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Getting to work on diversity at Google

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201–210 of 252 posts

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#201
post #43
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would you guess that? Clearly the non-asian minorities figures are abominable.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#202
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would you guess that? Clearly the non-asian minorities figures are abominable.

Because "diversity" is code for "there's too many white people here." I highly doubt anyone would complain about diversity if Google were 61% black (just like no one complains about the NFL and NBA's appalling lack of diversity).

Either way, to boost non-Asian minority percentages you've got to take away from the white or Asian percentages. Hmm... who do you think's gonna be on the receiving end of that rebalancing?

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#203
post #173
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quota implies there are limited spots. There are not. Google will hire as many qualified people as it can. These initiatives are about getting more diverse candidates in the recruiting pipeline. We are not turning away any qualified white dudes!

Perhaps "quota" is the wrong term. Yes Google doesn't have a limit on how many people they can hire in total, but in the interest of diversity they are likely to _limit_ the number of "X" people they hire (where "X" is some over-represented ethnic group).

As has been stated already in this thread the pool of qualified candidates forces Google to hire fewer people than they would prefer and their efforts on diversity include efforts to expand the pool of qualified candidates. They don't need to limit (or reduce) hiring (or retention) of any group to achieve diversity.

The biggest diversity win for them would be expanded hiring in all groups, but greatest in those currently underrepresented.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#204
It's tiring always being first, always being different, always being the one who has to adapt, denying important parts of yourself just to get the chance to do your job. It’s like being a stranger in a strange land, where you speak the language but nobody learns yours. That's why even women who do well in development end up leaving mid-career. http://www.fastcolabs.com/3008216/tracking/minding-gap-how-y... [You could swamp out woman with any other minority group and it would still be true. Its much harder to stick with something when the river flow is actively against you.]

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#205

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, 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.

From the point of view of a business, it is by no means clear to me that having a diverse workforce, at least along the traditional lines of demarcation - even assuming that this leads to a 'diversity of viewpoints' - makes the business more successful.

Hollywood, for example, spends the big money on films targeted at the notional 15-30 year old male, and medium budgets on patronising 'chick flicks' for women. It turns a very nice profit doing so, and has done for a long old time. A fortiori triple-A games, most of which I find frankly disturbing nowadays in their contempt for their audience.

Before the 1970s-80s, when equal ops and stuff really became a thing at all, I didn't notice anyone failing to make boatloads of money either, despite reproducing the much stronger racist/sexist biases of society at that time.

Until somebody shows me evidence that increasing diversity on staff and at senior levels/C-level has a causative relationship with increased profits, I conclude that capitalist enterprises are an ineffective vehicle for this sort of social change, and that people would be better served forming political parties, standing in elections, protesting, doing political stunts, strikes, whatever tickles your political fancy, than grumbling about what percentage of whom Google should have managed to hire thus far. It wasn't diversity on the board of Ma Bell that got rid of Jim Crow.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#206

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…

> > I would hypothesize that this is false.

> Citation required.

You may want to Google the meaning of "hypothesis"...

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#207
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 72.4% of Americans are White, yet 61% of Google employees are White. Technically Whites are under-represented. > Women earn 18% of computer science degrees, yet 30% of Google employees are Women. Technically women are over-represented. How come you use "Americans" as the universe of comparison in the first sentence and "CS degrees" in the second? I suspect that neither is the universe of comparison that Google is l…

[deleted]

> African Americans (12% of pop.) make up 80% of NBA players". I am pro-diversity and I have no problem with this. I don't want to change this that 80%. That 80% is based on their ability. Which just so happens to be gifted to people of their race. Good for them.

Thanks white person for explaining what black people are good at. Nope, no blatant racism here at all.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#208
post #47

[deleted]

Bringing up quotas is a complete non-sequitur. They didn't mention quotas or any form of favoritism towards minority candidates.

What they did mention is trying to improve the quality of CS education available to minorities. For instance, helping Howard, a predominately black college, improve its CS program.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#209
post #198
post #178

As a person who comes from a place where there has always been an unhealthy obsession with demographic classification (South Africa), I'm curious about the "Asian" classification, which seems even more worthless than the average racial classification. Does it encompass both South Asians and Chinese? Do they have a common "Asian experience" in the US? Does the average person whose ancestors came from Tehran have much…

I think I get what you're saying. The continent of Africa contains more human (genetic) diversity than the rest of the world combined, yet almost everyone from it would be classified as "Black".

The continent of Africa contains more human (genetic) diversity than the rest of the world combined, yet almost everyone from it would be classified as "Black".

Interesting that you should bring that up: in South Africa under Apartheid, the racial classification of "Black" (previously called "Bantu" and "Native") was a person of "pure" African descent.

In post apartheid South Africa, for the purposes of redress [^] "black" means Indian, Coloured (mixed race) and black Africans. Of course, it was found that disproportionately Coloureds and (especially) Indians were being appointed (they were better educated and more affluent), so there seems to be a renewed emphasis on black Africanness... our Indian finance minister was just replaced by a black African, which was viewed as some kind of milestone - incidentally Julius Malema brought this up a few years ago, but it was quickly sent down the memory hole.

There has been, in recent times the emergence of racial bomb-throwers who claim that whites cannot be "African".

In any case, my point is that even the term "black" is not as clear-cut as we would assume.

[^] I actually do support affirmative action in South Africa as a corrective measure. The potential for abuse does exist, in the future - currently whites, despite a huge amount of whining are not particularly disadvantaged. Sadly there isn't a sunset clause, although the constitution limits reverse discrimination to reversing the effects of past discrmination, a sunset clause of, say 2035, after which all racial discrimination would be banned, would have been better, in my opinion.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#210
post #191
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, no, we're not. That is an entirely baseless assertion.

So you work at Google but you're having trouble grasping simple mathematics? OK then. Let's break it down: X is an over-represented group of Googlers threatening their diversity. Let's say it's males. Y is, let's say, women. Z is the total number of current Googlers. In this case, 0.7Z = X and 0.3Z = Y. (70% men, 30% women). Still with me? If Google were to continue hiring X at the current rate (i.e., 70% of all cand…

Maybe you didn't read my earlier post where I said that Google will hire as many qualified people as it can. There is no upper limit. Nobody is excluded because of quotas or whatever.

If Google has 100 X's and 10 Y's and hires 10 X's and 1 Y every year, the ratio of X's to Y's stays the same. If Google increases the number of Y's they hire each year to 2, the ratio of X's to Y's decreases. Not sure what's so hard to comprehend about this.

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