8 ms·
Google's diversity numbers haven't budged, and it just lost its diversity chief
- d33 10y agoAre there any papers on what are the effects of diversity to a culture of programmers? I'd love to once see a scientific approach rather than the political one.
- mjolk 10y ago> I'd love to once see a scientific approach rather than the political one You're asking a lot from soft science, especially where said effects would be really hard to measure.
- yuhong 10y agoThe employment anti-discrimination laws was originally designed for manual labor and similar jobs. I suggest a compromise limiting the kinds of jobs these laws apply to.
- matt4077 10y agoKindly point me to any version of these laws that specifies the restriction to manual labor? Also, please elaborate why you think your idea of relegating minorities protected by these laws to manual labour "and similar jobs" doesn't deserve to be called "fucking racist".
- yuhong 10y agoThe point is whether the anti-discrimination laws are effective or not. And yes this is just a proposal and I'd welcome other suggestions.
- dfabulich 10y agoThe world today is so weird that I have to ask. Are you proposing that we should modify anti-discrimination laws so employers can take affirmative action to increase diversity? Or are you saying we should allow employers to discriminate against minorities for technical jobs?
- yuhong 10y agoI am mainly saying that the laws are fundamentally flawed when applied to anything but manual labor and similar jobs. The key difference is whether the job is easily measurable. This does not imply that I approve of discrimination.
- matt4077 10y ago> This does not imply that I approve of discrimination. Yeah, it kinda does. Keep in mind that the burden of proof is on the plaintiff in discrimination cases. If there are any problems with applying these laws to high-skilled work (I'm guessing you mean something like "it's too hard to compare people for this sort of work"), those problems would diminish the plaintiffs' cases more than anything.
- yuhong 10y agoToo subjective, more importantly. A Slashdot comment compared it to selecting friends: https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9857155&cid=53238301 https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9857155&cid=53238301
- matt4077 10y agoaka "The Old Boys' Club". I think your idea that you should be allowed not to hire African-Americans or women even if they're equally or better qualified is quite offensive. Even worse is that your argument now seems to be that you wouldn't want them as friends, either. And, worst of all, that you think that this community would share this attitude and could be convinced by it.
- yuhong 10y agoThe point is that selecting programming team members is more like selecting friends than selecting for example assembly-line workers, which makes anti-discrimination laws less effective.
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- dragonwriter 10y ago> The employment anti-discrimination laws was originally designed for manual labor and similar jobs. No, they weren't. They were designed for all jobs, which weren't just manual labor then. Obviously, lots of the jobs people in groups which had been systematically discriminated against in work, education, and every place else for centuries were working in or trying to get work in were at or near the bottom of the prestige and pay heirarchy, and thus manual labor, so certainly a lot of the early application was there. But nothing about the motivation or design of the laws was limited to that domain.
- yuhong 10y agoOne example is performance reviews and performance improvement plans that is often used in firing for example. I should mention that some of the laws here vary by state. I think California is one of the strictest here, right?
- yuhong 10y agoAnother example is the kinds of statistics that are often used, which tends to assume large amount of workers being hired for things like manual labor jobs.
- edblarney 10y ago"The employment anti-discrimination laws was originally designed for manual labor and similar jobs. " Google is not being discriminatory in any way - so I don't think this is the issue here.
- fmitchell0 10y agoI understand the tendency to conclude 'that is great, but are they qualified b/c that is what matters' logic. It's something you (especially if you were educated in America, like me) have to consciously unlearn. For those that want the science and math behind diverse teams (as I've given this talk numerous times), there are bunch of links on the last slide of my deck: http://slides.com/fmitchell/how-math#/10 http://slides.com/fmitchell/how-math#/10 If you want to see the actual talk I gave at O'Reilly, it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02HS9wjgfQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02HS9wjgfQY
- CWuestefeld 10y agoOf course having the qualifications on paper isn't all that matters. But limiting yourself to a palette of people fitting the "protected groups" isn't what you need to flesh out a good team, either. Wouldn't it be strange if, despite all the claims that race and gender, etc., don't matter, it really does matter as EEO regs keep telling us? But people differ in ways other than skin color, gender, religion, age, physical ability and sexual preference. Members of our team from the city versus the country; short versus tall; early-risers versus nightowls; family size; headbangers versus country music fans; vegans or steak-eaters; and so on. Why should we think that it's critical to have a pastiche of races, genders, etc.; while simply assuming that all the other interesting ways that people experience life differently is irrelevant?
- RileyKyeden 10y ago> while simply assuming that all the other interesting ways that people experience life differently is irrelevant? I don't know of anyone who values diversity in gender/religion/sexuality/etc but draws the line there, and I know a lot of very unusual people from all walks of life. That would be a weird line to draw. A gay genderfluid punk rocker probably has lots of experiences a biromantic genderfluid cellist would be fascinated by. Diversity is good. The more intersections, the better. Why do you think anyone would draw this line?
- fmitchell0 10y ago
- kukac 10y agoMaybe they realized that diversity is not the most important thing in the world. Also all these diversity officers make me cringe.
- aeturnum 10y agoApple seems to have pretty decent numbers compared to the rest of the field. Any insight into how they accomplished that?
- matt4077 10y agoActual support for diversity from the very top since day 1 (I'm not sure if it isn't apocryphal, but the original logo of a bitten apple in rainbow colors is supposedly a reference to Alan Turing, who wasn't just the most influential computer scientist, significant figure in winning WW2, but also killed by the anti-gay inquisition of his time that drove him to kill himself with a poisoned apple). Also: you are asking about Apple because it's one of the most prominent companies in the field. It's prominent because it's successful. It's successful because it creates excellent products. Excellent products are created by excellent people. Biases in hiring are detrimental to hiring, and a divers team will (all other things being equal) be better – especially in terms of creativity.
- jasonmp85 10y agoThe cynic in me says "by getting people to report as 'other/unreported' the first year, then telling them to honestly report races in subsequent years". It's not a scalable strategy, but it makes you look good for the first year.
- edblarney 10y agoApple also has a massive retail staff and retail organization, and especially the former group makes it considerably easier to show 'numbers' that are more 'diverse'. As far as their high-tech and HQ staff, I don't see any reason to believe that they are materially different from Google or Facebook.
- matt4077 10y agoThe sector-by-sector statistics are at https://www.apple.com/diversity/ https://www.apple.com/diversity/ – scroll down or search for "Data from the last three years"
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- popobobo 10y agoYou may look at the percentages of each ethnic groups studying cs or even STEM before pointing fingers to enterprises. There is no discrimination on choosing majors. And college kids don't go to classes anyway, no matter how racist your professors can be.
- facepalm 10y agoA lot of talk is about hiring practices (like blind assessments), or retention. But that ignores a question that should be easy to answer: are there a significant number of qualified "diverse" applicants that could be hired with the right approach? I seriously doubt any qualified developer would have troubles landing a job, regardless of race. Therefore I think the talk about hiring practices and cultural exclusion are misguided. Looking at the pipeline might be more promising, but it seems even Google can not turn the lives of millions of people around single-handedly.
- matt4077 10y agoThe laws don't only apply to hiring (although I believe that, yes, there's still discrimination going on at the margins). They also apply to salaries, promotions, workplace policies etc.
- facepalm 10y agoI didn't mention any laws. That said, I think the general assumption that racism must be the reason for unequal outcomes might not be based on reality in many cases.
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- HillaryBriss 10y agoMost of the tech giants are right in the middle of California. California has almost a 50% Latino population, but tech giants have less than a 15% Latino employee base. I'm always amazed that California's progressive political leadership isn't constantly hammering these companies to make their workforce look more like the California population. I wonder what would happen if Jerry Brown and Kevin De Leon pulled a Trump on Google, Apple, Facebook and Uber. "Hire California Latino workers or we will tax your ass out of existence!!!" Instead, they turn a blind eye.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> I wonder what would happen if Jerry Brown and Kevin De Leon pulled a Trump on Google, Apple, Facebook and Uber. Then the California Republican party would be competitive statewide again overnight, and/or a lot of tech companies would move out of California, employing even fewer California Latinos than they do now. Possibly both.
- HillaryBriss 10y agoJust to follow up, if I may: 1. How would your first possible scenario play out in the voter's mind? What considerations would cause a large number of formerly Democratic voters, and/or current non-voters, to say, "I'd rather vote for a Republican now." e.g. Do a lot of voters feel so strongly that Google, Apple, Facebook and Uber should remain unencumbered by such goals that it would overcome all their other deeply held objections to Republicans? Would it just be a deep revulsion to such a Trumpian method applied to large California companies? I mean what do you see as the thing large numbers of voters would really dislike about such a political move? 2. Alternatively, if a lot of tech companies voluntarily began moving out of California for this reason, how would they spin it? Surely they would not say, "We're leaving California because we don't want to hire Latinos". How would they explain such a decision to investors, customers, the general public? Thank you, kindly.
- mjolk 10y agoI'm sorry if this is just really dry satire, but that's absurd. > "Hire California Latino workers or we will tax your ass out of existence!!!" Speaking as someone that's been involved with a lot of hiring decisions, it ultimately comes down to who is in the pipeline when you're hiring for positions that require expertise. If you think companies should be forced to hire based on race, openly stating that people will be judged differently based on physical attributes, I welcome you to create a business and try this for yourself.
- protomyth 10y agoIt would be nice to see the diversity reports[1] actually count enrolled tribal members in the US. California has the second highest count by state in the US. 1) article mentions https://hackerlife.co/blog/tech-companies-diversity/San-Francisco-Bay-Area-CA https://hackerlife.co/blog/tech-companies-diversity/San-Fran... [edit: downvoted in a diversity thread for asking for more diversity]
- blkcod3r 10y agoI'm a very qualified blk cod3r that just got turned down for a job at fb. I thought the interview went well, but I guess the interviewer didn't share that sentiment. Either way, I'm not mad...so just wanna preempt any attempt to suggest that we're not being held to the same standards as everybody else...
- blkcod3r 10y agobtw, got one lined up at the big G. Wish me luck! :)
- HillaryBriss 10y agogood luck. i hope you get the job.
- HillaryBriss 10y agoi've received my fair share of down votes in the past and i've learned a bit about the kinds of statements people disagree strongly with or find inappropriate. but now it looks like someone down voted my expression of good luck to a job seeker! interesting.
- bpchaps 10y agoThe absolute best interviews I've ever had either received no callback, or I was told that a better candidate was hired. Could you share your thoughts on why you think it was a race issue?
- draw_down 10y agoI think there is a lot of goodwill and good intentions behind this issue, but I suspect that our understanding of it is missing something (I don't know what). And it's pretty obvious that whatever we're trying to do as an industry isn't working. I expect this state of affairs (industry wanting to do better but not improving much) to continue until something about this changes materially.
- PopsiclePete 10y ago"Diversify Chief" makes me cringe a bit. Makes me think of the modern-day version of the "Political Commissar" - there to make sure that you're always towing the Party Line. Not that I'm against diversity or anything, I just don't like how it's enforced as a goal unto itself.
- matt4077 10y agoYou'll be horrified to learn that many businesses also have "compliance officers". Because that sure sounds like an evil plan to enforce newspeak – if you manage to achieve a certain level of ignorance. It's also terrible (, terrible) how many companies are wasting money on "Quality Assurance", "Accounting", or "groundskeeping" when a business should actually be profit-driven. If only we could get out from under the yoke of political correctness. We'd give every employee the title of "profit maker".
- PopsiclePete 10y ago"Quality Assurance" and "Accounting" are directly tied to delivery a quality product or managing money and thus vital to a business. "Compliance officers" make sure you're not violating laws/trade agreements/what-have-you. "Diversity" is neither. It's nice to have it, sure, but it cannot be a goal unto itself.
- testUser69 10y agoIn my experience, the people obsessed with diversity are the real racists, except they've "changed" the meaning of the term "racism" to mean being born into privilege, and they've defined the most privileged people as having a white skin color. According to these people, people are literally born racist. Not only that, but racism has nothing to do with skin color to them, it's all about power. They've removed the race from racism to justify their authoritarian agenda and to make discrimination based on skin color "non-racist". Guess what guys, discrimination based on skin color is the real definition of racism, not your bs power and privilege crap. Elitism != racism But elitism is a real problem, especially in STEM. Too bad we'll do nothing to solve the problem because we focus on helping privileged non-whites instead of targeting people equally based on socio-economic status (and yes, using ones race as the sole basis to guess their socio-economic status makes you a racist piece of shit.)
- edblarney 10y agoTo be clear: Google does not have a 'diversity problem'. They are very diverse, and minorities are well represented as a block. What they have is a 'not enough Blacks and Latinos' problem. And - 'not enough Females in management positions' problem, possibly. The underlying issue which some fail to address is the fact that if you only have 15% of tech grads female, and 0.1% African American - it's really difficult to have '50% female coders' or '10% African American coders'. Actually, I'd argue it's impossible. A really interesting survey I read saw that Males in the Valley tend to think that the 'talent pool' is the issue (i.e. as I stated above), but Females tend to think the big issue is a 'lack of role models'. Maybe I'm biased being a guy, but I do think that it's primarily the talent pool issue, but I do concede that 'lack of role models' is probably a concern. I think that this is a concern, but a soft one, and that if a company like Google - which is very open minded and progressive struggles with it, well, it's a tough one to crack. As long as they are trying to make inroads there, then that's good. I don't think that we should hold them to any specific standard or shame them.