YouTube Hiring For Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Men, Lawsuit Says (theverge.com)

Kirsten Grind and Douglas MacMillan report via The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): YouTube last year stopped hiring white and Asian males for technical positions because they didn't help the world's largest video site achieve its goals for improving diversity, according to a civil lawsuit filed by a former employee. The lawsuit, filed by Arne Wilberg, a white male who worked at Google for nine years, including four years as a recruiter at YouTube, alleges the division of Alphabet's Google set quotas for hiring minorities. Last spring, YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren't female, black or Hispanic, and to "purge entirely" the applications of people who didn't fit those categories, the lawsuit claims.

A Google spokeswoman said the company will vigorously defend itself in the lawsuit. "We have a clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity," she said in a statement. "At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire the best people, improve our culture, and build better products." People familiar with YouTube's and Google's hiring practices in interviews corroborated some of the lawsuit's allegations, including the hiring freeze of white and Asian technical employees, and YouTube's use of quotas.

Comments

Easy Solution

[alvinrod]

Here's the easy solution to this problem. Don't include information on race, gender, etc. on employment applications and you don't have to worry about excluding people because HR or hiring personnel are bigoted, whether actively or unconsciously. If it gets the point of the interview and you've still got people being biased or discriminatory, then you've got bigger problems because at that point there's no excuse for falling back on some preconceived notions as everyone who makes it there should be qualified to work at your company or your screening process sucks.

Anything else is going to create a perception of unfairness regardless of what kind of noble intentions you might have. One thing that always astounds me is that the people who constantly bang on about white or male privilege and how that provides unfair benefits for some always seem to want to enact policy that enshrines unfairness as a fundamental concept. If you think that unfair treatment results in people being dissatisfied or outright disgruntled, then why the hell would you think that actively creating unfair conditions wouldn't result in the same conditions. To some degree I think this is partially (among a great many other things) responsible for the rise in what's been called the alt-right and has played a part in why someone like Trump was able to win the election.

Re:Easy Solution

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It wont work.

The accusation is, the general American population is 78% white, 12% black, 10% Hispanic, 2% Asian, 2% Arab, x% Jewish, 51% female. If your work force does not have the same percentages you are discriminating.

Instead of general population as the criterion, if you use STEM graduates of the top 100 or 200 US colleges, the percentages might not look so terrible for Google. If Google could say, "our workforce reflects the talent pool we recruit from" and that argument is accepted it would be good.

Google is not making that argument, "the population of top grads from top schools differs significantly from the general population. What can we do?".

The reason is, this argument has been used in the past to actively discriminate against the minorities. So it does not carry much weight among the general public. So Google is in this no-win situation.

Re: Easy Solution

[ArmoredDragon]

That's fine too say and all, until the government probes and lawsuits begin.

Re:Easy Solution

[blindseer]

Here's the easy solution to this problem. Don't include information on race, gender, etc. on employment applications and you don't have to worry about excluding people because HR or hiring personnel are bigoted, whether actively or unconsciously.

Sounds easy at first but impossible in practice.

Imagine an applicant fresh from college. The resume collection system removes the name and gender of the applicant and replaces it with a numeric identifier. Instead of "Jennifer Jones" it puts, "Applicant 79876". There are still schools that accept only men or women, if the applicant attended one of these schools then how can that be hidden? Is any mention of the name of the school removed? The college that people attended is important as some schools have a reputation for higher standards than others. Only removing the names of single sex schools would raise a flag as well.

Hiring managers like to see people that had activities outside of academics, and applicants know this. If someone took up softball or volleyball then the probability is quite high the applicant is female, versus more male dominated sports like baseball or hockey. This isn't absolute but a well known trend.

What of a club like Society of Women Engineers? If an applicant chooses to put that on their resume then would it be acceptable to remove it before a hiring manager can see it? The society does accept men as members but we all know that this is dominated by women. Same goes for societies based on race like Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.

To some degree I think this is partially (among a great many other things) responsible for the rise in what's been called the alt-right and has played a part in why someone like Trump was able to win the election.

I agree. The reason we saw organizations like SWE and SHPE develop was to counteract discrimination. They advocated for fair treatment in society. If white and Asian males see themselves being denied work because of their sex and/or race then would not organizations develop to advocate for fair treatment? What we've seen are these groups that historically called for fair treatment are now asking for special treatment. It's as if "reverse discrimination" is not also a form of discrimination. Trump didn't win the election so much as Clinton lost. She ran on being a woman and that "it's time" for a woman as President. That might get a person a lot of points in an election, which is how I think Obama was able to win, but the person still has to have enough other qualifications to be considered worthy. Clinton was a mediocre senator and a terrible Secretary of State. Trump called for "making American great again", which has broad appeal. Clinton talked of how she'd fight for women and minorities but white men vote too.

Some data: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Clinton did win the Latino vote, Black vote, and women, but white men voted too. When you go and campaign on how white men are keeping you down in a nation that is 74% white and 49% male then you should not be surprised that you lose. It's actually amazing she got as many votes as she did. Oh, and it doesn't help to run a campaign on getting a majority of the popular vote in an election that chooses the winner based on state allocation of electors. Trump and his campaign knew this and so campaigned on getting electors, so he won.

Re: Easy Solution

[Zalbik]

Nope. Having the wrong gender/race mix is prima facie evidence of wrongdoing in a civil suit.

Reference?

Every legal precedent I can find regarding discrimination requires the prosecutor to show that equivalent candidates were systematically approved/rejected on the basis of race. I have never seen a legal argument made based on the racial characteristics of an employers workforce.

If that were a valid legal argument, I would expect to see many more lawsuits of sexism in heavily male or female dominated industries.

Re:Easy Solution

[Maxo-Texas]

It is true according to the u.s. government.

How can there be a race war when I (an old white man) helps push a hispanic lady who's car stalled out of traffic into a church parking lot with the assistance of a young tattooed black man yesterday.

And we both smiled at each other and fist bumped before heading on our way. And this is in the deep south.

Be excellent to one another. That's all we need to make it.

Re: Easy Solution

[Reverend Green]

Yo silverspoon broham - your privilege is not my privilege.

I notice something whenever I hear some fake progressive scumbag ranting. It's always some inherited wealth private school twat, lecturing working people about their "checking your privilege". The whole "social justice" hypocrisy is just another tactic used by the bourgeoisie to divide and oppress the masses.

Racism

[TheCount22]

I think this has gone too far. Fighting for equality of opportunities is one thing but being racist to achieve it is another.

Reverse racism is simply racism it doesn't matter what group in targeted. Social justice isn't justice. Feminism is not about equality anymore it doesn't care about other genders it's only about women. People fought long hard against racism and inequality. The last thing we need is to find new victims (ie. Men, Caucasians and Asians this time around) .

Does anyone doubt it?

[Kohath]

I think we can all agree that Google and YouTube probably did this. If they didn’t do this exactly, they're basically saying they'd like to do it if they could get away with it.

All applicants to Google and YouTube should say they "identify" as a lesbian refugee from Honduras named "Sofia Espinoza". After you're hired, you can say you had an epiphany and you now "identify" as who you were born as. You can change it back to Sofia the week before performance reviews. If they doubt you, call them racist and transphobic.

Re:It's not surprising

[iamhassi]

You are posting as anonymous coward, but let me be on record to say that Youtube and their parent company have been taken over by the biggest racists on this planet.

This ^^^^ no one should be judged by skin color or gender. It's strange to see people who claim to not be racist say it's ok to not hire a white or Asian person because of their skin color but to not hire a black person is racist. It's all racist.

Google Made White/Asian Boys Worthless to Teachers

[theodp]

A Google-CodeCademy award program offered $1,000 bonuses to teachers who got 10 or more high school kids to take a JavaScript course, but only counted students from "groups traditionally underrepresented in computer science (girls, or boys who identify as African American, Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native)."

Minorities, Behold! This is what success looks lik

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Minorities, Behold! This is what success looks like Asians were not allowed to become citizens till recently, 1960s. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese who came to California during the gold rush were harassed, and their better claims were usurped, they were relegated to working on less productive claims, they were paid less for their gold, and when the gold rush ended they were mostly chased out of the country.

In 1906 an Indian man named Bhagat Singh Thinde made the crazy argument that he was White, (He argued he was from a high caste, despised low caste people, had enough prejudice in him to qualify as White. No one was offended by that argument, but Judge Sutherland, SCOTUS, ruled that he was Caucasian but not white ;-)).

They worked steadily, played by the rules of the game, concentrated on getting ahead personally. No long marches demanding equality, no serious law suits alleging discrimination, ... Over the years they are punching 10 times their weight. 2% of the general population, 20% of top STEM grads, 20% of Intel scholarships and 99% of top spelling bee and 85% of top geography bee ...

Yes, they had to much better than general population to get there. Asian kids need to score 150 points more than the White kids in SAT to get into the top colleges. Yes, the average Asian kid is suffering and is in stress because the expectation is set so high by the other Asian kids. But these are the problems of success, ....

I do hear complaints of discrimination among my friends, but it is more like to be something like, "I am the senior most nephrologist with much better publication record and I should have been named the head, but they gave the post to some White Guy. Anyway chairmanship involves mostly talking to the donors and getting projects from the pharma companies, so I don't care"... sour grape syndrome?

Re:It's not surprising

[Cederic]

Someone wearing a turban? sure.
Someone wearing a hat? sure.
Someone wearing a headscarf? sure.

Someone wearing some full face covering leaving only her eyes showing? No.

I can't hear her. I lipread to supplement poor hearing. Yet, somehow, if I ask her to remove the full face covering I'm the one that will be described as an intolerant bigot, even though she's the sexist discriminating against disabled men.

Re:It's not surprising

[Shotgun]

I find the headscarf mildly irritating at times, but then I ask myself, "What if the person was dressed as a nun? Would I be bothered then?" Then, I just move on and keep shutting up.