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HR Chief: Google Sexual, Racial Diversity "Not Where We Want to Be"

Posted by timothy on from the what-factors-go-into-it dept.

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.'""

14 of 593 comments (clear)

  1. Who gives a shit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What happened to hiring the best person for the job?

    The whole "there aren't enough females in the tech industry" seems like a manufactured issue to me. What exactly is the problem? How is it a problem? Etc.

    1. Re:Who gives a shit? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It doesn't matter if they're male or female, it only matters if they have an H1B visa.

    2. Re:Who gives a shit? by ebno-10db · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Now we can pretend that we are blind to race, gender, creed, or whatever, but that's more likely self-delusion than honesty.

      "Not a good culture fit" is the Jim Crow of the 21st century, and you don't have to have dark skin for it to apply these days.

    3. Re:Who gives a shit? by bondsbw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Applying general demographics to a targeted job applicant pool is very misleading anyway. We can't expect Google to hire 51% females when females only make up 13.4% of CS undergraduates.

      And what if they do? That means, naturally, that they took more than their fair share of female applicants and now there exist fewer female applicants for other companies to choose from. And then we get articles like this, except moaning that Apple now has fewer females than they should.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    4. Re:Who gives a shit? by Vellmont · · Score: 5, Insightful


        We need a lot less angry testosterone driven assholes.

      This is just another form is sexism. I'm really tired of this bullshit about the "testerone driven male". As if all aggression is male and derived from masculine hormones. Can we please stop this bullshit? Men and women are different, it's true. But is one form of being an asshole any better or worse than another? Is asshole diversity somehow "good"?

      The pendulum of sexism is drifting towards males, and there seems to be a distinct anti-male form of sexism in the world now. It's exemplified by this statement about "testosterone driven", as if men are simply slaves to hormones. It's just as sexist as women being accused of the same thing. (I think we're all familiar with the women controlled by their fluctuating hormones meme). Reversing it and putting the same thing on all men is just as sexist. So please stop this stereotype.

      --
      AccountKiller
    5. Re:Who gives a shit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How's Google supposed to do that? Pay girls to pretend to be interested in something they're not?

      My university has a very heavy female bias (owing to large nursing and psych departments) to the tune of ~65% or more. My CS101 class was pretty representative of this. More, way more than half the class were women. As expected, a bunch of the class dropped out after the first midterm, but there were noticeably more women gone than guys. CS102 was the start of the sausage fest. Maybe 35% of the class there was female, which is opposite of the school's demographics. By the third course, we were down to a handful of women. The fourth course? One girl. And she dropped out after a few months.

      So, why did this happen? It's not that the women were being forced out by some misogynistic oppression field. They, quite simply, didn't give a shit about the material. Most of them were there in the first course (or two) because the Arts program has a core requirement of two "analytical studies" which are satisfied by: calculus and a few other 'hard' math courses, philosophy 125 (formal logic), intro linguistics (another popular choice, but not easy), and *drumroll* intro CS courses. Confronted with having to take two courses from a selection of (to them) complete crap, they opt for the CS courses thinking that, hey, they know how to use a computer - how hard can CS101 be? By the time the professor has covered rudimentary hardware design and started talking about logic gates and simple circuits, most of these girls could not possibly be more bored if you locked them in an empty room for a month.

      It was after this that I stopped caring about how many women there were in CS/IT. They have the opportunity. No one's holding them back. No one's judging them. No one laughed at the one poor girl who tried to stick things out (in fact she was very pleasant the one time I talked to her - and discovered she was majoring in biology with a CS minor). They simply don't want to. Why? That's a problem for society, not Google.

  2. Asians != Diverse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Gotta love when 30% of the non-white asians don't count whatsoever into the diversity formula for these nitwits. Does anyone know what the correct mix should be btw?

  3. Equal Rights Equal Results by kiloechonovember · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Legitimized racism by Ostrich25 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Race doesn't matter... by hsthompson69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...culture does.

    If the wrong skin colors are coming into Google, look towards the *cultures* of the people who don't make it, rather than the skin color. Backwards urban cultures (where sadly most self-identified blacks and latinos live), are anti-intellectual and actively discourage those who try to make it out through education by shaming them as not being "real".

    So, the question is, should Google be in charge of destroying thug gansgsta culture, and forcing urban youth to speak proper english, work hard in school, treat women with respect, and avoid violent destructive behavior?

    As for men/women, they've got different brains, so you'll get different outcomes. There is no shame in being a man with less empathy than a woman, and no shame in being a woman with more empathy than a man.

  6. If You're Gonna Bring Up Sports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    80% of NBA players are black, 70% of NFL players are black. Is anyone asking them for more "diversity"? Yeah I thought not.

    And 100% of the top sports leagues are male. Where's the outrage over this lack of sexual diversity?

  7. Re:Equally Important Question by Entropius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In America "racial minority" means "black or Hispanic".

    There's a deficit of Chinese people in football and Jews in growing soybeans but nobody really worries about that.

  8. Re:racism matters by hsthompson69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I grew up in an anti-intellectual culture, and was persecuted for "trying to be white" when I focused on academics, proper english, and polite behavior.

    I made it out. Many others I knew didn't.

    If you can't understand how "urban" culture, with their thugs, gangstas, misogyny, violence and victimhood mentality, cause massive problems for those stuck in it, either you've never been there, or you're part of the problem.

  9. Re:racism matters by hsthompson69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The final solution will have to come from within the backwards cultures themselves. We cannot impose a solution upon them, and cannot be held responsible for their lack of a solution.

    For example, backwards islamic countries that treat women poorly will need to be reformed by internal leaders who manage to point out that flaw, and galvanize people around reforming it. Similarly, backwards urban cultures that objectify "bitches and hoes" will need to be reformed by internal leaders who manage to point out that flaw, and galvanize people around reforming it.

    So, if you don't want to be part of the problem, and you're internal to the backwards culture, stop trying to protect it from reform and growth. Become a leader, and move them away from the self-destructive parts of culture.

    Ultimately, it may be hopeless - islam has managed to stifle reformation for hundreds of years, for example. But I certainly understand that our responsibility to be honest and open about the failings of backwards cultures, is a small step in the right direction. Being dishonest, and blithely asserting that all cultures are of equal value or deserve equal respect, is poisonous and detrimental.