How many people here are actually bringing up console wars to defend Phil? Like what?
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Former Mixer employees details the racism & Toxicity while working at Mixer [Update: the offending manager is no longer employed at MS]
- Thread starter Armadilo
- Start date
I'm taking all realistic possibilities into account, assuming Phil deliberately ignored racism is the biggest assumption I've seen in this thread. I don't buy that especially when he has spent the last few years promoting inclusiveness in gaming. You have many people who work in various industries pointing out exactly how Phil would have missed this email. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying how it makes sense he may not have been aware of what was going on at Mixer.
I haven't seen alot of people dismissing the claims, I've been seeing platform warriors on both sides on twitter though with bad takes.
Eh, I haven't seen anyone dismiss the story at all lol people are just saying they can see why Phil would have missed the email. Doesn't change the fact that this is a huge fuck up on the part of Mixer, Xbox and Microsoft that this has been allowed to happen. It's now on Phil to clean up that mess though, as is his responsibility as the head of gaming, which Mixer comes under.
It's the same problem the World over because the US capitalism culture has been exported and implemented Worldwide.
I think diversity on the boardroom isn't enough. It's about what kind of values those boardroom holders hold and whether they will actively implement those values into company policy and direction, instead of every decision being tied around the profit motive.
Minority people who make it into positions of power are susceptible to being enablers of the status quo as well.
Yep. It's all bullshit otherwise.
Also looks like Milan (the person who posted the tweet about Mixer) is now a Sr. Solution Engineer at SalesForce. MS lost a great employee due to racism, shitty HR and shitty management/executive actions.
Wow, that's horrible and that "manager" needs to go.
Good on Phil to get involved here.
Good on Phil to get involved here.
Why do you think people are defending 'Phil'? It seems most people in this thread are on first name terms with him, which is bizarre on its own. If Spencer did not deal with the email, you don't defend him by blaming his secretary or anyone else but the boss himself.
What kind of BS is that? If I was a boss of a company and someone was getting beaten up on a daily basis, ignored the email about this, and the person ended up getting killed, do you think I am blameless?
This is so true. I was talking about this with a friend today and I showed them the that video of Shilpa because judging by what I'm reading on Twitter, she would have been the skip manager that Milan escalated this to but was ignored. After seeing that video, my friend said to me "but she's also a person of colour". Sure, she is also within an ethnic minority but like you said, unfortunately PoC who make it into positions of power become part of the problem.
I'm reminded of how the UK's Home Secretary who is asian, told a (black woman) MP in parliament that the UK 'isn't racist' and used her own experiences with racism as a defense for why she was right and the black MP was wrong. It's a sad state of affairs.
I've experienced this exact logic in a non-racist context in the workplace to quell dissent, legit constructive criticism about the work environment and to encourage banal conformity.
Exactly who I was thinking of as I wrote that comment!
'Phil' is his name. When you tweet at him, you address him as 'Phil'. Not sure if it's a cultural thing for you, but nobody needs to stand on formality here. If you choose to refer to him as Mr Spencer, that's fine.
You're making an unproven assertion here that he 'ignored' the email. As many have pointed out to you, people in his position tend to get a flood of emails and he most likely has a whitelist of folks whose mails get routed to him for urgent resolution. The rest are probably handled by a PA.
This only reads like 'BS' if you don't know how enterprise works.
given The fact that his track record is quite good with respect to diversity and inclusion, people are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Apparently that seems to irk a number if people here with hidden post histories.
note that the victim himself does not seem to blame Phil, and is seemingly enthusiastic about the upcoming meeting.
Great post.
This shows another aspect to speaking out on these issues. You're still trying to get hired and find a job. Milan seems to be a talented worker, and he took time to speak out on this. I have no idea what it is like being a black man in America, but I bet some of the reason was the job security. If you lose your job by getting fired or quitting for something like this, you still need to find employment and feel secure in your job. If he would have spoken out immediately his job prospects might very well have dried up as being a 'trouble maker'. It's how these companies keep the boot on the neck. They have such power leverage over their employees. The change needs to come from within and I hope this is more a shock to the system than something that has been known to be a problem at Mixer for this whole time. Judging by the video above tho, one wonders.
Not just a Mixer problem, there. Deep gutting of some of these areas needs done. What part of MS did she come from?
People are now going to be looking out for her inevitable LinkedIn update.
Sounds like a messed up situation, based on their retelling of events. Glad they got the attention of Spencer - hopefully something can be done to improve things at Mixer, because it sounds like there was a breakdown.
When you run a division with tens of thousands of employees, you rely on a reporting structure. When there's a breakdown in that structure, or when a manager isn't abiding by the policies set out by the overall corporation, they need to be held accountable. And judging by Spencer himself now getting directly involved, despite this probably occurring several managerial "levels" below him, I suspect shit is going to fly.
I'm not going to be overly cavalier with other peoples' jobs and say that Microsoft need to "clear house" at Mixer or whatever, but there clearly needs to be an internal review of, at minimum, why Mixer's HR came to the absurd conclusion it did. As for the manager, I suspect they are probably 72 hours or less from looking for a new career.
When you run a division with tens of thousands of employees, you rely on a reporting structure. When there's a breakdown in that structure, or when a manager isn't abiding by the policies set out by the overall corporation, they need to be held accountable. And judging by Spencer himself now getting directly involved, despite this probably occurring several managerial "levels" below him, I suspect shit is going to fly.
I'm not going to be overly cavalier with other peoples' jobs and say that Microsoft need to "clear house" at Mixer or whatever, but there clearly needs to be an internal review of, at minimum, why Mixer's HR came to the absurd conclusion it did. As for the manager, I suspect they are probably 72 hours or less from looking for a new career.
It shouldn't be Phil's job to deal with this issue especially when legal gave it a "seal of approval".
User Banned (1 week): platform warring in a serious thread
Was Phil the one to appoint her to that role?
Yes, I should be clear that when I'm talking about cleaning house and gutting areas, I am talking about a thorough investigation and review of these areas, and getting out people that helped this culture prosper. The direct mangers up the line almost assuredly need fired. The HR people, depending on the restraints their policies put on them, might need fired but at minimum there needs to be a review of how these kind of cases are handled. Phil's assistants probably need to be retrained for these scenarios and a new system needs put in place for how to handle these emails. More broadly, the culture at MS that would allow several people to get into highish level positions with 100s of reports under them that holds views like this needs examined. How did this department get so many people in high level positions that thought in this way? Is it evident in other divisions?
Another thing to worry about specifically relating to gaming is that Phil and the execs seem to be allowing the devs they have acquired to be pretty autonomous and foster their own unique cultures. At least for this issue, there needs to be systems put in place that are uniform across the board. There should be an avenue to take outside of the dev studio if they don't feel like these types of issues are being addressed.
it could have been auto forwarded straight to HR if the right keywords triggered. A lot of assumptions going on in this thread past the actual incident.
Who approved the auto forward to be setup in that way? Change can't happen if Phil isn't seeing these emails.
emails for the chief officer forwarded to HR because of keywords? ...
What nightmarish IT infrastructure is that...
I'm not saying Phil Spencer handles his emails on his own, it surely will be handled by an assistant.
OK wow I can see how something like this is completely probable at that Mixer team if this is indeed GM giving the speech.
Structural changes definitely need to take place at these major companies though. Working at a call center opened my eyes to how HR and management cover each other consistently at the expense of frontline employees. With a company as massive and diverse as Microsoft though it's probably allover the place.
She's a senior manager. That means a director at the company gave her that role. The director reports to a VP or GM. Phil maybe might have interviewed the VP or GM.
Disgusting. I cannot believe this is their strategy at Mixer. They urge their employess not to complain about thousands of reasons why they cannot succeed at Mixer, find one reason why you can succeed, follow that, and shut up. Pretty much in a nutshell.
That is such a sad thing.
Seriously, shame on Microsoft. Phil trying to recoup for the company when the person (Milan?) even tells him that they had contacted him previously about it... Lol. That's not a good look.
I'm arab and I had a manager at work once called me in her office after I sent an email to two directors voicing concerns with procedures not being respected in my department, and the subsequent departments. Due to the nature of my work, security is at stakes of millions of employees across the country, and we could not not respect these procedures. Additionally, I had noticed a pattern of the other departments not caring, so it was actually the third time I was raising the flag on something wrong. I was always told that I was wrong, and that I had an "attitude" for wanting to fix this.
The manager sat me down in her office to discuss the incident, and after the meeting went well, she took a deep breath and she told me: "I was so scared to call you in my office... I didn't know if you were going to be violent." I just stood there silent and rolled my eyes.
And she said that after I was always told by everyone on the floor that I was a nice person and that I was actually a ray of sunshine. It was well-known that I was very appreciated on the floor, and I got along with everyone. I always had that feedback in my employee reviews.
I was so annoyed. I quit shortly after, and told her she had been disrespectful on various occasions and I had enough.
Seriously, shame on Microsoft. Phil trying to recoup for the company when the person (Milan?) even tells him that they had contacted him previously about it... Lol. That's not a good look.
I'm arab and I had a manager at work once called me in her office after I sent an email to two directors voicing concerns with procedures not being respected in my department, and the subsequent departments. Due to the nature of my work, security is at stakes of millions of employees across the country, and we could not not respect these procedures. Additionally, I had noticed a pattern of the other departments not caring, so it was actually the third time I was raising the flag on something wrong. I was always told that I was wrong, and that I had an "attitude" for wanting to fix this.
The manager sat me down in her office to discuss the incident, and after the meeting went well, she took a deep breath and she told me: "I was so scared to call you in my office... I didn't know if you were going to be violent." I just stood there silent and rolled my eyes.
And she said that after I was always told by everyone on the floor that I was a nice person and that I was actually a ray of sunshine. It was well-known that I was very appreciated on the floor, and I got along with everyone. I always had that feedback in my employee reviews.
I was so annoyed. I quit shortly after, and told her she had been disrespectful on various occasions and I had enough.
And it almost totally worked, talk about how valuable it was for her or them to hire that one black person, insurance. :\
Makes me wonder how fast they searched out a replacement, and how they might be feeling right now if the behavior didn't change. Maybe they too can talk with Phil.
Probably someone who knows standard/proper business practice? My company is a tiny fraction of the size of Microsoft and there is no chance an email like this to one of the VPs would result in me getting any sort of response from them. That's a pretty crazy thing to expect of someone overseeing that many employees.
Is this an attempt at motivating their workforce? Tell me this GM is no longer there.
I have been given a similar spiel by a manager, but they were using Steve Jobs as an example instead. He ended up ditching the team to go to a total separate department shortly after.
It's a spiel that all managers use, in my experience. That fake positivity approach is so annoying. I've heard it over and over again.
I am at least confidant that mixer and Microsoft can begin to address issues and work this out with behind the absolutely amazing leadership of Phil Spencer. It's unfortunate that there was such toxic work culture, but fortunate they have a leader who is willing to put in the hard work needed for change.
WOW. I know this was in the past, but I am ANGRY that this happened to you.
What a disgusting thing to say to someone. I know my black ass response would've gotten me fired on the spot: "Well, I wasn't going to be violent at all until you said that. Now? I'm considering it."
I'm so sorry you had to experience that. Sheesh. People are fucking nuts.
Just for clarity, for a company of this size the org chart is as follows.
Employee>Manager>Sr.Manager or Director>VP>SVP/President>EVP>CEO/CFO/COO
A fact does not need to have a level of sincerity.
Gotcha. So somewhere up that line there's a problem. A 10 year vet, that's something.
Considering Microsoft is based out of the Pacific northwest of the United States this isn't surprising. I can go deeper but thats more a discussion suited for the none gaming side of Era
Not from the US, but from general conversation people often seem to lump Seattle and Portland with progressive Californian cities. That not the case?
Definitely the case but there has been a discussion that I've seen where white liberals aren't really about the cause of racial equality. It's more a tertiary thing where it 'would be nice' if it happened along with the other causes white liberals champion.
I'm not validating or invalidating this position with this reply - I'm just stating the discourse I've seen.
I'm a white software engineer and there are lots of times when entities are labled as slaves or masters. I've always thought this was a little weird and wondered if it was offensive to black people. Like for instance our builds are all handled by Jenkins. Jenkins implements master/slave architecture (as well as lots of other apps/systems). When discussing a problem with a build we often refer to the "jenkins slaves". These are the vm's that the build is running on. I always felt kind of weird discussing slaves in this context but literally everyone does it without batting and eye. Is this problematic? Is anyone here offended by this nomenclature?
Here is a wikipedia article for some additional context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)
Here is a wikipedia article for some additional context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)