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Getting to work on diversity at Google

googleblog.blogspot.com

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Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#11

Post by DiggityDug7 »

Dwolb wrote: post #4

It's great to be open and all, but they never mention what their goal is. Do Google believe diversity is good for workplace cohesion, their own social mobility goals, good corporate moral policy, etc.? The data is interesting in it's own right but I don't better understand where Google is going with diversity; I only understand where Google currently stands.

Does there have to be a business goal? Making society more fair is a good goal. Reducing the white male preference in the job market should be a social responsibility for a company that greatly impacts our daily lives.

There could be business goals though: it improves people's public opinion of you and in this case may help protect them from lawsuits.

This link at the bottom of the page has some more info... http://www.google.com/diversity/

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#12

Post by [deleted] »

Dwolb wrote: post #4

It's great to be open and all, but they never mention what their goal is. Do Google believe diversity is good for workplace cohesion, their own social mobility goals, good corporate moral policy, etc.? The data is interesting in it's own right but I don't better understand where Google is going with diversity; I only understand where Google currently stands.

[deleted]

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#13

Post by philipwalton »

Dwolb wrote: post #4

It's great to be open and all, but they never mention what their goal is. Do Google believe diversity is good for workplace cohesion, their own social mobility goals, good corporate moral policy, etc.? The data is interesting in it's own right but I don't better understand where Google is going with diversity; I only understand where Google currently stands.

As a Google employee, the reasons I hear is that we'd like the diversity of our workforce to more accurately reflect the diversity of our users, so we can serve them better.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#15

Post by namenotrequired »

bh3244 wrote: post #6

why is diversity good? forced diversity seems very contrived. why should the percentage of women hired be higher than the number that graduate from school with a CS degree?

>why should the percentage of women hired be higher than the number that graduate from school with a CS degree?

No one is implying that it should. From the blog they seem to be working on improving the latter number too.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#17

Post by heydenberk »

It's {{current_year}} and people are still asking, "why does diversity matter?"

Diversity matters for a lot of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, demographic diversity is strongly correlated with diversity in points of view. You want the people building your products to come from many walks of life. Remember how Google+ had significant uptake in the rich white tech dude demographic? Not a coincidence. If you want the best people working at your company, you should want a group with similar demographics as the customer population, and if you disagree with that, you either believe there is something inherent about certain groups that makes them better or worse at these jobs, which is plainly bigoted, or you believe that there are external social biases which cause the discrepancies. If the latter is your belief, that's all the more reason to work to increase diversity as a corrective to those external social biases. Diversity also impacts the way that people see your company, which makes attracting a diverse pool of qualified candidates easier (few people want to be the only member of a certain demographic group) and is good for public relations.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#19

Post by EGreg »

DiggityDug7 wrote: post #11
Dwolb wrote: post #4

It's great to be open and all, but they never mention what their goal is. Do Google believe diversity is good for workplace cohesion, their own social mobility goals, good corporate moral policy, etc.? The data is interesting in it's own right but I don't better understand where Google is going with diversity; I only understand where Google currently stands.

Does there have to be a business goal? Making society more fair is a good goal. Reducing the white male preference in the job market should be a social responsibility for a company that greatly impacts our daily lives. There could be business goals though: it improves people's public opinion of you and in this case may help protect them from lawsuits. This link at the bottom of the page has some more info... http://w…

DiggityDug7, if only 5% of the country was black, say, would having under 10% of your workforce be black be considered unfair?

Likewise, if the number of comp sci graduates in the country is 5%, the same question can be asked. Who is the one being unfair?

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#20

Post by Maascamp »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #7

I don't understand why companies are obsessed with diversity just for the sake of it. Edit: I am mexican, and I personally wouldn't like to be hired for diversity reasons, I would prefer to be hired on my abilities.

Of course companies should only hire qualified people. Diversity is about gaining new perspectives and ensuring you're creating an environment _all_ your employees can enjoy and feel comfortable in.

Companies, rightly, don't want to stagnate by being limited to perspectives and views that don't fully reflect the world they operate in.

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