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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

#71

Post by kolbe »

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…

Presuming your pipeline is accurate (dubious, but I'll presume), what "do something about it" is there to be done by the top two steps? It's a disservice to everyone if you hire workers who are unqualified over qualified ones. It a disservice to students to admit them if they are not ready to compete. Being successful either as a person or a corporation is hard, and there's no real way to handicap it and expect the handicapped demographic to succeed.

And if we want to use the past 30 years as an experiment for this, the most academically assisted demographic in America has been black through affirmative action, and they've shown little progress towards matching median US income, whereas Asians have been the most prejudiced against, and they're now far above. Plans like yours, to smooth outcomes based on racial divides, rather than industry or academic standards, are nice things to talk about in politics to make you sound good, but they appear to be destructive to the very people you purport to want to help.

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

#72

Post by Jwarder »

jhedwards wrote: post #43
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…

I think the reason is that historically black people and women were intentionally discriminated against and prevented from entering school and the workplace, so there's an attempt to actively make amends for that. So politically that's why the focus is on race and gender. I also think that people who champion social justice are also very much in favor of investment in education and public resources like public librar…

It looks like a measurement issue.

The problem we want to eliminate is sexism and racism. Counting the number of times people are actually affected by a negative -ism is difficult. We don't know what people are thinking unless they tell us. Bigots have an incentive to lie about their reasons and non-bigots can be subject to unconscious biases.

On the other hand categorizing people by race/gender is easy. There is always some wiggle room, but there is a lot less ambiguity when answering "is this employee a black woman" compared to "was this employee hired because she is black".

Once you have a set of (mostly) reliable statistics then you can start looking at trends over time, patterns by industry, etc. These numbers can't tell you anything about racism/sexism on their own, but they can help show the general direction the population studied is going and if there are any outliers who might deserve more attention.

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

#73

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kvl7 wrote: post #29

This is one of the comments on that article: ------- > The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook. Why is that an upside? It seems utterly racist to me. Let’s try to substitute “white” with, say, Asian. “The upside to this is that Asian people no longer make up the majority at Facebook.” Or how about the color black? “The upside to this is that black people no longer make up th…

Well, diversity efforts at Microsoft China were trying to move away from the 100% Chinese office. Of course, that being China meant a few foreigners here and there. Some effort really pays off in a very homogeneous environment.

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

#74

Post by ryanmercer »

isthisnagee wrote: post #16
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…

I don't think your example applies in the context of a tech company, so I'm going to comment ignoring it. If it boils down to who applies, then we need to make sure that we're reaching out to communities that are not well represented in our field. It's not about waiting for them to come to us.

>I don't think your example applies in the context of a tech company, so I'm going to comment ignoring it.

18% of CS majors are women. 76.9% of the U.S. is white. Statistically someone in the work force with a CS degree is a white male.

That absolutely applies in the context of a tech company, unless you want them to hire unqualified applicants and spend months or years training them before they return profit.

The problem isn't with who a company is hiring, the problem is women aren't seeking out the training and non-Whites are a literal minority of the population.

Until more women pursue degrees/training in the field, and everyone starts partnering off with someone of a different race to make melting-pot babies, then it's just going to be this way purely due to statistics.

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

#75

Post by ryanmercer »

eezurr wrote: post #65

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 on…

https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-10-20/st...

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...

"The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 61.3% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 76.9%"

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

#76

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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 is the supply pipeline. It takes 20+ years for the easy path to grow a competent software developer. If the supply stalls in primary school, you don’t recover from that. Looking at the end of the pipe isn’t that useful.

Even the hard path (someone going into it starting at college) takes 4+ years.

All FAANG is doing right now is concentrating a limited supply, making diversity worse in the rest of the industry. They aren’t magically creating new supply via aggressive hiring practices.

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

#77

Post by radiantswirl »

waisbrot wrote: post #26
poster123 wrote: post #2

"In the U.S., Facebook is 3.5 percent black, compared to just 2 percent in 2014, and 4.9 percent Latinx compared to 4 percent in 2014. White people, unsurprisingly, still makes up the single largest population of employees (46.4 percent today versus 57 percent in 2014). The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook." No mention is made of the fraction of Asians, because their over…

> the narrative of whites discriminating against minorities You made up that narrative. The narrative presented in the article is > Williams noted that, "diversity is critical to our success as a company" Achieving "diversity" is not the same as mirroring the demographics of a company's home country and "over-representation" is not directly related to lack of diversity.

If "diverse" != mirroring the demographics of one's home country, then what does diverse even mean? What could possibly be a better metric than that? Mirroring the demographics of the world at large? If so, why would that be better?

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

#78

Post by s-shellfish »

ryanmercer wrote: post #68
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'.

>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, mathe…

Okay, I understand the 'reality' that you don't want to listen to the experience of a woman who has been programming since she was 9, with a background in computer engineering and an MSc in computer science from a top engineering college that was all male until the 1970s, and 12% female at the time of graduation, a TA and graduate researcher, as well as being singularly awarded 'most outstanding student in computer science' with a cumulative gpa of 3.98 and a years experience working on a PhD in information flow control, before choosing multiple different directions. As well as pretty much doing nothing with my life besides studying, programming and mathematically philosphizing with the best of them since then. That's fine!

The world changes, I'm assuming you know that. That's reality too.

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

#79

Post by supreme_sublime »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #62
supreme_sublime wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 wip…

>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.

Interesting, though as the comment on one of those articles mentions, I wonder what would have happened if he had started with not having children out of wedlock, how much of a difference would adding in having a job and graduating high school made? Though he does go on to talk about how getting the number of people who are childless or married when they have children, is difficult.

>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"?

That's a good question. The Brookings Institute seems to think it is a result of women's sexual liberation and the unrestricted use of contraception.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/an-analysis-of-out-of-wed...

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

#80

Post by ryanmercer »

poster123 wrote: post #2

"In the U.S., Facebook is 3.5 percent black, compared to just 2 percent in 2014, and 4.9 percent Latinx compared to 4 percent in 2014. White people, unsurprisingly, still makes up the single largest population of employees (46.4 percent today versus 57 percent in 2014). The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook." No mention is made of the fraction of Asians, because their over…

>"In the U.S., Facebook is 3.5 percent black, compared to just 2 percent in 2014, and 4.9 percent Latinx compared to 4 percent in 2014. White people, unsurprisingly, still makes up the single largest population of employees (46.4 percent today versus 57 percent in 2014). The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook."

So they're actually MORE diverse than the country racially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...

"The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 61.3% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 76.9%"

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