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Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

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Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#61

Post by java_script »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #44
lawlessone wrote: post #9

Techs diversity problems start early in school before college. Facebook are just the last mile. The sex based targeting of childrens toys would be a good place to start , but you won't see results for 20 years.

I see this a lot and I just don't understand it. Everyone in this problem seems desperate to point the finger to someone else. And it's not just sex, it's race too. Having problems hiring black tech workers? It's the college's fault. Having problems graduating black students with BSs in STEM? It's the high school's fault. Having problems graduating black students from high school? Really it's the fault of the communi…

It’s just a regressive position on diversity masquerading as being a reasonable progressive one. Take something that’s easier to fix from a centralized location, and instead argue for individual responsibility. Like how instead of complaining about oil companies destroying the environment and corrupting our political system, we should all just recycle and buy Teslas, like a buncha radicals or something :)

I think sure, do what you can at an individual level if you want but that’s so much less important. You’re not gonna change the household conversations happening in millions of houses, and telegraphing what YOU are doing for your daughters in Silicon Valley is more narcissistic than political.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#62

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

supreme_sublime wrote: post #56
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot and I just don't understand it. Everyone in this problem seems desperate to point the finger to someone else. And it's not just sex, it's race too. Having problems hiring black tech workers? It's the college's fault. Having problems graduating black students with BSs in STEM? It's the high school's fault. Having problems graduating black students from high school? Really it's the fault of the communi…

>Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will hire us. There are only 3 things you need to do in order to not be permanently poor in the US - 1. Graduate High School 2. Don't have kids before you're married 3. Get a job, it doesn't have to be a "good" job. Specifically with black America, it is very obvious that the vast amount of fatherless children is a huge problem. Single motherhood…

The Success Sequence is bunk, here's some reading on it[1] but the basic idea is that in those three points you laid out number 3 does basically all the explanatory work, number one does a little work and number 2 does almost nothing.

>This is a problem of culture and a lack of personal responsibility.

Okay then where does that culture problem come from? Does it just emerge from the ether to grab black people and wipe away their "personal responsibility"? No, that culture emerges from the same society you're desperate to exonerate. There are many factors that influence that culture and systemic poverty is a huge one. You want to fix poverty in black America? Great, then hire them.

[1] http://www.demos.org/blog/8/5/15/economic-institutions-shoul...

http://www.demos.org/blog/8/13/15/success-sequence-extremely...

http://mattbruenig.com/2017/07/31/the-success-sequence-is-ab...

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#63

Post by radiantswirl »

montalbano wrote: post #39
hirundo wrote: post #28

> When the Cambridge Analytica scandal went down, some pointed to Facebook’s overall lack of diversity as part of the problem. That’s because homogenous cultures lead to limited perspectives and potential lack of awareness of things that may be more obvious to diverse groups of people. If the purpose is to gain greater perspective and awareness through less homogeneous employees, then it would be more effective to hi…

Agreed, genuine diversity of intellectual approach is the gold standard IMHO.

It seems like a completely unattainable standard to me. Can you give me an example of a situation in which "genuine diversity of intellectual approach" has been a net positive for an organization, rather than a divisive detriment to morale?

IMO if your organization has a "genuine diversity of intellectual approach" that is truly genuine, then you will soon no longer have an organization — you will have two different organizations, each ideologically homogenous but definitely "genuinely different in intellectual approach" from one another.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#64

Post by [deleted] »

supreme_sublime wrote: post #56
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot and I just don't understand it. Everyone in this problem seems desperate to point the finger to someone else. And it's not just sex, it's race too. Having problems hiring black tech workers? It's the college's fault. Having problems graduating black students with BSs in STEM? It's the high school's fault. Having problems graduating black students from high school? Really it's the fault of the communi…

>Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will hire us. There are only 3 things you need to do in order to not be permanently poor in the US - 1. Graduate High School 2. Don't have kids before you're married 3. Get a job, it doesn't have to be a "good" job. Specifically with black America, it is very obvious that the vast amount of fatherless children is a huge problem. Single motherhood…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#65

Post by eezurr »

This is slightly off topic, but are their any numbers on what percentage of [women, black, hispanic, white, men etc] WANT to sit in front of a computer and program all day? I think we need those numbers in order truly measure diversity progress. [1]

If only 10% (made up number) of women are interested in software development, and 95% of that 10% are working in software, that's good! Looking at all women and saying only 9.5% of women are working in software misrepresents all the progress has been made.

[1] Why these numbers would be different for each class of people is a whole different conversation involving nature/nurture/culture/etc.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#66

Post by sctb »

throwaway8cc3 wrote: post #49
swalsh wrote: post #12

Maybe because I'm a white dude, perhaps that means I'm not allowed to be a part of these conversations. I fail to understand what the goal of these efforts is. Why did we decide race, and sex are the important immutable factors that we're going to measure? I grew up in what is today Trump Country. My high school prepared me to work in a factory. Then the factory moved to China, and now the only jobs left in the area…

[flagged]

If you keep doing this we'll ban the main account as well. This site is not for ideological battle.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#67

Post by sctb »

atomical wrote: post #5
ryanmercer wrote: post #3

At some point it boils down to who applies. Example: Women are GENERALLY more petite, they struggle carrying firefighter gear (45-75lbs depending on your load out) and aren't interested or can't pass the necessary requirements to ensure their safety, they get fewer female applicants and thus more men are firefighters type of thing. I imagine there are still fewer qualified female applicants than male. I imagine there…

Petite? A majority of women are overweight in the USA.

If you keep posting unsubstantive inflammatory comments we'll ban the account.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#68

Post by ryanmercer »

s-shellfish wrote: post #7
ryanmercer wrote: post #3

At some point it boils down to who applies. Example: Women are GENERALLY more petite, they struggle carrying firefighter gear (45-75lbs depending on your load out) and aren't interested or can't pass the necessary requirements to ensure their safety, they get fewer female applicants and thus more men are firefighters type of thing. I imagine there are still fewer qualified female applicants than male. I imagine there…

What does this have to do with software development? Are you actually suggesting women have some physical attribute that makes them less applicable for programming, mathematics, or computer science jobs? This reasoning is part of the problem. It's not rigorously inspected or accepted, because it's circular logic that can be self proving given one dominant party enforcing such a reasoning structure as 'the rules'.

>What does this have to do with software development?

Everything. If people aren't applying to the jobs, they can't be hired.

Then of course even if the minority/gender a company is lacking on applies for a job, if they aren't the most qualified candidate a company shouldn't be expected to hire them.

>Are you actually suggesting women have some physical attribute that makes them less applicable for programming, mathematics, or computer science jobs?

No, clean your display off, I said "Example: Women are GENERALLY more petite, they struggle carrying firefighter gear".

It's an example, an analogy. Firefighters often have the exact same diversity issues, fact is more Caucasian men apply than other races and genders. In the case of a firefighter a man selected at random is more likely to be more physically cable to do the job than a woman, with firefighting strength comes first then firefighting theory.

With computer sciences, you have a far larger pool of men to draw on than women. n 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent (https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-10-20/st...).

That means out of a pool of applicants, roughly 1 out of every 5 (with a degree in the field) will be female. Add to that the fact that white Americans make up the racial majority of the country and what happens? Your pool of applicants is far more likely to be male and white than female and any other race.

Someone with a computer science degree in the U.S. is statistically likely to be a white male. That's not racism, that's not sexism, that's reality.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#69

Post by ryanmercer »

colordrops wrote: post #10
s-shellfish wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with software development? Are you actually suggesting women have some physical attribute that makes them less applicable for programming, mathematics, or computer science jobs? This reasoning is part of the problem. It's not rigorously inspected or accepted, because it's circular logic that can be self proving given one dominant party enforcing such a reasoning structure as 'the rules'.

I think it's an analogy. The point is that there are deep social and cultural factors at play that bias women against software, so the applicant pool is small, and it can't be fixed by some localized corporate initiative.

Indeed. I should have just said this

---

In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent.

As of July 2016, White Americans are the racial majority with the White population being 76.9% of the country.

Statistically, an applicant with a computer science degree is likely to be a white male so logically a company that employees mostly CS types would be heavy on white males and white on women and other races.

---

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#70

Post by sctb »

supreme_sublime wrote: post #56
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot and I just don't understand it. Everyone in this problem seems desperate to point the finger to someone else. And it's not just sex, it's race too. Having problems hiring black tech workers? It's the college's fault. Having problems graduating black students with BSs in STEM? It's the high school's fault. Having problems graduating black students from high school? Really it's the fault of the communi…

>Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will hire us. There are only 3 things you need to do in order to not be permanently poor in the US - 1. Graduate High School 2. Don't have kids before you're married 3. Get a job, it doesn't have to be a "good" job. Specifically with black America, it is very obvious that the vast amount of fatherless children is a huge problem. Single motherhood…

We've asked you several times to stop using Hacker News for ideological purposes and you haven't, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post according to the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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