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Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

reuters.com

311–320 of 443 posts

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#311
post #70

Let's look at the data, shall we? In 2019: - 0.95% of CS degrees were awarded to black women - 0.86% of degrees were awarded to women who identify as two or more races - 1.63% were awarded to latina women Looks like they're hiring a larger share of individuals in these demographics (1.8% hire rate in each group) than receive degrees. It's not by a lot, but it's definitely not stagnant or moving backwards. ( Note this…

It is very strange to work in a company where an individual of a given race with the power to fire or at least harm career progression tells another race how to treat members of the powerful individuals race. All the diversity training and questions delivered from this leader then imply that the white employees getting the training are the problems and are inherently racist. Just does not sit well with me.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#312
post #156

The interesting thing is that the top of the funnel is still heavily tilted towards e.g. men. I'm not claiming whether this right or wrong, but this is how it is. Now good luck for your small company to hire minorities. It's extremely hard. I have talked to a recruiting agency recently about getting some engineers on board, and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any…

> and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any genders?" If that isn't outright blatant sexism, I don't know what is.

This is extremely common among my recruiter friends. I know several and keep in touch in order to have my finger on the pulse of the hiring industry.

The vast majority of their clients seem to word it like "we'd love to have great talent" followed by "do you have any non-white, preferably women engineers?"

Since this is all off the books conversation it would be difficult to bring up a sexism or racism case. But there is currently a distinct, non-meritocratic, sub-industry cropping up in recruiting and it's getting more aggressive. Companies are being subverted in the name of "Diversity and Inclusion".

I have personal experience with this. When I was working out of a bay area consulting shop the "diverse" candidates were most often hired onto client projects despite experience levels not being the same. Again, the internal sales people had no choice. The companies would ask for "diverse" engineers off the books. I've also been passed up for promotion vs less tenured (but similarly experienced) engineers because the next rank up wasn't diverse enough. This one was not confirmed through any source but was deduced by the racial make up of promotion and personally knowing the promoted engineers. You'd expect it to be more random.

Racism is acceptable to big tech. It's both obvious and appalling.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought making everyone cartoon yellow was more empowering. Especially on the Internet, with pseudonymity, we're all nothing more than the ideas we present. An egalitarian dream was twisted into a woke nightmare for bad actors to earn free PR by pitting people against each other.

Why is yellow the “neutral” color? Why not black, or red, or white? Letting people pick whatever color seems more empowering to me.

How is it empowering? How long do you think a white employee could post with black colored emojis before someone said something?

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#314
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery is just one aspect. Almost no one in Slavic countries (afaik) complains about slavery affecting them to this day because - in all likelihood - probably somewhat difficult to tell who is descendant of slaves and who isn’t. Isn’t as difficult to tell in the US. And the policy that followed after the end of slavery wasn’t done to help those who had been slaves or were descendants of slaves… the policy tried to m…

We are almost all descendants of slaves. The issue is not if … it’s when Your descendants were slaves. Not sure anyone can speak for all Slavic people. However, just because someone complains about something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to others. Can you name a city in the world that doesn’t have some sort of racial, religious, economic or other form of segregation?

This is really the "all lives matter" of slavery debates. I'm done with this nonsense.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#315

How incredibly weird is it to witness American schizophrenia* when it comes to races (and gender) from a non-american perspective. "Black+", "Latinx+", "LGBTTQQIAAP". Putting people in smaller and smaller box in the name of equality and diversity. I am the only one to feel this is coming to an absurd point ? I'm not an alt-right fan, nor would I vote Republican if I could, I'm a leftist in what's considered a traditi…

It is super irritating to apply to american companies, most of them ask for your race (optional input) and list latin and white as different options. I am white as milk from a Latin America country I dont know what I am suppose to complete. I consider myself latin but companies may think I am not brown enough to fit the category.

You can usually put any race with Hispanic from my experience. It’s listed as an “ethnicity” not a race. I’ve always put White/Hispanic

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was fired because many employees refused to work with him. How can you employ someone who can't communicate with his coworkers? No, Google is huge, they could have put that guy in another team or whatever. He was fired because someone leaked his memo and the press managed to make it bad PR for google. He was fired for PR reasons nothing more, in an era that was all about "girls in tech" in a patronizing fashion.

Teams have to work with each other. If he needs help from someone who is disgusted by his manifesto google has a problem.

seems to be a good reason to remove discussions of politics, race, gender from work and focus exclusively on the product. Most people have at least one closely held belief that would alienate others. If everyone stops working with everyone they disagree with the company dies. Coinbase had the right idea.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is super irritating to apply to american companies, most of them ask for your race (optional input) and list latin and white as different options. I am white as milk from a Latin America country I dont know what I am suppose to complete. I consider myself latin but companies may think I am not brown enough to fit the category.

That form is mandated by the government, not the company. Anyone with a Spanish speaking heritage is considered to be hispanic.

The problem is that the terms are often not understood correctly or confused. Hispanic, indeed, refers to Spanish speakers... of any race. It includes, for example, Spaniards and some Filipinos.

But GP didn't say Hispanic. He was referring to Latin America, whose people are called Latino.

Neither of the terms carry racial connotations. If you're Argentinian of pure Italian descent, you're still Latino. If you're one of the 2 million Spanish speakers of the Philippines, you're Hispanic. If you're one of the Guarani indigenous languages speakers of Paraguay who doesn't speak Spanish at all you're still Latino but not Hispanic.

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends. If there's some cultural or expectations bias that is self-reinforcing to reduce the number of women who consider tech (to include their peers thinking that tech isn't cool/is nerdy/whatever), I think these programs are a fantastic way to interrupt that cycle. I don't see it as insulting to their intelligence in any way, but maybe I'm not understanding your concern properly.

>I don't see it as insulting to their intelligence in any way Were you not exposed to hamfisted intervention programs growing up? They say that you never notice the propaganda that works, and I think there are lots of programs that are just outright good that even a cynic can't cut down, but I remember lots of insulting messaging baked into "lets fix X" initiatives too.

I grew up watching “this is your brain on drugs” commercials*, so yes I know what you’re referencing there.

“Girls who code” and similar programs don’t strike me as the 2020s version of the war on drugs, though.

* https://youtu.be/GOnENVylxPI

Re: Google reports soaring attrition among Black women

#320
post #166

I happen to be very familiar with Google's diversity efforts and have many Black and Latinx friends and acquaintances in the company. Google is one of the most racially inclusive tech companies in the world. It really tries hard to fix historical disparities between races in ways that you don't see in most companies, ranging from very active promotion of minorities to programs dedicated to hiring them. The interview…

When I was an employee at Google and did interviews, I was told that for diversity reasons, I couldn't ask where an interviewee "was from" because that would bias my decision. I'm sorry, but other companies and fields don't prevent this question, and have far less bias (well, employee distributions that more closely map to underlying population distributions) in hiring. Most of what Google is doing is to reduce its l…

National origin isn't even a relevant interview question. Regardless of the legal issues you shouldn't ask because it's a total waste of time.
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