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California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

latimes.com

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Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#71

Post by larkost »

radisb wrote: post #46
kenjackson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal government already says you can't discriminate. They aren't saying, "you have to hire this person". They're saying you can't hire exclusively this type of person that currently dominates the top of society. Given that these boardrooms don't diversify themselves, what is the actual problem with it?

The problem is that someone must be fired because he is a white male

These are board members. They are not hired in the first place, and generally need to be re-appointed every few years. This law has been slowly ratcheting up, so either people have simply been not re-appointed to the board, or they have increased the size of the board to include new members who were chosen from more diverse backgrounds.

No one was fired.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#72

Post by BitwiseFool »

BrianOnHN wrote: post #44
LeoPanthera wrote: post #14

The comments here as I write this are quite shocking. I would have imagined that HN's readership would be quite progressive. Maybe not. I do not think it is unreasonable for a corporate board to be required to include at least one woman or at least one non-white person. I also think it's quite shocking that all-white-male boards are so common that this is even necessary. It's an artifact of institutional racism and s…

I agree with you, about HN's audience, which is I guess what "bro culture" devolves into, and that the idea isn't crazy. Board room implies scale. If you don't have diversity at scale, in so many senses of the word, your doomed to fail anyway. So many knee jerk reactions are a sad reflection of this community, though.

>"If you don't have diversity at scale, in so many senses of the word, your doomed to fail anyway."

That's not necessarily true. There are plenty of organizations all over the world that are not "diverse" but those institutions manage to succeed. Not every company needs to have a board room that looks like a university admissions pamphlet in order to operate and respond to competition.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#73

Post by monological »

Genuinely curious how women would feel if they were given a job not based purely on merit and credentials, but their gender. Isn’t that a slap in the face? Like, “yea there were other much more qualified candidates, but we just have to fill this quota.” That’s what would be nagging me in the back of my mind if I was a women.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#75

Post by humanrebar »

kenjackson wrote: post #29
kjksf wrote: post #13

Road the hell is paved with good intentions. As much as I support equality and diversity, I'm even more strongly opposed government over-reach. The state shouldn't have a say in who gets a job at a private (non owned by state) company. As the article state, I hope this will get over-turned by the courts. This would set a bad precedent. If the state can dictate the kind of person gets a highly coveted job, what else c…

Federal government already says you can't discriminate. They aren't saying, "you have to hire this person". They're saying you can't hire exclusively this type of person that currently dominates the top of society. Given that these boardrooms don't diversify themselves, what is the actual problem with it?

At a practical level, it means you end up with particular slots reserved for particular demographics. What happens when the person from $demographic_one retires from the board? Do you use an impartial search process? Or are you legally obligated to reject certain applicants based on their demographics?

I understand the appeals to equity vs equality. I'm saying this is a subtle distinction hinging on who is making choices and how. I don't want the government deciding who is diverse enough or historically oppressed enough or underrepresented enough. It will get it wrong far too often.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#76

Post by retrac »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #14

The comments here as I write this are quite shocking. I would have imagined that HN's readership would be quite progressive. Maybe not. I do not think it is unreasonable for a corporate board to be required to include at least one woman or at least one non-white person. I also think it's quite shocking that all-white-male boards are so common that this is even necessary. It's an artifact of institutional racism and s…

How non-white does someone have to be to qualify? Should it be based on self-identity? Should the race of corporate board members be determined by a state bureaucracy? While I agree with the goal, such a policy seems to raise questions like that immediately. And the more I wrangle with them the more intractable they seem.

> quite shocking that all-white-male boards are so common

Not if you knew the distribution of wealth by race (and gender) in America. Black people in America are poor after being slaves unable to own property for generations. Until very recently (in living memory) widely denied due process, access to employment, social and labour organizations, etc. that would enable building wealth. To this day, still disproportionately denied. There is less intergenerational wealth to transfer. Less educational capital. And so on. A different but cousin tale for women.

This is one angle of systemic racism, I suppose. But to my eye the solution is mostly to address the poverty by the transfer of wealth, not legislate representation among the elites. Especially when you can do wealth transfer to poor people without legal racial classification systems, which is a notion that immediately evokes opposition from many.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#77

Post by elzbardico »

tehjoker wrote: post #52

Quotas are good for increasing diversity, but lol @ thinking someone of a different gender or race will lead to a gentler kinder capitalism. This is a decision that will affect at most a few hundred or a few thousand people in a state of tens of millions. Those millions are suffering far more than bourgeois C-level aspirants one rung too low on the ladder for their taste. Pure spectacle. We need workplace democracy a…

Yeah. Some of the most cruel and exploitative slaver I had as bosses were women, even had one asking why I needed to take a day off to be with my son at the hospital if I was married,”couldn’t my wife spend one more day? “

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#78

Post by kbenson »

BrianOnHN wrote: post #20

What a shockingly sad interpretation from most (all at the time of writing) comments here. When did you ever have a job that you didn't learn 90% of what's needed, while on the job itself? Cries for meritocracy are woefully ignorant for this fact alone. If you want meritocracy, focus your energy on improving education. Until then, your worth is determined mostly by whether someone gives you a chance, which depends on…

> When did you ever have a job that you didn't learn 90% of what's needed, while on the job itself?

The older and more specialized my roles get, the less I'm learning about how to do the job on the job, and the more I'm just learning the small differences at the current location.

I assume that's why CEO's are routinely hired away from other companies. I assume the stuff they'll learn at the new job is the specifics of that company, but not "how to be a CEO".

I would assume the same of some board members (as I understand it, they don't all bring the same things to the table).

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#79

Post by pugets »

I couldn’t think of a more Californian approach to fixing racial inequity. Instead of providing more economic opportunities for minorities to become executives, just make it illegal for the companies to not make them executives. Meanwhile, continue your state tradition of gentrifying diverse neighborhoods and letting techies take over San Francisco and LA.

I think a lot of these dumb laws get pushed through because few people are willing to speak out against them for fear of being mischaracterized. The liberal Democrats are riding the wave of the cultural zeitgeist.

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