Silicon Valley’s Diversity Problem

The New York Times ^ | October 4, 2014

[artichokegrower]

After years of playing down the problem, technology companies like Google, Facebook and Apple now say they’re serious about improving the gender and ethnic diversity of their work forces and corporate boards. Recent data from those companies and others like them confirm what everyone has long known: Most of their employees are white and Asian men. Among technical employees, few are women, and even fewer are Latino or African-American.

[rbg81]

Harvard Business Review found that women quit high tech jobs at twice the rate of men. Among the most frequently cited reasons women gave for leaving, it said, were extreme pressure and a hostile culture.

Yeah, organizations that value product & results over process & "group-think" tend to seem that way--don't they?

[Vision]

The NYT being amazingly racist here.

[rbg81]

Concur, I would definitely shorten your resume. Understand you are proud of your accomplishments. However, I would rewrite it such that it makes it look you are only 10 years out of school (vs. 30). Age discrimination is real. I know people who have done likewise and gotten a lot more nibbles. Sad, but true. Good luck.

[rbg81]

No. What will happen is these people will be given BS jobs with loud titles. They will spend a lot of time on the phone (talking to each other), going to make-work meetings. surfing the web, and looking out the window. The real work will still be done by the less-than-diverse crowd.

Their salaries will be real enough though. The companies will treat it as a Diversity tax.

[pierrem15]

Software development and engineering are high pressure environments? I mean, who knew? /s

I've seen software developers screamed at by frustrated users, and I got a personal butt reaming from the CEO after introducing a bug that cost the company $50K in 3 seconds.

[TChad]

After years of playing down the problem,
After years of hiring employees based on their competence, ignoring their sex and race,

...technology companies like Google, Facebook and Apple now say they’re serious about improving the gender and ethnic diversity of their work forces...
...technology companies like Google, Facebook and Apple now say they’re serious about reducing the quality of their work forces by preferentially hiring job applicants simply because they are female or have dark skin color.

[perez24]

It’s possible that diversity leads to greater creativity and profitability, but when you ask how or for examples of companies that became more creative or profitable because of diversity (as opposed to say a new product or change in customer tastes or whatever) there’s never a lot clear answers.

Also, they never mention intellectual diversity...just race and national origin.

[faithhopecharity]

Why do I think it likely that this will lead ONLY to padding the payrolls with some highly-visible “token” employees of one or two politically-favored “minority groups,” (and probably poorly qualified, to boot?) ... while leaving intact the very longstanding discriminatory practices of some of SillyCon Valley’s leading/largest/most famous corporations?

(whereby exceptionally-highly qualified people from the most famous, highest=ranked universities...frequently can’t even get interviews)

These discriminatory practices apply to several “minority groups” (race/religion/etc.). If history is any guide, well-qualified people who have suffered this type of discrimination for years and decades...won’t be helped at all...

Note: either you fit in to the management’s ideas of “its own crowd” — or you’re a candidate from Communist China (or India) who will work cheap (and let’s face it, most of them do work hard, too)

Those foreign hires are just about the only exception to a blanket discriminatory climate

and there are a TON of foreign hires, the electronics industry has loved their special visa program for a very long time, enabling them to import cheaper workers from foreign lands

[glorgau]

Just anecdotally, I was talking to a very smart woman (MS EE on the board of a major university EE department) who was bemoaning being left out of a team because of the “brogrammer” meme that seems to arise spontaneously in startups.

[glorgau]

Your resume is 15 pages?

That’s a work history, not the tailored marketing document that actually gets one noticed and hired. Sadly, nobody is going to take the time to read anything that long.

[DJlaysitup]

“Welcome aboard Shaniqua, this is your office”

“Whats do I do?”

[KoRn]

Yeah, my resume in IT could easily go 7 - 10 pages after 12 years of experience, but everyone says to keep it to 3, maybe 4 pages at the most. I’d have to leave things out, and tell it to them during an interview, if I were in the hunt for a job.

I’d just assume to stay home, get EBT with all of the handouts(combined with ‘under the table’ work) if I couldn’t find anything that didn’t pay at least $55k per year.

Given how they open the door for the H1Bs, allow off-shoring of jobs, and give tens of billions to banks that should have been bankrupted with executives in prison, I’d gladly play the system without shame, if I needed to. I almost feel like a fool right now for showing up at work every day, and paying my bills....

[LambSlave]

“Okay then Rakim, we’ll just put you in the Diversity Working Group and accommodate your special needs by providing you with a television instead of a workstation. Oh, of course, a big screen television. No, no you won’t have to work with any f*#&!! chinks, ahem, Asians.”

[Sgt_Schultze]

Well, it looks like there will be many, many new human resources managers and executive VP’s at each of the offending, discriminating leftist companies. They won’t get away with hiring custodians and guards, executive level employment is the only acceptable response.

[martin_fierro]

Unknown if real or not — but it nonetheless represents the tenor of this NYT article.

[ClayinVA]

That is what Google just did, bring in-house their Security Services and as a side benefit increase those Diversity numbers.

[Zathras]

No one at the NYT has ever been to Silicon Valley.
Taiwan, Chinese, Indian vastly outnumber WASP’s

[Myrddin]

I know. I hacked it down to 4 pages this evening. I made sure all the hot button skills in demand by hiring managers are on page 1. I had a hand-carried offer for my current job before writing a resume or filling out an application. I'm dealing with age(58), experience 34 years and salary (over $160k) as competitive issues. CNN is dumping their over 55 employees per Drudge.

[roadcat]

Exactly how Asians acquired “white privilege” is never explained.

It is strange, isn't it? Lots of whites immigrated to latin nations to the south of us, and melded with the natives ("indians"). Yet you don't hear much of highly successful tech companies down south of the USA. I mean, latinos have a mix of white blood in them, so why are they doing well as tech hires? Could it be the culture? Then there are the American blacks, long resident in the USA along side white folks. You would think the culture would sink in over a hundred to two hundred years so they would do as well as whites as tech hires.

The answer may very well be a resistance to changing their culture. Many Asians have long had a culture of seeking to better themselves, and are successful competing with whites in the tech sector. Blacks and latinos simply have to alter their culture before whining about being left out as nerds.