Netflix CEO Reed Hastings To Depart Facebook Board of Directors (cnbc.com)

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will not be nominated for re-election at the company's 2019 annual stockholders meetings, Facebook said on Friday. CNBC reports: Hastings has served on the board of the social media company since 2011. The company said it will also not be re-nominating Erskine Bowles the president emeritus of the University of North Carolina, and it will instead nominate Peggy Alford, PayPal senior vice president of core markets. The addition of Alford, an African-American woman, comes as Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies strive for the inclusion of more women and minorities in their boards and throughout their workforces.

Hastings departure had been talked about for some time due to Facebook's growing interest in video services, according to Andrew Ross Sorkin. In 2017, Facebook launched Watch, its video streaming service, and last year, the company released IGTV, its Instagram video streaming app. Hastings' departure comes about three years after he got into a tussle with fellow board member Peter Thiel over their political leanings. In an August 2016 email, Hastings told Thiel that he planned to dock his performance review over his endorsement of then Republican Presidential-nominee Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report.

Comments

Merit Considered Harmful

[Kunedog]

The addition of Alford, an African-American woman, comes as Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies strive for the inclusion of more women and minorities in their boards and throughout their workforces.

Nothing says "We don't care about qualifications or achievement" more than "striving" to promote job candidates based on two attributes they were born with.

Re:Merit Considered Harmful

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is obvious, if you stop to think about it: there is a very limited supply of "diversity hires" available on the market, and an even smaller number of those are actually talented in their field (unless you're going to claim that being a minority automatically makes them competent). And that small supply is hotly demanded by a great many employers. Once the cream of the crop is skimmed off by the largest, highest paying companies, the leftovers will be hired anyway -- because even though they might be incompetent, they still provide PR and legal compliance value to the company that outweighs their lack of job ability.

Of course many will disagree with that logic on an emotional level, but simply ask yourself, if you were forced to undergo a risky medical procedure, would you be ok with your surgical team being chosen according to ethnicity first and experience/ability second?

Re:Minorities

[LostMyAccount]

My guess is she's better than you think. It's probably a real job with real responsibilities that has a really high income. And if she was half-smart, she'd also know that a black female executive who's actually good at her job is worth a giant pay premium to many companies for the black and female part.

It seems kind of ironic, but so many companies need/want to virtue signal their ethnically diverse makeup that they're fairly desperate to retain and promote female, and especially black female, executives, and will pay premiums to keep the ones that are average-or-better in their positions.

My wife (who isn't black) actually squeezed more money out of her employer for this reason. Her boss actually told her that female executive recruiting and retention was a big deal to global management ("You're actually on a high-value, high achievers list at corporate in Dublin."), and despite getting a bunch of unrequested deferred compensation thrown at her, she also asked for a big raise and they didn't even negotiate, they just gave it to her.

My guess is Peggy Alford doesn't give a shit whether some right wing cranks think she's only where she's at because she's female or black, she's too busy cashing checks and figuring out her new company-supplied Mercedes.