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Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

reuters.com

121–130 of 443 posts

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#121

> 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…

> We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt.

We should be a bit more exact. We do not have a underrepresentation problem in tech, but a misrepresentation problem.

There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries!

But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#122
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are studies that show that polyglot speakers tend to think in slightly different ways when they switch languages. It is probably true that speaking a language where every noun is gendered might slightly change the way you think, but in my personal opinion not in the way you imagine. What I mean is that when masculine or feminine are used to describe mundane everyday objects, it's very well possible that the ide…

I'm learning German at the moment. Everything is gendered. Such a strange way of looking at the world. And the unfortunate "das Mädchen" [0] - the German word for "young woman" is neutral gender (because it's a compound noun and the "-chen" suffix is neutral). I wonder how that affects German society when all young women are objects. Does this de-emphasise their femininity, or increase their "sexual object"-ness? [0]…

> Does this de-emphasise their femininity, or increase their "sexual object"-ness?

Or secret option c): it has absolutely no effect on how they treat their women because they aren't actually that dumb.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#123
I feel discourse nowadays could be substantially advanced by a new science of Discourse Mechanics which would include a Schrodinger operator to quantify the superposition of states applicable not only to the identity of participants in a discourse, but also to their opinions.

As science advances and the vagaries of thought are linked to organic and atomic, physical processes I expect the Grand Unified Theory of Quantum Mechanics to explain Discourse Mechanics too.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#124
post #104

How incredibly weird is it to witness American schizophrenia* when it comes to races (and gender) from a non-american perspective. "Black+", "Latinx+", "LGBTTQQIAAP". Putting people in smaller and smaller box in the name of equality and diversity. I am the only one to feel this is coming to an absurd point ? I'm not an alt-right fan, nor would I vote Republican if I could, I'm a leftist in what's considered a traditi…

As someone who works for Big Tech outside of the US, it's kind of comical to us foreign workers. From out point of view it seems like Americans are truly obsessed with diversity, or rather being perceived as diverse (PR), to the point where we can't help but laugh at the weekly corporate emails we get from the US leadership and the regular diversity training we have to do.

It’s equally comical to many non-foreign tech workers. Problem is that if you criticize it openly, there will be repercussions to your career. Corporations will take action against you due to the fear of activist employees and the news media which has been largely infiltrated/influenced by woke/post-modern critical theory activists.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#125
Kinda' sad that there is mostly discussion about what to call people or how they might feel singled out if we acknowledge their cultural differences and mixed backgrounds.

I'm mixed mixed ethnicity and it's definitely easier to just pretend everyone is treating me fairly and we're all the same. I was pretty much raised to do that.

Unfortunately, that has badly impacted me over my lifetime. It lets people single me out and pretend it's not a racist prerogative. It often is, but people don't even want to admit that to themselves. They hold other ethnicity to higher standards to "fit in" or "be a cultural fit". Meanwhile, some rude, abrasiveness, ignorant guy who looks like them gets a pass.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#126
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summarizing what you said (without agreeing) to see if I understood your point correctly. Marxism is the idea of needing class struggle for progress. Cultural Marxism is transposing that from class to culture / ethnicity. Essentially moving the dialectic from worker / captialist to privileged race / non-priviliged race? And the idea is that this is done, not to engender gradual change, but to engender revolutionary c…

Yes, I'd say that summarizes my statement well, where Marx's definition of progress is moving a society towards communism. This is why any time you see somebody talk about "the right side of history" that's a flag that said person is a Marxist, they view their desired communist end-state as inevitable.

You may be right about the origin of "the right side of history", but the phrase has become popular enough that you can't use it to pin down the speaker's ideology. I think most people use it to mean that their ideas will be commonly accepted in the future. Whether their perceived future is a communist utopia or a libertarian thunderdome is irrelevant.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#127
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often hear people I dismiss directly mention cultural marxism. But I have never seen an explanation of what cultural marxism is. Could you enlighten me?

Marx wrote about a theory of history in which all of history progresses through phases in which each phase is defined by struggle between classes. His view was that communism was the inevitable end of this model of history in that communism would finally resolve the class struggle. But for somebody who wishes to promote communism, the problem is if there is no class struggle, then history does not advance to their de…

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Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black people are currently less educated as a result of systemic racism than their Asain and white counterparts. That would make achieving 12% leadership particularly difficult, since black people are on average less qualified(on paper, at least) relative to applicants from other races.

Asians are proof the power of systemic racism to hold minorities down in this day and age is not very strong.

Some specific cultures with Asian heritage in the West. Not intentionally trying to be obtuse, but to support that talking point it is important to recognize that there are other Asian people in the West that are underserved by this overly broad racially prejudiced assumption.

There have always been cultures that adapt to certain states of the world. For example, German efficiency was there and irrelevant before the industrial era, and when the world valued efficiency their culture was the beneficiary. In reference to some cultures from Asia operating in the West, they are also benefactors of the family support systems that they are able to maintain, even if there are psychological issues with that model, it is accurate that many are able to achieve social standing in Western society. You are hoping for that to prove the wrong thing, or disprove the validity of other group's experiences as if they are not worth further analysis and support. This doesn't help y/our society.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's super hypocritical to be well paid a company while also trash talking them on Twitter. I wouldn't call that being outspoken.

My intent with saying "Regardless of who you think was in the wrong there" was precisely NOT to re-litigate the entire saga (that's old and played out here). Regardless of who you think was wrong, it had a big effect on black employees' perceptions of their employer.

On some black employees' perceptions.

This is hard for people new to working and living alongside minorities in America, but these are individuals and not a monolithic group. Identity politics is dangerous because the loudest mouths on the issue are definitely not representative of any whole group. And yet culturally we're demanded to see things their way to an increasing and alarming degree.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#130
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…

Learning German for the better part of the last two years, I agree with the thought of your comment. The only way I could wrap my head around the notorious German genders is by divorcing myself of the English concept that gender in language depends completely on the object referred to. Rather, I had to see gender as an arbitrary grammatical category; so just get used to it! However, I (an armchair linguist, I should…

> Rather, I had to see gender as an arbitrary grammatical category; so just get used to it!

Exactly

> Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: your language affects your world view

I also agree on this. The study you mentioned about German and Spanish speakers is fascinating.

However I see this under a slightly different light: I suspect that speaking a language where all nouns are gendered, your gender-related biases might end up being de-emphasised over time[1]. I would love to read research papers about this topic.

[1] see my other comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710620 and here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710812 where I attempt to explain what I mean by that

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