
Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years - AnatMl2
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/12/facebooks-diversity-efforts-show-little-progress-after-five-years/
======
hirundo
> When the Cambridge Analytica scandal went down, some pointed to Facebook’s
> overall lack of diversity as part of the problem. That’s because homogenous
> cultures lead to limited perspectives and potential lack of awareness of
> things that may be more obvious to diverse groups of people.

If the purpose is to gain greater perspective and awareness through less
homogeneous employees, then it would be more effective to hire according to
heterogeneous answers to questions about perspective and awareness, rather
than by less reliable proxies like gender and ethnicity.

~~~
montalbano
Agreed, genuine diversity of intellectual approach is the gold standard IMHO.

~~~
radiantswirl
It seems like a completely unattainable standard to me. Can you give me an
example of a situation in which "genuine diversity of intellectual approach"
has been a net positive for an organization, rather than a divisive detriment
to morale?

IMO if your organization has a "genuine diversity of intellectual approach"
that is truly genuine, then you will soon no longer have an organization — you
will have two different organizations, each ideologically homogenous but
definitely "genuinely different in intellectual approach" from one another.

~~~
montalbano
Your response seems to be suggesting that having two different approaches
precludes the possibility of two people listening to each other and reaching a
sensible agreement?

~~~
radiantswirl
I do not suggest that, because obviously people can listen to each other and
reach sensible agreements. But if that's possible then how "genuine" is their
intellectual difference in the first place?

My question is this: what defines an organization other than a shared
intellectual approach? Borders? Dare I say... Walls?

I'm just saying that a "shared intellectual approach" is literally the
definition of an organization to me, unless you're gonna say that
walls/borders/exclusion are what defines an organization. So it makes no sense
to insist on NOT sharing an intellectual approach because in that instance
you'd quickly have two separate organizations.

What I'm really asking for tho is a single example of "genuine intellectual
diversity" being beneficial as opposed to merely being divisive and
demoralizing. Can you provide an example?

~~~
montalbano
When I google the definition of 'organization' this is the 1st one that comes
up: "an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a
business or government department." People can have different ways of
fulfilling the same purpose.

As for an example: I'm currently developing a fairly large open-source
software package for numerical analysis. I do the majority of the coding but
every few weeks I discuss the latest developments with a co-worker and my
supervisor. They often disagree with the way I have done certain things
(intellectual diversity) but after (sometimes lengthy but productive)
discussion we almost always end up with greatly improved software design that
we are all happy with. Sometimes they compromise or come round to my way of
thinking, sometimes its the other way around.

~~~
radiantswirl
You sound very logical and well-meaning and seem to be a good person in
general, so I have to resist my initial urge to turn this comment thread into
a flame war, but:

1.) a shared "purpose" to me is literally the same as a "Shared intellectual
approach" \-- purpose is a synonym of what I was trying to say.

2.) I strongly disagree that "disagreeing with the way you do certain things
within the frames/boundaries of pre-agreed purposes and projects" is what
anyone is trying to say when they talk about "intellectual diversity." If your
definition of intellectual diversity (just inferring here so lmk if I'm wrong)
is "disagreeing about how a job should be done," then literally every company
on Earth is diverse by that metric, so its not a particularly useful metric
IMO.

3.) IMO when people refer to "intellectual diversity" they are referring to
having strongly held and opposing viewpoints about issues that are much larger
than "how this job should be done." The viewpoints that qualify as
"intellectually diverse" in all discussions of the concept I've read are
referring to politics and/or religion.

I respect that you have an effective working process with diverse and strong
viewpoints about software, but I think that strongly opposing viewpoints about
software do not meet the commonly-held criteria for "intellectual diversity."
Strongly-held opposing viewpoints about religion and politics do.

Compared to politics and religion, It's easy and fun for you and your
coworkers to strongly disagree about software development. When you guys
strongly disagree about that topic, the final outcome (as you just described)
is positive: Everyone learns new things and your product gets better.

But it's _extremely difficult_ and potentially way less fun for you and your
co-workers to strongly disagree about _politics and /or religion_ while still
having a positive final outcome for all involved.

My question is this: do you know anyone who can? Because if anyone can provide
me with a link to an article/blog post about "intellectual diversity" as it
seems to be defined in common parlance -- I.e. "group members holding strongly
opposing viewpoints about politics and/or religion" \-- let me know because
I'd be fascinated to read about it.

My curiousity is this: I wonder if intellectually diverse organizations share
characteristics and if there was a way to map all organizations and find out
which ones are "intellectually diverse" and what commonalities they share.
Some part of me wonders if CrossFit and yoga would be the most intellectually
diverse but the other part thinks maybe they're self-selecting for some
tribal/religious/political qualities that I'm not even aware of. Would be cool
to find out :)

------
kvl7
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 the majority at
Facebook.”

I wonder how that would go down? \-------

I echo this sentiment completely. Why is anti-white racism being encouraged?

~~~
jhedwards
Because historically many American companies were 100% white and controlled
all the financial and political power. We never had a homogenous Asian or
black majority in our society, so there is an attempt here to make up for
hundreds of years of segregation where black people were not allowed in the
office, the church, the restaurant etc, simply because they were black.

------
pwaivers
> "The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at
> Facebook."

I am all for diversity, but this sentence upsets me. Decreasing one population
in the place should not be the goal.

~~~
throwawaymath
But percentages are zero sum. You can't increase diversity without decreasing
homogeneity.

------
lawlessone
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.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
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 community or family that raised them.

Having problems fixing the community's culture? Really it's the fault of
poverty.

Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will
hire us.

This isn't a pipe that just spits kids out when they're about to be hired,
every single person in that pipeline is desperate to pretend that it's someone
further down the line's problem, except once you go far enough down the pipe
you end up back where you started. It's not a linear pipe spitting individual
kids out that we just can't do anything about. It's a cycle and wherever it is
that we exist in that cycle, be it elementary education or hiring Senior Devs
at a FAANG, we have a responsibility to step in and do something about it.
Enough passing the buck.

~~~
java_script
It’s just a regressive position on diversity masquerading as being a
reasonable progressive one. Take something that’s easier to fix from a
centralized location, and instead argue for individual responsibility. Like
how instead of complaining about oil companies destroying the environment and
corrupting our political system, we should all just recycle and buy Teslas,
like a buncha radicals or something :)

I think sure, do what you can at an individual level if you want but that’s so
much less important. You’re not gonna change the household conversations
happening in millions of houses, and telegraphing what YOU are doing for your
daughters in Silicon Valley is more narcissistic than political.

------
blahblahblogger
Can someone tell me why these tech companies even publish these numbers?

It seems like they always end up with egg on their face. And they have no
obligation to be transparent as private (or public) entities.

But now they all have to have chief diversity officers and diversity councils
and PR/recruiting teams for diversity - all of which cost money and hasn't
seemed to move the needle very much.

And which as another poster pointed out, doesn't fundamentally change the
underlying issue about who applies to these jobs, who goes to school for
computer science, etc.

~~~
craftyguy
> Can someone tell me why these tech companies even publish these numbers?

PR.

~~~
5874-4b22-a4e0
When they get sued, they bring these up and say, we tried.

------
0x445442
And yet there doesn't seem to be much concern that only 4% of Installation,
maintenance, and repair occupations workers are female or only 25% of
Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations workders are men.

[https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm](https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm)

------
eezurr
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 only 9.5% of women are working in software misrepresents all the
progress has been made.

[1] Why these numbers would be different for each class of people is a whole
different conversation involving nature/nurture/culture/etc.

~~~
ryanmercer
[https://www.usnews.com/news/data-
mine/articles/2016-10-20/st...](https://www.usnews.com/news/data-
mine/articles/2016-10-20/study-computer-science-gender-gap-widens-despite-
increase-in-jobs)

"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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_makeup_of_the_U.S._population)

"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%"

------
21
Looking at the graph, they seem to have the Harvard Asian problem.

Maybe they can solve it the same way, by hiring based on "full personality
assessments".

------
hw
The fact is that diversity doesn't start at companies. It needs to be part of
parenting (encouraging daughters to explore STEM). Needs to be part of early
education in schools, and also colleges. Until the diversity spectrum in
college admissions and graduates improves, companies are going to find it hard
to meet their diversity requirements if there aren't enough diversity in
skilled workers out in the market.

------
nodesocket
This Techcrunch write has a long storied history of playing identity politics
some would even argue with racist undertones.

I recently saw a new "the more you know ad" on YouTubeTV and was really
impressed with the message. Instead of playing identity politics and blaming
"patriarchal white men" it encouraged women to join the engineering and
science movement and become more active in technology. That's the message we
should be sending.

------
hugh4life
The serious way to boost diversity: go to poor/minority communities in west
and then developing countries in general and give young children the Raven's
Progressive Matrices test and recruit the best scorers into specialized
academies.

------
swalsh
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 are retail and healthcare. I managed to move out, but the vast
majority of people I went to high school with are stuck.

Why is economic background not a class we care about too? Shouldn't economic
mobility be a part of social justice as well?

~~~
aylmao
I don't know why this is getting downvoted; he has a very valid point.
Economic class/background is as important when it comes to diversity.

I feel like there's little conversation about it because it's an even harder
problem to tackle and a less obvious one to see. I will say though, to a large
extent economic class and race still remain tied in the US.

~~~
dongkyun
They're getting downvoted because the people who do care about racial and
gender equality very much do care about class mobilization and to premise the
question with the idea that they don't care means at best, OP doesn't know
what they're talking about and at worst, OP is using class issues in bad faith
to bludgeon away any attempts at talking about the former.

~~~
aylmao
> They're getting downvoted because the people who do care about racial and
> gender equality very much do care about class mobilization

I think this is an overgeneralization. I don't doubt this is mostly the case
but I don't think it's conclusive that it is always the case, especially when
you look into the activism within and by wealthier classes and corporations.

> to premise the question with the idea that they don't care means at best, OP
> doesn't know what they're talking about

The way I understood the comment is in reference to Facebook/tech, in which
case it's very true: Facebook seems to survey gender and race but there's no
mention in their diversity efforts about social/economic background. For all
we know, all those great paying jobs could be going to well-off people. 4.9%
hispanics of 25000 employees is 1,225 people: Are they first-generation
college students born in the US to immigrant parents, middle-class graduates
from Mexico's engineering schools or well-off kids from Latin America whose
parents could afford them a Harvard education? For the record I know people
who would fall under each of these three buckets and I think the idea of
classifying them under the same category in diversity efforts is very short-
sighted.

> at worst, OP is using class issues in bad faith to bludgeon away any
> attempts at talking about the former.

I don't know in what faith OP posted, but from his last sentence I gather he
is vouching to include economic status as part of "social justice as well",
not instead-of.

------
poster123
"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-
representation would undermine the narrative of whites discriminating against
minorities. This intellectual dishonesty irks me.

There are industries such as education where the vast majority of workers are
female. If men and women are in the workforce at about even levels, there must
be some industries where men predominate.

~~~
colordrops
I don't see much noise about bringing men into female dominated industries
either.

~~~
Frondo
There are groups working on bringing men into nursing and teaching. You can
find out more about these with a few google searches.

------
ryanmercer
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 are far fewer female applicants for entry-level construction
jobs than male applicants too, doesn't mean a construction company is dropping
the ball or being discriminatory by default.

~~~
s-shellfish
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'.

~~~
colordrops
I think it's an analogy. The point is that there are deep social and cultural
factors at play that bias women against software, so the applicant pool is
small, and it can't be fixed by some localized corporate initiative.

~~~
ryanmercer
Indeed. I should have just said this

\---

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

As of July 2016, White Americans are the racial majority with the White
population being 76.9% of the country.

Statistically, an applicant with a computer science degree is likely to be a
white male so logically a company that employees mostly CS types would be
heavy on white males and white on women and other races.

\---

~~~
ryanmercer
*light on women and other races.

------
atomical
"Anyway, worldwide, Facebook is 36 percent female, up from 31 percent in
2014."

This article isn't written professionally.

~~~
ceejayoz
It says "techcrunch.com" right by the link.

~~~
ryanmercer
Burn.

