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!"

Comments

More proof

[110010001000]

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

Re:More proof

[Wycliffe]

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.

Re:More proof

[tripleevenfall]

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.

They don't riot, they litigate.

Re:More proof

[ausekilis]

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.

Re:More proof

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:More proof

[HBI]

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.

Re:More proof

[Grishnakh]

...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.

Re:More proof

[Grishnakh]

> 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.

Re:More proof

[tsqr]

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.

Re:More proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you're always going to find some reason why "it didn't work." You're doing all sorts of mental gymnastics in order to come up with an explanation of something that is already perfectly explained with a far simpler truth: People are not all the same, and groups of people are not all alike. People within groups share certain biological and cultural similarities (which is why they are grouped), and those differences are sufficient to explain why some people will be interested in tech jobs and others won't.

Does "systematic racisms/sexism" exist? I don't know because that's a meaningless term used by the intellectually lazy. If you want to stop actual racism and actual sexism that is happening, then that's great. So do I. But you need to target something specific. Tell me specifically which institution is racist/sexist and let's go solve that problem. Then we'll move onto the next one until there are no more. But crying about "systematic" problems with vague evidence -- though it may make you feel a false sense of accomplishment -- doesn't solve anything.

Re:More proof

[tomhath]

The hiring managers have no incentive to do anything other than pick the candidate they think is best

I really, really doubt that's true.

Every large company has policies for quotas/affirmative action/cultural diversity/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. In the last Fortune 500 company I worked, a hiring manager had to write a letter justifying why they didn't offer a job to any minority candidate sent for an interview by HR. No letter was required for white males.

Re:More proof

[ranton]

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.

No, it is saying socio-economic factors make it less likely for African Americans to succeed, and this will not be changed for hundreds of years if society does not lend a hand. The average household wealth of a white family is $656k, while the average for African Americans is $85k. This disparity was $355k vs $67k thirty years ago, so the gap is widening in both real dollars and ratio. (source)

And it makes sense the gap would widen without significant societal assistance. If you believe it often takes money to make money, or that school districts with better funding often provide better education, it is painfully obvious this inequality cannot be reduced without outside assistance.

Re: More proof

[Grishnakh]

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.

Re:More proof

[Pfhorrest]

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.

Points based systems are inherently racist.

[DatbeDank]

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.

Female CS Grads were only 18%....

[clifwlkr]

Given this statistic:

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.....

Diversity quotas make things *worse*

[sethstorm]

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.

Re:Diversity quotas make things *worse*

[El Cubano]

Not only do you get people that are worse off, it tends to overcorrect to remove non-minorities.

Not only that, but then the actual best qualified minorities get looked at and they wonder to themselves, "Are they looking at me and wondering if I am actually the best qualified or of I'm here because of a quota? Am I going to have to prove myself by working 50% or 100% harder than the white guy sitting next to me at the table despite the fact that I already worked 50% or 100% harder to get here because I love what I do and this what I was born for?" As a minority who has worked very hard and has a passion for technology that has been a fear of mine. I am thankful that I have not encountered that (or at least if I have I have not taken notice of it), though I have had friends (both other minorities and women) who have experience it.

Then you wonder why your bigoted policy ends up with lots of incompetent diversity candidates.

And that's the other problem. These diversity programs actually end up becoming a drag for the minorities and women who are passionate and worked hard because they love the field and not because someone trying to fill a diversity quota recruited them.

Sadly it is much more difficult to measure these sorts of effects, so success is defined by number/percentage of minorities/women hired and pay parity/disparity, which are actually atrocious metrics to use for too many reasons to enumerate.

Citation please?

[Kunta Kinte]

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.

Citation please? Where are those "actual numbers" you reference?

But here's my citation, putting black CS grads at 4.5% but hires at 2%...

But last year, 4.5% of all new recipients of bachelor's degrees in computer science or computer engineering from prestigious research universities were African American, and 6.5% were Hispanic, according to data from the Computing Research Association.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/12/silicon-valley-diversity-tech-hiring-computer-science-graduates-african-american-hispanic/14684211/