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HR Chief: Google Sexual, Racial Diversity "Not Where We Want to Be"
theodp (442580) writes "In 2007, Congress asked Google, "How many [Google employees] are African-American?" "I don't actually have that data at my fingertips," replied Google HR Chief Laszlo Bock. Seven years later, Google finally disclosed diversity data for the first time ever, revealing that 17% of its tech workforce is female, and only 1% is Black. "Put simply," wrote Google's Bock, "Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity." To put things in perspective, it looks like the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers — commemorated in last year's Google Doodle of Jackie Robinson — put up better Black diversity numbers than Google was able to muster 67 years later. Things could have been worse, but the EEOC doesn't ask for and Google chose not to disclose anything about the age makeup of its workforce, aside from a mention of the existence of Greyglers, a group "for Googlers 'of a certain age.'""
What happened to hiring the best person for the job?
The whole "there aren't enough females in the tech industry" seems like a manufactured issue to me. What exactly is the problem? How is it a problem? Etc.
Gotta love when 30% of the non-white asians don't count whatsoever into the diversity formula for these nitwits. Does anyone know what the correct mix should be btw?
We’re not where we want to be when it comes to diversity. And it is hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts.
All of our efforts, including going public with these numbers, are designed to help us recruit and develop the world’s most talented and diverse people.
So.. where does Google really want to be? Do they have a defined quota? How soon will such affirmative action be used against them by white males and asian males?
I'd go into a long tirade on the subject so I'll sum it up that you either understand the argument or you're just wanting a Utopia at the cost of someone else who is the right choice for that company.
It's not just Google,now, is it? Silicon Valley is a strange place, as is much of the programming "computer science" community. It's as uniform as the top of the financial industry. There's this pretense that it's one big meritocracy and, as with all lies, there's a kernel of truth to that. Smart people come up with a new idea and are able to bring in other smart people to implement it. That's the end of the meritocracy story. Then comes the larger part of the cycle. Not-very-smart people -- but people who have a lot of unjustified self-confidence and excellent salesmens' smiles -- are brought in to run things and market the "dog food" and do "strategic planning." For a few years -- it used to be a decade but it's probably a shorter time frame now -- their association with the great name their company built when it was young hides the fact that, mostly, these newcomers are spectacularly incompetent. Then, the company, founded by smart people but running on reputation, eventually disappears.
The very question is racist. Why does it matter how many of a certain color there are? If I get hired for a job, I want it to be because I was the right fit for the job, not because my skin was the appropriate color to meet some quota.
...culture does.
If the wrong skin colors are coming into Google, look towards the *cultures* of the people who don't make it, rather than the skin color. Backwards urban cultures (where sadly most self-identified blacks and latinos live), are anti-intellectual and actively discourage those who try to make it out through education by shaming them as not being "real".
So, the question is, should Google be in charge of destroying thug gansgsta culture, and forcing urban youth to speak proper english, work hard in school, treat women with respect, and avoid violent destructive behavior?
As for men/women, they've got different brains, so you'll get different outcomes. There is no shame in being a man with less empathy than a woman, and no shame in being a woman with more empathy than a man.
80% of NBA players are black, 70% of NFL players are black. Is anyone asking them for more "diversity"? Yeah I thought not.
And 100% of the top sports leagues are male. Where's the outrage over this lack of sexual diversity?
From the Washington Post's Blog section: Eugene Volokh, On google's employee demographics
... non-Hispanic whites are 61 percent of the Google work force, slightly below the national average. (That average, according to 2006-10 numbers, is 67 percent.) Google is thus less white than the typical American company. White men are probably slightly over-represented; assuming that the 30 percent number it gives for women Google employees worldwide carries over to the U.S. (the article gives no separate number for U.S. women Google employees), white men are 42 percent of the Google work force, and 35 percent of the U.S. work force — not a vast disparity. ...Google can only accomplish that by firing well over three-quarters of its Asian employees, and replacing them with blacks and Hispanics (and a few whites, to bring white numbers up from 61 percent to 67 percent).
Indeed, if the goal is “reflecting the demographics of the country” as to race...
Also - what percentage of Google's workforce are of Indian descent? What percentage of applicants have been Indian? Here in the US, people of Indian descent would certainly be considered members of an ethnic minority, a large number them (even a disproportionate number, perhaps?) being professionals in the IT field. I suspect that Google's workforce is representative of the qualified candidate pool from which they can hire.
Interesting. How does Google's diversity data compare with other tech companies, particularly ones that offer products and services that tout utilizing open source software as benefit? Are they any better that tech companies that mostly deal in proprietary goods and services?
Please, just one day free of google. Please. They're in my browser, phone
, email and the internet is increasingly just an extension of google, they're constantly in the news...please, make them just go away...kim kardashian of the IT world.
Google has sexist/racist hiring policies....that's the cause of this TFA
now...I'm not supporting the notion of "quotas" or forcing Google to hire unqualified workers...I"M AGAINST THAT
I favor **affirmative action**
Affirmative action in the context of a large corporation means *acknowledging society's inherent inequality* and taking steps to offer ****equal opportunity****
how does a company like Google take "affirmative action"?
let's take the Pittsburgh Steeler's super bowl winning head coach Mike Tomlin's hiring process
which was so successful that it lead to the Rooney Rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
NO QUOTAS...NO FORCED HIRING
all the rule does is require the company to let minority applicants get their foot in the door
without affirmative action, Tomlin would have never got his interview...they did it b/c they wanted to be fair...they got a super bowl out of it
**THIS IS THE SOLUTION TO SILICON VALLEY'S SEXISM/RACISM PROBLEM**
it's not a panacea, but it works...it gives people who are *qualified* a chance
Thank you Dave Raggett
I have to tell my friends to apply for jobs at Google. Yes, expect to be hit hard with the lawsuits if you choose "white cracker" over for the job. It's time to milk Google
Based on Google Doodles, most human technological advancement is already women and minorities-driven. Google's actual numbers are thus doubly perplexing -- why do they continue to hire almost exclusively white male engineers which Doodles clearly suggest are inferior.
Oh, of course! They are practicing affirmative action to redress past wrongs against white male engineers. Duh, n/m.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
the EEOC doesn't ask for and Google chose not to disclose anything about the age makeup of its workforce
Of course not - you didn't think they were actually serious about age discrimination, did you? Besides, everyone under 35 knows that everyone over 35 is not just obsolete, but senile. Except for top management of course ... no, them too, but it's acceptable if you're one of the anointed class.
It isn't Google's job to feel guilty for the lack of qualified black tech workers. Universities these days are falling down over themselves trying to be inclusive, promote diversity, etc.; promising black students in technical fields are highly sought after... yet there are almost none of them. I'm in computational physics, not in computer engineering, so it's a slightly different field. However, the university I'm at now is extremely diversity-promoting -- and located in a city that is ~50% black... and there is one black physicist there. She's not African-American, either; she's Ethiopian (and competent as all hell, and headed for industry). At my previous university, there were folks from all around the world: a few Afrikaaners, Dutch, Russians, Germans, Brazilians, French, Chinese, Indians, Native Americans, Koreans, Mexicans, and so on... and no black folks at all. At the physics and astronomy conferences I go to, there are almost no black people. Yes, this is physics, not tech engineering, but I imagine the situation is about the same there.
For whatever reason, blacks (and especially African-Americans) are underrepresented in the tech sector. This is definitely worth some concern: it could be for innocent reasons, it could be for ones that need to be addressed (having to do with substandard schools in black areas, for instance), but whatever it is it's not Google's problem. By all means, let's make sure tech classes in black schools are up to standard, but it's not Google's job to worry about this.
Forcing Google at Al Sharpton-point to seek out and hire black folks, regardless of whether they are able to do their jobs well or not, is only going to make things worse, as people will ask "Is that guy over there able to do his job, or is he a quota hire?"
What percentage of Google's employees are Indian or Chinese? I'm guessing it's higher than the national average. But they aren't "special" important minorities so they presumably don't count.
Giving benefits or higher chance of being hired just because you're female or non-white is nothing less than discrimination against males - sexism - and discrimination against whites - racism. Realize that these problems swing both ways, and you're not helping to rid society of them by focusing on genders and races, you stupid shits.
I'm sorry to say it, but "diversity" is a mill stone around the neck of American companies. We have to hire idiots who can not read or write to satisfy the requirements of race-bating lawyers.
Give companies in one state the ability to ignore race and gender; to hire the most qualified candidate...and that state will boom.
Of course, that will never happen.
If You are white, know this...half of Your salary goes to subsidize the idiots of other races. It's not because they are genetically idiots, but because they competed up to the level they needed to, which was a very low level given affirmative action and such.
When Google says "Not Where We Want to Be" , what they are saying is that it is time to start discriminating against white males and hire other less qualified candidates because some groups are getting uppidy. We never hear similar claims of needing "more diversity" from the NBA or the National Felons League, but when we find an area where white males excel by working hard, it is time to put a stop to it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm a half hispanic Android developer in Boulder and I applied like two days ago for shits and giggles. Maybe this'll work out in my favor, albeit not necessarily for the best reasons, but I'll take whatever advantages I can get :P To be fair, I don't think they do Android development out here.
Congress to Google: Why aren't there Democratic voters in your workforce?
You do realize that Republicans control the House, right? Or does that not count because of the perpetual victimhood of the right wing?
I suggest Donald Sterling.
How about we see if there's really a problem here before we fix it with a jackhammer?
this one of the stupidest things I've ever read on slashdot
everything about this statement is bigoted nonsense
by this logic, white people are the craziest most fsked up "culture" in history...look at the 20th century;s worst...all white men
but this logic is wrong...every statement is a falsehood...
it's people who think like hsthompson who are the enemy here
Thank you Dave Raggett
My team here consists only of white males. Why? Because only white males applied for the jobs.
If a black, gay, transsexual Jewish woman applies AND displays the necessary skill set, I'll hire her. But certainly not just because she's a black, gay, transsexual Jewish woman.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We just look for qualified people? Who really cares what color/sex/orientation they are?
If you end up 'diverse', great, but if not, who cares? ( other than busybodies that operate off entitlements and the government )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Rooney Rule is not a fsking "jackhammer"
it's an *interview*
that's all...no "jackhammer"
if Google did it *voluntarily* there would be no need for legislation, would there?
let me punch you in the nose...the ask you if your broken nose is a "problem"
Thank you Dave Raggett
As a computer engineering student, after five years of the program I've had exactly three black classmates. All three described being ridiculed and physically beaten by their black peers for being 'nerdy' and being into science and math. All three had friends with similar interests that gave them up due to peer pressure.
In high school I frequently recall black and Latino students who were literally afraid to turn in homework in front of their peers. They'd wait for the hoodlum kids to leave first and turn in papers with a whispered apology to the teacher. This happened all the way from 8th grade to 12th grade. I've seen kids get beaten up after a teacher announced they got the highest score on a test (this was back in the 90s when you could still single out students for their accomplishments).
So what is the problem here? A culture that equates educational success with selling out or otherwise punishes people for excelling. It's the same culture that called Bill Cosby a sell-out because he want from a teen in the projects to a millionaire with a Ph.D, despite his life-long efforts to help his own people and encourage education and success. This is a culture associated with poor people of ANY ethnicity, including whites. Believe me I've seen enough pot-smoking tatted up white trash hitting their children to know we can do it too.
BTW my campus is one of the most diverse in California, and whites are the minority, with Latino students in the middle and the majority is Indian and Asian, mostly Chinese. So diversity and support of non-white students is definitely not an issue. We have tons of black students too, just not going into the hard sciences.
So let's not talk about "Google needs to hire N amount of black employees" and say "How do we reach out to the black community and remove the stigma on educational success". THAT is the issue.
I'm a boss. There are lots of right people. The right person is someone who can get along with all the OTHER people. Aptitude is not as important as attitude. Yours is kind of selfish and cynical. I'd hire a woman over you. She's more likely to be a team player. It's a stereotype, but....
I don't think I can stress this enough. For the vast majority of positions, there are plenty of people who can do the job I need them to do. There are no rock stars needed. We have rock stars. They cause problems and unneeded stress. I need bright motivated people who get along well. One asshole ruins motivation for everyone.
That's why we need diversity. That's why we need people with emotional intelligence. Then there's the whole "diversity of experiences helps come up with clever solutions to the problems we are trying to overcome." thing, which is really really important.
Sorry for being cynical, but they may be trying to take the eyes off an even worse number.
The major thing they left out of their diversity statistics is how many people are over the age of 40. It's pretty clear that ageism is pervasive in the tech sector - and the internet. Last time I mentioned this, there was a serious sneer response to my post saying that "old people" (i.e. people over 40) should be discriminated against, "because they have issues."
There you have it slashdot. You had better be looking over your shoulder! You aren't getting any younger!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The government may want to care about diversity because it wants to affect social change. So might cultural institutions. If Google was hiring editors for content, they would need to be aware of cultural diversities. But why would they need to do that to create better technical solutions? Does being a minority member make one a more competent engineer? Please, don't make the "all other things being equal" arguments, by the way. All things are never equal when it comes to human beings. Why wouldn't Google want to find the best technical people to solve technical problems? Let's be clear, Google is very good at doing what they do. So anyone making an argument that Google is deliberately rejects minorities is actually racist. They are making the argument that rejecting minorities is what makes someone technologically better. This is not an argument worthy of minority-rights advocates. It's an argument worthy of white supremacists. In fact, I have heard white supremacists make arguments just like that. Google finds people who are best at developing technology. The proof is in the pudding.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It is getting increasingly hard to tell when culture is being sarcastic from when it is just being incredibly stupid.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the CS program I attended, 49% students were from India, 47% were from China, 3% were from the US (mostly white males), and the remainder from elsewhere (including the one black male from the Carribean).
At the University, I was asked to serve on a faculty search committee because of a rule that a minority student had to have a say -- and since I was a minority...
I've now been working as a software developer for 15 years and interviewed many people. None have ever been black or hispanic. Most are from India and China. And two of my three caucasian co-workers (out of 8 on my team) are from Russia.
Was age diversity included? Full transparency would include the whole lot: age, sex, race, etc.
"There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and
Here's the thing. There are about three million Indian-Americans in the United States. There are about 40 million African-Americans in the US, over ten times as many as Asian Indians. Yet, you will find more Indians in Silicon Valley, in physics, in medicine then blacks. Even if it's ten times harder for black people to enter those fields, it still doesn't account for the disparity.
At some point, we have to admit, for the most part blacks just don't want to go into intellectual fields, because we don't want to do all that boring study. We don't mind working hard on things that are fun, hoops, rap, singing, but things that are tedious and unglamorous don't appeal to us. This is a problem for Americans in general, which is why our country is falling behind, but as for blacks, we got complacent and entitled long before we secured our place in this Balkanized ethnic mix we call a melting pot. We didn't do the homework, yet now we want to get skipped to the head of the class. It ain't gonna happen.
And for that, we might have the past to blame, but the responsibility for turning things around falls to ourselves, in the present. No amount of Affirmative Action, or "reparations," or other freebies will cure what ails us. Google hiring unprepared token minorities will just doom them to sub-par performance and engender further resentment on both sides. And the truly excellent black employees, the ones who got there the hard way, will get screwed because nobody will want to team up with blacks at all, lest they get stuck with the duds.
Wanna solve this problem, black parents? Throw away the basketballs and start buying pre-calc, linear algebra, biochemistry, etc. texts. Sure, when there's injustice in the world, I have no issue with calling attention to it. But that's not the solution. You can sue the driver who ran you over -- for ten thousand dollars, or a million, or ten million. That extra money might make buy you a really sweet motorized gem-encrusted wheelchair. But if want to walk again on your own two feet as good as before, you have to go to those long painful hours of physical therapy. There's no Affirmative Action shortcut for that.
Posted as anonymous because this is mildly heretical. I imagine many if not most of us (blacks) know this deep down, but we're frankly too chicken-shit to stand up to the vocal minority who are politically wedded to victimization.
Either that or the Native American nation that used to call itself Inde and now shares a name with a widely used open-source web server.
(Obvious CMTP-bait.)
They mention "sexual diversity" ... does that mean you can get preferred for a job simply by pretending to be gay? Is it even legal for them to ask candidates about that, given it's a protected status?
This is why, any more, I just mark "refuse to answer" on all of these surveys.
Was it necessary to announce you are a boss to make your point? You go straight for appeal to authority. Besides, on the Internet, everyone is a dog.
... And captain save a hoes
Gender and race are the two most commonly cited diversity factors, but what of age? Google is widely known to have an average age that is distinctly lower than most other companies, are they working to hire additional workers with greater experience?
Minorities and women must avail themselves of appropriate education, before they can expect to be hired in large numbers by tech firms. Tech firms need engineers and computer scientists in large numbers. Accounting and business majors are needed as well. Google did not have anything to do with the choices of study that young people make. You can't expect them to hire an English major to to develop software, unless they have considerable experience outside their field of study. Let's get our young girls and minorities interested in Math and Science at a young age, and have them pursue degrees in the STEM fields. All you can ask of Google and other major players is that they do their best to hire the best and brightest, and gender and etnicity play no role in hiring. If they do this they should pretty well match numbers of graduates in the field. With only 17% of women pursuing STEM degrees, it would be unreasonable to expect a company to have 50% of their employees women.
I'd estimate that roughly 17% of my computer science classes in University were female and roughly 1% were black. I understand that Google doesn't ONLY hire people who studied computer science, but I think this could be a good representative sample.
What they should be doing is comparing these diversity statistics against how diverse their labour pool is. If only 1% of the students that are hired by Google are female but Google ends up with a 50% female work force, I think there's discrimination.
But really, I think society needs to do something about removing any barriers that exist that are preventing interested minorities from entering certain fields of study.
Have you worked with women? Women are no more team players than men. I've observed women back-stab, gossip, manipulate, ostracize, and generally destroy team dynamics plenty of times (and I've seen men do it too). There are a lot of features which contribute to who would be best for a job. Gender, race, biological sex, none of it is relevant to a job in the tech world. By saying "I'd hire a woman over you" because "she's more likely to be a team player" you are either being inflammatory, or your boss needs to reevaluate your own position as a "boss".
If your company demographics are significantly different from general demographics, you are probably not hiring the best person for the job - probably, your hiring is skewed towards some demographic, for whatever reason (number of canidates, subtle unconcious or even open racism or sexism). If you want to have the best people for the job, you should have a strong interest figuring out if you have such a bias in your hiring and to eliminate it.
Further, diversity is healthy, especially in jobs that require some creativity. Many different people with many different approaches beats a bunch of people who all work roughly the same way.
I'm sure the daycare center that you manage really doesn't need rock stars. Important jobs probably do though.
There is no advantage to me being white. They hire based on skills, education, the quality of the papers you've written etc. Now, one could argue that I wouldn't have got the education that I did or many other socio-economic factors that I had little choice in and I would probably agree. Of course, if you family, your family's class, your country's politics were different, then things would be different - there is nothing new here.
Now, since there is outside pressure at google to hire more people from specific races and more females, it would actually be an advantage to be from a minority group (you would score more points for being a minority). Now minority means now that you are not white or asian because there are enough of those but some other colour of skin (or female).
If this all sounds a bit nuts it is because it is. Google and other tech companies focus on science and results and simply want workers that will get them those results.
If you are a 'google minority' then take solace that if you can code (for example) at the same level as others, you WILL get the job. Simple as that. Google is not responsible for socio-economic disparity nor the new dynamics of a global world, so stop blaming them. The hiring percentages reflect the current distribution of the best workers and has nothing to do will hiring because of someone's race etc.
BTW, in the lab I work in, I am the only white person (of 10+ others), and basically nobody cares one way or the other. It's about the work.
Sounds like a new social media product offering. Sign me up.
The "Best Person" is highly subjective.
As I have seen many many times over the decades in this business, one person's moron is another person's genius.
I have also seen highly qualified people do a shitty job because they were bored. Employers have a tendency to over hire for a job. Like demanding BSEEs /BSCS for a business programming job - you know, data in, data out, data update, etc .... - when a CIS or even a tech school grad is more than enough for the job.
Or having these ridiculous "tests" and questions for job candidates. I have seen excellent people get turned away because they failed one of those trick interview questions that are so famous on the net to see how a candidate "thinks"
The best interviews I have is when I am given a programming assignment and of course, the talking parts to see what a "fit" I'd be.
And that's the other thing too - all too often I see great candidates turned away because they don't "fit" the company culture - whatever that means. I take it it's because they're old or black or have a zit - all too subjective.
Anyone who thinks that they are cold and rational when it comes to hiring people is delusional.
We'll hire less qualified non-white candidates to bring up our fake numbers for PR purposes.
I guess that's ok? That is a specifically race-prejudiced action.
The situation is now that they have actually DONE what is the most meritorious race-blind action which is to hire based on qualifications. I guess in today's obama world, that's not good enough.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
Pfffft. Right. And the 'Women's outreach program' that the GNOME team got involved in totally improved the quality of that software. Oh wait, the entire GNOME project is in a complete fucking downward spiral because of it. Women ruin everything they touch.
I'm a boss. There are lots of right people. The right person is someone who can get along with all the OTHER people. Aptitude is not as important as attitude. Yours is kind of selfish and cynical. I'd hire a woman over you. She's more likely to be a team player. It's a stereotype, but....
but what? but it's a good stereotype, so you can act like you're "one of the good guys" without having to admit to your fundamentally prejudiced and patronizing worldview?
well played. cynically saying whatever you believe people want to hear in an attempt to keep and justify your grasp on power, LIKE A BOSS!
I'm a boss.....One asshole ruins motivation for everyone.
Hey boss, maybe you should look at yourself in the mirror.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Go f*ck yourself communist scums.
Google has such numbers, because, face it, white males are most intelligent beings on this planet.
Women are weaker at maths, computer science, programming. It just IS like that. Period. Same goes for blacks, they ara less intelligent and also lazy and have no understanding of their responsibilities. Talking from own experience.
So just shut up and stop "repairing" the world. You have already proven your repairs destroy everything they are applied to. Now you want to destroy great companies? Just F*CK OFF.
Die in hell communist scums.
Leftist idiots care.
Because they are handicapped in their brain and want to tell you how you should live. Because they would like to "celebrate diversity", even if this destroys and ruins everything in its path.
I've discovered quite an amazing amount of sexual diversity through Google. Much of which is also racially diverse.
How many Latinos do you have, Google? How many Latinas? How many Pacific Islanders? How many people over 50? How many women over 50? How many transgender men over 50?
If any of these numbers, percentagewise, are less than the percent for the ENTIRE US, j'accuse!
[citation needed]
the fact is race **is used to define cultures** internally and externally
saying "it shouldn't be" adds absolutely nothing to this discussion
the problems of racism need to be addressed *now*
our current racist problems **are** tied to culture
how?
one example of how racism in America is tied to culture: The Bible & slavery
Southern Christian preachers justified black slavery based on prophecies from the Old Testament that said the "Sons of Shem will dwell in tents and serve their kin"
Southern culture, and if you believe Republicans **all** American culture, was founded on the Bible and a strict Christian reading thereof
1,000s of pastors, many well into the 80s and a minority to this very day, preached to there flock that The Bible advocates black slavery...
fsck you...I know this isn't going to convince anyone but I've laid your argument bare for its blatant ignorance
the continued creedence that /. moderators give to race/trolls like you brings out the worst in /....and shows that our industry *really* has a problem still
Thank you Dave Raggett
>Aptitude is not as important as attitude
At the caliber of people Google hires, aptitude is just as important as attitude, if not more.
I'm a hiring manager for a Fortune 100 Tech company (my boss reports directly to WW HR VP) and have been told point-blank that all hires must pass the "if all else is nearly equal" rule. In other words, when presented with two applicants who are "nearly" equally qualified for a position, that we are to hire the one that best addresses a minority concern. Period.
So if Jack rates a 9, and Jane rates a 7 in our interview results, Jane will always be hired. Any manager hiring Jack over Jane in this scenario will not be one much longer.
A great company like Google keeps its jobs local, when they could very easily outsource the majority of their employees to India or the Philippines.
Real tech hiring issues include the increased use of hiring contract workers over full time employees with benefits; the tax evasion practices of companies like Apple; or outsourcing of tech work under the guise of "work from home".
The Google workforce is overwhelmingly Democratic, as are its founders and officers.
We should stop having scholarships for athletics. It should only be for academic achievement. That way the motivation to do good in school will be higher.
Bullshit. Fuck off. Your words are worthless and you are a terrible boss... if you are even a boss.
Emotional intelligence does not solve problems. Diversity does not do the heavy lifting. Do you know what does? People who work hard and cooperate. Touchy feely happy go lucky bullshit is not needed. If women can hack it, fine, if Mexicans can hack it, then fine. None of that shit is relevant and measuring it is should only be done when there are strong suspicions of discrimination. Even, then, "unbalanced" numbers are not a guarantee of discrimination.
Are you a gay HR manager by chance? I've got nothing against gay people so do not take it as an insult.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Pay attention to this shiny article instead of the wage manipulation in the tech industry. This is called damage control to make Google look like it doesn't do evil: "Ah, cute little Google trying to be SJW now!"
It's going to be one or the other.
Welfare runs about 18,000 a year.
Prison runs about 31,000 a year.
If you won't protect people over 45 from age discrimination (over two decades from retirement and social security) then you are going to end up supporting them on welfare or in prison.
Age discrimination has grown enormously since 2009 when SCOTUS gutted protection from age discrimination. Many companies now openly require the actual high school graduation date for positions that require advanced degrees. The ONLY reason you need that information is so that you know the age of the candidate. That should be made illegal immediately.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How many straight employees, Google? I'd bet you have much lower than the national average.
Whatcha doing to address THAT inequality?
Certainly you have to be smart to work at Apple and Google and similar companies. But they don't want you to be too smart or else you will figure out how the companies illegally colluded to keep from paying market rate for their worker drones. Or maybe you won't figure out how they did it but you will remember that they did it. In any case, they want you smart but not too smart.
Because they want me to do Python and Python fucking sucks. Perhaps it's not that women don't want to work in tech or women are blocked out by a mythical boys' club.
Perhaps women just don't like Python. I certainly don't. Fuck whitespace control structure level rule garbage and object-oriented idiocy. Write everything in C and Bash!
So... you just completely read past the part where he grew up in the culture that you claim he understands so poorly that he didn't say even a single true thing about it.
Of course he's wrong that skin color doesn't matter at all. Obviously. Yet also quite clearly skin color and socioeconomic background is correlated in the US. Certain socioeconomic backgrounds make it harder to qualify to be hired at a place like Google - e.g. if you grew up in a place where intellectual pursuits are discouraged. So far, so obvious, and that's really all he's saying, and he's saying it because he experienced it in his own upbringing. I guess you just really can't accept it when people bring facts to the table that don't agree with your worldview, which makes you the bigot.
You've also misunderstood his argument completely. It's not just that there exist blacks who grew up in the culture he talks about. The point is that the proportion of blacks who grow up in unfortunate circumstances is greater than is average for the US population (this is the point you'd need to disprove if you wanted to get anywhere). So you would expect there to be an achievement gap just from that even in the absence of racism or any other differences. That doesn't mean that the achievement gap is only because of that, of course, it means that it's a factor that matters.
They're right where they want to be actually. They're at "who cares about race and gender, hire the most qualified person and fire them if they don't do their job well enough." That's the polar opposite of racism. Hiring a few people from certain groups to look better from the outside is the most racist thing they could possibly do. If they were hiring only white males and ignoring talented black females for example, they'd be doing as well as Oracle or Blackberry. But they're not! They're doing Google-well at the moment so that means the people working there are the best people who should be working there.
Once you get enough women, they start to club up and discriminate against men too.
And there isn't a lawsuit/reeducation class to stop them.
I saw a manager filter through a half dozen male supervisors and end up with an entirely female supervisory staff in six months. She was always pissed off that they didn't communicate the same way she did. They were too direct and too black and white. She liked to give very "soft" commands. She would never give a direct order. She made a lot of "requests"- some of which later turned out to be orders while others were not.
Once she had a few female supervisors, they would go to lunch and exclude the males. At lunch, they would discuss business and project plans. Then later, she would bust the males for not knowing what was going on.
People tend to group up on some basis unless you actively discourage it. She and another female executive grouped up based on gender.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Agree with you. Women are equal in all senses of the term, and can be just as corrosive and nasty as any male. I work for a Fortune 50, and we just finally managed to get rid of a mid-level female manager who was so corrosive she managed to drive the highest turnover rate our company has seen in any division ever.
And she's being replaced with another female manager, who is probably the best manager I've ever worked under.
By insisting things be all about ratios rather than individuals, guess what? You can't get to equal treatment down that path.
> Aptitude is not as important as attitude.
Depends. If you want a good developer, for example, aptitude is pretty much everything (as long as you can additionally somehow find it within yourself to more or less obey instructions from superiors, and avoid killing your coworkers).
1. Whenever I talk about Linux/computer programming, there are a very small number of people that have been interested in the topics. Some are women, the vast majority are men. 2. Computers are expensive as a hobby. Sure they've gotten a lot cheaper, but you're still paying several grand to enjoy the hobby properly. Now I don't profess to know the US situation (Australian here), but in my experience, I had to use my computer constantly while growing up in the 1990's (I'm 28 years old) Computers when I started (1993/1994) cost $4000+ and have dropped significantly over time. Is it possible that we see less use of computers within groups within America that didn't have as much money in the 1990s? It's hard to use a computer every day if you don't have the money to buy one? I think lack of access has been the primary reason for these gender imbalances. I also think that there's been a rapid shift in the last decade. I remember about 10 years ago noone used Linux, only nerds and CS people. But in the last 5 years the use of it has grown dramatically. I think the same has been happening for women using computers. I think that in the next 10-20 years this issue will go away, purely because people can now afford and use computers on a daily basis, so anyone can get into the hobby. As a child my sister was very athletic and I was more into using and hogging the computer. I think now that computers have gotten so cheap, most people are buying computers for all their kids, so none of them gets left out (a boy can't monopolise his sister's machine if he's using his own). I think that this is what will end the gender/racial imbalances in computing.
1% is black? Where the hell did they find that many or is this including worldwide offices and the better Nonamerican Africans population?
Some cultures are better than others, period. All cultures have problems, no doubt, but thug, ghetto culture definitely has more problems than mainstream culture.
Asserting that disparate outcomes are mostly due to racism, rather than mostly due to culture, misidentifies the root cause of the problem, and actively works *against* any future progress. If your arm is broken, and you've got a hangnail at the same time, you don't focus on the hangnail as the reason why you can't lift your arm.
When you're in the ghetto, it isn't the guy in the suburbs that you never see in person that is holding you back - it's the gang of thugs that beats you up if they see you carrying a chemistry textbook, or if they hear you speak proper english. Blaming some mythical "whitey", while you're beat down by the thug culture around you, is giving a pass to the cultural violence perpetrated, and unfairly scapegoating someone who doesn't deserve it.
It's time to get past the idea that "being real" means being uneducated, criminal, illiterate, misogynistic, and violent.
You clearly do not need competent people. That's fine for most companies, you don't need them and neither do they need you. Other companies will still hire the best, even if they happen to be the straight white males you want to eliminate, and tech will continue to advance despite your useless efforts.
so by your logic, since the pastors have stopped (almost, a few churches still openly preach Biblical slavery)....since they stopped, then the racism & their influence just vanishes into thin air
the racist attitudes are the constant...racism was present before the preachers came to justify it with the Bible
if I punch you in the face repeatedly, will your pain stop when I stop punching?
Thank you Dave Raggett
To anyone doubting there is a problem, look at the comments in this post. There are a LOT of:
There's no problem
There's no women or minorities anyway!
Why don't you just hire the best person for the job?
This is just people being oversensitive.
Women aren't interested in this stuff anyway.
Etc etc etc. There are worse comments in here too. The entire tone of all these posts is a big "fuck off" sign. You wonder why there aren't many women in tech? Look around you. That's why.
The problem is VERY real, and kudos to Google for recognizing it and trying to do something about it. These kinds of efforts make the world a better place.
I've tended to notice that whenever someone does something to make the world better, a certain segment of the population will naysay and heap shit upon it, all while not lifting a finger to fix the problem themselves. Armchair Generals are a drag on the efforts of people with initiative.
Hiring must be on the basis on ability, qualification and experience. Anything other than those atributes is sexist, racist, any other "ist" that you care to mention. The moment you change your hiring critereria to inclue race, sex, creed, colour etc, is the moment you become the racist/sexist etc that you strive to eradicate
Hiring must be about merit, NOT about political correctness. If the world wants to see more non-white-males in these jobs, then the world should ensure the training, encouragement, peer pressure, and opportunities are there. Simply quoting bare statistics and bemoaning how unfair the world is does not solve anyone's problem. I am a white male electronics engineer, and I encourage everyone I find with the aptitude and inclination to follow my path regardless of sex, colour, race etc. I am only a very small part of the solution, but if we all pull together, we can become a transformative force for change,,
horsham sparky
A company shouldnt collect data about their employees race, religion, sexual condition or ideology
Your tirade can be shortened: correlation does not imply causation. While disproportionate representation is correlated with personal bias of those hiring, it does not even as much as suggest that such bias is present. Just as high correlation of left-handedness and talent does not imply that there is a left-handed conspiracy to promote their own.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Who cares if a small percentage of the IT workforce is women? I sincerely doubt that a 50/50 split of men and women are applying for these jobs. Now, if the percentage of male/female applicants WAS 50/50, then something would definitely be wrong. I'd be interested to see data on that.
For the record, I realize I may be privileged (and I cringe using that term, to be honest). I'm reading back on some comments about students getting picked on for taking an interested in science and technology, and that never happened to me. Even though I was pretty much always the only girl in my tech-related endeavours, I was never picked on for it (I was picked on for other things though, but I'm sure it would have still happened even if I liked more "traditionally female" things).
That being said, even if there wasn't a perceived stigma attached to those interests, I doubt the numbers would be much higher.
1) How many African Americans apply every year?
2) How many women apply every year?
3) How well do either female or African Americans interview?
4) Can you demonstrate given this information that your ratio of females to males and Caucasians to African Americans makes sense?
That is a simple way to judge if the work place is being restrictive or fair, you can't hire more women or diversity if they don't apply and if they don't interview well.
I support equal opportunity employers. That being said, I belive that we sould not hire someone for PR reasons. You should not discriminate someone because they are black, but you shouldn't hire them for that reason alone either. If a white male, and an African-american female apply for a job, and the white male is hired because he is better qualified, that is not racist or sexist, it is just selecting the better candidate for the job. Now this should also work the other way around as well. We should not be hiring based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or disabilities. We should hire based on qualifications (as well as a few other factors).
Classify Indians as black.
Meritocracy is blind to diversity. Meritocracy should be the one standard, and diversity or lack of diversity should be irrelevant, unless it due to discrimination against individuals who have merit.
Google has a lawsuit against it for price-fixing of its labour force along with other tech companies. Now that it is harder for Google to exploit its workers, suddenly Google starts talking about "diversity" What hypocrisy.
>One asshole ruins motivation for everyone.
Is the motivation high around you ?
https://twitter.com/LynnMagic/status/458840510673612800
"Hi excuse me if you are a white cis dude concerned about increasing diversity, I think you should quit your job as a public service, thanks."
The reason is that most women choose children and kitchen work over I.T., :-)
and most blacks choose Basketball over I.T. Look at *those* statistics.
I guarantee you I am right, like it or not. There, I said it.
I also bet the 17% women force at Google are for the most part secretarial
or whatever is Politically Correct to call those workers nowadays.
I'd hire a woman over you. She's more likely to be a team player.
You have clearly never actually worked with a woman.
how do you know "the time for it (is) LONG past?"
by what criteria do you make that decision?
explain in detail
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'd hire a woman over you. She's more likely to be a team player. It's a stereotype, but....
Funny. At work one of the key participants on my project is a woman and she does a really good job of antagonizing people. I'm constantly calling her to find compromises so that we don't tick off potential customers. She's very capable, but she tends to put the success of her immediate area ahead of the needs of the company.
It gets to the point where my manager sometimes plans meetings to exclude her so that we can deal with sensitive issues and then bring everybody together once we're moving in the right direction.
If that outrages you, does it help if I mention that my manager is a woman?
I work in a fairly corporate-y IT department, which has a pretty decent percentage of women in it (we don't really write software). In my experience you find all sorts of personalities in all genders/races/etc. About the only stereotype that might fit is that non-Caucasians are somewhat more likely to not speak English as well, but that is painting with broad strokes (we have a fair number of Asian immigrants at my company - all certainly speak English fairly well, but when you read a technical document you can spot anybody with less than 20 years immersion pretty easily).
Why do black people need to make up a certain % of the Google workforce? I'm sure there's lots of Asian and Indian and Latin and European workers, so why single out a low % of black people as a disgusting number? Are there 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' colors when it comes to ensuring a diverse workforce? Do you need one black guy for every 3 Asians? Is there an equation?
Then don't use Google.
I'm a boss. There are lots of right people. The right person is someone who can get along with all the OTHER people. Aptitude is not as important as attitude. Yours is kind of selfish and cynical. I'd hire a woman over you. She's more likely to be a team player. It's a stereotype, but....
This might explain why so many products and services today cost too much and fail to deliver. Attitude without aptitude is worthless unless your goal is to throw a sterile party for the perpetually offended. People who are 'team players' are far less likely to come up with unique ideas about anything. They're too busy spending their cycles on social conformance.
I don't think I can stress this enough. For the vast majority of positions, there are plenty of people who can do the job I need them to do. There are no rock stars needed. We have rock stars. They cause problems and unneeded stress. I need bright motivated people who get along well. One asshole ruins motivation for everyone.
or maybe you're causing your 'rock stars' unneeded stress by surrounding them with intellectually mediocre but nice people. These situations are quite common, usually with the 'rock star' doing 90% of the workload while the 'nice' people spend most of the day talking instead of working. Of course, when it's time to take credit, these 'nice' people line up, and being photogenic and 'nice', they fool idiot bosses like you into thinking they did the work. Eventually, you fire the 'negative nancy' and then wonder why suddenly you're behind schedule. You beg the guy to come back, and he agrees, for 2.5x the pay as a consultant. It's managers like you who should be fired.
That's why we need diversity. That's why we need people with emotional intelligence. Then there's the whole "diversity of experiences helps come up with clever solutions to the problems we are trying to overcome." thing, which is really really important.
The definition of 'diversity' used by these PC professional victims only works one way. They have no problem with all female run organizations, just all male run organizations. 'emotional intelligence' is newspeak for feelings-before-logic. That's hardly a talent worth seeking. Rooms full of 'emotionally intelligent' people spend most of their O2 talking instead of working. The most insufferable kind are the faux intellectual types who sophistize about everything, telling the 'rock star' how to do his job when they know almost nothing.
I'm a boss. There are lots of right people.
This is only true, if what you're doing isn't very demanding.
Where is Jesse "Shakedown" Jackson when we need him?
I have. If you think there's aren't on average personality differences between men and women, you're deluding yourself. What you conclude from that is up to you, but don't pretend it's non-existent.
The best way to go about hiring is to find the best people you can for whatever salary you're offering, based solely on merit. Do so by ensuring all interviewers have undergone training on non-discrimination - they should know what questions they can and cannot ask. When interviewers discuss a candidate, they cross check one another's opinion to help minimize subjective bias. The evaluation should never involve the candidate's gender and race, among other things.
After that it shouldn't matter what the composition of your workforce is.
Its not a problem.
Men and women are different. Holy crap!
No one said there are not personality differences. The assertion was that women are neither "on average" better team players, nor better employees in general, in the context of tech jobs. Pointing out there are "personality differences on average" does not counter the argument.
And what percentage of qualified applications were black or female?
If they never apply, they can never get the jobs... That's nothing to do with "diversity" or "racism", indeed most people who fling around accusations of racism in the industry conveniently ignore that theres a lot of asians working in the field.. The reason for this? They actually apply for the jobs and are qualified to do them.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The NBA is dominated by blacks. How come there isn't a problem there? Shouldn't the NBA have more diversity?
You see how stupid this thing sounds, doesn' it? People are drawn to whatever they are good at or like to do. Let the white males be programmers and the black males be athletes or whatever they like. If the blacks want to be scientists, teachers or anything else, let them be. It's not really a problem...
IT'S TIME TO RISE UP.
Time to stop this madness plot against white people and their civilisation they built.
People are waking up, right wing is winning everywhere. Time to hang leftists because it is all they deserve.
Time to cooperate freely with others, bot being made to by some communist idiots.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
- Edmund Burke
What happens now is evil and good people do not want to do anything about it.
Time to change it.
And yes, I'm talking to YOU.
That's why we need diversity. That's why we need people with emotional intelligence. Then there's the whole "diversity of experiences helps come up with clever solutions to the problems we are trying to overcome." thing, which is really really important.
That makes for a nice sitcom plot, but the reality most of the time it's just a job, and you want someone who will fit in with the existing team. If that fit is a different age/colour/sex than the others than so be it, but there's no magic formula that says to get the best results the team must comprise exactly one of each type of human on the planet.
in the name of 'diversity' ??
Hey, then lets do this affirmative action all around - 86% non blacks in NBA and NFL and that racist NAACP needs some diversity too.
Anyone who wants to do such things can go start their own companies (with their own money because most investors arent this stupid)
Lets appropriate 90% of the personal money of these people who propose/support such things to go to a special tech education fund for inner city youth to overcome their dole-government-handout-built culture and then FORCE them to put in all the effort required to achieve what private-sector-oriented cultures in America have done.
This likely will have to go on for an entire generation as it IS rather hard to teach programming and hi-tech work to functional illeterates propagated by government run schools too busy being 'diverse'.
I believe all humans are equally valuable and respectable regardless of race and sex. I do not, however, believe that humans are all created equal in terms of predisposition of physical skills and intelligence.
Differences in physical skills between race and gender is not much of a taboo. It is generally accepted that men are stronger than women, and in sports we don't let men compete with women because that would be unfair and pointless. The 100m sprint is dominated by blacks. Should we think of women as less than men because of this? Or whites to be inferior to blacks? Obviously not.
Differences in "intelligence" between race and gender is a huge taboo. It is not accepted that men are generally predisposed to be more able to abstract and plan ahead than women, and that whites and asians are predisposed to have better abilities to abstract and plan ahead than blacks. Perhaps the difference may be caused by poverty, less opportunity, cultural differences or racism. Or perhaps its the other way around: less ability to plan and abstract causes poverty and cultural differences.
This would be a racist and highly controversial, politically incorrect position to take. In my view, this is exactly where the problem starts. Apparently, intelligence is the one measure by which we must judge a human being. It seems that against all evidence we want to continue to pretend we are predisposed to be all equally smart, implying that people that would be predisposed to be less smart are somehow inferior. This is infuriating and obviously not the case. Intelligence is an arbitrary measure just as physical skills or beauty is. There are many traits to a human being, and it would be better if we'd accept that there are differences in terms of predisposition between gender and race. It would mean conceding that some races are predisposed to be physically superior and others to be predisposed in terms of ability to plan ahead and abstract. Then we can accept that, yes, no surprise, we see a lot of white men in doing things that demand math-like skills such as finance, programming and research. A great many of these jobs that require abstraction and planning are the higher paying ones.
My karma ran over your dogma
perpetual victimhood
The irony. Negroes have the market cornered on this, no shares to buy.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
"...little pale in here. Ummm did someone just ride past us, in a NYC office, on a little scooter? -_- . "
Perhaps that's why Google is so successful.
Perhaps the reason "Google chose not to disclose anything about the age makeup of its workforce" is that the company, like MOST other technology companies these days, is profoundly prejudiced against older (50+ years old) workers, even those who have kept up with the latest software technologies. So it appears that Google is overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly white, and overwhelmingly young -- yes, they should be very concerned about diversity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Casteism
It is just politically correct horseshit.
Truth is white males are the most creative and second only to Chinese in intelligence. Denying it; pretending it is evil; pretending it doesn't matter does not make it so.
My guess is that Google is full of white Jewish men. Why? Because they tend to be a lot cleverer than average.
Next the US Olympic team will need to encourage diversity by hiring white runners.
The kids brought up in the politically correct era have simply been duped. There are differences in human being. Get over it.
One of the reasons that the US is becoming the laughing stock of the world and is performing so poorly is that it no longer hires the best person for the job. (I mean look at your useless president - an affirmative action hire if I have ever seen one.)
You can't tell what color a person is from a forum post, but it's safe to say that there are not going to be a lot of posts from blacks on the original News for Nerds site.
So it's safe to say that most of what we're reading here is "our" opinion, "us" Nerds being a bunch of white and asian males.
My posts are surely some of the most radical, I have reclaimed the original definition of the word "racist" and can bear the label (I'm taking it back.)
If you take back the original definition of the word "racist" (race-sm, as in an *ism pertaining to race) and apply it equally and objectively, the results are very different from the "racist" meme promulgated by the left/msm since the 1960's.
Everyone is a racist, in one form or another. Think asians are smart? Racist. Think blacks are good at sports? Racist. White girl who prefers black men? Racist. Affirmative Action? Racist. Democrats? Nothing but racism.
I love white people, and I work to protect us. We have been the target of systematic, pervasive, instiutitional, legalized racism for the period of time that I've been alive, lied about, demonized, attacked and persecuted, and we've been denied even a voice to tell the truth about it.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Once Larry and Sergey turn 40, are they getting fired?
yeah i got crazy b/c of how racist /. commenters are...
you were just pointing out one error...it doesn't change anything to my central point at all
the thing is, this is the internet...and it's slashdot which allows anon comments...so that all has to be taken into account...
*those factors included* the level of racism or blatantly ignorant ideas of race relations and culture on this thread are truly ridiculous and disappointing
what you kids don't understand is, the media of the spectrum has shifted far, far to the right...the poles have re-aligned such that two groups that usually do not overlap: geeks and ignorant white racists, have converged and been empowered by tech money...just look at Peter Theil
usually the only people who express the ideas of racism I've seen on slashdot are un-educated, downtrodden whites who are just being bullies due to their own sad life circumstances...
this is different...this is educated, rich, white people talking like rednecks...it's fsking disgusting
Thank you Dave Raggett
We need more whites/asians (and latinos, which are typically white and asian) in the NBA! I'm down with this hiring practice discrimination against the best-candidate-for-the-job, when the NBA starts blocking the best black athletes for whites and asians.
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-slashdot-account Stop visiting Slashdot.
Just wait for the income inequality political advert nonsense it will make racial diversity look trivial.
Government trolls will be all over you to fix your income inequality, education inequality, ..etc. ills.
I wonder who will be strong enough to stand up and ask what happened to anything involving demonstrated ability to do the job?
by the way no one seems to question the lack of males in biology or veterinary science. there is probably something interesting about that
BS: People in IT are not generally known for their people skills. Don't confuse diversity of experience with diversity of groups, or even if said diversity will be of use. For IT, you will be looking at IT people. If you're the boss, you know that it's a balancing act between qualifications which include people skills. Diversity of experience seldom is of concern in IT. IT workers quickly split into two main groups. Those who are programmers and want to remain programmers. The idea of moving into management either scares them, or they see it with distaste. The second group slides right onto the management track/ladder. The two groups require a quite different secondary skills set. Even their primary skills differ somewhat. However, what group they come from (Diversity) Race, religion, or life style has very little to do with these skill sets. You are concerned with their skill set, not stereotypes which are often wrong. I think we've all worked with a programmer who had zip for people skills, but were outstanding. As long as their fellow workers could tolerate them, they just stayed in their cubical and did what was asked of them. As a project manager I worked for and with women. In those positions they were the same as men. Those in management and engineering were as different from general society as men in those positions. Getting a bunch of engineers on the same page can sometimes be like herding cats. We are talking, well educated IT people, not "the man on the street". Yes they need IT skills and usually the upper percentile for programmers. They need people skills which are seldom learned in college, and have little to do with gender. If on the upward track, they need to quickly identify problem employees and not be reticent to "have a talk" with said employee, or even terminate him/her. OTOH you don't want the aggressive military drill Sargent approach for most positions. Where I worked, people would burn out. If they had a good history, the company would do all they could to salvage said employee, often returning that employee to their original attitude and position. OTOH there are companies where you follow the "party line" or found yourself being engineered out the door. It didn't matter if you were hourly or a PHD. It was a very clickish atmosphere These minority groups are poorly represented because there are few from those groups in IT.
At least we haven't been straddled with mediocrity...yet. But look at all the useless degrees they keep pumping out. Graduates cant get a job so they spend another 50 grand plus to get an advanced degree in the same useless field.
You can't just fire white males and replace them with female and minority ethnicities, and if the majority of people applying for a positions are white males you cant fix this imbalance without breaking employment laws. In a large international corporation If 5% of interview job applicants are female then around 5% of those hired should be female, if 50% of those hired are female, then that company is obviously discriminating against applicants based on gender and should be sued our fined for breaking employment laws. Knowing ethnicity and gender ratios of a companies employee base with out knowing the ratio of their applicant base is pointless. A companies goal should to get their employee base ethnicity/gender ratio to match the ratio of their applicants. If their ratios match and there is still a huge imbalance then the problem is with their hiring practices but within the education system
You have clearly never actually worked with a woman.
And you have clearly never hired one.
Women are generally better at managing perception than the average man in IT.
as long as people are not being excluded from jobs specifically because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. - what difference does it make? If someone has the skills but doesn't get hired because they are Black or Hispanic or a woman or...whatever...then I have a problem with that. Just like I have a problem with white males who are qualified not getting hired because some mysterious "quota" is not being met.
What is it with this obsession in trying to artificially level the playing field? Imposing hiring quotas comes with the implicit suggestion that you, as the hiring manager, are a racist, sexist bigot and need to be told who to hire.
When I look back to my college days (admittedly quite a while ago) I just don't remember seeing very many black or hispanic kids in my Engineering classes. Could that be because maybe they just weren't that interested in Engineering as a career option? I don't know. But it seems to me that if you have fewer minorities graduating with Engineering degrees then you are naturally going to have fewer minorities working in this field.
The real problem with trying to artificially tilt the playing field is that it truly is a zero sum game. For every minority you "include" you "exclude" a white guy. Does that really solve the problem (assuming there was a problem in the first place)? Or is it just more feel-good, group-hug stuff to make some feel as if they are "making a difference" while all it really does is create resentment where none existed before?
Your comment about Asshole Diversity made me chuckle. I can see it now "Come work at XYZ, we have the best asshole diversity in the state!"