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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

#141

Post by Omniusaspirer »

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…

How is it unfair to hire what you perceive as the best candidate to work at your company? Something that's actually unfair would be disqualifying a better candidate purely because of his skin color/gender.

Also, just to emphasis what others have already replied to you; Whites are actually underrepresented at Google relative to the ratios seen in the rest of the workforce.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#142

Post by vacri »

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.

Your numbers add up to 112%. I'm also a little concerned that you can't think of something shittier than 61% white when it comes to diversity.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#144

Post by vacri »

[deleted] wrote: post #52
philipwalton wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Football is a monoculture - it doesn't matter what your race is when it comes to deciding whether to pass or rush. Services for the general public to use - from search to self-driven cars - does need to account for multicultural environments.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#145

Post by purringmeow »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #113

When I worked there I thought they did a reasonably good job on gender, religion, and sexual orientation but there were not enough older engineers there. I wonder what the actual numbers are for that.

Burnout maybe? How long is the average work week?

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#147

Post by purringmeow »

skj wrote: post #69
reddog wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I would bet my last dollar that its workforce is skewed hugely, disproportionately young. And there are no convenient they-just-aren't-majoring-in-CS excuses for this either. Lots of 50 year old engineers with years of training and experience are looking for work.

(approximate) ages on my team at Google: 26, 32 (me), 35, ~55, ~60, ~70.

Wow, a 70 year old engineer?!

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#148

Post by nl »

waveman2 wrote: post #103
heterogenic wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. You're assuming that the factors which drive women out of engineering do so independent of ability. I would hypothesize that this is false, that the most interested and passionate women are least likely to be nudged out. Google should be comparing its ratio to that of their potential pool, which is presumably skewed high. If that's true, they should be expecting to get closer to 50%. (Not exactly 50,…

> I would hypothesize that this is false Citation required. And if women are less interested overall in CS and/or have less ability on non-verbal tasks overall then you would expect that the RHS tail of the distribution of women would be lower than the RHS tail of the distribution of men. This is just basic statistics. The same applies with African Americans. Blacks in the US have far lower IQs than whites - this is…

As such the normal distribution will ensure that a much lower percentage of blacks will be at the high end of the scale (135IQ+) where google gets their recruits.

There's little evidence that IQ and programming ability are correlated.

There is some evidence[1] that Mathematical ability and success at programming are correlated (30%). [1] shows that gender and programming success are correlated, but others show no correlation at all.

[1] shows an 8% correlation between spatial ability and success at programming are correlated, while [2] showed "only a small correlation".

[2] shows that people who are successful at program articulate tasks differently to those who are not.

[1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.110...

[2] http://eprints.usq.edu.au/2259/1/CRPITV52Simon2.pdf

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#149

Post by lutorm »

ojbyrne wrote: post #93
lutorm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth reflecting on why the makeup of the NFL is as it is. One could for example imagine that it has something to do with what the opportunities for people with different backgrounds are. To be more blunt, if being football players is one of the ways that people with disadvantaged backgrounds who went to poor schools have of succeeding in life, then one could view the makeup of the NFL as a symptom of a problem.

You're equating making it to the NFL with success, which given the number of players who end up out of football within 2-5 years, with serious physical or mental damage, without a viable career path because they have been forced to neglect their education, and in many cases bankrupt, seems like a not very strong argument.

I agree with you that there are serious questions whether an NFL career is success or exploitation. However, one needs to consider a) whether the demographic that aspires to join the NFL thinks that way, and b) what the alternatives are.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#150

Post by a-t-shirt »

nl wrote: post #137
a-t-shirt wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're focusing on hiring discrimination, but the article's focusing on spending money to increase "upstream" tech interest in under-represented groups. That's because hiring discrimination isn't really the issue; upstream interest (and thus upstream qualification) is. If non-Jewish White people are underrepresented among successful tech founders, does that not represent an upstream issue?

If non-Jewish White people are underrepresented among successful tech founders, does that not represent an upstream issue? If that is the case, then yes. But I suspect that even if you remove the white Jewish cohort from the white group then whites (and especially white males) would still be overrepresented amongst founders. I don't see the overrepresentation of a minority group as a problem at all. Like you said: Go…

> But I suspect that even if you remove the white Jewish cohort from the white group then whites (and especially white males) would still be overrepresented amongst founders.

If the demographic data for founders looks anything like the demographic data in the linked blog post, White people would be almost perfectly(!) proportionally represented, given the percentage of working-age Americans who are White. White men would indeed be over-represented, and Asian men would be the most over-represented of all.

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