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?

Comments

SO

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? This isn't a national tragedy.

Re: SO

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope companies can hire the most talented candidate and not base decisions on something else. Reverse racism is still racism.

Re:SO

[James Clay]

The article is wrong. Facebook (and Google and Yahoo) isn't mostly white guys. It is mostly white and Asian guys. White representation in tech is not, by and large, larger than their percentage of the population at large. It is that Asians are vastly "over represented". These articles always lump Asians in with the white guys because they have no interest in pointing out that if your metric is proportional representation you are talking about getting rid of Asians.

Re:SO

[russotto]

Non-hispanic whites are 64% of the US population, but only 57% of Facebook's employee base. White people are under-represented.

Re:SO

[Shakrai]

That's because the Asian-American experience doesn't speak in favor of the sort of social engineering desired by the types that favor affirmative action and other sorts of reverse discrimination. They're literally at a loss to explain why the Asian-American community isn't mired in poverty in spite of the best efforts of the evil white man to keep them down. They also ignore the experiences of the multitude of different white peoples (Italians, Irish, Poles, etc.) that faced discrimination and somehow managed to build productive lives for themselves and their progeny.

The only answer they have is to take from the successful and give to the unsuccessful, which brings to mind the quote about teaching a man to fish....

Re:SO

[ahaweb]

Asians are the invisible demographic.

This means nothing without context

[FictionPimp]

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.

Re:This means nothing without context

[neminem]

I'm pretty sure that is factually incorrect, unless you literally have never been to Slashdot, or any other site that allows comments, ever.

It's also completely accurate. It is certainly not completely impossible that there are occasionally racists (or more likely, people who have slight biases and don't even realize it) in hiring departments for major companies. It is, however, much more likely that this issue is more cultural and/or class-based: one, minorities are more likely to be poorer by virtue of having been marginalized in the past, and poor people are less likely to have had the opportunities required to get into the tech field. Two, cultures push different things, and minorities who stick together form cultures. That is not racist, that's, well, obvious. Not all skin-color-based minorities stick together, obviously, but enough do (which is also partially class-based, as you don't really have a choice to have been born in a crap environment, and it's harder to get yourself out of one.)

As for women, there's a lot more evidence that HR departments do discriminate, and some more obvious reasons why they might want to (which are still BS and should be burned mercilessly, but which still make sense why they happen). Still, it is *also* almost certainly true that more men than women have the inclination and ability (more the former than the latter) required to get hired at tech companies, and that's not really the fault of those companies.

Re:This means nothing without context

[hsmith]

I went to a local Google office yesterday to watch the IO keynote.

Number of people in the room? 40

Number of women in the room? 2, 1 was from corporate.

Free to sign up, free to attend, so where were the ladies? I think this is just another made up issue people are looking to find a solution for.

Re:This means nothing without context

[Lab Rat Jason]

I don't think I'd go so far as to call the GP racist, and I can see the point GP is trying to make. I live in an area that is predominately white... and by predominately white... I mean like 99.9% or something like that. During a brief time I was entrusted to do the hiring interviews for my department. I only interviewed one black person and one woman. I ended up hiring them both because they both seemed to have the skills we needed. The guy I hired ended up not really being able to handle the work, and was let go. The woman I hired ended up leaving for a more challenging (and presumably better paying) company. From the outside you could say that the company was racist because we didn't have any black developers, or that we didn't have any women developers... but the truth is much more complex: Our sample size for non-white non-male programmers is too small to be statistically significant, and within the sample size we had one under-qualified, and one over-qualified. We actually hired both, and both left the company for perfectly normal reasons, bringing the development staff back to an all-male all-white mix.(not a mix really)

So when the GP asks about the ratio of available talent, I get the sentiment... although with a company the size of FB or Google and with a local diversity like Kalifornia's, you'd think the statistical significance of those numbers would mean more, which is why people are a bit outraged about it.

Re:This means nothing without context

[bluefoxlucid]

Not really.

I live in a black suburb (it's cheap) with poor people, 3 blocks down from a Jewish white suburb. The black suburb is full of trash, broken down cars, town homes with no yards, rental properties, liquor stores, and copious gang and firearms violence--all the amenities of a poor, black ghetto. The white suburb is made up of large single-family homes, huge yards, separated residential and commercial zones, and clean, well-maintained roads--because the city sends more road work out there so the people they collect the most taxes from don't leave.

There's also a poor white ghetto out east. Muscle cars, double-wide trailers, booze, slutty girls, drugs, and people occasionally get hit with a pipe wrench. These white folk aren't like those white folk, or like those black folk.

People identify culturally by geographic area, by surrounding interests, and by race and smaller cliques (IT people, security people, bouncers, car people, martial artists, etc.). Putting any critical mass of people together will develop a unique culture. We have plenty of black doctors and lawyers, probably as a result of racial tension: black people get out of slavery, they either become angry, miserable, violent sub-humans or they become philosophers who want to work for the greater good. Time goes on, and black people get rights, but they still get treated like shit. The racial tensions still exist today, and it creates the same forces: they either become angry, miserable, violent sub-humans or they become philosophers who want to do something in the world.

White people, by contrast, are largely just coasting. Racial tensions to us are mostly in the form of black people getting angry at us for saying something stupid. Nobody has told us white folk that the black man is keeping us down. We aren't living under the world's first black president. No white man in history has ever given a speech about how, one day, his children might be allowed to go to school and learn to read and write like all them black children. There is a lot less pessimism, and we just find it natural that everything we want should be at our fingertips.

Trying to cross that barrier is easy for a white man, but a black man has to get over all this shit that basically makes him feel like the world's holding him back. The ones that can push by that naturally have more energy--more optimism--and reach for higher goals. Lots of white folk can't imagine being a doctor or a lawyer or a physicist, but can imagine being a computer programmer or some other mundane job that sounds meaningful but also doesn't sound too hard.

It's just culture. Humans recognize patterns; the most disruptive effect of this is recognizing patterns in human appearance. If we were all white, we would start recognizing round-faced humans separately from square-jawed humans.

Re:This means nothing without context

[unimacs]

Part of the problem happens well before Facebook or anyone else has a job opening. Not everyone has equal access to the education required for many of these positions.

Another part of the problem is the hiring process itself. An initial requirement for one position I've taken in the past was a Masters degree in computer science or related field. Nothing about the job required a Masters degree and they got no applicants. The reason for the requirement? The hiring managers all had MBAs. There is a tendency for people to hire people like themselves, - people who fit their stereotype.

I've also witnessed more direct discrimination. At a former company we were trying to fill several tech positions. Several of us were going through resumes when I discovered that my boss had tossed out a few of the candidates I had thought had potential. When asked why she said that their names weren't "American sounding" and she just wanted to hire Americans. She was at least honest about it. Many aren't or don't ever realize why they're excluding people.

Re:This means nothing without context

[pla]

What is the percentage of black, women, etc people with the skills and training that google, facebook, etc is looking for?

Black: Blacks make up only 3.6% of CS graduates, 6% of CE graduates, and 7% of generic IT graduates at the moment.
Female: Female CS/CE graduates peaked in the '80s at 37%, and has fallen ever since to a current low of only 12%; the previous link also shows them at about 50% higher rates in generic IT, or 17% total.

Sorry if that doesn't give your axes a nice fine edge, folks, but the likes of Google, Yahoo, and Facebook don't hire only misogynist racists for their HR departments - In fact, all three soundly beat the above graduation rates, making them arguably biased against hiring white males.

Re:This means nothing without context

[Intrepid imaginaut]

As for women, there's a lot more evidence that HR departments do discriminate

Which is ironic given that almost 60% of HR staff are women, apparently. Maybe HR companies should start hiring more men to bring a male perspective and lived experience to these roles?

Re:This means nothing without context

[HappyPsycho]

Remembering (early 2000s) my comp sci classes (and to a lesser degree higher math) I was pretty heavily outnumbered (compared to my classmates back then I'm black), the few girls in class had it even worse. As soon as I went to one of my electives (even something science like Bio or Chem) the makeup changed, e.g. enter the arts department and I was once again outnumbered but then again so were the white dudes (mostly women with a decent mix but still dominated by white chicks).

While I have no issues with diversity (I stand to benefit), I fail to see how facebook and family can do much about this other than they are currently doing (the various competions or http://tech.slashdot.org/story...). They could just hire the applicable minorities and have them stand around just to make up numbers, but I don't think that helps anyone.

I guess in their defense these companies should post the matching numbers of the diversity of the applicants, problem is that is near impossible due to not everyone gets called in for an interview and it would most definitely get called racist to require your resume to include your skin color (sex can probably be guessed with a high degree of accuracy).

Re:This means nothing without context

[wired_parrot]

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.

8% of MIT's class is black Among the general college population the numbers are closer to 14%. But even assuming Facebook, Google and Yahoo were exclusively recruiting from the top Ivy-league universities, their numbers should be significantly higher than the mere 1% of black employees that they are showing. If my company were showing such significantly different demographics from the graduate population they are recruiting from, especially among such a large employee base, we'd be under investigation for racial discrimination.

Re: This means nothing without context

[larryjoe]

One interesting study would be the correlation between the characteristics of the hiring manager and team members. In my experience the correlation is strong, especially in terms of race and ethnicity. At Bell Labs in the 90's, one out of the three research area organizations had a very high representation of Indian managers and researchers. At Sun, the same was true except that most managers and researchers were white (Americans, Europeans, Australians, etc.). I worked at another company where the manager was Serbian and two other researchers were Serbian.

This is a hypothesis that can be fairly easily corroborated with statistical studies. I'm fairly certain that the bias exists. Of course, whether that bias is good or bad is a separate question.

Re:This means nothing without context

[alexander_686]

Because you are now touching on one of the more interesting issues / intractable issues when it comes to closing the "gender gap". IIRC women who have the same skills and job experiences as their male counterparts earn 95% of what they earn. The reasons why women earn far less than males is that they tend to choose careers which have a better work / life balance.

You can take 5 years off from being a HR person and you skills won't be out of date. Harder to say for a engineer. A saw one study that women who graduated from law programs had lower average wages than their male counterparts not because they were women but because of what type of law their practiced. Family law pays less than corporate law but offers better work / balance than corporate law. Women tend to pile into family law. Those women who go into corporate law earn about the same as males. The studies did adjust for the school and rank where they graduated.

In addition, because women tend to pick these types of jobs one has many women pilling into the same workspace depressing wages. High supply of applicants and a fixed demand. Males have a much wider dispersion in careers chosen.

This is why HR departments tend to be stuffed with women.

The problem with all of these stories

[d0rp]

The "general population", and the "population of qualified tech workers" are two very different things...

See: Morgan Freeman

[xdor]

Stop talking about this crap.

Re:See: Morgan Freeman

[Shakrai]

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." -Chief Justice John Roberts, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

Re:See: Morgan Freeman

[CronoCloud]

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." -Chief Justice John Roberts

Roberts is a fool. Sure that sounds great to conservatives and libertarians, who are opposed to anti-discrimination laws out of principle (and some hidden racism) but that's not how the world actually works...because people don't stop discriminating. Sometimes it's even subconscious.

In a perfect world without assholes, Roberts might be right, but we don't live in that world.

Diversity is not a virtue

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Diversity is not a virtue

[lucm]

They probably hired communication specialists from the LAPD.

Re:Diversity is not a virtue

[bmajik]

There is nothing worthwhile in diversity in and of itself

This is the attitude that needs to stop. Diversity may not be a value in your pantheon, but it's not social engineering to want an inclusive society. It's wisdom.

Why does it need to stop?

A huge problem -- that few people seem to speak about -- is that using gender, nationality, or, most frustratingly -- race, as a measure of "diversity" is implicitly bigoted.

The diversity that people _claim_ to want is one of perspectives, life experiences, etc.

The things that are relatively easy to bucketize - gender identity, race, socio-economic status, etc.... these things in and of themselves are not a valuable source of "diversity"

The implicit bigotry in the "diversity" argument says that, if you hire more black people, you'll get much different ideas than what you already have. Why? Because all black people are different from the white people you already have.

I've never seen a more stark illustration of _racism_ then that.

The conjecture here is that if a population distribution doesn't' look the way certain people expect it to, then there is some upstream social problem that needs tinkering with.

That conjecture is only ever true or false on a case by case basis. The real problem that needs to stop is for people to believe this conjecture in the general case; the real problem is that people don't even agree or are not willing to state what their expectations are for the "ideal" population distribution, but, are still willing to cry foul and to assert that a problem exists.

The can of worms...

[ZeroPly]

... 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?

Re:The can of worms...

[tlhIngan]

The females and minorities I've worked with have had equal ability. It seems that there's just far more white men in the US that are inclined to be software developers than there are females and minorities who are inclined to do so. Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and many others are merely reflecting the demographics of the broader industry.

I think it's just demographics of who goes into CS and engineering, though slightly skewed because I could swear a majority of students in STEM tracks were Asian, not white. Though all those companies generally have a fairly big showing of Asians (roughly 33%), it does seem a bit on low side given they can easily make up 60-80% of a graduating class.

Though, the percentage of female Asian students in STEM was also fairly high - perhaps 10% of that population.

Companies can't create a diversified talent pool

[Brannon]

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?

I call bullshit

[JustNiz]

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.

Awesome

[PeeAitchPee]

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?

Careful what you wish for....

[erp_consultant]

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.

Re:Careful what you wish for....

[jmd]

>> 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.

My father was a professor of education and his main focus was in the public education system. K-12 and beyond. In his writings it is clear he believed that a committment to education gave the best result. In both education for enlightenment or for job prospects. He would also speak of disadvantaged people (not only race and gender etc but developmentally disabled or physically handicapped etc as well) not having a strong committment to the educational process. And he attributed most of this to each person's life experiences. Hence, if you grow up without some sort of affirmation that an education will be beneficial you will not committ to the educational process. i.e If I grow up in a poor violent neighborhood do you think I will commit to a higher education? That person's world view is: As far as I can see McDonalds is the only place hiring in my neighborhood.

This in a nutshell is what the affirmative action ideas was to address. Until a given group of people begin to believe that change is possible and that they would benefit from the change, that group will not risk time and energy let alone financial resources to make the changes.

I agree with this poster. This kind of article only scratches the surface. There are no easy answers.

Re:Careful what you wish for....

[erp_consultant]

Well said. I think that the environment that a person grows up in is a much bigger factor than race or gender. If your parents don't instill in you the value of a good education then many kids will miss out on that. Growing up poor already puts many of these kids at a disadvantage. Having parents that don't stress education just makes it worse. For the vast majority of these disadvantaged kids, education is the only way out. Sure, maybe you'll get a sports scholarship but that's a long shot.

I think that Affirmative Action legislation is well meaning but ineffective. It does not address the core issues, it merely masks it without offering any long term solution.

Re:wtf does baseball have to do with anything?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

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.

Re:We all know...

[AnOnyxMouseCoward]

Yea, damn the NBA for having so more black people than the US population average. This is discrimination against the whites, and has nothing to do with abilities.

Re:wtf does baseball have to do with anything?

[aardvarkjoe]

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.

Re:wtf does baseball have to do with anything?

[rogoshen1]

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"