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Amazon Releases (Not Many) Details On Its Workforce Demographics
theodp (442580) writes Late to the table on disclosing workforce demographics, Amazon posted a diversity report to its website on Halloween, revealing that its global work force is 63% male and 37% female, while in the U.S., its work force is 60% white, 15% black, 13% Asian and 9% Hispanic. More lacking in granular detail than the less-than-transparent diversity data provided by its tech peers, Rainbow PUSH said Amazon's numbers were not as good as they appeared, and criticized the company for a lack of candor. "Their general work force data released by Amazon seems intentionally deceptive, as the company did not include the race or gender breakout of their technical work force," PUSH said in a statement. "The broad assumption is that a high percentage of their black and Latino employees work in their warehouses." Following the lead of other tech companies, Diversity at Amazon suggests the e-tailer's undisclosed-but-presumed lack of tech diversity could be blamed on "female students and students of color [who] are opting out of technology and engineering" as early as middle school and high school. Taking a page from Google's playbook, Amazon pointed to its involvement with the Anita Borg Institute, Code.org, Girls Who Code, and the National Center for Women & Information Technology as ways the company's addressing tech diversity deficiencies.
Not the droids you are looking for
That organization has embodied weaponized identity politics to such an extent that an article quoting them non-ironically deserves dismissal.
What is the diversity deficiency really mean? Asians are overrepresented as a share of the general population, there seems to be underrepresention in whites. Why do Asians not count for the purposes of this diversity calculation?
Let's be honest and admit you really want more blacks admitted at the expense of other groups. That's what the diversity these race baiters really want.
Why are Women and Minorities (not including Male Asians) being permitted to opt out of technology education? If anyone is going to take this problem seriously, those under-served communities need to be disproportionally encouraged to peruse technology education.
Comparing Amazon to Google or Facebook, is really apples-to-oranges, given that they're in very different businesses.
I'm just not sure how much I hold them responsible for lack of diversity in their ranks. Show me the diversity in the set of resumes they receive and interviews they conduct and I'll get on your bandwagon, but until then my experience says that the reasons for lack of diversity begin much earlier in the funnel.
Yeah, it's much easier to dismiss an article based on history than to engage with the actual arguments and numbers that are presented. /s
Not everyone can do the job, you need the best. If there's an opening and 1000 white guys apply and one black guy applies, does the latter get the job just because he's black? How is that fair? They should all be interviewed and may the most skilled win. In the warehouse, anyone can do that job, and only there should diversity be equal.
Amazon has 60% white people, whilst the US has far above 60% white people.
Without reading the article I presume that it does not treat this as a problem.
Trouble is, you're assuming that hiring policies are fair and unbiased to begin with. I can't say anything about Amazon in particular, but generally and historically, they're not.
One of the ways society has tried to combat this bias is through affirmative action (equality). It's not a "fair" system, but it was never meant to be. What it is, is a way for people to be confronted with their own biases and hopefully erase a few of them. I'm not saying it's a great system, but I haven't seen a lot of alternatives.
Hire on merit, stop victim Olympics
All well and good, but what percentage are Jedi?
Polyglot?
TransSpecies?
What percentage have cats? Dogs?
What percentage are folders? Wadders?
And the best one - Vulcans?
They'll get no more of my money until Bezos has a sex change.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Google, Facebook, etc. need to just come out and say it: there are simply not that many blacks and Hispanics getting the basic credentials required to even sit for the interview. Demanding "diversity" then is literally demanding a lowering of standards to the point that people who would never be hired there can have a shot. There's no other way to read the demand. It's magical thinking at best and at worst, resembles the sort of logic that in Africa lead to confiscating white-owned farms and giving them to black Africans who had no clue how to run a farm.
I keep hearing about "women in technology " and such on Slashdot. Is there some new programming language or something that involves the worker using their genitals to do the job? Something new that makes one's crotch relevant in IT?
"The broad assumption is that a high percentage of their black and Latino employees work in their warehouses."
You mean they discriminate against White and Asian warehouse employees?
who cares what jesse jackass and his race baiting pimps think? Not me. Hell, they don't even care about diversity as long as they get their reparations.
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"while in the U.S., its work force is 60% white, 15% black,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity
White 223,553,265 72.4 %
Non-Hispanic Black or African American 37,685,848 12.2 %
Guess I'm not clear why I should expect the percentage of black workers would be any different than it is now.
The US is 72% white, yet only 60% of their employees are white.
It's time to put pressure on Amazon to start hiring more underrepresented whites to improve their diversity numbers.
I once worked with a woman software engineer who wanted to get fired for the severance package. She started coming in at noon and leaving around 3:00. She hardly did anything, hoping that management would let her go at the next RIF. Instead management wanted to keep her around to help their demographic numbers look good so more capable males were let go instead.
Amazon demographic of African Americans: 15%
USA 2010 census African Americans: 12.6%
There we have it, proof of racism within Amazon. I eagerly await Jessie Jackson's protests of non-black victims.
...your workforce is 100% human.
Race is an illusion, an arbitrary social construct with no biological basis - using it as some sort of measure of proper employment ratios is just as useful as trying to get a proper mix of Firefly and Star Wars fans.