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Tech Workforce Diversity At Facebook Similar To Google And Yahoo
theodp (442580) writes Facebook is mostly white dudes, writes Valleywag's Sam Biddle, cutting to the chase of Facebook's inaugural disclosure of diversity figures. "We're serious about building a workplace that reflects a broad range of experience, thought, geography, age, background, gender, sexual orientation, language, culture and many other characteristics," said Facebook, which has a tech workforce that's 15% female and only 1% Black. By contrast, Wikipedia's Baseball Color Line article notes that "by the late 1950s, the percentage of blacks on Major League teams matched or exceeded that of the general population." So, is it surprising that the company whose stated mission is "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected" is having problems connecting with the general population in 2014?
Who cares? This isn't a national tragedy.
What is the percentage of black, women, etc people with the skills and training that google, facebook, etc is looking for?
Are there out of work fully qualified programmers that can't work at facebook because they are black? Maybe the ratio is the way it is simply because there are not enough minorities looking for high end development work (Unlike baseball). That doesn't make it Facebook's fault if it is truly hiring the most qualified workers.
No one besides those looking for racial inequality cares. The industry that they draw applicants from isn't a perfectly balanced mix either. This isn't even news.
That the color of your skin matters more than your abilities! Yay for ending racism!
The "general population", and the "population of qualified tech workers" are two very different things...
Stop talking about this crap.
Why force diversity? There is nothing worthwhile in diversity in and of itself, despite the dogma of 40+ years of social engineering.
I had to laugh at Google's I/O presentations yesterday; they were obviously finding every single non-white, non-male person, sexually ambiguous person they could find for the presentations. Don't get me wrong: None of the talks were bad; everyone was competent. But it was obvious that Google was going out of its way to seem inclusive. It just comes off as needy and foolish. "See, we're INCLUSIVE!". /notes from a white patriarch
... congratulations on opening it without any further ado...
Is it really skills and training? Or is it something more innate like IQ or visualization ability, especially for the technical jobs? Do we really want to find out?
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
well, one could say that the white population is being discriminated in Major League ?
out of thin air. The internal demographics of these large companies reflect the demographics of graduates in the relevant fields. The right answer is to get a more diversified college population in computer engineering and computer science, which requires getting more K-12 interest in those fields amongst underrepresented groups. And that's exactly what the big companies are doing--investing in programs that will build a more diversified pipeline of future employees.
The comparison against MLB is outrageously stupid. African-Americans were already playing baseball in high numbers in separate leagues; MLB just started poaching players from those leagues. Are you claiming that there are some all-female or all-black companies full of millions of computer engineers that Facebook could start hiring from tomorrow?
"So, is it surprising that the company ... is having problems connecting with the general population in 2014?"
Stupid loaded question. It is not having problems "connecting with the general population", unless by "connecting" you mean a completely different verb.
HR discriminates based on gender or race rather than ability. The composition of its workforce tells us nothing about this, as correlation does not equal causation. ... which is not nearly click-baitey enough, so we get tripe like this "article".
I am positive these big companies go out of their way to only hire white dudes. I bet the CEOs all have white sheets and pointy hats in their closets.
Conservative, mod down for violating
This debacle with people complaining about Silicon Valley's low female/minority hiring rate sounds to me like a case of segregation by choice - Facebook, Google, et al are not actually discriminating against females or minorities. There's just no evidence of it, because if there was, there would be federal lawsuits pending. What this sounds like is a case of segregation by choice - there aren't a whole lot of female or minority CS grads out there applying to Silicon Valley firms. Attempting to regulate segregation by choice is never a good idea, because it can't be fixed without a complete social upheaval.
To get an idea of how much trying to regulate this kind of thing can screw stuff up, all you have to do is look at Connecticut. In CT, about 20 years ago, we had a major lawsuit known as Sheff v. O'Neill. The suit concerned the fact that schools in the urban areas of Connecticut have a very high minority population - I believe that when the suit was filed, Hartford (our capitol city) had schools with a 90% minority population, and the plaintiff (an eight year old boy named Milo Sheff) couldn't get state aid to go to a school in another area where the schools weren't 90% minority populated. Hartford's schools are also well-known for being some of the lowest-performing in the state.
The state lost that lawsuit, and their solution to the problem so far has been to spend millions of dollars subsidizing magnet schools to attract white students to Hartford and bussing students long distances to try to meet the racial quotas set by the Sheff suit. They really haven't been successful, because the population demographics continue to remain the same, and there's only so much the state can do to fix that.
The same thing is true for tech companies - they can subsidize computer science education for girls and minority students all they want, but that doesn't mean that the girls and minority students are going to take that offer.
You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and SJW's.
A beige hermaphroditic dwarf with a Mohawk and a love for Polka and yodeling with vegan nudists on double shifts..
I've been reading a few comments about how poor people can't afford technology.
We're in 2014, I don't believe such arguments. You can easily get more-than-capable computers for absolutely free. It may be older Pentium 4 era computers, but you can still code, program and use the Internet with them. You don't need powerful computers for the things that Facebook, Twitter and others are doing. And we're also not talking about games or HD video here, so even a low-end DSL connection will be sufficient.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
You say that as if George W. Bush wasn't a simpleton.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
can we get over these complete bullshit stories about gender and race prejudice in high tech offices? Nothing I have seen during my 35 years of being a software developer at many different companies has suggested this is even remotely true.
Literally every company I have ever worked at has gone above and beyond all existing laws to make sure there is absolutely no racial or gender-prejudice in hiring in any way . In fact they err on the side of caution so much it actually seems to be a positive advantage at interview time to be a female, or racial minority, or disabled. if you're all 3 you could probably name your own salary (joke).
I refuse to believe that these days anyone can't get a job at a high-tech company just because of skin color, gender or racial origin. Not least because if they could even slightly prove that, they could sue and it would be all over the news, and the companies themselves are hyper-sensitive to this.
I'd bet a stack on that the fact that high-tech companies are still more filled with white guys than anything else solely because that where nearly all the (actually suitable) job applications come from in the first place.
If you want to force an actually very biassed and unnatural 50% racial and gender balance in the work place, then you need to look at why its still mostly white guys that apply in the first place, not blame the companies for hiring from the pool of suitable applicants who are actually out there.
So when can we expect to see the diversity reports on players in the NFL and NBA? How about gender diversity as it relates to employment in the healthcare industry?
Do you know what Obama's approval rating is amongst blacks?
87%
(http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/presidential-approval-center.aspx)
My god, how our country is cursed by these nitwits.
If "diversity" means putting more of those simpletons into positions of power, fuck diversity.
You realise there may be all sorts of legitimate reasons for this. Maybe the approve because they see Obama as no worse than most other politicians, but see that he also provides a positive role-model for blacks. Maybe more black people are in demographics that benefit from his policies. Maybe they value different things to you when evaluating how good he is.
If employee populations should be representative of customers, would Facebook be better off if they made the education and salary of their employees representative of their users? If paid their engineers $50k a year and hired mostly non-STEM majors? Would your hospital deliver better health care if its medical staff was representative of its patients in terms of education and salary? Would teachers teach better if they were representative of the student population? The whole point of an economy and division of labor is that businesses and their customers are not representative of each other.
Of course, as far as race is concerned, it is just irrelevant. I mean, who but a racist would seriously believe that you have to be (fill in some race) in order to write web software for (same race)?
This.
First, you start with the talent pool, which is very low on minorities and females.
Then you cut off the 95% bottom part, as these companies get more applicants than the average tech company, and can be somewhat more picky. You have even fewer (not because women or minorities can't be good, but certain demographics statistically do better at showing off their strengths in the shark pool).
Now of whats left, these companies have a biais to hire ultra monitivated/no work life balance/eat and dream computer science people. That cuts off anyone whom's life doesn't revolve around the field.
And then the coup de grace, they favor younger applicants, and women and minorities usually have kids younger (the gender age gap stereotype of women usually dating older guys doesn't help here...it means usually the woman will be significantly younger when they have kids). So a young man is more likely to not have kid than a woman of the same age, and thus will have more time to dedicate to the career.
All that together means you end up with white males, asians and indians. Its just the correlation between these groups and the criteria the hyper-competitive companies use to hire that cause this.
What the fuck is a USian? I hate you
You can hardly blame tech companies for a lack of diversity when the talent pool coming out of universities is milk toast. Source: Seeing 5 minority or women (non Asian) graduate in my 4 years at U.
At the end of the day there is a SHORTAGE of qualified IT professionals. We need all the qualified tech workers we can get our hands on.
Big companies like FB, Microsoft, Google etc are SCARED SHITLESS from getting their image ruined by a big public discrimination lawsuit. You know why? because the maximum amount of compensation is UNLIMITED. That means it takes one badly handled discharge or some bigoted idiot to lose millions.
Why do you think they keep hammering their equality statements etc? A: Reputation, B: Fear of lawsuits
What about Amish people? how many Amish does FB employ? why are there no more Amish people in google? What about Sikhs in Microsoft?
Honestly, this is not tech news, this is garbage.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
You know, the deeper we look into these kinds of issues the more interesting it gets.
The real question here is not "why are there so few minorities at Company X" it's "why are there so few qualified candidates from minority group X to fill open positions?". We already have diversity legislation in place at Universities in America. In fact, there are more women graduates than men. Yet so few of the females grads are getting degrees in CS. Why is that? It is certainly not because of lack of opportunity. Could it be that maybe - just maybe - women don't want to be programmers?
How about African Americans and other minority groups? Well, clearly the number of University students as a percentage of the total population is much lower than society in general. The question is why? Partly economic to be sure. But loans and grants are available to nearly everyone. Yet the number of black and latino college entrants is far lower, on a percentage basis, than they are for whites. Why is that?
Is it possible that, in general, black and latino kids just don't put as high a value on a college education as white kids do? And, therefore, just don't work as hard to get the good grades necessary to get into a good college? What part does having children out of wedlock play in this? Black and latino women have a much higher instance of this than either white or Asian women.
I'm not trying to point fingers or cast blame here and I certainly don't pretend to have all the answers. But it does raise some interesting questions.
I love everyone complaining about diversity at the tech companies and comparing against the diversity of the general population. The problem is that is not the pool they can hire from. They can only hire from the pool of people graduating with degrees in things like computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, or have great personal knowledge/experience in those fields. That is the diversity pool that they have to work from. I forget which company it was, but last year one company hired 50% of all the African American new graduates with a Phd in Computer Science in the entire country. They hired 1 person to do that...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
...it seems like this is obviously due to larger cultural factors with the *applicants* rather than with the people doing the hiring.
The idea that HR departments at both Facebook and Google could be not only both racist, but equally racist, defies imagination.
On the other hand, Facebook and Google draw applicants from the same demographic pool - and those whose culture is technically and academically successful happens to correlate with self-identified "race" (a sad and arbitrary distinction if there ever was one).
Inner city urban thug culture is a failure, period. It just so happens more dark skinned people are stuck in those cultures than light skinned people. Unfortunately, the only people who can make the choice to change *their* culture are the people in it.
As much as I hate "USian", what's the preferred alternative? American? America isn't a country, it's a pair of continents. Argentinians are no less American than New Yorkers are. "Citizens/residents of the United States of America" is too wordy. So it's down to "USian", which is retarded, or "American", which is ridiculously arrogant. When it comes down to it, I'll take retardation over arrogance.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
How can poor minorities obtain employment in the tech giants when one of the requirements is to list "lived in Mom's basement for 1 year"
That was a nice jab. In fact, it was a veritable pun-jab!
Ezekiel 23:20
...education right now. One important question is whether the relatively lucrative STEM fields, like Software Development in this case, are drawing from candidate pools that are skewed toward certain demographics simply because those demographics have greater access to resources and encouragement in the first place.
So if American Blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented in the Software Development field compared to the overall American population, one question to ask is, is it because Blacks and Hispanics are "simply not interested" in Software Development, or is it because they generally come from less affluent backgrounds, in school districts that cannot afford to provide the same resources toward educating and encouraging students who might otherwise be interested in these fields?
Likewise, are American women somehow "innately not interested" in Software Development, or is it because they have traditionally been steered away from high-tech industries because of pervasive cultural messages (in school, at home, on television) that "those are professions for men"?
The reason some people care about equal access and encouragement for STEM fields (as opposed to, say, food service) is that they pay extremely well and yet, unlike sports, these careers are attainable by nearly anyone with determination and encouragement.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
What's a 'Chuuch'?
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I take it you're not familiar with the work of Archbishop Don Magic Juan. Chuuch.
"Chuuch" is an exclamation or interjection largely synonymous with "okay". It is used to express assent, agreement, or acceptance.
Unique to a particular branch of African American Vernacular English, it is most commonly heard in the pimp community.
Let's turn to popular culture for more:
Snoop Dogg's thoughts on "Chuuch".
Urbandictionary on "Chuuch".
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Lets start seeing some sponsored scholarships to organizations like SACNAS ( https://sacnas.org/ ) by these companies, if we want to promote more diverse geek workforce, and not just give lip-service about it.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
As much as I hate "USian", what's the preferred alternative? American? America isn't a country, it's a pair of continents. Argentinians are no less American than New Yorkers are. Argentinians are no less American than New Yorkers are.
Nobody uses the term "American" to refer to a resident of one of the two American continents. That would be as dumb as referring to somebody as a "Eurasian", or an "Afro-European." Argentinians aren't "American;" if you insist on referring to them as residents of a continent, then they are "South Americans."
The "USian" name is an attempt by the PC brigade to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist. In English, the term "American" when applied to a person always refers to citizens of the United States of America.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Seems like this is a lot of unnecessary or unwarranted hand wringing in an attempt to dredge up controversy. This almost seems like some kind of post hoc inference that since these companies are predominantly white males, there must be some kind of bigotry at work here. Are these companies engaged in actively refusing to extend offers to minorities? If yes, take them to court. If no, then there is no story here.
Tech Workforce Diversity At Facebook Similar To Google And Yahoo
Well then, that can only mean one thing - they must all be equally racist! ...or they're not racist at all, and that's just the way the world is when it comes to finding people with the right skills for the job.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The other missing context is the actual proportion of white people at Facebook. Considering that the proportion in the general population is 64%, perhaps this "lily white" (Valleywag's words) company is 80% white? 90%? No, in fact just 53% of tech employees are white - you can check for yourself. The actual overrepresented group is asians, who make up a whopping 41% of Facebook's tech employees - more than 8 times higher than the proportion of the overall US population.
Because white privilege, duh.
Don't be a dolt. A smug dolt.
By your logic the Irish would be "British" too since since they are residents of the British Isles.
American in most contexts refers to the USA. Argentinians are as you said, Argentinian. Both the New Yorker and the Argentinian live in the Americas, but one is Argentinian and one is American.
If you're referring to the continents, you'd say "Americas"
I believe you'll find the difference, at least for blacks is not fully explainable by economic factors. There is a significant middle-and-upper-class black population.
No, they really aren't. Just because the difference between a person with intelligence and talent and one without in more cerebral fields isn't as obvious as the difference between a person with talent in sports and one without doesn't mean the difference isn't there.
Is discrimination happening? Or are the companies hiring those who can get the job done?
I worked in a software development department at a government contractor who was pressured by HR to bring in minorities, mainly black females, into a department of "mostly white dudes".
The problem? There were not enough qualified minority applicants.
We hired in 5 new grossly underqualified developers that were minorities in one way or another(one was filipino, the rest were black, 2 were female), passing over numerous qualified "white dudes".
Fast forward 6 months. Only one of the 5 was still working in software development. The rest had to be transferred out.
Not saying that there are not "not white dudes" that can't handle these jobs. In certain parts of the country, there just happens to be a lot of "white dudes" who can, and a lot of "not white dudes" who can't.
But... they do!
A Brazillian refers to himself as American if using the english language.
http://www.usaisnotamerica.com...
It's kind of amusing that your link starts with the assertion: "America is the name of a whole continent."
Which is, of course, incorrect. There is no continent called America.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I believe you'll find the difference, at least for blacks is not fully explainable by economic factors. There is a significant middle-and-upper-class black population.
Here's some data on economic factors separating American black families and white ones. TL;DR: the presence of a few successful black families in America does not negate the fact that white households continue to have significantly higher median incomes, and thus, access to greater resources for their children:
- http://www.pewsocialtrends.org...
- http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Just because the difference between a person with intelligence and talent and one without in more cerebral fields isn't as obvious as the difference between a person with talent in sports and one without doesn't mean the difference isn't there.
But the range of opportunities are totally different. Software development is not a "geniuses only" field. You can be of average intelligence and still have a good career as a software developer, or beta tester, or system operator, or network admin -- just like you can be a decent electrician, carpenter, or architect. But if you want to go into professional sports (in the sense of earning big bucks), you have to be physically exceptional, period.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
As much as I hate "USian", what's the preferred alternative? American? America isn't a country, it's a pair of continents.
There is no continent named "America". There is North America. There is South America. Just like there is the country United States of America. If you are consistently ignoring the beginning of each of the names, nobody can be called an American because there is no such place named just "America". But you're not, and I'm not sure why you arbitrarily decided to do that.
Argentinians are no less American than New Yorkers are.
Actually, I would argue they are because "American" when used in the context of continent is ambiguous: North or South. Whereas when used in reference to national origin, is not.
So it's down to "USian", which is retarded, or "American", which is ridiculously arrogant.
You do realize that Americans are not the only ones to refer to Americans as American, right? It is the accepted terminology to use in reference to US passport holders all over the planet. The terms history, including the transition in reference from First Americans (1570s-1590s) to North American residents of British descent (1640s) and then later to residents of the United States of America ("shockingly", 1770s), primarily flows via the choices of non-Americans.
Using abbreviated terms like "American" is not arrogance, it is how language naturally develops. Communication requires presumptions as to the meaning of whatever word, phrase, or gesture that is used. Communicators that share more knowledge, presume more and communicate less: Spouses can just look at each other, whereas strangers have to describe the entire situation to avoid ambiguity. Using "American" is simply somewhere in between a subtle gesture and having to explicitly state "A citizen, resident, or passport holder of the nation United States of America".
I didn't say economic factors didn't matter; I said they weren't sufficient. Something like 33% of black households earn more than $50,000 per year, compared to 52% of white households. For $75,000 and up, it's 18% compared to 32%. For $100,000 and up, it's 9.3% compared to 20.1%.
So perhaps by economic factors alone you'd expect black tech workers to be under-represented by 50% compared to white people. Non-Hispanic black people make up 12% of the population, non-Hispanic white 64%. Facebook has 53% white people in tech, so you'd expect maybe 6% black people...actual number 1%.
I've been working in high tech for 15 years and from what I see there is virtually no discrimination. Nobody cares about race or gender. Sure there are some jobs naturally draw more men due the physical demands, which sometimes discourages women from the entry level jobs (cabling, rack-and-stack, desktop support) that can lead to more advanced IT work. That aside when I look around I see plenty of women in engineering. As for racial minorities, it's certainly about participation rates and not hiring practices. Schools are generally bad at exposing students to technical skills and opportunities. If anyone wants to be an engineer, the best thing is you don't need anyone's permission. If you develop the skills and seek the education the opportunity is there. The hard part is that no one is going to tell you how to get there. You have to self-motivate, you have to figure it out for yourself. You have to try things and find the specific skill set that you are suited to master among the skill sets that are in demand in the market. There are complex social issues that go into the participation rates only some of which society is likely to change. We must also accept that free will is always going to create statistical anomalies. The big name high tech firms are like the finish line of starting a tech career, they are not the gatekeepers of who starts or finishes the race.
Since when is Facebook like baseball in the 50s? Athletes and the nerd class are worlds apart. so how can there be ANY comparison? How come there aren't more nerds playing pro basketball? If you want the tech job then tool up or shut up.
My entire life, I've been told diversity is a critical component of success -- building a robust and varied environment out of people from a range of different experiences, etc.
Now you're telling me that two of the most successful companies on the entire planet are, in fact, super homogeneous?
Yeah, right. This flies in the face of everything I was indoctrinated to believe.
lllll AJ
I wonder if this has anything to do with the double-standard that Facebook applies to nudity in images. Posting a drawing or painting of a male butt can get your photo removed and your account suspended, while posting a photograph of female breasts gets nothing. Too many straight guys reviewing people's image uploads?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Please don't use insulting slurs like "USian". The polite term in English is "American".
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
FYI to your racist rant, actually it's just African Americans that are athletically superior, not blacks. African Americans are genetically superior athletically due to selective breeding due to slavery and therefore physical work. This does actually confront the "baseball" comparison of the 1950's which does not relate to 2014 Facebook racial makeup.
Comparatively, horses are incredibly larger, stronger, faster, etc., than they were just a mere 2000 years ago due to the military importance of them and therefore the immense selective breeding that came of it. The reasons a few certain countries in Africa such as Kenya always win marathons is due to genetic makeups, but it's not a "black" thing it's a gene pool thing.
"Asians" in your view are actually American Asians. The Asians who come to America are financially superior than their counterparts who could not come.
However, humans are 99.9% genetically similar. There is no plausibility that any human by race could not become equal to another by another race within a few generations of genetic swapping.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Why would anyone need a role model of a particular color? Role models are about admiring someone for what they do - not for what they look like.
I think its more about culture - thinking "wow someone like me could be president".
What if language started to gradually change such that citizens, residents, or passport holders of Luxembourg became known as Europeans? Wouldn't that necessarily imply that they're more European than other Europeans? Wouldn't that come across as arrogant to you?
Also, a majority of commonplace continent models include a single continent named "America" which can then be further subdefined into North, South, and possible Central regions, much like Asia is often further subdivided as Minor, South-East, etc. Much like many would argue that there is no continent named South-East Asia, so too would they argue that there is no continent named North America. I was never taught this in US public schools, so I'm not surprised to hear so many "Americans" bring this point up.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Mod parent up: Troll
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
You don't get to pick what should an entire nation be called in their own language.
The English language doesn't belong to the United States of America. What if I'm Canadian. Am I not allowed to speak English?
Cue the Quebecois and their "Fuck you, Anglais!"
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
What if language started to gradually change such that citizens, residents, or passport holders of Luxembourg became known as Europeans? Wouldn't that necessarily imply that they're more European than other Europeans? Wouldn't that come across as arrogant to you?
That is in no way a similar situation. Is it the very first country on 2 continents? Does it have "Europe" in its name? Was the name first chosen by non-locals? Was the name selection a choice of the entire English speaking world? Did continent suddenly become synonymous with country?
Also, a majority of commonplace continent models include a single continent named "America" which can then be further subdefined into North, South, and possible Central regions, much like Asia is often further subdivided as Minor, South-East, etc. Much like many would argue that there is no continent named South-East Asia, so too would they argue that there is no continent named North America. I was never taught this in US public schools, so I'm not surprised to hear so many "Americans" bring this point up.
lol we're done.