The pipeline sucks for everyone, we all know that. Let's not pretend that this is just a matter of a single company having substandard processes.
And again -- I am talking about process smells. Women, Latinos, Black people, etc. are gainfully employed in roles where they ship software. (If you work in tech, you know the "CS Majors only" objection is a red herring given the breadth of roles at large tech firms.) If your process is unable to find them, that speaks to your process specifically (because someone else did find & hire them!).
Understanding why your process is bad is a good thing that every team should continually work towards.
2. Higher paying firms like goog fb are able to sweep the labor market and get the most of folks from tiny population of well qualified minority candidates. Making pipeline issues worse for everybody else.
3. At this point if you are minority and is qualified - you have no problem getting top tier job and top tier pay relatively easy, especially when compared to asian male population.
1) You are correct, but this does not speak to the need for Microsoft to have sub-optimal processes in any aspect of its business.
Separately, all of the big tech companies including Microsoft pay significantly more than typical employers in places where there are no big tech offices (this is most of the country).
2) This is just incorrect. Those firms cannot sweep the labor market because their US cultures have historically been so dependent on face-time. Microsoft is able to hire engineers in Atlanta in part because Facebook and Google have yet to put down significant engineering presences here, for example. Most medium-to-large US cities do not have significant FAANMG presence and so are also ripe for picking. This is why e.g. Target is able to get great talent in Minneapolis.
3) This is a claim that is difficult to evaluate given that engineering has had essentially full employment for going on 20 years.
2. You are wrong again, facetime is irrelevant, because of relocation. Very few will stay at MSFT in Atlanta for 100k if they can double pay + relo to CA/Seattle. Google does have office in atlanta, btw.
Your concept of supposedly "untapped talent in Minneapolis" is wrong, because in Minneapolis metro is about 3.5M people and Target can tap from talent pool of 3.5M, while places like Bay Area can tap from global talent pool (7B people) who self-selects and specifically migrates to places like Bay Area/NY/Seattle. This is three orders of magnitude difference in talent quantity and quality.
There is a reason Walmart established office in Bay Area, and doesn't want to limit itself to the great talent pool of Fayetville AR