Google Diversity Report Straight Out of 'How To Lie With Statistics' Playbook

theodp writes: Among the books recommended by Bill Gates for beach reading this summer is How to Lie With Statistics, the published-in-1954-but-timely-as-ever introduction to the (mis)use of statistics. So, how can one lie with statistics? "Sometimes it is percentages that are given and raw figures that are missing," explains the book, "and this can be deceptive too." So, does this explain Google's just-released Diversity Report and the accompanying chock-full-o-percentages narrative (find-all-%-image), which boasts "the Black community in grew [sic] by 38 percent", while the less-impressive raw figures — e.g., the number of Google employees increased by 5,928, but the ranks of Black females only increased by 35 (less than 0.6% of the net increase) — are relegated to a PDF of its EEO-1 Report that's linked to in the fine-print footnotes? To be fair to Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple and Amazon didn't want people to see their EEO-1 numbers, either.

Comments

Diversity

[asylumx]

The big lie, I guess.

Re:Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

The big lie, I guess.

A many layered and complete response.

The lie that it's "good" inherently.

The lie that it is there.

The lie that seeing it, will result in fairness. (It doesn't, it's just another kind of discrimination, only this time it hurts both the employee and the employer.)

At least, we get to talk about race this time instead of just SJW branded misandry.

Way to go slashdot editors, you have achieved diversity in SJW subjects.

Re:Diversity

[Chas]

Pretty much.

What color a person's skin is, or what equipment they keep between their legs isn't as important as the knowledge they have in their head and their skill at utilizing it.

Slotting someone into a position ahead of a worthier candidate, simply because they're a certain race/gender, rather than because they're the best candidate is idiocy of the highest order.

It's not Google/Apple/whoever's problem that a given race or gender has historically been downtrodden. Google/Apple/Whoever didn't do the treading, so why should they be guilt-tripped into settling for mediocrity for some lie about "equality"?

Because what's being pushed here is not about "equal" treatment. It's about "special" treatment.

Re:Diversity

[NotDrWho]

Part of the lie is that somehow diversity is somehow going to help your business. "It will open us up to new ideas and a new audience" usually just turns into "Everyone is walking on eggshells around the new hire, the new hire isn't as qualified or hard-working as candidates we passed over, and if we ever try to fire the new hire we're going to get sued for discrimination."

Re:Diversity

[kabulykos]

And perhaps when such assessments of worthiness become as exact a science as you presume them to be, such nonsense can be done away with. My experience with getting jobs in tech — and my hearing of interviews in other fields of employment — suggest at best a loose relationship between most interviewing techniques and many skills actually relevant to completing projects in a corporate environment.

The folks that run these companies are bright people, and they're more than able to decide if it furthers their interests to (publicly, at least) go on about diversity in their employee statistics. Corporations may be legal persons, but they themselves are not capable of feeling guilt.

And you of course remain free to found your own company devoid of such considerations.

Re:Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

There are biases. Conscious or sub-conscious and everyone has them. People like to fool themselves into thinking that they are objective and that they can fight their own prejudices. And it's not just about race or gender. When I hear folks with those thick Southern accents, I find myself considering them of lesser intelligence.

And what about the prejudice against age? Zuckerberg actually said that older people "don't get it" - which I find funny since old people love facebook since they can be a part of their grandkid's life - sort of.

And sometimes the prejudice is buried in the interview process. All those stupid questions that are asked will only allow a certain population of people because they answered the question in a way that the interviewer wants it answered.

And as far as race or gender is concerned, people's perception of their skills isn't accurate. I have witnessed it first hand -as a white guy - how others perceive women and black people. They're perceived as not being as good.

And then there's positive prejudice. How many think that Asians are BETTER than white people? I actually had a development manager prefer Indians because "they are bred to sit in front of the computer all day."

I think this should be a wakeup call on the inherent deficiencies in recruitment and hiring practices.

Re:Diversity

[bickerdyke]

And perhaps when such assessments of worthiness become as exact a science as you presume them to be, such nonsense can be done away with. My experience with getting jobs in tech — and my hearing of interviews in other fields of employment — suggest at best a loose relationship between most interviewing techniques and many skills actually relevant to completing projects in a corporate environment.

Yes, but that's a completly different matter, usually based on outsourcing the first candidate screening to HR, or basing the whole recruiting process on mindlessly copying what someone read in a magazine on how (ironically) Google does their recruitment process to find the best and most creative tech skills.

I haven't heard either that (in large enough corporations) gender or skin color were part of the interview process either.

Re:Diversity

[fche]

... not to those who make their living championing the issue.

Re:Diversity

[weilawei]

Everyone is walking on eggshells around the new hire

Balls. Grow some. I don't care if you're pink, purple, and green all over in the worst re-imagining of Picasso. You either have the technical chops and willingness to learn & work, or you don't. Nothing else is relevant.

As an aside, I'd rather work with someone who was a complete asshole, but often right, than a person who was always nice, but often incorrect.

Re:Diversity

[funwithBSD]

You say that now, wait until you have gone through the diversity training and have been reconditioned...

Re:Diversity

[LWATCDR]

I still think a big part of it is location. SF has large asian and white communities and only tiny African American and Hispanic communities. Oakland's African American community is also shrinking but Oakland never had a large educated African American community.
If Google wants a more diverse workforce it needs to open centers in areas with more diversity like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and South Florida. Places where you have "Traditionally Black Colleges" and or a long established Hispanic community.

Re:Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

Google/Apple/Whoever didn't do the treading, so why should they be guilt-tripped into settling for mediocrity for some lie about "equality"?

Because it's in their own financial and quality reasons for doing so. Look, I know this is an unpopular stance here on Slashdot, where middle class white man-children think they invented the universe because they can use emacs, but if a group of people is "historically discriminated against," and there is no ACTUAL genetic or biological reason which you can point to that demonstrates that they are deterministically incapable of doing math and science, then there is no reason to believe that members of a disadvantaged and underrepresented minority are underrepresented for any reason except for their "historically downtodden" state.

This means that there are, quite literally, tens of thousands of people who are *perfectly capable* of being excellent software engineers - just as good as you - but who are not working in that field because they've been told, in effect "sorry, Black dudes, and girls of all colors can't do this stuff. Maybe you'd like dealing drugs or baking cakes instead?"

Now, to your initial point: why should Apple, Google, et. al. care?

Because if they increase the labor pool, they have more and better engineers to hire from (meaning - better products!), and they pay less for that labor (meaning - lower payrolls, or MORE engineers for the same amount of money).

You may not LIKE that your job has more competition, but pretending that these companies have no interest in seeing capable people of all backgrounds entering the workforce is just idiotic. They get more, and better qualified, engineers, and they pay less for them.

And enough with the "settle for mediocrity" bullshit, yeah? First of all, the true "genius" programmers are a vanishingly small percentage of the population. The bad news: You're not one of them. The good news: companies have been 'settling for mediocrity' all along, as evidenced by the fact that all of the frothing neckbeards on Slashdot have jobs in IT.

Nobody is arguing that companies should go out and hire brain-damaged people who can't read to do these jobs - they're talking about addressing the situation through increased educational outreach - you know, giving other people all the benefits and privileges that you had as a middle class white kid growing up in the suburbs.

It's a tough world, cupcake. Get used to it.

Re:Diversity

[msk]

Google should have telecommuting for all its employees, then it could attract talent from all over.

Re:Diversity

[AmiMoJo]

Slotting someone into a position ahead of a worthier candidate, simply because they're a certain race/gender, rather than because they're the best candidate is idiocy of the highest order.

*sigh*

I don't know how many times this has to be said, but that isn't what they are doing or what anyone is suggesting. The selection process is still done on merit alone, no question. All the effort goes into getting more people from under-represented groups up to the necessary standard and to actually apply for the jobs in the first place.

For example, if you look at a network liked LinkedIn you find that in workplaces that are mostly male the people working there are mostly connected to other males. So when a job comes up and people are asked to contact people they think might be suitable on LinkedIn, there is a natural bias towards more of the same. By making an effort to advertise the job to more women the organization can increase the number of women working for it, but ultimately the decision about who to employ is still based purely on merit alone.

Re:Diversity

[tehcyder]

Slotting someone into a position ahead of a worthier candidate, simply because they're a certain race/gender, rather than because they're the best candidate is idiocy of the highest order.

But not as idiotic as denying someone a position simply because they're a certain race/gender.

Re:Diversity

[tehcyder]

isn't as qualified or hard-working as candidates we passed over, and if we ever try to fire the new hire we're going to get sued for discrimination

I've worked with four people 100% exactly like this, from the CS engineer who didn't understand what a directory was to the un-fireable person who showed up to work maybe 20 minutes/week.

You probably need to work in organisations with half decent performance appraisal and HR systems then.

Re:Diversity

[tehcyder]

I'd rather work with someone who was a complete asshole, but often right, than a person who was always nice, but often incorrect.

Personally, I prefer people who are both nice and right, but maybe I'm just an old hippy.

The fact is that it is much easier to be an asshole all the time, than right all the time.

Re:Diversity

[The Raven]

Your comment is absolutely true. But that's not the whole story... in a study a few years back, "applicants with white-sounding names were 50% more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with black-sounding names." This is a real problem that affects minorities, so while preferential treatment is also a problem the biases have to change quite far before it's likely that minorities are getting actual preferential treatment.

Re:Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is pro-equality: they support treating people equally, regardless of gender or ethnic background. If that leads to a diverse workforce that features people of different colours in proportion to the global population ... that's nice, but it's not the point.

Their critics are pro-diversity: they support a diverse workplace that features people of different colours in proportion to the global population. If that can be achieved by treating people equally, regardless of gender or ethnic background ... that's nice, but it's not the point.

Pro-equality versus pro-diversity. That's the issue here.

Re:Diversity

[mrchaotica]

As an Atlantan, I'll tell you that while black people are common, black software engineers are still pretty rare. Of the three black people [in technical roles] I work with, two are actual immigrants from Africa and the third is a QA person, not a developer. I think black engineers are more common in other fields, such as civil engineering.

Also, the historically black colleges around here, such as Morehouse and Spelman, are excellent places to look if you want to hire a doctor, lawyer or businessperson, but if they even offer computer science as a major they're certainly not well-known for it.

Nevertheless, I'll certainly agree with the idea that Google should open a development office in Atlanta! (Or that they should allow full-time telecommuting, like the other responder suggested.)

Re:Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

I use to work at HP. They had drunk deeply from the holy waters of the well of Diversity. The plant was in Boise, ID, an area not known for having a lot of blacks. They had a summer internship program called SEED. We called it Minority Tryouts. They would bring in dozens of "diversity candidates" and run them through the mill. Only a few were hired. Some would call that racist. Their diversity program caused massive problems on development teams. One firmware team I worked with had 6 people, one of which was a diversity candidate. He had a few years of experience, but was simply incapable of writing quality code. When crunch time hit, everyone else on the team had to take up the slack. Not good.

Re:Diversity

[kaiser423]

Yup. But Google's point (not in this article, but in an interview I believe) is that right now there's only a certain number of minority software engineers. There's a finite quantity at this instant. ALL of the SV tech companies are fighting over them -- trading them back and forth essentially as the employee hops due to better job offers. So, Google's numbers may go up, but Facebook's may go down as a result. This is why Google, Facebook, et al all have huge programs supporting STEM for minority elementary, middle and high school students. That's the only way that it can be fixed, and why these reports are silly. The only report we really need is unemployment %'s in the industry by minority status. My totally uninformed guess is that that statistic looks pretty fair, if not in favor of minorities...

Re:Diversity

[AmiMoJo]

You raise a very interesting question. The current supply of under-represented candidates is known to be low, but exactly how low is a matter of debate. Some argue that better recruiting techniques bring more of them in, but others like yourself argue that they are just stealing them away from other companies. There is some evidence in the studies that have been done that suggests many candidates are being attracted into the industry, or back to it after they left (because there used to be more), but I don't have any hard numbers at the moment.

As you say, education is the key.

Re:Diversity

[ChaoticCoyote]

All true. That does not excuse companies from being misleading for PR reasons. If companies were up-front about WHY they have the demographics they do -- society does provide female and minority candidates -- it might provide impetuous for change. Hiding reality rarely, if ever, improves anything.

Re:Diversity

[AmiMoJo]

I don't think trying to create more diversity in SF by hiring people from further away and bringing them in is necessarily a bad thing. Maybe bad for housing, a separate issue, but rather than going to where the concentrations are I think it's better to try to reduce the concentrations by encouraging people to move around.

Re:Diversity

[AmiMoJo]

I've actually done this using my real name and a variation of it. My real name didn't get an interview, the fake "English" sounding one did. I didn't go, but man it was depressing.

Re:Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

There are biases. Conscious or sub-conscious and everyone has them.

Over a couple of decades, I have interviewed hundreds of people while working at Silicon Valley companies. I have interviewed exactly one black applicant in that time. Racial disparities in employment are primarily a reflection of who applies, not of any "biases" on the part of interviewers.

Re:Diversity

[LWATCDR]

" but rather than going to where the concentrations are I think it's better to try to reduce the concentrations by encouraging people to move around."

Ever think that an African American might not want to move away from where his culture is? Or a Hispanic person?
Frankly I would hate to live in the SF area. I like the level of diverse culture that South Florida offers. Not just in race but economics and urban and rural lifestyles.

The Bay area just does not seem like a place I would want to live and I bet a lot of other people feel the same way.

Re:Diversity

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

This means that there are, quite literally, tens of thousands of people who are *perfectly capable* of being excellent software engineers - just as good as you - but who are not working in that field because they've been told, in effect "sorry, Black dudes, and girls of all colors can't do this stuff. Maybe you'd like dealing drugs or baking cakes instead?"

But that's fiction. Black kids aren't being told that at all. Instead, many deliberately avoid academic and STEM fields because their own peers disapprove of it.

Nobody is arguing that companies should go out and hire brain-damaged people who can't read to do these jobs - they're talking about addressing the situation through increased educational outreach

The poverty and lack of achievement associated with African Americans is not primarily a consequence of discrimination or lack of outreach.

You can't address a problem if you don't understand its causes.

Re:Diversity

[LWATCDR]

Frankly I would like to see them open one in the Palm Beach area of Florida but yes Atlanta would IMHO probably help attract a more diverse workforce as well.

Re:Diversity

[Gr8Apes]

I've actually done this using my real name and a variation of it. My real name didn't get an interview, the fake "English" sounding one did. I didn't go, but man it was depressing.

Well, what that proves is that it isn't about race, but name bias. I'll bet something like Bjork ranks low as well.

Re:Diversity

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

So let me get this straight -- increasing chicks in a business dominated by shy nerdvirgins is supposed to increase their skill and output because diversity?

Re:Diversity

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I recall way back when at U-Mich talking to a fellow near-savant (for lack of a better term, full of ourselves). We were discussing intelligence and he was convinced it was almost entirely genetics. I wasn't so sure.

But I did note the seductive desire to see it as ingrained rather than achieved through effort, a romantic story notion. Which is bizarre if you think about it -- you feel better about your brainpower because you inherited it than because you worked for it.

Then we went and I DM'd Keep on the Borderlands for him and his Asian buddy, using a giant 1" square roll of plastic marker-wipe roll my dad swiped from layout at his plant. The entire cave system fit on it so we could use figurines on it. Oh the life of the privileged!

Re:Diversity

[KGIII]

Palm Beach and Atlanta are not too far apart, really, so I think one could move to the other location fairly easily. However, well, I think we should compromise and they should open an office in Panama City Beach, FL.

Re:Diversity

[KGIII]

Your username is Kaiser. I am not sure how unbiased you can be. ;)

Re:Diversity

[KGIII]

What about the person who is formally known as Prince? I bet not even Burger King calls him back.

Re:Diversity

[Dragonslicer]

This means that there are, quite literally, tens of thousands of people who are *perfectly capable* of being excellent software engineers - just as good as you - but who are not working in that field because they've been told, in effect "sorry, Black dudes, and girls of all colors can't do this stuff. Maybe you'd like dealing drugs or baking cakes instead?"

But that's fiction. Black kids aren't being told that at all. Instead, many deliberately avoid academic and STEM fields because their own peers disapprove of it.

Just to be pedantic, that would mean that they are being told that they can't (or at least shouldn't) do it. It doesn't necessarily have to be an adult that teaches children what jobs their gender, ethnicity, etc. can and cannot do. "Peer pressure" has been an issue at least since I was in grade school.

Re:Diversity

[Gr8Apes]

If you check the name and person out, you'll understand why I used it and not Prince.

Re:Diversity

[Dragonslicer]

As an aside, I'd rather work with someone who was a complete asshole, but often right, than a person who was always nice, but often incorrect.

I wouldn't. When the asshole is incorrect, they'll still be an asshole. They'll probably be an even bigger asshole because you dared challenge their wisdom.

Re:Diversity

[butchersong]

The selection process is still done on merit alone, no question

As someone that has been involved in the hiring process at a large tech company that has not been my experience.

Re:Diversity

[Chas]

If these people are "perfectly capable", let them apply like any other prospective employee.

I have zero issue with capable people filling positions. I don't care WHAT their background is. I'm just concerned with "can they do the job", and "can they convince me they'll do it *better* than the other 500 applicants"? Whether it's some Ivy League schmuck or a guy who put himself through a vo-tech. Black, white red, yellow, green, blue, whatever. Man/woman/???, whatever.

I simply think that the positions ought to go to the people best able to fill it. Instead of "settling" someone who is less capable, just because someone of their approximate dermal hue or gender was disadvantaged 200 years ago and someone feels they're "owed" something.

And hey, if, at some point, that means someone out-competes me for a job? Kudos for them. I just object to being screened out of a job because my parents happened to birth a WASPish boy baby and the job goes to a halfwit who's incapable because they're conveniently placed on some ethnic or gender quota.

Re:Diversity

[tnk1]

While a company like Google likely has all sorts go through their doors, I can tell you what my experience with hiring is.

Working in a small company, I frequently have quite a bit of exposure to the raw talent pool. Sometimes HR gets involved, but just as often, I am talking to the recruiters myself.

There is the occasional woman. There is the occasional black man. What there is not are both black and female. Google having only 35 black females mirrors my experience. The percentage of resumes of black females, even for junior positions, is likely so low to begin with that I never see one and Google probably only sees a few hundred.

And that is even before any question of their skills or experience come up.

I'm wary of a scenario where the first black female resume in my 5 years as a manager will someday come across my desk and she just happens to not have the skills I require for the job and don't hire her. Am I suddenly discriminating in my hiring practices because I have rejected 100% of my black female candidates? Do I hire her because "diversity"?

More to the point, if I had two identically skilled candidates, and one happened to be a black female, do I derive an advantage from hiring her over the other person?

Re:Diversity

[KGIII]

Alright. I read that, what is your point? That she was fired just like 20 other people in a clear company policy that has nothing to do with her race, gender, or lawsuit?

Re:Diversity

[phantomfive]

I recall way back when at U-Mich talking to a fellow near-savant (for lack of a better term, full of ourselves). We were discussing intelligence and he was convinced it was almost entirely genetics.

For a while, this theory was being popularized by William Shockley. His push mostly ended when he got on the radio, and the host asked him if his own kids were smart. Apparently old Bill didn't think they were.

Re:Diversity

[LaurenCates]

The argument, as I understand it, is that women provide a "different perspective" and offer possibilities for "new solutions".

Which is bunk, really (at least in STEM fields; in other more creative fields, a change in perspective might make a difference). Because if women consistently offered such successful outside-the-box thinking, all women would be worthy of promotion just for showing up*. This also assumes that most men think alike and if given a certain problem will always come to the same conclusion as if all men are the same**.

Most women, like most men, aren't visionaries by some inherent characteristic, and most had the same level and quality of education. Why there's an automatic assumption that women somehow have such a usefully divergent set of neural pathways, I'm not really sure about.

*Because we need more female CEOs, naturally.
**But that isn't a sexist assumption if we're talking about men, right?

Re:Diversity

[LaurenCates]

And on the other side of the argument, I'd hate to think that I was hired to meet a quota, especially in a place where the reputation of those already hired under the same system results in poor candidates.

Because people would automatically assume that I, too, was poor right from the gate.

And even worse, might blow smoke at me for how "good" my performance was in case my predecessor on the quota list did a particularly great deal of tongue-wagging to HR, who, being the good little set of diversity-promoting drones they are, fell right in line to avoid getting a lawsuit.

I'd hate to believe I'm being overly inflated while being constantly undermined. It cripples me as an employee and it kills any ability I have to be a member of the team.

Re:Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what SJWs actually believe!

Re:Diversity

[david_thornley]

It might well do that. Get a lot of similar people together, and they're likely to focus on the same solutions. (Not that racial diversity necessarily means anything: when my son was in a University daycare, we met some of the other parents. All sorts of skin colors, nationalities, religions, etc., and we all thought similarly in many ways.) Moreover, if a company hires based on irrelevant factors, they probably don't get the best possible people, and in some situations the numbers suggest suboptimal hiring practices.

Re:Diversity

[david_thornley]

I agree with much of what you say, but I don't know that there are any problems with Google hiring practices. Google can only hire people who apply, and if the pool of competent applicants is heavily slanted there's not much they can do about it. (They do have some diversity initiatives.) From a national point of view, we're doubtless losing out on a lot of good software people who are discouraged for some reason or another, but it looks like most of the discouragement happens before they apply for jobs. Google does try to encourage underrepresented groups to get into software development, which is actually going beyond what they should be expected to do.

Re:Diversity

[KGIII]

I am sorry that it was not clear that it was meant for a humor value.

Re:Diversity

[Gr8Apes]

I apologize for my humor impairment. Not enough caffeine....

Re:Diversity

[AmiMoJo]

General xenophobia, you mean.

Re:Diversity

[MechaStreisand]

"This is why Google, Facebook, et al all have huge programs supporting STEM for minority elementary, middle and high school students"

That is NOT why they are doing that. They are doing that so they can fabricate some evidence for the idea that there's a shortage of tech workers so they can increase the number of H1Bs, who they can treat as indentured servants and drive down wages.

Re:Diversity

[Chas]

Bingo.

I'm sure SOME people get off on "getting over" and "milking the system".

In the long run, it makes for inferior employment opportunities.

Re:Diversity

[terbo]

Insightful comment, but digging further you will find that that bias effects quite a lot more.
For instance, when oppressed people are required to put their race on a test, they do worse.
When children are shown white and black dolls, they invariably consider the white doll 'good'.
This bias is deeply rooted in American culture, language, and history, to a frightening degree.

According to other studie(s) a majority of Americans are subconsciously biased against 'black' people.
Some don't afford the system the possibility of reform, while others don't seem to do enough research.

Re:Diversity

[terbo]

The theory of genetic basis for intelligence is still alive and well.
It has been masked and rationalized to an almost imperceptible degree.
And in other places, it still makes headlines without modification.

Re:Diversity

[terbo]

>> many deliberately avoid academic and STEM fields because their own peers disapprove of it.

Break it down. Where do you get your information from? The addressing of any problems
requires understanding the framework in which they work, which begs the question.

Institutional discrimination, impoverishment from colony establishment, obfuscated history,
and extremely biased education create the problems you speak of.

In some ways, yes, the black kids you talk of are being told they cannot achieve, in
wide-scale ways, from their marketed culture, to their lack of family structures, to their
loss of history, knowledge of who they are in the world, and a myriad of other ways.

Understanding why these things exist leads to one of two conclusions: 1) that for some
reason 'these people' can't seem to get it together, either due to genetic or cultural deficiencies
or that 2) their destruction was systematic, planned, and on-going, in such an extreme way
that precludes all notions of a segregated society where everyone 'gets along'.

The only words of wisdom available now are "don't trust a conquerors history, listen to the oppressed."

Re:Diversity

[The Raven]

I'm aware it affects more, but the discussion was about job seeking and hiring practices, and I remembered that article from a few years back. Bringing up every study on bias ever just dilutes the argument.

Re:Diversity

[edmudama]

Furthermore, studies have been done proving that black-sounding names get 50% fewer callbacks than white sounding names, when the only thing different is the name on otherwise identical resumes.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ruchikatulshyan/2014/06/13/have-a-foreign-sounding-name-change-it-to-get-a-job/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/weekinreview/06Luo.html?_r=0

237,000,000 google hits for "white sounding names get more job interviews"

Re:Diversity

[edmudama]

So, you throw an engineer into an obviously hostile work environment that is pre-judging their abilities negatively, and you wonder why they have trouble executing?

Re:Diversity

[justaguy516]

Its not just about the selection process; it is also about nurturing a person once hired. No interviewing process is 100% accurate and you will never get people who are the exact match for what you need. It is possible that minorities are being hired but then are not fitting in and the organization is not using the resources it has to make it happen.

Re:Diversity

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Break it down. Where do you get your information from?

From African American techie friends and boyfriends.

The only words of wisdom available now are "don't trust a conquerors history, listen to the oppressed."

Yes, why don't you?

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

http://www.tsowell.com/spracec...

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

The economic and social legacy of slavery is not the cause of crime and poverty in the African American community anymore. But instead of listening to reason, you listen to the self-serving lies of politicians and activists.

The "conquerors" are long dead. The fact that I (and you?) happen to have white skin color doesn't make us in any way related to the people who enslaved anybody. Check your racism.

Understanding why these things exist leads to one of two conclusions ... 2) their destruction was systematic, planned, and on-going, in such an extreme way that precludes all notions of a segregated society where everyone 'gets along'.

Well, it's clearly (2), carried out by the same people who have been carrying it out for a century: progressives and Democrats. Then as now, they view African Americans as inferior and incapable of succeeding on their own.

Re:Diversity

[volmtech]

East India Company. English corporation actually, it was very successful. Since then all corporations have tried to emulate them. Hiring guys with English sounding names helps. Now, who would you hire if you wanted to build rockets? Bet you thought of a German or Jewish name. Banking? Logger? Lettuce picker?

The pool of guys with English sounding names is getting smaller so your chances get better every year.

Re:Diversity

[AmiMoJo]

Why didn't you report it?

Also, come on Slashdot, anecdotes with no evidence or even explanation of what the poster thinks happened is not "informative".

Not a popular opionion, but...

[rmdingler]

Lie, damn lie, or statistic; these companies are being forced to engage these topics by the increasing social pressure to appear "fair handed."

If you imagine that you are tired of hearing about it as a reader or tech employee, just imagine how it might be for the people whose job it is to make this bettter at the supposedly forward thinking tech giants.

How are those numbers coming, Jim?

Well, we've hired as many somewhat qualified people as we can find, and it's still not enough. Can we count the cafeteria employees again this year?

Re:Not a popular opionion, but...

[AmiMoJo]

Or they could do what Google is doing, and start educational programmes aimed at improving the situation. Away from sensationalist headlines, people with an actual interest in this subject understand that while the numbers now are not brilliant Google is making a genuine effort to improve things that will take at least a few years to really make a substantial difference.

Also, do you have any evidence that they hire "somewhat qualified" people? Their stated policy is to hire the best candidate, and efforts are focused on getting more good candidates to apply. If you could prove your claim it could be the basis of a very lucrative lawsuit, and you would probably be well compensated.

Re:Not a popular opionion, but...

[KGIII]

I doubt they would be compensated at all? The only way they would be compensated would be if they were directly impacted. I can not sue on behalf of Burger King employees and take their money. I can not sue at all. I am not affiliated with the company in any manner. I do not even eat there.

Re:theodp is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Dice and Sourceforge...

Providing free software... whether you want it or not.

Re: Looks like the OP read that book, too..

[johnsnails]

My thoughts exactly!

Statistics in School

[KermodeBear]

My father told me that when I took math classes in college, that Statistics I will teach me everything I really needed to know about the subject, but that Statistics II would teach me how to lie with what I learned. He was not incorrect. There's so many ways to manipulate the data that I find it very, very difficult to trust ANY stats that I find in the news without also having access to the raw data, the methodology, questions used, selection process, etc., etc., etc.

Re:Statistics in School

[tompaulco]

I've always used an example of how statistics can be deceiving. If you put 99 rocks and a chicken egg in a box, and a baby chick walks out, there was a 99% chance that it came out of one of the rocks.

Re:Statistics in School

[bickerdyke]

Nice example.

I prefer statistically, there are usually 1.4 popes per square kilometer living in the Vatican State. And current rate is even up to 2.8!

Re:Statistics in School

[operagost]

That's not statistics at all, but a logical fallacy.

I guess what we're proving here is that people who don't understand statistics can be easily fooled when they're given information that is derived from them.

Re:Statistics in School

[tehcyder]

I've always used an example of how statistics can be deceiving. If you put 99 rocks and a chicken egg in a box, and a baby chick walks out, there was a 99% chance that it came out of one of the rocks.

No, there is not.

There is a 100% chance the chicken came out of the egg and a 0% chance that it came out of one of the rocks.

There is not an equal probability that a rock and an egg will produce a chick.

Re:Statistics in School

[Gilgaron]

It would also show how trusting stats on a subject you're not well informed on can be deceiving. There are plenty of circumstances where the differences between the rocks and eggs may not be obvious to a lay person.

Re:Statistics in School

[zzsmirkzz]

There is a close to 100% chance that it came out of the egg and a close to 0% chance that it came out of one of the rocks. Highly improbable does not equal impossible. Anything is possible.

Re:Statistics in School

[KGIII]

"Living?" Could you share your data and methodology. I *am* a graduate with a maths degree (and a major in EE) but I am not seeing where you are getting the "living" status as there is a singular pope normally. I know of only one situation where they had two popes simultaneously. However, I am not a Catholic nor have I made a real effort to study their history. The only reason I know of two popes at one time is due to a bathroom trivia book. So, it stands to reason, that I am missing something. Once someone resigns as pope they are no longer the pope I understand. If the new pope dies the old, resigned, pope does not step in, do they? Even still, isn't there only one pope who is alive AND resigned? I am obviously missing some data if your statement can be proven correct.

Re:Statistics in School

[KGIII]

And assuming an exact equal number across the genders. This is not true.

Re:Statistics in School

[bickerdyke]

It's from what I remember from when the last one resigned: That was such an unusual event that they had to find a new title for him. He is now "Papa emeritus", Which boild down to "a retired pope is still a pope".

Re:Statistics in School

[david_thornley]

There is no statistically significant conclusion that all people die. Out of the roughly hundred billion people who have ever lived, about ninety-three billion are dead. That's not significant at the .05 level.

Re:Statistics in School

[KGIII]

That would mean that the ex-president of the US is still considered a president. Title retention does not confer any status in either case I believe. Nomenclature would be the entire title and not the singular making it no greater than one pope and no greater than one president?

Re:Statistics in School

[space_jake]

Papalation density?

Re:Statistics in School

[bickerdyke]

I'm no expert in US constitutional law, but I doubt that it's modeled after chatholic church law. And Ex-presidents shouldn't be as surprising as having an ex-pope for the first time.

Jokes aside, I think this legal status is modeled after that of an professor emeritus (at european universities) when a professor still keeps his earned title and privileges, but is honorably disbanded from his academic duties.

But as I said, I'm no expert in church law either.

Re:Statistics in School

[toddestan]

Obviously the example is contrived, because we already know that eggs produce chicks and rocks do not. The difference between a rock and an egg is pretty obvious. However, you usually use statistics to measure things you don't know so much about, and trying to discern differences that are not as obvious. How do you know you're not making such a mistake? Or for that matter, someone purposely lying with statistics, presenting data, and hoping you don't know the difference between the eggs and the rocks in his/her experiment?

Re:Statistics in School

[christopher.taylor]

I've always used an example of how statistics can be deceiving. If you put 99 rocks and a chicken egg in a box, and a baby chick walks out, there was a 99% chance that it came out of one of the rocks.

This is a terrible example of statistical thinking -- especially from a Bayesian point of view. What's the prior probability that you assign to a chicken coming from one the rocks? If it isn't zero, then... I don't know what to say.

Re:Statistics in School

[rpstrong]

I have two of each - am I above average?

Re:Statistics in School

[cwsumner]

The example was of a situation where the identity of the objects was not known. Imagine water-worn rocks. They are seldon spherical and often somewhat egg-shaped.

I think the point was that even the best statistics are very misleading when critical data is unknown. And since statisitcs are often used to avoid having to get all of the data, that can be very dangerous.

Also Consider: Very few people are anywhere near average. 8-)

(Of course, that depends on your definition of "anywhere near".)

Re:Statistics in School

[the_digitalmouse]

That would mean that the ex-president of the US is still considered a president.

Well they are often still called that even if they do not retain the office. We hear former Presidents referred to as President Clinton and President Bush on the media all the time. From wikipedia: "In the U.S., the title is reserved for the current President and should not be used for former Presidents. Although when addressing a former president, it is proper to use the title as a courtesy title."

Re:Statistics in School

[the_digitalmouse]

For whatever his evils, Nixon would still be referred to as "President Nixon", or "Mr. President" when engaged in conversation or an interview, just out of courtesy. He'd probably be introduced as "former President Richard Nixon" when introduced to an audience (I've heard that done for Clinton).

Do you want a diversity hire?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Google hires people based on talent. Women and minorities are under-represented in the technical and engineering community. That is a fact of life. Until more women and minorities CHOOSE to enter this field, getting a "diverse workforce" would have to mean you exclude more qualified white males in order to hire less qualified minorities and women.

Think about that for a moment. Suppose hospitals did things this way? If you need critical brain or heart surgery, do you want your surgeon to be one of the best in his or her field, or one that was a "diversity hire"?

Until you're comfortable with the second option, this "diversity" idiocy needs to stop. It's one thing to exclude perfectly qualified candidates because they're female or minority. It's another thing to make that the primary reason you're hiring them instead of making sure they're the best qualified for the job.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[funwithBSD]

Just you wait until hospitals are run by the government and hire this way... well, you can see it now, it is called the VA.

Where they improved their time-to-wait appointment statistics by canceling and rescheduling appointments and/or putting them on off-the-books waiting lists.

Some day, we will all get equal medical service of this same quality.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[bickerdyke]

Google hires people based on talent. Women and minorities are under-represented in the technical and engineering community. That is a fact of life. Until more women and minorities CHOOSE to enter this field, getting a "diverse workforce" would have to mean you exclude more qualified white males in order to hire less qualified minorities and women.

But if possible, companies should take measures to make the tech community more "diverse" (or "equal-rights" or "whatever"). But some stupid quota hiring is not helping.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[tehcyder]

You are perpetuating the myth that companies have some sort of quota for women/blacks/whatever they they "have" to fill.

The truth is that, in the absence of evidence that (say) black lesbians are inherently incapable of doing "X", you would expect that the number of your employees who are black lesbians is roughly in line with the proportion of black lesbians in society as a whole. If not, it means there is some sort of unconscious bias going on.

The problem with a lot of tech people is that they think their jobs are this mysterious "X" that for some reason only white males can do, and that tech companies therefore have some sort of exemption from behaving like everyone else.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[serviscope_minor]

Google hires people based on talent.

ITYM google hires people based on an obscure interviewing process which requires you to be able to recite details of algorithms you'd only learn in a CS course, but without reference to any reference material.

It's a substitute for talent, which biases them towards hiring people who have very recently finished a CS degree. And are therefore young.

This explains the astonishing level of churn in their "products" and why they seem to value nuking something that works and replacing it with something higher bandwidth, slower, more featureles but shinier every 6 months.

Think about that for a moment. Suppose hospitals did things this way? If you need critical brain or heart surgery, do you want your surgeon to be one of the best in his or her field,

Yes I would, so I'd rather the company didn't have hiring practices that preferentially hired from a limited pool of people or had biases in hiring that made them biased against people based on race or gender.

Which is what these initiatives are about.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[AmiMoJo]

Until more women and minorities CHOOSE to enter this field, getting a "diverse workforce" would have to mean you exclude more qualified white males in order to hire less qualified minorities and women.

Do you think the marketing guys at Coke say "until more people device to drink Coke, getting more people to buy our product would have to mean poisoning all the wells and reservoirs"? Or do they perhaps try to encourage people to drink Coke, because historically that has worked quite well?

That's what Google is doing. Encouraging under-represented groups to apply for their jobs, but still hiring the best candidate in the end.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[Tyrannosaur]

where everyone is "free" to make such choices, with no peer pressure and no social stereotypes to infer their decisions.

It is going to take a bit of thinking, but that would actually be really terrible if things such as peer pressure and social stereotypes didn't exist. That is literally the definition of culture.

You may want your culture to change, but don't do anything so stupid as to think you want it not to exist, or even that that would be possible.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[jsrjsr]

The truth is that, in the absence of evidence that (say) black lesbians are inherently incapable of doing "X", you would expect that the number of your employees who are black lesbians is roughly in line with the proportion of black lesbians in society as a whole. If not, it means there is some sort of unconscious bias going on.

But the "bias" may not be on the part of the employer. Consider the possibility that black lesbians are just not interested in the job you are hiring for. (Maybe they are smarter than those who do want that job.)

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[phantomfive]

Google has been spending a lot of money on lobbying democrats lately (republicans too, of course).

Google doesn't care about diversity, but those democrats do. So Google makes reports of diversity in exchange for favors from politicians. That's the reason you've been hearing so much about it lately.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[KGIII]

I have the feeling that this is going to be a long post as I have a lot to say on this subject so this is a novella warning - TL;DR Ahead!

My Experiences, Observations, and Gathered Data Concerning the Veteran's Administration Hospitals.

Do you have experience with the VA? I have, a lot. There are some hospitals which are the exception to the rule (on either end of the spectrum) but my personal experience has shown that the only issues I have had were long wait times at the emergency check-in because of triage. The myriad VA hospitals I have been to all have had small emergency departments which can be problematic but a real emergency is still paid for if one goes to a non-VA hospital. They have many non-VA clinics and doctors as well.

Methinks you were not in the military and have not experienced a visit to the VA. I think this is called, "talking out of church." Even with the influx of many new patience due to the FUBAR that is the middle east and our desire to police them into democracy there has never been a time I have not had adequate care and time with my GP or specialists. Never - as in ZERO times. I have NEVER had to wait an unreasonable time to get an appointment with a specialist - in fact I have waited less time than I have when getting private care. The exception, in my experience, is listed above and is only in the emergency area (generally not a separate building) and is for a just reason - triage but one could reasonably conclude size is an issue.

The turnover rate is also reasonable, again, in my observations. I show up early for my appointments and almost inevitably get called into my appointment as much as a half hour before it is scheduled. (My Nook keeps me busy if I have to wait until the scheduled time.) I have one sibling and one father (who is ancient and has more appointments than I - they even pick him up for them if he wants but one of us usually drives him as he doesn't drive much any more) all have the same experiences in many different locations as well. My veteran buddies all have similar stories, I know because we all get together and talk or we all communicate via chat, email, our own private (and vetted - no pun intended) mailing lists.

What you say is, for the most part, true if one is using data from the 1980s and early 1990s. They were much worse. Anyone who makes these claims as being the norm for the typical VA hospital is likely just as guilty of fudging the statistics as are the people cited in this summary and article. If it is true then it belies the many experiences I have had or have heard testified. There are, quite literally, near zero complaints among the many other people I communicate with and there are zero complaints (other than wait times for "emergencies" due to size and triage) among those closest to me and from myself.

As for the emergency complaints, the VA hospital in my area (Maine) is currently constructing a new giant brick building to replace 1 South and one of the major reasons for the new construction is to increase the size and make a whole separate area for a more traditional emergency room that can handle about three times as many patients. They will be rehabilitating the old 1 South to make a large portion of it into a walk-in clinic for the less pressing things that need quick attention but are not actual emergencies but are also not something that can be resolved in a timely manner by the patient's general practitioner.

A good portion of that building (1 South) will be re-purposed as an inbound call center for crisis intervention and suicide prevention (many folks are returning from the middle east with PTSD) that will also offer general crisis/pressing matters information. It will be staffed with paid employees and trained volunteers. Out-patient mental health will be getting their own ward in the building. The current in-patient mental health patients will be moved to that building and will occupy the entirety of the fourth floor (which is a huge amount of space if one is unfamiliar with VA hospita

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[KGIII]

This does not detract from your post but I think you mean AXIS and not AXES. Using an ax to vet employees is likely either very counterproductive or very effective depending on the field.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[StikyPad]

I have as well, and I loved my experience (I mean, aside from the fact that I was injured and had to be in the hospital). It was one of the only things that made me wish I had retired instead of getting out. Are there administrative problems? Sure. Yes. At the same time, I've had civilian hospitals lose my files too. Administrative problems exist everywhere. The level of care I got at the VA hospital far exceeded anything I've experienced at a typical hospital, both in quality of service and in staff bedside manner and caring. If I could use the VA hospital for everything, I would.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[StikyPad]

you choose what seems ok with the norms of the society you live in.

That's only true to an extent. Do you have kids? I never encouraged my daughter to like clothes, or dolls, she just did. (And video games too!) Kids may be subject to peer pressure, and wanting to fit in, but it starts well before peers matter, at age 2 or 3, when mom and dad are still the center of the universe.

And nobody ever questions men's interests. If a boy likes cars or Legos, nobody accuses him of being programmed by society, but somehow everything women do is a result of social programming. It's incredibly subversive, because it sends the message that women can't think for themselves.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[StikyPad]

The problem with a lot of tech people is that they think their jobs are this mysterious "X" that for some reason only white males can do, and that tech companies therefore have some sort of exemption from behaving like everyone else.

That's just not true. Law is the biggest boy's club in the world. Ask almost any female lawyer, and they will tell you that they bone up on typical male interests like sports, cigars, bourbon, etc. So it must be dominated by men, right? It's not. Law is almost an even distribution by gender now, even while all of the stereotypically male aspects of the culture remain in place. (Including a lot of sexual harassment, to be honest.)

Read my lips: women do not like tech! If you want to know what matters to women, ask the people who sell to them. You will *never* sell a car to a woman by talking about its technical specifications. They don't care. What does it look like, how comfortable is it, will it go in the snow, how many people does it fit, and maybe how many MPG does it get, if they're budget conscious. That's it. Men want to know about horsepower, 0-60, skidpad data, what's the towing capacity, etc. You could sell a car to a man without ever mentioning the color. The color is an afterthought, and if black and white were the only choices, they'd simply choose one or the other to get the vehicle they want with the right specs.

Yes, of course there are exceptions, but it should be no surprise that there are differences between men and women. If anyone's been "programmed by society," it's people who believe that there is no difference. It's not that women are less capable, it's that they do not give a shit about tech.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[StikyPad]

See my other post, AC. A female name is an asset, not a liability.

Plus women have their first child in their 30s these days, on average, and most tech jobs last less than two years. It's a non-issue that you're speculating that someone else is speculating exists. If you're not getting hired, it's because there are people who are significantly more qualified, or you're living in an area with too few jobs, in which case the solution is not to get a sex change, it's to move.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[KGIII]

There, your post, is another example. I really do not think that the GP actually has even ever been in a VA hospital. The initial clue was them calling it the VA. The VA is lots of things, one of which is a hospital. The rest of the clue came when they started to make some very old claims about them. They have improved so much over the past 20 years that it is amazing. I can even order refills online, I can check my records, I can opt to share my records, etc... I was a grunt, most any health issues can be 'related' so getting care is not an issue. I could get a disability check (I think it would be fraud in my case) but I do not. I do not want it, I do not need it.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[funwithBSD]

That is a great story.

But stories are not data.

What do you say to the families who can prove that they were delayed, to the proof that administrators lied and doctored results?

Your great story does not negate what they did.

And yes, I have plenty of experience. I know case workers that work for the VA, and most of my family uses the VA system.
I even worked for a company that administered Tri-care for a while. (as a sysadmin, so I knew EXACTLY what was going on)
There are systemic issues, that you had a good experience does not off set the wrongs done.
And not the 80's, here is an ADMISSION from the VA that these "unofficial" waiting lists exist:

http://www.9news.com/story/new...

That is a very recent report. Not the 80s.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[KGIII]

If you read my post carefully you will notice that I was quite specific and open about there being exceptions. The reason they are notable/news is because they are exceptions.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[funwithBSD]

I am amazed that admissions from the VA itself of wrong doing are tossed out and personal experience replaces reality.

Facts are stubborn things, and the facts are widely available of the issues the VA admits itself, never mind anything it is not coming clean on.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[KGIII]

Read. There are exceptions. I was quite clear about this. I was also clear about what was anecdotal.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[serviscope_minor]

Go or work on Amazon's delivery drone system without knowing "algorithms you'd only learn in a CS course" like the back of your hand.

Been there, done that (well close enough). That sort of thing doesn't do much with the kind of algorithms you learn on CS courses (all the discrete algorithms). It much more heavily leans on algorithms you might also learn on an engineering course, all on the numerical computation side. So, if you're hiring for such a project, you don't want to bias yourself to CS types with a huge knowledge of discrete algorithms like google does.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[funwithBSD]

Maybe your post is so long you have forgotten what you wrote:

"ou may have been fed this information but it is FUD in every sense of the words. What you are saying is simply not true given the information that I have and, while this may seem an appeal to authority, I am going to trust my experiences, my family's experience, my friend's experiences, and the experiences from the many vets that I am in contact with and have discussed this very topic with (at length). There are so few complaints that I could, quite literally, count them using no more than my own digits. I may not even have to use more digits than are on both hands. "

that is not claiming an exception, it is claiming your anecdotal data is superior to actual reports of abuse, admitted under oath by VA officials, across many VA hospitals and facilities.

Are you saying that the VA is lying about being incompetent?
Are you saying these facts, which contradict your own, and admitted by the Army's Vice Chief of Staff are wrong?

"The Army’s Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody admitted on Wednesday there has been a "breakdown in leadership" at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. His comments came three days after The Washington Post revealed that hospital rooms at Walter Reed were infested with mouse droppings, cockroaches, stained carpets, rodents and black mold. "

http://www.democracynow.org/20...

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[ToddInSF]

"Because, historically, creating products and trying to convince people that they need it when they don't is a good way to fail. Check out Shark Tank and see how many billionaires are *really* trying that approach. The answer is zero."

Your profound lack of knowledge of advertising and history is pretty amusing. Corporations market shit people don't need all the time, consent is manufactured, advertising exists not to educate or inform so much as to deceive and manipulate. You didn't know this ? Really ? What are you, 12 years old ?

And referencing a (particularly shitty) reality tv show to support a flawed assertion is laughable.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[StikyPad]

If you can't stick to the facts without personal insults, I'm not interested in the conversation.

You are correct, I meant to say "don't want," not "don't need."

I used the example of Shark Tank because it's an easily approachable and widely available example for the lay person, and your original post was written as a lay person, as is your reply.

Corporations market things all the time, but if people don't want it, the products and/or companies are ultimately unsuccessful. The conspiracy -- and that's what it is -- that people are purely told what to want disregards all of the massive market failures for every one success.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[ToddInSF]

"Corporations market things all the time, but if people don't want it, the products and/or companies are ultimately unsuccessful. The conspiracy -- and that's what it is -- that people are purely told what to want disregards all of the massive market failures for every one success."

Yeah, only an idiot just tosses around the word "conspiracy" to support their bullshit assertions.

Look, if you are entirely unaware of the nature and history of marketing and advertising, and stubbornly refuse to be bothered, that's on you, and you should rightly be called out for being an idiot.

Re:Do you want a diversity hire?

[shutdown -p now]

The truth is that, in the absence of evidence that (say) black lesbians are inherently incapable of doing "X", you would expect that the number of your employees who are black lesbians is roughly in line with the proportion of black lesbians in society as a whole. If not, it means there is some sort of unconscious bias going on.

True, but it doesn't mean that said bias exists at the company that is hiring. All available statistics indicates that the bias enters the picture much earlier - at least as early as college, and more likely as early as high school. If black lesbians don't get education (formal or informal) that qualifies them to work at Google, well guess what? Google won't have any black lesbian employees; but how is that their fault or responsibility?

Ask anyone who has ever had any involvement in a hiring process in any software company about how many non-white, non-male candidates they see applying - even before any screening or interview, just the raw input, so to speak.

Everyone is ignoring the most important number!

[bickerdyke]

Everyone is ignoring the most important number!

Difference between percantage of [minority] employees and percentage of [minority] applicants.

Heck if you only have 2% white employees, that makes you the most diverse employer ever if only 0.5% of applicants were white.

It would take some steam out of this whole discussion to have a look at those numbers.

Granted, with numbers as in my hypothetical example would definitely point out a problem (or at least an interesting statistical anomaly), but outside the scope of the hiring company. And of course nothing should keep a company from starting programs in schools end universities to fix that problem, but not through some skewed hiring policy.

Re:Everyone is ignoring the most important number!

[bluefoxlucid]

Percentage of qualified applicants, you mean. Unqualified gits apply for entitled employment all the time. "I took computers in high school but I think I'd be a good fit for your 8-year-experience BA certified Oracle database engineer position because Oracle runs on Linux and I tinker with MySQL!"

Re:Everyone is ignoring the most important number!

[bickerdyke]

Shouldn't be such a big difference if unqualified applications are distributed evenly among relevant minorities. But would be a really interesting research subject, too.

Re:Everyone is ignoring the most important number!

[bickerdyke]

OK, that work day is down the drain anyway. I declare my last post as "open season for anecdotal evidence". Keep the good stories comming.

Re:Everyone is ignoring the most important number!

[operagost]

If someone tinkered with MySQL, that would indicate personal interest, which I would probably take over someone who worked at eight different McJobs over 3 years before getting a diploma from ITT Tech.

Re:Everyone is ignoring the most important number!

[bluefoxlucid]

What you have there is two unqualified applicants and nobody to hire yet. If this becomes routine (for example, if the government stopped funding college and concentrated on K-12), businesses would have to hire the unqualified applicants and take up their education and training, or else collapse with no engineer capable of doing their jobs.

Increase in # employees 5,968, not 5,928

[theodp]

Oops, I did slightly understate the denominator (couldn't cut-and-paste numbers), but results are close to same (actually a pinch worse). From the linked-to Google EEO-1 filing: (Current # Black Female Employees (250) - Prior # Black Female Employees (235)) / (Current Overall Total # Employees (32,527) - Prior Total # Employees (26,559)) = 35 / 5,968 = 0.0058646113, or about 0.59%.

All techies will be H1Bs soon enough

[walterbyrd]

At google and every other big tech company.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[envelope]

What evil is Google perpetrating, exactly? Trying to present irrelevant data in a positive light to people who pretend it is relevant?

Re:Sexist and racist

[tehcyder]

Well your resume looks very good, unfortunately to maintain our SJW quota we're looking for a paraplegic transsexual from Romania.

Yes, that is exactly how minority groups end up with all the best jobs.

Diversity or rote political correctness?

[fyngyrz]

what equipment they keep between their legs

Related to that, however, is the question of what hormonal influences may arise. For one example (of many possible), with males, you often see more aggression, and (obviously) with females, less. Pretending there can be no relevant differences WRT job performance is not an optimum approach. Furthermore, interactions between the people of significantly different sexual identity are of inherently different natures. Much as the incoherent would like you not to believe it, the vast majority of us are sexual creatures. We are naturally and unavoidably affected by other concerns than the specifics of today's TPS report.

Same thing goes for age, various cultural influences, parent or not, single or not, personal maintainance, presentation, health, mobility, superstition, depth of education, and means of education (conventional, autodidact, on-the-job, etc.)

Because of these truths, consideration should be given to such factors. And of course it is, and always will be. But mostly because of the law, much of this is now sub-rosa, which is entirely a bad thing -- a bad thing that at least partially offsets the benefits of the law overriding (or at least attempting to override) people who operate using a chain of reasoning that primarily incorporates blind prejudice rather than "how will this affect job performance?"

Politically correct often means "poorly thought out and mostly harmful." When there are differences, there are differences. Pretending otherwise doesn't make such things go away. It just makes them harder to deal with.

Re:Diversity or rote political correctness?

[serviscope_minor]

Pretending otherwise doesn't make such things go away.

Pretending those matter though doesn't mean they do. If one accepts the hypothesis that gender has some effect on the ability to write computer programs then if you aggregate together many members of each gender and figure out their ability there will be some statistically significant difference.

If then, one were in the odd position of making blind hires with no information other gender, then if the hypothesis is true, you'd get best results by hiring people of one gender.

However no one at all ever makes blind hires.

If you already know the person's ability via their qualifications, interview performance, past performance etc, then gender provides no further information.

Therefore hiring based on gender is a bad idea.

And that applies to just about every other category.

Because of these truths, consideration should be given to such factors.

No it shouldn't. If gender is a predictor of ability then the probability distributions are BY DEFINITION not independent. If therefore you use the knowledge of gender after evaluating ability then you are treating them as independent variables when you combine them. This is mathematically bogus.

Re:Diversity or rote political correctness?

[fyngyrz]

No it shouldn't. If gender is a predictor of ability then the probability distributions are BY DEFINITION not independent. If therefore you use the knowledge of gender after evaluating ability then you are treating them as independent variables when you combine them. This is mathematically bogus.

Actually, that's just mathematically simplistic. Here's what your reasoning does not account for: There are leanings, abilities and competencies that do not exist in isolation from other influences. Gender can be one of those. Therefore, to the extent that affect is possible, it is a valid consideration.

It could be a positive for either sex.

For instance, the air force has definitively determined that females are significantly better at maintaining more comprehensive situational awareness in complex aerial situations. This is because of a real world gender-based difference in information processing.

On the other hand, if one was hiring a bouncer, the competencies lean strongly the other way.

There will be outliers, of course, but that's why we need to think about these things rather than operate by rote. The law, unfortunately, but needfully (due to blind prejudice), specifies decision by rote. This is why many parts of the decision making process have gone missing from public view.

Re:Diversity or rote political correctness?

[serviscope_minor]

Actually, that's just mathematically simplistic. Here's what your reasoning does not account for: There are leanings, abilities and competencies that do not exist in isolation from other influences.

How does it not account for that? Gender gives you a probability density function over performance, which gives you a prior on someone's performance in the absence of further information. Once you have a measurement of the performance the prior PDF doesn't yield anything extra.

For instance, the air force has definitively determined that females are significantly better at maintaining more comprehensive situational awareness in complex aerial situations.

Yeah on average. Inevitably some women are crap at it, where as others are good. This is not unexpected. What it means is that in a given random pool of men and women the women will be on avreage better, so you'd expect to hire more women.

But you don't make hiring decisions based on gender because there's far too much intra-gender variation. So you evaluate their skills and hire based on that.

The thing is once you've evaluated the skills, you know the skills and gender has no further bearing.

The law, unfortunately, but needfully (due to blind prejudice), specifies decision by rote.

Unless you point to the specific statute that states that I do not believe you.

Re:Diversity or rote political correctness?

[fyngyrz]

You don't believe me? Good grief, it's been illegal to consider all manner of things when hiring for years, all over the place. Not to mention there are questions you can't even ask.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[ShanghaiBill]

Google is being evil here. No slack for this should be contemplated whatsoever.

How are they being evil? What individual was harmed? Is there any evidence that black applicants were treated differently than white applicants?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[TwoEyedJack]

Comparing "murder" with "reporting the race of Google employees in a way you don't like" is a little hysterical, don't you think?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Google is being evil here.

So, you are a racist and/or sexist person, supporting race and/or sex discrimination, for privileges based on race and/or sex!
Am I right, or am I right?

Correct, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a suspicion when companies grow to a certain size they reach a point where they have to engage in these sorts of politically correct follies or otherwise risk being publicly accused racism, sexism, achondroplasiaphobia, etc. whenever an unqualified candidate doesn’t get hired. It also gives a chance for worthless HR clowns to be elevated to C level positions such as “Chief Diversity Officer”.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[morgauxo]

"Google is being evil here"

Uh, Yah... they are being real evil.

They should fire a bunch of white people and hire a bunch of non-white people based solely on the color of their skin.

That would make them not evil.

Re:That is not the correct statistic

[medv4380]

Unless you'd care to present your genetic research which demonstrates that black women are rendered incapable of understanding math and science by some inherent biological or genetic flaw?

I would only need to present the number of black women taking the courses needed for the field compared to the total. It doesn't matter if they are perfectly capably of doing the job if they were educated in it if they aren't getting the education in the right fields. However, the stats show they avoid engineering degrees like the plague and swarm sociology like it were the second coming.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[fyngyrz]

Am I right, or am I right?

You seem fringe left to me. But hey, perhaps you're just trolling. Difficult to tell.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[fyngyrz]

What they should do is publish relevant and clear statistics on the issue instead of attempting to obfuscate the relevant issues at hand.

Try to keep up. It's really not that difficult.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[fyngyrz]

What evil is Google perpetrating, exactly?

In this case (there are certainly others), they are using deceptive reporting to mislead people on the current state of affairs. Ask yourself why they would do this. The answer isn't "because they are angels."

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[fyngyrz]

See here

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[Archangel Michael]

You are under the impression that people tell the truth. Very rarely do people tell the truth. The whole Political Correctness gig is simply a "how to avoid telling the truth". We are lied to daily, by almost everyone that has media outreach, from broadcasters to politicians to advertisements to government officials to business leaders.

The fact that most Americans still "trust" anyone at this point is a testament that lying still works. AND If you say it convincingly enough (wagging finger ... "I did not have sexual relations, with that woman, Ms Lewinsky") it actually works!

The best liars are the ones that you thank after they've lied to you. "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

They should fire a bunch of white people and hire a bunch of non-white people based solely on the color of their skin.

To be demographically representative of the US population, they would have to fire lots of Asians, and hire more Caucasians and African Americans, since the latter two groups are both statistically underrepresented.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[ArmoredDragon]

In this case (there are certainly others), they are using deceptive reporting to mislead people on the current state of affairs. Ask yourself why they would do this. The answer isn't "because they are angels."

Probably because they, like many other tech companies, are getting incessantly railed on an issue that is out of their control.

I don't know about you or any of these other SJWs, but I went to college for an IT career, and I only recall seeing at most one or two black people to a class the size of about 30 in any of my technology classes. In other classes I took (mainly the general requirement classes) there were more. (Most of the ones I met were either going for legal or service industry management careers.)

For whatever reason, most of them don't care to pursue a career related to technology. That isn't Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or anybody else's fault. Meanwhile they have to catch shit about it all the time, and pay ransom money to Al Sharpton (who himself is the real lying sack of shit.)

The same can be said of women, by the way. As another anecdote, two of my cousins are currently wanting to get IT jobs, but their sister wants to become a dentist, and that isn't due to any different treatment by their parents (they buy her as much computer stuff as they buy for her brothers. In fact she often asks for and receives more expensive Apple phones/tablets where they get Android devices.)

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Am I right, or am I right?

You seem fringe left to me. But hey, perhaps you're just trolling. Difficult to tell.

I am NOT trolling...
(replacing my last "Am I right, or am I right?" phrase with just "Right?")
my revised reply to you:

Google is being evil here.

So, you are a racist and/or sexist person, supporting race and/or sex discrimination, for privileges based on race and/or sex!
Right?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

What they should do is publish relevant and clear statistics

What is the distribution of skin colors of Google's employees possibly ever relevant to?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[serviscope_minor]

What is the distribution of skin colors of Google's employees possibly ever relevant to?

Its relevant to knowing if their hiring practices are biased for or against people with a certain skin colour, for example...

Re:Diversity bingo

[tehcyder]

So the holy grail of diversity is finding a mentally handicapped, physically disabled, lesbian black woman with an impoverished background?

No, the holy grail of diveresity is that if that person can actually do the job as well as anyone else then there is no reason to exclude her from consideration.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[Anonymous Coward]

I clicked the link hoping for actual evidence, but I got more speculation.

To answer the questions posed at the post linked, what's happening is that gender lunatics along with other special interest groups are simply hammering tech right now with the equivalent of "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

As far as racial issues, hoo boy. Yes, there are quite real problems here, but the problems are at the K-12 stage, not at the workplace. If these groups were serious about changing things, they'd be out in communities trying to help families realize value for education and to get schools in impoverished neighborhoods more funding and better resources.

I am far more receptive to the overall race issue. We can't expect centuries of slavery and Jim Crow laws to just magically sort itself out. BUT: tech companies and workers can do nothing about it, short of donating to some initiative that fits what I wrote above. If there is no evidence that these companies are discriminating against actual applicants, what the fuck are you asking them to do?

What I need to change my mind are some actual demographic data. How many black applicants with this GPA from X college applied and were hired vs. how many white or Asian applicants with the same GPA from same X college applied and were hired? That's how you generate reasonable suspicion of racism. Without knowing how many black applicants who at least on paper appear to be equal to their white and Asian colleagues, even knowing the number of employed blacks is meaningless to me.

Then there's the gender lunatics.

My first question, although it would amount to a rounding error, concerns trans women. How are trans women reported? Do we go by lived gender (i.e. name's changed, on HRT)? Do we go by bottom surgery status? Do we go by birth certificate gender, which, depending on the state of birth, cannot be changed even after bottom surgery? Or do we go with the feminist view as stated by Janice Raymond and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (i.e. trans women are not only rapists because they're men, but also metaphysical rapists because they have the audacity to have the same body parts as women)?

So, ok, rounding error aside, but I'd like to segue into the real point that the preponderance of trans women who are in tech raises the question of why are there very few cisgendered women who go into tech? Sure, I'm being a hypocrite here because I don't have the demographic data to back up my assertion, but visit any gallery of successful trans women. Sysadmins! Programmers! EEs! DBAs! More sysadmins and programmers!

There is no economic disparity in childhood between daughters and sons, unlike the race issue.

Do you have a good theory we can use to explain this?

Gender lunatics across the board from feminists to MRAs all take a shit on trans women. Yet, you'll find trans women in tech. Why? What is the difference here between cisgendered and transgendered women?

-- kurenai.tsubasa (not bothering to register this account here because fuck beta)

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[ArmoredDragon]

Its relevant to knowing if their hiring practices are biased for or against people with a certain skin colour, for example...

No, it's not. To do that, you'd need an analysis that includes much more than just who is working there now. Two huge variables you're leaving out:

1) How many minorities actually applied for a job there?

2) Of those, how many were actually qualified?

Go take your zero knowledge SJW outrage to twitter and/or wordpress where it belongs.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[Dragonslicer]

Suppose I said "To be fair to [a murderer], [other murderer1], [other murderer2], [other murderer3] and [other murderer4] didn't [fail to murder], either."

Suddenly it becomes (or should become) obvious that there is nothing relevant whatsoever about the other entity's actions that involves being "fair" to the entity being examined.

Google is being evil here. No slack for this should be contemplated whatsoever. It is irrelevant to our consideration of Google if/that others are being evil as well. The metric shouldn't in any way be "everyone does it", it should be "this company is doing bad things, and they should stop."

You rarely hear anyone say that Jack the Ripper was an evil person, but Charles Manson was really a nice guy that was just misunderstood.

In this case, though, you may get a large number of fanboys of other technology companies spouting about how this makes Google the most evil company in the history of the world.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[tnk1]

Reading between the lines is the following at Google HQ.

They hire a lot of men as engineers. Not an incredible surprise.
People have picked up on that and want to call them out on that, so they pressure them to release their diversity stats.
The stats say what everyone knows: there's a lot of men at Google. Many are white or possibly Asian. Just like in the rest of the IT industry.

Google sees where this is going, and it does its best to spin the stats as a good thing. Especially the significant portion of ethnic/racial minorities, albeit minority men.

As expected, the other side homes in on the intersection of black and female and calls Google out on only having 35 black, female engineers.

Here's the question. What does Google look like when everyone gets what they want?

Does Google have to throw money at some programs for black female coders?
Does Google have to have a hiring quota for black females?
Does Google have to launch a campaign to get black females into coding and STEM?

Just what is the point of all of this? It feels one side wants to expose something that everyone already knows: there aren't a lot of females in computing in general, fewer of them are black females.

If there is a demonstrable benefit to having a completely diverse workforce as a force multiplier, a corporation, especially one like Google, isn't likely to avoid diversity for the sole purpose of perpetuating the white Patriarchy. Honestly, speaking as someone who hires people for IT work, I'll tell you what the problem is. There are no candidates who are black and female. I'm not rejecting these candidates, I literally never see them. Ever.

We all know this, and yet.... somehow everyone wants us to self-flagellate over an issue that we have almost no control over.

Google is likely sensitive in the same way that anyone in that situation would be. What happens when you don't aim to discriminate, but you end up with a non-diverse workforce based on the demographics of the pool of available workers?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[antiperimetaparalogo]

As English is your second language, your word choice isn't making it obvious what side you're taking. It is not clear to me if you are using sarcasm or are actually calling someone out as a racist.

I'm thinking sarcasm, but I could be wrong. Others will not bother to think about it and think you just called them a racist, which will get you an angry response. As you have seen.

Yes, i struggle with my bad English, but as a RACIST AND SEXIST Greek i think i know about sarcasm and how to use it for OTHER racist and/or sexist persons, supporting race and/or sex discrimination, for privileges based on race and/or sex... plus, my signature is: Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[Wootery]

Did you miss fyngyrz's whole comment about how it's still bad to behave badly, no matter what others are doing?

Re:religion much?

[KGIII]

The first two people I hired to work at my business were females. The first was a stenographer/secretary. The second was a programmer of some note that I stole from a buddy (he did not mind too much) who owned his own company as well. The third was a black male who was also a programmer. Then came a bunch of females as a sales force - being held accountable to a female. For quite some time my other business friends called my shop, "The Bunny Ranch."

Actually, the first person I hired was Amerindian, Black, and White. It was me. I had an asshole for a boss too. He made me work long hours, sometimes without pay, and seldom paid me for all the hours I put in until long after the company was secure.

Anyhow, my point has nothing to do with me wanting diversity. In fact, that was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted to hire the best, pay them well, and encourage low turnover by incentivising (spell check says that is not a word, if it is not then I declare it as such now) remaining with the company. I was easily approachable (then HR was) and if one felt they were inclined to leave we would do our best to ensure that they were given reasons to remain. We paid more by default, we offered better benefits by default and immediately upon hire, and we offered "telecommuting" long before such was a word. Due to the expense we paid for their connection and hardware as well - allowing them to keep the hardware (even if they resigned) and generally left the connection running for some time as well. This was seldom applicable though, and this was a good thing.

It is not diversity that matters (though it can happen by accident as you see above). What matters is merit, low-turnover, and an employer that does not treat you like an asset or a piece of meat.

Re:Sexist and racist

[KGIII]

To be fair they did not say all or best. I think the implication was that this could happen and that those people mentioned could also have earned the job via merit. I do not dare say that was certainly their intent but I try to believe the best rather than beating up strawmen of my own construction.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[LaurenCates]

The part that gets me is the internal inconsistency of all of these initiatives.

I hear a lot of drum-pounding over how hostile tech environments are to women and minorities (they MUST be, or else there would be more of them in these environments*). But, let's make it so more of them want to head into the jaws of the wolf anyway?

What am I missing here?

*Yes, I am well aware that research dictates those candidates are self-selecting out of careers in STEM for other reasons, but I'm playing devil's advocate here.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[Archangel Michael]

I didn't miss that at all. If we accept bad behavior isn't that actually worse?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[david_thornley]

Google provided the numeric information, although I can't see any real use for it without additional information that may not be available even inside Google. If you'd like to suggest a use for it, without other information we're not going to get, feel free.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[morgauxo]

Except that now you are talking about a very expensive and difficult report to create. You would end up creating a team of people whose sole job is to collect, organize and report this information while providing no benefit back to Google. Why do you feel Google owes this to you? Sorry, not doing that does not make them evil.

Re:Newsflash

[KGIII]

I am 1/4 black, by your definition I am a nigger - on that half the other quarter is Amerindian. This nigger got his graduates degree in maths and masters in electrical engineering. This nigger started, made solid, and sold his company for an "upper-medium" eight digit figure - ten digits if you count stock in the buyer's parent company. In fact, if you go to some stadiums then you may have driven across roads and entered a stadium that this nigger's company did the traffic modeling (vehicular and, eventually, pedestrian) for. This nigger did much managing and clerical work (more so at the start) and programmed, made custom hardware like 10BASE-2 boards to network a plotter long before such was commercially available -- it even supported a queue, and submitted proposals as well as performed consulting work across the country and in Canada with an eventual expanding to three offices that were able to cover the entire potential sales area. It was a lucrative business which was better, safer, and easier than this nigger working the corner to sell drugs.

Niggers - we do more than pick cotton and we do it well. I usually avoid using the title (it is often assumed that I know medicine even after I clarify) but I will make an exception for you my bigoted fellow human... You, Mr. Anonymous Coward (who will not personally accept blowback for their racist beliefs) can call me Doctor. You, Sir or Ma'am, have my express permission, nay my demand, to call me Dr. Nigger. I, on the other hand, will be proud of such a title being used by you and your ilk.

I do not hate you. I do not wish you harm. I am happy and you have no power to control my thoughts or actions. I do choose, however, to be sorry for you. Why am I sorry for you? Well, I will leave that as an exercise for your imagination.

Also, I sleep with your white women.

Good day. No, I mean it. Seriously, have yourself an excellent day.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[mujadaddy]

Hey, FUCK you! I lost a BUNCH of weight!

...jackass...

Re:growth unimportant

[KGIII]

Raw numbers (assuming they are true) do not lie, they are just misunderstood by people because the people using them can not communicate clearly.

Diversity Drones are asking the wrong question....

[erp_consultant]

The question should not be "What percentage of your IT staff is African American?".

The question should be "What percentage of qualified African American IT applicants were hired?".

If Google is only getting 5 AA applicants for every 100 white applicants (or asian, or whatever...) then it puts Google in a tough position. Should they be expected to hire all 5 AA applicants, regardless of merit, to give the appearance of "evening things out"? Even if they do hire all 5 then someone will still complain that only 5 AA's were hired vs. X amount of white applicants.

This is what the race haters like Sharpton conveniently ignore. The problem is that companies are not getting enough qualified AA applicants, not that the AA applicants are being discriminated against.

If there is a low percentage of AA grads in IT programs I don't see that as a problem. I see it as a choice. People gravitate towards what they enjoy and what they are good at and employment opportunities and family/lifestyle choices.

It's not demand, it's supply.

[StikyPad]

Look, my experience as someone with a first name that is gender neutral, but trends female with the spelling, has been awesome. Many of the emails from recruiters address me as Ms., not Mr.

Overall, it is an advantage for me, because I get calls that I otherwise would not. I was told flat out after getting one job that I had been targeted initially because they thought I was a woman. I also know a guy named Brooke, and he gets tons of calls.

If you are a woman in tech, you pretty much have it made, because companies will compete for you. They *are* competing for you. Your biggest challenge is deciding which offer(s) to accept, and while that can be daunting, it's still an enviable position. Complaining about it to men is like complaining about the buffet selection to a homeless person. If you're a woman in tech that's not getting hired, it's *not* because you are a woman, it's because you're .

All else being equal, I *much* prefer to work with women too. They're usually tactful, often have insights that I lack, and they typically have better hygiene to boot. What I don't like is listening to people complain about problems that do not exist. The problem isn't that women are being kept out of tech -- they are being welcomed with open arms -- it's that they don't want to be there, and it's an insult to their autonomy to tell them they *should* want to be there when they don't.

Re:It's not demand, it's supply.

[StikyPad]

Hahaha.. That third paragraph should have ended with, "it's because you're incompetent." Oh, irony.

Re:That is not the correct statistic

[david_thornley]

There is underlying racism going on (I don't know how much is institutionalized). However, it's very clear that this racism has had its effect long before Google receives job applications, so completely non-racist hiring will result in some groups being overrepresented (like Asian men) and some underrepresented (black women). FWIW, some large computer companies, including Google, are trying to encourage said underrepresented groups to get into software development.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[camg188]

You can't say Google is evil based solely on the racial status of their employees. You also have to look at the number of applicants for a job. If only 5% of applicants have a particular racial profile would you expect more than 5% in their workforce?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[tlambert]

In this case (there are certainly others), they are using deceptive reporting to mislead people on the current state of affairs. Ask yourself why they would do this. The answer isn't "because they are angels."

Nope. It's because it was a USA Today hit piece from 6 months ago, and educators, parents, and guidance counselors don't want to take responsibility for the input to the pipeline, and it's a slow news day.

They don't release the numbers because they don't want to be blamed for them, when they can only take whatever output comes out of the pipeline.

It's not like there are huge numbers of PhD CS people in the underrepresented minorities just sitting around twiddling their thumbs: everyone knows that the only people who get discriminated against for these jobs are people who are old (sorry... "not 'digital natives'... must use the code words), or who learned by doing, and so have no reasonable credentials with which to protect their employers in the event of a lawsuit.

It's also not like the CollegeBoard would not *gleefully* take the money of anyone who wanted to pay for the AP Computer Science test, or any other freaking AP test, period: they will happily take *all* your money if you are willing to give it to them.

No the problem is the input to the pipeline, and it's not being addressed, and so on slow news days, you get attack pieces on the people on the other end, as if they could magically make an Comparative Literate graduate into a software engineer.

Re:That is not the correct statistic

[tompaulco]

If the number of qualified black women is really that low, then this points to an underlying, institutionalized racism, that is discouraging or actively preventing black women from entering the field in the first place.

That is far from the only conclusion. It could also mean that black women don't generally care to go into fields that Google hires for.
If it DID mean that some organized society wide racism was keeping black women out of these fields, why should it be on Google's shoulders to hire unqualified people, rather than on Society's shoulder's to stop (almost used reverse, which would be the wrong word) the racism which keeps black women out of these fields.

Get rid of anti-discrimination laws

[yuhong]

I am thinking of removing anti-discrimination laws completely (not just to create exceptions) and allowing regulators (such as anti-trust) to impose anti-discrimination conditions on specific companies instead.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Its relevant to knowing if their hiring practices are biased for or against people with a certain skin colour, for example...

No, it is not relevant to that: you cannot infer the presence or absence of racial biases in hiring practice by looking at the racial distribution of who actually got hired.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

And pray tell where did I ever say that. I was just disputing that the data has no relevance.

The data has no relevance; you cannot infer the presence of racial biases in hiring from this data.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[tnk1]

There's a feeling that, I suppose, "where there's smoke, there's fire", except in this case, we don't actually know what the "fire" is.

Certain advocates seem to think it is because of discriminatory hiring practices, which I would agree is wrongheaded, if that was the case. I just don't believe it.

I believe that such practices could certainly happen in smaller shops with cozy "brogrammer" atmospheres, perhaps, but I have trouble believing that Google, which is both a big corporation and filled with many "progressive" sorts would allow racial or gender discrimination to become enshrined in their policy.

In fact, I know a person in the recruiting department at Google. She's a latina and pretty liberal. Not to mention a former editor for a newspaper. I can't imagine a person less likely to let a practice like that stand in her area. She'd probably have a piece written and on the desk of her remaining journalist friends in short order if there was any sort of dealings like that.

I just don't think people are turning women away at the door who really, really want to be in tech. I think that, for whatever reason, a greater number of women don't want to be in tech or don't have enough interest that field of study to want to consider it as a career.

The women I have worked with and interviewed never seemed to have any trouble getting their skills or experience and measuring up to the men, but there's always been very few of them. That leads me to believe that this all starts long before anyone ever gets to an interview or application.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[edmudama]

If it's out of their control, why do you think minorities aren't pursuing careers in computer science? You don't think it could possibly be the rich, white, entitled brogrammer work environments that most of silicon valley brags about?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[serviscope_minor]

The data has no relevance; you cannot infer the presence of racial biases in hiring from this data.

No, you cannot figure it out from this data alone. but that doesn't mean you dont need it.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

No, you cannot figure it out from this data alone. but that doesn't mean you dont need it.

You cannot prove the presence of bias in hiring from any such statistics, it doesn't matter what other data you have.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[morgauxo]

Well, when you learn to read yourself you can go back to the start of this thread and see that I was replying to someone who said that Google was being evil. You seem to be supporting that person's comment. I don't see how they can be evil (in regards to this report) unless they somehow owe the world all that information so I am aksing why they owe it.

It seems to me that they should hire the best applicants that apply (as best as they can determine that) and it's really nobody else's business.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[siliconsmiley]

I graduated from a Computer Engineering class of 400 from Virginia Tech in '97. There was one black guy and two women.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[ArmoredDragon]

Not that I disagree, but she doesn't want the alternative.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[ArmoredDragon]

If it's out of their control, why do you think minorities aren't pursuing careers in computer science?

It's likely a cultural preference. That's very similar to asking why is chicken more popular in India?

You don't think it could possibly be the rich, white, entitled brogrammer work environments that most of silicon valley brags about?

If that was the case, then Asians would be underrepresented. Instead the opposite is true, they're over-represented.

Basically you are making a really retarded assumption similar to this one:

If region's population is 40% black and 60% white, then all sales of rap music to that region should be going to 40% black people and 60% white people, because you know, we're all human and therefore have all of the same preferences. Likewise, 40% of sales of country music CDs should be going to black people, and 60% to white people. If the figures don't reach those numbers, then clearly the stores that are selling them are racist.

See how stupid that is? And fundamentally it's no different than what you're saying.

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[fyngyrz]

Oh, FFS. Look. No matter *what* I chose, the point, which you completely missed, was that one malfeasance is in no way made less by the existence of others.

By concentrating on the particulars -- which named no one and drew no level of equivalence except withing the example, as without -- you failed.

The example is the same if it is stealing from the cookie jar or shoplifting -- or murder -- or twisting the truth. That's the WHOLE POINT. That's the whooshing sound you heard.

The slashdotter below you screws up and makes some dumb remark about my post, missing the point? Doesn't excuse you doing it at all. How's that? A little closer to home?

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[fyngyrz]

I didn't do anything of the kind. I substituted an act for an act. I pointed out a general truth that applies across the board. That's all.

Seriously, it's like some of you never made it through English class.

"Diverse society will fail" --Putnam;

[NewYork]

"Diverse society will fail" --Putnam;
http://www.boston.com/news/glo...

Re:Pop culture mental fugue

[serviscope_minor]

You cannot prove the presence of bias in hiring from any such statistics, it doesn't matter what other data you have.

Sounds like you're claiming it's impossible to prove (i.e. show with a high degree of certainty) bias with statistics.

Whatever dude.