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Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

reuters.com

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Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#31

Post by CydeWeys »

bko wrote: post #22
praptak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The data in this section allows people of two or more races to more accurately state their racial background. For example, Black+ includes all Googlers who identify as Black, plus those who identify as Black and any other race." https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/...

Thanks. Is there a hierarchy? Like if I identify as both Black and White, am I counted in Black+ or White+ or is it double counted? Does the employee provide a ranking?

It's not a hierarchy, and they don't add up to 100%, so there is double-counting. I just did the math on one of the rows from the report using the + labels and that row added up to 104.6%, so we can deduce that 4.6% of people fit into two categories (or maybe slightly less than that including people that fit into 3 or more categories).

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#32

Post by sokoloff »

> some people from underrepresented backgrounds have said they continue to feel unwelcome in the tech industry, and they also remain high in demand elsewhere as companies compete to increase diversity.

This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps, but it seems like many policies which seek to boost individual company population ratios to be significantly higher than the comparable tech-industry ratios are prone to this problem.

Competing for talent and working hard to ensure that underrepresented group members have a fair shot? Should be standard practice and a baseline of ethical corporate and human behavior.

Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me.

We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. That’s observable from the industry-wide figures. Moving an underrepresented group member from industry company A to industry company B doesn’t change that industry-wide measure at all, which should be obvious but seems to escape mention.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#33

Post by kaycebasques »

mastazi wrote: post #17

I'm Italian and I speak Spanish and Portuguese relatively fluently. Using the term "Latinx" in my opinion is a form of cultural appropriation, because it imposes a way of using grammatical gender that is typical of the English language (think e.g. about the "singular they") upon neo-latin languages where the perception of grammatical gender is very different. In neo-latin languages such as Italian or Spanish, grammat…

I have studied Spanish and am currently studying Portuguese (my partner is Brazilian) and I think about this a lot. I would take the other side of the bet here. I would bet that this deeply ingrained gendering of objects does show up elsewhere and influence attitudes. Surely there have been studies on this? Of course I respect your experience as a native speaker and the fact that you know more native speakers than I do, but right now we're just battling anecdotes.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#34

Post by 542458 »

mastazi wrote: post #17

I'm Italian and I speak Spanish and Portuguese relatively fluently. Using the term "Latinx" in my opinion is a form of cultural appropriation, because it imposes a way of using grammatical gender that is typical of the English language (think e.g. about the "singular they") upon neo-latin languages where the perception of grammatical gender is very different. In neo-latin languages such as Italian or Spanish, grammat…

I was wondering if it was just internet bias that made “latinx” look unpopular, but no - it’s pretty unpopular in real life as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx

> Surveys of Hispanic and Latino Americans have found that most prefer other terms such as Hispanic and Latina/Latino to describe themselves, and that only 2 to 3 percent use Latinx.[1][2] A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that roughly three-quarters of U.S. Latinos were not aware of the term Latinx; of those who were, 33% said it should be used to describe their racial or ethnic group, while 65% said it should not.[3][2]

Honestly, with support that poor I’m not sure why you’d bother.

(Aside, but iOS doesn’t even recognize latinx as a word)

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#35

Post by curiousgal »

bko wrote: post #29
CydeWeys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't track sexual orientation. Black+ means black or black plus some other ethnic minority (Native American, Latino, etc.).

Google does track orientation of employees. They have a breakdown of intersectional hiring in their 2019 report. It may be voluntarily reported. But the + doesn't stand for orientation. I don't see how being gay makes you any more or less of a racial identity https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb78...

According to this[0] people can self-identify as "Black+" so if it's purely racial how could people self-identify as that?

0.https://developers.google.com/learn/certificates

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#36

Post by indigochill »

bko wrote: post #3

What is Black+ and Latinx+? This is the first time I'm hearing this term and can't find anything about it in the report or online.

Maybe the reason for the attrition.

I'm a white dude but work in a foreign country (also predominantly white). For the most part I'm just "one of the guys". I only really feel like an outsider when corporate policy dictates we have to talk about cultural sensitivity towards foreigners and I happen to be the only foreigner in the room.

For people of different races, I assume this feeling is switched on practically all the time because now the differences aren't only felt during HR mandated meetings. And moreover, they're not differences that have any bearing on the person's contribution to the company (any more than my status as a foreigner does).

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#37

Post by 0xy »

mastazi wrote: post #17

I'm Italian and I speak Spanish and Portuguese relatively fluently. Using the term "Latinx" in my opinion is a form of cultural appropriation, because it imposes a way of using grammatical gender that is typical of the English language (think e.g. about the "singular they") upon neo-latin languages where the perception of grammatical gender is very different. In neo-latin languages such as Italian or Spanish, grammat…

3% of Hispanics use the term, and an overwhelming majority believe it should never be used to describe them. [1]

Honestly it's disgusting it's still in use. When does it be come a slur given it's used against a population against their wishes?

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#38

Post by [deleted] »

bko wrote: post #29
CydeWeys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't track sexual orientation. Black+ means black or black plus some other ethnic minority (Native American, Latino, etc.).

Google does track orientation of employees. They have a breakdown of intersectional hiring in their 2019 report. It may be voluntarily reported. But the + doesn't stand for orientation. I don't see how being gay makes you any more or less of a racial identity https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb78...

[deleted]

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#40

Post by mastazi »

sz4kerto wrote: post #30
mastazi wrote: post #17

I'm Italian and I speak Spanish and Portuguese relatively fluently. Using the term "Latinx" in my opinion is a form of cultural appropriation, because it imposes a way of using grammatical gender that is typical of the English language (think e.g. about the "singular they") upon neo-latin languages where the perception of grammatical gender is very different. In neo-latin languages such as Italian or Spanish, grammat…

Not even speaking about languages without gendered nouns. :) Sometimes I use she instead of he or the other way around, and the listeners likely don't realize that I have to pay extra attention using he/she when talking about people because my mother tongue doesn't even have a similar concept whatsoever. Anyway, we know that most of the time it's not about actually respecting the other person.

I have a problem that is somehow similar to yours. In Italian, the grammatical gender of possessive pronouns works the other way around, e.g. if a boy has a girlfriend, in English you say "his girlfriend", "his" is masculine. But in Italian, possessive pronouns work the other way around ("la sua ragazza", where "sua" is feminine). To this day I still get it wrong sometimes e.g. if I'm tired at the end of a long day.
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