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YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says
- neonate 9y agohttps://outline.com/R9tseg https://outline.com/R9tseg
- arvinder 9y agohttps://archive.fo/OPbpS https://archive.fo/OPbpS outline link seems broken
- circadiam 9y agoseems fixed
- frenchie4111 9y agoThis link seems to be breaking because of the "Diversity Deficit" charts
- ausjke 9y agoNBA is totally underrepresented by non-black Males, let's sue them. Swim tournament is severely underrepresented by deep skin colors. Meanwhile track and field is the opposite. Let's mix all colors everywhere based on population percentile, to achieve diversity, equal rights and fairness. Or do something like Dr.King hoped, that is, don't judge a person by color.
- colordrops 9y agoThat's a good point. There are many fields that are dominated by women or non-whites, yet there is virtually zero attention paid to those. Why is that?
- tabeth 9y agoWhat's the median salary for those positions?
- rmrm 9y agoI don't doubt thats the reason - but I've always felt it wasn't exactly a compelling argument. (Potential) Discrimination is perfectly fine, so long as the job is average. Welders, car mechanics, nurses.... Aren't we somehow presumably stifling the interest of large amounts of kids to enter these jobs based on gender biases? I would assume so based on the numbers.
- xyzzyz 9y agoQuite high for veterinarians, which, at the college level, is as dominated by women as CS is by men (80%). They aren't dominating the work force yet, since in the past men became vets much more often they do now, and we still have those older male vets in the work force, but their numbers are steadily decreasing.
- jotux 9y agoRegistered nurses: 90% women, median $68k Nurse Practitioners: 92% women, median $107k Veterinarians: 83% women, median $88k All data from BLS.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tabeth 9y agoThis is good, but is easily explained by the reflected percentages with various doctor specialties. What's the technology equivalent?
- jotux 9y agoI think it's better to compare whole labor subgroups: [1] Computer and mathematical occupations (engineers, programmers, etc): > 4,804k jobs, $78k median, 25.5% women, 7% projected growth [2] Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations (doctors, nurses, technicians): > 9,141k jobs, $63k median, 75.0% women, 18% projected growth If we imagine the ideal scenario of employment across all jobs being 50/50 men/women then we need to add 2.3 million women to tech and 4.5 million men to healthcare. Arguably, the lack of men entering the healthcare field (good-paying jobs, growing need) is at least as important as the lack of women entering technology, but why do we constantly talk about getting more women in to tech but not men in to healthcare? [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/home.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/home.ht... [3] Percent women info: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm
- drwl 9y agoI'm not sure that's an equivalent relation. I wasn't able to read the article, but NBA representation has a lot to do with skill and performance.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 9y agoSo what? You seem to be assuming that Black people simply have more skill and performance than others. You do this in Basketball but not in other areas. Currently, hiring males for programming jobs is due to skill and performance, because far more men chose to go through this type of education than women. Huge numbers of men and women don't enjoy straining to grapple with abstract concepts for long stretches of time, sitting hunched over a keyboard, and so on. But, more men do than women, at the moment. So does that mean things are just fine the way they are, as your comment suggests about being Black and skill and performance? Why not encourage, for instance, more Chinese basketball players to get scholarships, and increase their skill and performance? Why settle for how things are, which currently is not very diverse as anyone can plainly see? China's basketball team has a lot of great Chinese players.
- ghostcluster 9y agoSo when the NBA hires for job qualifications like height, skill and performance, that's OK. But for tech positions they should actively discriminate against skilled applicants because maybe somebody else ought to do it? The NBA is actively recruiting/training for elite talent in China: http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/12/news/companies/china-nba-basketball-academies-players/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/12/news/companies/china-nba-bas...
- EGreg 9y agoI think you TOTALLY misunderstood my point. Which was: how come drwl accepts the status quo with NBA and not with programmers? Why do they simply assume that some qualities are more prevalent with Blacks but not with males? I am not taking a position in my comment one way or the other, just pointing out a potential double standard so the reader can make their own conclusions by reconciling them :) I assume you are clearly on the side of "things are the way they are because that's how biology works". So here is another one, far more politically charged. Are you prepared to endorse this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United... "There is general agreement in the literature that blacks are more likely to commit violent crimes than are whites in the United States. Whether this is the case for less serious crimes is less clear." This statement is considered racist. However the equivalent statement for men and women is not considered sexist: men commit far more violent crime than women. Therefore, should these things be used in profiling people suspected of violent crime? You can go on and on about these things.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoAll good options. But don't forget to represent people of different body types by weight and height as well. As a very short, fat, and white dude who can't jump...but has a decent jumper, I still want my shot at Lebron James in the NBA.
- wqnt 9y agoIf I understand it correctly, it is only discrimination if employer cannot demonstrate the criteria are needed for work performance. Race and gender are not related to performance in most work categories. In the case of body types in sports, they are.
- the_grue 9y agoAnd so are problem-solving skills, relevant experience and education in STEM. Is it anyone's fault that white/asian males happen to have more of it than other groups?
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoI get relevant experience, but are saying that general problem solving skills are race based?
- the_grue 9y agoExperience is not the same as problem-solving skills. And I never said they were "race based".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- belltaco 9y ago>NBA is totally underrepresented by non-black Males, let's sue them. False equivalency. How do we encourage short people to grow taller? Or kids to grow up into a tall adult? Coming to tech, it's possible to encourage people to work in STEM who otherwise may feel unwelcome due to various issues, including gender, age, race, workplace attitudes, glass ceilings etc. That includes trying to have role models that kids may want to emulate.
- smallnamespace 9y agoWait, so the majority of tall athletic people are black men? What is the actual argument here?
- arkona 9y agoIt is not at all a false equivalency. How do we encourage artistically oriented people to be more mathematical? How do we change ESFJ into INTP? How do we increase IQ? Just hecause certain traits are mental rather than physical doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
- arkona2 9y agoIt is not at all a false equivalency. How do we encourage artistically oriented people to be more mathematical? How do we change ESFJ into INTP? How do we increase IQ? Just hecause certain traits are mental rather than physical doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
- random3 9y agoSo height discrimination is not discrimination? Funny, but no, not to encourage people to grow taller, but to encourage NBA to have height classes, just as boxing has weight classes.
- arkona3 9y agoNot at all a false equivalency. How do we encourage artistically oriented people to be more mathematical? How do we change ESFJ into INTP? How do we increase IQ? Just hecause certain traits are mental rather than physical doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
- 9y ago
- majos 9y agoDo you really think there are young people in the US who could be NBA players but are held back by lack of resources, lack of training, and lack of friends/family members who play basketball? I think that's a key difference between the "diversity problem" in the NBA and the diversity problem (no scare quotes) in tech.
- m_mueller 9y agoDiversity quotas are making this situation actively worse by giving a bad image to those who pass. In German there‘s even a compound slur word for one such cases, „Quotenfrau“ (quota woman). These kind of outcomes were once unforeseen but are very easily to foresee now after lots of experience with that kind of thing. I firmly believe that as a society we should try to make people of all shapes be interested in the most productive and needed professions, but the pushing and pulling should end there. If you want equal, just go ahead and install actual communism, I actually might be on board with thst more, at least with modern technology it should be doable such that people can all live well enough.
- tibbetts 9y agoPeople like to say this is a major problem, and I don’t know of any quantification of the effect one way or the other, but I am skeptical. Annecdotally I do know my mother was told (by coworkers and her boss) she was a quota hire in 1975 and it was still the start to a successful 42 year career in sales. She was only with that first company about 4 years. I imagine many other people overcome the stigma associated with getting an “undeserved” opportunity or being told they were hired thanks to a lower standard due to their race or gender. I personally try not to hold it against my fellow white male entrepreneurs from prestigious schools and affluent backgrounds that I know we had an easier time raising capital and hiring people because of our race, gender, and social connections.
- netheril96 9y agoYes. Jeremy Lin has spoken on multiple occasions of the discrimination he has encountered entering and during NBA, and god knows how many more Asian Americans are kept from a NBA career by these discrimination. (Hint, there are very few Asians in NBA).
- throwaway201803 9y agowomen form a majority of new entrants in certain medical sub specialities that were historically male dominated e.g. pediatricians, psychiatry etc. rather than any of these organizations being overtly discriminatory, can we acknowledge certain groups might just be self-selecting into professions as a part of culture identity and work-life balance or risk/reward preferences. and that's okay!
- saas_co_de 9y agoThis is a false equivalency. The idea that male programmers are like professional athletes who are so far superior to women that they deserve a similar level of elevated status and disproportional representation is repugnant and indicative of the problem that needs to be solved.
- tzs 9y agoBlack people are severally underrepresented among swimmers in general, not just among competitive swimmers. The BBC had an interesting article about this a few years ago [1]. This is a serious problem, leading to unnecessary deaths of black children. Here's an article by the founder of an organization trying to address this called "Black Kids Swim" [2]. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11172054 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11172054 [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-stereotype-is-killing-black-children/2017/02/10/2c06fa14-e249-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.100f03901e92 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-stereotype-is-k...
- mabbo 9y agoIt sounds as though some recruiting leader was told to hit their goals for minority hiring percentages but wasn't given much oversight in how they did it. This sort of thing is often the result of such mismanagement.
- nine_k 9y agoAren't the goals like that a mismanagement, to begin? Either state officially, like "we do racial profiling of candidates", if you in fact do, or, well, don't if you don't.
- striking 9y agoYou can try to invite a wider audience to apply. Many firms just hire based on a short list of posh colleges and thus inherit whatever racial statistics apply to them. But it's possible to look for candidates of all kinds, to expand internship programs, to go to job fairs at inner-city colleges, and so on. That really only applies to junior personnel, though. I'm not sure what you would do for hiring more experienced people.
- nine_k 9y agoThis sure makes sense. Invite a wider audience, go an extra mile to reach those who could meet the requirements but prejudices or other adverse conditions make it hard for them. This is an opposite to narrowing your audience, because certain people need not apply. I mean, I think employers should be able to introduce whatever filters they need for the job requirements ("our dance group only accepts ladies with prior dancing experience, older than 18, and no shorter than 6ft".) But I'd like them to be open about these requirements.
- cargo8 9y agoThey do this already at a fairly large scale, for example the BOLD internship and development program where the goal is to "expose historically underrepresented students in this field to career opportunities in the industry." [https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/bold.html https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/bold.html] These programs are fantastic, and I think a great (albeit no silver bullet) strategy to grant greater OPPORTUNITY to underrepresented groups who may never be exposed to CompSci & Tech industries. Things that are discussed in this article (if true) are clearly about reaching equal REPRESENTATION more than opportunity – and yeah, that's very disappointing since at the end of the day the only way to do that with immediate gratification is discrimination. (pipeline & societal problems don't get fixed overnight)
- notadoc 9y agoIs this discrimination? Why or why not? Reminds me of this controversy from not too long ago: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30393117/ns/us_news-life/t/asian-americans-blast-uc-admissions-policy/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30393117/ns/us_news-life/t/asian-a...
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agoThe law might apply differently to a public university than to a private company.
- empath75 9y agoDiscrimination per se isn’t necessarily a problem. You’re discriminating on some basis no matter how you hire someone. A lot rides on the motivation for discrimination. As Martin Luther King said: > History unfortunately leaves some people oppressed and some people oppressors. It’s just a fact that some groups end up with advantages in any society and some end up disadvantaged, and those that have advantages will use their power and wealth to retain them. You don’t have to lay blame on people to see that it happens, and how it can be damaging to society if allowed to continue to its natural end— massive political and economic inequality. So how do you fix it? If you go on a purely quote-unquote merit based system, the people who grew up with educated, wealthy parents, in safe neighborhoods, etc, will naturally fill the educational and recruitment pipelines that train people for high status jobs. And thus you perpetuate injustice and unfairness from generation to generation, which even if you don’t object to morally, you should at least object to out of self interest, because it will leas to instability and civic unrest. Racial quotas in hiring are a blunt instrument to be sure, and can be grossly unfair to individuals, particularly the less well off members of advantaged groups who get passed over. I don’t know if I think they’re a good way to solve the problem over a purely class based approach, but if you look at it and all you see is ‘racism’, then I would suggest that you look a little bit deeper, because it’s a much more complex issue than that.
- neerkumar 9y agoAnyone who has worked for a large tech company in SF in the last 3/4 years knows that this has happened everywhere. In fairness, Google was one of the very last ones among large tech companies to play the quota game. But the problem is that that's a game that once the first company starts playing it, everyone else is forced to play it too. Company X publishes a report with amazing diversity numbers and brands itself as a great company for certain minorities and diversity in general, along with some unbelievable BS about how they achieved that. At that point, you have to introduce quotas too to get similar numbers or your brand and recruiting will be strongly affected.
- cookiecaper 9y agoIt's not about recruiting. It's about lawsuits. Companies with more than 100 employees are legally obligated to report demographic information to the EEOC. The EEOC reviews this information when someone files a complaint alleging discrimination. If similar companies in the same industry and geography have numbers that show a more diverse demographic profile, the EEOC is much more likely to consider a discrimination complaint non-frivolous, which is required to file a lawsuit alleging employer discrimination (as I understand it; not a lawyer). Companies play this game a) to protect themselves against lawsuits; and b) to potentiate damage to competitors who are not yet explicitly playing this game, and therefore have correspondingly less demographic diversity.
- mkeedlinger 9y agoI did not know that, and that brings a whole new dimension to my understanding of this issue. Thanks.
- wycs 9y agoThen company X gets rightfully trounced by a Chinese firm 5 years from now which does not share our ridiculous racial taboos. Some crimes are self policing.
- HarryHirsch 9y agoNo company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Let's face it: the top tech companies have sufficient applicants, so they can choose whoever they want, and most jobs are drone jobs.
- tachyoff 9y agoI’m not a lawyer, so I’m curious (and I can’t read the article): are quotas legal? Irrespective of their efficacy or morality, they must’ve held up in court, right? I thought it was fairly obvious that organizations have minority quotas. Then again, I also know that discrimination against ANY gender and ANY skin color (including male and white) is illegal, which was born out recently when Google’s decision to fire a rather opinionated individual who regularly derided straight, white men was upheld. Political beliefs are not a protected class, and you can absolutely be fired for them (although I think in this case the person was let go because railing against vast swaths of your coworkers is disruptive and rude, even if they’re “cishet white boys”).
- nova22033 9y agorelevant part of the item linked Employers are allowed to undertake initiatives to promote diversity hiring, employment lawyers say. But under Title VII, the federal antidiscrimination law, employers aren’t allowed to make hiring decisions based on race and gender among other protected classes. That means they can’t employ practices like hiring quotas based on race or only hiring one type of minority candidate, attorneys say. Such practices would also run afoul of California laws.
- wqnt 9y agoI'm not a lawyer either. But I remember that explicit racial quota are illegal.But in another precedence, diversity is considered a valid objective. So having preference that favor minority for the sake of diversity is OK. That is the case for a lot of hiring and admission processes now: No explicit quota, but a soft preference towards diversity, which usually means favoring under-represented racial and gender groups.
- staunch 9y agoI suspect Google, YouTube, YC, and many other Silicon Valley companies have followed a similar pattern: Step #1 Discriminate against the lower classes through a biased hiring process that favors upper class people over more qualified members of the 99%. A system of "culture" tests, nepotism, and simple favoritism. The "elite" investors fund the "elite" founders which hire "elite" friends. Step #2 Realize your policy is classist and racist. Step #3 Disregard the idea of creating a merit-based system. Step #4 Commit explicit racism in an attempt to balance out your on-going racism. Step #5 Ignore classism entirely, despite it being the root cause.
- stcredzero 9y ago#6 Repeat Steps 3-5 until the problem is solved. EDIT: Also, double down on the ideological fervor until th problem is solved.
- ttoinou 9y agoDid you run a business that hired employees without biases, word of mouth, entry tests and friendly cronyism ? Show us the right path
- spicymaki 9y agoI am curious too. Some commentators are saying well if you just make discrimination not happen anymore then there will be no discrimination. Problem solved!
- notacoward 9y ago"Merit" as defined by whom, and measured how? I doubt that many companies disregard the idea of hiring based on merit. They all try to do that, they were trying to do that all along, but that only got them to your step 2. So what do you when even your best effort to create a purely merit-based system has empirically failed to overcome unconscious or structural bias? What's your magic prescription?
- elihu 9y ago
- ilamont 9y agoLast spring, YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic, and to “purge entirely” the applications of people who didn’t fit those categories, the lawsuit claims. Anyone from Google or YouTube--or people who applied to work at either org in this time frame--have perspectives to add regarding this claim?
- master-litty 9y agoTowards the end of last year I actually did apply to Google in Mountain View for Software Engineering. I believe my on-site went excellent technically overall, but I had a hard time meshing with a couple of my interviewers and wasn't surprised about my rejection. Nothing strange about that personally. However, another Google recruiter reached out to me for two other potential positions, said I would be an excellent fit, and said they would set up the interviews for me. A couple weeks passed and I pinged, no response. A month passed and I pinged, no response. Still haven't had a response from two separate recruiters to this day. I don't wish to stir the pot -- Anything could have happened, there are some stories about Google recruiters forgetting their candidates, maybe they think I'm just annoying and not a good candidate, but in light of these specific circumstances this is certainly intriguing news.
- r00fus 9y agoThis happens all the time in recruiting. Companies leave candidates hanging indefinitely. Hell, I've had it happen to me even for an internal position at a company I've worked for.
- stcredzero 9y agoIt used to be that this was just not done. However, the Bay Area and Silicon Valley seem to have adopted much degraded standards. When I was young, a company that did such things would have been marking itself as being comprised of immoral rubes.
- 9y ago
- danieltillett 9y agoThe thing I hate about actions like this is what it does to talented people who fit some diversity quota checklist, both in the perception they have of themselves and those of other people. If you are a talented melanin-rich woman you are going to face both heightened impostor syndrome and dismissal by others that you only got the job because of some quota. Not good for anyone. There are no easy solutions, but it would help I think if all effort was concentrated on removing hurdles rather than patching problems downstream with lazy fixes.
- majos 9y agoI agree. Unfortunately, lazy fixes at clear and prominent decision points are much easier than removing hurdles in, say, the early childhood education system.
- ghostcluster 9y agoThis goes beyond a lazy fix. According to another HN commenter here: > under Title VII, the federal antidiscrimination law, employers aren’t allowed to make hiring decisions based on race and gender among other protected classes. The former veteran Google recruiters behind this suit are claiming they were 'instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic, and to “purge entirely” the applications of people who didn’t fit those categories.'
- wutbrodo 9y agoThe fact that it's illegal doesn't make it any less lazy.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- apta 9y agoThe entire thing is ridiculous, but I can't help but laugh at how it seems to them that all the different races and cultures have been reduced to being one of: white, asian, black, hispanic. What about Arabs, Persians, Turks, Natives, etc? Would those have gotten rejected as well?
- ignoramceisblis 9y agoDid anyone not see this coming? The goal posts of equal _outcome_ continue to move, from university enrollment, to employment enrollment. And there are some people who want to see it go further. (What societal engineering scheme does this resemble?) With no apparent regard for what it costs. Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? Or do you think that, maybe, we should judge people by who they are? The substantive characteristics that define an individual. Not a fantasy, not a PR story, but _who an individual is_. We should all have the decency to look beyond the superficial traits of a person, to not make assumptions about their character, positive or negative, and to truly try to understand one another. Blatant discrimination of such superficial features has no place in a healthy society, or one that wishes to become one. This arrogance, assumptions, and short-sighted thinking cost more than we can afford.
- busterarm 9y ago"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
- DrScump 9y agoSome people (especially those from outside the USA) may not know the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream
- vkou 9y ago> Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? We already do, through systemic biases. Sadly, as the downvotes indicate, reminding people of their privilege seems to be an unpopular thing.
- ghostcluster 9y agoIs it a systemic bias that men choose to study CS and Engineering majors and make up 80% of graduates and the talent pool? Should we discriminate against them for this reason?
- malvosenior 9y agoI suppose these white and asian men are better off not being employed by a sexist and racist company. Even if they got in the door who's to say that "no raises for white/asian men" isn't the next step (if that policy isn't already in place). I hope Google gets raked over the coals for this though. Not only are they hurting these men (and their families -- if they have them) but they're also hurting women. What man wants to be an "ally" to the women in tech movement when that movement's goal is to put them out of work? This is just going to create more hostility between people who should be working together, not at war with each other.
- simooooo 9y agoThis shit.. just hire the most talented people. Doesn't matter what colour they are.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Caveman_Coder 9y agoI may have been born as a white male, but I identify as a half black, half hispanic female...should be easy now to find any job I want /s
- BigChiefSmokem 9y agoGarbage comments like yours are what perpetuate the rift between the Asian/White (what I refer to as the "upper-class") super majority in tech and the infinitely smaller minority that are brown people and women in tech. I'm part of the latter group and there is nothing funny about how marginalized we feel around the rest of you.
- Caveman_Coder 9y agoWhite != "upper class" Turns out you can be a poor white (like myself)...just an FYI.
- BigChiefSmokem 9y agoSo you being poor is justification enough to spread divisive comments and fuel further hatred (on either side)?
- peterhadlaw 9y agoI don't think making light of a otherwise sad situation, is "fueling hatred". It's actually lightening the mood while pointing out room for improvement. Trying to stay positive is something we can all do, even when there are injustices.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago> "So you being poor is justification enough to spread divisive comments and fuel further hatred (on either side)" This is over-dramatic... I'm just saying in today's world you can identify as whatever the hell you want, and nobody can question it apparently...so It might be a good strategy for white males to "identify" as the race/gender that seem to get additional points on their applications based on their race/gender.
- pratikjhaveri 9y agoAmbulance chasing lawyers seem to have focused their efforts on large tech. Reminds of that joke "Why do robbers go after banks?". "That's where the money is". Wonder what the lawyer vs individual split is in these cases....most of them land up settling any way.
- aqsheehy 9y agoShouldn't the demographics of new google hires look roughly like the demographics of university graduates? If say 80% of graduates are men, how could google hit gender parity without discriminating?
- mkeedlinger 9y agoThis is a question I have as well. The trends currently seem to heavily favor white males right now. Maybe part of the issue has to do with the early education system? I'll admit this idea is not originally mine, but I like it. For some reason is sounds right?
- whatyoucantsay 9y agoOnly if you believe that uni credentials are synonymous with capability.
- colmvp 9y agoThis doesn’t surprise me. I can’t speak to what it’s like to be a white man but for some reason Asians especially men are excluded as being part of what contributes to diversity despite being visible persons of colour.
- EduardoBautista 9y agoAnd Asians are more successful than white people on average. Strange that there is no “Asian Privilege”
- titanix2 9y agoI read more than once on diversity related posts or comments that East-Asian are considered privileged or even... white. That shows the real motive is not the one stated. This diversity stuff is a power game used by some minorities go get some advantages for themselves. They do not care about the minorities that can achieve things by themselves, with education and hard work.
- alphabettsy 9y agoBy which minorities and to achieve what?
- spicymaki 9y agoThe comment is divisive and conspiratorial. The strategy is to create more division among groups and reduce trust.
- themaninthedark 9y agoRight, because splitting people up into arbitrary groups based on melanin levels and ancestral migration does a world of good in promoting trust and good will.
- gyc 9y ago
- mesozoic 9y agoIs anyone still surprised by this behaviour from a post-Demore Google?
- huckyaus 9y agoThe timeframe for these alleged actions predates the release of Damore's memo.
- ghostcluster 9y agoMaybe he was actually onto an unhealthy culture within the company, and trying to help it from the inside.
- huckyaus 9y agoI agree that's possible, but I don't think it's reasonable to read this piece in a "post-Damore Google" context.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- stcredzero 9y agoAs far as I can tell, they are still deeply infected by toxic ideologues who will witch-hunt anyone who openly disagrees with their politics. So many of my old classmates did this vehement un-personing of James Damore, even when they had no factual basis for what they were saying. Someday someone should write a play about it. In the meantime, there's "The Drumhead." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjJN08uqt70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjJN08uqt70
- ygaf 9y agoPeople lost their shit over him IRL?
- 9y ago
- mythrwy 9y agoI don't know what the position was and diversity for PR sake alone is nuts and it's harmful. Also agreed, any discrimination is discrimination and not OK. That being said, it is YouTube. Sure most programmers are white or Asian males but many YouTube viewers are not. It could be in this case that a broader demographic more representative of end users was desirable for actual practical reasons and it was more than about slinging code fast and a PR quota stunt.
- robotresearcher 9y agoJust a note to acknowledge that user IntronExon predicted stories and comments exactly like this being raised in reaction to the stories about endemic sexism that were briefly on the front page today. Now replaced by these tales of unfairness to men. You called, it, Intron.
- hnaccy 9y agoI disagree with this but I do selfishly wish I could get a "diversity" boost when applying. Too bad being LGBT is effectively invisible to recruiters.
- tibbetts 9y agoDo you find that LBGT status is still an obstacle in tech?
- nomansland 9y agoI find that T status is still an issue.
- allthenews 9y agoI really hope that this marks a turning of the tides, because what has been going on in tech, as well as certain non-tech industries, in the name of "diversity," has been nothing short of abhorrent. The doublespeak is inescapable. They claim to stand against racism and sexism, but will not hesitate to discriminate based on race or sex to meet some kind of nonsensical demographic parity targets which are absolutely not reflective of the actual qualifications of applicant pools. Meanwhile, with the other hand, they claim that the existing industry leaders are in the wrong for supposedly doing just that, when merely conflating equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. How the hell do you seriously expect to achieve something like gender parity, for example, through hiring, in a competitive industry when incoming male graduates outnumber female graduates 10 to 1? How can people be so disconnected from reality and blame biased hiring practices?
- megy 9y agoIt is abhorrent to hire one of two very similar people, but prefer the black to overcome the huge bias for white people? In an attempt to redress the 100s of years of imbalance? But it is not abhorrent to treat black people like shit and disclude them from many roles for many years?
- allthenews 9y agoAbsolutely, but those slights do not justify harming other innocent people. Especially in a business context, where the rationale for hiring is supposed to be about productivity. And it isn't fair to presume that we benefited from some kind of historic opression based on the color of our skin either - some of us are immigrants, or first or second generation descendants, having faced persecution of our own, pre and post immigration.
- wqnt 9y agoI remember back in college when I applied for a job in a multi-national company, I didn't get a math screening quiz that applicants from outside of United States had to take. The quiz was pretty easy middle school math that would take 15 minutes to complete. It turns out that the reason is that screening for basic math competency could be discrimination, because it reduces the chance of hiring for minorities who do less well at math testing. If the quiz were carried out in US, the company would need to prepare some report stating that math is essential to the job, which would be very cumbersome and costly to do scientifically. I found it ridiculous as the position clearly needed math and I believe basic arithmatic is a valuable skill to ask for majority of the jobs, even for low-skill positions like cashier at Walmart. While eliminating discrimination is a great cause, all the band-aids to make the issue look less bad is shameful. Instead of improving basic education for minority communities (which costs some money now with high return from enhanced labor productivity and less welfare), our governments/society artificially discriminate in the opposite direction and suppress valid criteria that are statistically unfavorable to minorities.
- stcredzero 9y agoIt turns out that the reason is that screening for basic math competency could be discrimination, because it reduces the chance of hiring for minorities who do less well at math testing. If it genuinely screens for basic math, then there's nothing racist about it. artificially discriminate in the opposite direction and suppress valid criteria that are statistically unfavorable to minorities. Eroding meritocracy is ultimately bad for everyone. It's through climbing meritocratic ladders that minority groups throughout history have raised their prospects.
- nitwit005 9y agoWhile it's clearly not genuinely discriminatory to filter people based on math skills, this is something that gets pushed internally at some companies by the people they hire to improve their diversity. They see that the people they "want to hire" can't pass some standard so they call it discriminatory. It's an easy way for them to show "success".
- Toast_25 9y agoThis begs the question, what is Latino and what is white? I was born in a Latin American country to a Latin American mother and a Canadian father, have lived here my entire life but if you saw me you wouldn't even think I spoke Spanish. Likewise, I've made friends in the US who are of Mexican descent and look very much like it but don't speak a lick of Spanish. This has led me to feel not at home in either my country of origin or Canada. Since I'm too white to be from here and don't know enough about Canadian lifestyle to relate to anyone there.
- alphabettsy 9y agoThere are many people is that position. For example, the conflict between Hispanic and Latino identity.
- BigChiefSmokem 9y agoYou are Generation 0 (Zero) like me. Your ancestral roots are anglo, hispanic, and native american by tradition.
- EduardoBautista 9y agoLatin American does not mean they have Native American roots.
- spicymaki 9y agoMany aspects of how we categorize humans fall apart when you start asking questions like this. Best I can say is there are no logically satisfying answers.
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- throwaway0255 9y agoPeople outside of tech think there's this silent discrimination and hostility against women and minorities, but it's the complete opposite. If you could choose your race and gender going into these interviews, you would be a complete idiot to choose male or white or asian. It's not just in hiring either. Another thing I've noticed is if you fail as a male engineer, you get fired. If you fail as a female engineer, you get reassigned to product management. These positions seem to be reserved for non-males. Women get reassigned, men get shown the door. It's getting to the point where all of this is so overt and so undeniable. It's all to avoid lawsuits, but what if they're just exposing themselves to more lawsuits on the other end of that pendulum? I have to think at some point the race- and gender-based meddling these companies do in people's careers will have to stop.
- joefkelley 9y agoMy understanding is that you can't legally have any sort of explicit quota or scoring system, but that you can sort-of factor in race, ethnicity, or gender to meet diversity goals. Is this correct? And isn't it kind of inconsistent? Whatever sort of decision-making process a recruiter goes through, one could imagine a mathematical formulation of it that matches up to some tolerance. Would such a formulation be illegal, since it must assign a weight to race at some point, even if the recruiter's vague sense of "I kind of want more diverse hires" is legal? In fact, doesn't disallowing any sort of numbers-based approach increase the likelihood of human bias creeping in, which is a lot of what diversity hiring is trying to correct for in the first place? Why should a practice only be illegal if you put explicit numbers around it?
- Distant_horizon 9y agoCompanies are only required to "avoid discrimination." So documenting attempts to hire and attract underrepresented people (POC), is a way to avoid discrimination lawsuits and satisfy court judgments for prior bad hiring practices. Recruiters need to get POC into the pipeline. Then, merit based "scoring" is introduced. There's no guarantee they'll be hired.
- whatyoucantsay 9y agoThe article mentions that there was a hiring freeze of white and Asian candidates and shows in a demographic breakdown that 56% of its employees are white. The US is 76.9% of the US "white alone" according to its Census data. The corresponding figure for California is 72.7%. It's interesting that YouTube (allegedly) made the decision to freeze hires of a racial group already underrepresented and that the text of the article never touched upon the point. The ethnic group truly overrepresented in US tech companies is Asians. It's an unfortunate trend of treating people as members of groups rather than individuals to begin with, but it's doubly unfortunate that so many Americans are struggling even to speak openly about the what the current numbers are. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217
- usaar333 9y ago"white alone" includes Hispanic. You need to read "white alone, not Hispanic". Anyway, going by https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanmateocountycalifornia/PST045217 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanmateocountyc... San Mateo County is: 40% white alone 29% Asian alone From that data alone, whites could actually be more over-represented than Asians. (I stress could because you need per-site info to conclude anything) Regardless, I don't see evidence that whites are underrepresented.
- whatyoucantsay 9y agoSan Mateo County is small enough to be distorted by the effects of the very kind of discriminatory hiring the article is about. Based upon the rapid downvoting, I'll work off the premise that I misread the statistics and ask for clarification: Which group of people does the "76.9% of US population - White alone" statistic refer to? The San Mateo numbers in the link you shared say: 24.8% Hispanic or Latino 39.8% White alone, not Hispanic 61.4% White alone Does this mean that the vast majority of Hispanics in the county are also in the "white alone" category? This would be clearer if race were one category and "household language" were a completely separate one. :/
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- cpt1138 9y agoJust wait until y'all get over 40. Then you'll see what discrimination feels like too. Ive had interviews where they wont even talk to me once they come in and get a look at me. They instantly say sorry were not looking anymore, sorry to waste your time. But the job stays up. The problem really might be that no one has a good solution. Discrimination exists, no one has a clue what to do about it. These "affirmative-action" type solutions seem more like attempts to do something rather than nothing.
- woolvalley 9y agoWhat size were the companies? Did it happen at the big tech companies?
- dhf17 9y agoI grew up in a somewhat cult like church environment. Speaking in tongues, adults laughing uncontrollably on the floor, people falling out after the laying on of hands. Although I respect Christianity and the values it teaches, looking back on my particular church environment, it seemed deep into lunacy territory. What's your point, you might be wondering... The point is at the time it seemed completely normal. Sometimes when you get away long enough to clear your mind, you get to see the reality of the social hysteria that you had been consumed by. I experienced this a second time after not watching the news for a few years. Silicon valley, Hollywood, MSM, the 'left' in general, has gone so far bonkers their behavior is virtually comedic at this point. If you get a chance, turn off the news, the movies, twitter, facebook etc, and leave your bubble for a year or two. You'll be amazed at the clarity and freedom of thought that you will discover.
- ignoramceisblis 9y agoIt's rare for internet denizens to hear a voice from the other side! And it's a welcome reminder.
- heurist 9y agoGuess you haven't watched Fox since you turned the TV back on... Really think you're overstating the positions liberals are putting forward. Also, your comment has no critical disagreement s with the positions themselves so I have to wonder if you're just trolling.
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- arkona3 9y agoTo be frank, Fox has been parroting the same conservative rhetoric for as long as I can remember. It’s the same as it was during the Bush years and the Obama years - O’Reilly has been replaced with Hannity and when Hannity retires another talking head will take his place. On the other hand CNN, NYT, Washington Post, MSNBC have shifted so far to the left, they would be unrecognizable to a time traveler from 15 years ago. Remember when CNN was considered in the center of the political spectrum and one of the most “objective” news source around? There is a pronounced bias in the mainstream media and it is not towards the right.
- throwaway9837 9y agoThe phrase "historically underrepresented groups" in the US hides the truth that: historically underrepresented = minorities - Asian-Americans + white women Imagine if a policy were instituted that benefited minorities, then someone proposed that it should be tweaked so that it didn't help Asian-Americans so much and helped white women instead. They'd be laughed out of the room. Engineering is one of the few fields Asians in the US have been able to do well in. Consider law, where Asian-Americans make 10% of graduates at top-30 schools but only 6% of federal law clerks and 4% of state law clerks; by comparison, the numbers for white Americans are 58% graduating and then 82% and 80% becoming law clerks. [1] And now policies like this are in vogue--removing one of the last reliable paths to the middle class for immigrants and the children of immigrants. The phrase "historically underrepresented" should be a red flag. It neglects context and is virtually a euphemism for discrimination against Asian Americans and for (and it feels so bizarre to be typing this) white women. [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/07/31/538299755/whats-keeping-asian-american-lawyers-from-ascending-the-legal-ranks https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/07/31/538299755...
- throwaway1584 9y agoIt also doesn't make sense to apply US demographics to an industry where ⅔ [1] of the workers are immigrants. Silicon Valley recruits outliers from around the world. Immigrants are misclassified into US demographic categories from the EEO-1 Instruction Booklet [2] that underpins all diversity and inclusion programs, and they risk discrimination for this. [1] https://jointventure.org/images/stories/pdf/index2018.pdf https://jointventure.org/images/stories/pdf/index2018.pdf [2] https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/2007instructions.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/2007instructions.c...
- notacoward 9y ago> Imagine if a policy were instituted that benefited minorities, then someone proposed that it should be tweaked so that it didn't help Asian-Americans so much and helped white women instead. They'd be laughed out of the room. That exactly describes the policies many have adopted, either explicitly or implicitly, and they're often deadly serious about it. It's no secret that both Jews and Asians are generally treated as white/majority/whatever for diversity purposes, despite their respective histories or current demographics.
- cierra 9y agoThis sort of discrimination happens at many big companies these days. Having worked at facebook, I have witnessed these policies first hand. Facebook has explicit policies against hiring (non-latino) white and asian men. Management would occasionally decide that they hired too many people of certain races/ethnicities and tell employees that they are only hiring from other groups until the end of the year. I'm not sure how they determined race/ethnicity. I'm assuming recruiters had to make guesses based on candidates names and facebook photos. It's weird to imagine recruiters trying to estimate candidates' skin color to determine whether to toss their resume in the trash. Facebook tried to hide their affirmative action programs and chastised any employee who questioned them. But occasionally, someone from recruiting or management would reveal the existence of their racial profiling. So I'm assuming the discrimination went much further than what was occasionally revealed. Mark Zuckerburg spent last year touring the country to make photo-ops with "real americans". I'm curious what his new friends would have thought of him if they knew about his support for discriminating against them.
- shiado 9y agoThe obvious solution is to just lie when applying to jobs. Anything short of a genetic test to determine your racial origin is unsatisfactory and administering such a test for a job applicant is illegal and for good reason. Can you imagine a Gattaca style world where tech companies require your 23andme profile for diversity purposes? There is no situation where somebody in the application process would talk to you about their concerns you don't match some race you claimed to be a part of. Can you imagine some HR person saying "Um, excuse me but I don't really think you are 1/4 black because your skin looks really white to me". Just pretend your grandparent is some other race and claim mixed race on the application, for all you know you very well may be. It also brings up an interesting question. Without a genetic profile can you truthfully answer what your race is on a job application? Are there legal implications to answering without concrete knowledge? Without such a test I suppose you can only really call yourself "indeterminate race".
- nradov 9y agoSince race is a social construct with no scientific basis there's no lieing involved. Anyone can select any race they please with a clear conscience.
- rmartelli 9y agoYou can find the brief here: https://www.scribd.com/document/372751852/Wilberg-v-Google-Recruiter-that-was-fired-for-refusing-to-discriminate https://www.scribd.com/document/372751852/Wilberg-v-Google-R... A screenshot from an email says (p28): "Please continue with L3 candidates in process and only continue with L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups"
- cyphunk 9y agoWow, Have fun with this one n-gate.com. HN commenters have homogeneously settled on feeling abused by affirmative action. I'm having trouble finding critique herein.
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- rendall 9y ago"The latter suit was filed by plaintiff James Damore, an engineer who was fired from the company last year for distributing a memo that suggested men were better suited to certain tech jobs than women. " Excuse me. Hold on. Aaaaararrrrrarrrrgh!!!11!!! Sorry. Had to get that out of my system. It is frustrating to read the same misapprehension over and over and over. Once again: James Damore's memo suggested no such thing. He said that men and women tend to have different interests; and that engineering jobs at Google, as they are implemented, tend to favor engineers whose personality attributes are those that are typically held by men. He then went on to explain how Google might change the jobs so that it would be more appealing to those whose personality traits typically align with women. There is nothing about how men are more suited. Something is seriously wrong with society when journalists at WSJ (et. al., et. al., et. al.) do not have enough reading comprehension skills to read, and understand, Damore's memo.
- DanBC 9y agoWhen multiple degree educated people who use language as a tool of their job continue to misunderstand what damore said maybe the problem is with his piss-poor communication, and not their understanding. When very many people who read his document come to the same conclusion maybe, just maybe, that's what he actually said.
- GhostVII 9y agoI'm not a particularly well educated person and I could still clearly see that Damore was talking about preferences not abilities (he explicitly said it in the memo if I remember correctly). Seems more like the degree educated people aren't reading the memo very carefully.
- cpncrunch 9y agoHe was talking about preferences and abilities.
- apta 9y agoWhile I haven't read what he wrote, it may not be directly due to bad communication. I'm strongly inclined to believe that anyone going against the grain on this matter, even with logical and study-backed arguments will not end up in a good position (see e.g. Jordan Peterson).
- znpy 9y agoI came back to this thread to say that this issue is very peculiar because if Youtube/Google can be this picky about candidates (junior/low experience candidates in particular) maybe this STEM/Tech shortage is not so real as they often try to make it look. Maybe all this effort agains an hypotetical STEM/Tech "shortage" is just to drive down tech employees salaries in the long term.
- burntrelish1273 9y agoNot sure this has ever happened to me. I'm very pale and male, and always have recruiters coming after me for SRE gigs. Maybe this happens, but I've not see it. It's irrational to hire based on anything other than merit, although I understand diversity is good because I don't prefer to work with only white/asian dudes either. Hire everyone qualified, especially people whom don't look like yourself.