
Apple releases diversity numbers - aroman
http://www.apple.com/diversity/
======
unfunco
Some people might criticise these numbers, particularly the 70% male ratio.
However, to really determine whether a company is being as diverse and open to
equality as possible, the same measurements should be applied to the
applicants as well as the employees.

If seven out of ten applicants are male then the 70% male ratio doesn't
indicate a bias. It might mean that the company isn't as attractive to female
applicants, but then again, neither is the discipline behind many of their
products (at the moment.)

~~~
aristus
Please, stop repeating this tiresome excuse. Absolving a company and blaming
the pipeline does not help actually solve the problem.

1) There is a "filter" problem, eg bias in interviewing. This is what you are
talking about.

2) There is the "pipeline" problem, eg universities _and_ recruiting
practices.

3) There is the self-selection problem, eg women / minorities going into other
fields because they don't want to deal with the horseshit.

...plus many others, including how the few women are treated after they get
the job.

The only cure is sunlight. You optimize what you measure. If we can get tech
companies to publish these numbers _every year_ , then maybe they'll start
doing something about it.

~~~
keithnoizu
I really can't fathom why you were voted down on this.

Regardless of where the failure is there is clearly something about the
software engineering industry and the pipeline leading to it that is biased
against minorities and women, which implies we are failing to optimally place
the most talented (or potentially talented) people in the right positions
assuming talent if evenly distributed among various ethnicities and sexes).
Which means our economy is not as productive as it could be and we're missing
out on the increased opportunity for possible break throughs in software
development and other related fields with similar bias.

It's clearly a problem. It may not be directly the fault of say Apple or
Google but it is naive to see numbers like that and not be concerned.

~~~
aurelian
"Regardless of where the failure is there is clearly something about the
software engineering industry and the pipeline leading to it that is biased
against minorities"

How can you say that when East and South Asians are so overrepresented?

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chimeracoder
Three things:

1\. You are confusing P(A|B) with P(B|A).

2\. Even if it were true, a lack of bias against a few minority groups would
not invalidate the statement that there is bias against other minority groups.

3\. You are conflating a very wide and disparate set of ethnic groups in a way
that is very misleading (and mathematically similar to Gerrymandering[0]). If
we were to break those very broad categories further, we would see that many
groups that qualify as "East and South Asian" are still themselves under-
represented.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering)

~~~
aurelian
1\. How so? 2\. True, but the comment I responded to made a different claim.
3\. is irrelevant. There are always under-represented groups depending on how
you look at the data, but if you claim general bias against minorities when
some minorities are doing very well, you have some explaining to do.

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gxs
It's often companies with retail outlets that are willing to provide this data
- I suspect a lot of the diversity comes from the people that work at retail
Apple stores.

In a way, it is similar to how the government operates - the diversity of
people who call the shots is very different than the diversity of people in
DMV or SSA offices, but overall it gives the impression that things are
diverse.

~~~
dublinben
If their "tech" and "non-tech" categories are what they sound like, then
you're right. Their "tech" category is still 80% male, and 54% + 23% white
plus Asian. For such a hip company, they look just as bad as their
competitors.

~~~
TheHypnotist
Serious Question(s): How does this make them look bad? Is it unfair to think
that this happens to be because of the demographic of people interested and
qualified in "tech" positions? Or should we genuinely think these numbers are
lopsided for some nefarious reasons?

Edit: Un-Edited the Edit.

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wyager
If these stats are for the US, it means that whites are about 17% _under_
represented at Apple.

~~~
jiggy2011
That depends. The data segregates into "tech" and "non-tech", but doesn't seem
to define these terms well. If tech is taken to mean mostly programmers and
engineers then you would expect these to be clustered around Cupertino, in
which case (based on pure demographics) you would expect more hispanics and
less whites. If you are including people like geniuses at retail stores then
perhaps it would break down differently depending on how these stores are
distributed around the US.

~~~
wyager
That's true, but a 17% difference from expected seems quite large. And if
we're talking about people working at Cupertino, the pool of tech workers is
significantly more white and asian than the average U.S. population, and I
would think most of the Apple employees at Cupertino are pulled from that
population.

Apple does have a substantially higher percentage of asians than would be
expected from the entire U.S. population (15% vs 5%), probably due to the
relatively large number of asian tech workers, but I would think the same
effect would lead to a larger-than-expected percentage of white employees.

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kazinator
What is the meaning of "white" in that pie chart? Does a pale-skinned person
from Jordan or Lebanon count as white? If not, then what category? "Other"?

What is "hispanic"? Is a white person of Spanish descent "hispanic" or
"white"? Wikipedia says that this is "is an ethnonym that denotes a
relationship to Spain".

So a Greek or Turk would count as "white", but a Spaniard as "hispanic"? Pop
quiz: Ricardo Montalbán: white or hispanic?

The pie chart seems to be mixing "ethnonyms" with skin colors.

Then there is "Asian"; what exactly is that, and does it lump together the
people of Indians and of Korea?

About "white": suppose that 70% of applicants are white, but they are largely
Slavic, from central and eastern Europe; and suppose that the 70% of the
employed whites are Germanic whites. Nope, no discrimination there!

Maybe the "white" category is so large because it includes many ethnic groups:
someone from Iceland could qualify, as well as someone from Israel.

Since the Arabic and East Indian people are "caucasoid", any pale-skinned
people from those regions can represent themselves as white. A person with
albinism of Indian descent is very difficult to distinguish from a European,
if at all. (Do a Google image search for "indian albino").

~~~
jiggy2011
If I was cynical I might consider this to be a feature, simply release another
set of statistics a year later with the demographics sliced a little
differently and declare victory.

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gopher1
No age data?

~~~
thevardanian
Aren't you funny.

~~~
caio1982
I think I get it but in some countries age is not a privacy issue, business-
wise. Actually, in some places (like Brazil) people expect you to disclose it,
eventually. There's not much privacy protection about it like there is in US.

~~~
thenipper
The weirdest is other countries where it'll be on the CV. Along with gender,
ethnicity, religion, marital status, number of children(including their ages
and names sometime) and a photo.

Its really uncomfortable since we're not supposed to use any of that.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Should you withhold information from your CV since some of it is known by you
to not being supposed to be used by the reader of said CV?

Because CV without all what you listed is no longer a CV and is closer to a
catalog listing. Should you also replace your name with some alphanumeric
code? Because name can tell you a lot to discriminate on.

~~~
thenipper
No not necessarily, though I wouldn't use a CV to apply to a job in the States
or that is with a primarily US based organization. I just ignore the info when
it comes up, it just catches me by surprise sometime.

I've actual lobbied to anonymize all applications as much as possible.
Thankfully for some positions I have to review resumes for I'm unfamiliar with
the cultural norms of what names are female and what are male. So in that way
they are anonymized!

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detcader
People need to learn the difference between descriptive and prescriptive
ideas. Observating that Apple isn't diverse in a certain way is not the same
as saying Apple is the problem. In fact I don't think most people believe that
Apple's hiring practices, or any tech company's in particular, is the real
issue for any metric.

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oh_sigh
Why are the race and ethnicity numbers U.S. based, but the gender numbers are
global?

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guard-of-terra
Most of the world does not operate on rigid and sometimes funny ("hispanic",
come on) set of "races" like US do.

Rather, people have more dynamic nationalities and ethnicities which are
harder to classify.

~~~
oh_sigh
My question was really going the other way - why don't they release their
gender numbers for the US only?

My conspiratorial feeling is because they are even more male dominated in the
US than globally.

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yummyfajitas
Data like this suggests that a common argument employed by diversity activists
is false. Specifically, if companies like Apple and Facebook manage to create
products that are wildly popular with women, it suggests that it isn't
necessary to have female employees to make products for women.

(Repeat for race/nationality - I don't think a single African person works for
Whatsapp. I've also never met an African woman in the past year who doesn't
use it daily.)

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Gracana
The fact that there are success stories doesn't make the argument false.

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im3w1l
A single counter example is enough to prove that something isn't __necessary
__.

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ceejayoz
Is anyone actually arguing it's strictly _necessary_ , though?

Diverse viewpoints can help meeting the needs of diverse populations, but it's
obviously possible to make a product that appeals to other demographics than
your own.

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CucumberLime
Age?

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teamhappy
I'll never understand why anyone would care about the absolute numbers. Look
at the relative numbers (relative to applications) and try to find any kind of
bias (including preferential treatment for minorities). No bias? Great. Some
bias? Not great. Pretty simple really.

Another thing I don't get about absolute numbers is that it seems desirable to
have an outcome proportional to society (eg. 0.2% "Native Hawaiian or other
Pacific Islander"). Given the fact that we're all equal; I don't see why that
would be any better/worse/whatever.

~~~
mmatants
There is no intrinsic reason why these numbers should not be proportional to
society in the long run, that's why we compare the ratios.

Not even considering issues of equality and access, diversity as a thing in
and of itself is at least _good business_. Especially in positions of power
and decision-making. And that is at least one reason to peer at the
discrepancies with open-minded curiosity - not to start a witch hunt, but to
make smart shifts towards better business.

~~~
aurelian
"There is no intrinsic reason why these numbers should not be proportional to
society in the long run, that's why we compare the ratios."

Tall black men are wildly overrepresented in the NBA. Should the NBA be
"proportional to society?"

~~~
teamhappy
That's his point exactly. The reason more black kids start playing basketball
is because more black people are in the NBA. And therefore more black kids end
up in the NBA in the future. It's a cycle. There's no _intrinsic_ reason for
that though.

