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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

#361

Post by otto2 »

gedy wrote: post #273
marcus_holmes wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that all applicants are of equal attainment, ability, and motivation. However, women have to fight an in-built discrimination. While men are more forced into work because our gender role expects it of us. Thus, women who are candidates for promotion are likely to be more motivated and more ambitious than their male counterparts - they've had to fight harder against more obstacles to get to that point. I se…

> while male programmers have had nothing but encouragement I really hate this stereotype as growing up in 80s "liking computers" was this thing only "nerds" liked in my area. Getting called a nerd was not at all positive and a derogatory slur. I loved computers at my own (social) peril.

Me too. I suffered few years being called "Clive" and "Sinclair" by bullish peers.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#362

Post by mymanz »

archagon wrote: post #350
mymanz wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting democrat is to provide approval of this ideology and to give it a greater platform. Many americans are equally perplexed at this, and a lot of republican voters exist precisely as a reaction to it.

Voting Republican is to enact fascism and tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible. The ideology you cite is remarkably tame by comparison.

Hmm that's interesting. Who told you that? The US just had a republican president. Many states have had republican government for decades. Do we see this happening? No. Instead here we are talking about a real and tangible event, largely championed by mainstream democrats.

If you think the average republican voter would support enacting "fascism [to] tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible", then I suggest you talk to some more. You may be quite surprised.

Regardless, I think this is a major pitfall of the two party system. What you say certainly has truth. What I say has truth as well. However discourse usually devolves to attacking the extremists in each group and no real discussion can be had. I am optimistic about the future. Have a nice day.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#363

Post by anon7725 »

SlowBall wrote: post #178
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…

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)?

I’ve witnessed candidates pass interviews yet fail to be advanced for open positions because they were not in the correct demographic - this was put in writing as the explicit cause. Ironically these were not “white guys,” but candidates who would be considered a minority in the tech industry, just not the right one for executive metrics.

This seems to be quite illegal according to the EEOC website, yet as another poster notes there is no chance that it would be pursued if reported.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#364

Post by specialist »

Reading the linked annual diversity report was worthwhile. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/... It touches on so many points, the breadth of effort is frankly amazing. Mental health, accessibility, addiction, mentorship, child care, and so forth. Bravo for Google measuring themselves.

Knowing nothing, I can't put this in context. Three curiosity followups I'd ask:

#1 How does Google compare with other huge organizations? vs Fed Govt, military, education, FAANG, interationally ...?

#2 I'm most interested in retention efforts. Daylighting the reasons people say they're leaving. Revealing this info is fraught with danger, I know. Maybe with large enough sample size, across organizations (eg all FAANGs), it could be done safely.

#3 For people to advance, there need to be opportunities. If I had a cushy job, why would I leave to make room for another? What's Google doing there? One radical solution is the "up or out" system used for high powered consultancies (lawyers, accounting). I'm sure there's downsides to any proposal. But ya gotta break some eggs to make omelets. The kind of cash Google has, they could just buy people out.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#365

Post by erik_seaberg »

nradov wrote: post #308
rocqua wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A problem I have heard female friends speculate about is with promoting women in higher positions. If the female population is too low, and you try to get them into higher positions, two effects occur according to this theory. First of all, with a low female population there probably aren't enough proven and qualified women to fill the desired number of slots. This leads to imposter syndrome / worry about people thin…

Women were well represented in the early days of computing. The gender imbalance only started in about 1984. Some researchers think that was because home computers started to become affordable at about that time and were mainly marketed to men. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

Any history of the industry needs to address what analysts did vs. what programmers did. “Programming” was clerical work, converting flowcharts or pseudocode into machine code on cards or tape. That role was obsoleted when computer time became cheap enough to spend running compilers and linkers, which enabled analysts to write code by themselves in a higher-level language.

It wasn’t until later that obsessed nerds could teach ourselves from scratch at home.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#366

Post by klyrs »

slumdev wrote: post #338
staticman2 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel quite confident there are unpopular opinions from 10 years ago that would land you in trouble. "People used to say whatever they wanted" is hyperbole.

None of these statements were even controversial twenty years ago: "Sex and gender are the same; they are immutable; and there are only two of them." "Every child has a right to a mother and a father." "An individual can't change his race." "China is the world's worst human rights transgressor and currency manipulator."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Womyn%27s_Music_Fes...

The immutability of gender was controversial in 1991, but okay.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#367

Post by postsantum »

zozbot234 wrote: post #357
caeril wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women are also currently well-represented in computing in Eastern Europe, Iran, China, and somewhat in Russia. None of these regions particularly care about "women in tech", and most of them are certifiably more patriarchal than any of the Western countries currently suffering from under-representation of women. One can conclude from facts on the ground that neither gender equality nor pro-diversity movements correla…

> We're not serious about tackling the problem. We are, however, quite good at grifting off the problem with proposals we know don't work. Could it be that women tend to care about stuff like a healthy work-life balance, and things like the 996.ICU working week can discourage them from applying? Whoops no, we've been told that's sexist wrongthink.

Could it be that computers are boring af and most of these people who genuinely care about computing are somewhere on the autism spectrum (which is mostly populated by males)

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#368

Post by slumdev »

klyrs wrote: post #366
slumdev wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these statements were even controversial twenty years ago: "Sex and gender are the same; they are immutable; and there are only two of them." "Every child has a right to a mother and a father." "An individual can't change his race." "China is the world's worst human rights transgressor and currency manipulator."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Womyn%27s_Music_Fes... The immutability of gender was controversial in 1991, but okay.

In 1991, the immutability of gender might have raised the ire of 1 in 10,000 -- if even that many.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#369

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #200
blueflow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the anglosphere (and especially in the US), the ethnic background of a person is given much attention. They have very odd labels with the intent to be more inclusive towards the "corner cases". The 'x' probably stands as a placeholder for 'o' and 'a' to capture both the male and female version. This seems to be a oddity of the english-speaking cultures and not very relevant to other parts of the world.

"Latinx" is especially great because it sends such a clear message: "We wish to use this ethnic group to make us look like we're concerned about the problems social justice, but we don't actually respect that 97% of the people we're describing don't use that term or want that term."

Americans fixed the word. They also fix their dogs.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#370

Post by postsantum »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #344
kingsuper20 wrote: post #140

So what exactly is a white+, black+, latinx+? It is just my browser stuffing a plus sign at the end?

Downvoted and I still don't know what the '+' is. Some sort of gender or kink letter? Code for a cyborg? Programming language?

That's plus as in "doubleplus" from newspeak
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