
Facebook has a 'black people problem,' says former employee who quit this month - SirLJ
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/facebook-has-black-people-problem-mark-luckie-former-employee.html
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nudpiedo
I disagree with this person's opinion:

    
    
        You can build something that works, that people want to use,
        but you can’t actually make all the right decisions if among
        the builders there’s not enough diversity and perspective
    
    

I thought the point of diversity was about giving equalty of opportunities to
all folks indepndently of gender, race, ideas, etc, not about achieving some
sort of colorful mastermind.

And why can't the current staff make all the right decissions? Is the current
staff flawed in some aspect that only diversity can fix? I thought empathy is
a common human trait, and actually many decissions at facbook are data-driven
or CEO driven (and a CEO is just a corporative authority).

    
    
        In some buildings, there are more ‘Black Lives Matter’
        posters than there are actual black people...
    
    

Is even this politcal organization even representative of that community?
Perhaps enforced diversity politics instead of meritocracy is the reason why
Facebook has been lacking recently.

I have no data on diversity beign good or bad; although I think this
"diversity" topic is an opinable political posture. I hope everyone
understands that my point is that there are several claims repeated over and
over without any justification...

~~~
Traster
>I thought the point of diversity was about giving equalty of opportunities to
all folks indepndently of gender, race, ideas, etc, not about achieving some
sort of colorful mastermind.

There can be more than one reason to do something. Yes, Diversity and
Inclusion initiatives are often attempting to extend opportunities to groups
that are currently denied that opportunity. But there is also an element of
D&I that is motivated by the belief that people with different perspectives
and backgrounds can bring new and different ideas to the table and that the
more ideas you bring to the table the more likely you are to find the best
ideas.

Empathy is absolutely a common human trait, but let's be honest, but this
isn't about understanding other people's feelings, it's about being exposed to
other people's feelings. You can have the most empathetic person in the world,
but if they're living in a 99.99% white, gated community in the US and you ask
them about race relations they're not going to have an informed view. Not
because they lack empathy, they lack experience.

Facebook has lots of users, and of those users it's not difficult to imagine
different people use facebook in different ways. If you don't have an
organisation that atleast to some extent reflects those perspectives then
they're not truly going to do a good job building products for them.

There's a good reason that when you look at successful start ups they're
generally founded by people who have experience in the customer base that
they're building their product for. It's because they have experience and true
understanding for how their customers behave and think. I could say 'Well,
surely anyone could use empathy to achieve the same thing' but we don't see
that.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> There's a good reason that when you look at successful start ups they're
> generally founded by people who have experience in the customer base that
> they're building their product for.

I have no trouble believing this, but I don't think this transfers to the OP.
Facebook is not a startup anymore, and end users are not even Facebook's
direct customers (they sell ads, not accounts).

But more tellingly, why stop at race (and other protected classes)? Why not
optimize for the right balance of first spoken language, political party
affiliation, age, family net worth, educational background, number of
children?

I think we're overanalyzing what is essentially a fluffy slogan from a person
whose sole job it is to widen Facebook's candidate pool.

------
voyager2
“In some buildings, there are more ‘Black Lives Matter’ posters than there are
actual black people...”

    
    
      Those posters are divisive in and of themselves.

Best to have no racially themed posters at all.

~~~
just_myles
You know that wasn't his point, at all.

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SirLJ
“On a personal note, at least two or three times a day, every day, a colleague
at MPK [Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park] will look directly at me and tap
or hold their wallet or shove their hands down their pocket to clutch it
tightly until I pass,” Luckie wrote.

~~~
vfulco2
I don't believe this for a minute given what I have heard from FB employees
about the place.

~~~
ergothus
Why not? I staunchly believe that race and gender are not indicators of value,
capability, or personality...but my subconscious acts on biases it has learned
over decades from everyone around me, and it will take more than rational
thought to alter who I find threatening, "slow", smug, timid or other
decisions based on ephemeral qualities. These biases are difficult to identify
in the moment when you are the one doing them rarely, but far more noticeable
if they are directed towards you by many.

That doesnt mean the author is correct, but I certainly find the issue
plausible.

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just_myles
I know what he is going through. I have experienced a lot of this during my
tenure working in technology (Entertainment).

It's unfortunate that a company like that still hasn't been able to figure
this out. As someone who studied computer science it is hard for me to
recommend to the younger kids (Children of color... ok Black.) to get into
technology when the prospects of them working in that sector are so low.

~~~
commandlinefan
How representative do things seem to you? I seem to recall that black people
were 13% of the U.S. population, so you'd expect (all other things being
equal) about 1 in every 10 employees to be black. On the other hand, Asians
are about 5% of the U.S. population, so you'd expect to see about 1 in 20, but
everywhere I've ever worked it's been more like 18 or 19 in 20. I've never
assumed that's due to prejudice, though.

~~~
jakear
Shouldn’t it be more about mirroring general workforce demographics than
population demographics?

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User23
Facebook has a white people problem too. Among US employees white people are
grossly underrepresented at only 47.6%[1] while they are 72.4% of the
population according to the latest census[2]. If these numbers were for any
other race it would be front page news.

[1][https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-
report](https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report)

[2][https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...](https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk)

~~~
Traster
To do the comparison you're attempting to do, surely you need to get data that
excludes employees who are currently here on a visa. It would seem insane to
criticize facebook for not reflecting US demographics when quite simply it's
not hire from the US.

