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Apple's Diversity Numbers: 70% Male, 55% White

Posted by Soulskill on from the one-button-issue dept.

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."

36 of 561 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid by Scareduck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow, so we have quotas for Apple employees.

    How about if we have quotas for awesome products?

    --

    Dog is my co-pilot.

    1. Re:Stupid by kbrannen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Gotta agree that's stupid. First, you can only hire people that are available with the skills you're looking for. So if you don't have "diverse applicants", you'll never get "higher numbers".

      Second, I hope he doesn't mean it, but it sounds like Cook want to be more diverse to look more politically correct. If I were a stock holder, I'd be upset. I wouldn't want him be "diverse" so he can look good; I'd want him to hire the best qualified people in a completely "blind" way. If that means 90% are male, or 80% white, or 85% female, or whatever the numbers work out to be because those were the best people to get the job done, then so be it. If the PC-crowd doesn't like it, then they need to encourage more minorities to get the required education and get qualified.

    2. Re:Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If the PC-crowd doesn't like it, then they need to encourage more minorities to get the required education and get qualified.

      Kudos for saying what needed to be said.

      It's time that bullshit like hiring quotas based on sex, race, etc. are dumped for the
      wasteful idiotic bullshit they are.

      There is ONE thing that matters, and that is : who does the best work. If you don't think
      this is true, ask yourself whether you'd rather have a semi-competent pilot flying your airliner
      because the airline was forced to accept hiring quotas, or whether you'd rather have the
      very best pilot available controlling the airliner on which you are a passenger.

      .

    3. Re:Stupid by Noah+Haders · · Score: 3, Interesting

      it's clear that for a company of apple's wealth and reach, the solution isn't to hire diverse applicants, but to produce diverse applicants - invest in education opportunities, scholarships, other programs to bolster the pool of people.

    4. Re:Stupid by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This could fix things. However the people who refuse to acknowledge that the problem even exists won't be the ones to implement the fix and will probably claim it's a waste of effort, or that it's quotas in the schools.

    5. Re:Stupid by electrosoccertux · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If I were a stock holder, I'd be upset. I wouldn't want him be "diverse" so he can look good; I'd want him to hire the best qualified people in a completely "blind" way. If that means 90% are male, or 80% white, or 85% female, or whatever the numbers work out to be because those were the best people to get the job done, then so be it.

      until you catch negative PR blitz that feminists picket and blacks boycott, which the media loves to pick up because You're Apple

    6. Re:Stupid by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In my average IT class, we started with 20% females and finished with about 5% females.

      I.e. they dropped at a higher rate. Most were not obsessed with computers enough to excel.

      That creates a challenging pool to hire from.

      Perhaps if IT people were not expected to be as obsessed and asocial as they are, it wouldn't happen.

      There were zero IT parties in 4 years of collage. Heck my DND club had at least a couple parties a year.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    7. Re:Stupid by lisaparratt · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or, another way of looking at it: they met their future colleagues, and bailed while the gettin' was good.

    8. Re: Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      RACIST SEXIST NEANDERTHAL PIG! How dare you, breathe the same air as we Smart and Sophisticated (SS) people! When Hillary becomes President, we'll send you to totenkamp with your white trash buddy Bubba!

    9. Re:Stupid by mlk · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I come from the same camp, hire the best person for the role. Definitely.

      But best is not just "technically best" but also "team fit best" and "not a dick" and "can communicate with the team" and various other little things. What this can mean is that the team unconsciously equates "best team fit" as "same as the rest of the team". The management should step in if this happens and look at ways to fixing what is a problem and reports like the one performed by Mr Apple is one quick way to measure if this is happening.

      --
      Wow, I should not post when knackered.
    10. Re:Stupid by GuB-42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This study is interesting as it doesn't show that affirmative action itself has a positive effect. The simple knowledge that affirmative action is in place is sufficient, like some kind of placebo effect.

      The idea is : women can win if they try but they don't try unless we tell them they have an unfair and in many cases unnecessary advantage.

    11. Re:Stupid by BitZtream · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The results of that 'study' are subjective and the study was biased from the start to show results that favor affirmative action.

      Your study is bunk. It starts off by finding qualified individuals, then claims because it puts a diverse group in competition that its emulating affirmative action, which is entirely not the case.

      Yes, I read the link.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    12. Re:Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think this may be a good point here. I've known a lot of women in my life, and the "super-gorgeous blond" woman, if that's true, is probably used to guys falling over themselves to talk to her. Well, in the CS crowd, we weren't jocks, and lets be honest, we're not the most attractive fellows. Most of us have probably been rejected, and at least in my personal case, quite cruely on several occasions. I'm going to be very hesitant to go talk to this "super-gorgeous blond" simply because I know nothing about her, but people similar (looking, yes superficial, but it's the first indicator I have to go off of) to her have been very mean to me in the past.

      Did she ask, did she present herself as being friendly. We're not typically assholes, but you do tend to have to make an effort to get to know us.

    13. Re:Stupid by QuesarVII · · Score: 5, Insightful

      the kind of person who thinks there is not any inequality in access to education to begin with

      There is definitely inequality in the system, but it goes both ways. As a white male born to middle income parents, I was not eligble for the vast majority of scholarships I seeked. Despite having good grades in honors/AP classes and getting a very high SAT score, I got squat.

      Why? It's because so many of the scholarships were specialized to various minority groups and to females. Things like this are why I personally have a problem with education programs targetting specific groups. Equality means equality, or at least it should.

    14. Re:Stupid by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Before I respond, let me be clear: I'm NOT arguing that quotas are the best way to fix this. Nor do I necessarily think Apple even has a "problem" here -- as others have noted, hiring pools in tech jobs tend to contain a lot of men, and white people are in fact the majority of people in the U.S.

      However...

      There is ONE thing that matters, and that is : who does the best work.

      While I agree with you to some extent, the reality is that for most of history, that has NOT been the "one thing that matters." Getting a job was not just about whether you could do the best work, but whether you "looked like" other people at the company (maybe same race, sex, whatever), whether you went to the same school that the hiring manager did, whether your dad played golf with somebody who had some "pull" in the company, etc. And because of those latter things, even people who aren't really racist per se end up hiring people who are "more like them," because the college they went to also was skewed more white than most and the golf course is almost all for male white people, etc.

      I'm NOT defending quotas here or saying they are a good solution to these problems. But the reality is that "who does the best work" is often only one of many criteria that goes into screening candidates or selecting someone to hire. And even though those mechanisms may not necessarily be overtly unfair regarding race or gender (though they may be unfair in other ways), they end up reproducing a result that is balanced toward maintaining the status quo.

      And that also doesn't take into account the reality that there are in fact huge numbers of actual racist and sexist people who still live and work in the U.S. It's not polite to talk about it anymore, but it doesn't mean the attitudes aren't still around -- and just because one guy on the hiring committee doesn't explicitly say, "Let's move on from these three candidates because they're black" doesn't necessarily mean he isn't harboring prejudice.

      So, I think it's important to recognize that "who does the best work" is actually NOT the only (or even primary) criterion for who ultimately gets hired in many positions. Some companies may actually succeed in doing that, and I applaud them. But there are often a lot of other subjective factors at play, and some of those may have racist or sexist effects (either intentional or unintentional).

    15. Re:Stupid by SecurityTheatre · · Score: 5, Interesting

      1) This study assumed an equal pool of men and women (it breaks, badly, if there is an unequal pool)
      2) This study assumed or selected men and women who are very closely matched in terms of problem solving skill
      3) This study simply concluded that affirmative action does not impact "the ability of the group to cooperate".

      I hire for technical computer-related positions. I advertise in all the standard places, ranging from craigslist to the variety of job boards, as well as on our website. I will interview EVERY SINGLE woman who sends me a resume with even the most remote bit of experience. To contrast, I only interview about 5% of men who do.

      I have hired EVERY SINGLE women who has come through the door for an interview. EVERY SINGLE ONE. (That is 3 people in the last 2 years)

      I hire about 2% of men who apply. My standards for the men we hire are EXTREMELY strict.

      I still hire over 80% men.

      I'm not sure what kind of affirmative action would be required to rectify this, but it certainly isn't up to my HR department to go out and train more women, or convince them to look for jobs.

      My boss is female. Our CEO is an immigrant who is decidedly not white. But we end up with a bunch of white guys applying for positions. That's just the nature of it and Apple, being ONLY 55% white and 60% male has done something remarkable with their diversity... In my experience, that level of diversity is unheard of...

    16. Re:Stupid by wired_parrot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Problem is you are considered RACIST for suggesting they get a better education and not follow the ghetto culture.

      It is racist to apply broad stereotypes to a class of people. The black people applying for those Apple jobs are college graduates, most likely coming from a middle-class background. The average black applicant has as much in common with the "inner-city ghetto culture", as you call it, as the average white applicant has in common with "white trailer-park trash".

  2. Re:That can't be right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're absolutely right.

    You may be stupid.

  3. Remediating American's Victimization of Indians by Baldrson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Its good to see Apple recognizes America's history of victimizing Indians requires remediation by affirmative action favoring the hiring of Indians.

    --
    Seastead this.
  4. It's easy to fix by msobkow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  5. Jobs to Cook: DFIU by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >> 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.

    1. Re:Jobs to Cook: DFIU by Yoda222 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This goes in the 50% of marketing. If you have a diversity policy, it's a diversity policy. If you communicate over your diversity policy, it's PR.

  6. Why the backlash? by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  7. Quick rule of thumb by nrasch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...)

  8. Constantly surprised at the reactions by unimacs · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:Next, Samsung by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Funny

    we demand that Samsung engineering department show us their diversity porfolio!

    Samsung is proud to report their diversity numbers:

    45% Kim
    38% Lee
    7% Park
    6% Choi
    4% Other

    Samsung strongly believes in promoting a diverse workforce. We currently have a company-wide mandate to raise our Park percentage to 11% by 2018.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  10. 55% White by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:55% White by maliqua · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually if you read the article or even looked at the pictures on the report you'd see that the racial numbers are based on US employees and the gender numbers are based on the world employees

  11. Re:I'm an Apple, I am male by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

    Say what you want, but Apple is the only company I know where all workers lost their Jobs and could still go to work the next day!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  12. Re:Why 'diversity'? by maliqua · · Score: 5, Insightful

    everyone doesn't.

    It's just the new acceptable racism. It's the same as the old kinds of racism, socially accepted at the time.

    I guess we just wait for history to decide if they're right or we're right.

  13. Re:How about some real number? by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yawn.

    If women really made less than men for doing the same job, why would any company ever hire men?

    Oh, OK, the companies are EVIL, but they're also really stupid, right?

  14. Or don't be... by popo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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 : )
    1. Re:Or don't be... by jrumney · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Apple doesn't just hire computer science and technical graduates.

    2. Re:Or don't be... by Imrik · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about, what's the percentage of qualified job applicants?

  15. equality by key figures by Tom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  16. That's a problem we have by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.