
Google discloses its diversity record, and it’s not good - _pius
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/google-discloses-workforce-diversity-data-good/#.U4ZeWexaIgw.twitter
======
forrestthewoods
Not good based on what criteria exactly? They seem to say Google is doing
poorly in comparison to other tech companies but they fail to provide a
concrete comparison to support that point. They could be saying Google's
diversity is "not good" as a sign of the greater cultural issues, but they
single Google out too much for that.

Only 17% of Google's tech jobs go to women. Given that roughly 20% of comp sci
degrees go to women that seems roughly reasonable [1]. For non-tech jobs the
split is 52/48 which again seems roughly reasonable.

The numbers for non-Asian minorities are pretty grim. They appear to be much
further off from national averages for relevant degrees. Would need much more
detailed information before making an assessment.

[1]
[http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp)
[2]
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s3.htm](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s3.htm)

~~~
colmvp
As an Asian American minority, does it really matter? I don't see that many
Asian Americans in hollywood, modeling for fashion companies, doing standup
comedy, starring in televisions shows, playing in professional sports leagues,
or playing in live bands compared to whites or other minorities. Should I feel
enraged?

~~~
stfu
Of cause! Pretending to feel oppressed seems to be the thing of the moment. We
need to staff every industry, company, college course based on a
race/gender/etc quota!

~~~
ufmace
Except for the ones that are already disproportionately filled with an
approved racial or gender minority. We'll just quietly ignore those.

------
IvyMike
I've made this point before, but... having done a ton of interviews for senior
and principal software engineers, the candidate mix is already incredibly non-
diverse by the time it gets to me.

I mean, maybe my management and hr is filled with racists and sexists, but my
gut reaction is they seem like pretty progressive folks. I think the pipeline
is messed up much, much earlier.

~~~
cbhl
I really want to know the opposite question of this -- how many percent of
qualified {hispanics, blacks, women, trans people, etc} are employed and
receive {compensation, perks} relative to their peers?

This is a tricky question for senior/principle software people, but perhaps as
a proxy, we could look at the number of new grads at the Bachelor's, Master's
and PhD levels that are employed {six months prior, one month prior, one month
after, six months after} graduation, as broken down by gender and ethnicity.

For example, if 95% of women are hired by one month before graduation day,
that would suggest that we need to be looking at an earlier point in the
pipeline (educating parents, additional funding at the elementary or high
school level, teaching boys how to not sexually harass girls in middle school,
etc.). On the other hand, if 20% of women are hired by six months after
graduation day, then maybe that means there's something funny going on during
the hiring process.

~~~
ggchappell
That is an excellent idea. It would also be worthwhile to know the general
field of employment; in particular, is it one to which the qualifications of
interest are relevant.

------
WestCoastJustin
This closely jives with the " _Degrees conferred by sex and race_ " stats from
U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences National Center
for Education Statistics.

ps. Interesting side note, is that while looking this up, I wanted to see if
H1B visas skewed the stats. I found a page that lists "10 of the largest and
hottest US Companies that hire skilled immigrants for H1B visas" [2]. What's
interesting is that these numbers are _far_ lower than I thought they would
be, as in, I thought H1B visas were the life blood of these companies. But
these numbers are probably not even a fraction of their total employee base.

    
    
      Amazon      333 visas
      Apple       520 visas
      Facebook    173 visas
      Google      685 visas
      Microsoft 2,125 visas
      ...
    

[1]
[http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72](http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72)

[2]
[http://www.h1base.com/visa/work/H1Bvisa10topH1BsponsorsRevie...](http://www.h1base.com/visa/work/H1Bvisa10topH1BsponsorsReview/ref/1691/)

~~~
beat
The H1Bs aren't being hired by A-list companies. They're getting hired by old,
slow, cheap, mostly non-tech corporations who won't compete on either quality
of work or wages.

~~~
vajorie
> The H1Bs aren't being hired by A-list companies.

H1B is a type of visa, it cannot be hired.

> They're getting hired by old, slow, cheap, mostly non-tech corporations who
> won't compete on either quality of work or wages.

Foreigner = Evil. On the other hand, you get an H1B if you are shown to be
more qualified than u.s. citizens who applied to the job. If anything, it's a
great way to bring in skilled laborers and keep them in check (since, if you
get fired, you get deported too).

~~~
beat
Qualified isn't the problem. _Willing_ isn't the problem. When some old non-
tech company needs a network engineer to work in some crusty old industrial
town in the middle of nowhere for 2/3 what a qualified person would make in
actual civilization, they _cannot_ get one. Even if they paid market rates,
which they find appalling, they couldn't get anyone to move into the boonies
in an environment with little opportunity for professional advancement.

So they import someone on an H1B visa, work them for a few years, and send
them home. They've solved the kind of labor shortage that causes immigration,
without actually giving them the chance to become Americans.

------
CHY872
I can't help but feel that this really isn't Google's fault. A simple
heuristic to make recruiting grads simpler is to restrict yourself to the top
universities (most companies do this) - but I bet that the CS programs for
most of those universities have similar statistics.

As one datapoint, the program I'm on has a 8:1 male-female ratio, and of the
80 or so students on it, I believe that there is one black student.

It's a problem with all of CS - and Google have decent initiatives to help
turn it around, but it's going to take time - more CS education in schools,
more access programs to help those from deprived backgrounds get programming -
and that'll sadly happen slowly.

Perhaps it's different in America (where one need not choose CS before
university starts).

~~~
jsolson
> Perhaps it's different in America (where one need not choose CS before
> university starts).

Not really related to the original article, but this stood out to me as not
quite accurate.

Even within the US, this actually varies from school to school. My university
required you to declare a major before you started, but the average student
changed majors at least once in their college career (I changed twice, landing
in CS). Other schools require you to start undeclared and declare at some
point, as your comment implies.

~~~
CHY872
Ah, ok. I guess I meant that you didn't have to choose the major you'd
graduate with. To give a comparison (for the sake of where I was coming from)
I'm in the UK, where you apply for a specific course, you take no minors, and
once you arrive, at most universities it's impossible to change course beyond
that without massive special dispensation (and usually a requirement of
starting the degree again).

~~~
dredwerker
Not true for me. I did two majors and changed to another minor in a proper UK
university not those polyversities;)

------
buckbova
> “We’re not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,” Laszlo Bock,
> Google’s senior vice president of “people operations,” told the NewsHour in
> a statement prior to a broadcast interview Wednesday. “It is hard to address
> these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and
> with the facts. All our diversity efforts, including going public with these
> numbers, are designed to ensure Google recruits and retain many more women
> and minorities in the future.”

I don't agree with diversity for the sake of diversity. Hire the most
qualified candidate regardless of race/gender.

And also, Asians are a minority group, at least in California as of today.

~~~
enneff
> I don't agree with diversity for the sake of diversity. Hire the most
> qualified candidate regardless of race/gender.

Google will hire ALL the qualified candidates, not just the "most qualified"
one. We are always looking to hire more people (headcount is easily the most
precious and scarce resource at Google).

Nobody is missing out here. We're just trying to decrease the gender and race
imbalance at the company.

~~~
buckbova
In order to change the demographics, you have to hire more of one group and
less of another.

Somebody must be turned away based on race/gender to accomplish this.

~~~
enneff
No, not less. If you hire equally from all demographics eventually the balance
will be restored.

------
incision
_> 'Google and other major tech companies have been the target of increasing
pressure to hire more women and minorities...'_

Time for me to add a profile pic on LinkedIn?

Seriously now...

I'm not sure what, if anything, to make of this. I expected the numbers to be
low, but not that low. I've personally felt discriminated against throughout
life and at times witnessed direct evidence of it.

Thing is, the objective requirements for candidates to build and run bleeding
edge infrastructure in a highly competitive market is quite a bit different
from say renting an apartment.

This leads me to imagine that the applicable pool will be much smaller and
Google will not be inclined to pass on qualified candidates.

That said, ‘Google’ doesn't hire people, people do and unless the process has
changed - any single person can exclude any candidate. It would be interesting
to know what proportion of minority candidates who come on-site are hired
versus the field - not conclusive, but certainly interesting.

If I had guess I’d think that discrimination is producing this, but it’s not
happening at Google - it’s happening all over. A million small slights and
denied opportunities (in this generation or those prior) that see people who
might otherwise have the capacity never gain the necessary experience,
exposure, relationships or plain confidence that could surface them to the
top.

Personally, I had never entertained the possibility that I could work for them
until they called me - it was eye-opening that someone could see a possibility
in me that I’d refused to see myself. Interestingly, both times I've been
contacted by SV companies (Google included) the recruiters were minorities
themselves.

We’ll see.

------
mullingitover
Is PBS implying that Google is discriminating during the hiring process, or
that the talent pool lacks diversity? If it's the latter, hard to blame Google
for that one.

~~~
rusabd
My company tries to hire women hard, but there are not many of them in the
first place.

~~~
mullingitover
Isn't 'trying' to hire women just as illegal as trying not to? I'd be pretty
bummed as an applicant if I discovered that I lost out on a job because of my
Y chromosome and not my qualifications.

------
buro9
The greatest disadvantage you can have in the Western world is to be born a
black woman.

Unfortunately I don't feel this is due to Google's hiring policies, the
disadvantages and lack of privilege kick in a lot earlier and apply to every
action in a lifetime... by the time that has compounded the person isn't even
a candidate for Google.

~~~
hkmurakami
I understand the point you're trying to make, but you may want to caveat this
with "in the US" rather than "in the world", since being born in the developed
world at all is a huge advantage compared to being born in developing nations
with longstanding human rights problems.

~~~
buro9
Changed to Western world, certainly applies to most of Europe too.

------
jqm
I'm not surprised and doubt anyone else is either.

I'm a white male and Google wouldn't hire me. Because I don't have all the
qualities I would need to work there. Probably neither do most of the people
they aren't hiring. Probably not a conspiracy. Why do we look at people as
groups instead of individuals so much? What if someone is half Asian and 1/4
African American? Or what if they are "Hispanic" but half their ancestors came
from Lebanon three generations ago? Where do these go on the numbers chart?
There are only going to be more of these types of individuals around as time
goes on. Maybe the group view is sometimes misleading and becoming more bogus
every generation?

------
shephallmassive
Getting diversity in a company means changes to standard practices. ie its ok
to work from home,flexible part-time working, a good environment for disabled
and on-site creches for parents, prayer rooms for religious peeps and being
careful not to create a presenteeism long-hours culture. This may be expensive
to invest in for companies upfront but the benefits in having a diverse
workforce are well documented. Perhaps if even Einstein himself had been a
single-parent father in our time, he would have found it difficult to work in
tech too..

------
joeblau
This isn't really that surprising if you look at the talent pool in Silicon
Valley, which probably breaks down along the same diversity lines. I live in
SF and I would like to see that chart against the actual qualified candidates
who live here. Most of the people that I meet at Meet Ups, social events,
Commonwealth Club, VC meetings, and see in my building are White and Asian so
I don't see how this is "not good." I'm Black, and I'm usually the only
technical Black guy at whatever company I work for.

------
sheepmullet
I think "we" look at the diversity issue from the wrong angle. The question we
should be asking is: Why should a smart, hard working, and not particularly
nerdy woman want to join the software industry?

If you are smart enough, and hard working enough, to get a good job at Google
then you can do well in accounting, medicine, law, banking, sales, engineering
etc.

Outside of a few tech hubs like Silicon Valley software development doesn't
pay as well, or have as good of a career progression, as other top
professions. It is also significantly riskier.

On risk: In a startup your job is much less secure and to adjust for this your
compensation should be roughly 1.5-2.5x higher than at a more stable firm.
Startups _don 't_ usually pay this much higher which is why, outside of a few
select areas, startups struggle to find talent. In SV though most of the risk
disappears because the market is so hot. In SV it is easier to change
companies than it is to change teams.

So already you are saying: If you want to do well you have to give up your
existing friendships/family/lifestyle etc and move. Other sectors/fields that
require the same sacrifices typically compensate you much better e.g. Go to
NYC for finance and realistically if you are good your total comp can be >
$1million/year.

And that is not even getting into lack of time for l&d, the small half-life of
knowledge, working in a heavily male environment, etc.

------
CurtHagenlocher
It would be nice to be able to compare these numbers with other large computer
technology companies.

------
thebokehwokeh2
The 'slice of pie' type of analysis only tells half of the issue. Better would
be the ratio of applicants to hires. If in a pool of 100, 70 are white, 30 are
asian, and 1 is hispanic, then that could point to a lack of diversity in the
talent pool.

On the other hand, if 100 hispanics applied, and only 1 was hired. Or if only
2 hispanics actually get to the application process, then that is an actual
story.

------
wickedOne
do these figures mean anything without knowing the racial and ethnic data of
the entire industry?

~~~
gms
No. And even then, you'd only be interested in the data among the top end of
the industry population, i.e. people likely to be productive as Google
employees.

------
qzervaas
So let's say a hiring decision comes down to 2 people, both identical in
skill/experience/attitude. One is a white male, another is a black female.

These studies imply the black female should be hired because of her gender
and/or race to boost diversity numbers. Is this not sexist / racist?

~~~
marssaxman
Google doesn't hire people that way. You interview for a job at Google in
general, not for a specific position. The hiring decision is yes/no for you as
an individual. If your hypothetical black woman and white man both interviewed
and both got a "yes", they would both get an offer. At no point would they be
compared to each other. What's more, the interviewers don't make the hiring
decision; they only write a report about the interview. Later, a hiring
committee goes through the stack of reports and makes a decision; they never
meet the candidate.

------
general_failure
Google should be careful here. I have been part of teams where managers go
ahead and make 'diverse' hires just to fudge the numbers despite getting an
explicit 'no' from the engineers who interviewed them. These hires were always
terrible and bring productivity down big time.

I see no difference between this and caste based reservation in countries like
India
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India)).
In states like Tamil nadu (India) only 30% of seats are available to brahmins.
Note that 30% is open quota - everyone competes for those 30%. Even the people
for whom things seats were reserved for already.

Diversifying the work force should never be a goal by itself.

------
ethanpil
Google is in the profit business they don't discriminate by race. Just like
any other capitalist entity, they discriminate against individuals based on
perceived profitability.

They hire the people they think will make them the most money because these
are the best people they can find for the job.

Seriously, if you don't like this, go to Cuba or North Korea or back in time
to the USSR. There is no other agenda.

My forebears (and most likely yours) came to this country because of this;
(honest) capitalism means the most talented and qualified
people/entities/products succeed.

Why do people care about this?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Seriously, if you don't like this, go to Cuba or North Korea or back in time
> to the USSR.

If you read the Google blog post about this, _Google_ doesn't like the state
of their workforce diversity, and is actively taking steps to change it (by
working to correct the external social factors that they see as the cause.)

> Why do people care about this?

Because some people aren't just narrowly self-interested capitalists. For
which, I suppose, you would like to send the entirety of Google's management
to Pyongyang.

~~~
ethanpil
Google "doesn't like" bad publicity from people who make a stink about non-
issues like this. That't my take away from such a post.

I don't want to anyone to Pyongyang or anywhere else.

Those who think that that hiring is the business of an irrelevant third party
or that job candidacy based on any factor other than pure merit is a good
thing, should examine how this practice is paralleled by practices of those
regimes.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Google "doesn't like" bad publicity from people who make a stink about non-
> issues like this.

But the stink is entirely a result of Google voluntarily releasing the numbers
_and_ saying that they were disappointed with them and working to fix them,
_and_ pointing to things they were doing to fix them _long before_ the
released the numbers. If Google were really only concerned about the stink,
they could have just _not_ released the numbers, and would have no reason to
have been working on corrective actions when they weren't releasing the
numebrs.

It really seems like you started from the conclusion that Google doesn't
really care about diversity, and are desperately trying to twist the facts
into that preconceived mental model.

~~~
ethanpil
The article implies strongly against your argument. Google didn't want or care
to do it, just that people who care about this silliness got in their face...

"But public campaigns have stepped up the pressure — just this spring, Jesse
Jackson visited Google’s shareholder meetings in Silicon Valley. Google
officials told the NewsHour that the company had been “working toward
disclosing this for the better part of the year” and said Google invited
Jackson to its meeting last month where the company promised for the first
time to release the numbers."

------
coherentpony
"Totals and % do not include unknown, null, or 'decline-to-state' fields."

Without that information, it's pretty hard to tell how much of an effect it
has on those numbers.

~~~
trhway
it is very easy - any googler i've met personally or what i see commuting in
the morning (MV near Rengstorff) is usually a white and sometimes an Asian
guy.

Similarly to Jobs's "A-people hire A-people" \- top college kids doing well in
CS algorithms (which would usually be white or Asian guys) would hire the
same, ie. top college kids doing well in CS algorithms.

~~~
coherentpony
With all due respect, your few data points are hardly a representative sample
of Google's workforce.

I fully accept that women aren't represented in CS degree courses, and this
may be a good argument for the under-representation of women in Google's
workforce. For foreigners and people of a different race, it's more difficult.
Tuition fees for foreigners is higher, so I'd be willing to believe the are
fewer foreign students studying CS than domestic students. For domestic
students of a particular race? It's still not entirely clear to me.

------
jebblue
It seems to correlate to the Bay Area Demographics:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Demograp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Demographics)

I don't see anything out of the ordinary or wrong, as far as men versus women,
I think it's not a surprise to me that more men are in technology.

------
yueq
If you look at NBA/NFL diversity record, it is much worse.

------
voidr
Time to hire people just because they were born women/part of an ethnic
group/race! Who cares about merits....

------
darkrabbi
This topic is something that I feel strongly about as a minority that has
worked in tech/new media.

I don’t think any reasonable people at this point would disagree that
affirmative action/hiring for the sake of racial quotas is the equivalent of
passing up qualified candidates based on race. That is to say it’s a
destructive practice that creates resentment and unnecessary racial tension.

The main problem with this line of thinking is that it ignores the tremendous
societal forces in place that lead to a predominantly white executive work
force instead focusing only on the outcome and attempting to change that with
affirmative action and minority hires for the sake of diversity. This is so
narrow minded and results-oriented that I have a hard time believing
intelligent people signed off on it and it was actually legally mandated at
one point.

What we should be doing is examining the processes and infrastructure that
leads to a predominantly white male executive workforce to determine where
discrimination occurs and attempt to curb it there. This discussion is not the
one we’re having, instead focusing on sensationalist headlines and click-bait
articles that do more harm than good to racial relations in America. Top that
off with clowns like Jesse Jackson who just the other day showed up at the
facebook shareholders meeting "advocating for hiring more minorities at
technology companies, especially into board seats." and you get the sad state
of affairs we find ourselves in today.

Louis CK tells a joke in which the general idea is “You know you really trust
someone when you reveal to them your inner most racist thoughts”. It’s funny
because it’s true, but the prevailing air of secrecy and shame about ones
prejudices is a big part of what's preventing us from having honest dialogue
about race in this country.

Just the other week Mark Cuban was lambasted by a desperate journalist/blogger
who took quotes out of context and misrepresented his remarks to paint him as
racist. With an atmosphere like that it’s no wonder white people are afraid to
discuss race relations. It's the same reason this thread is full of people
getting defensive about "Google isn't racist!"

Now I'm going to lose a lot of you on this next part, but based ONLY on my
subjective experiences in the corporate workforce whenever we had new hires,
the white males always seemed to be treated as "potential leadership material"
not based on merit but simply because they looked the part. Being tall and
easy on the eyes helps too. Meanwhile minority hires, even in the same
position as their white male counterparts were seen as foot soldiers and
worker bees. This perception was prevalent in the last 2 companies I've worked
for. Take from that what you will, that's been my experience.

~~~
icegreentea
I don't think anyone can realistically argue that physical appearances do not
modify how others will judge or interact with you.

Going out a bit on a whim here, but if we accept that a) beauty has a
substantial subjective element b) standards of beauty are modifiable/learned
c) that people can derive an advantage through their status of being beautiful
(ie, that all things being equal, in a choice between two identical candidates
except that one is judged more beautiful than the other, that the more
beautiful one will tend to be favored) and d) that North American and European
norms of beauty are still rooted deeply in being white (which is fairly
reasonable, and not their fault), then you can see where problems kick in.

It's honestly really shitty. I could rant on about your example re: looking
the part of leadership material. But I won't cause... it'll be rambling and
awkward. Suffice to say that we're in this really awkward in between phase,
trapped between a history of clear white majority, and a future of clear
heterogenerality - and worse, it's a transition taking place unevenly in
nearly every respect.

------
rusabd
if you notice, there is a higher level of asians in tech (compare to non-tech)
and ratio of women to men in non-tech is almost 50-50. If might suggest that
men (mostly white and asians) are more likely brain damaged in certain ways
which let them succeed (or survive) in such unnatural environment.

~~~
trhway
>If might suggest that men (mostly white and asians) are more likely brain
damaged in certain ways which let them succeed (or survive) in such unnatural
environment.

my wife's IQ is 30+ points higher than my :) I do pretty well - a senior
engineer (and among "the best programmers", etc... according to many people i
worked with). My wife just can't stand the tech environment, nor the people,
nor the work. Primitive, plain, boring, single-sided, ... - some adjectives
used by her.

~~~
pvdm
Just curious, what is not primitive, plain, boring ? Math/Physics/DNA
sequencing ?

~~~
sn41
A Techie here - I think, for example, literature is none of these. Every time
I read Graham Greene, there are these terse sentences which leave me with
admiration for his observation into human nature, and his masterly sardonic
sarcasm - e.g. "I am easily moved to anger by cruelties not mine own" [ A Sort
of Life ], or when describing how assurance in youth ends in doubts later
"even our handwriting begins young and takes on the tired arabesques of time"
[ The End of the Affair ], the sentences stay in your memory long after you've
read them, and you see that pithy phrases can carry a world of experience
behind them. Another great sentence - "We live as we dream - alone" [Conrad,
Heart of Darkness]

Literature may be considered boring because it takes patience to appreciate,
but I think it is neither primitive nor plain. If some programming reaches the
level of art, as in a clever hack, maybe we can tell others about the beauty
of the solution. (G. H. Hardy says that "Archimedes will be remembered when
Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not".
At least history has not borne this out - people do find literature easily
more beautiful than they do theorems and programs.)

