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Apple Makes Slight Progress On Diversity While Its Rivals Are Making Practically None (macrumors.com)

Posted by msmash on from the diversity-at-work dept.

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.

15 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. So by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What

  2. It's not a bad thing by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:It's not a bad thing by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's not my job as a business owner to fix.

      --
      Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    2. Re:It's not a bad thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      That's not my job as a business owner to fix.

      Actually, it sort of is. Why?

      1) You're a member of the society you're doing business in.
      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.
      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.

      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.

    3. Re:It's not a bad thing by GLMDesigns · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But why is that a problem for Google to solve? Is it the NBA's problem to ascertain and to solve the problem regarding the over representation of black males in the NBA? Should teams start hiring less qualified under-represented populations to make up for the disparity?

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    4. Re:It's not a bad thing by tsqr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually it is, because diversity brings new opinions and viewpoints. If all you hire are white men you're only going to ever have the viewpoints of white men.

      Right, because white men all have the same viewpoint with regard to technology products. "Diversity is a good thing" refers, for example, to diversity in approaches to of problem solving, not in getting the LGBT slant on circuit design or software implementation, whatever that might mean.

    5. Re:It's not a bad thing by Solandri · · Score: 3, Insightful
      1) Yes.

      2) You're mistakenly concluding that having an employee composition which doesn't reflect society means you don't care about diversity. It's the talent pool which is relevant to a business, not society overall. If your employee composition doesn't reflect the talent pool, then all you're doing is depriving qualified people of jobs so you can give them to less qualified people.

      The proper way to measure whether a company is acting responsibly would be to compare the gender and ethnic makeup of all the people who apply for a job, and compare to the gender and ethnic makeup of all the people who are hired. If there is no statistical difference between these two groups, then the company is hiring responsibly. Unfortunately, the Equal Employment Opportunity ordinances make it illegal to ask job applicants their gender or race. So the government makes it impossible to ascertain just how responsibly companies are hiring.



      3) You're again assuming that not having an employee pool which reflects society means you're discriminating. As I said, it's the composition of the talent pool which matters. If you ignore the composition of the talent pool, you can set up impossible-to-achieve standards. If I need to hire 10 programmers, get 100 applicants, and only 4 of them are women, it is mathematically impossible to make sure 50% of your hirees women.

      As for lack of qualified non-white applicants, what can I as a business owner do? I cannot force non-whites to stay in school. I cannot force non-whites to study harder. I cannot force non-whites to get a STEM degree. I suppose I could set up a charity scholarship open only to minorities, but I'm in California. Whites are only 42% of the population here. So if I tried to set up a scholarship for only non-whites, I could be sued for discriminating against the white minority.

      These problems need to be addressed at the educational and government level, not the business level. Trying to address it at the business level is like trying to address poor kids growing up shorter in height by lopping off the feet of non-poor kids, instead of instituting a program to feed poor kids better.

      Building diversity in your business can be a competitive advantage because it's good public relations

      This in particular is especially troublesome. The economy doesn't work off of good intentions. It works off of productivity. The more productive an employee or company is, the more economic activity it creates, and the wealthier people become.

      Certain hits to productivity, we as a society have decided to accept. The ADA requires everyone to go to extra expense to make sure handicapped people are given the same opportunity as abled people. But this is a decision we as a society made together, using the democratic principle of majority decides what laws to make.

      You can argue diversity is also important enough that we as a society should require it despite the economic hit it creates. If that is your argument, then you need to get a majority of legislators to make it a law. Without that process, coercing unwilling businesses to conform to your ideals by arguing it is good public relations is just that - coercion.

    6. Re: It's not a bad thing by cyber-vandal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So a Slovenian farmer has exactly the same world view as a US CEO because they're both white?

    7. Re: It's not a bad thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I like how how because I'm white and another guy is white we don't offer two different diverse perspectives... As if all white people are the same. I'll just give you all a hint "white" isn't one group, it's full of a bunch of "diverse" groups. If I hired a South African white guy people would still complain I hired a white guy. We would be incredibly different with different points of view, culture, upbringing, and offerings but your narrow minded check box diversity gauge would explode. Bunch of freaking hypocrite racists.

    8. Re:It's not a bad thing by EmeraldBot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually it is, because diversity brings new opinions and viewpoints. If all you hire are white men you're only going to ever have the viewpoints of white men. And if the talent pool is heavily biased against non white men you need to go out of your way to choose diversified talent to make your company better.

      You're making a grave and extremely patronizing mistake, whether you know it or not. The whole concept of diversity is based around the concept that people of different ethnicities have had significantly different life experiences, and this assumption is flawed in two ways; for starters, people who grow up in the same country, with the same economic and educational backgrounds, do actually tend to think alike. Take a black person and a white one from Seattle; notice that both are pretty likely to support gay rights. Take a black person and a white one from smallsville Idaho, and notice that both are pretty likely to vote against it. The point is, social class and physical location forms one's opinion far more than skin color. You would get significantly different viewpoints if you hire two white (or two black) people from two different cities than if you hire one each from the same city.

      Second off, the whole concept is incredibly degrading, for everyone involved. You assume white people come from one well off background and are incapable of imaging what being poor or discriminated against is like. You assume that people with minority skin color can't handle the work, and so we need special accommodations for them. And you assume that quality of work is no longer the only criteria you should be using to judge employees. This whole movement is largely based on assumptions , and blatantly racist ones at that. Yes, there are plenty of white people who are the minority ethnicity where they live. I myself have lived in Japan for years, being the only white european person for miles when I walk on the streets, so you can cut the judgmental crap about not understanding being a minority. Furthermore, just because I am white skinned, does that automatically tell you my upbringing? How about a person from France? Do you think we have the same opinions, philosophy, and views on life, despite coming from entirely separate cultures, just because our skin color and gender are the same?

      I don't know if you intend diversity to be kind or something, in a really twisted and demeaning version, but racism is still racism even when you say it with ("good") intentions. You should judge employees by the quality of work, and ideally nothing more (you're being paid to help the company, not fix society at the expense of it). If you really want to get different perspectives, sit down with a cup of coffee in a cafe with your employees, ask a few philosophical questions, and see what happens. You will get a far, far better answer than looking at a checkbox or groping their genitals ever will.

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    9. Re:It's not a bad thing by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This just in: People are assholes. Guess what, happens to men too. Suck it up and learn to deal with it, because it will happen to you a lot of times in your lifetime. You're too tall, too small, too fat, too skinny, too ugly, too beautiful... it doesn't matter, there will always be someone who will think differently of you just for what you look like, how you walk or talk or just how you're standing on the corner. Welcome to the real world. Just today I had to "endure" that I was told to my face by a woman that she doesn't want to stand near me 'cause men with beards make her uncomfortable. So I should now complain about "microaggression"? Maybe force her to stand next to me to make a point?

      What the FUCK is going on here? When did we turn into a bunch of crybabies who throw a tantrum because someone said a bad word?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. Re:White Male by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.

  4. That's not "progress" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. your argument is BS. by scatbomb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  6. Just combat poverty and bad education in general. by Z80a · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.