
Google Is Pushed to Tie Executive Pay to Progress on Diversity - cwperkins
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-05/google-is-pushed-to-tie-executive-pay-to-progress-on-diversity
======
mrnobody_67
I wonder why the push to diversity hasn't affected other sectors of the
economy that have equally huge gaps in 'diversity'?

\- Airline pilots are 90% white men

\- Airline stewards tend to be predominantly female. Maybe Jetblue should
publish a diversity report on its cabin crews?

\- Nursing seems to attract mostly attract individuals with XX Chromosomes.
Why isn't Stanford Hospital pushing for executive compensation to be tied to
diversity among its nursing staff?

\- Traders at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are predominantly male --
unlikely to change in the next 10 years no matter what programs are launched
or how much money is spent

etc. etc. etc.

Silicon Valley seems unique in its headline grabbing push in this regard,
despite decades of failed experiments: [https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-
programs-fail](https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail) ...

Google spent $265m on diversity, Intel pledged $300m in 2015, Yale pledged
$50m to diversify its faculty - Columbia, not to be outdone is spending $100m.

All these programs and many more like them going back to the 80's have been
spectacular failures... it seems this media fueled social justice movement
only makes money for diversity consultants and the new field of "DE&I Program
Leaders" which have emerged out of nowhere...

~~~
kolpa
I suspect it's because techies are better at Internet publicity than non-
techies, so tech industry gets the most Internet-driven pressure, and Internet
is taking about the world.

[https://skift.com/2018/04/20/airlines-need-to-work-harder-
to...](https://skift.com/2018/04/20/airlines-need-to-work-harder-to-recruit-
more-female-pilots/)

[http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-
blog/transportation/218401-...](http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-
blog/transportation/218401-the-company-isnt-going-to-hire-black-pilots-
anymore)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2018/mar/06/ineq...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2018/mar/06/inequality-30000-feet-
qantas-aviation-least-progressive-industry)

> Silicon Valley seems unique in its headline grabbing push in this regard,
> despite decades of failed experiments: [https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-
> diversity-programs-fail](https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-
> fail) ...

Please read the article you linked. You'll learn a lot. It talks a lot about
how entrenched racism and sexism has resisted traditional diversity efforts,
and recommends more-successful approaches for the future.

Example:

> Five years after a company implements a college recruitment program
> targeting female employees, the share of white women, black women, Hispanic
> women, and Asian-American women in its management rises by about 10%, on
> average. A program focused on minority recruitment increases the proportion
> of black male managers by 8% and black female managers by 9%.

------
manigandham
Nobody bothers to define what "diversity" even is. Skin color and gender? Is
that it? After civil wars and decades of social unrest to prove that your
appearance has nothing to do with your skills, talents, motivations, and
competence; are we really back to saying we need a certain quota of each
group?

This madness needs to stop.

~~~
subpixel
The madness is in trying to engineer equality of outcome (employment) without
trying to engineer equality of input (education, healthcare).

~~~
manigandham
Make the process fair and the outcome will be fair, whatever it looks like.
Unfortunately that doesn't have the same marketing power as "diversity" today.

~~~
Asooka
That's not the only definition of "fair". I agree with you, but a lot of
people see fair as having equal representation of each sub-group according by
their overall percentage of the population.

~~~
manigandham
Those people are fundamentally confused because they only look at group
identity rather than individuals.

And if we look at groups for fairness, then we must also look at groups for
responsibility, and that leads to tremendous suffering. Are you ready to be
responsible for whatever your "group" does?

------
vannevar
Well, it would be nice if executive pay were tied to _something_. Studies show
it certainly isn't correlated with financial performance:
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/27/negligible-...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/27/negligible-
link-between-executive-pay-and-firms-performance-says-study)

The massive rise in executive pay over the past 30 years amounts pretty much
to a giant consumer-funded welfare program for corporate management.

~~~
cabalamat
> Well, it would be nice if executive pay were tied to something.

Maybe it could be tied to user satisfaction? If it was, maybe they wouldn't
have scrapped Google Reader.

~~~
simonsarris
That would be a neat way to drive most companies into the ground.

------
Crontab
I don't feel the diversity should be sought for its own sake. The best
applicant should be hired every single time - although I do feel that it is
okay to consider diversity as a tie-breaker when choosing between equally
qualified candidates.

On the opposite side: people not hiring the best candidate, in order to
prevent diversity, should be fired. Just hire the best person.

~~~
matthewmacleod
How does one define “best person?”

Is a female candidate of the age and life situation that she’s likely to
become pregnant soon less suitable? After all, she might be about to take
extended maternity leave! Better not risk it.

Is the candidate with a strong foreign accent less suitable? Maybe the project
managers will struggle to communicate as effectively. Not worth the bother.

Is the candidate who lacks a degree worse? They seemed good in the interviews,
but maybe there are holes in their knowledge. Why bother?

That gay guy was a bit flamboyant. The sales bros might not be into it. Pass.

That view rapidly invites monoculture. It’s easier to hire people who are
similar to yourself. In reality, diversity is _in itself_ a desirable
attribute for a team to have. Teams with a variety of backgrounds have
different experience that contributes to solving problems in different ways.
They will know things that you don’t, and your products will be better for
that contribution.

~~~
manfredo
The best person is defined as the one that has the best capability to
contribute. None of the items you mentioned affects this factor (aside from
the first, but making a decision based on that is illegal).

------
anon12345690
""Those concerns came to the fore after another engineer, James Damore, wrote
a 3,000-word memo assailing the firm’s affirmative action policies and
suggesting women are biologically less-qualified than men for tech jobs.""

he didnt suggest that at all, badly written articles like this are why this
problem even happens

~~~
cortesoft
Except, he did, in a few different ways:

"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part
explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."

"On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ... Women on
average show a higher interest in people and men in things ... Women on
average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for
status on average"

He is clearly using softer language to make his point, but he spends multiple
paragraphs explaining why biological reasons are behind the lack of women in
tech.... which boils down to "men are biologically better suited for tech
work."

It isn't a bad characterization to say that is saying women are biologically
less qualified than men for tech jobs.

~~~
autarch
I would summarize those two quotes as saying something more like "women may be
biologically less inclined to want a job in tech and therefore expecting a 50%
representation of women is unrealistic".

My reading of the memo, way back when it broke, was that his argument was more
about differences in interest/inclination rather than ability.

~~~
ino
I dispute that the difference in interest, if it exists, is biological. There
are so many societal factors that come into play here from early age, and they
all influence the outcome. It's an unfair world from the start.

~~~
anon12345690
how can you say that you dont think interest exists but if it does then its
definitely not biological?

~~~
tpeo
Supposing there's a 1955 Cadillac Series 62 Coupe in the middle of Antartica,
which most likely there isn't, it didn't fall there from space.

I have no particular stakes on this discussion besides this one, I just
dropped by to say this: I don't see any problem with the construction of that
statement. At least as an informal or "folk" logic argument.

~~~
anon12345690
ok so the question still stands, you dont think theres a car in antartica, but
if there is you know it didnt come from space

how do you know either things and why does the first mean the other is not
possible?

also your example is using "from space" which is obviously fictional compared
to "biological" which there is plenty of evidence for

------
bfors
Does this mean that candidates will now have their race and sex submitted to
the hiring and executive committees as part of the hiring process?

~~~
anon12345690
they already do look at that, they have diversity quotas that are considered
more important than technical skill

~~~
sorenjan
What do they consider diverse? I'm not American, am I more diverse than a
black American woman?

~~~
kolpa
Google has far higher proportion of non-Americans than black people (let alone
limiting to American and women). It's not even a close comparison. This sort
of extreme ignorance is the sort of problem that D&I initiatives are
struggling against.

~~~
Rapzid
What sort of extreme ignorance?

------
shrewduser
Another nail in the coffin of meritocracy

~~~
kolpa
Indeed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Early_definitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Early_definitions)

> the original, condemnatory use of the term in 1958 by Michael Young in his
> work "The Rise of the Meritocracy", who was satirizing the ostensibly merit-
> based Tripartite System of education practiced in the United Kingdom at the
> time.

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

> It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is
> the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind
> harden into a new social class without room in it for others.

~~~
anon12345690
#1 is just the origins that dont have bearing on the modern use and #2 is a
fiction book so what are you saying? you would rather have hiring based on
what you look like? no thanks

------
ocdtrekkie
One thing that is interesting/potentially missed in this article is that Liz
Fong-Jones has actually publicly stated her intent to leave Google as of last
week. She stated that she was looking for offers just after the emails about
the drone program leaked out to the press last Thursday, shortly before Google
announced their intention to withdraw from the program. She stated there was
some line to her leaving, but didn't detail what that was. It could've been
over the drone program, due to the timing, but it could've just as well been
related to her activism in diversity.

I'm not sure if this comment has a particular point, to be honest, just felt
like a missing piece that the only Google employee they quoted is already a
soon-to-be-former employee.

~~~
grillvogel
it's amusing to me that projects related to national defense are considered
evil to these people but google's core business of mining and selling user
data for advertisements isn't.

~~~
prepend
This is interesting to me as well. I’m not sure where these people draw their
ideological lines.

Letting sugar sell to kids and overweight people is ok, when sugar kills
people.[0] Or that google sells data to the NSA and other governments. [1]

It’s usually possible to dislike multiple things and support or protest
multiple causes. But if you are quitting or trying to change corporate
governance, those are exclusive decisions. So it’s hard to tell the reasoning
behind these people’s morals.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493081/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493081/)
[1] [https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-
othe...](https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-others-
millions-1188615332)

~~~
lern_too_spel
> Or that google sells data to the NSA and other governments. [1]

That's a strange way of putting it. If the government compels you to comply
with a non-trivial request, you are entitled to compensation to cover your
costs.

~~~
prepend
Or you can refuse compensation out of principle.

This is kind of my point though, Google is entitled to compete for and win
defense contracts. I’m not arguing that and I agree that Google is entitled to
payment for their costs.

But is that more important than end-state diversity? To these protesters, yes.
But I don’t understand their priorities or at least the rationale behind them.
This is a very important issue to them, and it seems odd.

------
subpixel
I'm reminded of this plan from NYC mayor De Blasio that factors in the race of
an arts organization's employees and board members when considering funding
requests: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/arts/design/new-york-
cult...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/arts/design/new-york-cultural-
plan-museums.html)

I probably don't need to point out what bad things can happen when political
thought is denuded to the idea that 'anything against the status-quo is seen
as a step in the right direction'.

------
ENTP
So if someone loses out on a position because of their gender or race (due to
quotas) then isn't that indistinguishable from prejudice?

------
sqdbps
It would be nice if Google employees just did their jobs instead of trying to
sabotage their employer every other week.

~~~
Barrin92
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think employees in a free market are allowed to
negotiate their working conditions based on whatever they think is important
to _them_ and they are also constitutionally protected in their ability to
organise.

Are you suggesting they somehow are obligated to work for Google or should not
be able to negotiate however they see fit, or not voice their grievances?

~~~
md224
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'd like to suggest that "People
shouldn't do X" should not automatically be interpreted as "People shouldn't
be _allowed_ to do X".

We could save ourselves so much grief if high schools offered courses on the
Hermeneutics of Online Discourse. People are so bad at interpreting each
other.

~~~
Barrin92
I'm aware of that distinction, but even the former case isn't legitimate. Of
course employees should negotiate against what they perceive is unfairness.
Not just legally, but culturally. If Google employees believe that many of
their peers are not compensated fairly and that executives are biased in their
compensation, they ought to speak out.

Why shouldn't they? To not disrupt the echelons of upper management? is that
the tech industry now, run like a 1940s oil company?

~~~
weberc2
They should entertain the possibility that they're mistaken and consider
contrary arguments, instead of (for example) slandering the person making
those arguments and pressuring management to fire him.

~~~
Barrin92
what makes you think they did not? Do you think people generally speak out
lightly against the guys who sign their paychecks?

Maybe you should entertain the possibility that they, as employees who are
aware of what's going on internally and have their own employment at stake
have made this decision after deliberation?

~~~
weberc2
> what makes you think they did not?

Lots of personal experience with far-left Googlers and other far left-wing
folks in and out of the tech industry. Like their right-wing equivalents, they
have an agenda to act on and they're not about to respond rationally to
evidence one way or another, as evidenced by the Google memo fiasco. Yes, I'm
aware this is a huge generalization, but I'm strapped for time so I'll leave
the nuanced, longform version for your imagination.

EDIT: Tried to change the wording to make this less likely to trigger a flame
war.

------
sheepmullet
Let's link it to political diversity - Google clearly has a far stronger bias
against conservatives than it does women or African Americans or the
transgendered.

~~~
krapp
Being a woman, being African American or being transgendered aren't political
ideologies, nor are they mutually opposed to conservative beliefs.

~~~
tux1968
That's not the point. The point is there is an identifiable group that is
underrepresented within Google. It doesn't matter why, it doesn't matter who,
it doesn't matter if it's "political". All that matters is that it is clearly
discriminatory.

~~~
lern_too_spel
People with low IQs? People who are antagonistic?

~~~
tux1968
Do you honestly think that all conservatives have low IQ's? This kind of
argument seems so counterproductive. For whatever it's worth, i've met a lot
of highly intelligent people who happen to have different political beliefs
than mine. They shouldn't have reduced opportunity, just because they are
conservative.

~~~
lern_too_spel
There certainly are conservatives with high IQs, but if you draw the
distribution of IQs among conservatives and compare it with the distribution
of IQs for people who are not, you will find a far larger mass in the
distribution of non-conservatives with high IQs to the right of 120. This will
lead to the underrepresentation of conservatives in companies whose hiring
practices prefer high IQ candidates.

Damore conveniently made a plot for illustration.

~~~
tux1968
Careful, a lot of those same graphs apply to currently specially-favored
diversity demographics. But whatever the case, at least be consistent. If all
you care about is diversity, not intelligence, bring in all those
conservatives too, low IQ or not. The low IQ ones will be especially grateful
for the leg up in life.

~~~
lern_too_spel
The difference is that political leanings don't come up during interviews, so
any prior on conservatives' IQs won't skew hiring. Sex and race are visible,
so the interviewers' priors on their IQs will skew hiring, hurting the chances
of people in disadvantaged sexes and genders who do have high IQs. That is
what implicit bias training aims to counter.

Separately, there is the issue of correcting the education of people with low
IQs, but that is a problem whose solution lies outside the hiring funnel.

~~~
tux1968
It can be dressed up in a number of ways, but the fact is that Google is
biased against conservatives, as evidenced by the ratios not matching that of
the general public. The same argument that is used to justify and measure
diversity hires of other segments of the population.

If the real reason is to avoid overlooking those of high-inteligence, a blind
screening process could be employed rather than diversity quotas.

~~~
lern_too_spel
A couple of mistakes in your post:

> It can be dressed up in a number of ways, but the fact is that Google is
> biased against conservatives, as evidenced by the ratios not matching that
> of the general public.

That is not evidence of bias. If Google is looking for high IQ employees, and
Google hires high IQ conservatives at a lower rate than high IQ non-
conservatives, that would be evidence of bias. Unlike with race and gender,
there is no mechanism for doing that, so it makes no sense.

> a blind screening process could be employed rather than diversity quotas.

No big company is advocating diversity quotas. It's difficult to make
diversity quotas match ability by group with a quota, so using a diversity
quota will lead to an arbitrage opportunity for competitors, who can hire
better employees for less and lay off expensive employees who are worse.

The big companies are using bias training to take advantage of the arbitrage
opportunity afforded by other companies failing to hire disadvantaged groups
according to ability.

Separately, some big companies are attacking the education issue for
disadvantaged groups by targeting education resources into underdeveloped
communities, opening up a larger candidate pool in the future.

------
EGreg
These articles twist words. How come teams composed entirely of women on them
are called "diverse"? I do not think this word means what they think it means.

Liberals have fought for decades to make race and sex a non-issue. They won:
today's conservatives are decidedly liberal when we compare them to the
thinking of conservatives from the 40s and 50s. No one can dare to say in
public the kind of stuff that was regularly said. Few even think it. Mixed
beaches. Interracial marriages. Women go to college and graduate at greater
rates than men.

But now the pendulum has swung in a direction that makes many liberals uneasy
(including Bill Maher, Sam Harris, David Pakman and so on). Now, we can
unironically say things like an all-women team is "diverse", that failing to
mention race is racist, that it's impossible to be sexist against men or
racist against whites, that ignoring the effect of race based quota policies
on asians is not racist, that men should shut up in the #MeToo movement, and
white people should be in the back in the BLM movement.

Things usually start far earlier in life. Little boys are funneled more
towards maths and programming, little girls are not. So by the time it comes
to Google hiring, trying to solve the problem with quotas is only going to
make things worse. Take it from a female ex-googler who did the hiring:
[https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-
le...](https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-
m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999)

But beyond this, liberals need to speak up and keep fighting the left for what
they've been fighting for all this time: judging people by their character and
ability, not the sex or the color of their skin. Standing up for facts and
reality. If we don't stand up for truth and reason and policies that lift all
boats, we are going to go into a world where reason and rationality goes out
the window.

Don't get me wrong, there are tons of issues on the right (evolution is a
myth, global warming is a hoax, hillary clinton has a body double, michelle
obama is a man, and other irredeemable stuff). But on the left we have a
growing brand of arbitrary political craziness we should keep in check too.

------
qaq
Atlas Shrugged should be required reading for employees

------
crb002
Damore and company are ardent about policing what is mostly discrimination to
Asian hires. Google would be wiser to fix holes in the talent pipeline going
back to middle school than punish a generation for the shortcomings of their
parents.

------
johng
And so it starts. No longer will jobs pay based on your skills, what you offer
the company.... we've moved past that onto more "politically correct things".
Let's start paying people based on need instead, how could that go wrong?

------
EGreg
I want to make a separate comment on this topic:

All this argument about "women in tech" actually gives cover to the underlying
exploitative premise: that you have bust your butt in college and then go work
for corporate America.

I say, our society by and large expects women to be primary caregivers to
children, and it expects men to be working longer hours. If you doubt this,
try doing the reverse and see how the stay-at-home dad and the career mom of a
toddler is treated by people.

This is the actual root of the issue. If you want to solve it, get the courts
to give equal custody to men in divorces, for instance. Dads who leave and
don't stick around contribute to the issue.

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286&from=hn](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286&from=hn)

And yes, I'm serious. Men were historically treated as far more expendable by
society than women. They were shipped off to wars, went on adventures, they
took risks and became homeless or dead. It makes evolutionary sense: women can
have children with one man at a time, but a few men can repopulate the whole
next generation.

Why are we automatically assuming that the goal should be for more women to
join corporate America and work long hours?

For that matter, why should people not be criticized for sticking their kids
in a public school and their parents in a nursing home instead of taking care
of them?

