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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

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #7

I don't understand why companies are obsessed with diversity just for the sake of it. Edit: I am mexican, and I personally wouldn't like to be hired for diversity reasons, I would prefer to be hired on my abilities.

> I am mexican, and I personally wouldn't like to be hired for diversity reasons, I would prefer to be hired on my abilities.

Which is all a non-sequitur, since nothing in Google's blog post or the linked diversity website suggest that Google's approaches to improving diversity include hiring people for diversity reasons rather than for their abilities.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#63

Post by dragonwriter »

[deleted] wrote: post #47

[deleted]

> 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 looking at -- particularly the latter, given that one of their approaches for addressing diversity is to support programs that are designed to expand the number of women and underrepresented minorities graduating in technical fields.

> Another 10 years of this diversity mania propaganda and we'll have the same quotas for Whites as the ones that were used against Jewish high achievers.

No one is talking about adopting quotas, except for the reflexively anti-diversity crowd.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#64

Post by nl »

Are these diversity numbers for the US or for Google as a whole?

If they are world-wide, I find it quite interesting how closely the location of the Google offices where software development occurs[1] matches the ethnicity numbers.

Notably, there is only one development office in Latin America (and none in Spain/Portugal), and the only development office in the Middle East or Africa is Tel Aviv (not clear what ethnicity the workers there would class themselves as).

I'm not aware of any world-class Computer Science programs in Africa. There are some decent ones in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, but increasing the number would be a problem worth tackling.

[1] https://www.google.com.au/about/careers/teams/engineering/sw...

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#65

Post by wetmore »

omonra wrote: post #41
heydenberk wrote: post #17

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…

Successful tech companies have to be staffed by very smart nerds. So at the end of the day their pool of candidates is that group. So the numbers you see are reflective of the people who make up that pool. If you want to see more X in it - work on attracting X into the pool of smart nerds.

That's what half this blog post was about.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#66

Post by [deleted] »

nl wrote: post #57
[deleted] wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Does this mean we should empose[sic] quotas to get Blacks out of the NFL and replace them with Whites No to the quotas. But yes, race in the NFL (and in many sports) is an issue that should be addressed. The old problem of the low proportion of black quarterbacks is slowly being addressed, and the Rooney Rule[1] has had some success with the underrepresentation of black coaches. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roone…

[deleted]

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#67

Post by dragonwriter »

EGreg wrote: post #18

"But we’re the first to admit that Google is miles from where we want to be" Who is "we"? And why do they want to be somewhere else?

> Who is "we"?

Google.

> And why do they want to be somewhere else?

Among other reasons, because Google is employee-constrained (they have plenty of money and plenty of things they'd like to do, but have trouble hiring enough workers that meet their qualification standards to be able to effectively apply the money they have to the opportunities they would like to pursue), and the lack of the diversity in their workforce, mirroring the lack of diversity in their qualified candidate pool -- given the absence of evidence that there are inherent reasons for that lack of diversity -- indicates that improving social barriers that constrain their qualified candidate pool is likely to be an effective way of making more of the people who are innately capable of being Googlers actually able to become qualified to be Googlers, allowing Google to hire more qualified people, allowing Google to more effectively pursue the wide range of opportunities they would like to pursue.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#68

Post by nl »

samstokes wrote: post #9
ceras wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official site breaks it down by tech/non-tech/leadership: http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html

Interesting that non-tech is less male-dominated than tech, as expected, but even more white-dominated.

Speculation only: It's possible the non-white numbers are boosted by the development offices in Asia. They may employ large numbers of developers (who are likely to be 95% Asian), but lower numbers of managers compared to management-heavy offices like Mountain View.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#69

Post by skj »

reddog wrote: post #37
steele wrote: post #2

age diversity would be interesting as well

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.

Re: Getting to work on diversity at Google

#70

Post by nl »

[deleted] wrote: post #47

[deleted]

Diversity programs are important because they uncover and fight discrimination, both explicit and more subtle.

A specific example: I once worked in a job where the team leader and hiring manager was looking at resumes, found one was female and put it aside saying "she'll just get pregnant and leave". That was an extremely explicit form of discrimination that a formal diversity program may have helped combat (eg: he may have said "oh she'll just get pregnant and leave but I have to interview her anyway to get diversity points").

Interestingly, his team was extremely uniform ethnically too, and after he was asked to leave it became much more diverse.

Edit: Oh, and to address your points about the success of Jews in the fashion industries and Blacks in the NFL: overrepresentation is not a problem except in the case of whites because of history. If it becomes a problem the other way, then yes, it should be dealt with then. It is very far from that point at the moment, though.

(White, Anglo-Saxon male here)

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