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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.
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.
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.
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.
The population of California is 15% Asian, so it is slightly high in comparison.
Worked for Rachel Dolezal...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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?
At least in the South, there has traditionally been a "one drop" rule, wherein anyone with "one drop" of non-White in them was considered not white. In Virginia, we had the Pocahontas Exception for those descended from the marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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.
Then why don't more of Apple's white male employees (and Facebook's and Twitter's and ...) simply self identify as black, women, hispanic, and other minorities? Problem instantly solved, right? The company could kick in a little bonus to incentivize them to do so and make their 'diversity numbers' look really good without having to hire anybody new.
Hiring Indians might be good for diversity
No, actually when you read diversity reports like TFA, Indians and other Asians are counted as "white" to make sure that the diversity numbers appear low.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
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...
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.
Obviously not an academic or even really an opinion source, but a funny commentary on that...
College Humor video for you. Enjoy
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.
Where have you been hiding those past 5-10 years?
Talent, marketable skills or an education that prepares you for the job you're trying to get is so last decade. Today, what matters is that you belong to a disadvantaged group. Or rather, to a group that perceives itself as disadvantaged and is loud and obnoxious.
Seriously, if you have enough money to dye your hair in some neon color and have enough money to blow on a vanity degree in something as marketable as "gender studies", your claim to being disadvantaged is a wee bit lacking credibility.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I couldn't help but instantly think of this.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What? You nuts, who in their sane mind would wanna get rid of their customer base?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I'm glad you asked. Consider "Primate Programming Inc". http://www.newtechusa.com/PPI/...
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
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?
Fuck putting "diversity" ahead of reality.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Was that the shortest totally appropriate comment ever ?
No
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
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.
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
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.