
Facebook’s Point System Fails to Close Diversity Gap - Garbage
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/facebooks-point-system-fails-to-close-diversity-gap-1471387288-lMyQjAxMTE2ODE2NjcxMjYzWj
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jdminhbg
It's weird that the article describes Facebook as "largely white" when it's
significantly less white than the US as a whole: (54.4% vs 61.6%[1])

[1]
[https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00)

~~~
perfmode
> Facebook says it wants its workforce to better reflect the diversity of its
> 1.7 billion monthly users—85% of which are outside the U.S. and Canada.

~~~
asdfologist
Then shouldn't Facebook hire more Chinese and Indians? They comprise ~35% of
the world population.

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tn13
Since Chinese people are not the users of Facebook he should not hire any
Chinese :D.

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chrischen
These policies are always just band-aids for a deeper rooted problem. In the
best case scenario, it masks the problem and diverts attention away from
actual solutions that actually provide equality of opportunity at an earlier
stage for underrepresented segments.

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reefoctopus
Why is it a problem? I personally think it's a problem that there are so few
women coal miners. Clearly this is a sign of deeper societal problems. We need
to get women interested in coal mining at a younger age to help solve the
gender gap in coal mining. Once we solve that we can tackle diversity in
professional basketball and hockey. Obviously more white and Asians should be
in the NBA and more blacks in the NHL. That the ethnic breakdown of these
particular sports doesn't match up with my personal beliefs can only mean one
thing: everyone is racist.

~~~
sanderjd
It _was_ a problem that there weren't more women mining coal when mining coal
was an up and coming industry and one of the best ways for people to get ahead
economically. It just wasn't really talked about because that was then and
this is now. But we still see the ripples of "men's work" being the most
lucrative in that era, and it's very laudable to try to reduce those same
ripples from our own era emanating into the future.

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belorn
For as long they have conducted the survey, its has been quite stable Swedish
statistics that women in average prioritize social status and work environment
over pay, while men prioritize pay over social status and work environment.
Statistics from other sources like dating sites has also shown the same
priority, where profile from women (that mention work) more often talks about
social status and coworkers, while profiles from men that mention work more
often talk about earning money.

As such, I don't believe your statement that women mining coal was a priority
for women when mining coal was an up and coming industry. Coal mining has
always been a low status and dangerous job, and as such its been exclusively a
male profession.

A similar situation currently exist with under water welding. It is one of the
highest paying jobs there is, but its below average in social status and has a
very risky environment. As one of the most lucrative area, you would think
there would be a push by gender equality advocates, but no. The focus is only
to get more women in jobs which has high social status, rather than to create
change in current gender culture.

~~~
sanderjd
Thanks for the interesting comment! Do you have a link to that survey?

Is software low- or high-status work?

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belorn
I did not save it, and search engines are not really great on finding specific
news articles based on queries like "what women and men want". Too much noise.

I did find people who has done a similar study, like
[http://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/Global/Dokumentbibliotek/Ra...](http://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/Global/Dokumentbibliotek/Rapporter/Rapport_karriar_hur.pdf)
page 18.

As for software development, there has been quite a few movies so far about
CEO's of large software companies. I don't think there is that many other
professions that get hero worshiping like that, except for doctors.

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helloworld
The article doesn't mention any focus by Facebook on diversity of age.

Along with data on race and gender, does the company make public the percent
of its workforce that is over 40 or 50?

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flukus
Is this just a confirmation of what many of us here suspected all along, that
the interview process is way to late in the game to correct for diversity?

~~~
achompas
No, I don't think so. We don't know what the recruiting funnel looks like at
FB, but it is entirely possible that the hiring process has been designed by a
group of engineers who, through their homogenous demographics, are either
drawing on similarly-homogenous professional networks for references or
selecting for characteristics they possess (which could be bad for anyone
who's not like them).

~~~
happyslobro
Based on my own anecdotal experience with hiring developers, the m/f ratio is
highly unbalanced before our own biases even come into play. A while ago, we
had a recruiting agent helping us to find candidates, based solely on a list
of technical criteria. She (yes, she) sent us almost only men, a dozen or two
of them. The one exception was a woman who choked on the fizzbuzz test. That
was actually really saddening.

~~~
achompas
Did these technical criteria skew towards mid-level or senior? I've observed
this as well, but I've observed a more even balance of junior candidates.

If so, this could be a manifestation of the high attrition rates for
experienced female engineers.

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iamleppert
Otherwise known as affirmative action? My guess is that the recruiters
realized that selecting for people who could actually pass the interview
process and stand a chance at getting hired is a better strategy to getting
good performance reviews. It's gravy if its a minority, but you can't count on
it.

That's not to say there aren't extremely talented women and racial minorities,
but I'd imagine they have their pick of the litter right now as everyone is
clamoring to have that perfectly homogenous workforce so their director of HR
can post their "diversity numbers" and get a big raise. That's the real reason
driving this nonsense.

The problem is in the supply of the candidates, which starts long before they
make it to the recruiter, so it's of no surprise the recruiter can't do
anything. It's not like by giving these points we suddenly opened up a hidden
cache of women engineers somewhere.

If big tech companies really cared about minorities, they would offer minority
scholarships, complete with an offer of employment afterwards, sponsor after
school programs and help find those kids that have been left behind in the
institutional education system. Take that extra budget allocated for this
banal and hopeless program and give it to the local Big Brothers/Big Sisters
organization and mandate the recruiters attend and mentor someone there. Of
course, those results will not be visible in the HR Director's next OKR
meeting. Some problems cannot be fixed easily or quickly and that's just how
it is. They could be doing these things....but they won't.

Instead, we get recruiter "point systems".

Bravo, Facebook!

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exit
it always struck me as funny watching this issue unfold in my industry, that
the people on the "frontlines" belong to another highly gendered career path -
human resource workers seem to be overwhelmingly female.

first of all, does anyone know whether i'm right about this?

and then, does anyone else think we might have to address the gendering of all
careers in order to get at addressing those careers which attract all of the
concern?

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jtchang
I don't see this surprising. It's like trying to find the target market for
your product. It's possible that the market size is too small or you are being
too restrictive. It also could be that facebook's recruiting itself is biased.

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toehead2000
Facebook Recruiter: "I won't be able to afford to send my kid to college
unless you wear this sombrero to your interviews."

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daok
Isn't that racist and sexist to give bonus to hire specific sex or race.
Hiring by competency is still a concept that we cannot handle in 2016?

~~~
asdfologist
The really sad thing is that viewpoints such as yours are considered racist
and sexist in today's society. These issues are so politically charged that
it's impossible to have any honest debate. If you even remotely disagree with
feminism, Black Lives Matter, or Israeli occupation of Palestine, you're
immediately labeled sexist/racist/anti-semitic and no one else will dare agree
with you.

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seattle_spring
I'm not sure how this is surprising for anyone. Of all of the female friends I
had growing up, I don't know a single one that went into software. I had one
study "Happiness" at Mt Holyoke, one study Gender Studies at UMass, a few
Biology majors who now are lab techs, one law school graduate who works with
the ACLU, and a bunch of women who didn't even go to college.

If we want to fix this problem, we need to encourage women to stop studying
such ridiculous nonsense feel-good bullshit. The problem lies with our culture
and how we raise children, not "racist/sexist/whatever-ist" employers.

~~~
achompas
Sorry, so you're suggesting the problem is that women don't study computer
science? Hmm. [0]

It sounds like you're chalking this up to the famous "pipeline problem." [1]
This is empirically incorrect. In particular, Figure 8.2 demonstrates that the
quit rate for women in "high tech" is almost 2.5x higher than the quit rate
for me.

[0] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-technology-
stanford-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-technology-stanford-
idUSKCN0S32F020151009)

[1]
[http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-...](http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-
Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-
technology.pdf)

~~~
wutbrodo
The fact that the quit rate is higher doesn't disqualify the pipeline problem
as an explanation. It sounds like your assumption is that a hostile work
environment must be the reason for the higher quit rate, and thus that fixing
the pipeline wouldn't fix the issue. I'm not sure this is as ironclad as
you're pretending it is.

I personally know people from underrepresented groups in tech (African-
American, women etc) who attest that, even in work environments that made them
feel 100% welcome/comfortable, they felt a mental cost from the very fact of
being underrepresented. That is to say, even if you were to remove all the
consciously and unconsciously biased behavior from workplaces, some people
still have a negative reaction to being the only present member of a group
that they identify with. The pipeline problem is the only solution that could
possibly address that[1], by addressing the imbalance per se.

[1] I suppose short of having people stop feeling this way about being
underrepresented. I've been underrepresented ethnically in almost every group
I've ever been in, but it has never bothered me. Far be it from me to tell
other to stop feeling a certain way though.

~~~
achompas
> It sounds like your assumption is that a hostile work environment must be
> the reason for the higher quit rate, and thus that fixing the pipeline
> wouldn't fix the issue. I'm not sure this is as ironclad as you're
> pretending it is.

I mean, the data does seem to support a tech environment that applies
disproportionate pressure on women to perform certain activities. From the
linked HBS study, for example (Figure 6.1), 71% of women in tech feel pressure
to put in face time (vs. 19% in all sectors) and 36% feel pressure to be
available 24/7 (vs. 26% in all sectors).

Both of these are time-consuming activities. Myriad studies show child care
responsibilities, even today, still fall disproportionately onto women. Child
care is time-consuming, and that comes into conflict with time-consuming
professional work.

Of course, not all women want children. And this is one study. But it wouldn't
surprise me if women were underrepresented in tech due to a combination of
cultural issues and the pipeline problem. It's just extremely reductionist
when people assign blame to the pipeline problem, since that shifts the focus
from work environments to higher education. That's a convenient result for
companies.

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wutbrodo
Thanks for the data. That's a pretty compelling perspective actually: policies
that are less compatible with family care in a given industry have a
disproportionate impact on women in just that industry, which increasing
representation (through pipeline issues) won't necessarily fix.

