Google reports soaring attrition among Black women • Hacker News Board

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#151

Post by kaycebasques » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

mastazi wrote: post #64

kaycebasques wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Totally agree with your "other side of the coin" assessment that this gendering of everyday objects could diminish the importance of gender overall.

To my original point, one of the most interesting examples that I can think of is how you gender groups of humans in Spanish or Portuguese. If I understand correctly, no matter the distribution of the group, the group becomes masculine once there is one man in it. It could be 999 females and 1 male and the proper way to label it is masculine.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#152

Post by kaycebasques » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

Bayart wrote: post #99

kaycebasques wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My understanding of historical linguistics is that gendering in Indo-European languages has its roots in animate vs inanimate objects, with a feminine category splitting later on from the animate category (possibly as a way to distinguish singular from collective initially, before being retrofitted to « female » things later on). Add on nouns shifting meaning over time and you've got a relationship between grammar an…

> I'd take any notion that it « influences attitude » with extreme carefulness.

For sure. Similar to sociobiology, my original line of thinking can quickly lead to some offensive ideas.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#153

Post by vmception » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #25

The elephant in the room is the ouster of Timnit Gebru. Regardless of who you think was in the wrong there, a lot of people who left did so because they thought Google was in the wrong, and left in solidarity or maybe even because they thought they might be next for being similarly outspoken.

It would be super easy for me to not say anything for two years for a million dollars.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#154

Post by vmception » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

eplanit wrote: post #119

eric4smith wrote: post #97

Unpopular opinion… Could it be that women (in general) want something more in life than working in a big company for a nice wage? Study after study after study show that women want families and other things other than the standard mega corporation employment that society has trained us to expect. I’d bet if one looked at the numbers one would see that women as a whole are leaving google and other companies just as mu…

Google infamously fired a male engineer for speculating on such things. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Ch...

I have found it extremely strange, mostly of "anti-right" crowds, to never see an educational moment in anything. Its just "if you weren't exposed to our views by this point in your life and don't accept them uncritically then you are ostracized"

is that useful?

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#155

Post by vmception » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #121

sokoloff wrote: post #32

> 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 under representation problem in tech, but a mis representation 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” m…

underrepresentation is clearly a context, and the context is clear, you missed it and chose to assume everyone else is wrong

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#156

Post by azth » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

sz4kerto wrote: post #54

The interesting thing is that the top of the funnel is still heavily tilted towards e.g. men. I'm not claiming whether this right or wrong, but this is how it is. Now good luck for your small company to hire minorities. It's extremely hard. I have talked to a recruiting agency recently about getting some engineers on board, and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any…

> and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any genders?"

If that isn't outright blatant sexism, I don't know what is.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#157

Post by dralley » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

callamdelaney wrote: post #60

sokoloff wrote: post #32

> 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…

You're assuming that companies care about the industry wide measure and aren't just competing for the best PR between themselves.

Which is absolutely what they're doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5CTxckRywg&t=43m15s

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#158

Post by endisneigh » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:19 PM UTC

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #84

l33t2328 wrote: post #20

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.

I'm curious - how did you come to this conclusion?

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#159

Post by brayhite » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #121

sokoloff wrote: post #32

> 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 under representation problem in tech, but a mis representation 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” m…

The problem being described is an identifiable group feels like they are unwelcome or an otherwise hindered group within the industry. They use the population ratio as a mere point of evidence to argue it’s not just anecdotal.

Pointing out what groups _aren’t_ underrepresented is like saying “Yeah, we’ll, all lives matter” in response to “Black lives matter”.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#160

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

grapehut wrote: post #106

I've conducted technical interviews for a FAANG company for several years, and been explicitly told to go easy on and inflate the scores of minorities. On one hand it makes sense as we're trying to hire minority groups on a greater ratio than they're coming out of college. On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me they retention rates a lot lower when often they're thrown into positions they would otherwise not be re…

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