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Getting to work on diversity at Google

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Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#41

Post by omonra »

heydenberk wrote: post #17

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…

Successful tech companies have to be staffed by very smart nerds. So at the end of the day their pool of candidates is that group. So the numbers you see are reflective of the people who make up that pool.

If you want to see more X in it - work on attracting X into the pool of smart nerds.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#42

Post by nostrademons »

Torgo wrote: post #28
heydenberk wrote: post #17

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…

"Remember how Google+ had significant uptake in the rich white tech dude demographic? Not a coincidence." The founders of Twitter and Facebook are mostly rich white dudes and don't seem to be having this problem.

Twitter and Facebook also had significant uptake first in the rich white tech dude demographic (or in Facebook's case, the rich white college student demographic). It's just that they later grew to encompass...everyone.

For that matter, look at the social networks that have flourished abroad: Orkut (developed by a Turkish engineer) and WhatsApp (developed by a Ukrainian). So there may be something to this...

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#43

Post by xienze »

vajorie wrote: post #39
doodyhead wrote: post #36

Although it's fairly straightforward to distinguish between gender and sexual orientation, I disagree with these traditional US categories of ethnicity. Take a 'White' person, for instance: is a White American the same as a White Englishman, or a White Australian? What about a White Frenchman? These are all classified as 'White' but could potentially be vastly different in terms of diversity. The same argument could…

Yes, race and ethnicity are socially constructed and are fluid. No, however much you try to whitewash it, 70-30-3-4-5 is as shitty as it gets outside of legalized segregation.

Whites are 78% of the US population, so being 70% of Google's population is a pretty fair representation. Asians are over-represented though. What exactly do you think is "fair"? I'm guessing having fewer than 50% whites at Google.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#44

Post by ianstallings »

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…

Yes it takes the idea of a corporation strictly being beholden to shareholders and extends it to all stakeholders, which includes impacted society.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#45

Post by yaketysax »

heydenberk wrote: post #17

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…

"If you want the best people working at your company, you should want a group with similar demographics as the customer population"

It's not the role of every single worker to deal with how the customer interfaces with the product. So what's the point in having diversity at every level?

"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,"

no.

"or you believe that there are external social biases which cause the discrepancies."

nope

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#48

Post by Torgo »

rcthompson wrote: post #32
Torgo wrote: post #14

So women make up 18% of new CS degrees and Google's staffed at 17%. Blacks and hispanics make up under 5% of CS degrees and at Google they make up 3%. Close the ticket, it's an upstream problem.

Well, they say they're working with "upstream" to resolve the issue: "Among other things, since 2010 we’ve given more than $40 million to organizations working to bring computer science education to women and girls. And we’ve been working with historically black colleges and universities to elevate coursework and attendance in computer science. For example, this year Google engineer Charles Pratt was in-residence at…

My response was flippant, which is probably why some people have been downvoting it, but I'm legitimately glad if they're working to make their hiring pool more representative of the population. But at the same time, it's hardly their fault or responsibility to "fix" it if universities just aren't graduating people in those proportions. This came right after I'd read a PBS article that claimed "Google finally discloses its diversity record, and it’s not good." Then I read a breakdown of CS grads in this submission, and Google seems to be pretty representative.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#49

Post by ianstallings »

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.

Well there's using it as a checkbox and then there's real diversity. No one likes being patronized. But if it's done right you would still be judged on your abilities. And therein lies the challenge. It's a worthy goal but they better stay on top of it.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#50

Post by xienze »

Maascamp wrote: post #20
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.

I hear this all the time but really, how much of an impact does "diversity" have on yet another shitty chat app or photo sharing site? They're creating utterly trivial, harmless social applications that have NOTHING to do with racial, cultural, or religious matters.
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