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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?
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.
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.
It's true, but it's also just part of the way the world works. It's not just Silicon Valley. The big difference there is that Smart People have far more of a chance of first succeeding because software is "hard", and requires smart people in the first place to do anything useful.
1. By definition, most of the population is not-so-smart. (Please note, this does NOT mean smart people are better than everyone else, just smarter)
2. It takes smart people, and often times a particular kind of smart person to distinguish the smart people from the not-so-smart, but overly confident people.
3. People are heavily biased towards confident people. Confidence everyone can recognize. (as evidenced by the rise of Sara Palin, who has no business being confident, but yet was/is beloved by a certain segment of the populace).
4. There's an inverse relationship between skill and confidence. The more skillful people become, the less confident they are. (Primarly because they realize how much they really don't know).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
So given the above, it's a natural tendency as a company grows that it'll start to get filled with people who aren't quite as smart as the founders. It's really inevitable at a certain point of growth because you'll just need more people, and a larger percentage of them will be not-so-smart. They'll start promoting the confident, but less skilled people because of point 2 and 3. This will create a feedback loop (less smart promotes even less smart people), and eventually the company is filled with morons who coast on the success of others. (i.e. Microsoft).
AccountKiller
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.
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 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.
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.
Have you ever seen an upper level computer science class? The Google numbers aren't at all far off the potential employee pool and therefore it's unlikely that there is any bias on the part of Google.
This means that in order to "correct" the problem they MUST either hire lesser qualified workers or take resources away from other things in order to seek out more minority candidates.
It's people who think like you who will forever keep us from addressing these problems.
Race is not tied to culture, and criticizing a dysfunctional culture is not racist, bigoted, or an action to be shamed. Your need to tie the self-destructive culture that is held by some urban people (of all races) to a specific race, and imply that they are unable to change their culture, is what is racist.
Thug gangsta culture is not a productive and viable culture, regardless of the color of the practitioner's skin. My saying that is not racist, but your implying that thug culture is an intrinsic part of being black is racist. We get to call out dysfunctional cultures and your attempts to make everything about race and shut down the conversation only make the world an uglier place.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.