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Apple's Diversity Numbers: 70% Male, 55% White
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has released a diversity report on the genders and races of its employees. As is common in the tech industry, the majority of Apple's workforce is male — only three out of 10 employees around the globe are female. Broken down, males compose 65 percent of non-tech workers, 80 percent of tech workers, and 72 percent of Apple's leadership.
According to CEO Tim Cook, he's unhappy with Apple's diversity numbers and says Apple is working to improve them: "Apple is committed to transparency, which is why we are publishing statistics about the race and gender makeup of our company. Let me say up front: As CEO, I'm not satisfied with the numbers on this page. They're not new to us, and we've been working hard for quite some time to improve them. We are making progress, and we're committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products."
According to CEO Tim Cook, he's unhappy with Apple's diversity numbers and says Apple is working to improve them: "Apple is committed to transparency, which is why we are publishing statistics about the race and gender makeup of our company. Let me say up front: As CEO, I'm not satisfied with the numbers on this page. They're not new to us, and we've been working hard for quite some time to improve them. We are making progress, and we're committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products."
Wow, so we have quotas for Apple employees.
How about if we have quotas for awesome products?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Wow, so we have quotas for Apple employees.
How about if we have quotas for awesome products?
They can accuse you of being HATEFUL !!
"Apple is committed to transparency" I've just snorted my coffee! Funniest comment of the day!
How many of them are gay?
Just saying...
So it's fine to directly say we will be "fixing" these numbers (intentionally hiring more foreign people over whites).
But it's horrible to say we want to hire more whites.
Only the white people can be discriminated against openly. Every other ethnicity is untouchable it seems.
You're absolutely right.
You may be stupid.
How does everyone accept this practice of establishing "diversity quotas"? To accept this is utterly insane.
It's a corrupt practice. For the sake of efficiency, jobs should go to the people that the management of a business believe to be the best. Asserting that 'diversity' must be increased implies that management discriminates against non-whites and/or non-males by criteria other than their talents and skills which are relevant to the business. There is no evidence that a 'diverse' work-place is more efficient than a homogenous work-place. Therefore seeking 'diversity' is illogical, and clearly intended for a purpose other than one of justice.
There is no possible argument for 'diversity' that does not contradict itself. It's an idea that was not designed to benefit working class people. It's an idea that was designed to weaken the communities that worked to create our way of life. It's idea purposed to destroy our way of life.
we demand that Samsung engineering department show us their diversity porfolio!
Signed,
NAACP, N.O.W., G.L.O.W.
Maybe Tim should lop his unit off to increase the transgender % in their leadership.
I'm an Apple, I am female .... .... ....
I'm an Apple, I am white
I'm an Apple, I am black
I'm an Apple, I am brown
I'm an Apple, I am Hispanic
FUCK YOU ALL!! I AM STEVE JOBS, AND I AM APPLE!!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Its good to see Apple recognizes America's history of victimizing Indians requires remediation by affirmative action favoring the hiring of Indians.
Seastead this.
Apple is a racist company unless they hire at LEAST 70 percent black. We are owed that much after what the whites did to us.
And what, specifically, does "improve" mean?
Just break down all the employees into the smallest groups possible. Instead of "White" or "African", break it down to German, Swiss, Dutch, South African, Tanzanian, and so on. With everything down to a few dozen members per group, you'll have a nice flat diversity line. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
and "diversity" is just getting rid of white males, so apple should fire Tim Cook???
>> CEO Tim Cook, he's unhappy with Apple's diversity numbers and says Apple is working to improve them
(Voice of Steve Jobs): Tim. Boobie. The secret of Apple is 50% product and 50% marketing, with minimal bullshit. Please don't fuck it up.
>> we're committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products.
(Voice of Steve Jobs): Ah shit. You fucked it up.
Diversity quotas, affirmative action, is about opportunity, not entitlement.
Apple doesn't give two shits about the color of the skin or gender of who it hires. Like every other tech company, Apple is looking to hire educated, motivated, and intelligent people. Unfortunately, there tends to be a racial bias on the "education" part of the equation... Blame our society for this, not Apple.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
30% peeved by what they assume must be sexism
70% irritated the CEO's just announced a commitment to tokenism and explicitly trying to boost the hiring of employees based on their genitalia.
I'm sure glad I haven't got much invested in Apple, because it's heading for disaster as long as Cook is fucking around pretending to be a leader.
you are a very smart man! oh wait apple stock is up 80% since cook took over. i'm not saying the stock price is the most important thing, but I think it's a general barometer of the health of the company. when a stock is up 80% over 2 years there's an extraordinary burden of proof on your claim "heading for disaster".
1% Undeclared.
How does this affect anyone here who is commenting negatively about this? Why are people taking it as a personal attack on their personal politics?
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
When working conditions are so bad that suicide is a better alternative, I would say that is a real problem.
very easy to fix: hire a bunch of minority females.
diversity for the sake of diversity is easy, why dont all those obsessed with the idea just quit whining and do it? if it's even a problem at all -i'll bet that those black/hispanic/whatever females that are qualified to but not working at apple are working somewhere else.
What is the available hiring pool? According to to the National Center for Women and Information Technology http://www.ncwit.org/ in a PDF document http://www.ncwit.org/sites/def...
14% of 2010 Computer Science undergraduate degree recipients at major research universities were women. This compares with 37% in 1985. Why blame Apple?
Besides what qualities do women provide that men don't? Intuitive GUIs? Did you know that Melinda French (who later married Bill Gates) pushed "Microsoft Bob" into production, and that Julie Larson-Green pushed through both the MS Office Ribbon and the Windows 8 Metro interface?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
No "may" about it....
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I always apply a quick rule of thumb to these types of items: Replace the word diversity/female/minority/whatever with the words "single white Christian male." Then read the sentence again. Does it offend and/or sound bigoted? Would it make Al Sharpton snort milk out of his nose if he read it whilst eating breakfast cereal? If not great; probably a good idea. If so, then it's just as bad/racist/slanted as if the words really were replaced with "single white Christian male."
Ex: Single white Christian male's have a higher cancer rate in lower income communities. (Yep, no problem here.)
Ex: Apple needs to hire more single white Christian males. (Derp! Issues... Al's nose hurts now...)
If they really cared about diversity then tech companies wouldn't be asking workers to give up their entire social lives to work egregious hours. Young 20-30 year old men are often willing to go so far as to give up sleep but women and older workers want to be treated like people not machines.
How often does a company REALLY hire the best possible person for the position? I'd say the chances are pretty slim. They may very well hire somebody who ends up being successful, but that's not the same as the best.
Usually the way it works is that the person that gets hired is the one that the hiring manager likes the most out of the people they've interviewed. The people that get interviewed are the ones that HR/hiring manager liked out of the pool of people that applied.
There may have been highly qualified people that were eliminated at any step. I've seen managers throw out resumes because the name wasn't "American sounding". That's a more blatant case. Some of the more subtle cases occur because there is a tendency to hire people like yourself.
For example, I was nearly turned down for a position because they wanted someone with a masters degree. Why? Because the people running the business unit and doing the hiring had MBAs, not because anything about the job required a masters.
I would venture that in many cases where a white male is hired into a technical position, there are equally or better qualified non-whites out there some place. To find them, you may have to look in different places, - cast a wider net. My point is that making an effort to have a more diverse workforce DOES NOT mean you have to settle for less qualified people.
On the other hand, there is a definite shortage of women CS and engineering grads. There are lots of complex reasons for this. But it's worse than it used to be, - which means it can be better than it is now. Companies like Apple are big enough to help make that happen, but not overnight.
I can't believe some of the comments on here. Is it really stupid not to see that there something wrong with your hiring when you're only getting one or two types of people in your workforce? Why is it such an obvious given that whites and Asians are the best this incredibly diverse country has to offer?
Why to people stupidly assume that the percentages in the population should represent the population of a subset?!? That's asinine! You don't see such outrage about the lack of men in the cosmology field....
Did a pretty good job of covering the why's of different quality tech support in India.
Much like China, Japan, and Korea, the caliber of service you get has been steadily increasing as the quantity of qualified employees has increased due to demand for call center services.
In a nation who's population is approximately 80% White...
If every company in the united states was only 55% white employees or less, then 25% of the countries population would be unemployed.
Apple's Diversity Numbers: 70% Male, 55% White
Whoa - that's like 125%.
(This is sarcasm BTW)
Apple is still coasting on Job's set up.
It has absolutely sucked at setting up new types of products in the pipeline in the eventual saturation of the tablet market (ok, people will keep on buying phones every 2 years... well until some markets savvy up and offer a discount for bringing in existing smartphones).
Ipod sales are going down since 2009, to be expected because of the iPhone, but now also because of android.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
What happened to Apple TV since Steve died? Nothing. And it will remain nothing. Netflix and Amazon have that market tied up now.
Apple is going to wonder what happened to itself in 10 years, because I see Tim Cooke taking absolutely no chances unlike Steve. He's too conservative and too scared of fouling up but he also will never be able to hit it big. They'll keep churning out iPhones and that won't be enough for that much longer. Apple is the new Sony and it's days are numbered.
Apple will start considering quotas for feminists and blacks once these 2 groups stop being so homophobic, it's simple.
Why can't they leave the poor white homosexual males in Apple alone? They finally managed to get some success as of late in homosexual rights and now the bible humping/testosterone obsessed blacks and sexually insecure feminists are trying to ruin it for them because of jealousy and phobia.
It's childish and pathetic. Quotas. Hitler liked quotas a lot, as did Stalin and Mao, so that may explain some things.
For example, how many of that 30% women makes the same as males doing the same job?
Same goes for the non white compared to the white workers.
Be seeing you...
According to the AFL/CIO's report "Women in the Professional and Technical Labor Force", in the manufacturing sector workers are 71% male, 29% female. Apple is a manufacturer, and as such has a range of employees in technical, clerical, and production categories that fit the manufacturing labor mix profile. So Apple's diversity is actually a tad better than the available workforce. You can't really "improve diversity" without affirmative-action-type job manipulation, which will lead to reduced productivity and innovation.
"we need more h1-b visas.. and we'll give half those jobs to women"
("and we'll save even more money by paying them only half what an american male worker would demand, instead of seventy percent like male visa recipients. it's a 'win win' scenario.. a win for apple, and a win for apple shareholders")
Senator blasts Microsoft for hb1 push and firing 18000 workers
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kedfVAbXNy0
and here is a petition to stop the hb1
http://www.petition2congress.com/7637/abolish-h1b-visa-program/
They succeeded at this by turning people away according to their race and gender?
What's the percentage of white male computer-science and technical graduates?
To do anything but hire according to that percentage would be an act of sexism or racism.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
When you stop using key figures as a guidance to reaching your goal and use them as goals in themselves, you've got a problem.
Frankly speaking, I don't give a fuck if a company is 5% white, 50% white or 99% white. While these numbers may be indicators of an underlying problem, they are just that - indicators. Just like running a company by consulting-think usually results in a bancrupt company, you have to go deeper than some numbers, and you should never make those numbers your actual goals. Many companies have been run into the ground by idiots who thought 4% profit margin is not enough and this consultant or that business insider says they need 5% and if it ruins the company to get that extra 1% then so be it...
What should matter is if there's any problem for anyone getting hired or promoted in Apple (or any other company) because of gender, skin colour or whatever else you want. Statistical numbers can give you a hint on where you might want to check, but in themselves, they are meaningless. They're just statistics.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
According to CEO Tim Cook, he's unhappy with Apple's diversity numbers and says Apple is working to improve them
Simple solution, Mr. Cook... Just suggest to the Apple board that they replace the CEO with a more "diverse" choice. That way you could be a good example instead of putting other people at a disadvantage because of their race or gender.
It's all those late nights ...
I'm not sure if people in general even realize it, but that very idea also carries the idea of white superiority. Whites are so superior they can and need t obe discriminated against. Others won't stand a chance unless thay have positive discrimination helping them.
The possibility is that women fail to push for higher pay both at interview and when seeking rises. The latter particularly will leave to them staying on lower pay long term.
I'm a white woman. Suppose I applied to work at Apple. Would the facts that I'm caucasian and born in the US be held against me? Would the fact that I'm a woman help me? Suppose I dropped hints that I was a lesbian. Would that help my chances of getting hired? Suppose I dropped hints that my grandfather was from Mexico. Would that help me?
None of that stuff should make any difference. They should hire me (or not) depending on whether I can do the job.
I like to know how many white vs non white in a certain region live. If 80% is white and 20% is black, than don't expect 50% white vs 50% black in a company. That's stupid. Same goes for man vs woman, how many man do programming, and have studied programming or such, vs how many woman program and have studied programming. You can't make it 50% in a company. That's no equality, that only will course white people hate other people... If I had a large company, I wouldn't care about black or white or numbers. I would look at credentials, and how he would interact with my team. Getting woman on your floor also increases the change at lawsuits for harassment. I have known a few woman who programmed in my company, I personally would have thrown them out, I liked them, they were nice, but their code quality was terrible. So If you have a pool of people to choose from you like to choose the best, if there are more white male people in that pool, the changes are you choose a white male. If a black woman would come by and would show she can program much better than most people white man in my company, I wouldn't hesitate to give her the job. But I wouldn't select her because of some number. A company needs to make money to survive, not conform to some government standard.
>As CEO, I'm not satisfied with the numbers on this page.
That is a nice euphemism for: "we're gonna start discriminating against white males now".
When are they going to hire a heterosexual man?
If these stats can't be improved, we need to find more ways to pressure companies to hire women. And we need to find more ways to pressure women to pursue these career opportunities. It's a simple as that.
Once you hire someone, they may want to leave because the atmosphere in the workplace isn't what they like, or the pay for their gender or ethnicity seems off compared to others. A large part of why some companies can't seem to get their "diversity" numbers anywhere near what they want them to be, is because they have a reputation that will put certain groups off whether deserved or not.
These are things that are much more important in the long run than just getting candidates in the door that have the right skills on their resume. That part is easy, just advertise and throw money at it. Keeping them and making them fit in the team is the hard part.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
... use Samsung phones?
Denying white people jobs IN THEIR OWN COUNTRIES is genocide, calculated to bring about a reduction in numbers of the group. All these people think they're unaccountable and will get away with it. Good luck with that. There is going to be hell to pay.
The crime of genocide is defined in international law in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
The Genocide Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. More than 130 nations have ratified the Genocide Convention and over 70 nations have made provisions for the punishment of genocide in domestic criminal law. The text of Article II of the Genocide Convention was included as a crime in Article 6 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Punishable Acts
The following are genocidal acts when committed as part of a policy to destroy a group's existence:
Killing members of the group includes direct killing and actions causing death.
Causing serious bodily or mental harm includes inflicting trauma on members of the group through widespread torture, rape, sexual violence, forced or coerced use of drugs, and mutilation.
Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy a group includes the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for the group's physical survival, such as clean water, food, clothing, shelter or medical services. Deprivation of the means to sustain life can be imposed through confiscation of harvests, blockade of foodstuffs, detention in camps, forcible relocation or expulsion into deserts.
Prevention of births includes involuntary sterilization, forced abortion, prohibition of marriage, and long-term separation of men and women intended to prevent procreation.
Forcible transfer of children may be imposed by direct force or by through fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or other methods of coercion. The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines children as persons under the age of 14 years.
Genocidal acts need not kill or cause the death of members of a group. Causing serious bodily or mental harm, prevention of births and transfer of children are acts of genocide when committed as part of a policy to destroy a group's existence:
It is a crime to plan or incite genocide, even before killing starts, and to aid or abet genocide: Criminal acts include conspiracy, direct and public incitement, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.
Apple's numbers are far more diverse than the US Congress. And Apple can argue that they just hire the best and brightest while Congress is explicitly supposed to be representative of the American people. Incidentally Apple's White/Non-White split seems already balanced because of the numerous Asian employees that hide the dearth of Latinos and Blacks. And a 70/30 split of male/female is really not bad.
Discrimination on the basis of physical characteristics like race or gender is unfair.
Apple should try for a different kind of diversity - diversity of thought.
Some people are good at thinking up and "seeing" new ideas. Others are good at implementing those ideas efficiently. Others are super-thorough at reviewing code and testing.
Some people design UX with the user in mind. Others write code that's easy to maintain, written with programmers in mind.
Some people are more willing to take chances than other people are. Tim Cook can listen both of them, and gets both points of view.
Especially for a company that needs to innovate, Apple's hiring policy should be to get diversity in ways of thinking.
These figures are in contrast to their users who are all female or gay.
No, it means that 55% of those 70% of males are white. So we can see that only 70% - 55% = 15% of the males are black.
I'd be interested in seeing the percentage breakdown of job applicants in comparison.
Hypothetically, suppose that on average 2 out of 10 job applicants are female. In order to achieve a '3 out of 10' female employee ratio means that Apple must have gone out of their way to hire more females than males.
Without knowing the demographic breakdown of the applicants, then the number of employees is meaningless.
I do IT work at a state university. As you'd expect with government institutions, we are really big on the EEOC rules and such. However, we can't force people to apply and for IT stuff, you get mostly men. Last round, it was all men. I don't mean we chose to interview all men, I mean no women applied, or if they did apply, HR filtered them out (HR does a basic "resume vs qualifications" check). Our IT group (we are only one of many IT groups on campus, there are women in other groups) is all male, at present. We had a female webmaster, however her fiance got a job in New York, so they moved there and of course she quit.
What, precisely, are we supposed to do to be more diverse? There are just not many women who seem to have the skills and wish to apply. We can't go and force people to apply, nor can we (legally or practically) say we'll waive the requirements for the job if you are a woman.
You can't hire those that don't apply.
So in terms of all this fluff up over Silicon Valley and diversity, I'd say how does their workforce numbers compare to their applicants? If in general it is the same, meaning say 30% of applicants are female and 30% of employees are female, 9% of applicants are black and 8% of employees are black, well then there probably isn't any discrimination going on. The fact that the numbers do not reflect demographics doesn't mean any discrimination on their part if they are simply not getting the applicants.
Also with regards to race, I'm not seeing why the 55% white number is problematic. According to Wikipedia, 72% of the US is white. If you count being hispanic as not being white (remember hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race) then the number is 64%. So per overall breakdown of the population, white people would be underrepresented in Apple by a fair bit.
That is also something I think people forget: The US does not have an even balance of all groups. Male/female has about a 50/50 split, but racial/ethnic groups are not nearly so even. It is still a nation dominated by fair skinned people of European ancestry, aka "white". The amount varies by state, of course, but it is quite a consistent majority.
Shizzlin his nizzle or whatever.
Joe Biden is a square shooter. Joe Biden for 2016!
These numbers likely include the retail employees at Apple stores. This is why Apple's diversity numbers are so much less skewed than any of the other tech companies, which are reporting based on a much different employee mixture (i.e. Engineers + Sales and Marketing, vs. Apples Engineers + Sales and Marketing + Retail store employees.. Much easier to pump up the numbers this way.
As to why publish a report saying, look at me, I'm so diverse (at least compared to Twitter, FB, et al.) I would think it's obvious. Risk management from "corrective" action by government, i.e. discrimination lawsuits, regulatory action, etc. Particularly when one's company is so tightly aligned with the democratic party .
wake up and find out that you are the eyes of the world.
...tech companies.
That doesn't mean it's good enough, but having 20% female tech workers? That's great compared to my experience in the industry.
It was 4 years into my career before I met my first female software engineer at work, and there were two out of 80. This was the valley back in the 90's though.
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You have to look at how each gender interviews and balance that with qualification, the same has to be done for each time of ethnicity that applies. You can't get mad at them saying, "They're sexist and a white majority company!", when you don't know the information stated above. If 90% of the women who apply can't interview very well or can't show there qualifications then why would they deserve a job? You should never be awarded a job because you aren't a while Caucasian male.
Of course, why would you want talented people on your team when you can load it up with useless ones so the 'diversity' numbers will come out right.
I sure wish that there was the same scrutiny of diversity numbers in sports such as football, baseball, basketball, soccer, etc. Funny how no one ever gets involved there..............unless it's coaches and owners. Friggin' politically correct morons.
I am happy that Tim Cook at least states that he sees an issue with the makeup of the workforce. I hope that he addresses the problem correctly though. The issue is not that Apple needs to hire more minorities and woman, as it has already been stated that the applicant pool is adequately reflected in the hiring numbers. What they should do to address this issue is help level the playing field of children learning computer science through primary education, starting from elementary school and carrying on through high school. There are a myriad of issues that are present in minority dominated schools that can be handled, though the effects of these measures would take years to see. There is the minor issue of public perception of the IT industry, but more over they can help tackle issues like communities who are underserved by ISP's, lack of access to free community available equipment, lack of course diversity in prominently minority schools, and scholarships to help promote young people to get into the industry. None of these require them to immediately hire unqualified applicants, so there won't be any negative ramifications on their products. They can use the same advertising/business model of the NFL who intimately insinuates themselves into the lives of young people to promote them into not only consuming their product (sports entertainment) but also spurs them on to participate in the industry directly. I know I am crazy.
Each staff member is a profit centre. If you hire someone who's return on investment is 20% less but their ethnicity fits your company's profile, your competitors will eat you for breakfast - while hiring the best staff away from you.
If you really want to effect change, create a double-blind hiring system so that race and gender become non-issues - and you end up with the best staff. Period.
*** Don't be dull.***
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
The % of whites in the country right now is 72.4% I would say they are well within reason on their ethnic diversity. Women on the other hand, not so much. The struggle there is to make computer science appealing to women. Not sure why that's such a sausage-fest.
Its no secret that Apple is the gay male mecca of the corporate universe. These numbers are a direct result of that.
by having 28 out of every 100 male employees to undergo sex-change operations, perhaps starting with himself.
So a number of successful companies are found to have a large percentage of white males working for them. This is looked at as bad and the diversity numbers are not good enough. It would seem the interpretation should be that having a large number of white males working for your company makes the company more likely to be successful.
Let's face it.
U.S. Census Data (Left) versus Apple Employee Data (Right)
White: 77.7% 55%
Black: 13.2% 07%
Asian: 05.3% 15%
Draw whatever conclusions you like.
Ethnicity surveys are bogus.
They almost always want us to pick ONE (1) box.
I am many ethnicities.
Most of all, I'm American.
My people met my people at the shore, interbred and mixed it up.
That is how it is for a great many people in our great country.
That mixing is part of what makes America great.
We are a blended family.
Ethnicity questions should be deleted from all these sorts of reports and surveys.
Skip the optional ones. Lie to the rest. Give them the data they deserve.
...is less than you would expect based on the US population (assuming race-blinded hiring and proportional applications, etc.). Based on the last census, the US is 72% White, so 55% is... what terminology do we use? More diverse? Less White?
11% Hispanic at Apple vs. 16.4% in the general population, there's a difference for sure. 7% Black at Apple vs. 12.6% US-wide, and 15% Asian vs. 4.8% US-wide, OK, definite differences there, so if you put Asians in the "non-diversity" group I can see calling that an issue.
As far as gender representation, yeah that's disproportionate, and that's an issue across tech/engineering fields that's been known for a while.
I guess they should have done a survey when Jobs and Woz looked around the room when they started and shut it down immediately. One of them should have been changed out for a minority woman - from the start. What? No minority women around with the talent and ability of these two men? So it wasn't possible?
It still isn't possible. Show me the article with all the hordes of minority or women, high end technologist that can't get hired - but white men are. Show me that and you got something. What about these companies... should we boycott them?
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/women/ 96% Women, shocking sexual discrimination at work there. Yep
But, let me guess, 75% of the employees are under 40.
Let me guess, this does not concern him.
Though not because agism is illegal and the social contract that high minded companies espouse.
There's a lot of misunderstanding here about these statistics. The purpose of releasing these numbers isn't to institute a "quota" system - it's to show that there is fairness in your hiring practice. The biggest criticism here appears to be that one can only hire the talent that is available, whatever race they may be. I agree with this - and if you're hiring practice is fair and open, the demographics of the hirees should closely match the talent pool from which you're hiring from. And for a large enough company (Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc.), the statistical deviation from that mean should be small. Incidentally, in my jurisdiction statistics like these are used to monitor hiring practices and ensure that no discrimination or hidden bias is occurring.
Apple's numbers appear to show a fair hiring practice, as their numbers at a glance match the applicant pools. For example, 10% of US college graduates are black, according to the US census survey, which closely matches their 9% of black non-tech workers. Google's and Yahoo's numbers, on the other hand, showed only 1% of non-tech workers as black. The implication from those numbers is that while the average black college graduate has an equal chance with his white counterpart of getting a job at Apple, he is 10x less likely to obtain a job at Google or Yahoo. That is where the cause for concern arises.
Corporations tend to have a hard time dealing with diversity of thought - pandering using something superficial like internal or external genitalia or melanin content of the skin is the easiest thing to do to hit the "diversity" buzzword.
That being said, there is something to be said about having *some* similarity of thought in corporate culture. I mean, obviously it's not easy to have pro-fracking people work for the Sierra Club, or atheists working for Catholic Charities...there are some corporations out there that rightfully screen (and perhaps unfortunately screen) for a specific type of thinker.
I think the problem Apple has is that it's having mission creep - they're a technology company delving into social issues. I might appreciate some of their corporate choices, and decry others, but their forays into these kinds of topics are generally cynical marketing tools to shape brand image, or more disturbingly, arbitrary displays of power by leadership for their own personal convictions.
Diversity is a social construct.
If they add up the females and non-whites then it'll be more than 125%.
What's their number?
"According to CEO Tim Cook, he's unhappy with Apple's diversity numbers and says Apple is working to improve them"
Here, let me paraphrase what he said. We're going to try our hardest to hire people based on their skin color and gender instead of who is most qualified for the job.
Is it education? Plenty of HS offer CS classes, are enough of the "under represented demographic" (URD) starting here? With the quota system in place at most state colleges, if you happen to be an URD you have a higher degree of chance of getting into the program you want. There are also plenty of solid CS programs that are available via online delivery and then you have to start in the field.
Is it the "field" that is hard to get into? I'd say yes. I have a Masters in Information Assurance and a CISSP and I have been fielding interviews left and right to land an IA gig. They just don't want anybody and you have to find your niche and develop it. Do the URD perceive this as racist/sexist behavior when really its just the way the game is played?
Is it the "scene"? Are the URD not aware that just about everyone in IT is a bit of a weirdo and have a hard time socializing with ourselves let alone someone new? We all just basically ignore and avoid one-on-one and intra-personal communication unless we absolutely have too. Very common to have one-way conversations. Not normal just the way a lot of us are.
Is it "cultural"? Is there some barrier that makes a segment of the URD simply not want to pursue it? At either a cultural, societal, human level? Considering that you can do a lot of this work from home, it'd be ideal for working mothers, or, the disabled. But, where are they?
I just know of so many positions for all aspects within the IT field that they'll take anyone. I'm listening to interviews for a network engineer at my current company that can do modeling. They are willing to take me and my experience with OpNet is strictly from an academic stand point via my class labs. I just have another full-time commitment so I can't. A PM was walking around begging for security engineers. They don't care who, they just want a body that can do the work.
What is it exactly?
posting diversity numbers is racist. I am offended.
I am offended that they categorize their employees by skin color.
I am offended that they count and give statistics on skin color.
I am offended on so many levels.
That is a bad argument. You likely won't Nguyen anyone over with it.
Tim Cook (white, male) is concerned that there are too many whites and males at Apple. I have a good idea how he can help both of those numbers immediately.
This issue is very complicated. First off Apple's numbers are not that bad considering the US itself is a pretty white country.
Here's the issue, and it is a real one.
Almost every large society has upper class groups and lower class groups. The extreme case is something like India where the caste system was actually enforced and you're pretty much stuck there.
In every one of these societies, the upper class group is probably a good hire at any moment. It's not just a matter of money. It's also a matter of having mentors, parents, connections in your community, high expectations, leadership, knowing how to talk to people...
Now here's a little caveat. I'm speaking heavily from the Asian perspective as that is my heritage. I know many here are commenting from America where they would associate the upper class as 'whites' and the lower class as 'blacks' and they would then suggest a big problem in America is that the class rejects upper class values as being too white.
That is true to the extent it goes. It is one of the reasons even a low class Asian can rise up in the US. They still think of the upper class values as good.
But societies DO TEND to segregate in these groups. It's one of the reasons Asian societies are so heavily family based and obsessed with good families and communities. They keep it in the family, and the extreme poverty and exclusion is attributed to lower class groups as dirty.
It is a real issue. Thinking of things like diversity and societal groups is helpful to the the extent that it goes. I fully understand it is complicated and all the faults with quotas and everything, but thinking about the issue is useful.
Myself, I am a person with a disability, a pretty bad stutter. It is much better now. Does this impact my hiring? Of course it does.
I am also of Indian heritage. Although I received a mainly British education.
First appearances matter and they matter a great deal. Yes, once in a team, these barriers all become meaningless. But how do you get started. The starting point is huge. Who gets first sent to training. Who is assumed on first hire to be the code monkey? Who is assumed to value abstract thinking?
You also get a certain culture within teams that tends to crowd out different thinking individuals. As a bit of a different example, I've been in heavy Indian groups (like 8/10 people were Indian). A culture of heavy work, just get it done regardless of quality, developed on that team. Anyone not of that mindstate would quickly feel excluded and would not perform their best.
Like I said, I am not a big fan of quotas and what not because they don't really create results. They don't change cultures or get the best out of people. But it is definitely something that is useful to ponder and take note when there are grand disparities.
I am guessing a lot of apple employees are under 40 years of age - especially in software development.
I wonder how many Indians work at Apple, vs Indians in general US population?
My last manager said at a staff meeting that HR was pressuring him to hire diversity candidates. His response to them was, 'If you sent me qualified diversity candidates, I would gladly hire them.' Now that you all are fuming mad over the comment, I will tell you that my manager falls into that diversity category. He is African American. How do you feel now?
The complex issues are not that of race, but of economics. The greater the divide of the haves and have nots will prolificate the issue.
As a society we are moving beyond this antique attitude. Even Bill Cosby himself does not subscribe to this philosophy of quotas.
In the conclusions of the study they say that "hardly any better-qualified men were passed over as a result of interventions". However, given the structure of the study, this is only true when the men are forced to compete in a competition with a deliberate sexist bias against them since they did not get to chose their group - it was assigned. Given a choice between applying for a job where the selection criteria are non-biased by gender and one where there is a clear bias which would you choose, assuming that you were the gender biased against? In addition since there is considerable competition in the workplace (for promotions, contracts etc.) it is not clear that by lowering the competition you will actually get the best people for the job. You might get people with better skills but if they cannot use these effectively in a competitive environment their overall performance may be lower.
I agree. No one should be forced to star in Mrs. Doubtfire 2.
I'd say it's pretty much the same now.
But I'm hiring right now. I have 117 resumes on my desk. 116 are males, as best I can tell.
Where are the numbers on left handed, near sighted, Pacific Islanders with flat feet? Who speaks for them?
LOL
but it may well be that at the time of interviews there is no expectation of paying less to women, and that the salary negotiation is a detail after the decision to appoint the individual; that women end up being cheaper is therefore a permanently unexpected bonus, not something which the recruitment process is equipped to take advantage of; no choice is ever being made to employ the cheaper. Therefore men and women will be recruited purely on the basis their skill set.
'55% White' is thrown out there like it's wrong or unjust, but whites actually appear to be underrepresented, as non-Hispanic whites make up ~63% of the population in the US. Better get on that, Mr Cook. Or you could just forget the bullshit and hire people who are the best fit for the job, whatever race/sex they happen to be.
What we can do is hire students. We rarely get female applicants. We hired the last one who applied, she was the daughter of our business manager. She stuck around for like a year, but decided she wanted a job that had night hours (we are a day only shop) and left.
We also are not allowed to discriminate and offer positions to only one gender, or race. EEOC is really big here. If we open a position, it must be open to all.
From Wikipedia, "Of the 43,000 Apple employees in the United States 30,000 work at Apple Stores." Because of this, none of Apple's numbers are comparable to other tech companies. What would be interesting to see is the breakdown for the 13,000 non-store employees. Non-tech vs. tech is not a valid point of comparison unless other tech companies provide numbers using the same criteria, since it's not always entirely obvious who is tech vs. non-tech.
Of course, the real questions are (1) whether the aggregate statistics are of any use to represent current fairness or to drive future policy and (2) if and to what extent specific individuals are disadvantaged due to certain demographic characteristics. I think the aggregate statistics are useless because target numbers do not exist. Sure, the media and CEOs happily decry the current numbers, but then they cowardly balk at stating what the desired targets are. Also, they try to portray that their sense of "fairness" may be focused on individuals, but they selectively pick and choose which individuals are worthy of fairness and which are not. It may be true that it's not fair that a certain black woman doesn't have a tech job, but does the fact that lots of other white men have tech jobs make it any more fair that a specific white man doesn't have a tech job?
Looking at the limited information available on this page, I would be more concerned about the gender disparity than any perceived racial disparity.
Let's make the following assumptions:
1) Apple employs people in many countries, all of whom were counted in this report
2) We do not know the racial mix in the populations of these countries. If it was just the US, 55% white would seem to be less than the population demographic, for instance. From some dim memory, I recall about 10% of the US population being afro-american, not sure what proportion hispanic, asian, or other groups that identify as not white.
3) We could be pretty confident that the gender proportions are close to 50% across most places - this means that 30% of the workers female is not very good. Is 30% better than other similar industries? I don't know. We are a much smaller business, and it's probably better than our numbers.
BTW - when does it become not acceptable to classify 'west european' descent (or similar) as white, when grouping other races and cultures by colour is clearly unacceptable.
Replace half with women and half with non-whites.
Do that for the top ten percent of those paid.
The rest will happen naturally.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How come nobody is interested in diversity within garbage collectors? They are paid well, have stable employment and I've never seen a single female among them.
Sounds about like the demographic, doesn't it?
I'm gonna take a wild guess...... but that's "BAD".
What a surprise. I bet a lot of countries in Mexico are majority hispanic, and I'll even go as far as saying that in Japan, the majority of employees are... let me think now.... Japanese!!!! Wow every country must be racist!!!
So a company that's working in a field where the majority of potential employees are male is employing more men over women. Maybe if comp sci/engineering/math etc fields are made more enticing for women to study in, it becomes less of an issue as they have a more diverse field to recruit from. Not that this should be a story at all - if Apple start hiring non white males just to meet arbitrary diversity targets, rather than hiring the best person for the job, then you have a story
When the workforce produces lopsided results that are apparent in market stats, then it's the government not the private sector that should be acting. If educational norms are still instilling the idea that people should pursue areas that are appropriate for their gender then you have a lopsided workforce as we do. In minority communities where socioeconomic status is disproportionately lower then you are unlikely to seed kids grow up and go to college or some other avenue to acquire a skill set that is marketable.
Many companies do discriminate and deter minority groups for getting a job at their company. But when looking at a company the size of Apple, Google or Microsoft, it becomes apparent the skills required to work at their firms are concentrated in the obvious gender and racial groups reflected in their employee statisctics.
Business hiring practices are the outcome of a poorly managed political states not the cause.
So if the workforce is supposed to represent the population, then I guess Tim Cook would get the best bang for the his hiring buck by bringing in more white women.
Yes, white. According to The US Census Bureau the country is 77.7% white. So while it is important to get the 70% male employees down closer to 49%, that 55% white employee number is even further off the norm.
That is all.
This sort of thing proves that the whole 'gender pay inequality' thing is a myth.
If women really were being paid less on the basis of gender, that would just provide Apple with an opportunity for cheaper workers and in turn, would mean that there would be more female workers than male - if anything.
As you can see, that isn't happening.
Big companies hire for their FUTURE requirements.
Small companies hire for their CURRENT requirements.
Casteism
A great problem there.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
in Melbourne, and out of 130 applicants, only 3 were female. There was a wide mix of different nationalities represented - by far the heaviest concentration of applicants were from Asian countries.
How many are female?