FB Reveals Woeful Diversity Numbers 256
theodp writes: There's more work to do," said Facebook's Global Director of Diversity Maxine Williams, who issued a straight-out-of-How-to-Lie-With-Statistics diversity update on Thursday that essentially consisted of a handful of bar charts labeled with only percentages for select measures of the social networking giant's current demographics. In search of real numbers, the Guardian turned to Facebook's most recent Equal Employment Opportunity report filing, which showed that the ranks of black employees swelled by a grand total of seven (7) (1 woman) in the year covered by the filing, during which time Facebook saw an overall headcount increase of 1,231. Comparing Facebook's new bar charts of US tech employees to those issued last year shows the proportion of Hispanic and Black employees remained flat at 3% and 1% respectively, while a decline in the proportion of white employees from 53% to 51% was offset by an increase in the proportion of Asian employees from 41% to 43%.
Demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what the demographic breakdown of people who actually apply for jobs at FB looks like? Comparing the two would be a more valid way of looking at it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
THIS!
About 10% of our employees are female and we have literally taken EVERY female who applied yet rejected quite a few male applicants. We have had exactly 0 Black and 0 Hispanic applicants.
Maybe people should be looking at the students and encouraging females and people of different races to go into technical fields so we actually have people to hire.
Re:Demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's every person's own business which career and jobs they want to go for. I know, it's preposterous to assume that blacks, women, and all the other "minorities" can make decisions and their own.
Re:Demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, good. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to say "Black people just don't want technology jobs." I suppose they prefer working in fast food and sports?
Well, it's not like black youth are inundated with the glorification of "thug life" and "gangsta" culture, or that blacks that *do* do well are often labeled by their peers as "actin' like dey white", "uncle Toms", "house niggas" (all things I've heard blacks say personally, as well), and any that profess anti-entitlement-society, pro-family views are excoriated by both their peers and "news" media.
I frankly greatly admire minorities in the US that have the courage and determination to run that gauntlet instead of cave to the pressure to "stay on the plantation" and instead go on to use their intelligence, talents, skills, and strong work ethic to do well and become an asset to their communities and to society.
Strat
Television Stereotypes (Score:2)
I'm black and I don't know a single person that talks like that. Not among my family, friends, or acquaintances. I do encounter this stereotype quite frequently on television, music and on the internet though.
I'm not saying there aren't people who think like that. But that it's not as common way of think a
Re:Television Stereotypes (Score:4, Interesting)
I live a short distance outside Detroit. Come take a drive with me some afternoon and I'll introduce you to countless examples. I'm a professional blues guitarist and regularly live, work, and eat with black people and have for decades, and have dated a number of black women over the years as well, many with children. It's a result of the culmination of decades of cultural and social messages blacks receive their entire lives from government entitlement programs, affirmative action laws & policies, schools/colleges, music/media/mainstream news, and their peers.
Strat
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"Ongoing program of destroying their lives"? What the fuck are you talking about?
Black youth are given the same opportunities that every other youth is given. They can attend public school. They can use the resources of public libraries. They can better themselves and create futures for themselves, if they are smart enough to do so. They even get preferential treatment when it comes to college admission and many jobs.
When a black youth or adult decides to voluntarily get involved with a gang, ends up volunt
Re: Demographics (Score:4, Insightful)
Black youth are given the same opportunities that every other youth is given. They can attend public school. They can use the resources of public libraries.
Yes, on that level, they have opportunities. Of course, they might live in an area where there's de facto segregation because it's a poor neighborhood and only black people live there. They might go to a shitty underfunded public school. They might get harassed by the police on a regular basis, charged with a felony in a situation where a white kid would get a slap on the wrist, and have their lives effectively ruined by a criminal record.
It's definitely not as bad for black people as it was 50 years ago, or even 25 years ago, but let's not pretend that they get all the same opportunities, and they get given the benefit of all the same doubts.
Re: Demographics (Score:5, Informative)
The very concept of "public school" is fairly recent. Not only did Aristotle grow up without one, neither Benjamin Franklin nor Thomas Jefferson attended one either. Thomas Edison was homeschooled [edisonmuckers.org].
Even if true, how is this different from what Jews suffered in Europe for centuries?
Why are the supposedly "racist cops" (many of them Black [nytimes.com], BTW) today only targeting African Americans? If they really were White Supremacists [dailykos.com], wouldn't the statistics for Asian Americans be just as gloomy? Immigrant Blacks are doing much better than the native-born ones [theatlantic.com] too.
A theory contradicting observable facts is wrong. Your explanation is thus without merit. Whether or not there really is "institutional racism" or whatever in America, it simply does not explain the woeful underperformance of African Americans.
Actually, you are wrong again — it is worse than 50 years ago. Despite — or, more likely, because of — decades of various policies advocated by your kind, the Blacks' satisfaction is lower today, than it was in 1964 [usnews.com]. Although, yeah, it may be better than 20 years ago...
(Note, that I'm not putting forth my own theories here. I'm just obliterating yours.)
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It's a very common STATISTIC in America today that blacks and hispanics are and prone to joining gangs, and that Asians are smart and successful
There we go had to fixed that for you. An assumption is taken as true without evidence
http://www.nationalgangcenter.... [nationalgangcenter.gov]
What you do with that is your concern. Pretending it doesn't exist just makes you look foolish.
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I'll answer your ridiculous questions, though I suspect you'll simply continue to deny reality.
And where would this assumption you claim exists — without any citations, BTW — have come from?
You're asking where stereotypes come from? That's certainly not so simple. Gangs used to be predominately white, after all. Not just any white people, of course, but white immigrants. Immigrants who suffered from discrimination and abuse simply because of their national origin. Remember "No Irish need apply"? Many researches believe gangs are mostly an immigrant problem and that long-standing black and latin
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Although I mostly agree, I would say just because treat people differently based on their race doesn't make you a racist (ok it does), but it is all about degrees, it is totally natural for people to affiliate more with there family, then social group, ...
How long do first impressions take? According to this article http://www.psychologicalscienc... [psychologicalscience.org] 1/10 of a second. There is not much you can do about that, the key is to realize that you are doing it and attempt not to let it influence you too much.
I also
Re: Demographics (Score:4, Insightful)
So, you've gotten past denying the higher likelihood of Blacks belonging to a gang, and are now listing excuses for it? Nice.
So, is it still "stereotype", if it is true? Is it "racist" to point out, that African Americans have darker skin?
You keep saying these things, but remain unable to explain, why these very same racist police do not treat Asians just as badly as they (supposedly) do Blacks. Anecdotes about Korean kids studying Math don't count. Koreans are but a fraction of Asians in America — there are vastly more Chinese, for example. There are great many Vietnamese. Then there are Indians and Pakistani, who — being brown and with funny accents — would've made a perfect target for racism.
And maybe they are a target — I do not know. But I do know, they don't burn pharmacies for some reason...
Citations? Single anecdotes don't count — statistics, please... Cite me a study or two.
I asked this question up above already, but you — "cowards on race" [cnn.com] — have all dodged it. Why is it, that even the most vile stereotypes of Jews — who were certainly mistreated in Europe for centuries — do not contain anything even remotely like smashing police cars or robbing storekeepers?
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So, you've gotten past denying the higher likelihood of Blacks belonging to a gang, and are now listing excuses for it? Nice.
Did you read what I wrote? It's not a racial issue at all. Race has absolutely nothing to do with it. Gangs for regardless of race due to specific social factors.
You keep saying these things, but remain unable to explain, why these very same racist police do not treat Asians just as badly as they (supposedly) do Blacks.
Bigotry and stereotypes! Try to pay attention here.
Citations? Single anecdotes don't count — statistics, please... Cite me a study or two.
Gaines, Larry K. (2002) An Analysis of Traffic Stop Data in the City of Riverside. Riverside, CA: City of Riverside.
Lundman, Richard J., and Robert L. Kaufman. (2003) Driving while black and male: Effects of race, ethnicity, and gender on citizen self-reports of traffic stops and police actions
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Please, explain, how a "racist cop" manage to distinguish between Black immigrant and Black native born.
Accent, mannerisms, etc.
Re: Demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
I went to a shitty underfunded public school in a major city, located in a poor neighborhood and only black people live there (magnet schools: because rich people object to "bussing"). I lived in a variety of poor neighborhoods during and after my college years (admittedly Houston doesn't have the problems with escape-proof ghettos that the Democrat-only cities do). The main problem keeping people there, where I lived, really was either "attitude and culture" or "spending money on someone else".
Don't get me wrong: attitude and culture are no small thing! The strongest prison bars are the ones in our minds. But if you want to actually fix the problem, instead of keeping the problem around on purpose to serve your political goal, then you must understand the fix has to be cultural. I was stuck there myself for a few years due to my own attitude.
Everyone I talked to (and you do spend time talking to your neighbors when there fuck-all else you can afford to do) fell into one of these 3 groups:
1. Hardworking recent immigrants, legal or otherwise, who were already making enough to live somewhere better, but were sending most of their money back home (these are the best neighbors, BTW). They were here because the opportunities were good, and were anything but trapped. I'm sure their kids are doing great here.
2. A hardworking woman who wouldn't still be in this shitty neighborhood except for some layabout relative, always male, she was unwilling to force to work or throw out on the street. (I always suspected I only saw the ones who hadn't done that yet, but either way the problem wasn't lack of opportunity).
3. The majority: people who were convinced that working a regular, full-time job was some sort of scam. They were just too smart to fall for that scam, you see, to be tricked into working long hour for shit pay. They knew that wasn't the right answer, and any day know their next scam would work and they'd be rich. I was definitely trapped there by this, for years.
There's nothing in entertainment that glorifies, or even explains, that working long hours for shit pay is what the start of the path upwards looks like. That living with roomates in a ghetto apartment longer than you have to, spending less than you can even when that sucks bad, is how you make the space to change to a better job. That working a job that sucks so bad that you sit in the parking lot in a daze sometimes unable to walk inside and start the workday is just a temporary step on the path. None of that is explained, but it's normal when you start from the bottom. My immigrant neighbors understood it - I wish they'd have been able to explain it to me at the time.
Software development is more open to non-traditional backgrounds than most fields. I've participated in a couple hundred interviews and phone screens while working with a variety of the big names in my career, and no one ever cared about anything but "can you code, are you self-motivated, and are you an asshole". The opportunity is there, if you have the talent and the training, but its ultimately on you to make the changes to get the training and go after the opportunity.
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Black youth are given the same opportunities that every other youth is given. They can attend public school.
Oh please, this is a load of horse shit.
Public schools are not the same everywhere. That's exactly why they tried that whole "busing" scheme (which they're still doing in some places I believe). Schools are run at the local level, not the federal level, and are comprised of students from the local area, and teachers willing to work at that school, so schools in rich districts are good and well-fund
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They can attend public school.
Rundown, overcrowded, with severely stripped-down course offerings.
They can use the resources of public libraries.
Sure, if they want to take a long bus ride to a nicer part of the city where the libraries have not been closed.
This might be the case in larger cities, but in most small to medium sized towns, this isn't the case. In the small town I grew up in of 15k and the town I live in now with 120k people, it's a single school district and the public library is downtown. The town I live in now, the public library is in the poorest part of town, so the poor actually have easier access to it than the middle class living on the outskirts of town. If walking 5 blocks to the library is too much work, my town also has a bookmobil
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But back on topic, how is this facebook or google's problem? Facebook can't hire people that don't exist.
We've completely strayed from that topic in this sub-discussion, and are just talking about why things are the way they are.
You're absolutely right: FB, Google, etc. have little control over this stuff. To change it requires changing society in a big way, and it'll take decades for the changes to really bear fruit. These companies can't hire engineers who don't exist, and to create them would require
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Don't feel like doing a full survey for the reading impaired, but here's an example: Crack bad, cocaine good [wikipedia.org]. This reduced the weight ratio for federal punishment between possession of crack cocaine and cocaine powder from 100:1 to 18:1, and eliminated the minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years for possession of crack cocaine. Guess what population group was involved in crack, and which in powder when the original law was drafted?
As for organizations, you might want to do some reading into the way the Ame
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It's not a bullshit racist excuse, I've heard it myself. I have children that are mixed, so I am well integrated into black culture. Sure not all black people do it, but there is a great amount of adults that does.
And posting something from SJW's that are white themselves and would be afraid to physically walk in the neighborhood I live in is not a great help. Talk to actual black people that are successful for an instance like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and his struggle to become a black scientist.
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Culture, not race (Score:2)
Re:Culture, not race (Score:4, Interesting)
They come here, work 16 hour days often living with 5 other families living in a studio apartment. They work hard, they learn a skill, they learn a new language and are succeeding beyond anything that could have been hoped for in their homeland. They know what hard work is and to get things they must work for them through adversity.
Now their precious snowflake knows none of these things. She watches tv and sees people driving in Lamborghinis and living in beachfront houses Malibu and knows nothing about their background, but thinks her parents are losers for not having a car and living with other losers. She knows she deserves something better. All of her friends are in exactly the same position.
Meanwhile, she isn't doing her homework and when my girlfriend would talk to the parents at conferences it usually went:we try to make her study, but snowflake threatens to report us and have us deported. Snowflake and her friend knows they'll never have to work as hard as their parents but deserve a lot more because everyone else.
Always check the "Other" box (Score:5, Funny)
We have an every other hire must not be a white male [policy?]
Wow, so it's a good thing that in today's PC society, I can "identify" as a 28 year old female of color, with 30 years of industry experience the next time I apply for a job. That will increase my chances, because, as a 50 something year old white guy, I am screwed.
Re:Demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
As would be a further breakdown across something like school grades or other performance metric of those applications. Lack of diversity is a problem that is not mostly caused by discrimination but by lack of suitable candidates with a decent education, which is an issue with a nation's educational system. Once education provides equal opportunity you'll see these differences go away rapidly (what will remain are cultural differences about what young people want to become when they're still in school).
Re:Demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
I went to school to speak with my daughter's teacher when she was in the third grade and struggling. We discussed her situation at length for about 30 minutes and covered a lot of possible actions to help her improve. At the end of that time her teacher thanked me profusely for coming to the meeting. I was rather surprised and stated that I was thankful to her for her time and help and would not have dreamed of failing to come. She then told me that over the past week she had scheduled 7 meetings with parents and I was the only one to actually show up. Parents are the biggest shortcoming in the education of children today. If parents do not get involved then no amount of money spent on education will accomplish much. When I was a child my parents involvement consisted of beating my ass when I had problems at school. This method, while crude, was effective. It would have been much better if they had taken the time to do more but what they did do was better than the apathy so many parents exhibit towards their children's education.
Re:Demographics (Score:4, Funny)
Well there is your problem right there. If your daughter's teacher is in the third grade and struggling, then you need to find a different teacher for your daughter!
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No, the parent is so involved that they built a time machine to identify when their child's teacher had a problem in school and went back in time to fix the problem so that they could become a great teacher for their own child to excel!
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Parents are the biggest shortcoming in the education of children today.
Have you seen the tripe that passes for curriculum these days? Believe me a certain percentage of the parents are tuning them out because they've become politically indoctrinating baby-sitters.
Sylvan is damned expensive too...
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The basics are largely the same. Math, English and Science are key the rest of the tripe they waste time on I could do without as well. Still I remember there were 500 students in my child's elementary school and the PTA meetings were lucky to have 40 people in attendance.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"If parents do not get involved then no amount of money spent on education will accomplish much."
I cannot agree with this enough. I am a teacher (at an international school in Tokyo). Way back when I was a student teacher in the US, we had parent/teacher night. I had one class which was a strong academic class with about 15 students. I had another class with 40 low academic students. For the class with 15 students, the parent/teacher night was full with parents - basically 100% of the students had a parent show up. For the class with 40 students only about 15 parents showed up - basically about 25%
Re: Demographics (Score:2)
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Where I live the per capita spending on students has risen over the years far ahead of inflation. The results have remained largely unchanged. Money is important but a lot can be done cheaply if you have good management. Without support from a solid family structure money will make little difference. One thing I am glad to see is schools serving breakfast now. For far too many children the only meals they get are at school. Libertarian though I may be free food for children is an exception I make. It
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At least in Israel, parent meetings are always late afternoon, going well into the evening, and even the night.
And, no, our education system isn't in a wonderful shape.
Shachar
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Back when I was in school, parent=teacher meetings were always in the evenings so that both parents could attend. Of course this was long. long ago (early seventies), in a country 8000 miles away
Re:Demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
Be nice if parents were paid for the time they had to take off to attend these meetings.
Poor academic performance is strongly correlated with poverty. Households in the bottom quintile have an average of 0.4 people employed. I doubt if the parents failed to show up because they were too busy.
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While it is a shortcoming of the education system, it's not because of money. We spend more than ever per student. The problem is government schools.
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Re:Demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
Or more aptly, those who apply and are the best fit for the job - there is no point in berating a company for woeful diversity hiring figures when all they did was concentrate on hiring the best candidate.
When it can be shown that Facebook turned down a better qualified minority candidate in order to hire a more poorly qualified white candidate, then there is an issue in hiring standards - if minority candidates are being failed by the education and social support systems to the point where we have a noticeable disparity in hireable candidates, well thats something we all need to fix properly rather than just tut at companies who would rather hire the better candidate regardless of race, colour or sex.
Re: Demographics (Score:2)
I think this story is an important one, but perhaps not for the reasons your imagining people care about this. I wouldn't necessarily berate anyone at Facebook for these statistics. Maybe they're not doing everything they should, but maybe they're doing everything they reasonable can do to hire minorities and women.
However, the fact that there's such a huge discrepancy in hiring of black people is an indication that there's some kind of problem. Before we even get into trying to figure out where the pro
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Well, fortunately, both problems are solved. I direct your attention first to the question of why there are more black men in prison than you would think "fair" by their fraction of the population:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.... [f2s.com]
Next up, a quick look at hiring practices. Note that this one is earlier, and does not walk you quite so explicitly through the cutoff theory.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.... [f2s.com]
If you can handle the math, that site will open your eyes.
Hiring diverse top performers (Score:2)
Hiring a diverse team is not at odds with hiring the best fit for the job. Your quote assumes that the reason for the lack of black candidates is irrelevant, or at least should not be investigated by by hiring organizations.
No one is suggesting hiring workers who can't do the job. That would be silly. Rather, it's important for us to quantify the lack hires, and in
Only ~50% of FB employees are white. (Score:2)
75% of the country is white. FB is obviously doing a very good job of attracting non-white employees--they are [in fact] over-represented by a significant margin.
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"If Facebook has very low numbers of non-white applicants it suggests that the way they advertise jobs isn't very good"
Or it suggests that non-white applicants aren't very good at finding the advertisements. Or it suggests that there aren't that many non-white applicants available. Or it suggests ... a thousand more possibilities.
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If Facebook has very low numbers of non-white applicants it suggests that the way they advertise jobs isn't very good, because it fails to attract qualified candidates from minorities. Often it's because they advertise jobs informally via things like Linkedin contacts first, which tends to attract more of the same type of people they already have.
Yeah, because nobody in the world had ever heard of Facebook. You really believe that crap you spouted? It makes me ill to have to defend them, but if I want a job at Facebook I think I might, you know, look for job postings at Facebook. I'm pretty sure I know how to find them.
Job postings are the worst. The ratio of good applications to bad applications is extremely low, and recruiters use fast filtering methods with lots of false negatives, so you can apply for jobs all day and not even get an interview.
Facebook is the worst at job postings. They have plenty of openings, but if you apply to more than 3, then they shut you down hard. No more applications for you. You can fill out an application, but then the system finds that you have applied to 3 openings already in the past ye
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Given that especially IT jobs get an incredible number of applications from utterly non-qualified people (see http://blog.codinghorror.com/t... [codinghorror.com]), these statistics would not tell us much. Also remember that those with the worst qualifications write the most job applications, skewing the numbers further.
Blacks and Hispanics make up over 9% CS Grads (Score:2)
From...
Tech jobs: Minorities have degrees, but don't get hired/a. [usatoday.com]
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I take the existence of this story to mean that Zuckerberg's campaign contributions aren't meeting Her Majesty's expectations.
Who is "her"? Hillary Clinton? She's not a current government official, has no actual power, is not even her party's nominee for an election that's still 16 months away, and you've already crowned her Queen? WTF is wrong with you?
The story author is Rupert Neate, a (male) British journalist covering US business and politics. Liberal, but without any obvious ties to any particular candidate.
The /. submission by theodp, a user almost as visible as BennetHaselton, though with less tendency to ramble, general
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Nearly homogeneous workforce? You haven't seen tech workplaces. There's Americans, Indians, Chinese, Koreans, and Europeans (both eastern and western) all well represented. Plenty of diversity.
Symptom (Score:2)
So under-representation of BMEs and women in large tech company is the symptom. What we need to understand is the cause. Encouraging companies like FaceBook to address the issue is one approach and given their resources one that might bring about change. Perhaps Facebook could target bright kids in certain communities with fellowships and the like - try and encourage more to engage in a tech career?
Re:Symptom (Score:4, Interesting)
How about "people can do what they like and it's none of my business"? If black people/women/transexual Muslim asexuals don't want to work in STEM how about we assume they're capable enough to reach that decision on their own, without the need to engage in social engineering to correct them. Saying "gee, these black people aren't intelligent enough to figure out they should go into science, let's convince them" is just a veiled form or racism.
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If
You're entire premise is based on an unsupported supposition, mixed with other random crap likethe feeble attempt at some sort of racism-reflection.
Rcruiting through peer networks (what a lot of tech companies do) tends very strongly to hit exactly the same demographic they've already got. FBs numbers are below the numbers on the courses at uni and in the industry so it implies strongly that their recruiting message isn't getting outside a rather select demographic.
IOW there are talented people who they
Celebrate Pride (Score:5, Funny)
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Well... pictures of darker skinned people are kinda hard to see with a rainbow filter on them.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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These numbers tell us that both Whites and Blacks have a serious education and qualification problem.
Include the "Immigrant" dimension (Score:2)
Include the immigrant dimension in those statistics and it makes a lot more sense. The Asian group includes Indian natives and other immigrant populations that have cultural norms very different then native populations.
Immigrants, regardless of race, have different rates of starting businesses, pursuing higher education and career in general.
For an accurate compa
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Given the interest in diversity, it's perfectly reasonable to rule out the probability that there were any because the interest in diversity would have almost invariably lead to them being given hiring priority if they applied.
You can keep on repeating the same rubbish: it doesn't become true if you say it enough.
This is not about favouring unqualified "minorities", it's about actually getting them to apply in the first place.
Oh and equal opportunity so that when they do apply they're not being judged based
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Blacks and Hispanics make up over 9% of CS grads. Source.. Tech jobs: Minorities have degrees, but don't get hired [usatoday.com]
Heavens Forbid (Score:2)
Heavens forbid that the best candidates are picked! Oh the horror!
And of course if there's a vastly smaller pool of minority and women applicants, that's the employer's fault as well! Maybe we could force them to pay to educate then train minority/women parolees and force them to hire them! That will assure private data stays private! /s*
Strat
*I find it rather tragic that Western culture and society has devolved so far into reactionary mob-rule that a 'sarc' tag is necessary. We used to have these things ca
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As someone mentioned, one black woman, but probably a lot more woman. They were probably mostly all Asians.
Where I work, in the last 60 engineering hires (we're a semi-established but still small startup), we hired 100% of the black people who applied. 100% of them are among some of our most senior, respected employees, who are constantly winning every hackathons, prizes, company value awards, and are always present in promotions round. ALL OF THEM.
That is, all of them because only ONE ever applied. And by
I have an idea... (Score:2)
I suspect that they could...impressively boost...their diversity numbers if they were just able to find a way of counting those as 'employees' without actually paying them more. The effect would probably be even stronger than any benefit Apple gets from including their retail sales/support minions in the numbers.
Black employees. Hmm. (Score:5, Informative)
Look: I graduated from high school in 1985- far before the intarwebs were cool. I was a geek because I *wanted* to be, societal pressures notwithstanding.
I was bullied on a daily basis. The source of the majority of this bullying was blacks. An Asian friend of mine, years later- in college- mused about his similar experience.
I guess this can go two ways:
1. Black culture can finally start to view academic accomplishment as "cool".
Or:
2. Black culture can realize that the smart kids are in charge, and they'd better adapt or learn to enjoy life in the hip-hop ghetto they've made.
Sorry. Not my monkeys, not my circus, not my problem.
Re:Black employees. Hmm. (Score:4, Funny)
2. Black culture can realize that the smart kids are in charge, and they'd better adapt or learn to enjoy life in the hip-hop ghetto they've made.
Black culture is largely a deliberately created phenomenon. Much of what you think of as modern black culture was actually guided and shaped by whites. While there are many black labels now, what music was produced was formerly controlled by whites. Which movies get made is still largely controlled by whites. The laws regarding private prisons are largely written and passed by whites. You want to blame everything wrong with black culture on the blacks but forgetting about slavery and ongoing, deliberate oppression which continues to this day is more than a bit disingenuous, isn't it? It's ignorant at best, and more than a little racist.
haha "offtopic" racist mods on dope (Score:2)
Couldn't really be much more on topic than discussing how we got here. Obviously some racist cowards don't want to take responsibility for their share of how the world turned out. They think you can just shit on people forever and there won't be any shit on them.
God damn this site is broken by design.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you just reply to yourself to tell yourself how brilliant your post was?
No, I reply to myself to display abuses of moderation. Sometimes other moderators notice and correct the failure.,/p>
Do you normally use multiple accounts to vote yourself up or comment about how brilliant you are but you screwed up the login?
Nope. I have only one account, I am set unwilling to moderate. But this isn't about how brilliant I am. This is about how fucked slashdot is, and how cowardly you are — speculating about whether I botched a login while you piss yourself before you can even manage one.
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You sound like a conspiracy theorist.
Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception. The phrase "conspiracy theorist" was actually deliberately popularized by the CIA [zerohedge.com], through the media. So it's absolutely hilarious to see you use the phrase like you understand it. Unless you work for the feds? Then you no doubt do.
You assume you are correct and no alternative views could be correct.
You assume you are correct and no alternative views could be correct.
Then when people vote you down for your obsession with having to be correct, you freak out.
You have never seen me freak out.
Really, "Black culture is largely a deliberately created phenomenon", and you don't expect that to be controversial in any way when stated as a fact?
Of course I do. And I even expect to get downmodded for it by cowards. It's only controversial if you ignore history.
Re:Black employees. Hmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
If there's some Great White Conspiracy to keep the black man down, neither I nor anyone I know are part of it. Indeed, all my cohorts (including the black ones) say the same thing- something along the lines of, "Shut up, raise your kids well, buy your beer, and don't annoy your neighbors". I don't know what's so groundbreaking about that.
I also notice that you've focussed on my second point, while ignoring the first. Care to comment? I have intimate experience, as well as reading about it all over the place- it's not a melanin thing. Black people come to the US from all over the world and do well. It's US black culture that is to blame.
Furthermore, you whipped out the "racist" card, so here we go: shut up and behave. This may take a while to result in change... but isn't this what everyone should be doing anyway?
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If there's some Great White Conspiracy to keep the black man down, neither I nor anyone I know are part of it.
There isn't, the problems are more subtle than that. It's been discussed a hundred times here, can we please move on from having to repeat the basics every single time?
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If something is so "subtle" that they are directly immeasurable,
There's nothing subtle or immeasurable about blacks being more highly targeted by law enforcement, courts, and the penal system than whites, and this leading to a general downward spiral in their quality of life; or in how blacks were property, and then were effectively prohibited from owning property, for a massive slice of the duration of the history of the nation. (Hence this proclamation of agitation? In b4 masturbation.) This leads to being penalized in any capitalist society. When capital controls the
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If there's some Great White Conspiracy to keep the black man down, neither I nor anyone I know are part of it.
First, I didn't allege any such conspiracy, so you're attacking a straw man. Second, if were such a conspiracy, you'd be doing a fine job of helping it along even without knowledge.
Indeed, all my cohorts (including the black ones)
Ah, the appeal to authority, and it's false authority as well.
Black people come to the US from all over the world and do well. It's US black culture that is to blame.
You want me to address your comment while ignoring mine? That's still a created situation. What you say here does not detract from my point in the least. That's why I didn't mention it; it's not relevant.
Furthermore, you whipped out the "racist" card, so here we go: shut up and behave.
And I quote: Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, motherfucker
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But if you think it's a great white consipiracy to "keep da niggas in their place", you're not thinking straight. It's about what every other conspiracy in America is about: making money.
Right, you've almost got it. Very very close.
Music and fashions - to take the most obvious examples - are marketed to black people, not to keep them down, but to sell more music and clothes.
Look, where did hip-hop come from? It came from the music programs getting shut down which affected black students before it affected white ones because there was more money to wring out of parents and communities in white neighborhoods — due to the weight of history, and public policy. So "that's not music!" came from being too cheap to have decent education in the poorest neighborhoods. But moreover, the majority of advertising which is targeted at anyone
9% of CS grads not good enough for you? (Score:2)
Source...
Tech jobs: Minorities have degrees, but don't get hired [usatoday.com]
Fixing statistics does not fix problems (Score:2)
It rather about the most stupid thing you can do, because it may obscure problems, making them _harder_ to see and solve. That is if there actually is a problem. Fixing the statistic may well cause problems where there were none before.
This is an instance of the classical cause-end-effect reversal mistake that stupid people are so likely to do. It requires intelligence low enough to not understand the difference between an implication and an equivalence. Correlation is not causation, and it is _never_ causa
Garbage in, Garbage out (Score:2)
But is that taken into consideration? Humankind isn't divided into white, asian, hispanic, and black.
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The city where I live, when they had to hire someone to manage the school district and took public opinion, a lot of people were asking for diversity. We are an ethnically diverse city and that is part of the culture and it needs to be preserved.
So we need someone that represents said diversity.
What they repeatedly asked for? "Someone of non-euro-african or asian descent", the spanish community was asking.
Holy shit that's diverse.
When people ask for diversity, what they usually ask for isn't to exclude whit
Treatment of Asians in 1892 (Score:4, Informative)
Robert Louis Stevenson describes the White attitude towards Asians in his book "Across the Plains", his account of a train journey in America. Based on his telling, I expect that vigorous affirmative action is needed to uplift such a downtrodden ethic group.
"Despised Races
Of all stupid ill-feelings, the sentiment of my fellow Caucasians towards our companions in the Chinese car was the most stupid and the worst. They seemed never to have looked at them, listened to them, or thought of them, but hated them a priori. The Mongols were their enemies in that cruel and treacherous battle-field of money. They could work better and cheaper in half a hundred industries, and hence there was no calumny too idle for the Caucasians to repeat, and even to believe. They declared them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of choking in the throat when they beheld them. Now, as a matter of fact, the young Chinese man is so like a large class of European women, that on raising my head and suddenly catching sight of one at a considerable distance, I have for an instant been deceived by the resemblance. I do not say it is the most attractive class of our women, but for all that many a man’s wife is less pleasantly favoured. Again, my emigrants declared that the Chinese were dirty. I cannot say they were clean, for that was impossible upon the journey; but in their efforts after cleanliness they put the rest of us to shame. We all pigged and stewed in one infamy, wet our hands and faces for half a minute daily on the platform, and were unashamed. But the Chinese never lost an opportunity, and you would see them washing their feet—an act not dreamed of among ourselves—and going as far as decency permitted to wash their whole bodies. I may remark by the way that the dirtier people are in their persons the more delicate is their sense of modesty. A clean man strips in a crowded boathouse; but he who is unwashed slinks in and out of bed without uncovering an inch of skin. Lastly, these very foul and malodorous Caucasians entertained the surprising illusion that it was the Chinese waggon, and that alone, which stank. I have said already that it was the exceptions and notably the freshest of the three.
These judgments are typical of the feeling in all Western America. The Chinese are considered stupid, because they are imperfectly acquainted with English. They are held to be base, because their dexterity and frugality enable them to underbid the lazy, luxurious Caucasian. They are said to be thieves; I am sure they have no monopoly of that. They are called cruel; the Anglo-Saxon and the cheerful Irishman may each reflect before he bears the accusation. I am told, again, that they are of the race of river pirates, and belong to the most despised and dangerous class in the Celestial Empire. But if this be so, what remarkable pirates have we here! and what must be the virtues, the industry, the education, and the intelligence of their superiors at home!"
Does increased diversity help stock value? (Score:2)
Both sides of the coin? (Score:2)
If we're going to strike a pose of moral outrage when a company's employee demographics don't match closely enough the general population demographics, are we going to cry 'injustice' if their numbers climb too high? Ie if African-Americans are 16% of the population, will we complain if they reach 24% of the Facebook employee roster?
Why do we care?
In 2015 do we really believe that some Snidely-Whiplash HR person is rubbing their hands together and cackling while they shred all the valid applications from b
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In 2015 do we really believe that some Snidely-Whiplash HR person is rubbing their hands together and cackling while they shred all the valid applications from blacks and other minorities?
No, which is part of the problem. It's a lot more subtle than that. People often don't even realize they're doing it. Look at the experiment where people with "black-sounding" names got passed over while those with "white-sounding" names got interviews, despite identical resumes and cover letters.
Given that Zuck is constantly begging for most H1B (Score:2)
Given that Zuck is constantly begging for most H1Bs, I strongly suspect that this is a ploy to open the "expendable imported labor" tap a little wider.
"Oh me! Oh my! My company lacks diversity! If only there were a place with millions and millions of 'minority' developers that we could hire (at below-market wages and working conditions, teehee) to balance things out!"
What I can't figure out is why MBA types assume software developers are too stupid to see right through bullshit like this. Just because w
homogeneity (Score:2)
Some professions attract certain kinds of people. Where I used to live almost all restaurants were run by Greek men. Where I now live, all donut shops are run by Cambodians and the taco shops are run by hispanics. The hospitals here vary- some have mostly black staffs, some mostly Filipino and all mostly female. In Los Angeles, I'm told, the garbage industry is monopolized by Armenians. When I worked for Volkswagen in Chicago, over 90% of the technical employees were German, the rest were Austrian (not one
This diversity stuff was already debunked (Score:2)
Equal numbers of other people do not have the skills.
really, if you idiots don't stop harping on this issue, the only way they're going to improve those numbers is by replacing half their employees with Indians. There you go... company is now full of brown people. Happy now? Because now no one has a job.
Look, you can't compare straight population numbers with how many people are hired in given professions. You have to consider graduates from the colleges that have the required degrees or get some sort of ba
Asians (Score:5, Interesting)
only hear one side of the story (Score:4, Interesting)
Family of Feds (Score:2)
Easy fix (Score:2)
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Multiplication is timeless, at least.
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Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone arguing that a quotia is needed for equality dislikes freedom.
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Facebook is large enough that it has probably outgrown the most blatant 'Our hiring process is that you were the CEO's frat bro at Stanford, bro.' school of startup HR; but the question remains whether they've gone slightly more subtle, or whether they a
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You are kidding right? Do you really question if it might be true that only 1 in 1,231 candidates would be qualified women? Seriously?
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
My suspicion is that facebook is doing some "good cultural fit" selection; but 1 black woman, of 7 black hires, is much more plausible than 1 woman, of 1,231 hires.
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