Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
[flagged]
I submit 'Drewcoo's Dictum' for use in these cases.
Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
221–230 of 443 posts
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#222Earlier 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”.
Well, all lives matter
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#223I'm curious, if this is a matter of self-identification, why don't people "play the system" by identifying as whatever-moves-the-diversity-needle in order to get themselves ahead?
Why don't "straight white American men" tell HR they identify as "homosexual black Latina women"? Not like the HR is in a position to dispute that, right? Is there a mechanism to avoid this?
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#224> 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…
> 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.
I've been trying to call this out for years, to no avail.
Trying to boost the diversity metric scores without actually working to remedy the underlying structural problems boils down to a very simple goal: "We need to poach the diverse talent from out competitors, while making sure they fail to poach ours."
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#225> 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…
> 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!
How do you get to your conclusion from your statement? Simply having some minority groups overrepresented doesn't mean that the industry is welcoming. It may mean its welcoming to those groups.
And people w/o formal education isn't really a minority group. Any more than PhDs in computer science is a minority group that is overrepresented in the tech industry.
> But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out.
This isn't about political expedience, but its about understanding the context of the discussion. Either you're new to the US or simply are ignorant to the issues of the post.
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#226Earlier 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…
> I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries! And I’m guessing you’re not one of the affected minorities. Otherwise you might see that “the system works for this subset of people so it must be working for everyone” is a flawed and untrue argument, at least in tech. People pushing for more equal treatment of certain minorities didn’t happen out of the blue. There’s a long history of certai…
a good example of this is the disabled. any of those same brilliant tech workers could acquire a disability at any time - they come from the same group of people, but we seem quite under-represented. and the developer tools themselves tend not to be accessible (I can find literally nothing online, or even internally, about using Visual Studio with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.)
it's curious, right?
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#227I'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…
Given you unique position at a FAANG, I am curious about your perspective on this. Do you have trouble sleeping at night knowing that you have penalized qualified non-minority applicants? Or do you not have a spine, and just care about your RSU’s vesting?
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#228All these big corporations use virtue signalling as an alternative to actually being virtuous. They preach equality of opportunity while engaging in the destruction of the free market system; the only system known to humanity which has ever managed to deliver equality of opportunity in the history of the world.
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#229Perhaps they found better jobs with more accommodating employers, maybe it's not so great working at a company like Google? Good for them!
Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
#230> 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…
> people without formal education
That's an odd way to write, "modern educations for gifted people so fancy that their brand comes from their status at the world's biggest corporations instead of universities, but have nothing in common with the experiences of a typical person who did not receive a formal education.