{"id":326207,"date":"2025-12-05T03:33:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326207\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T03:33:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:33:20","slug":"microsoft-is-quietly-walking-back-its-diversity-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326207\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft has been publishing data about the gender, race, and ethnic breakdown of its employees for more than a decade. Since 2019 it\u2019s been publishing a full diversity and inclusion report<\/a> annually, and at the same time made reporting on diversity a requirement for employee performance reviews.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s scrapping its diversity report and dropping diversity and inclusion as a companywide core priority for performance reviews, just months after President Donald Trump issued an executive order<\/a> to try and eradicate workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.<\/p>\n

Game File reported last week<\/a> that Microsoft will cease publication of its diversity and inclusion reports this year. \u201cWe are not doing a traditional report this year as we\u2019ve evolved beyond that to formats that are more dynamic and accessible \u2014 stories, videos, and insights that show inclusion in action,\u201d said Frank Shaw, Microsoft\u2019s chief communications officer, in a statement to Notepad. \u201cOur mission and commitment to our culture and values remain unchanged: empowering every person and organization to achieve more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sources tell me that Microsoft also quietly made some big changes to its employee performance reviews last month, known internally as Connect. Microsoft has removed its companywide security and diversity \u201ccore priorities\u201d from its performance reviews, meaning employees no longer have to submit exactly what they did to improve security and diversity and what they plan to do in the future.<\/p>\n

Microsoft employees always had to answer \u201cWhat impact did your actions have in contributing to a more diverse and inclusive Microsoft?\u201d and \u201cWhat impact did your actions have in contributing to a more secure Microsoft?\u201d Both of these questions have been removed, replaced with a simplified form that asks employees to reflect on the results they delivered and how they achieved them, and any recent setbacks and goals for the future.<\/p>\n

The performance review changes were announced through a Viva Engage post on Microsoft\u2019s employee news group, instead of through a mass email. Microsoft described its changes internally as a simplification, and announced that \u201ccore priorities are now simply called goals, with at least one goal focused on security.\u201d<\/p>\n

In HR documentation, the company doesn\u2019t even use the word \u201cdiversity\u201d anymore, opting for just \u201cinclusion\u201d instead. \u201cSecurity, inclusion, and strong people management remain essential to how we deliver impact at Microsoft,\u201d says Microsoft in its HR documentation. \u201cInclusion is embedded in how you work, interact, and lead, reflecting our growth mindset culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

One employee, who supports Microsoft\u2019s DEI initiatives and wishes to remain anonymous, told me that adding the requirement to its performance reviews five years ago seemed \u201ccompletely insincere and performative\u201d at the time. \u201cThe fact that the company (and most of corporate America) just dropped it proves to me that it was always a shallow commitment.\u201d The employee wants \u201cdepth and sincerity\u201d in executing DEI policies, which they say Microsoft never achieved.<\/p>\n

Other employees I\u2019ve spoken to about the changes aren\u2019t surprised by Microsoft\u2019s walk back. Some point to Elon Musk\u2019s appearance onstage<\/a> at Microsoft\u2019s Build conference earlier this year as a sign that Microsoft was cozying up to the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s appearance at Build in May caused plenty of tension internally, at a time when he was heading up DOGE to dismantle government agencies and government-funded organizations. One source told me at the time that the company\u2019s GLEAM group (Global LGBTQIA+ Employees and Allies at Microsoft) were \u201cincensed\u201d by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella welcoming Musk to Build.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s appearance was part of a broader push by Nadella to get Musk\u2019s Grok AI model onboarded to Azure in time for Build. Grok 3 was part<\/a> of the Build announcements, but months later Microsoft had to cautiously onboard Grok 4<\/a> after major concerns about its output. One employee told me over the summer that the safety issues around Grok 4 were \u201cvery ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft pushed ahead with private testing of Grok 4 with potential enterprise customers, but it also quickly rolled out<\/a> Grok Code Fast 1 to GitHub Copilot. One Microsoft employee said at the time that \u201cthis was pushed out with a rushed security review, a coerced and unwilling engineering team, and in full opposition to our supposed company values.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now going to be a lot more difficult to judge those company values.
Microsoft is still publishing its Inside Inclusion<\/a> newsletter and \u201cCode of Us<\/a>\u201d stories that highlight experiences from Microsoft employees with diverse backgrounds, but they\u2019re not the same as having diversity and inclusion as a core priority for employees, the focus of an annual report, or part of disclosures to shareholders.<\/p>\n

LinkedIn has been testing an AI personal assistant for Microsoft execs<\/p>\n

Microsoft employees have spotted some company executives using a new, unannounced AI personal assistant. Sources tell me that Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott has \u201cKevin\u2019s Cosio,\u201d a personal AI assistant that reports directly to him in the company\u2019s global directory, alongside other human direct reports.<\/p>\n

Cosio is a project from Microsoft\u2019s LinkedIn team that\u2019s designed to be an autonomous, AI-powered digital assistant. You\u2019d think that would simply be Copilot, but Cosio is described internally as a \u201cnext-generation digital worker\u201d that is deeply integrated into Microsoft\u2019s enterprise environment. I\u2019m told it\u2019s capable of automating tasks, building workflows, and collaborating with human employees and other AI agents.<\/p>\n

\"Kevin<\/a><\/p>\n

Kevin Scott\u2019s AI assistant appears like a real employee.<\/p>\n

Microsoft has been testing Cosio with some executives internally, including Charles Lamanna, head of Microsoft\u2019s business and industry Copilot (BIC) team. Cosio was part of Microsoft\u2019s new Agent 365 initiative<\/a>, a framework that controls how AI agents access data and work like human employees. Microsoft was planning to roll it out to all employees by the end of October, but that date passed and only execs have been able to test Cosio.<\/p>\n

It sounds like Cosio won\u2019t be rolling out more widely anymore. \u201cAs Customer Zero, we\u2019re constantly experimenting with emerging technologies \u2014 some make it into our roadmap, others don\u2019t,\u201d says Microsoft spokesperson Cynthia Reynaud, in a statement to Notepad. \u201cCosio was a helpful experiment that is now informing the features we deliver to customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s interesting that Microsoft was testing the viability of having digital worker bots that look like real employees.<\/p>\n

Around 500 million PCs are holding off upgrading to Windows 11, says Dell. We already knew that Windows 11 adoption was slower than Windows 10, but last week Dell put a number on the people holding off upgrading<\/a>: 500 million. Not only are that many machines capable of being upgraded to Windows 11 but haven\u2019t been, but Dell says around the same amount can\u2019t upgrade due to Windows 11\u2019s strict hardware requirements. I expected millions of consumers to stick with Windows 10, but I didn\u2019t think the overall number (including corporate machines) would be as high as 500 million.Microsoft\u2019s latest Windows 11 update improves and breaks dark mode. Microsoft shipped a Windows 11 update this week that was supposed to improve dark mode consistency, but it also added an embarrassing bug. After installing the update, every time you open File Explorer it now flashes white<\/a>. You couldn\u2019t make this up, and I\u2019m surprised that Microsoft didn\u2019t spot this obvious bug during testing. Microsoft says it\u2019s working on a fix.Microsoft\u2019s ugly sweaters return with Clippy, Xbox, and Zune brown options. Microsoft is bringing back its ugly sweaters for the holiday season<\/a>. This year the company has an \u201cArtifact\u201d sweater with lots of retro iconography, a Zune brown sweater, and even an Xbox option. The Artifact sweater puts Clippy at the center, surrounded by MSN, Minesweeper, Internet Explorer, MS-DOS, and plenty of Windows logos. Because Microsoft can\u2019t resist putting a Copilot logo everywhere, this retro sweater even has a Copilot icon on the sleeve. All the sweaters are available in limited quantities at Microsoft\u2019s online store.Satya Nadella warns of AI\u2019s impact on data center power consumption. Microsoft\u2019s CEO admitted this week that the energy use of AI data centers could turn people against the tech industry. In an interview<\/a> with Mathias D\u00f6pfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, Nadella says that the tech industry \u201cneeds to earn the social permission to consume energy, because we\u2019re doing good in the world.\u201d He also said that people will accept the extra pressure on the electric grid if it \u201cresults in economic growth that is broad-spread in the economy.\u201d So far, we\u2019re still waiting to see if AI is a bubble that will burst or add real value to productivity.Microsoft says it\u2019s not lowering sales quotas for AI products. Microsoft has come out swinging against a report from The Information<\/a> that claimed multiple Microsoft divisions have lowered the sales targets of salespeople for certain AI products after \u201cmany of them\u201d missed sales-growth goals. An unnamed Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC<\/a> that the company has not lowered sales quotas or targets for its salespeople. \u201cAggregate sales quotas for AI products have not been lowered, as we informed them prior to publication,\u201d said the unnamed Microsoft spokesperson.Xbox Cloud Gaming is getting a new design soon. Microsoft is getting ready to revamp the Xbox Cloud Gaming interface with a design that more closely resembles the Xbox PC app. The developer behind Better xCloud spotted the changes<\/a>, with a promotional video offering a brief look at what\u2019s coming. Given there\u2019s a \u201ctry new experience\u201d button in test versions of xCloud, I\u2019d expect we\u2019ll see this appear for Xbox Insiders very soon.Linux founder defends Microsoft\u2019s Blue Screen of Death. The creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, has come out as an unlikely ally to Windows this week. Torvalds defended the Blue Screen of Death errors in Windows in an appearance on Linus Tech Tips<\/a>, saying that most were related to \u201chardware being not reliable\u201d instead of software bugs in Windows. Microsoft has now changed the BSOD to black, in an effort to simplify the error screen and to probably shift away from the memes and jokes.Microsoft looks to move Xbox production to Vietnam. Microsoft is reportedly planning to move some of its Xbox manufacturing to factories in Vietnam. Reuters reports<\/a> that a Foxconn subsidiary is seeking a permit to make up to 4.8 million Xbox gaming devices in Vietnamese factories. This follows a report last month that suggested Microsoft was moving its Surface manufacturing<\/a> out of China and looking to produce more Xbox consoles outside of the country. Moving manufacturing to Vietnam will help Microsoft avoid some of the larger Trump tariffs that have impacted Xbox console prices in the US.Microsoft might be ditching Contoso and Fabrikam. I remember doing Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certifications as a teenager and seeing the fake Contoso and Fabrikam companies in every scenario. Microsoft has used these two companies for demos and testing for decades now, but as the company pushes ahead with its AI transformation it\u2019s also introducing a new fake company: Zava. The Register spotted<\/a> Microsoft using this company during its Ignite conference, and it has also shown up in some technical documents recently. Microsoft says Zava is a \u201cfrontier\u201d company, the moniker it uses for companies that are rapidly adopting AI. Hopefully Contoso and Fabrikam can survive Microsoft\u2019s AI transition, though.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com<\/a> if you want to discuss anything else. If you\u2019ve heard about any of Microsoft\u2019s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com<\/a> or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I\u2019m tomwarren.01<\/a>. I\u2019m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you\u2019d prefer to chat there.<\/p>\n

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See All Tech<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft has been publishing data about the gender, race, and ethnic breakdown of its employees for more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[62,49,48,63,6756,2100,714,64,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-326207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-microsoft","12":"tag-notepad","13":"tag-policy","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-tech","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}