HR Chief: Google Sexual, Racial Diversity "Not Where We Want to Be"

theodp (442580) writes "In 2007, Congress asked Google, "How many [Google employees] are African-American?" "I don't actually have that data at my fingertips," replied Google HR Chief Laszlo Bock. Seven years later, Google finally disclosed diversity data for the first time ever, revealing that 17% of its tech workforce is female, and only 1% is Black. "Put simply," wrote Google's Bock, "Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity." To put things in perspective, it looks like the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers — commemorated in last year's Google Doodle of Jackie Robinson — put up better Black diversity numbers than Google was able to muster 67 years later. Things could have been worse, but the EEOC doesn't ask for and Google chose not to disclose anything about the age makeup of its workforce, aside from a mention of the existence of Greyglers, a group "for Googlers 'of a certain age.'""

Washington Post Comment

[Guppy]

From the Washington Post's Blog section: Eugene Volokh, On google's employee demographics [washingtonpost.com]

... non-Hispanic whites are 61 percent of the Google work force, slightly below the national average. (That average, according to 2006-10 numbers, is 67 percent.) Google is thus less white than the typical American company. White men are probably slightly over-represented; assuming that the 30 percent number it gives for women Google employees worldwide carries over to the U.S. (the article gives no separate number for U.S. women Google employees), white men are 42 percent of the Google work force, and 35 percent of the U.S. work force — not a vast disparity.
Indeed, if the goal is “reflecting the demographics of the country” as to race... ...Google can only accomplish that by firing well over three-quarters of its Asian employees, and replacing them with blacks and Hispanics (and a few whites, to bring white numbers up from 61 percent to 67 percent).

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

more diverse teams perform at higher levels

Maybe at Google.
My anecdotal evidence at the university shows that teams of white people did better.
Of course this was mostly because all the white people came from a similar culture and actually understood each other, whereas all the other teams were just the people who couldn't get a team and were thrown into a group.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans: Are your African-Americans really born in Africa? Because, otherwise they're just Americans.

Re:Race doesn't matter...

[bondsbw]

Data seems to back this up. According to a Computing Research Association study in 2010 [cnn.com], only 13.4% of CS graduates from American universities (that have Ph.D. programs) were female, and only 4.2% were African American. You also have to factor in the demographics of the Mountain View area, where as of 2010 only 2.2% of the population is African American [wikipedia.org].

Re: white males should

[nmos]

Have you ever seen an upper level computer science class? The Google numbers aren't at all far off the potential employee pool and therefore it's unlikely that there is any bias on the part of Google.

This means that in order to "correct" the problem they MUST either hire lesser qualified workers or take resources away from other things in order to seek out more minority candidates.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Shivantrill]

There are plenty of women, incredibly qualified women to fill the IT jobs. However, the "not a good culture fit" applies here too. Even though I could probably kick ass in Call of Duty like any of the guys, these companies are still like grade school. No one wants to play with the "girls". I have an ambiguous name. I get phone interviews. they ask for me. I say this is her. They ask two questions then hang up. Tell me this is not discrimination!