HR Chief: Google Sexual, Racial Diversity "Not Where We Want to Be" 593
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.'""
Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to hiring the best person for the job?
The whole "there aren't enough females in the tech industry" seems like a manufactured issue to me. What exactly is the problem? How is it a problem? Etc.
Asians != Diverse (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta love when 30% of the non-white asians don't count whatsoever into the diversity formula for these nitwits. Does anyone know what the correct mix should be btw?
What quota (Score:2, Insightful)
We’re not where we want to be when it comes to diversity. And it is hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts.
All of our efforts, including going public with these numbers, are designed to help us recruit and develop the world’s most talented and diverse people.
So.. where does Google really want to be? Do they have a defined quota? How soon will such affirmative action be used against them by white males and asian males?
Equal Rights Equal Results (Score:5, Insightful)
Legitimized racism (Score:5, Insightful)
Race doesn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
...culture does.
If the wrong skin colors are coming into Google, look towards the *cultures* of the people who don't make it, rather than the skin color. Backwards urban cultures (where sadly most self-identified blacks and latinos live), are anti-intellectual and actively discourage those who try to make it out through education by shaming them as not being "real".
So, the question is, should Google be in charge of destroying thug gansgsta culture, and forcing urban youth to speak proper english, work hard in school, treat women with respect, and avoid violent destructive behavior?
As for men/women, they've got different brains, so you'll get different outcomes. There is no shame in being a man with less empathy than a woman, and no shame in being a woman with more empathy than a man.
If You're Gonna Bring Up Sports (Score:5, Insightful)
80% of NBA players are black, 70% of NFL players are black. Is anyone asking them for more "diversity"? Yeah I thought not.
And 100% of the top sports leagues are male. Where's the outrage over this lack of sexual diversity?
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, it turns out when it comes to determining the best person for the job, there's a lot of bias, some of it intentional, some of it accidental, and so there's a recognition that it's not an objective determination, but a flawed one.
Now we can pretend that we are blind to race, gender, creed, or whatever, but that's more likely self-delusion than honesty.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:1, Insightful)
I work in the tech industry, at one of the largest companies IN the tech industry. We need more people with decent social skills. We need diversity. We need a lot less angry testosterone driven assholes.
Bias exists.
There's a problem. Someone is trying to fix that problem and make the world a better place. To paraphrase the kids these days, "Why haters gotta hate?" Why are you questioning Google trying to do some good?
Not Google's fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't Google's job to feel guilty for the lack of qualified black tech workers. Universities these days are falling down over themselves trying to be inclusive, promote diversity, etc.; promising black students in technical fields are highly sought after... yet there are almost none of them. I'm in computational physics, not in computer engineering, so it's a slightly different field. However, the university I'm at now is extremely diversity-promoting -- and located in a city that is ~50% black... and there is one black physicist there. She's not African-American, either; she's Ethiopian (and competent as all hell, and headed for industry). At my previous university, there were folks from all around the world: a few Afrikaaners, Dutch, Russians, Germans, Brazilians, French, Chinese, Indians, Native Americans, Koreans, Mexicans, and so on... and no black folks at all. At the physics and astronomy conferences I go to, there are almost no black people. Yes, this is physics, not tech engineering, but I imagine the situation is about the same there.
For whatever reason, blacks (and especially African-Americans) are underrepresented in the tech sector. This is definitely worth some concern: it could be for innocent reasons, it could be for ones that need to be addressed (having to do with substandard schools in black areas, for instance), but whatever it is it's not Google's problem. By all means, let's make sure tech classes in black schools are up to standard, but it's not Google's job to worry about this.
Forcing Google at Al Sharpton-point to seek out and hire black folks, regardless of whether they are able to do their jobs well or not, is only going to make things worse, as people will ask "Is that guy over there able to do his job, or is he a quota hire?"
white males should (Score:4, Insightful)
When Google says "Not Where We Want to Be" , what they are saying is that it is time to start discriminating against white males and hire other less qualified candidates because some groups are getting uppidy. We never hear similar claims of needing "more diversity" from the NBA or the National Felons League, but when we find an area where white males excel by working hard, it is time to put a stop to it.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you saying that all White males are assholes without decent social skills? That sounds racist.
Re:Asians != Diverse (Score:3, Insightful)
Diversity is affirmative action. It has no inherent value. We are trained to mouth words that it does because affirmative action has had trouble in courts in recent decades. So everyone goes through the motions that it is of vital importance.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we can pretend that we are blind to race, gender, creed, or whatever, but that's more likely self-delusion than honesty.
"Not a good culture fit" is the Jim Crow of the 21st century, and you don't have to have dark skin for it to apply these days.
Re:Equally Important Question (Score:5, Insightful)
In America "racial minority" means "black or Hispanic".
There's a deficit of Chinese people in football and Jews in growing soybeans but nobody really worries about that.
You can only hire what's on the market (Score:4, Insightful)
My team here consists only of white males. Why? Because only white males applied for the jobs.
If a black, gay, transsexual Jewish woman applies AND displays the necessary skill set, I'll hire her. But certainly not just because she's a black, gay, transsexual Jewish woman.
Re:Equal Rights Equal Results (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a boss. There are lots of right people. The right person is someone who can get along with all the OTHER people. Aptitude is not as important as attitude. Yours is kind of selfish and cynical. I'd hire a woman over you. She's more likely to be a team player. It's a stereotype, but....
I don't think I can stress this enough. For the vast majority of positions, there are plenty of people who can do the job I need them to do. There are no rock stars needed. We have rock stars. They cause problems and unneeded stress. I need bright motivated people who get along well. One asshole ruins motivation for everyone.
That's why we need diversity. That's why we need people with emotional intelligence. Then there's the whole "diversity of experiences helps come up with clever solutions to the problems we are trying to overcome." thing, which is really really important.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah man. This is BS. If you compare the amount of females in the IT pool to begin with its hardly surprising to find a similar ratio in the actually hired staff of any company.
Re:Race doesn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
We're educated we speak clearly and concisely
We're educated [and|so|hence|<semi-colon>] we speak clearly and concisely[.]
Re:racism matters (Score:5, Insightful)
I grew up in an anti-intellectual culture, and was persecuted for "trying to be white" when I focused on academics, proper english, and polite behavior.
I made it out. Many others I knew didn't.
If you can't understand how "urban" culture, with their thugs, gangstas, misogyny, violence and victimhood mentality, cause massive problems for those stuck in it, either you've never been there, or you're part of the problem.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:0, Insightful)
He's saying that angry testosterone driven assholes get away with it because of their racial privilege. There is a reason "angry black man" is a stereotype but "angry white man" is not.
Re:If You're Gonna Bring Up Sports (Score:3, Insightful)
>80% of NBA players are black, 70% of NFL players are black. Is anyone asking them for more "diversity"? Yeah I thought not.
Maybe it's because there's around 500 NBA players, and around 1700 NFL players. For comparison, Google has 50,000 employees.
So if you're concerned about people having equal access to high paying jobs, who are you going to go after, the NBA or NFL, with a combined 2000 jobs, or Google, with 50,000?
It's not about "fairness" in each industry or "diversity" (that's really just marketing in our current culture), it's about different groups of people having access to well paying jobs.
Now, I'll be the first to tell you I don't think Google is racist, and there's MANY different reasons for the racial disparity. But trying to paint this as a numbers game where each industry has to have balance is really missing the point here. I'm actually totally against things like affirmative action. I don't think you can solve racial inequality through a socially acceptable form of racism.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Applying general demographics to a targeted job applicant pool is very misleading anyway. We can't expect Google to hire 51% females when females only make up 13.4% of CS undergraduates [cnn.com].
And what if they do? That means, naturally, that they took more than their fair share of female applicants and now there exist fewer female applicants for other companies to choose from. And then we get articles like this, except moaning that Apple now has fewer females than they should.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree completely. Having been interviewing for a role at a large silicon valley company recently, out of about 20, every single applicant we've had has been white, male and in his 30s. This isn't caused by bias in the hiring process, it's caused by bias in those applying. The problem really comes in when the profession being seen as a white male 30 year old's job causes itself to become a self fulfilling profesy.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
You said "Google's own stats", but then supported it with a subjective anecdotal statement from Google.
Re:Equal Rights Equal Results (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you worked with women? Women are no more team players than men. I've observed women back-stab, gossip, manipulate, ostracize, and generally destroy team dynamics plenty of times (and I've seen men do it too). There are a lot of features which contribute to who would be best for a job. Gender, race, biological sex, none of it is relevant to a job in the tech world. By saying "I'd hire a woman over you" because "she's more likely to be a team player" you are either being inflammatory, or your boss needs to reevaluate your own position as a "boss".
Re:racism matters (Score:5, Insightful)
The final solution will have to come from within the backwards cultures themselves. We cannot impose a solution upon them, and cannot be held responsible for their lack of a solution.
For example, backwards islamic countries that treat women poorly will need to be reformed by internal leaders who manage to point out that flaw, and galvanize people around reforming it. Similarly, backwards urban cultures that objectify "bitches and hoes" will need to be reformed by internal leaders who manage to point out that flaw, and galvanize people around reforming it.
So, if you don't want to be part of the problem, and you're internal to the backwards culture, stop trying to protect it from reform and growth. Become a leader, and move them away from the self-destructive parts of culture.
Ultimately, it may be hopeless - islam has managed to stifle reformation for hundreds of years, for example. But I certainly understand that our responsibility to be honest and open about the failings of backwards cultures, is a small step in the right direction. Being dishonest, and blithely asserting that all cultures are of equal value or deserve equal respect, is poisonous and detrimental.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Our IT group is all male, and we do have one rage-filled, user-abusing team member that our users regularly complain about. He also happens to be the one gay member of the team.
Problematic people can come in all shapes, sizes, and genders.
(Posted anonymously for obvious reasons)
Who gives a shit? (Score:1, Insightful)
If your company demographics are significantly different from general demographics, you are probably not hiring the best person for the job - probably, your hiring is skewed towards some demographic, for whatever reason (number of canidates, subtle unconcious or even open racism or sexism). If you want to have the best people for the job, you should have a strong interest figuring out if you have such a bias in your hiring and to eliminate it.
Further, diversity is healthy, especially in jobs that require some creativity. Many different people with many different approaches beats a bunch of people who all work roughly the same way.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
We need a lot less angry testosterone driven assholes.
This is just another form is sexism. I'm really tired of this bullshit about the "testerone driven male". As if all aggression is male and derived from masculine hormones. Can we please stop this bullshit? Men and women are different, it's true. But is one form of being an asshole any better or worse than another? Is asshole diversity somehow "good"?
The pendulum of sexism is drifting towards males, and there seems to be a distinct anti-male form of sexism in the world now. It's exemplified by this statement about "testosterone driven", as if men are simply slaves to hormones. It's just as sexist as women being accused of the same thing. (I think we're all familiar with the women controlled by their fluctuating hormones meme). Reversing it and putting the same thing on all men is just as sexist. So please stop this stereotype.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
and you don't have to have dark skin for it to apply these days.
In many H1B shops, particularly those with *ahem* immigrant managers it's usually the white workers who aren't a good culture fit.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
How's Google supposed to do that? Pay girls to pretend to be interested in something they're not?
My university has a very heavy female bias (owing to large nursing and psych departments) to the tune of ~65% or more. My CS101 class was pretty representative of this. More, way more than half the class were women. As expected, a bunch of the class dropped out after the first midterm, but there were noticeably more women gone than guys. CS102 was the start of the sausage fest. Maybe 35% of the class there was female, which is opposite of the school's demographics. By the third course, we were down to a handful of women. The fourth course? One girl. And she dropped out after a few months.
So, why did this happen? It's not that the women were being forced out by some misogynistic oppression field. They, quite simply, didn't give a shit about the material. Most of them were there in the first course (or two) because the Arts program has a core requirement of two "analytical studies" which are satisfied by: calculus and a few other 'hard' math courses, philosophy 125 (formal logic), intro linguistics (another popular choice, but not easy), and *drumroll* intro CS courses. Confronted with having to take two courses from a selection of (to them) complete crap, they opt for the CS courses thinking that, hey, they know how to use a computer - how hard can CS101 be? By the time the professor has covered rudimentary hardware design and started talking about logic gates and simple circuits, most of these girls could not possibly be more bored if you locked them in an empty room for a month.
It was after this that I stopped caring about how many women there were in CS/IT. They have the opportunity. No one's holding them back. No one's judging them. No one laughed at the one poor girl who tried to stick things out (in fact she was very pleasant the one time I talked to her - and discovered she was majoring in biology with a CS minor). They simply don't want to. Why? That's a problem for society, not Google.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can they do magic, too?
Where do you connect wealth, power, and presence with the ability to draw more women into the IT pool? How would you respond if someone tried to convince you to become a nurse because "there aren't enough men in nursing"? Furthermore, why is it Google's responsibility to get women involved in IT?
Re: white males should (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, what makes you or any of the HR fucks at Google the authority that can tell these women that THEIR CHOICES ARE NOT VALID? Let women exercise their agency and stop trying to shove them all in shitty tech jobs.
Re:Asians != Diverse (Score:4, Insightful)
Diversity is not synonymous with Affirmative action. Hiring a woman just to say you hired a woman is Affirmative Action. Hiring a woman to gain the experiences and perspectives that she has is diversity. This doesn't necessarily apply to the obvious physical indicators such as black, woman, asian, etc. I'm a white male, but I can guarantee you that I have more in common with a black male from upstate New York than I do with a white male from Mississippi, and that black male from upstate New York has even less in common with a black male from Africa than he does with myself and the white male from Mississippi. Diversity is about recognizing this and using it to build a stronger team. The downside is that in promoting diversity people often focus on physical characteristics as being the only aspect of diversity, when those are really only indicators. I once asked a group of new employees if they felt they were a diverse group, and they said "no" because there was only one black person in the group (and all were male). Yet each one had a different religion, some had no religion, they were all from different parts of the country and each one had a different professional experience level. Granted, a racist, sexist or other bigot could probably twist the above to justify only hiring from their preferred demographic, others will recognize that pushing for greater diversity in the workplace, especially for companies which serve areas larger than a small town, can strengthen their business. A diverse marketing team will do a better job of marketing to a variety of markets than a homogenous one would. A diverse design team can leverage their cultural differences in the appearance and interface of their products. Similar statements could be made for engineering teams, sales teams, research teams, etc.
As has been said elsewhere, if your companies demographics don't match the general population that doesn't necessarily mean your workplace isn't diverse, though it may indicate social problems somewhere in the chain between hiring and grade school. Maybe your hiring practices are biased. Maybe the demographics of your applicant pool don't match that of the general population. Maybe that is because universities are biased, maybe only a certain demographic is actually applying to those university programs. Maybe that is because of problems in high schools or earlier, are teachers pushing students based on their race/gender/preference/etc? Are parents? Is the media? Is income a factor?
Just because the dialogue surrounding a topic is politically charged doesn't mean there isn't value to it.
Re: Who gives a shit? (Score:0, Insightful)
Way to draw baseless conclusions bro. Clearly any interaction between a man and woman must be because the man wants to sleep with her. How could someone ever be just friendly in this day and age?
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're sort of missing the point. Sexism is sexism. You're still dividing the world up into sexes and saying one persons sexism is better or worse or not as important than someone else's sexism. Uhh.. also a form of sexism.
Isn't not discriminating on the basis of sex simply not discriminating on the basis of sex? You're kind of saying "Well fuck you and the discrimination you face because mine (or womens) is FAR worse". That's counter-productive. If you're against discrimination, you're against it, no matter who's being discriminated against.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe they dropped out after reading the comments on this article.
Re:racism matters (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't believe in the "great white savior" trope, thank you very much. Asserting that people outside of ghetto culture, or islamic culture, have some sort of responsibility for reforming ghetto or islamic culture is shamefully insulting to the people in ghetto or islamic culture.
If things are going to be changed, they have to come from within those culture communities, not from the outside.
Start with the man in the mirror.
culture isn't race (Score:4, Insightful)
Some cultures are better than others, period. All cultures have problems, no doubt, but thug, ghetto culture definitely has more problems than mainstream culture.
Asserting that disparate outcomes are mostly due to racism, rather than mostly due to culture, misidentifies the root cause of the problem, and actively works *against* any future progress. If your arm is broken, and you've got a hangnail at the same time, you don't focus on the hangnail as the reason why you can't lift your arm.
When you're in the ghetto, it isn't the guy in the suburbs that you never see in person that is holding you back - it's the gang of thugs that beats you up if they see you carrying a chemistry textbook, or if they hear you speak proper english. Blaming some mythical "whitey", while you're beat down by the thug culture around you, is giving a pass to the cultural violence perpetrated, and unfairly scapegoating someone who doesn't deserve it.
It's time to get past the idea that "being real" means being uneducated, criminal, illiterate, misogynistic, and violent.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:3, Insightful)
The first is that if you assume that women are a) not inherently less qualified to do tech jobs and b) given an equal opportunity
and c) are, on average, equally interested in tech jobs on the first place.
Maybe you think they have different brains or something.
Uh... they do.
Whatever it is, there's some subconscious bias somewhere that is holding women back
Or perhaps women are also simply generally less inclined towards that kind of job.
By all means, fight discrimination and "bro culture" where it exists. But you can't assume it must exist simply because a 50/50 mix hasn't been achieved.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
that makes no sense whatsoever when the politically correct premise is that attributes like race, sex and orientation aren't supposed to be relevant to job skillset. I wonder if the study was biased in order to promote more affirmative action.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a few thoughts:
1) I've seen nothing like that, and I've been in the business for years.
2) How do you know that it's your sex that's turning them off, as opposed to something else? People can have remarkable blind-spots regarding their shortcomings.
3) "I say this is her." It might be your command of grammar ;)
Re:It happens every day in my job. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a hiring manager for a Fortune 100 Tech company (my boss reports directly to WW HR VP) and have been told point-blank that all hires must pass the "if all else is nearly equal" rule. In other words, when presented with two applicants who are "nearly" equally qualified for a position, that we are to hire the one that best addresses a minority concern. Period.
So if Jack rates a 9, and Jane rates a 7 in our interview results, Jane will always be hired. Any manager hiring Jack over Jane in this scenario will not be one much longer.
So which racist and misandry company do you work for so we can all avoid buying their products and services? Tell us so none of you can be there much longer.
Re: Race doesn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you even read your cites, or do you just expect everyone else not to?
1) Computer Science was not considered in that report. It concerned strictly engineering degrees. There's no comprehensive list of which ones, but Computer Engineering is NOT cited as one of the degrees represented.
2) Those deciding not to start engineering courses were not considered.
What WAS considered were those women who finished an undergraduate engineering degree and then went into a different field, and those women who finished an undergraduate engineering degree, worked in engineering, and then left the field. It is specifically mentioned that some of those left engineering FOR computer programming or IT.
Re:It happens every day in my job. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was a manager at Home Depot for years and can tell you they do the same thing. When I got hired we had a man as a regional manager who didn't give a shit what race or sex you were. He hired the best people he could and our team became the envy of the entire company. We literally wrote the book on how to do our jobs better and most things considered 'best practices' came from our regional team at some level. Then his boss was changed to a woman who decided their were too many white men in our region things got really bad. When hiring the last three lower level managers under me I wasn't told if candidates were nearly the same, I was told I HAD to hire more females and minorities. After giving interviews for three months, and finding zero decent female or minority candidates, my new regional manager pulled me aside and basically accused me of being a racist and a sexist. I was told I had two weeks to fill the position or someone would be found to do it for me. The best of the bunch was a black woman who had been an HR department head. I had to fire her six months later for theft and was then blamed for hiring her in the first place. I ended up leaving HD because I got tired of the stupidity. At every level of the company they have gone off the rails. Management at the upper levels of the company have decided that anyone but a white male should be hired and most of the time that means not hiring the best candidate. Men are more physically capable of doing the bottom end jobs so more men are hired for those jobs. When it comes time to hire for their boss should I hire one of them who knows every aspect of his own job plus most aspects of his boss' job or a female who knows nothing about either position as an outside hire? In nearly every case it was better to hire from within but that meant I was a racist and a sexist for thinking people most capable of doing the job were the ones I should hire.