8 ms·
Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years
- poster123 8y ago"In the U.S., Facebook is 3.5 percent black, compared to just 2 percent in 2014, and 4.9 percent Latinx compared to 4 percent in 2014. White people, unsurprisingly, still makes up the single largest population of employees (46.4 percent today versus 57 percent in 2014). The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook." No mention is made of the fraction of Asians, because their over-representation would undermine the narrative of whites discriminating against minorities. This intellectual dishonesty irks me. There are industries such as education where the vast majority of workers are female. If men and women are in the workforce at about even levels, there must be some industries where men predominate.
- blahblahblogger 8y agoI completely agree and I'm not sure why over-representation isn't a larger issue.
- ceejayoz 8y agoHonest question: Is your concern about over-representation limited to Asian people, or do you have similar concerns about white male over-representation in tech and elsewhere?
- colordrops 8y agoI don't see much noise about bringing men into female dominated industries either.
- Frondo 8y agoThere are groups working on bringing men into nursing and teaching. You can find out more about these with a few google searches.
- ceejayoz 8y ago> There are industries such as education where the vast majority of workers are female. Yes, and they've tended to be the lower-paid professions. Nurses instead of doctors, teachers instead of principals, etc. This argument is a little like citing "black people have water fountains, too" to defend the segregated South. It misses the point.
- neoburkian 8y agoFemale dominated professions, on average, have more time off, more flexible hours, significant social components, less physically dangerous, etc. Maybe these things matter, on average, more to women than men. Why should we expect women to have the exact same distribution of preferences as men? Why are we accepting the frame that the only thing that matters is salary? If women choose their profession based on factors other than salary, it is a little strange to analogize them to black people under segregation. Just because someone has different values doesn't mean that they have false consciousness or are acting under duress.
- waisbrot 8y ago> the narrative of whites discriminating against minorities You made up that narrative. The narrative presented in the article is > Williams noted that, "diversity is critical to our success as a company" Achieving "diversity" is not the same as mirroring the demographics of a company's home country and "over-representation" is not directly related to lack of diversity.
- radiantswirl 8y agoIf "diverse" != mirroring the demographics of one's home country, then what does diverse even mean? What could possibly be a better metric than that? Mirroring the demographics of the world at large? If so, why would that be better?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ryanmercer 8y ago>"In the U.S., Facebook is 3.5 percent black, compared to just 2 percent in 2014, and 4.9 percent Latinx compared to 4 percent in 2014. White people, unsurprisingly, still makes up the single largest population of employees (46.4 percent today versus 57 percent in 2014). The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook." So they're actually MORE diverse than the country racially. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_makeup_of_the_U.S._population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... "The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 61.3% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 76.9%"
- ryanmercer 8y agoAt some point it boils down to who applies. Example: Women are GENERALLY more petite, they struggle carrying firefighter gear (45-75lbs depending on your load out) and aren't interested or can't pass the necessary requirements to ensure their safety, they get fewer female applicants and thus more men are firefighters type of thing. I imagine there are still fewer qualified female applicants than male. I imagine there are far fewer female applicants for entry-level construction jobs than male applicants too, doesn't mean a construction company is dropping the ball or being discriminatory by default.
- atomical 8y agoPetite? A majority of women are overweight in the USA.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sctb 8y agoIf you keep posting unsubstantive inflammatory comments we'll ban the account.
- s-shellfish 8y agoWhat does this have to do with software development? Are you actually suggesting women have some physical attribute that makes them less applicable for programming, mathematics, or computer science jobs? This reasoning is part of the problem. It's not rigorously inspected or accepted, because it's circular logic that can be self proving given one dominant party enforcing such a reasoning structure as 'the rules'.
- colordrops 8y agoI think it's an analogy. The point is that there are deep social and cultural factors at play that bias women against software, so the applicant pool is small, and it can't be fixed by some localized corporate initiative.
- atomical 8y ago"Anyway, worldwide, Facebook is 36 percent female, up from 31 percent in 2014." This article isn't written professionally.
- ceejayoz 8y agoIt says "techcrunch.com" right by the link.
- ryanmercer 8y agoBurn.
- remusrm 8y agobesides forcing them to get int his field, what else can you do!
- lawlessone 8y agoTechs diversity problems start early in school before college. Facebook are just the last mile. The sex based targeting of childrens toys would be a good place to start , but you won't see results for 20 years.
- nsxwolf 8y agoSex targeted toys sell. Most parents want that for their kids. It's not a conspiracy by the toy companies.
- jonathankoren 8y agoI wouldn’t say, “most parents want [sex targeted toys]”. Rather parents give the toys their kids want. Kids want what they see, and the see gender specific toys.
- ryanmercer 8y ago>I wouldn’t say, “most parents want [sex targeted toys]”. Rather parents give the toys their kids want. Kids want what they see, and the see gender specific toys. I don't know. The pink bicycles vs non-pink bicycles thing applies to adults too. See 'pink tax'.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoSure its not the parents. Kids 'want' what they see on tv, see their friends have, see who the toy's aimed at etc. Its cultural. Which means, learned.
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y agoI see this a lot and I just don't understand it. Everyone in this problem seems desperate to point the finger to someone else. And it's not just sex, it's race too. Having problems hiring black tech workers? It's the college's fault. Having problems graduating black students with BSs in STEM? It's the high school's fault. Having problems graduating black students from high school? Really it's the fault of the community or family that raised them. Having problems fixing the community's culture? Really it's the fault of poverty. Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will hire us. This isn't a pipe that just spits kids out when they're about to be hired, every single person in that pipeline is desperate to pretend that it's someone further down the line's problem, except once you go far enough down the pipe you end up back where you started. It's not a linear pipe spitting individual kids out that we just can't do anything about. It's a cycle and wherever it is that we exist in that cycle, be it elementary education or hiring Senior Devs at a FAANG, we have a responsibility to step in and do something about it. Enough passing the buck.
- swalsh 8y agoMaybe because I'm a white dude, perhaps that means I'm not allowed to be a part of these conversations. I fail to understand what the goal of these efforts is. Why did we decide race, and sex are the important immutable factors that we're going to measure? I grew up in what is today Trump Country. My high school prepared me to work in a factory. Then the factory moved to China, and now the only jobs left in the area are retail and healthcare. I managed to move out, but the vast majority of people I went to high school with are stuck. Why is economic background not a class we care about too? Shouldn't economic mobility be a part of social justice as well?
- danharaj 8y ago> Why is economic background not a class we care about too? Shouldn't economic mobility be a part of social justice as well? It is, but those people are called socialists and/or communists. If you look, you'd find groups that try to synthesize a unified picture of our common struggles.
- dongkyun 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
- aylmao 8y agoI don't know why this is getting downvoted; he has a very valid point. Economic class/background is as important when it comes to diversity. I feel like there's little conversation about it because it's an even harder problem to tackle and a less obvious one to see. I will say though, to a large extent economic class and race still remain tied in the US.
- dongkyun 8y agoThey're getting downvoted because the people who do care about racial and gender equality very much do care about class mobilization and to premise the question with the idea that they don't care means at best, OP doesn't know what they're talking about and at worst, OP is using class issues in bad faith to bludgeon away any attempts at talking about the former.
- blahblahblogger 8y agoCan someone tell me why these tech companies even publish these numbers? It seems like they always end up with egg on their face. And they have no obligation to be transparent as private (or public) entities. But now they all have to have chief diversity officers and diversity councils and PR/recruiting teams for diversity - all of which cost money and hasn't seemed to move the needle very much. And which as another poster pointed out, doesn't fundamentally change the underlying issue about who applies to these jobs, who goes to school for computer science, etc.
- craftyguy 8y ago> Can someone tell me why these tech companies even publish these numbers? PR.
- 5874-4b22-a4e0 8y agoWhen they get sued, they bring these up and say, we tried.
- s3r3nity 8y ago> Can someone tell me why these tech companies even publish these numbers? Because if you don't, it looks even worse. So my guess is publicity and PR.
- pdpi 8y agoBecause they care? I know it's a shocking concept, but people actually care. "Big corporations" aren't some amorphous number crunching machine. They're staffed by people, and those people have concerns, and priorities, and principles. When you specifically hire for people who share those principles, and announce them loudly as part of your culture, people actually can, and do, get upset, and demand change when you don't act accordingly — and change can and does happen.
- hirundo 8y ago> When the Cambridge Analytica scandal went down, some pointed to Facebook’s overall lack of diversity as part of the problem. That’s because homogenous cultures lead to limited perspectives and potential lack of awareness of things that may be more obvious to diverse groups of people. If the purpose is to gain greater perspective and awareness through less homogeneous employees, then it would be more effective to hire according to heterogeneous answers to questions about perspective and awareness, rather than by less reliable proxies like gender and ethnicity.
- montalbano 8y agoAgreed, genuine diversity of intellectual approach is the gold standard IMHO.
- radiantswirl 8y agoIt seems like a completely unattainable standard to me. Can you give me an example of a situation in which "genuine diversity of intellectual approach" has been a net positive for an organization, rather than a divisive detriment to morale? IMO if your organization has a "genuine diversity of intellectual approach" that is truly genuine, then you will soon no longer have an organization — you will have two different organizations, each ideologically homogenous but definitely "genuinely different in intellectual approach" from one another.
- montalbano 8y agoYour response seems to be suggesting that having two different approaches precludes the possibility of two people listening to each other and reaching a sensible agreement?
- radiantswirl 8y agoI do not suggest that, because obviously people can listen to each other and reach sensible agreements. But if that's possible then how "genuine" is their intellectual difference in the first place? My question is this: what defines an organization other than a shared intellectual approach? Borders? Dare I say... Walls? I'm just saying that a "shared intellectual approach" is literally the definition of an organization to me, unless you're gonna say that walls/borders/exclusion are what defines an organization. So it makes no sense to insist on NOT sharing an intellectual approach because in that instance you'd quickly have two separate organizations. What I'm really asking for tho is a single example of "genuine intellectual diversity" being beneficial as opposed to merely being divisive and demoralizing. Can you provide an example?
- kvl7 8y agoThis is one of the comments on that article: ------- > The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook. Why is that an upside? It seems utterly racist to me. Let’s try to substitute “white” with, say, Asian. “The upside to this is that Asian people no longer make up the majority at Facebook.” Or how about the color black? “The upside to this is that black people no longer make up the majority at Facebook.” I wonder how that would go down? ------- I echo this sentiment completely. Why is anti-white racism being encouraged?
- jhedwards 8y agoBecause historically many American companies were 100% white and controlled all the financial and political power. We never had a homogenous Asian or black majority in our society, so there is an attempt here to make up for hundreds of years of segregation where black people were not allowed in the office, the church, the restaurant etc, simply because they were black.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoWell, diversity efforts at Microsoft China were trying to move away from the 100% Chinese office. Of course, that being China meant a few foreigners here and there. Some effort really pays off in a very homogeneous environment.
- pwaivers 8y ago> "The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook." I am all for diversity, but this sentence upsets me. Decreasing one population in the place should not be the goal.
- throwawaymath 8y agoBut percentages are zero sum. You can't increase diversity without decreasing homogeneity.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y agoIncreasing a minority will require decreasing the share of the majority. Either you're okay with that or you're not.
- manfredo 8y agoI'm not sure I follow. If a company has 75% from group A and 25% from group B while these groups make up 66% and 33% of the population respectively then it makes sense to address the underrepresentation of group B. But why would we applaud a 50/50 ratio? Isn't that just an underrepresentation if group A? A majority is not necessarily an overrepresentation. This line if thing seems liable to give credence to the notion that "diversity" is a dog whistle for achieving an underrepresentation of undesirable groups (men, Whites, and increasingly Asians).
- java_script 8y agoThen by definition you are not "all for diversity".
- manfredo 8y agoDepends. In my view you can be all for diversity but at the same time not deliberately attempt to achieve an underrepresentation of a particular group.
- nodesocket 8y agoThis Techcrunch write has a long storied history of playing identity politics some would even argue with racist undertones. I recently saw a new "the more you know ad" on YouTubeTV and was really impressed with the message. Instead of playing identity politics and blaming "patriarchal white men" it encouraged women to join the engineering and science movement and become more active in technology. That's the message we should be sending.
- hw 8y agoThe fact is that diversity doesn't start at companies. It needs to be part of parenting (encouraging daughters to explore STEM). Needs to be part of early education in schools, and also colleges. Until the diversity spectrum in college admissions and graduates improves, companies are going to find it hard to meet their diversity requirements if there aren't enough diversity in skilled workers out in the market.
- hugh4life 8y agoThe serious way to boost diversity: go to poor/minority communities in west and then developing countries in general and give young children the Raven's Progressive Matrices test and recruit the best scorers into specialized academies.
- 21 8y agoLooking at the graph, they seem to have the Harvard Asian problem. Maybe they can solve it the same way, by hiring based on "full personality assessments".
- eezurr 8y agoThis is slightly off topic, but are their any numbers on what percentage of [women, black, hispanic, white, men etc] WANT to sit in front of a computer and program all day? I think we need those numbers in order truly measure diversity progress. [1] If only 10% (made up number) of women are interested in software development, and 95% of that 10% are working in software, that's good! Looking at all women and saying only 9.5% of women are working in software misrepresents all the progress has been made. [1] Why these numbers would be different for each class of people is a whole different conversation involving nature/nurture/culture/etc.
- ryanmercer 8y agohttps://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-10-20/study-computer-science-gender-gap-widens-despite-increase-in-jobs https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-10-20/st... "In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_makeup_of_the_U.S._population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... "The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 61.3% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 76.9%"
- 0x445442 8y agoAnd yet there doesn't seem to be much concern that only 4% of Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations workers are female or only 25% of Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations workders are men. https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm
- lord_ring_111 8y agoThe diversity should be built from startups rather than by big corps vacuuming small population. But then diversity is also about not having “fair share” of high paying jobs. For example no one complains about lack of diversity in non high paying industries. See https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18.htm Agriculture, mining, constrction, transportation are much worse in gender diversity than tech (over representation of male) but you never hear those stories. Similarly health and education are over represented by females by 3:1 and no voices in needing more males there. Building more diverse statups are good entry point as diverse leaders there will help define tomorrow rather than being being a diversity cog in bug company.