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Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

reuters.com

181–190 of 443 posts

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#181

> 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…

>This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps It's a dangerous time when it's considered dangerous to express an opinion.

It's always been dangerous to express unpopular opinions.

It may be less dangerous here and now than most places in history.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost as thoughtful as Slack enumerating all user skin tones via 5 integer values.

I thought making everyone cartoon yellow was more empowering. Especially on the Internet, with pseudonymity, we're all nothing more than the ideas we present. An egalitarian dream was twisted into a woke nightmare for bad actors to earn free PR by pitting people against each other.

Why is yellow the “neutral” color? Why not black, or red, or white?

Letting people pick whatever color seems more empowering to me.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#183

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…

It is super irritating to apply to american companies, most of them ask for your race (optional input) and list latin and white as different options.

I am white as milk from a Latin America country I dont know what I am suppose to complete. I consider myself latin but companies may think I am not brown enough to fit the category.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#184

This website is a stellar example of white tech bro culture, especially threads like this. Guaranteed toxic AF.

By time of writing i dont find anything toxic here, just confusion on what X and + mean outside of math contexts and electronics models

Pretty much any post using the words "woke" or "signaling" is going to be toxic. The words are intended as synonyms for "hypocritical": "They don't actually mean this argument; they're only doing it to be seen."

It's not just ad hominem, but also the way it comes out reflexively any time any issue of justice is brought up. (Along with "SJW", which I haven't seen as much lately; the terms of opprobrium go in and out of fashion.) That's where the toxicity lays: the instant dismissal of the topic without having to even reference the matter at hand.

Viewed that way, you can see toxicity all over this thread, and all over any similar thread anywhere on the site. The tone is hostile before anybody has even begun to discuss the merits of the idea.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#185

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…

Isn't that technically illegal according to federal law? I.e. aren't you effectively discriminating against other people based on their sex and/or race (by making their interviews more difficult explicitly because of that reason)?

Yes, it's illegal.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#186

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…

It wasn't abelist but I don't understand the analogy with schizophrenia.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#187

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…

Isn't that technically illegal according to federal law? I.e. aren't you effectively discriminating against other people based on their sex and/or race (by making their interviews more difficult explicitly because of that reason)?

The probability that the DOJ would investigate / prosecute this particular bias is near zero. Where I work, if you submit a bad review for an underrepresented minority you will get a call from HR asking “are you absolutely sure? You don’t think that’s too low?” (even if you also submitted good reviews for other employees of that racial group).

What’s funny is: in five years researchers looking at the data will say “oh! There’s a higher attrition rate / poor performance even though prior reviews marked them as good! THAT must be where all this systemic racism we are trying to find is!”

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#188

I happen to be very familiar with Google's diversity efforts and have many Black and Latinx friends and acquaintances in the company. Google is one of the most racially inclusive tech companies in the world. It really tries hard to fix historical disparities between races in ways that you don't see in most companies, ranging from very active promotion of minorities to programs dedicated to hiring them. The interview…

Google's outcomes are pretty weak. I work at a large tech firm that has significantly higher percentages of employees who are black and/or hispanic compared to Google. We are at 2-3x the rates Google publicly reports. At my current company, I regularly work with Black employees, but when I worked at Google, I could go weeks, if not months, without working with a Black person.

You can tout all the sophisticated programs about conquering bias or what not, but the truth is many of these initiatives have shown little actual evidence for improving outcomes. Our company is probably doing 1/10 of what Google is doing with 2-3x the outcomes. One major difference I see between Google and us; we actually have offices in cities with high concentration of black and hispanic talent. While I was at Google, leadership pushed people towards the HQ and in fact they were shutting down offices that were in more diverse areas of America. You can tout all the sophisticated programs Google runs, but I believe that Google misses the most basic steps for how to increase diversity in their workforce.

Our metrics aren't great, but they are a significantly better than Google. We aren't a unicorn, I know of a handful of tech companies that are at the same level, and the common pattern I see is very basic steps towards hiring that Google refuses to consider. As an outsider (and an insider several years ago), my experience is that Google invests in lots of programs that give a credence of caring about diversity, while actively avoiding doing impactful things.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#189
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”.

Communication is hard, and having to dance around the topic to be PC makes communication much harder.

Your parent was responding to this statement:

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

And their response - that tech is, in fact, diverse and meritocratic - is a fair response to that statement.

I think what OP meant by their statement is that there is a diversity problem _pertaining specifically to people of color_ in tech. Which is true.

I think we would all benefit by being a little generous with each other when trying to discuss these sensitive issues.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is straight up comedy?! Brilliant speaker.
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