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Google Businesses

Google Drops Engineering Residency After Protests (reuters.com) 127

Alphabet's Google plans to shut down a long-running program aimed at entry-level engineers from underrepresented backgrounds after participants said it enforced "systemic pay inequities," according to internal correspondence seen by Reuters. From the report: Google confirmed it was replacing the Engineering Residency with a new initiative, saying it is "always evaluating programs to ensure they evolve and adapt over time to meet the needs of our employees." Google last year pledged to improve retention for underrepresented employee groups. Critics have long argued that Google and its tech industry peers favor white, Asian and male workers in hiring, promotions and pay. Companies have grown more attuned to concerns about workforce diversity since the Black Lives Matter protests a year ago.

The Google residency, often referred to as "Eng Res," has since 2014 given graduates from hundreds of schools a chance to work on different teams, receive training and prove themselves for a permanent job over the course of a year. It offered a cohort of peers for bonding, three former residents said. Residents were Google's "most diverse pool" of software engineers and came "primarily from underrepresented groups," according to a June 2020 presentation and an accompanying letter to management that one source said over 500 current and former residents signed.

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Google Drops Engineering Residency After Protests

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  • by nemyax ( 1376001 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:39AM (#61510132)

    Critics have long argued that Google and its tech industry peers favor...

    ...people who are good at what they do.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      No no, all those horrible Google racists who just happen to hire Asians. They're the problem.

      It MUST be racism, there's NO other explanation.

      • From the article:
        "Compared with other software engineers, residents received the lowest possible pay for their employment level, a smaller year-end bonus and no stock, creating a compensation deficit "in the mid tens of thousands of dollars."

        So, basically, the idea was that they could hire underrepresented minorities... and pay them a lot less because they could.

        it continues: "Nearly all residents converted to regular employees, according to the presentation. Many alumni years later have continued to feel t

        • by SirSpanksALot ( 7630868 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @12:10PM (#61510440)
          Maybe if you stay at the same company... The best way to get a big fat raise is to change jobs.
          • by klipclop ( 6724090 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @12:38PM (#61510516)
            Or you can stay in the company and change departments. That's how I got all of my huge pay increases.
          • Maybe if you stay at the same company... The best way to get a big fat raise is to change jobs.

            That'd be great and dandy if everyone starts with a leveled field. But it isn't. The fact that those unrepresented minority engineers were systematically given smaller salaries indicate that *they* have to job-hop more than non-minority peers who don't have to deal with a less-than-average starting salary.

            The starting salary at the beginning of one's salary can affect someone's career from the first 5-10 years. And that's the thing. When we minorities get hit with shit like that, we are told "just change"

            • That'd be great and dandy if everyone starts with a leveled field. But it isn't. The fact that those unrepresented minority engineers were systematically given smaller salaries indicate that *they* have to job-hop more than non-minority peers who don't have to deal with a less-than-average starting salary.

              I disagree with this statement. I don't know anyone (or at least I could likely count them on one hand) that didn't job-hop who could match the salaries of literally anyone who did. It doesn't matter whe

              • I disagree with this statement. I don't know anyone (or at least I could likely count them on one hand) that didn't job-hop who could match the salaries of literally anyone who did

                But that's not what I am talking about. We are not talking about the efficiency of job hopping, but the inequality of starting salaries that causes some people to job hop a lot more than others for reasons that have nothing to do with skills or performance.

                You either get it or you don't.

        • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @02:34PM (#61510838)
          There's a lot of assumption about cause-and-effect in your post. Maybe the people who just barely got in through the door in the first place don't progress as much subsequently because they never were and still aren't very good.
          • So, you're saying that human resources offices turn out to be inerrant, efficiently sorting entry-level employees by starting salary levels which accurately predict which engineers will be stars and which won't.

            Possible. We need to take into account the possibility that elephants fly, too.

        • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          So, basically, the idea was that they could hire underrepresented minorities... and pay them a lot less because they could.

          Regardless of whether these people are minorities, they couldn't pass Google's regular hiring process. If they could, they wouldn't need this program in the first place.

          Google's basically giving them on-the-job training to bring them up to the necessary skill level. Of course, in exchange Google is paying them less than a regular hire. Do you think they should take the cost and effort to train them, but not obtain any benefit from doing it? Besides, they're free to switch to another company as a regular hir

      • Systemic racism isn't like the 1980's "Very Special Episode" where there is that guy who just hates minorities, who is the only block to the minorities success. However a long chain of events were people in some minority groups are kept at a disadvantage, and not allowed to show off their full potential.

        There is a cultural bias in which we judge people differently.
        So we have two students taking the same class (say a different times)
        When covering a topic where both students don't fully understand yet are as

        • by deKernel ( 65640 )

          So you are using a made-up example to prove a point....gotcha.

          • The SJWs cannot admit that people are different and like different things, that blows all their whining out the water, so the ONLY explanation they can conceive of is systemic racism and the only way they can show that ( because it is not the real explanation ) is MADE UP SHIT.

        • 'Misrepresented' (Score:5, Informative)

          by Geodesy99 ( 1002847 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @01:36PM (#61510704)
          'Misrepresented', not 'under'. Much of the 'structural' notion is fundamentally flawed because it fundamentally relies on a Fallacy of_Composition ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ). Instead of taking a group of certain pigment range as a monolithic block, one instead segments it into fairly large segments according to say, family immigrant trajectory - 'wave cohort' ( like the Irish Famine ), national origin, foreign born, first generation, second generation, third generation, etc. Upon immigration, most of these have a starting point in the same neighborhoods, school systems, job markets, etc.( "structures" ). And you will find despite the supposed 'structures' in place, and with even more disadvantages than coincident natives, these segments, again, with the same pigment range, do better than the population as a whole. And when you examine their cultural characteristics common to there segment, the success factors are screamingly obvious. If one also expands to similar pigment ranges to continental origins, it is even more dramatic. You can slice and dice this any number of ways, by same origin, different waves, etc., but the same trends appear. Of course, the success factors are an anathema to certain ideological narratives and academics ( the real 'structures' ) that have an interest in propagating the situation. the pew research Center has plenty of articles relating to this ( https://www.pewresearch.org/to... [pewresearch.org] ), and the US Census data is there for all to use. "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken
    • by anoncoward69 ( 6496862 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:59AM (#61510208)
      We have some of these "diversity hires" at my job. They are useless at much more than keeping a seat warm, and breaking shit to give the engineers that actually know their shit even more work to do. They cant perform at much better than 25% the workload of the other engineers and what they do end up doing, you just wonder if what they did is going to come back and bite us in the ass and make for a shitty work day
      • by Anonymous Coward

        I have to say, I'm old enough to remember when we had a large number of management who, as far as I could tell, had been hired with the sole qualification of being white, male, and looking good in a business suit. They are useless at much more than keeping a seat warm, and breaking shit to give the engineers that actually know their shit even more work to do. My cynical co-workers called them "empty suits".

        If you're saying that these days the empty suits come in other colors than white, my reply would be "y

        • Not talking about management aka "suits" those have always for the most part been useless seat warmers claiming credit for others work to make them look good as long as they have existed. Especially the middle management variety. Im talking about engineers who actually get the work done.
          • by tsqr ( 808554 )

            This is not something unique to "diversity hires". Every department has always had its share (hopefully small) of unproductive, unmotivated, lazy employees. One manager I worked with many years ago referred to these people as his "department pathetics." He gave them unimportant, non-critical tasks to keep them occupied, and he kept them around because their salaries formed part of the basis for annual merit increases. He could give them 0% merit raises and spread their share of the basis among the more usef

          • I mean you can just say ni ggers if thats what you mean, dude.
      • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @12:43PM (#61510528)

        I work in a rather diverse team, Where the radio of of people is mostly on par with the the demographics of the area.
        My work organization doesn't do "Diversity hires" we hire based on the job that is needed. We have our share of Bozo's where were in the Minority groups, but we also had a bunch of Bozo's who were part of the Majority group. We also have a good set of Rock Star Experts from the Minority Group at the same ratio of the Majority.

        The trick is we don't treat them like "Diversity Hires" we treat them as individuals, to keep them on board our organization we try to understand their strengths and weaknesses, and allow them to Work to their strengths, and help them with the weaknesses.

        From the tone of your post, it seems that your job, just hired people to keep their numbers, but never encouraged or pushed them to do more. While they apply a different set of expectations to other employees.
        One key difference I have found working with those of a disadvantaged diversity group, is I found that I need to invite them into the project and allow them to gain their confidence, because their lives they have been excluded and sometimes punished for showing initiative, as being seeming too aggressive.

      • by clovis ( 4684 )

        We have some of these "diversity hires" at my job. They are useless at much more than keeping a seat warm, and breaking shit to give the engineers that actually know their shit even more work to do. They cant perform at much better than 25% the workload of the other engineers and what they do end up doing, you just wonder if what they did is going to come back and bite us in the ass and make for a shitty work day

        I have to wonder what is the workplace where engineers work like that.
        I looked at your posting hisory. You said:
        "Yeah this wont go over well with COVID. At my current job when we were at another office location that was smaller we hot desked in a 3 shift 24/7/365 operations team. The desks were always downright filthy disgusting. Since no one had an assigned desk no one had pride of ownership of said desk and people just trashed them. Desk drawers filled with garbage/junk/old condiments, drink/food spills a

      • I have been at various tech companies, and yeah, I have noticed that most of the hires from a certain demographic are gone from the company within 6 months. They just can't cut it.
  • Seems like a loss (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:43AM (#61510144)

    after participants said it enforced "systemic pay inequities,"

    I worked as an intern for free on summer at a software company. The experience was invaluable in improving my carrier later, and in tailoring what I studied in college.

    These Google "interns" were all being paid (the article mentions a "smaller year-end bonus"), and learning a lot of practical things as they studied under various groups in Google. What a huge loss just because a few whiners complained that interns did not earn a full salary, or that not everyone was guaranteed a job...

    Yes they are going to have a new program but it sounds smaller since it seems like it will more guarantee employment. isn't it better to give a larger number of people a learning opportunity even if not all of them get jobs at Google? Just being an intern at Google would be a pretty good thing to have on a resume.

    • they sound like free or low cost labor. The complaint seemed to be that the program targeted groups that traditionally had a hard time breaking into Google and other high end IT jobs and offered them positions where they did real work for much less pay.

      When you start work for less pay people quickly expect to pay you less overall, and it's a struggle to increase your pay from that baseline. I started work a few years before a coworker of mine and I make significantly more. The Millennials and Gen Z have
      • by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @11:17AM (#61510250)

        These were interns. Low-cost labor in exchange for experience is the deal. Stop telling your students that they'll immediately be hired as execs commanding top-dollar the day after graduation.

        • by bored ( 40072 )

          Yah, I can see if they are funneling people into these programs to avoid paying them a real salary. OTOH, I don't see why they aren't just open door job trailing programs for anyone who can pass a basic comp-sci competency test (say a short write some code, answer some basic questions test where everyone above the 70 percentile is automatically accepted).It gives people who might be having a hard time finding a job after college a place to go, and google if they put them on non critical tasks can gain some

        • Then stop fucking telling people you need a degree to get the job. Company: we only hire grads! Grad: me? Company: we only hire grads who have industry experience! Grad: oh...
    • by Anonymous Coward

      These Google "interns" were all being paid (the article mentions a "smaller year-end bonus"), and learning a lot of practical things as they studied under various groups in Google. What a huge loss just because a few whiners complained that interns did not earn a full salary, or that not everyone was guaranteed a job...

      Did you actually read TFA? It's not that they weren't getting paid enough, it's that, when they did get hired on at Google (as most of them did) they spent their entire career getting a far lower income than that of their peers.

      • it's that, when they did get hired on at Google (as most of them did) they spent their entire career getting a far lower income than that of their peers.

        Yeah I read that, but why did they keep working if they felt they were big paid so much less?

        Especially since after working at Google for even a year you could easily switch to some other company with that on your resume.

        Also it's possible at any time to goto your manager sand talk to them about how you feel you are underpaid compared to peers, and that yo

    • Re:Seems like a loss (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Luke has no name ( 1423139 ) <fox@cyb[ ]oxfire.com ['erf' in gap]> on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:57AM (#61510194)

      >Nearly all residents converted to regular employees, according to the presentation. Many alumni years later have continued to feel the "negative effect" of their starting pay on their current salary, it said.

      So, no, not some grad mad they aren't getting paid as a lead. It's people saying that their lower salary out of the gate never caught up with other people who didn't use the program for their start.

      I saw it happen at my last employer. HR almost never "catches people up" when they have a lower starting salary, even if they're doing equal or better work than other teammates.

      Is it **racist**? IMO not really, but perhaps it indirectly affects minorities because they are the ones using the program. In any case, sounds like Google is being cheap and should pay more. Something something $26,000,000,000 cash on hand, something something $1.6T market cap

      • I saw it happen at my last employer. HR almost never "catches people up" when they have a lower starting salary, even if they're doing equal or better work than other teammates.

        It's always been that way in this industry (and probably most others, I'd guess). You get the big pay increases by changing companies, not working your way up.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I'll never understand why companies don't give decent raises when people can switch companies and get a lot more. They lose all that domain knowledge and waste time looking for a new hire who then has to come up to speed. In the end they will probably end up paying market rate anyway.

          They could avoid all that just by paying what they end up paying anyway. Get ahead of it.

          • by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @01:05PM (#61510594) Journal

            Companies are made up of people. People want to look good, hit their targets, and make their bonuses, and not make waves.

            For example, departments are often allocated a fixed amount to distribute for raises.

            If you're a manager who wants to give some superstar extra who agitates about wanting more or walking, and are afraid of the consequences if you let them walk, then you'll short everybody else a tiny bit to give them extra. Over time this adds up.

            At the top level they understand that if there are pay disparities between people in the company, that people will walk, hence the pressure to keep salary a secret. They also understand that if there are pay disparities between people in the company and the market rate, that people will walk, hence giving people bullshit titles "You're a [insert domain area] engineer... look, the average market rate for insert domain area] engineers is X, we can't justify giving you Y", and bullshit industry salary average surveys to gaslight you into believing that this year-old data justifies the lack of raise that they are giving you.

            Bottom line is - the managers are betting on inertia. They give just enough that they hope you don't leave, and if you make more noise, then they'll give you a little more, so long as this doesn't piss the rest of your team off. But ultimately, they dance to the tune of the beancounters - unless you have some high level exec pushing for more budget for salaries, they're just going to treat people as cogs, because distributed across the organization, it's a numbers game.

            • And the best way of fighting this is to encourage people to leave. You might notice that they suddenly get a lot more accommodating about salary increases when people leave...

          • Re:Seems like a loss (Score:4, Interesting)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @01:09PM (#61510610) Journal

            Risk premium.

            When you change jobs you take enormous risk. You might find you don't like the new company so well once inside. You might not get a long with the new personalities there. You might be a hire-to-fire fall guy because some manager is trying to protect his existing people from some up or out scheme. You might be being hired to work on a risky project because existing internal people are not willing to make a possibly career limiting move. Unless you have friends inside almost all of this will be invisible to you even if you ask most of the right questions at interview time. There are outside personal risks to you as well, how will relocation work out for you economically etc. You can investigate the market etc but until you really seriously try to buy you wont know for sure.

            So unless companies are willing to take a risk themselves hiring someone with gaps in employment, or someone who may need to 'grow into the role' they have pay extra to take on all those risks; employee collects the risk premium. While keeping people requires none of that the people staying dont want that risk; employer keeps the premium.

             

          • I've seen that... ...I've also worked at a company that, once, just out of the blue, said, "We are giving all of our programmers raises."

            "We did some market research, and we discovered that we're paying our programmers 15% below their market value. We think they are as good as anyone on the market -- in fact, we think we have great talent, and we struggle to find more."

            "So, raises for all the programmers."

            Well, I was grateful. (I left not because I was unhappy with the company, I left for totally unrelate

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I've never worked at Google, but even in a large companies I've worked in if a manager made the case, it was fairly easy to get substantial "competitive adjustment" (or some other such term) for stars and super-stars and I did so. However the "meh" employees generally didn't get similar treatment as they could be replaced fairly easily and it was likely that the replacement would be a bit better (although, likely, would cost more in exchange).

        I'd be surprised if Google managers don't have an avenue to make

      • I think the place where race/sex might come in is if recruiters are targeting specific minorities because they know they're more likely to accept the program. Sales people go after the easy sale, and they don't care how they make their numbers so long as they don't get in trouble for it.
    • after participants said it enforced "systemic pay inequities,"

      I worked as an intern for free on summer at a software company. The experience was invaluable in improving my carrier later, and in tailoring what I studied in college.

      These Google "interns" were all being paid (the article mentions a "smaller year-end bonus"), and learning a lot of practical things as they studied under various groups in Google. What a huge loss just because a few whiners complained that interns did not earn a full salary, or that not everyone was guaranteed a job...

      Yes they are going to have a new program but it sounds smaller since it seems like it will more guarantee employment. isn't it better to give a larger number of people a learning opportunity even if not all of them get jobs at Google? Just being an intern at Google would be a pretty good thing to have on a resume.

      I don't think that's a good summary based on what I got from the article:

      Compared with other software engineers, residents received the lowest possible pay for their employment level, a smaller year-end bonus and no stock, creating a compensation deficit "in the mid tens of thousands of dollars," the presentation said.

      Nearly all residents converted to regular employees, according to the presentation. Many alumni years later have continued to feel the "negative effect" of their starting pay on their current

      • It's a interesting quandary.

        Google went the extra mile to recruit, and the recruits signed on after their internship because... well, Google.

        Gold plated benefits, stock options/RSUs, and the Google name on your resume.

        Unfortunately, they perhaps didn't feel secure enough to play the game of shopping their resume to multiple firms to secure a better offer, and then doing that on a biennial basis to boost their earnings. Over the years that would hurt them. It would hurt anyone who didn't play that game, an

        • Isn't the correct plan not to hop jobs, but to create your own start-up with hopes of being bought by Google?

  • by rcb1974 ( 654474 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:50AM (#61510162) Homepage
    Any company that pushes diversity for the sake of diversity at the expense of meritocracy will suffer against competitors. Smart competitors who aren't racist/sexist and who favor meritocracy will have a competitive advantage. The free market will sort these problems out. The way this diversity insanity is manifesting recently is so blatantly discriminatory against whites and Asian men it is ridiculous.
    • Who is Google's competitor? That's the problem.

      • by rcb1974 ( 654474 )
        I agree. This is where the Department of Justice needs to step in and break up monopolies like Google to ensure more competition, so we can all enjoy even higher quality products at lower prices.
        • "monopolies like Google"

          What does Google have a monopoly in? Search? Advertising? And how do you break either of those up?

          • While I'm not (yet) in favor of a Google break-up, it would be a lot easier than the Telephone anti-trust breakup.

            The story of "Ma Bell" and the "baby bells" was a big deal. Breaking up google by country/region or audience/market sector wouldn't be nearly as hard.

            History lesson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            • When they broke up the phone companies, there were no alternatives to communicate via phone. If they decided to "cut you off", you could potentially be unable to call the police, an ambulance, or even do business.

              No one has to have Google. Even if they blocked your IP from search, gmail, maps, ads, cloud (GCP), or chat; there are dozens of similar services or options available for FREE to ANYONE with access to the internet.

              If someone needs to get broken up or regulated more, I'd like to see cable companies

        • Or investigate these 'diversity' initiatives. There was a hard fight to combat racial and gender discrimination in the workplace, yet corporate America is very blatantly favouring certain identity groups.

          Correcting a known broken process that favoured one group is fine. Show the evidence, and not some vague mention of unconscious bias, then you're fully justified in correcting it. Otherwise what it looks like is corporate America in a frenzy to discriminate by hiring whatever the trendy identity group of th

    • Any company that pushes diversity for the sake of diversity at the expense of meritocracy will suffer against competitors. Smart competitors who aren't racist/sexist and who favor meritocracy will have a competitive advantage. The free market will sort these problems out. The way this diversity insanity is manifesting recently is so blatantly discriminatory against whites and Asian men it is ridiculous.

      It depends how you define value. I've seen an all male teams develop some pretty toxic internal cultures, add a couple of women and a lot of that stuff gets tamped down. Group think is also a little easier to pull off when you're all from the same culture and poor decision making has ridiculously high costs. Not to mention the benefits of having people from a particular background when having to deal with customers from the same background.

    • Any company that pushes diversity for the sake of diversity at the expense of meritocracy will suffer against competitors.

      This is very true. It is also true that many places and people believe they operate a meritocracy, when they aren't in reality.

      Besides, that's not what the story is about, but that these interns were paid subpar salaries.

      Whether that's just what I call "incidental discrimination" (just how things get structured that cause some people to get lesser salaries according to criteria other than performance), that remains to be seen.

      And I make that distinction because it is fundamentally different from nake

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Mr. Pichai, et al., some free advice: I'm just a lowly cog--and not even at Goggle--so I don't expect you to even hear this, but....

    These people (the professional gripers) have got a taste of power and, like most human who do, it's going to their heads. IOW, you can't win with them by appeasing them!

  • An easy fix: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jm007 ( 746228 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:55AM (#61510192)

    An easy fix: stop looking at anything other than merit

    if folks are looking at race/gender/quotas/etc in any way, then that's the part that needs fixing

    adding yet another flavor of non-meritorious qualifications only serves to make things worse

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Yes absolutely, race/gender/quota should not have any influence on hiring whatsoever.

      And in many cases it never did, companies want the best employees for the lowest price. They don't care about the gender or ethnicity or the employee, they want the most value for their business at the lowest cost.

      The fact that many fields have little diversity has absolutely nothing to do with discrimination and absolutely nothing to do with corporate hiring policies. It has everything to do with the availability of qualif

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        Yes absolutely, race/gender/quota should not have any influence on hiring whatsoever.

        Correct. It's called blind hiring [fastcompany.com]. In short, you strip out most identifiable characteristics such as name, any organizations they might belong to and so on.

        And in many cases it never did,

        BS. Study after study has shown that people who do not have "white" names must send out more resumes than others. In several studies, the exact same resume was sent out, but with different names. Those with non-white name
    • Re:An easy fix: (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @11:22AM (#61510262) Journal

      An easy fix: stop looking at anything other than merit

      How do you measure merit? Performance evaluations completed by a human? Those are subjective.

      • [sigh] This isn't that hard.

        What are the job objectives for a given position? Make measurable goals for that job. Done.

        Looking at it backwards, at what point is someone doing so little productive work should they be fired? That's clearly an objective line. Now measure that, and work backward toward lines that "good" and "excellent".

        If you can't measure what a given job is doing, maybe it's not providing value to the company...

      • The lighter the skin, the more likely they went to better, more expensive, schools and thus got better jobs earlier. Easy-peasy.

      • How do you measure merit?

        I look at the number of bugs outstanding in the bug tracker, but there are lots of ways to measure merit. Another way is to look at number of years worked, or whether they have a CS degree. These are imperfect metrics, but someone who has worked 10 years with a CS degree is going to be a better programmer than someone without a degree and 0 years of experience, with a high probability.

        Ultimately companies that are able to measure merit better are going to have an advantage over other companies.

    • stop looking at anything but merit

      What is your merit metric for entry-level positions? Grades are inflated, interviews are notoriously unreliable and most "merit" badges that one accumulates before the age of 21 are just evidence that your folks are monied. Some students have had the opportunity to have an internship, and that counts for something, but poor folks gotta get paid. So if someone hasn't done an internship, what "merit" are you talking about? It doesn't exist at entry level.

      • by RevDisk ( 740008 )
        I've hired folks for entry level positions.

        I ask about hobby projects, open source stuff, home labs, schooling, etc. It's admittedly more to gauge aptitude than accomplishment. If someone tells me they scrounged up a home lab from ebay or tossed out computers, it counts as merit in my book. A degree or other education is another type of merit. Making a web site or app. Non-IT work experience can be informative. Except for the degree, none of them require money. And for an entry position, I absolutely wou
  • by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:59AM (#61510202)
    Companies want diversity for reasons you can agree or disagree with. The problem in software is that there simply aren't enough good engineers. We'll gladly hire any afro-latinX-queer-transbian employee if they can pass a coding test. Want evidence? We hire people who can't speak or understand English worth a shit and don't shower. Seriously, it's a huge fucking issue that we have people who refuse to shower and smell so fucking bad that you can smell it 15 minutes AFTER they leave the room. Most software engineers clearly didn't get the job from their charm.

    So I get a little annoyed with diversity pledges. Qualified engineers of any ethnicity or sexuality don't go unemployed. Just be good at your job and people will hire you. We care more about shipping on time than having coworkers of whatever group we consciously or subconsciously favor. So you want diversity? Great...train diverse people. My company does that. Google does that. I fully support that. Want more women, LGBTQ, and underrepresented minorities?...find them, train them to be GOOD engineers and none of us care.

    I am confused by the details of this story, but think the general idea is great. Train the workforce you want. It's shitty to deny a qualified non-diverse person a job....and since there's a shortage, that doesn't really happen...but yeah, every team is pretty much dominated by asian and white men, mostly Jewish or somewhere on the autism spectrum. That's just the realities of who can do the job and who applied. Right now, there are plenty of engineering jobs to go around, so yeah...I'd LOVE to mentor whatever diverse candidate you can throw at me, just make sure they are qualified for the job!

    I like diversity. I don't mind being inconvenienced to achieve it, but more than anything, I care about doing a good job and going home on time.

    I wish more companies would stop talking the talk about valuing diversity, breaking their arm patting themselves on the back, and commit some time, money, and resources to solving the problem. Train whatever underrepresented group to compete effectively with the rest of us. We will all thank you because then we can ship on time and go home and enjoy our life once the work is done.
    • by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      Absolutely! The thing is, I don't *care* if company X or Y "desires diversity" for whatever reason. It's irrelevant. I desire a multi-million dollar paycheck, but guess what? Despite my reasons, it won't happen!

      The situation boils down to; company needs labor/talent to perform certain tasks. Either you hire the most qualified people you can find for those tasks, or you're being less efficient with your spending than you could/should be.

    • by Rinikusu ( 28164 )

      Speaking as a POC:

      There's a lot of things going on here. Like, we like to give lip service to "merit" and ability, but we gladly throw that under the bus for our friends/colleagues we like. And there's always that undercurrent of distrust that most of us (you) seem to ignore. I'm Asian, but not one of those "dirty brown" South Asians, but a docile, clean, "could be white if it weren't for his chinky eyes" East Asian (literally heard that from a co-worker). I mean, I've got a mohawk, ride a motorcycle, play

      • I am not sure if your comment is directly about mine, but while I am American, I'm not white, dude! I got lots of white friends who I thought I earned their trust and certainly they've told me some strange and personal things, but the white guy whining about diversity is rare where I live. Those sort of idiots generally get fired for being shitty at their job. If you're any good as a software engineer, you have too much on your mind to whine about people whose kitchens smell differently than yours.

        Th
  • So basically starting as an intern can negatively affect one's future pay. Unique to Google.

    • Re:Precedent. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MrLogic17 ( 233498 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @11:58AM (#61510386) Journal

      Or more precisely: starting as an intern at Google, and staying at Google for years, results in lower than market pay.

      I'd wager that those that leverage Google as a resume line item- and hop jobs every few years- end up with an above average salary.

      Job loyalty has a negative coloration with good pay.

  • Concerns about being offered a job made the engineering residency feel "probationary"

    Isn't that kind of what a residency is supposed to be? It's continued training with the possibility (not guarantee) of a job. Now, if the critics see minorities being hired through this residency program while white and Asian graduates go straight into employment with full benefits, then they have a point. But that's not what I'm reading in TFA.

    Many alumni years later have continued to feel the "negative effect" of their starting pay on their current salary, it said. Google said it worked to eliminate long-term disparities when hiring residents permanently.

    So is there a pay disparity, or is it just a "feeling"?

    It's not clear from the article if the program got shut down for valid criticism, or for any criticism. In matters of diversity, companies have become very wary of criticism, and will cave to any complaint regardsless of merit or lack of it.

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      Another question is whether they have 'equalized' their new hires, but not their 'professional' hires.

      I have seen places that when they need specific skills, they hire an experienced professional, and tend not to be very diverse. They tend to be people who know people and tend to be highly paid, particularly in the executive circles, where people hire friends rather than particularly qualified individuals.

      Meanwhile, they feel better about themselves by being diverse in the category of 'sure, hire random int

    • The article reads like "We gave these people an internship where we could accurately evaluate their abilities and when it came time to hire the ones who weren't headhunted for better jobs, the optics of paying them what they are worth were very bad. So we took it upon ourselves to shut the program down rather than invoke some kind of shitstorm on Twitter.". If you have "Internship at Google" on your resume then that's a golden ticket into the second interview. You have to be a complete screwup to NOT be abl

    • >Isn't that kind of what a residency is supposed to be?

      For big corporations (I'm in one and we take on interns) it serves as 'first dibs' on a batch of university students. Get 'em in, keep the good ones. They have relationships with the professors at universities to create an annual stream of pre-grads for internships. The profs do a job of identifying appropriate candidates.

      The single most effective way to reach more 'diverse' students without compromising on merit was to expand to include different un

      • by tippen ( 704534 )

        The single most effective way to reach more 'diverse' students without compromising on merit was to expand to include different universities that were previously ignored.

        ^ This. So many companies get hung up on only hiring from Stanford, Berkley, MIT, etc. Plenty of talented developers outside of the those select few universities.

    • by avandesande ( 143899 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @12:16PM (#61510464) Journal
      Actually google did a study and found that they were underpaying men

      https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05... [npr.org]
  • "Critics have long argued that Google and its tech industry peers favor white, Asian and male workers in hiring, promotions and pay" - Well, maybe that's because the vast majority of CS and Engineering grads are white males and asian. That is the pool of candidates they have to choose from. Does it mean that women or minorities cannot be good engineers? Of course not. It simply means that many of them do not choose it as a profession. There is no barrier to entry.

    "Companies have grown more attuned to concer

    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      "Critics have long argued that Google and its tech industry peers favor white, Asian and male workers in hiring, promotions and pay" - Well, maybe that's because the vast majority of CS and Engineering grads are white males and asian. That is the pool of candidates they have to choose from. Does it mean that women or minorities cannot be good engineers? Of course not. It simply means that many of them do not choose it as a profession. There is no barrier to entry.

      I wouldn't say that there's *no* barrier to entry. There's a pretty high barrier to entry. Only people who think well in certain ways can be good programmers. Maybe a low double-digit percentage of people have the ability to reason about logic flow at the level required. But there's no barrier that's specific to any given racial or gender group.

      There is a barrier to being employed at larger companies, though. Larger companies tend to mostly hire from big schools, and many minorities are less likely to

      • "But there's no barrier that's specific to any given racial or gender group." - I should have been more specific but I think we're on the same page here. Thanks for clarifying.

        "For women, I think it's more a social thing. Women seem to gravitate away from math and science in high school, presumably because of social pressure, and as a result, most don't really consider getting a CS degree in college. Introducing CS into the curriculum at a much younger age could break that cycle." - Yes perhaps. But I would

        • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          "For women, I think it's more a social thing. Women seem to gravitate away from math and science in high school, presumably because of social pressure, and as a result, most don't really consider getting a CS degree in college. Introducing CS into the curriculum at a much younger age could break that cycle." - Yes perhaps. But I would argue that some of it is due to famliy and career choices.

          I'm sure there are a lot of factors, but until you get past the point where the thought never crosses their mind, where most women aren't even exposed to CS until it's too late to learn it easily (CS is learned most easily if you start in first or second grade), we'll never know. :-)

          "The SAT and ACT are actually poor predictors of academic success [uchicago.edu]. The only thing they really demonstrate is how well you take tests." - I notice you quote the U of Chicago study and I believe they are moving away from standardized testing so there might be some bias in that study.

          FWIW, a similar study in California [edpolicyinca.org] had similar results. My impression is that disdain for standardized testing is pretty much the general consensus among educators, rather than an outlier. :-)

          Regardless, taking tests is a large part of any college curriculum and mastering that is key to success. Not just in college, but post college many professions require certifications etc and those also require the taking of tests.

          I'm open to hearing about an alternate predictor but so far the best one is success in taking tests.

          Taking tests is very different fro

  • How do Google decide who is too "Asian" to be recruited ?

    What if they have too many Indians, does that mean Thai people are also excluded ?

    Do they do it on looks, place of birth, skin color, what ?

    Even more seriously:
        How close to Nazis do the misguided SJWs have to become before normal, decent peole put a stop to this hateful discrimination ?

    • Normal decent people in Germany were not able to stop Nazism, nor normal decent people in China the Cultural Revolution, which is actually a better comparison to the current situation. Only in the movies do the good guys always win. It's a miracle that the Allies even won WWII, and even then the "normal, decent people" in the US and elsewhere wanted nothing to do with the Jews who were trying to avoid being exterminated.

      • Yes, but this is occuring in democracies.
        Stopping it just needs normal, decent people to vote for the normal, decent centre and against the loonies of the woke hard left ( and against the hard right ).

  • by drwho ( 4190 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @02:29PM (#61510822) Homepage Journal

    Honesty, Reliability, Talent - how about we just rely on those? Nah, it wouldn't fit in with the modern day.

  • Initial plan: "Lets have a group to give underrepresented backgrounds more representation!"

    Initial executive reaction to plan: "Let's give these people less pay"

    Reaction to plan: "Less pay leads to worse career trajectory!"

    Reaction to reaction by executives "Let's cut this plan"

  • Google went out of its way to essentially get underrepresented interns but the large amount of interns from underrep groups tipped the scale of pay down for those gorups. The result is that those people now dont get jobs. This is the snake eating it self.
  • Google has fixed the problem of low pay by replacing it with no pay.

The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8. -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?]

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