24 ms·

Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

98 points by shivbhatt 5y ago

sidlls 5y ago
Let's look at the data, shall we? In 2019: - 0.95% of CS degrees were awarded to black women - 0.86% of degrees were awarded to women who identify as two or more races - 1.63% were awarded to latina women Looks like they're hiring a larger share of individuals in these demographics (1.8% hire rate in each group) than receive degrees. It's not by a lot, but it's definitely not stagnant or moving backwards. (Note this obviously doesn't include other professions, but these other professions, at Google, aren't nearly as large a part of their labor pool. It is significant, though, considering 20% of blacks have BS degrees, and 19% of hispanics do.) I've really soured on these efforts. It seemed to me the diversity group formed at the company I work for has a narrow focus on the specific identities that (surprise, surprise) the "leaders" on the team fit in. This is what identity politics in America is these days. It's not about inclusion, it's about using the politics of identity in a self-serving way--kinda like any other corporate maneuvering.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  It is very strange to work in a company where an individual of a given race with the power to fire or at least harm career progression tells another race how to treat members of the powerful individuals race. All the diversity training and questions delivered from this leader then imply that the white employees getting the training are the problems and are inherently racist. Just does not sit well with me.
vmception 5y ago
> The company nearly doubled the number of Black+ people in U.S. leadership to 7.1% last year It’s cool they’ve been able to find qualified people, taking a long time to fill those roles but very nice they are doing it! They will more adequately address additional markets with this talent gravitational pull. What is the percentage of Black+ in the population? The US census doesn’t have a + section, so we can deduce that it is at least 12% for standard tier Black, but when including the premium tier what percentage is that? It’s nice that it is getting much closer to proportionate representation, it’s not clear how close
- sct202 5y ago
  Is that a mistake? In the charts on this year's report, the Black Leadership % went from 2.6% to 3.0%. https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/ https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/
  - vmception 5y ago
    Best I can see is maybe a 7% increase! The article got that very incorrect
- l33t2328 5y ago
  Black people are currently less educated as a result of systemic racism than their Asain and white counterparts. That would make achieving 12% leadership particularly difficult, since black people are on average less qualified(on paper, at least) relative to applicants from other races.
  - vmception 5y ago
    it seems the article is wrong and it is much lower % I was surprised by the 7% metric and found it improbable too
  - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
    Asians are proof the power of systemic racism to hold minorities down in this day and age is not very strong.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Some specific cultures with Asian heritage in the West. Not intentionally trying to be obtuse, but to support that talking point it is important to recognize that there are other Asian people in the West that are underserved by this overly broad racially prejudiced assumption. There have always been cultures that adapt to certain states of the world. For example, German efficiency was there and irrelevant before the industrial era, and when the world valued efficiency their culture was the beneficiary. In reference to some cultures from Asia operating in the West, they are also benefactors of the family support systems that they are able to maintain, even if there are psychological issues with that model, it is accurate that many are able to achieve social standing in Western society. You are hoping for that to prove the wrong thing, or disprove the validity of other group's experiences as if they are not worth further analysis and support. This doesn't help y/our society.
bko 5y ago
What is Black+ and Latinx+? This is the first time I'm hearing this term and can't find anything about it in the report or online.
- cyberlurker 5y ago
  I want to know also. My guess is Black or Latino of every gender/sexuality.
  - ignoranceprior 5y ago
    If I had to guess, I would say Black+ means anyone who has Black heritage, even if mixed. But it could be a sexual orientation thing too.
  - bko 5y ago
    I don't think so because in their 2019 diversity report they have breakdowns of Asian+, Black+, Latinx+, Native American+ and White+ in an "Intersectional workforce" chart. I think that has to do with gender and sexuality, so those shouldn't be + Their hires and workforce representation are ~40% Asian+ but I don't think that qualifies as diversity. https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb783535e7baa3f596bccb1ce697dccec2e4db2114b84013ae12a1399ec9672fe1ab2fd419ac0ca9a3b6d2f78418b480885e7b24c9ec107c0ccc https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb78...
    - kbelder 5y ago
      It also has the effect of pushing as many people into the +buckets as possible, making it so all marginal cases are included. This could be a modern incarnation of the 'one drop' rule, thinking that if you're part minority, that is still the most important part of your makeup. Or, more likely, it's to inflate numbers as much as possible for PR.
- joshsyn 5y ago
  I identity myself as "space-master". I can't find myself in there. Shame, I am such a minority group nobody cares.
l33t2328 5y ago
Latinx(+) is a term I’ve never heard a latino person use in real life. It seems like needless kid gloves and bastardization of language.
- blueflow 5y ago
  This is woke signalling and is a kind of public performance.
- cyberlurker 5y ago
  I don’t have data for this, but it is probably language popular in Black and Latino Twitter communities. I’m assuming those not engaged in those communities don’t use the “x” or “+”.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  They're not for use in real life, they're for statistical aggregation of e.g. someone who is both Black and Latino. It's a way of saying "X plus maybe also other things" rather than "X only".
- danpalmer 5y ago
  I also don't use the term "White British" to describe myself even though it is the demographic I select on surveys. These terms are useful for demographic measurement, not for personal description. Another commenter gives a good explanation – that the + is there to include those who identify as mixed race. Latinx is used to aggregate Latino/Latina identities. These terms are useful with even the smallest amount of interest given to why they might be. I'd encourage you to be more curious rather than jumping to the conclusion that this stems from some cultural over-sensitivity.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    There’s an easy word for this: Latin.
- donohoe 5y ago
  Ruby, Ruby on Rails, React, jQuery, Vue, Svelte, Vagrant are terms I’ve never heard a regular person use in real life. The former in particular seems like needless kid gloves and bastardization of language.
mastazi 5y ago
I'm Italian and I speak Spanish and Portuguese relatively fluently. Using the term "Latinx" in my opinion is a form of cultural appropriation, because it imposes a way of using grammatical gender that is typical of the English language (think e.g. about the "singular they") upon neo-latin languages where the perception of grammatical gender is very different. In neo-latin languages such as Italian or Spanish, grammatical gender doesn't have the same weight that it has in English, e.g. when I think about "scrivania" or "armadio" (those are the Italian words for "desk" and "closet", the former is feminine and the latter is masculine) I don't imagine in my mind that the desk has feminine features, or that the closet is somehow manly. This is just not how those languages work. Edit: when I speak English I'm absolutely in favour of things like singular they. I'm just saying that this doesn't work as well in other languages.
- sidlls 5y ago
  Oh, absolutely. The appearance of "x" instead of the "a" or "o" is an immediate signal of someone who is trying to signal wokeness, but isn't actually.
  - doubleunplussed 5y ago
    Signalling wokeness is wokeness. It's not like there's some authentic wokeness - calling it wokeness is accusing it of being inauthentic.
    - sidlls 5y ago
      Okay; and that's fine by me, as I do consider it a rather shallow minded concept anyway. But it does mean something in certain communities, and there are indicators when someone is mouthing words without understanding their meaning or weight. To claim there isn't an "authentic wokeness" is not exactly correct.
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  Not even speaking about languages without gendered nouns. :) Sometimes I use she instead of he or the other way around, and the listeners likely don't realize that I have to pay extra attention using he/she when talking about people because my mother tongue doesn't even have a similar concept whatsoever. Anyway, we know that most of the time it's not about actually respecting the other person.
aliasEli 5y ago
Is attrition a "normal" English word in this context, or is it also GoogleSpeak like Black+?
- kzrdude 5y ago
  It's relatively normal. I guess the dictionary doesn't agree exactly with how it's used here, but it's listed as meaning 2 in this dictionary here and then also further on. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/attrition https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/attriti...
CydeWeys 5y ago
The elephant in the room is the ouster of Timnit Gebru. Regardless of who you think was in the wrong there, a lot of people who left did so because they thought Google was in the wrong, and left in solidarity or maybe even because they thought they might be next for being similarly outspoken.
- curiousgal 5y ago
  I think it's super hypocritical to be well paid a company while also trash talking them on Twitter. I wouldn't call that being outspoken.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    My intent with saying "Regardless of who you think was in the wrong there" was precisely NOT to re-litigate the entire saga (that's old and played out here). Regardless of who you think was wrong, it had a big effect on black employees' perceptions of their employer.
    - curiousgal 5y ago
      Not necessarily, you'd probably be surprised that many black employees don't really care about this whole ordeal or affirmative action in general. Which is understandable; if you're confident in your skill set and take pride in your work, the last thing you want to hear is "we hired you for diversity reasons".
    - sidlls 5y ago
      On some black employees' perceptions. This is hard for people new to working and living alongside minorities in America, but these are individuals and not a monolithic group. Identity politics is dangerous because the loudest mouths on the issue are definitely not representative of any whole group. And yet culturally we're demanded to see things their way to an increasing and alarming degree.
      - vmception 5y ago
sokoloff 5y ago
> some people from underrepresented backgrounds have said they continue to feel unwelcome in the tech industry, and they also remain high in demand elsewhere as companies compete to increase diversity. This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps, but it seems like many policies which seek to boost individual company population ratios to be significantly higher than the comparable tech-industry ratios are prone to this problem. Competing for talent and working hard to ensure that underrepresented group members have a fair shot? Should be standard practice and a baseline of ethical corporate and human behavior. Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me. We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. That’s observable from the industry-wide figures. Moving an underrepresented group member from industry company A to industry company B doesn’t change that industry-wide measure at all, which should be obvious but seems to escape mention.
- hdhjebebeb 5y ago
  Isn't this the free market at work? How would all the companies collude to collectively bring in more marginalized people? It's like saying "I want higher wages but I don't think one company raising wages will achieve that". The companies are competing because that's the system they exist in - some of that competition will be zero-sum, but according to arch capitalists some of it will be a net positive
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    > How would all the companies collude to collectively bring in more marginalized people? Supporting pipeline programs (middle and high school education, summer programs, internship programs, bootcamps and other career-change programs, etc.) seems to be the obvious paths for companies to exert lasting positive influence on the industry and world. Sure, there's some fringe backlash when some company supports a program that is targeted at underrepresented groups, but I think that's the way to create lasting change. Unfortunately, it doesn't move the needle on D&I OKRs this quarter or next. Poaching from someone else is the fastest way to move a key result metric. "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."
blacktriangle 5y ago
Because leftist have a white savior complex and are trying to spread cultural Marxism, that's why they're bothering.
- rocqua 5y ago
  I often hear people I dismiss directly mention cultural marxism. But I have never seen an explanation of what cultural marxism is. Could you enlighten me?
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    Critical theory is actually what people mean when they say cultural Marxism. Critical theory itself came out of various Marxist and Marxist-influenced academics in the mid-20th century.
    - rocqua 5y ago
      It seems that most people in this thread who use the term cultural marxism don't quite mean critical theory. Instead it seems to be about seeing (and advocating for) a dialectic between the oppressors and the oppressed. The idea is that this division maps somewhat to 'cultural' groups. The main 'cultural' division they mention is race. I would assume they also include LGBT+ and occasionally jews as part of the opressed group. A main part of the concept behind this is that this dialectic is wrong. And hence people supporting it are doing so for other goals. Apparently this goal is "communism". That is, the goal is overthrowing the oppressed. It seems like the idea is that some of the people supporting this dialectic do so without questioning whether it is true. Hence, the argument goes, the supporters of this idea are either maliciously pushing a false agenda, or they are convinced by the false agenda and are well-meaning fools. I also get the feeling there is an undertone of trying to understand why white / straight / gentile people are actually supporting the progressive side of identity politics. Personally, I think most of this is plainly wrong. Though it seems like an interesting lens through which to look at the most extreme people at the progressive spectrum of identity politics.
techbrobane 5y ago
This website is a stellar example of white tech bro culture, especially threads like this. Guaranteed toxic AF.
- vmception 5y ago
  By time of writing i dont find anything toxic here, just confusion on what X and + mean outside of math contexts and electronics models
  - jfengel 5y ago
    Pretty much any post using the words "woke" or "signaling" is going to be toxic. The words are intended as synonyms for "hypocritical": "They don't actually mean this argument; they're only doing it to be seen." It's not just ad hominem, but also the way it comes out reflexively any time any issue of justice is brought up. (Along with "SJW", which I haven't seen as much lately; the terms of opprobrium go in and out of fashion.) That's where the toxicity lays: the instant dismissal of the topic without having to even reference the matter at hand. Viewed that way, you can see toxicity all over this thread, and all over any similar thread anywhere on the site. The tone is hostile before anybody has even begun to discuss the merits of the idea.
- cudgy 5y ago
  Might as well find a website that is non-toxic and agrees with your views because there are many perspectives on this site, which is one of it’s greatest strengths. Another strategy is to avoid any threads concerning politics and diversity issues where one feels there could be “toxic” perspectives.
noutella 5y ago
How incredibly weird is it to witness American schizophrenia* when it comes to races (and gender) from a non-american perspective. "Black+", "Latinx+", "LGBTTQQIAAP". Putting people in smaller and smaller box in the name of equality and diversity. I am the only one to feel this is coming to an absurd point ? I'm not an alt-right fan, nor would I vote Republican if I could, I'm a leftist in what's considered a traditional sense in my country, but this is beyond my understanding. * Oh boy was that ableist ?
- lm28469 5y ago
  In the quest for universalism they're splitting the population in an ever increasing number of sub groups, the irony is lost on them I guess. In my country it happens on both side of the spectrum, they're just instrumentalised differently, I don't think it's a left vs right thing
- tester34 5y ago
  Seems like Dividing by Equality and Diversity
- brap 5y ago
  As someone who works for Big Tech outside of the US, it's kind of comical to us foreign workers. From out point of view it seems like Americans are truly obsessed with diversity, or rather being perceived as diverse (PR), to the point where we can't help but laugh at the weekly corporate emails we get from the US leadership and the regular diversity training we have to do.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    It’s equally comical to many non-foreign tech workers. Problem is that if you criticize it openly, there will be repercussions to your career. Corporations will take action against you due to the fear of activist employees and the news media which has been largely infiltrated/influenced by woke/post-modern critical theory activists.
    - walkedaway 5y ago
minikites 5y ago
Curious that most of the comments here are attacking the choice of language instead of engaging with any of the actual reasons this is happening.
- techbrobane 5y ago
  The top voted comment is some guy saying that he knows a few romance languages and he isn't bothered by gendered pronouns. That's the depth of HN.
- noutella 5y ago
  Language is our main tool for expressing ideas. IMO that means language choices can help include more people in the conversation, or (more often than not) act as a diferenciation factor between the "enlightened ones" (woke ones ?) and the rest. Given people stay respectful, I think that's fair to criticize languages choices and the barrier they create. "Freedom is Slavery"
boltedBRT 5y ago
How statistically significant are these numbers? Given large jumps in both directions for various groups, it’s hard to figure out if this is just noise or a meaningful number (eg last year: attrition for whiteX-males was higher, this year it’s higher for blackX-females).
sz4kerto 5y ago
The interesting thing is that the top of the funnel is still heavily tilted towards e.g. men. I'm not claiming whether this right or wrong, but this is how it is. Now good luck for your small company to hire minorities. It's extremely hard. I have talked to a recruiting agency recently about getting some engineers on board, and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any genders?" So as far my experience goes it is pretty difficult to hire non-male engineers if you're on a budget, then you end up with a full male team and then you might end up being accused with bias and discrimination against women. (I've seen this happening.)
- azth 5y ago
  > and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any genders?" If that isn't outright blatant sexism, I don't know what is.
  - zeroj22 5y ago
    This is extremely common among my recruiter friends. I know several and keep in touch in order to have my finger on the pulse of the hiring industry. The vast majority of their clients seem to word it like "we'd love to have great talent" followed by "do you have any non-white, preferably women engineers?" Since this is all off the books conversation it would be difficult to bring up a sexism or racism case. But there is currently a distinct, non-meritocratic, sub-industry cropping up in recruiting and it's getting more aggressive. Companies are being subverted in the name of "Diversity and Inclusion". I have personal experience with this. When I was working out of a bay area consulting shop the "diverse" candidates were most often hired onto client projects despite experience levels not being the same. Again, the internal sales people had no choice. The companies would ask for "diverse" engineers off the books. I've also been passed up for promotion vs less tenured (but similarly experienced) engineers because the next rank up wasn't diverse enough. This one was not confirmed through any source but was deduced by the racial make up of promotion and personally knowing the promoted engineers. You'd expect it to be more random. Racism is acceptable to big tech. It's both obvious and appalling.
danielrpa 5y ago
I happen to be very familiar with Google's diversity efforts and have many Black and Latinx friends and acquaintances in the company. Google is one of the most racially inclusive tech companies in the world. It really tries hard to fix historical disparities between races in ways that you don't see in most companies, ranging from very active promotion of minorities to programs dedicated to hiring them. The interview process, while not perfect, also tries to erase bias by forcing gender and racially-neutral terms in interview writeups. I have my own explanation for the problems the article describes, but I think it would be hard to accurately represent it in a HN comment. This is part of a VERY complex situation rivaling the historical Middle East conflicts in resistance to analysis. For all of its faults - and it has many - Google is trying much harder the most companies to right past wrongs in our industry regarding racism.
- vcavallo 5y ago
  I’d be interested in reading your hard-to-represent analysis. You can find various ways to contact me, including email, at vinneycavallo.com. Send it over!
- marcinzm 5y ago
  I'm curious how the interview process at Google compares to other tech companies. I don't mean the text written afterwards but the actual interview process. My female friend interviewed at a number of large tech companies, not Google due to it's COVID hiring slowdown, and generally there was at least one interviewer that made comments I never, as a white man, have heard from an interviewer. Not outright sexist but things like (paraphrasing) "clearly you must have only worked on part of this project and not do the whole thing." It wasn't a question "which parts did you work on?" but a direct statement questioning her claim to have done the whole project.
  - jonfw 5y ago
    I imagine most interviewees hear things I've never heard during their interviews- interviews can be a very divergent experience based on company, personality, and experience.
  - 5y ago
eric4smith 5y ago
Unpopular opinion… Could it be that women (in general) want something more in life than working in a big company for a nice wage? Study after study after study show that women want families and other things other than the standard mega corporation employment that society has trained us to expect. I’d bet if one looked at the numbers one would see that women as a whole are leaving google and other companies just as much as black women. And it’s not about google. It’s just about people wanting something different that working in a mega corporation.
- eplanit 5y ago
  Google infamously fired a male engineer for speculating on such things. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Chamber https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
  - eric4smith 5y ago
    Yup. And at the time I thought he was wrong. But even though he was an ass, studies have proved him absolutely right.
    - wreath 5y ago
      Studies have "proved him right" because he used studies in his memos! He wasn't really talking out of his ass, he referenced tons of studies irrc. Whether you agree with those studies or not is a different story. (not you personally)
  - vmception 5y ago
    I have found it extremely strange, mostly of "anti-right" crowds, to never see an educational moment in anything. Its just "if you weren't exposed to our views by this point in your life and don't accept them uncritically then you are ostracized" is that useful?
    - _fat_santa 5y ago
grapehut 5y ago
I've conducted technical interviews for a FAANG company for several years, and been explicitly told to go easy on and inflate the scores of minorities. On one hand it makes sense as we're trying to hire minority groups on a greater ratio than they're coming out of college. On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me they retention rates a lot lower when often they're thrown into positions they would otherwise not be really qualified for.
- cudgy 5y ago
  I wonder why they don’t help them get more qualified if that is the goal of the company. My guess is that it would be admitting the new hires are deficient which could backfire.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SlowBall 5y ago
  Isn't that technically illegal according to federal law? I.e. aren't you effectively discriminating against other people based on their sex and/or race (by making their interviews more difficult explicitly because of that reason)?
  - ttt0 5y ago
    Yes, it's illegal.
  - padastra 5y ago
    The probability that the DOJ would investigate / prosecute this particular bias is near zero. Where I work, if you submit a bad review for an underrepresented minority you will get a call from HR asking “are you absolutely sure? You don’t think that’s too low?” (even if you also submitted good reviews for other employees of that racial group). What’s funny is: in five years researchers looking at the data will say “oh! There’s a higher attrition rate / poor performance even though prior reviews marked them as good! THAT must be where all this systemic racism we are trying to find is!”
  - 5y ago
Andy_G11 5y ago
I feel discourse nowadays could be substantially advanced by a new science of Discourse Mechanics which would include a Schrodinger operator to quantify the superposition of states applicable not only to the identity of participants in a discourse, but also to their opinions. As science advances and the vagaries of thought are linked to organic and atomic, physical processes I expect the Grand Unified Theory of Quantum Mechanics to explain Discourse Mechanics too.
pnutjam 5y ago
Kinda' sad that there is mostly discussion about what to call people or how they might feel singled out if we acknowledge their cultural differences and mixed backgrounds. I'm mixed mixed ethnicity and it's definitely easier to just pretend everyone is treating me fairly and we're all the same. I was pretty much raised to do that. Unfortunately, that has badly impacted me over my lifetime. It lets people single me out and pretend it's not a racist prerogative. It often is, but people don't even want to admit that to themselves. They hold other ethnicity to higher standards to "fit in" or "be a cultural fit". Meanwhile, some rude, abrasiveness, ignorant guy who looks like them gets a pass.
GlennS 5y ago
I realise this isn't the point of the article, but I'd be interested in knowing a few more numbers: * Absolute numbers of people leaving over time * Absolute numbers of employee * Average tenure (And you could break those down by group.) My thinking is: maybe there's a background effect? Google used to have the reputation of being the most exciting and desirable place to work in tech, and maybe it deserved that reputation? Now?
kingsuper20 5y ago
So what exactly is a white+, black+, latinx+? It is just my browser stuffing a plus sign at the end?
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  Downvoted and I still don't know what the '+' is. Some sort of gender or kink letter? Code for a cyborg? Programming language?
  - postsantum 5y ago
    That's plus as in "doubleplus" from newspeak
- vmception 5y ago
  There are many posts in this thread asking the same thing and receiving answers
deegles 5y ago
The stats I want to see are “average days to first promotion” and average tenure for male/female groups and also grouped by minorities. Tech companies love to point out how they have “equal pay for equal work” (which I believe, this is easy to audit by having salary bands per level) but what about “equal career advancement for equal work”? If members of a minority group take say 25% more days on average to get promoted what is that evidence of?
- username90 5y ago
  Google did stats for this and there was no difference. Not sure if they are viewable outside Google. Google is about as equal as you can get on these points since they are really easy to fix via top down mandates and asking pointed questions at those who don't fall inline. They have quotas over how many should get promoted in each org etc, having race and gender play into that is super easy.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
I hope woke culture is the anti-trust mechanism that will actually succeed at breaking up the FAANGs!
sssilver 5y ago
I'm curious, if this is a matter of self-identification, why don't people "play the system" by identifying as whatever-moves-the-diversity-needle in order to get themselves ahead? Why don't "straight white American men" tell HR they identify as "homosexual black Latina women"? Not like the HR is in a position to dispute that, right? Is there a mechanism to avoid this?
cryptica 5y ago
All these big corporations use virtue signalling as an alternative to actually being virtuous. They preach equality of opportunity while engaging in the destruction of the free market system; the only system known to humanity which has ever managed to deliver equality of opportunity in the history of the world.
d33lio 5y ago
Perhaps they found better jobs with more accommodating employers, maybe it's not so great working at a company like Google? Good for them!
andyxor 5y ago
Why even mention the skin color, unless you’re racist what’s the difference between black and white Google employees
- jedberg 5y ago
  Do a search for [why is I don't see color racist]. Much smarter people than I have written a lot about this.
  - andyxor 5y ago
    well, that's wrong and un-American, I thought everyone is created equal. I'm not sure what the reason for this recent surge of neo-racism where every "tribe" has to be treated differently.
    - jedberg 5y ago
      Everyone may be created equal, but they are not treated equally as they grow up, making them unequal as adults.
      - andyxor 5y ago
        separating people into groups based on race and treating them differently is literally the opposite to treating everyone as equal By “affirmative action” Google perpetuates racism
      - kbelder 5y ago
        You both seem to agree on that. You are only disagreeing on the methods for fixing that. I think one of you is saying 'we need to fix the root cause and stop being racist', and another is saying 'we need fix the symptoms right now because they're suffering.' What's frustrating is pretty much everybody thinks racism is wrong, and I legitimately think over 99% of the posters here are appalled by racism. But for various reasons, they disagree about methods to correct the issue, and end up despising each other.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
I do analyses like these for companies sometimes. They almost always get it wrong. I'm surprised Google's report doesn't seem to do it correctly either. The issue is rarely that people of a specific race are leaving faster than other races. The issue is almost always that turnover is high in lower level roles and that's where the bulk of your black / latinx population sits. You CANNOT look at overall attrition rates for a company. You must segment it by level unless your levels have equal mixes of races, and they never do. I'd bet heavily that low level attrition is just higher than usual. You can see it in their charts that attrition has increased across the board. It just fails to notice that attrition is going to be among low level employees and low level employees are more likely to be black. In order to not have black employees leaving at higher rates than white employees overall, while black employees occupy lower level roles, you would need black employees to leave at significantly lower rates than their white colleagues, normalized to level. edit: and I'll also note, for a growing company the more important number is hiring. They're at 8.8% black/latinx each up from ~6% each last year. That's very good. The overall representation has improved by ~0.6% since 2020. That's also very good. Headline is misleading. Google's making strong progress on its diversity goals.
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  Are these based on self-identification? How do you account for that in the analysis?
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Very few people opt out of sharing race with their employer. It's not generally an issue.
- FartyMcFarter 5y ago
  Is this Simpson's Paradox? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
steve76 5y ago
If you are non-white or female, and can fog a mirror business wise, can't keep the money, or power, or press off of you. On the other side, it's really fun to be berated and pushed away your entire life, only to see leadership fawn over mobs who just looted and burnt down their business. I used to think leadership was blind or naive. It really is cut throat. If siccing a blood thirsty mob boosts earnings, well then, black lives do matter. Those wounded warrior commercials, how many women or minorities do you see blown to bits or burnt alive or brain damaged? It's not 54% women or 40% non-white. Climb the ladder high enough, you see everything wounds. Claiming oppression is a convenient luxury to squat on the lower rungs and make failure palatable. Means as much as a carnival freak show. You're still going to get it bad.
iammisc 5y ago
Probably because minorities like myself don't like being pandered to.
specialist 5y ago
Reading the linked annual diversity report was worthwhile. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/en//annual-report/static/pdfs/google_2021_diversity_annual_report.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/... It touches on so many points, the breadth of effort is frankly amazing. Mental health, accessibility, addiction, mentorship, child care, and so forth. Bravo for Google measuring themselves. Knowing nothing, I can't put this in context. Three curiosity followups I'd ask: #1 How does Google compare with other huge organizations? vs Fed Govt, military, education, FAANG, interationally ...? #2 I'm most interested in retention efforts. Daylighting the reasons people say they're leaving. Revealing this info is fraught with danger, I know. Maybe with large enough sample size, across organizations (eg all FAANGs), it could be done safely. #3 For people to advance, there need to be opportunities. If I had a cushy job, why would I leave to make room for another? What's Google doing there? One radical solution is the "up or out" system used for high powered consultancies (lawyers, accounting). I'm sure there's downsides to any proposal. But ya gotta break some eggs to make omelets. The kind of cash Google has, they could just buy people out.
ikerdanzel 5y ago
Running a business is to earn profit. If you need a competitve workforce to gain advantage over your competitors, hiring the best is the only hiring criteria. Even if the person is toxic and unbearable, if able to contribute significantly, it is stil the opyimal hire. A certain fruit company kick out a dificult guy many years ago. He came back and made that fruit company the best in the world. A nicer guy would have doom it.

98 points by shivbhatt 5y ago

Let's look at the data, shall we? In 2019: - 0.95% of CS degrees were awarded to black women - 0.86% of degrees were awarded to women who identify as two or more races - 1.63% were awarded to latina women Looks like they're hiring a larger share of individuals in these demographics (1.8% hire rate in each group) than receive degrees. It's not by a lot, but it's definitely not stagnant or moving backwards. (Note this obviously doesn't include other professions, but these other professions, at Google, aren't nearly as large a part of their labor pool. It is significant, though, considering 20% of blacks have BS degrees, and 19% of hispanics do.) I've really soured on these efforts. It seemed to me the diversity group formed at the company I work for has a narrow focus on the specific identities that (surprise, surprise) the "leaders" on the team fit in. This is what identity politics in America is these days. It's not about inclusion, it's about using the politics of identity in a self-serving way--kinda like any other corporate maneuvering.

wonderwonder 5y ago
It is very strange to work in a company where an individual of a given race with the power to fire or at least harm career progression tells another race how to treat members of the powerful individuals race. All the diversity training and questions delivered from this leader then imply that the white employees getting the training are the problems and are inherently racist. Just does not sit well with me.

vmception 5y ago

> The company nearly doubled the number of Black+ people in U.S. leadership to 7.1% last year It’s cool they’ve been able to find qualified people, taking a long time to fill those roles but very nice they are doing it! They will more adequately address additional markets with this talent gravitational pull. What is the percentage of Black+ in the population? The US census doesn’t have a + section, so we can deduce that it is at least 12% for standard tier Black, but when including the premium tier what percentage is that? It’s nice that it is getting much closer to proportionate representation, it’s not clear how close

sct202 5y ago
Is that a mistake? In the charts on this year's report, the Black Leadership % went from 2.6% to 3.0%. https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/ https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/
- vmception 5y ago
  Best I can see is maybe a 7% increase! The article got that very incorrect
l33t2328 5y ago
Black people are currently less educated as a result of systemic racism than their Asain and white counterparts. That would make achieving 12% leadership particularly difficult, since black people are on average less qualified(on paper, at least) relative to applicants from other races.
- vmception 5y ago
  it seems the article is wrong and it is much lower % I was surprised by the 7% metric and found it improbable too
- ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  Asians are proof the power of systemic racism to hold minorities down in this day and age is not very strong.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Some specific cultures with Asian heritage in the West. Not intentionally trying to be obtuse, but to support that talking point it is important to recognize that there are other Asian people in the West that are underserved by this overly broad racially prejudiced assumption. There have always been cultures that adapt to certain states of the world. For example, German efficiency was there and irrelevant before the industrial era, and when the world valued efficiency their culture was the beneficiary. In reference to some cultures from Asia operating in the West, they are also benefactors of the family support systems that they are able to maintain, even if there are psychological issues with that model, it is accurate that many are able to achieve social standing in Western society. You are hoping for that to prove the wrong thing, or disprove the validity of other group's experiences as if they are not worth further analysis and support. This doesn't help y/our society.

bko 5y ago

What is Black+ and Latinx+? This is the first time I'm hearing this term and can't find anything about it in the report or online.

cyberlurker 5y ago
I want to know also. My guess is Black or Latino of every gender/sexuality.
- ignoranceprior 5y ago
  If I had to guess, I would say Black+ means anyone who has Black heritage, even if mixed. But it could be a sexual orientation thing too.
- bko 5y ago
  I don't think so because in their 2019 diversity report they have breakdowns of Asian+, Black+, Latinx+, Native American+ and White+ in an "Intersectional workforce" chart. I think that has to do with gender and sexuality, so those shouldn't be + Their hires and workforce representation are ~40% Asian+ but I don't think that qualifies as diversity. https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb783535e7baa3f596bccb1ce697dccec2e4db2114b84013ae12a1399ec9672fe1ab2fd419ac0ca9a3b6d2f78418b480885e7b24c9ec107c0ccc https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb78...
  - kbelder 5y ago
    It also has the effect of pushing as many people into the +buckets as possible, making it so all marginal cases are included. This could be a modern incarnation of the 'one drop' rule, thinking that if you're part minority, that is still the most important part of your makeup. Or, more likely, it's to inflate numbers as much as possible for PR.
joshsyn 5y ago
I identity myself as "space-master". I can't find myself in there. Shame, I am such a minority group nobody cares.

l33t2328 5y ago

Latinx(+) is a term I’ve never heard a latino person use in real life. It seems like needless kid gloves and bastardization of language.

blueflow 5y ago
This is woke signalling and is a kind of public performance.
cyberlurker 5y ago
I don’t have data for this, but it is probably language popular in Black and Latino Twitter communities. I’m assuming those not engaged in those communities don’t use the “x” or “+”.
CydeWeys 5y ago
They're not for use in real life, they're for statistical aggregation of e.g. someone who is both Black and Latino. It's a way of saying "X plus maybe also other things" rather than "X only".
danpalmer 5y ago
I also don't use the term "White British" to describe myself even though it is the demographic I select on surveys. These terms are useful for demographic measurement, not for personal description. Another commenter gives a good explanation – that the + is there to include those who identify as mixed race. Latinx is used to aggregate Latino/Latina identities. These terms are useful with even the smallest amount of interest given to why they might be. I'd encourage you to be more curious rather than jumping to the conclusion that this stems from some cultural over-sensitivity.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  There’s an easy word for this: Latin.
donohoe 5y ago
Ruby, Ruby on Rails, React, jQuery, Vue, Svelte, Vagrant are terms I’ve never heard a regular person use in real life. The former in particular seems like needless kid gloves and bastardization of language.

mastazi 5y ago

I'm Italian and I speak Spanish and Portuguese relatively fluently. Using the term "Latinx" in my opinion is a form of cultural appropriation, because it imposes a way of using grammatical gender that is typical of the English language (think e.g. about the "singular they") upon neo-latin languages where the perception of grammatical gender is very different. In neo-latin languages such as Italian or Spanish, grammatical gender doesn't have the same weight that it has in English, e.g. when I think about "scrivania" or "armadio" (those are the Italian words for "desk" and "closet", the former is feminine and the latter is masculine) I don't imagine in my mind that the desk has feminine features, or that the closet is somehow manly. This is just not how those languages work. Edit: when I speak English I'm absolutely in favour of things like singular they. I'm just saying that this doesn't work as well in other languages.

sidlls 5y ago
Oh, absolutely. The appearance of "x" instead of the "a" or "o" is an immediate signal of someone who is trying to signal wokeness, but isn't actually.
- doubleunplussed 5y ago
  Signalling wokeness is wokeness. It's not like there's some authentic wokeness - calling it wokeness is accusing it of being inauthentic.
  - sidlls 5y ago
    Okay; and that's fine by me, as I do consider it a rather shallow minded concept anyway. But it does mean something in certain communities, and there are indicators when someone is mouthing words without understanding their meaning or weight. To claim there isn't an "authentic wokeness" is not exactly correct.
sz4kerto 5y ago
Not even speaking about languages without gendered nouns. :) Sometimes I use she instead of he or the other way around, and the listeners likely don't realize that I have to pay extra attention using he/she when talking about people because my mother tongue doesn't even have a similar concept whatsoever. Anyway, we know that most of the time it's not about actually respecting the other person.

aliasEli 5y ago

Is attrition a "normal" English word in this context, or is it also GoogleSpeak like Black+?

kzrdude 5y ago
It's relatively normal. I guess the dictionary doesn't agree exactly with how it's used here, but it's listed as meaning 2 in this dictionary here and then also further on. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/attrition https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/attriti...

CydeWeys 5y ago

The elephant in the room is the ouster of Timnit Gebru. Regardless of who you think was in the wrong there, a lot of people who left did so because they thought Google was in the wrong, and left in solidarity or maybe even because they thought they might be next for being similarly outspoken.

curiousgal 5y ago
I think it's super hypocritical to be well paid a company while also trash talking them on Twitter. I wouldn't call that being outspoken.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  My intent with saying "Regardless of who you think was in the wrong there" was precisely NOT to re-litigate the entire saga (that's old and played out here). Regardless of who you think was wrong, it had a big effect on black employees' perceptions of their employer.
  - curiousgal 5y ago
    Not necessarily, you'd probably be surprised that many black employees don't really care about this whole ordeal or affirmative action in general. Which is understandable; if you're confident in your skill set and take pride in your work, the last thing you want to hear is "we hired you for diversity reasons".
  - sidlls 5y ago
    On some black employees' perceptions. This is hard for people new to working and living alongside minorities in America, but these are individuals and not a monolithic group. Identity politics is dangerous because the loudest mouths on the issue are definitely not representative of any whole group. And yet culturally we're demanded to see things their way to an increasing and alarming degree.
    - vmception 5y ago

sokoloff 5y ago

> some people from underrepresented backgrounds have said they continue to feel unwelcome in the tech industry, and they also remain high in demand elsewhere as companies compete to increase diversity. This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps, but it seems like many policies which seek to boost individual company population ratios to be significantly higher than the comparable tech-industry ratios are prone to this problem. Competing for talent and working hard to ensure that underrepresented group members have a fair shot? Should be standard practice and a baseline of ethical corporate and human behavior. Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me. We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. That’s observable from the industry-wide figures. Moving an underrepresented group member from industry company A to industry company B doesn’t change that industry-wide measure at all, which should be obvious but seems to escape mention.

hdhjebebeb 5y ago
Isn't this the free market at work? How would all the companies collude to collectively bring in more marginalized people? It's like saying "I want higher wages but I don't think one company raising wages will achieve that". The companies are competing because that's the system they exist in - some of that competition will be zero-sum, but according to arch capitalists some of it will be a net positive
- sokoloff 5y ago
  > How would all the companies collude to collectively bring in more marginalized people? Supporting pipeline programs (middle and high school education, summer programs, internship programs, bootcamps and other career-change programs, etc.) seems to be the obvious paths for companies to exert lasting positive influence on the industry and world. Sure, there's some fringe backlash when some company supports a program that is targeted at underrepresented groups, but I think that's the way to create lasting change. Unfortunately, it doesn't move the needle on D&I OKRs this quarter or next. Poaching from someone else is the fastest way to move a key result metric. "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."

blacktriangle 5y ago

Because leftist have a white savior complex and are trying to spread cultural Marxism, that's why they're bothering.

rocqua 5y ago
I often hear people I dismiss directly mention cultural marxism. But I have never seen an explanation of what cultural marxism is. Could you enlighten me?
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Critical theory is actually what people mean when they say cultural Marxism. Critical theory itself came out of various Marxist and Marxist-influenced academics in the mid-20th century.
  - rocqua 5y ago
    It seems that most people in this thread who use the term cultural marxism don't quite mean critical theory. Instead it seems to be about seeing (and advocating for) a dialectic between the oppressors and the oppressed. The idea is that this division maps somewhat to 'cultural' groups. The main 'cultural' division they mention is race. I would assume they also include LGBT+ and occasionally jews as part of the opressed group. A main part of the concept behind this is that this dialectic is wrong. And hence people supporting it are doing so for other goals. Apparently this goal is "communism". That is, the goal is overthrowing the oppressed. It seems like the idea is that some of the people supporting this dialectic do so without questioning whether it is true. Hence, the argument goes, the supporters of this idea are either maliciously pushing a false agenda, or they are convinced by the false agenda and are well-meaning fools. I also get the feeling there is an undertone of trying to understand why white / straight / gentile people are actually supporting the progressive side of identity politics. Personally, I think most of this is plainly wrong. Though it seems like an interesting lens through which to look at the most extreme people at the progressive spectrum of identity politics.

techbrobane 5y ago

This website is a stellar example of white tech bro culture, especially threads like this. Guaranteed toxic AF.

vmception 5y ago
By time of writing i dont find anything toxic here, just confusion on what X and + mean outside of math contexts and electronics models
- jfengel 5y ago
  Pretty much any post using the words "woke" or "signaling" is going to be toxic. The words are intended as synonyms for "hypocritical": "They don't actually mean this argument; they're only doing it to be seen." It's not just ad hominem, but also the way it comes out reflexively any time any issue of justice is brought up. (Along with "SJW", which I haven't seen as much lately; the terms of opprobrium go in and out of fashion.) That's where the toxicity lays: the instant dismissal of the topic without having to even reference the matter at hand. Viewed that way, you can see toxicity all over this thread, and all over any similar thread anywhere on the site. The tone is hostile before anybody has even begun to discuss the merits of the idea.
cudgy 5y ago
Might as well find a website that is non-toxic and agrees with your views because there are many perspectives on this site, which is one of it’s greatest strengths. Another strategy is to avoid any threads concerning politics and diversity issues where one feels there could be “toxic” perspectives.

noutella 5y ago

How incredibly weird is it to witness American schizophrenia* when it comes to races (and gender) from a non-american perspective. "Black+", "Latinx+", "LGBTTQQIAAP". Putting people in smaller and smaller box in the name of equality and diversity. I am the only one to feel this is coming to an absurd point ? I'm not an alt-right fan, nor would I vote Republican if I could, I'm a leftist in what's considered a traditional sense in my country, but this is beyond my understanding. * Oh boy was that ableist ?

lm28469 5y ago
In the quest for universalism they're splitting the population in an ever increasing number of sub groups, the irony is lost on them I guess. In my country it happens on both side of the spectrum, they're just instrumentalised differently, I don't think it's a left vs right thing
tester34 5y ago
Seems like Dividing by Equality and Diversity
brap 5y ago
As someone who works for Big Tech outside of the US, it's kind of comical to us foreign workers. From out point of view it seems like Americans are truly obsessed with diversity, or rather being perceived as diverse (PR), to the point where we can't help but laugh at the weekly corporate emails we get from the US leadership and the regular diversity training we have to do.
- cudgy 5y ago
  It’s equally comical to many non-foreign tech workers. Problem is that if you criticize it openly, there will be repercussions to your career. Corporations will take action against you due to the fear of activist employees and the news media which has been largely infiltrated/influenced by woke/post-modern critical theory activists.
  - walkedaway 5y ago

minikites 5y ago

Curious that most of the comments here are attacking the choice of language instead of engaging with any of the actual reasons this is happening.

techbrobane 5y ago
The top voted comment is some guy saying that he knows a few romance languages and he isn't bothered by gendered pronouns. That's the depth of HN.
noutella 5y ago
Language is our main tool for expressing ideas. IMO that means language choices can help include more people in the conversation, or (more often than not) act as a diferenciation factor between the "enlightened ones" (woke ones ?) and the rest. Given people stay respectful, I think that's fair to criticize languages choices and the barrier they create. "Freedom is Slavery"

boltedBRT 5y ago

How statistically significant are these numbers? Given large jumps in both directions for various groups, it’s hard to figure out if this is just noise or a meaningful number (eg last year: attrition for whiteX-males was higher, this year it’s higher for blackX-females).

sz4kerto 5y ago

The interesting thing is that the top of the funnel is still heavily tilted towards e.g. men. I'm not claiming whether this right or wrong, but this is how it is. Now good luck for your small company to hire minorities. It's extremely hard. I have talked to a recruiting agency recently about getting some engineers on board, and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any genders?" So as far my experience goes it is pretty difficult to hire non-male engineers if you're on a budget, then you end up with a full male team and then you might end up being accused with bias and discrimination against women. (I've seen this happening.)

azth 5y ago
> and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any genders?" If that isn't outright blatant sexism, I don't know what is.
- zeroj22 5y ago
  This is extremely common among my recruiter friends. I know several and keep in touch in order to have my finger on the pulse of the hiring industry. The vast majority of their clients seem to word it like "we'd love to have great talent" followed by "do you have any non-white, preferably women engineers?" Since this is all off the books conversation it would be difficult to bring up a sexism or racism case. But there is currently a distinct, non-meritocratic, sub-industry cropping up in recruiting and it's getting more aggressive. Companies are being subverted in the name of "Diversity and Inclusion". I have personal experience with this. When I was working out of a bay area consulting shop the "diverse" candidates were most often hired onto client projects despite experience levels not being the same. Again, the internal sales people had no choice. The companies would ask for "diverse" engineers off the books. I've also been passed up for promotion vs less tenured (but similarly experienced) engineers because the next rank up wasn't diverse enough. This one was not confirmed through any source but was deduced by the racial make up of promotion and personally knowing the promoted engineers. You'd expect it to be more random. Racism is acceptable to big tech. It's both obvious and appalling.

danielrpa 5y ago

I happen to be very familiar with Google's diversity efforts and have many Black and Latinx friends and acquaintances in the company. Google is one of the most racially inclusive tech companies in the world. It really tries hard to fix historical disparities between races in ways that you don't see in most companies, ranging from very active promotion of minorities to programs dedicated to hiring them. The interview process, while not perfect, also tries to erase bias by forcing gender and racially-neutral terms in interview writeups. I have my own explanation for the problems the article describes, but I think it would be hard to accurately represent it in a HN comment. This is part of a VERY complex situation rivaling the historical Middle East conflicts in resistance to analysis. For all of its faults - and it has many - Google is trying much harder the most companies to right past wrongs in our industry regarding racism.

vcavallo 5y ago
I’d be interested in reading your hard-to-represent analysis. You can find various ways to contact me, including email, at vinneycavallo.com. Send it over!
marcinzm 5y ago
I'm curious how the interview process at Google compares to other tech companies. I don't mean the text written afterwards but the actual interview process. My female friend interviewed at a number of large tech companies, not Google due to it's COVID hiring slowdown, and generally there was at least one interviewer that made comments I never, as a white man, have heard from an interviewer. Not outright sexist but things like (paraphrasing) "clearly you must have only worked on part of this project and not do the whole thing." It wasn't a question "which parts did you work on?" but a direct statement questioning her claim to have done the whole project.
- jonfw 5y ago
  I imagine most interviewees hear things I've never heard during their interviews- interviews can be a very divergent experience based on company, personality, and experience.
- 5y ago

eric4smith 5y ago

Unpopular opinion… Could it be that women (in general) want something more in life than working in a big company for a nice wage? Study after study after study show that women want families and other things other than the standard mega corporation employment that society has trained us to expect. I’d bet if one looked at the numbers one would see that women as a whole are leaving google and other companies just as much as black women. And it’s not about google. It’s just about people wanting something different that working in a mega corporation.

eplanit 5y ago
Google infamously fired a male engineer for speculating on such things. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Chamber https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
- eric4smith 5y ago
  Yup. And at the time I thought he was wrong. But even though he was an ass, studies have proved him absolutely right.
  - wreath 5y ago
    Studies have "proved him right" because he used studies in his memos! He wasn't really talking out of his ass, he referenced tons of studies irrc. Whether you agree with those studies or not is a different story. (not you personally)
- vmception 5y ago
  I have found it extremely strange, mostly of "anti-right" crowds, to never see an educational moment in anything. Its just "if you weren't exposed to our views by this point in your life and don't accept them uncritically then you are ostracized" is that useful?
  - _fat_santa 5y ago

grapehut 5y ago

I've conducted technical interviews for a FAANG company for several years, and been explicitly told to go easy on and inflate the scores of minorities. On one hand it makes sense as we're trying to hire minority groups on a greater ratio than they're coming out of college. On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me they retention rates a lot lower when often they're thrown into positions they would otherwise not be really qualified for.

cudgy 5y ago
I wonder why they don’t help them get more qualified if that is the goal of the company. My guess is that it would be admitting the new hires are deficient which could backfire.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SlowBall 5y ago
Isn't that technically illegal according to federal law? I.e. aren't you effectively discriminating against other people based on their sex and/or race (by making their interviews more difficult explicitly because of that reason)?
- ttt0 5y ago
  Yes, it's illegal.
- padastra 5y ago
  The probability that the DOJ would investigate / prosecute this particular bias is near zero. Where I work, if you submit a bad review for an underrepresented minority you will get a call from HR asking “are you absolutely sure? You don’t think that’s too low?” (even if you also submitted good reviews for other employees of that racial group). What’s funny is: in five years researchers looking at the data will say “oh! There’s a higher attrition rate / poor performance even though prior reviews marked them as good! THAT must be where all this systemic racism we are trying to find is!”
- 5y ago

Andy_G11 5y ago

I feel discourse nowadays could be substantially advanced by a new science of Discourse Mechanics which would include a Schrodinger operator to quantify the superposition of states applicable not only to the identity of participants in a discourse, but also to their opinions. As science advances and the vagaries of thought are linked to organic and atomic, physical processes I expect the Grand Unified Theory of Quantum Mechanics to explain Discourse Mechanics too.

pnutjam 5y ago

Kinda' sad that there is mostly discussion about what to call people or how they might feel singled out if we acknowledge their cultural differences and mixed backgrounds. I'm mixed mixed ethnicity and it's definitely easier to just pretend everyone is treating me fairly and we're all the same. I was pretty much raised to do that. Unfortunately, that has badly impacted me over my lifetime. It lets people single me out and pretend it's not a racist prerogative. It often is, but people don't even want to admit that to themselves. They hold other ethnicity to higher standards to "fit in" or "be a cultural fit". Meanwhile, some rude, abrasiveness, ignorant guy who looks like them gets a pass.

GlennS 5y ago

I realise this isn't the point of the article, but I'd be interested in knowing a few more numbers: * Absolute numbers of people leaving over time * Absolute numbers of employee * Average tenure (And you could break those down by group.) My thinking is: maybe there's a background effect? Google used to have the reputation of being the most exciting and desirable place to work in tech, and maybe it deserved that reputation? Now?

kingsuper20 5y ago

So what exactly is a white+, black+, latinx+? It is just my browser stuffing a plus sign at the end?

kingsuper20 5y ago
Downvoted and I still don't know what the '+' is. Some sort of gender or kink letter? Code for a cyborg? Programming language?
- postsantum 5y ago
  That's plus as in "doubleplus" from newspeak
vmception 5y ago
There are many posts in this thread asking the same thing and receiving answers

deegles 5y ago

The stats I want to see are “average days to first promotion” and average tenure for male/female groups and also grouped by minorities. Tech companies love to point out how they have “equal pay for equal work” (which I believe, this is easy to audit by having salary bands per level) but what about “equal career advancement for equal work”? If members of a minority group take say 25% more days on average to get promoted what is that evidence of?

username90 5y ago
Google did stats for this and there was no difference. Not sure if they are viewable outside Google. Google is about as equal as you can get on these points since they are really easy to fix via top down mandates and asking pointed questions at those who don't fall inline. They have quotas over how many should get promoted in each org etc, having race and gender play into that is super easy.

axiosgunnar 5y ago

I hope woke culture is the anti-trust mechanism that will actually succeed at breaking up the FAANGs!

sssilver 5y ago

I'm curious, if this is a matter of self-identification, why don't people "play the system" by identifying as whatever-moves-the-diversity-needle in order to get themselves ahead? Why don't "straight white American men" tell HR they identify as "homosexual black Latina women"? Not like the HR is in a position to dispute that, right? Is there a mechanism to avoid this?

cryptica 5y ago

All these big corporations use virtue signalling as an alternative to actually being virtuous. They preach equality of opportunity while engaging in the destruction of the free market system; the only system known to humanity which has ever managed to deliver equality of opportunity in the history of the world.

d33lio 5y ago

Perhaps they found better jobs with more accommodating employers, maybe it's not so great working at a company like Google? Good for them!

andyxor 5y ago

Why even mention the skin color, unless you’re racist what’s the difference between black and white Google employees

jedberg 5y ago
Do a search for [why is I don't see color racist]. Much smarter people than I have written a lot about this.
- andyxor 5y ago
  well, that's wrong and un-American, I thought everyone is created equal. I'm not sure what the reason for this recent surge of neo-racism where every "tribe" has to be treated differently.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    Everyone may be created equal, but they are not treated equally as they grow up, making them unequal as adults.
    - andyxor 5y ago
      separating people into groups based on race and treating them differently is literally the opposite to treating everyone as equal By “affirmative action” Google perpetuates racism
    - kbelder 5y ago
      You both seem to agree on that. You are only disagreeing on the methods for fixing that. I think one of you is saying 'we need to fix the root cause and stop being racist', and another is saying 'we need fix the symptoms right now because they're suffering.' What's frustrating is pretty much everybody thinks racism is wrong, and I legitimately think over 99% of the posters here are appalled by racism. But for various reasons, they disagree about methods to correct the issue, and end up despising each other.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

I do analyses like these for companies sometimes. They almost always get it wrong. I'm surprised Google's report doesn't seem to do it correctly either. The issue is rarely that people of a specific race are leaving faster than other races. The issue is almost always that turnover is high in lower level roles and that's where the bulk of your black / latinx population sits. You CANNOT look at overall attrition rates for a company. You must segment it by level unless your levels have equal mixes of races, and they never do. I'd bet heavily that low level attrition is just higher than usual. You can see it in their charts that attrition has increased across the board. It just fails to notice that attrition is going to be among low level employees and low level employees are more likely to be black. In order to not have black employees leaving at higher rates than white employees overall, while black employees occupy lower level roles, you would need black employees to leave at significantly lower rates than their white colleagues, normalized to level. edit: and I'll also note, for a growing company the more important number is hiring. They're at 8.8% black/latinx each up from ~6% each last year. That's very good. The overall representation has improved by ~0.6% since 2020. That's also very good. Headline is misleading. Google's making strong progress on its diversity goals.

nomoreplease 5y ago
Are these based on self-identification? How do you account for that in the analysis?
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Very few people opt out of sharing race with their employer. It's not generally an issue.
FartyMcFarter 5y ago
Is this Simpson's Paradox? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
- spywaregorilla 5y ago

steve76 5y ago

If you are non-white or female, and can fog a mirror business wise, can't keep the money, or power, or press off of you. On the other side, it's really fun to be berated and pushed away your entire life, only to see leadership fawn over mobs who just looted and burnt down their business. I used to think leadership was blind or naive. It really is cut throat. If siccing a blood thirsty mob boosts earnings, well then, black lives do matter. Those wounded warrior commercials, how many women or minorities do you see blown to bits or burnt alive or brain damaged? It's not 54% women or 40% non-white. Climb the ladder high enough, you see everything wounds. Claiming oppression is a convenient luxury to squat on the lower rungs and make failure palatable. Means as much as a carnival freak show. You're still going to get it bad.

iammisc 5y ago

Probably because minorities like myself don't like being pandered to.

specialist 5y ago

Reading the linked annual diversity report was worthwhile. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/en//annual-report/static/pdfs/google_2021_diversity_annual_report.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/... It touches on so many points, the breadth of effort is frankly amazing. Mental health, accessibility, addiction, mentorship, child care, and so forth. Bravo for Google measuring themselves. Knowing nothing, I can't put this in context. Three curiosity followups I'd ask: #1 How does Google compare with other huge organizations? vs Fed Govt, military, education, FAANG, interationally ...? #2 I'm most interested in retention efforts. Daylighting the reasons people say they're leaving. Revealing this info is fraught with danger, I know. Maybe with large enough sample size, across organizations (eg all FAANGs), it could be done safely. #3 For people to advance, there need to be opportunities. If I had a cushy job, why would I leave to make room for another? What's Google doing there? One radical solution is the "up or out" system used for high powered consultancies (lawyers, accounting). I'm sure there's downsides to any proposal. But ya gotta break some eggs to make omelets. The kind of cash Google has, they could just buy people out.

ikerdanzel 5y ago

Running a business is to earn profit. If you need a competitve workforce to gain advantage over your competitors, hiring the best is the only hiring criteria. Even if the person is toxic and unbearable, if able to contribute significantly, it is stil the opyimal hire. A certain fruit company kick out a dificult guy many years ago. He came back and made that fruit company the best in the world. A nicer guy would have doom it.