71–80 of 252 posts
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> 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 l…
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Well, they say they're working with "upstream" to resolve the issue: "Among other things, since 2010 we’ve given more than $40 million to organizations working to bring computer science education to women and girls. And we’ve been working with historically black colleges and universities to elevate coursework and attendance in computer science. For example, this year Google engineer Charles Pratt was in-residence at…
My response was flippant, which is probably why some people have been downvoting it, but I'm legitimately glad if they're working to make their hiring pool more representative of the population. But at the same time, it's hardly their fault or responsibility to "fix" it if universities just aren't graduating people in those proportions. This came right after I'd read a PBS article that claimed "Google finally disclos…
One of the things you repeatedly hear from girls/young women considering CS is that there are no role models. Sending female engineers to university events is a small step, but it can have huge impact. In a nutshell, it's playing the long game :)
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Does there have to be a business goal? Making society more fair is a good goal. Reducing the white male preference in the job market should be a social responsibility for a company that greatly impacts our daily lives. There could be business goals though: it improves people's public opinion of you and in this case may help protect them from lawsuits. This link at the bottom of the page has some more info... http://w…
DiggityDug7, if only 5% of the country was black, say, would having under 10% of your workforce be black be considered unfair? Likewise, if the number of comp sci graduates in the country is 5%, the same question can be asked. Who is the one being unfair?
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As a Google employee, the reasons I hear is that we'd like the diversity of our workforce to more accurately reflect the diversity of our users, so we can serve them better.
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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.
If you know experienced engineers looking for a job, please send them our way.
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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 m…
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.
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…
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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 m…
If there is something gained by having gender X, then you are saying that genders are not equal. If there is no difference, then why are we doing this? Why are we basing employment on gender anyway?
I'd like to see stats regarding people looking for work who are successful and those that are not. If a woman wants to stay at home, can we not accept her choice? If a man wants to stay at home while the woman is breadwinner, is this not okay too?