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Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

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191–200 of 464 posts

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#191
post #2

> In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Staffing Management team was instructed by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with this request. Good for him. Google is now exc…

As a black IT professional, I tend to leave the demographic information blank on applications because I want to avoid the racial implications of my application. I don't know if I'll be dismissed because I'm black and I don't want to be an affirmative action hire either. I made it to the 3rd round of interviews with Google back in 2012. Maybe if I had told them I was black, I would have gotten the job.

Oh man! The irony of this. Diversity hiring doesn’t help anyone. What if you had gotten the job and your peers thought you were only there because of being Black. They don’t take your technical arguments and code seriously?

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#192
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want to work for a company where world-class work might not be that important for your career progress? Do you think a super talented high-achieving person with wrong gender/race should be expected to sacrifice their achievements for "common good" as defined by internal diversity officers? Do you think those diversity hires would be happy staying at junior positions and not pushing beyond their capabili…

"Do you really want to work for a company where world-class work might not be that important for your career progress?" I think pretty much every company has employees who would say that there are definitely people who get promotions and bonuses for reasons that are not related to "world-class" work.

Yeah, which is sad to observe with increasing probability in what should be one of our industry's flagship. It's double sad as there is literally nowhere else to go as a regular employee with high ideals; our industry could have done better.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#193
post #85

I work at Google. It is the most unpleasant place to work, largely because work evaluation is almost 80% politics (might be 100%). I am a senior engineer. You get stuck here because the pay you better than elsewhere, but I think it is a very bad and very sad place to work. My stomach curdles every morning before going to work and I wonder if it is worth it. Many of my peers talk in the same vein. Please consider not…

Can you tell me more about this? I have interviewed at google 2 times now. The first interview I bombed -- and I knew it. It was my first interview in near 10 years. The second interview I thought I aced. There was not a single answer I could not answer expect one about obscure hardware that nobody uses any more -- which I think was a test on how I handle not knowing something -- I ended up learning something neat. T…

I wouldn't think of someone as "horrible" for not caring what color other people's skin is. That's a testament to the world we're in. If you don't actively and consciously take skin color into consideration, you're a bad person!

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#194

If this is true and the recruiter has emails to back up his case it should be a pretty easy case to win. According to the the rules: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which makes it illegal to discriminate against a person on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It should also be a massive fine.

court will just look at distribution of google employees, see that white asian is not the minority and conclude no discrimination occurs

A cynical view on things, but, you're probably not wrong. Discrimination is definitely something being treated with a double standard, both actively (like in this case) as passively (like in male rape victims)

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#195
post #85

I work at Google. It is the most unpleasant place to work, largely because work evaluation is almost 80% politics (might be 100%). I am a senior engineer. You get stuck here because the pay you better than elsewhere, but I think it is a very bad and very sad place to work. My stomach curdles every morning before going to work and I wonder if it is worth it. Many of my peers talk in the same vein. Please consider not…

Please don't take this the wrong way, but attitudes like what you just described contribute to a toxic work culture--people sticking around just because of the money but hating every minute of it. It implies that people there are not just unhappy but will do/say things they don't believe in just to keep the paychecks rolling in.

Working at big companies like Google is not for everyone. Unless you have material reasons for staying--such as funding care of aging parents--wouldn't you be happier and more successful by taking your own advice?

p.s., I don't work at Google and don't ever want to.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#196
post #160
post #85

I work at Google. It is the most unpleasant place to work, largely because work evaluation is almost 80% politics (might be 100%). I am a senior engineer. You get stuck here because the pay you better than elsewhere, but I think it is a very bad and very sad place to work. My stomach curdles every morning before going to work and I wonder if it is worth it. Many of my peers talk in the same vein. Please consider not…

I found this shocking. How did this come to be? Don't places like Google reward people based on merit. Isn't it the hallowed ground for egalitarianism? I read an article about the hiring practices at Google that spoke highly about it.

Honestly, I'm not so surprised. A lot of stuff about employment Google reads like hagiographies. Maybe it was that way in the distant past, but its most notable perks (20% time, etc.) have been cut and it's big and publicly traded now, so rot has definitely had time to set in.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#197
post #126

I have to say, as an Asian male I found this comment by dirtyid in the article to be succinct and all too true: > "Pour one out for Asian males. Get screwed by affirmative action in education, media representation and now employment but can't get screwed on dating apps." Asian men constantly get grouped as a single entity when it comes to tech and aren't considered an added element of diverseness within the industry…

As an Asian male this article also frustrates me. Google has always been a company I've wanted to work for but if this article is true and Google discriminates against Whites and Asians in their hiring process then they're not the dream company I previously believed they were.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#198

There has to be a way to use tech to anonymize vetting and hiring until the hired candidate shows up for work the next day. Phone interviews could be handled in such a way that gender can’t be determined say by using voice scramblers. Whiteboarding can be done in separate rooms with a digital whiteboard that evaluators see and where the candidate can ask questions but not be seen. Etc etc. or, or, people could stop b…

Unless you are fresh from an undergraduate degree, the thing people care about is what you have shown you can actually do in the industry. And showing what you can do will in most cases instantly identify who you are.

As soon as I say what projects I've worked on or what my skills are anyone recruiting me will know exactly who I am.

How do you get around that?

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#199
post #79

You can't fix in hiring what's already broken before people even get to college. I'm pretty sure Google's hiring disproportionally much women, black people, gay people already if you would compare it to what's graduating from the compsci careers in the US. Google is making other companies probably even more exclusively white/asian male because they tend to hire more of the women that do qualify for programming jobs.…

> If they really would care about diversity they could have Google schools in prisons to educate the more motivated and promising inmates in the skills Google requires.

Precisely. Or sending recruiters to Mississippi/Alabama/Louisiana/etc to identify brilliant 18 year olds who can’t go to college because of their socio-economic situation, etc. One can come up with many other ways to directly attack these problems.

But really, most at Google/FB/Apple/etc do not believe there is much of an issue. They just want to appease the media by saying how much they care about diversity, resulting in terribly misaligned incentives all over, resulting in the kind of crazy situations the original linked article describes.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#200
I strongly believe diversity should be solved when students declare their major, and not by HR years later (though I have no idea "how" we could achieve that.

If the workforce of a country in a certain is composed of 80% white male, then having the same representation in your company is NOT wrong.

Hire people that are competent and with who you would enjoy working with. That's it.

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