW that the company was dedicated to listening to all employees — not just the loudest voices on Yammer or elsewhere.

As of June of 2018, Microsoft’s demographic numbers show that the company – which employs nearly 135,00 people – is 73.4% male. Company-wide, it’s 55.1% white, 31.9% Asian, 6% Latinx and 4% black.

In leadership positions, the disparity is starker: 80.3% male and 65.9% white.