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Google, Apple Call Workers' Race & Gender Trade Secrets
theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that Google, whose stated mission is to make the world's information universally accessible, says the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that cannot be released. So do Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, and Applied Materials. The five companies waged a successful 18-month FOIA battle with the Merc, convincing federal regulators who collect the data that its release would cause 'commercial harm' by potentially revealing the companies' business strategy to competitors. Law professor John Sims called the objections — the details of which the Dept. of Labor declined to share — 'absurd.' Many industry peers see the issue differently — Intel, Cisco, eBay, AMD, Sanmina, and Sun agreed to allow the DOL to provide the requested info. 'There's nothing to hide, in our view,' said a spokesman for Intel. Some observers note it's not the first time Google has declined to put a number on its vaunted diversity — in earlier Congressional testimony, Google's top HR exec dodged the question of how many African-American employees the company had."
the EEOC and Congress will see it differently.
Wonder what *else* Congress will ask while they've got them on the stand...
Our numbers don't look very good. After all, didn't a Google executive pretty much tell us that if we've nothing to hide we've nothing to fear?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Nothing good (from the perspective of the companies involved) could come from the release of the data. Only harm would be likely to result. If the data didn't show anything the Mercury-News could capitalize on for a story about those evil racist sexist tech firms, nothing at all would come of it; that's the best case scenario.
It's the H1Bs.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
So, let me get this straight. A media company wages an 18-month lawsuit against private companies, trying to force them to disclose private data. The media company is doing this purely out of malice, as there is no good that can come from release of this data. On what planet is this sort of thing acceptable?
Oh, and if anyone says, "Journalists are a sort of magical, pure source of good in our society, white knights protecting the people," that attitude belongs back in the Cronkite era.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ignoring the potentially messy, and unbounded, arguments over whether or not anybody should be bothering to collect these data, what sort of "trade secret" could they possibly be?
Does Google not want Microsoft to scoop them on their new blacksploitation search engine? Would knowing how many women work at Oracle be of the slightest use to a competitor?
Even if the data were valuable, they are nothing that you couldn't easily enough gather with a statistics grad and a pair of binoculars and a few days casing the relevant corporate campuses(not to mention the more exotic methods: With modern analytical chemistry, the threshold for what you can detect is pretty impressive. You could probably get an approximate gender ratio for a given building just by sampling the sewer outflow for excreted hormones. You could probably also gauge morale: If you know roughly how many people are working there, you can watch the concentrations metabolites for various drugs and get a rough aggregate sense of what, and how much, the building is on. More SSRIs and anxiolytics? Bad times. More cocaine? Ambiguous, or 80's flashback...) You can sample people for sex or color pretty quickly, and accurately enough, from a fair distance. If the data were worth more than peanuts, it'd already be available.
What is Google hiding?
Well, let's be clear: "we're going to hire the smartest people, even if they're "white" and male" is *not* racist, but will probably get them in trouble anyway.
(As Carlin notes: "Indians are very dark 'white people'. What's that all about?")
Well, the customary argument in favor of Affirmative Action -- which is what you're talking about there -- is "we need to help them along because their minority screwed them, going through primary school". Whether it applies in secondary education, it *certainly* doesn't apply in post-secondary, and I don't see that it applies on the job either.
That guy passed out on the floor of the burning house doesn't care that because you're female, you can't meet the weight-lifting requirements of the firefighter exam. He just cares whether you get him out.
Mercury News: Blacks, Latinos and women lose ground at Silicon Valley tech companies
they just don't want us to know that it's about 40%borg and 15%greys
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I'm 35. My father was actively discouraged from pursuing a career in architecture by hostile highschool teachers (he now has a PHD in architecture). Based on a lot of replies (not yours), it takes more than a math genius to understand why there are still very few African American engineers. African Americans remain a numeric minority, only one generation (at best) removed from being told by their own teachers that they are too stupid to aspire to careers like engineering.
Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that, if Google were to release statistics, those statistic would show some kind of imbalance in workforce based around ethnicity. I can see a few different possibilities for this.
Perhaps Google is racist in hiring. I doubt it.
Perhaps certain ethnic groups are inherently more capable of the kind of things needed to get a job with Google. I doubt this also.
Perhaps our society is structured in such a way that people born into certain ethnic groups are less likely to get the credentials and skills needed to get a job at Google. If this were the case, you'd likely also see disproportionate rates of unemployment, poverty, and incarceration based on ethnicity. Of course, that couldn't be the case. This is America, after all. We're a color-blind, post-racial society. Everyone is equal here.
So, that's what I can see. Since it can't be any of the three hypotheses I've suggested, it must be something else.
No, the customary argument in favor of Affirmative Action is not that minorities need a handout. It's that fully qualified members of minority groups are both actively and passively discriminated against in employment, a fact which has been proven over and over again.
And enough already with the red herring of the mythical incompetent female firefighter. Where are all the factual horror stories about the female firefighters letting people die in fires because her widdle arms can't carry more than a latte? I'm sure you think that the fact that no such stories exist is proof of a big liberal coverup.
That guy passed out on the floor of the burning house doesn't care that because you're female, you can't meet the weight-lifting requirements of the firefighter exam. He just cares whether you get him out.
Relax, the guy passed out on the floor of the burning building will be saved! All firefighters have to pass fitness and strength testing. http://www.topendsports.com/testing/forces-fire-fighters.htm
What you seem to be saying is that ALL women should be excluded from firefighting just because MOST women couldn't pass the entry exams. Most men couldn't pass the exams either.
Sure, given the natural differences between the average man and woman, men will always outnumber women in jobs needing strength.
But you shouldn't apply infomation about the average man or women to every man or women. It's unfair and discriminatory
We all knew given the naming of iPad, that they had no women in their marketing/strategic decision making (all that synergy stuff) dept.
More likely it'll prove this wasn't a joke.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Speaking of all white men in the work place, why do companies even bother hiring men anymore if they can apparently pay women less for equal work?
Our corps are A-OK with offshoring jobs so why aren't they gendershoring them as well?
It wouldn't apply on the job if we'd fixed it in elementary school, so they had all the same chances for a suburban-quality education back when suburban-quality educations were still good (but urban educations were not).
For that to be the case, though, their parents would have needed to have it applied on their jobs (so they could pay for a home in the suburbs and college for their kids), or would have needed it to be fixed when those parents were in elementary school, which means it would have needed to be fixed when their parents had jobs, or when their parents were in elemenary school. And it certainly wouldn't have been fixed then because segregation was the law back then.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Possibly because some races are over-represented in the lower economic stratas, are unable to afford tertiary educations at top-tier institutions and thus, even though they may be competitively intelligent, aren't able to make the most of it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Having walked around the Googleplex, it'd be hard to describe it as dominantly white. There are not too many African Americans, but asians are not absent by a long-shot.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That would be "caucasian".
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I am half black, half white, and don't always relate to either half. One the whole, the black side of my family is much more worldly, educated and open minded. Thats just how it worked out in this particular case. Members of my father's family have spread all over the country and lived in foreign countries. Members of my mother's family have tended to stay in the Western US. Their attitudes are about what you would expect, even if you knew nothing of their skin color.
I think that these stand-offish attitudes are another relic of physical and often legal segregation that is, again, part of living memory for many Americans. Its not as if there was mass migration for the purposes of integration once the Civil Rights movement took hold. Where members of either culture have since moved to seek a better or different life, I think the cultural chasm narrows. Where insular communities (of any race or ethnicity) persist, ignorance and distrust of outsiders persists.
I've often heard that Africans do not naturally relate to African Americans. Is this so surprising? The United States and most African nations are as different as can be. Why do we assume that blacks of vastly divergent cultures would automatically relate?
Firstly, Google never records the race of their employees unless they fill out an OPTIONAL box on the forms at hiring time. They don't actually HAVE this data to share.
Secondly, walking around the Google campus, it's definitely not just a ton of white men. There are lots of women (and darn hot ones...), and a huge amount of East and South Asians and South Americans.
Thirdly, Google is one of the most merit-based companies in existence. Any conclusions based on the race profiles would be completely misguided. Google doesn't care if you're black or white, straight or gay, male or female... there's only one thing that matters - competence.
It's not only legal, it's mandated by law, or almost. When you get a job here, somewhere on your forms (often on the application itself) there is a section called race, with a bunch of check boxes. You don't have to answer it, and often there is a check box called something like "decline to state" or something else along those lines. My kids are all mixed race, and it's rare in my experience to see any kind of mixed-race box on these forms. It will be interesting to see what they fill out when they reach that age.
The reason it's there has to do with federal reporting requirements. If, say, 10% of your applicants are black, 10% are hispanic, and 25% are female, yet the total of your black, hispanic, and female hires is something like 5% of your work force, the government might be interested in that. So might more than a few lawyers.
This has to do with a doctrine/policy called Affirmative Action, which in the simplest terms, holds that in order to prove you aren't discriminating in hiring, you'd better make sure you're hiring at least X percent minorities. I have, in the fairly distant past, worked with people who were most obviously hired solely because they were part of a protected class. Certainly, they were not hired because of either their competence or their work ethic because they had neither. One particularly stands out in my mind because he earned the nickname "deathbed" because at least twice a month (including every payday - how convenient) would call in sick, claiming that he felt like he was on his deathbed.
Other times, he just didn't show up. On many of those occasions, his wife would call and ask to talk to him and we'd have to say "Uh, sorry, he's not here."
It was quite obvious that he had never done the work he claimed he had done (mainframe operator) on his resume at his previous job. We eventually figured out from the one thing he could sort of do that he must have been a tape librarian. Later, a couple of us met someone who worked at his previous employer and who told us "Oh, that guy? Yeah, he was a tape librarian. We fired him. He's working for you guys now?! That's too bad."
In his first three months on the job, his absense rate exceeded (by far) the number of absences at which a person could be terminated, yet he didn't even get reprimanded. I assure you, those of us who worked our way up through the ranks in that company would certainly have been reprimanded, most likely fired. The PHB who hired him was obviously going to take no action, however. He was well known for making bad outside hiring decisions and never disciplining those people.
Finally, after about a year, we got a different manager, and he'd heard all about deathbed and was going to have none of his crap. Within a couple months, deathbed was fired and there was great rejoicing. And deathbed himself? He robbed a nearby liquor store a few days later and was arrested. No one was surprised.
That was in the early eighties. Things like that don't happen too much anymore, at least in my experience, although they probably do at government agencies.
There was a lawsuit that ended not long ago in which some city had held promotional exams for firefighters (for lieutenant or captain, IIRC). None of the firefighters that passed the exam was a minority, so what did the city do? They threw out the results completely. They'd made up their minds that they were going to have minorities pass the test and be promoted. Naturally, the firefighters who had passed the test and would have been eligible for promotion sued. A few months ago, they won and had their eligibility for promotion reinstated.
On the flip side, there are charter schools in the US that are 100% minority, or nearly, and are so by the choice of the students and their parents, who believe that the programs, specifically tailored to the ethnic groups and the challenges they face in often high-crime neighborhoods, give them a better chance of a good education and completing school. I wholly support them. Nobody knows better than the
I think it is much more likely that they want to just avoid a tangle with the regulatory agencies.
Google is now big enough that they will be asked "why don't you have exactly 0.03274% female black jewish mentally handicapped" employees, to reflect the population?
Hiring should be blind to race, gender, etc. - that is true equality of opportunity. The agencies don't see it that way - they play a numbers game, and it's worth a lot of effort to avoid this discussion, or at least to avoid having the discussion in public.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Possibly because some races are over-represented in the lower economic stratas, are unable to afford tertiary educations at top-tier institutions and thus, even though they may be competitively intelligent, aren't able to make the most of it.
Oh, come on. There is plenty of opportunities for intelligent minorities to finance their education in college.
Yes, I'm bitter - perhaps that's because most of the benefits listed above didn't apply to me, and I still somehow managed to accomplish my goal of doing a good enough job as an undergrad to be accepted in a top 5 grad school. Upward mobility *does exist* if you're persistent (or desperate) enough.
It's funny how few people realize that this attitude is actually a cultural trait :
it would certainly bother me in numerous ways if I was hired based on my skin color/nationality rather than my ability. Aside from the fact that it brings one's own abilities and prospects as an employee in question ("Was I hired because I'm qualified or was I hired to fill a quota?"), it's also downright insulting
This is all very protestant of you. You get what you deserve, and what you deserve is based on how much work you do, on how much value you produce for society.
Of course, most cultures see merit in other things. Even something as similar as a catholic, for example, would mostly agree, but would take offence at the implicit connection you draw between money (or value) and a person's worth, which he would consider very improper and very wrong. No, for you a person's worth is related directly to how much worth said (regardless, even, of how much work you put into producing that value, e.g. according to you a ceo who does almost nothing, resulting in a 50% rise in value is superior to one that works 14 hours a day and destroys 50% of the value of the firm, something most other Christian denominations would take offence at).
And that's just the beginning. A nazi, or a black panther, or a tamil tiger, or ... would take offence at your definition of value (like the GP). After all, value is first and foremost defined by how arian/black/"diverse" someone is. Anyone with white/black skin will obviously perform better than anyone with black/white skin. Anyone who claims differently is offensive, and should get beaten, or worse.
A communist would take offence at your implication that there is difference at all. Any difference in performance must be abolished by state decree, and the state is god, after all, doing otherwise would imply no "social justice". If you were hired for any reason other than "the party decided it", you should get fired on the spot. A person's worth is determined by how high one's position is in the communist party, and by nothing else.
A muslim would take offence at your failure to differentiate between the "master" and the "slave". Obviously depending on the job, it would be an insult to hire a muslim for it, e.g. garbage collection, or it would be an insult to hire a non-muslim for it, e.g. a police officer. Also, the job description would determine 100% the required gender of the person filling it. Women are not allowed in many jobs, and men are not allowed in others. Segregation must be enforced, in addition the superiority rules that sharia pushes, which must be respected, and muslims are superior, women inferior, and segregation a requirement from allah ("men are superior to women", quran, ch. 4, verse 34) ("muslims are superior to non-believers", repeated every 5 verses or so).
The list goes on. Just about all cultures (except that one sect of christianity and it's direct descendants) would not agree with your feelings at all. This is one of the things that makes them different.
Employers are not sexists and are not racists. They are impatient and cheap. They will pay the lowest wage that anyone will accept. They will hire the first qualified people to fit their needs.
Business doesn't care and the race or gender of its employees so long as they get the job done.
Instead of looking where women and black people AREN'T, I think it would be better to look where women and black people ARE and to see why they are happy (?) where they are. If the people who see injustice in the workplace want to make changes, it would be easier to interest these groups of people to move into other professions by making them less comfortable in the jobs they populate today.
Where I work today, there are five black people. Five out of around 150 employees. Two of those black people are women and they are literally in the paper-pushing department. Two of the black men are exceptionally intelligent people and are employed into some highly technical roles and the other is in administration. The three black men have failed to fit within their stereotype moulds and no one seems at all uncomfortable with that... in fact, I doubt anyone gives it any thought at all except to wonder why they are so different from other black people they may known to see.
I seriously doubt the black people we have working with us today were hired because of some quota-guilt system. They seem to have been hired because they are qualified for their jobs and seem to do their jobs quite well. In contrast, where we see most black people employed are in roles that are close to the government -- federal, state and local. Why is this? Could it be all the effort that goes into "fairness and equality" has managed to unbalance distribution in another unfair way?
I guess what I am saying is that perhaps we need to re-examine our current system and philosophy where it comes to "diversity." We have been forcing and enforcing policy for so long, we don't have any idea if the problem has been solved already or not -- or if the solution is actually perpetuating the problem. (By that, I mean to say, are current policies and practices in government actually "guaranteeing" jobs to 'minorities' and therefore making the idea of competing in the marketplace a less attractive option? I think so.)
What a collection of stereotypes taken out of context. Almost feels like a bad soap opera. Nazi ideology didn't grow on trees you know. It wasn't some flashy new idea that emerged over the course of few hours or even a few years. Nor did Panthers invent 'black self-defense' thing. Did communist invent struggle for worker's liberation out of whim?
Also, communists didn't believe that everybody should be the same. They put high value on labor, and if you are not a working[wo]man, you are more-or-less inferior. Also, communist society never grew outside their own history and planted into an otherwise 'healthy' society. Conversely, once a communist system is abolished, and a 'democratic' system is installed, values did not change over night. They remained more-or-less stable initially, and only gradually shifted towards the new set of values. And that's despite the fact that installing democratic systems in communist countries was never undramatic. Nazis have their background, too, and so do panthers.
Every harsh word you utter has the right address. It only sounds harsh because the one on the envelope is the wrong one.