Apple Releases 2015 EEO-1 Diversity Data Over Weekend (qz.com)
theodp writes: Just days after it came under fire for dismissing a call for diversity as "unduly burdensome and not necessary," Apple quietly released its 2015 EEO-1 diversity report (dated 10/6/2015, reflects the 8/1 payroll). Like other tech companies' diversity disclosures, Apple's EEO-1 raw numbers can't really be reconciled to the percentages based on undisclosed raw numbers that grace the infographic-heavy diversity progress narrative CEO Tim Cook spoke to last August. As to why they keep two sets of diversity books, Apple explains, "The EEO-1 has not kept pace with changes in industry or the American workforce over the past half century. We believe the information we report elsewhere on this site is a far more accurate reflection of our progress toward diversity." Taking this stance allows Apple CEO Tim Cook to boast that "in the United States, we hired more than 2,200 Black employees — a 50 percent increase over last year," while ignoring Apple's EEO-1 report, which indicates that Black employees showed a year-over-year net increase of only 1,475 employees and accounted for only 1.9% of the 4,333 YOY net increase in "Professionals" at Apple (White employees accounted for 50.6%, Asian for 42.1%). If you want to check the math, Apple's EEO-1 data (typed in from the content-copy-not-allowed 2015 and 2014 PDFs) and additional charts can be found in this Tableau workbook.
Given that whites are already underrepresented at Apple compared to their share of the US population, should Asians be terminated so more people of other colors (and whites) can be hired?
I expect a beer from my Asian colleagues for taking the brunt of the scapegoating.
The real question is why this is even an issue in the first place, and why does a corporation need to collect and record a persons race? Is it really any of their fucking business?
How dare Apple call something that is unduly burdensome and not necessary, "unduly burdensome and not necessary".
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I clicked every dang link in that summary and couldn't figure out what the source article was. If this is your own personal research, have the decency to sum it up in a blog post instead of jamming it into the slashdot summary.
I don't care about the whole diversity thing, and apparently neither does my employer, because when they wanted to show us how inclusive they are as an employer, and how they employ people of all races they sent five white middle aged males to tell us. Oh, how the women and various ethnic groups laughed.
See, it's shitstains like you that cause the problems. If we could just get the bigots to shut the fuck up and quit agitating everyone maybe we could fix some things but nooooooooooooo! Dickweeds like you pop out of the woodwork like cockroaches every single time. We've got you idiots on one side and Jesse and Al on the other.
Given he is Afro-Asian? Does he get counted as 0.5 of a black person? i.e. What minority do you count or favour?
This idea of race is increasingly becoming irrelevant.
If you want a better metric, for the purpose of mitigating disadvantage, you should count every employee multiplied by a factor between 0 and 1 based on the economic and academic status of their parents.
So, what are those numbers even "supposed" to be? The "white" percentage is way below US population averages, and likely between US customer demographics. Depending on how big Apple is in Asia, the current statistics may well represent Apple's worldwide customer base.
Can some progressive expert in the calculus of intersectionality and race explain what the percentages ought to be and why?
theodp, what you write is pure polemic. So Apple "dismissed a call for diversity". Here's the actual text of the rejected proposal at the last shareholder meeting:
"Shareholders request that the Board of Directors adopt an accelerated recruitment policy requiring Apple Inc. (the âoeCompanyâ) to increase the diversity of senior management and its board of directors, two bodies that presently fails to adequately represent diversity (particularly Hispanic, African-American, Native-American and other people of color)."
So Apple is supposed to create new senior management or board positions or fire existing senior management or board members, in order to hire "people of color" (strange enough, an expression that you wouldn't dare using in the UK).
Staff need to be found on merit so they can design the future. Consumers pay a lot for branding over very low production costs and ensure a great profit.
That takes real skills and smarts. Good branding and profits per device needs the best staff.
How to get the very best people for the job?
Find people who have had access to study and who had the freedom to learn to like and enjoy further education.
Good new reading material, small class sizes, new equipment, professional teachers who could advance learning rather than teach how to just pass state and federal testing.
Once the few region of educational excellence in a nation have been mapped out, focus recruiting within the very best of the best over every generation.
People who have had the pleasure and time to enjoy history and can project into the future wants of the average consumer. Then place new advanced products on any production lines that ensure a good profit growth.
Finally have a sales team to tell the world about the joy of working with good design. Smart staff can play a charismatic role in keeping the media well away from the production lines and any questions about gov crypto trap doors.
Just as the role of taxation was considered so should any nations further educational demands on a company.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
From the few people I know who have worked at Apple, Apple does not just hire from the top schools at all or those with a heavy academic background only...
I'm thinking Google must hire pretty much anyone at this point too, I think at one point they only hired PHd's but there's no way they could expand as they have keeping up that kind of criteria.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
when the animal rights nutters and the diversity nutters decide to join forces and hire a thousand monkeys to crank out our code for us. Oh wait...
It isn't the function of a commercial company to fix societies diversity issues. Apple is there to make money for the investors. People should get promoted depending on merit and not just to fill some quota.
I think some of the decisions they've made in the past indicate they already have.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
(Of course, he's talking about the board versus the general employee base.) "Choosing a Board of Directors based on race and gender is a lousy way to run a company. Cypress will never do it. Furthermore, we will never be pressured into it, because bowing to well-meaning, special-interest groups is an immoral way to run a company, given all the people it would hurt. We simply cannot allow arbitrary rules to be forced on us by organizations that lack business expertise. I would rather be labeled as a person who is unkind to religious groups than as a coward who harms his employees and investors by mindlessly following high-sounding, but false, standards of right and wrong." More here: http://www.cypress.com/documen...
Best thing to do is not feed the A/C, it will move on.