Microsoft
Microsoft (/ˈmaɪkroʊsɒft/ MY-kroh-soft) is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 21 in the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue;[1] it was the world's largest software maker by revenue as of 2016.[2] It is considered one of the Big Five companies in the U.S. information technology industry, along with Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.[3]
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016,[4] followed by their acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.[5]
Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000, and later envisioned a "devices and services" strategy. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has scaled back on hardware and has instead focused on cloud computing, a move that helped the company's shares reach its highest value since December 1999.[6]
Supports to Racial Justice
Microsoft is committed to take action to help address racial injustice and inequity, and unequivocally believe that Black lives matter. June 23, 2020, Microsoft made commitments to address racial injustice and inequity for the Black and African American community in the United States. "We will additionally take important steps to address the needs of other communities, including the Hispanic and Latinx community, across the company in the next five years.", said Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft in an email to Microsoft's employees.[7]
Support Black Community
Microsoft will deepen it engagement with six organizations that are advancing social justice, helping community organizers address racial inequality, and offering solidarity to the Black community: Black Lives Matter Foundation, Equal Justice Initiative, Innocence Project, The Leadership Conference, Minnesota Freedom Fund, and NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Legal Defense & Education Fund. This starts with a company donation of $250,000 to each of these organizations ($1.5 million in total), followed by a company match of our employees’ contributions to eligible organizations. "Together, through your giving and the company match, we have donated more than $15 million to civil rights, social action, and advocacy nonprofit organizations since 2015", said Satya Nadella in the blog.[8]
Double Black Leaders
Microsoft also will increase the representation and culture of inclusion by build on diversity and inclusion (D&I) momentum from the past five years by adding an additional $150M of D&I investment, and will double the number of Black and African American people managers, senior individual contributors, and senior leaders in the United States by 2025.[7]
Support Black-owned Businesses
Microsoft said it would double the number of Black-owned businesses on supplier list over the next three years until 2023 and spend an additional $500 million with these and existing suppliers. The company will also promote Black representation in it's top 100 suppliers, which account for most of it's spending, by asking them to disclose their diversity information annually and incorporating that into Microsoft’s evaluation of which companies are awarded contracts.[9]
Racial Bias and Racist Treatment
Microsoft and other large technology companies have come under fire for poor workforce diversity and hiring and promoting few Black executives and managers despite several years of public data reporting and pledges to improve. A former Microsoft employee in the Mixer video-game streaming division posted an account alleging racist treatment at the hands of his manager and a lack of action by the company’s human resources department. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox, said he planned to talk with the former employee later that day and looked forward to listening, learning and apologizing for the experience.[9]
In September 2020, Microsoft agreed to pay $3 million to settle Labor Department allegations of race discrimination in hiring. Because of that agreement, Microsoft agreed to a review to ensure its hiring practices are not discriminatory, according to the letter from Craig Leen, director of the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.[10]
The total workforce at Microsoft and it's family companies such as LinkedIn was 4.4% Black, the company reported in 2019 diversity report. Among technical employees and managers, the numbers are even lower.[9] The software maker said it increased the proportion of both groups by 0.3 percentage points in the past year, with Black workers rising to 4.9% of it's U.S. workforce and Latino employees increasing to 6.6%. Black and Latino workers are even more poorly represented in management roles, with Black employees making up between 2.6% and 3.7% of the people at various levels of manager and executive. For Latino employees, those numbers range between 3.3% and 5.4%. Microsoft also released data on the number of employees who identify as disabled, putting that at 6.1% of its U.S. workforce. [11]
References
- ↑ Fortune 500 list of companies 2020. Fortune. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
- ↑ Murphy, Andrea.'The World's Largest Public Companies. Forbes. 13 May 2020. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
- ↑ Microsoft. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
- ↑ U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission – Linkedin. US SEC. 8 December 2016. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
- ↑ Microsoft confirms takeover of Skype. BBC. 11 May 2011. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
- ↑ Microsoft shares at new high as cloud focus pays off. BBC. 21 October 2016. Retrived January 19, 2021.
- ↑ Jump up to: 7.0 7.1 Microsoft Corporate Blogs. Addressing racial injustice. Microsoft Blog. 23 June 2020. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
- ↑ Microsoft Corporate Blogs. Change in ourselves helps drive change in the world. 5 June 2020. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
- ↑ Jump up to: 9.0 9.1 9.2 Bass, Dina. Microsoft to Add $150 Million on Diversity, Double Black Leaders. Bloomberg Quint. 23 June 2020. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
- ↑ Guynn, Jessica. Microsoft plan to increase Black representation in its U.S. workforce probed by Labor Department. USA Today. 6 October 2020. Retrieved January 19, 2020.
- ↑ Bass, Dina. Microsoft shows minimal increases in ranks of Black and Latino employees. Fortune. 22 October 2020. Retrieved January 19, 2021.