
Google diversity figures show little change - adzicg
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44496076
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silvestrov
Interesting that the huge overrepresentation of asians can be completely
ignored and not seen as bad at all while a smaller overrepresentation of men
is a huge problem.

41% of 2017 hires were asians [1] while being only 5% of the population [2].

1: [https://diversity.google/annual-report/](https://diversity.google/annual-
report/) 2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States)

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basica
> In the US almost 90% were white or Asian, 2.5% were black and 3.6% Latin
> American.

I've always found it curious how asians are treated as honorary whites when it
comes to talking about diversity in American companies. This is the most
egregious example.

If you go to Google's own diversity report the breakdown becomes 36.3% asian
and 53.1% white. Considering white people maybe up like three quarters of the
population in the US they're actually under represented at Google, ironically.

Report: [https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_our-
workforce](https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_our-workforce)

~~~
josteink
Diversity proponents seem to generally want every conceivable minority (like
-women-) represented 50%, completely ignoring how the math doesn’t add up.

And if not everyone is at 50%, it’s obviously the fault of all the racist and
sexist white men everywhere.

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rahimnathwani
Sloppy reporting:

"Just over 25% of leaders were women in 2018, up nearly 5% since 2014."

Actually it's up 4.7 _percentage points_ , or about 25% (not 5%).

~~~
tantalor
[https://xkcd.com/985/](https://xkcd.com/985/)

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jordigh
People often write about how outreach efforts such as Google's are illegal.
They are not. There's a very specific law that encourages it. I learned about
it because Karen Sandler told me about it when she explained to me why
Outreachy went from outreaching to women to also outreach to specific US
minorities. It's the only change that this US law allowed.

[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-2017-title29-vol4-part1608.xml)

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thinkingemote
Interesting to see for the first time attrition statistics.

It's higher across the board for men versus women (and the gap is wider for
tech roles but no figures were given here). And for ethnicity in 2017,
attrition was highest for Black Googlers followed by Latinx Googlers, and
lowest for Asian Googlers.

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40acres
Why was this flagged? This is the second story I've noticed this week on
diversity in tech that was an early top 10 link and then got flagged.

~~~
josteink
Because it tends to stir a discussion about the merits of current
“diversity”-initiatives.

This often leads to polarized debate. And the San Fran pro-diversity crowd
being stripped absolutely naked.

I’m guessing it’s a little bit of both.

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rahimnathwani
I just had a look at the BBC's equivalent report ("BBC Equality Information
Report 2016/17").

Interestingly:

\- p38 says that 42.1% of 'Senior Leadership's staff are female

\- p39 shows the real number (35.7%). It seems like on page 38 they define
senior leadership as around 3000 people, rather than the smaller (and less
diverse) group that has the actual senior management job grades (SM1 and SM2).

\- The report has almost no historical information. The top level actuals are
compared with targets, but the only numbers that are compared with, e.g. 2014,
are things like # apprentices.

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trisimix
Is there evidence supporting Google denies diverse hires of the same skill
levels at others in the position? Or is this just a byproduct of our countries
failures and all the best computer scientist applying at Google are actually
white males? Should Google attempt to diversity hire less skilled individuals
for the sake of changing the status quo? Would that even change the status
quo?

~~~
DanBC
There's an assumption in your post that current hiring practices somehow
select the best candidates from a pool of suitably qualified candidates.

Anyone who has been hired, or has hired other people, know that recruitment is
terrible and includes huge amounts of randomness and you are - hopefully -
avoiding terrible candidates from a pool of qualified candidate.

Given that, it makes sense to change the random factors of recruitment that
select against women to be selecting for a few more women. So long as you're
still mostly achieving the previous avoidance of terrible candidates.

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mpweiher
It's almost as if the guy who wrote that their approach isn't working had a
point. Nah, crazy talk!

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jhowell
Recently the board voted against recommendations made by employees to increase
diversity. It's pretty clear what priority the Google board gives to
diversity, which is their right even if wrong.

~~~
josteink
How is it wrong? Who are you to know better what is good for Google than the
Google executives?

