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WSJ: Facebook's Point System Fails To Close Diversity Gap
theodp writes: Gizmodo and others are picking up on a Wall Street Journal story (Warning: may be paywalled) which reported that Facebook's failure to move the needle on diversity is all the more surprising because the social network awarded Facebook recruiters double points for a "diversity hire" -- a female, Black, or Hispanic engineer -- compared to the hire of a White or Asian male. Facebook declined to comment on whether this points-based system is still in effect. The WSJ also notes that Intel has paid its employees double referral bonuses for women, minorities, and veterans. The reward schemes evoke memories of gender-based (and later race-based) incentives offered for K-12 coding and STEM programs run by tech-backed Code.org (to which Facebook just pledged $15 million) and Google, which offered lower funding or no funding at all to teachers if participation by female students was deemed unacceptable to the sponsoring organizations. Facebook's efforts also seem consistent with the tech-backed Every Student Succeeds Act, which calls for increasing CS and STEM access to address a tech-declared national crisis, but only "for students through grade 12 who are members of groups underrepresented in such subject fields, such as female students, minority students, English learners, children with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students." Hey, sometimes "every" doesn't mean "every!"
In most European countries favoring someone for the color of their skin would be be illegal, even if it was 'positive discrimination'.
People who think this is a good idea should watch the Equal Opportunities episode of Yes Minister.
-SR
it shows racism, but you have it backwards. facebook is the one being racist by treating some races different than others
edit - cap - disaster
More proof of systemic racism: even though the white recruiters were given an incentive to hire for diversity, their innate racist tendencies overrode that incentive and they continued to hire cisgender white males.
- AmiMojo
Nice try but if you look at the actual numbers, facebook, google, etc.. are hiring a *higher* percentage of minorities than are graduating from college. You can't hire what doesn't exists. You either need to start much earlier in the process (high school, grade school) or you need to admit that people are different and their interests and abilities push them to different paths. You rarely hear anything about the lack of male nurses, male teachers, male social workers, etc... The one traditionally male profession that does attract a large percentage of females (doctors) has flipped to being more female. The truth is that most women don't want to code and the ones that do have no problem getting a job.
LGBT people and atheists don't usually have a massive great chip on their shoulder and go out and riot if they don't get what they think they're owed by society. Isn't it odd how there's no quota required for indians? Perhaps its something to do with them working hard and not expecting a good job to be handed to them on a plate simply because of their skin colour.
The sad thing is that I had to do a double take as this was entirely believable.
Racism is now a thought crime. You can't prove that you don't secretly hate all people for being different and any attempt to argue the point makes them hate you, which only proves that you're a racist. It was one thing when we were talking about the KKK who were actually doing things and being cruel to people, and society rightly rejected that nonsense. But when people are trying to misuse statistics, like seeing if you meet certain quotas without even looking at the pool of applicants you have to draw from, it gets silly fast. Especially when we lay collective blame on groups of people based on their skin color in doing much of this.
So we're going to discriminate white and asian applicants over one of another race?
Goodness, isn't that similar to what happened to blacks during the early 20th century too?
Being racist to stop racism doesn't solve the problem. It's just more racism.
... Giving them more for recruiting not recruiting white and asian males is the very definition of sexism and racism.
So to fix racism/sexism ... they are being racist and sexist.
Maybe the problem isn't racism or sexism ... ever consider that? Nope, you didn't. You keep assuming the lazy option.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
In 2013, 18% of bachelor’s degrees in computing were earned by women
How in the heck do they expect to get equal numbers of female and male people into programming jobs in the field. It would seem 'equal' hiring would be around 18% of the population of programmers to make it apples to apples. That would indicate 'fair' hiring.
That said, I do believe in encouraging everyone to get more experience in STEM at a younger age, then to make informed decisions about if this is a career they would like to pursue. It is nuts to me that they are trying to hire 50% of the work force out of 18% of the graduates. That is just not going to work. Just goes to prove we really do need better math education at all levels.....
Not only do you get people that are worse off, it tends to overcorrect to remove non-minorities.
Then you wonder why your bigoted policy ends up with lots of incompetent diversity candidates.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others.
Maybe, just maybe, it's not really racism but a dominance of two particular races that apply to jobs within the industry. When I think Engineering and Math, I tend to think of Germany and Japan, two cultures that are known to have a strong work ethic and an aptitude for solving complex problems. Sure, one country may be predominantly white and the other asian, but that's a superficial difference. There's certainly no race-specific barriers preventing Hispanics, Blacks, Women or other minorities from getting the appropriate Math and Science degrees... could it possibly be that those degrees just don't interest them?
My college CS classmates were dominantly Chinese, Middle Eastern and White (in that order), with one or two Indian (eastern) students. This is in New Mexico, where half the phonebook is hispanic last names. Looking at the broader Engineering school, there were a handful of hispanic students, but they were vastly outnumbered by Asian, Middle Eastern, and White students. The hispanic and native american students tended to go toward business, medicine and art.
Don't jump to the assumption that racism is at play when there are many more variables that could account for this perceived slight.
are hiring a *higher* percentage of minorities than are graduating from college
Do you have some stats for that? TFA links to this paywalled article that says there are more minority graduates than jobs. This US government report says the same thing.
male nurses, male teachers, male social workers
Read the news, at least in the UK this has been a major issue since the 90s at least and is getting millions of Pounds spent on fixing it. Men looking to become primary school teachers get massive incentives, for example.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
LGBT people and atheists don't usually have a massive great chip on their shoulder
BUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh wait, you were being serious? Let me laugh even harder. BUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
facebook is the one being racist by treating some races different than others
Racism is only present when one group is believed to be inherently superior to others. The fight to mitigate socioeconomic barriers for underrepresented groups does not come close to fitting the definition of racism. It does fit the definition of inclusive discrimination, which so far has been the only successful way of fighting institutional exclusive discrimination.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The summary is misleading. The recruiters are rewarded for finding minority candidates, but they only feed them to hiring managers. The hiring managers have no incentive to do anything other than pick the candidate they think is best, with best being some combination of qualifications, interpersonal skills, experience, wage requirements etc.
Frankly the summary is just flamebait, the way it frames what is happening. It's actually kind of ironic that people are modding me down as flamebait when they have been triggered by the inaccurate trolling summary.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Molding a definition to fit your politics is 1984-esque.
Racism is discrimination or bigotry on the basis of race, not that load of crap you just spewed.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
...and is getting millions of Pounds spent on fixing it. Men looking to become primary school teachers get massive incentives, for example.
There's a good reason we don't do that in America: any man who wants to be around little kids like that is automatically deemed a pedophile and has a cloud of suspicion around him. Almost no man is dumb enough to go into that field because of this, even though I'm sure many would like to if society weren't so paranoid about it.
> My college CS classmates were dominantly Chinese, Middle Eastern and White (in that order), with one or two Indian (eastern) students.
If you are a black or hispanic child, you are much less likely to have a computer growing up than a white child. By the time you get to college you will be miles behind other students that have been tinkering with computers for their whole lives.
If that's the case, how are the Chinese, Indian, and middle eastern kids getting their hands on computers at such young ages? They don't seem to have any problems overcoming any disadvantages they had.
Sorry, I don't buy it. It's not because of having computers growing up, it's because of cultural differences. Asian and middle eastern cultures value engineering and think of it as a prestigious career; black and Hispanic cultures simply do not.
1. Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior
The concept I see being pushed these days is that only a member of an oppressed minority can be a victim of racism, and a member of an oppressed minority cannot be a racist, regardless of who he/she discriminates against.
So is ecnomics the determining factor in one's ability to succeed in technology? We've solved "nature vs. nurture" and the answer is nurture?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
If some people want to believe affirmative action is even on the same magnitude as believing other races are sub-human they are deluding themselves and making a very weak argument.
That's exactly what affirmative action is. It says blacks are not as good as whites, can't compete, and thus need a loving, guiding hand to help them up.
I don't think you'll find many people who want to deny anyone equal rights under the law. More likely you have a disagreement about what those rights are, and what "equality" means in context. But what do I know? I'm just an asshole on the internet.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You're right. Here's the dictionary definition of "bigotry": "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own." Note that the concept of "race" is absent from the definition, so "bigotry on the basis of race"? Not a thing, according to the definition.
Reading comprehension fail. The definition refers to the intolerance found in someone's creed, belief or opinion, not intolerance about someone else's creed, belief, or opinion. For instance, having the opinion that a race is inferior and being unwilling to accept you are wrong (intolerance) would be bigotry.
Words end up meaning what most people generally agree they mean, which often diverge from dictionary definitions. Most people would generally agree that someone who believes that persons of a specific race are inherently inferior, is a bigot.
Words certainly do change over time, and the worst examples of this include when two very different (or even opposite) meanings are given to the same word because of ignorance of the population. Literally literally meaning figuratively is a good example.
Racism apologists are certainly attempting to re-use the word racism to mean any form of discrimination in an attempt to imply inclusive discrimination is just as bad as considering another race sub-human. It is a deeply ignorant attempt by people unwilling to accept their own privilege or at least who are unwilling to extend that privilege to others.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I completely disagree.
It's 1967, and a bunch of people don't want equal rights for black people; some of them even want to bring back lynchings, and they all want to deny them voting rights, the right to sit anywhere on the bus, the right to use the same drinking fountains and bathrooms, etc.
Are you seriously going to tell me that it's "puerile" to dismiss these people as "assholes"? That we should have a rational discussion with them? Sorry, but fuck that.
It's no different today, it's just the group being oppressed is different (homosexuals/LGBTetc.). Heck, they still don't want them using the same bathrooms.
If you're in favor of making a whole group of people second-class citizens, then you're an asshole, full stop. This isn't about "disagreement", it's about basic human rights. Even Donald Trump thinks trans people should use whatever bathroom they feel comfortable in. There's a little room for rational discussion at the fringes (like the wedding cake issue: equal rights. vs. rights of business owners to choose who to do business with, but this was also mostly settled with the CRA in the 60s, mainly it's just extremist libertarians who want to regress on this out of some misguided notion that "the invisible hand" of "the market" will magically correct this), but not much. Mostly it's just a bunch of religious assholes who want to deny people equal rights under the law, and it's little different from what those peoples' brethren in the 60s and before did to black people.
If the real problem is that poor people need a hand (which they do) and it's just that black people are generally more poor than white people (which they are), then policies that address the disadvantage of poverty directly will, as a consequence of the existing racial bias in poverty, automatically help black people more than it does white people, to exactly the extent of that bias, and for only so long as that bias persists.
No need for policies to directly address race at all.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Would you rather people take assholes to court or just cut to the chase and punch them in the face?
How about just finding another baker or photographer? No need for violence. And yes, litigation is violence, because it's enforced by men with guns.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.