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Apple Makes Slight Progress On Diversity While Its Rivals Are Making Practically None (macrumors.com)
The workforce at Apple is still predominately white and male, reveals the diversity report the company released Wednesday. But that doesn't mean that its efforts to improve diversity haven't yielded improvements. This is the third year that the Cupertino giant has released its diversity numbers and the balance is improving, although a bit slowly. From a MacRumors report: Its overall workforce, including tech, non-tech, and retail jobs, is 68% male and 32% female as of June 2016, a slight change from a 69%-31% split in 2015. Apple's race and ethnicity breakdown among U.S. employees is 19% Asian, 9% Black, 12% Hispanic, 2% Multiracial, 1% Other, and 56% White, representing a 2 percent increase in White employees and a 1 percent increase in both Asian and Hispanic employees compared to last year's data. Females represent 37% of Apple's global new hires, while U.S. underrepresented minorities represent 27% of global new hires. Apple defines underrepresented minorities as "groups whose representation in tech has been historically low -- Black, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islander."Washington Post compares Apple's progress to other Silicon Valley giants, claiming that rest of the industry is mostly sitting idle. (Alternate source: Reuters) From the report: At Facebook, black and Hispanic employees make up 2 and 4 percent of the employee base. Despite commitments to diversity, neither Google nor Facebook have made a dent in those numbers since they first announced them in 2014.
What
It's only a bad thing if they're excluding better qualified people. If they're hiring the best person for the job regardless of what they have between their legs and the color of their skin, and it turns out to be a bunch of white guys, then that's just an artifact of the talent pool.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Also, how is Samsung Telecommunications / Samsung Telecommunications US looking?
I'm curious what percent of applications come in from minorities comparatively, and what the reasons are for declining those who are declined. I think it's important for the debate/argument (in either direction) to know how many people of each minority are TRYING to work there, compared to which are accepted, as well as the reasoning behind those decisions and the qualifications of each.
Hiring Indians might be good for diversity, but bad for business. Speaking from my own experience. After we replaced all Indians with East Europeans (we are West European company), we literally forgot about bugs and losing customers because of terrible quality of our code. The price of software development remained the same.
That instead of making companies hire under qualified (generally) minorities, we should work on qualifying more minorities. And avoid quotas at all cost.
I am just curious, but according to the census blacks make up 9.5% to 13% depending on which survey you use. So at what point will a company be considered diverse ? When the % of blacks they hire exceed the national % present or when they are equally represented with all other ethnicities, which would put them at a much greater than national average representation.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I wonder if any black or woman programmer has ever been fired for incompetence, insubordination, or for refusing to do their work at Facebook or Apple? Is the company too afraid to get rid of bad programmers if doing so might hurt their 'diversity' numbers? Years ago, I worked with a woman who wanted to be let go so that she could collect unemployment or get a severance package. She did everything she could think of to get the company to get rid of her. Nothing worked so she finally left voluntarily.
That seems low to me considering they now dominate Cal state schools ever since they dropped affirmative action.
Doing something where nobody including them cares?
Or matters..
Great!
And everyone's the KKK
Talent is the only thing that truly matters.
How much does someone have to be 'non-white' before they are classified as a minority? Obama is half white and half black but he is always considered to be black. There are people who consider themselves 'black' because just one of their great-great-grandparents was black (1/16). I think Elizabeth Warren tried to claim she was Native American because she had something like 1/32 (which turned out be completely unsubstantiated as well). I once had HR question my 'white' heritage when I was hired to make sure I didn't have some kind of minority blood in me so they could claim it. Is there some kind of standard that must be met or can it be like sexual preference where you can just 'self-identify'?
It's hard to go to the PTA meetings when they are working odd hours of double shifts to make ends meet. It's not because minorities are bad parents. Problem is that majority of school funding comes from local taxes which means some schools are overflowing with cash while other schools are just barely getting by.
Why pull that punch? Just say it: White male is the new nigger. It's the latest class of people for which it is socially acceptable to openly disparage, shun, or mock.
For as many times as we've been down this road before, you'd think the landmarks would start to seem familiar.
So folks are told that they can choose their gender these days. I'm going to start choosing my race. Look like a white guy, but self-identify as black, and if you disagree that's racism.
Probably due to the realization that diversity is only good for a company as at most a secondary good. Unfortunately, the prevailing rhetoric about diversity is generally closer to the assumption that there exist plenty of qualified black and non-white Hispanics who are just chomping at an opportunity to prove their worth. However, when one looks at the pipelines coming out of academia, that doesn't appear to be the case there at all. That's particularly problematic because the industry often has a real credentialist elitism so if God forbid some black kid taught himself to code but could only get into a HBC because it was a cheap and safe route to a degree, they'd probably never consider him. Because Stanford, CMU and such.
So if Apple is becoming more racially diverse in those demographics it means one of these things, though possibly both is true:
1. Apple is poaching a lot of good black and non-white Hispanic talent, leaving less for the industry at large.
2. Apple is accepting candidates below their usual standards.
If I were involved in strategy at Google, I would make it clear that if you aren't getting #1, you aren't going to accept #2. That's a route to risking mediocrity for your company, but awesome when your competitor does it to themselves.
The Fine Summary touts the increase in Asians as a positive, but Asian-Americans are only 5.6% of the population. 19% is way too high. This share should be decreasing if they actually want to mirror society.
Oh? So more/better qualified candidates have become available to apply for positions at Apple? Great! Although, I'm not entirely convinced that Apple had anything to do with that...
err..or were you saying that Apple has become a little better at hiring people that will make it look more Politically Correct?
You can simply tell Apple that you identify as a woman (Caitlan Jenner) and this will give you an advantage in the hiring process. A mediocre woman is apparently more desirable to them than a good man.
Apple announces a massive fall in profits
I'm sure it's only a coincidence!!!!!
Sorry, I'm tired of it. Silicon Valley has more "diverse" people than the rest of the industry - there literally aren't enough women, blacks, latinos, trannies - whatever you think makes them "diverse" - interested in tech to work at these places and bring the statistics up more even if it were a worthwhile goal. But it's not. And it's not "progress". Progress is having the most qualified people working, regardless of innate traits.
Do you have ESP?
Skin color only? I thought that minorities do not want to be judged by the color of their skin. It seems that they do want to be judged by the color of their skin now. What a bizarro world this is becoming...
So we are forced to conclude that it's not a diversity issue, it's a failure to find enough of the candidates to tick the boxes to keep the social justice warriors off your backs
In 2010 David Cameron appointed a lot of female cabinet ministers in the UK. A year later a lot of them were sacked in his first reshuffle, and the papers were strangely quiet because they KNEW that they'd proved incompetent...
We seriously live in a world now where it is more important to focus on diversity , than the best person for the job now..
Notice how every time these articles come out, they don't include application, firing, or geographical stats ?
Can we just stop the PC bullshit and focus on improving our world?
Hmm. I wonder what Apple could have that neither Facebook nor Google possess in the US? What might possibly account for the discrepancy between Apple and other big tech companies? Oh yeah, probably the 30,000 retail workers (out of a total of 43,000) in their Apple stores. I wonder what the breakdown would be for the technical jobs that Apple relies upon for the products those retail workers are hawking? I'm guessing that it'd probably be in line with what Facebook and Google are posting.
Good for Apple for being more diverse that Google, I guess, but I'd bet it's a hell of a lot easier to broaden overall diversity when you essentially require a Starbucks level of skill for the majority of your workforce.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
Surprise, it really isn't discriminating white guys causing the "diversity" numbers. Despite focused attempts to change the "diversity", it looks like the large tech companies just are not able to find the "desired" people to hire. The "underrepresented" groups need to encourage their children at young ages to have interests and academic achievement for tech careers if they want their groups to be better represented. This has very little to do with racism and a whole lot to do with how parents raise their kids and encourage them. Yes, we could use some more emphasis in schools, especially in poor neighborhoods, as well, but that will just be a money pit unless the kids are self engaged and eager to learn.
NUFF SAID
Hey Apple, get rid of the SJWs & their "diversity" bullshit, and be done with it already.
Well, it's the ONLY class of people left you can mock, belittle and make fun of. We just have to find a stereotype that can be exploited.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But with no marketable skill. Though, I think that's not relevant in this time and age.
Any chance we can turn him into a woman? Ohh, he would be a trans-woman, that would be perfect!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you want a device made by the most diverse team, buy Apple. If you want a device made by the best Indians your money can buy, look elsewhere.
is making boorish sessions with women, fat women, blacks and gays, instead on focusing in perfection and technology like in Steve Jobs gone days, Apple is doomed.
Every few months /. has a topic. As a longtime programmer who happens to be Black ... (Atari 8bit, ST, PC, Linux, Mac, Unix, Solaris, Embedded Oses etc etc) I find this topic interesting. What I find more interesting are the comments from other /. readers, most of whom I assume are white.
I get the impression that most of the people commenting on this topic actually do not have black friends. It seems very evident. Maybe because they did not go to school or socialize with people other than them. This may be more the core of lack of diversity. A casual visit to a NSBE conference (which many white students attend) shows a lot of talented engineers.
I think the solution starts with a more holistic approach, befriending some very different than yourself.
We're completely against racial and gender bias, which is why we're enacting quotas for the race or gender of employees that we'd prefer.
I hire the best people for my team from the available pool of candidates. Currently my team is about 15% East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), 10% South East Asian (Vietnamese, Cambodian, Filipino), 25% South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi), 45% White of European Descent (American, British, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Estonian, Latvian, Dutch, and Serbian), and about 5% South American (Braziallian, Argentine, Panamian and Salvadorean). There just have been no qualified black candidates. I can count on 1 hand the number of black applicants. As the same time, I refuse to hire a bad fit or underqualified person just to meet artificial numbers to make people feel good.
People seem to decry the concept of a person being hired despite being seemingly less qualified than a white male. To a company that thrives on ideas the diversity is actually key, and can benefit a corporation more than having a large group of cookie-cutter people who have all had nearly identical life experiences and all come from very similar culture. This is an example of the parts being less valuable than the sum.
But with no marketable skill. Though, I think that's not relevant in this time and age.
Any chance we can turn him into a woman? Ohh, he would be a trans-woman, that would be perfect!
He's already a pussy.
$400 million to pay for US prisoners the Iranians broke international law to hold?
The proper response is, "Give them back by tomorrow, or we consider it an act of war."
Because if they think you'll respond like that, they won't take the prisoners in the first fucking place. Bullies take hostages when they know you're weak.
Thanks, Obama.
This is the best excuse you could use for a homo company story today? meh
Racism and Sexism. Must be a bunch of Trump supports over there at Apple running the place.
Why are we limiting ourselves to just skin colors and ethnic background. Are other species really being represented in high tech? I mean why are we not hiring Chimpanzees. Studies have actually shown the Chimp mind actually has better problem solving abilities than the Human brain. Sure they are 7 times as strong as we are and can easily rip a human into shreds. That's not the point: it's all about the diversity. Why use a UPS to power your computer when an electric eel will do? The eel will bring diversity to the workplace -- even though a UPS may be superior.
And for those who are sarcastically impaired: This is just silly. The people who have the knack for this stuff, regardless of color, end up doing this stuff. Just like many people in engineering gravitate to management if they lack technical kung fu. Guess what: life will sort you out to do what you're good at. That's what nature does: that which doesn't work disappears.
Hopefully the diversity will disappear soon along with the SJW's and HRtards who impose such nonsense on those of us already working 20 hours a day under a deadline.
Apple Makes Slight Progress On Diversity...
Any time ethnicity is a factor in hiring decisions, it's not "progress," it's a social regression. It's the opposite of what Dr. King wanted; namely, a society where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
It's time to take back the work "progressive" from those who use apply it to regressive policies.
1) You're a member of the society you're doing business in.
Read the grandparent post. It simply asserted that a business should hire the best people regardless of sex or ethnicity. That's the society I want to live in, and I suspect most people would agree.
2) Building a reputation as somebody who doesn't care about diversity and inclusion is a good way to find yourself ignored or excluded by the portions of the population you've stated you don't care about. (See: boycott, negative public relations) You are shrinking your pool of available customers.
So you're arguing that Apple should base their hiring practices on meeting some quota of racial hires and gender hires for PR reasons? Sounds pretty messed up to me.
3) Ignoring other parts of the population who could be working for you limits your access to the best thinkers and workers, unless you really care to assert that the lack of minorities in the labor pool are *actually* a reflection of those minorities being dumber and lazier than all of your majority-hire candidates. You are shrinking your pool of available labor.
Read the grandparent post. It says nothing like what you are saying.
Building diversity in your business can be a competitive advantage because it's good public relations, and it's also going to give you access to a wider array of thoughts, ideas, and perspectives - all of which can make your business stronger.
But it's fine - if you don't make it your business, you can be sure your competitors will find a way to make it a competitive advantage. Eventually, you'll be faced with the choice of caring about diversity, or failing and shutting your doors.
Did you read the actual article summary? The breakdown was: "68% male and 32% female as of June 2016, a slight change from a 69%-31% split in 2015. Apple's race and ethnicity breakdown among U.S. employees is 19% Asian, 9% Black, 12% Hispanic, 2% Multiracial, 1% Other, and 56% White." To compare, the racial distribution of the US is 5% asian, 12% black, 16% hispanic, 2% multiracial, 1% other, and 64% white. So what exactly are you so upset about? Is it that Apple has slightly more asians and less hispanics? Fewer whites? Are you planning to complain until Apple's demographics match the US demographics exactly? What do you want?
There is a higher % of Asians in CA compared to the national average. Somewhere around 12%. Still slightly over-represented, but not by as much as using the national average would imply.
Any sort of "quota" is awful and racist, because it paints the worker as "a guy that needed a hand from the HR to be hired", and his actual merits get downplayed in the process.
Now if you for example subsidie GOOD schools on the poorer cities/neighbors, you give em an equal chance to get the jobs fairly.
Also if there was any sort of systemic racism in place, it would be favoring asians rather than white people.
That doesn't sound overwhelmingly white to me
The first rule of "white" club is not to talk about "white" club. Now if you don't mind, get back into our smoke filled room so we can finish planning. Murder, rape, and robbery don't get accomplished and covered up on their own.
What the actual fuck did you put at the end there?
Well, asian people generally get paid more and have better jobs than white people.
So if that social justice bullshit of "an invisible hand manipulating everything to make sure minorities get shafted" was a thing, it would be favoring the asians over whites as well.
It's like there is some kind of natural selection going on where males in general are drawn to detail driven technical work, and women are seeking work with more social aspects. Maybe I am on to something here?
> Any sort of "quota" is awful and racist
And also illegal in many European countries. American "diversity" is really weird.
Fuck putting "diversity" ahead of reality.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
How do you decide that a trend in a particular direction is "improvement" or "progress"? Just because it involves less white males? That sounds like racism and sexism to me.
Consider: would you describe an increased fraction of women in prison as an "improvement"?
Was that the shortest totally appropriate comment ever ?
No
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
All Asian are racist. There will be no peace until all Asian are dead. If you want change you will have to accept killing Asian babies. #WhiteLivesMatter
If you flip the races around and it sound racist, then it was racist to begin with. Enough with #BlackkkLivesMatter. Rule them out as terrorist group and jail the marxist scum.
But then what they would do if they could not do the BLM thing? occupy wallstreet again and only leave when they got decent jobs?
Gotta keep em distracted with trivial matters or else.
BLM is not trivial. It is a serious threat.
They are everything White supremacist/KKK/homegrown terrorist are claimed to be, but for real. Unlike the KKK, BLM is real. They openly march in the street calling for the death of White peoples. Such public display of bigotry and acts of violence hasn't being seen for decades.
Sure the foreign Muslims seem more dangerous now, but let not lost track of our own retards.
Go to school, get an education, work hard, and pay your taxes OR a prepare for a life of public assistance and criminality. Where do YOU want minorities to invest their efforts? Do you want to pay your tax dollars to educate or jail them? Do you want them to contribute their own tax dollars to the system or live off of yours?
Make up your minds!
The idea that meritocracy or the lack thereof can explain disparities is easily demonstrated as false because it assumes that the whites that have their jobs were _naturally_ the most qualified applicants for their positions when in reality many of them got their positions because of who they knew or who they were related to. The previous POTUS being a prime example of this case in that he didn't have the grades to go to Yale, but he had the right father to do so.
That said, I wouldn't force companies to do anything except obey current laws. What minorities should have done a long time ago is to withdraw their resources and create their own institutions to compete in a free market. Asses that benefit from being asses usually don't stop being asses until they no longer benefit from being asses.
Occupy wall-street was funny. The look on their face when they realize the 1% are mostly Jews. The speechlessness when they know they have become kin to Hitler. LOL.
Fat people, smokers, Muslims, geeks (not here), jocks (especially here), uppity or sexually active women (I never did understand why that's considered a bad feature in women), and the traditional ones depending on who's listening. I'm usually not bothered by being mocked and belittled as a member of a class, but that may be because I don't have a long history of having to put up with it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Hire the best and let the skills sort them.
If there are so clever women, then you will just hire no more men. If you're still getting only men, maybe the blame is on the women.
No sane company should use another criterion than skills and soft skills when hireing.
The best progress on "diversity" is to ignore it 100%, and base your hiring decisions on merit. Therefore the companies who have made the least progress on "diversity" have actually made the most progress, by not wasting time and effort and dollars catering to political activists. If someone can show me that those companies are discriminating against anyone based on "diversity" characteristics, I might have more sympathy, but that hasn't been demonstrated anywhere in large companies.
You should be able to hire according to QUALIFICATIONS, not race, ethnicity, or any other political factor!
... I DON'T CARE!
If you want to work for me, you need:
1) Be a US citizen;
2) to speak clear, complete English (such is my market);
3) be fully qualified for the position: prove your abilities and education;
4) NOT be a religious fanatic - preach on your own time, we sell and service REAL products and services;
4) show a sincere work ethic.
You are free to be black, brown, yellow, white, male, female, gay, straight, Muslim, Jewish,
IF you think I need more Hispanics on my workforce, then educate (them) and send them my way!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.