Wow, dude, you must be really oppressed.
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Youâre going to insist that reckless incompetents are the majority? I cannot agree with your premise. They are quite clearly an underrepresented minority at Google, and deserve equal opportunity under the âdonât be evilâ policy. Write your congresscritter today!
In my experience in engineering (15 years with a couple of major firms) the numbers for female engineers in general are indeed dismal, but I havenât noticed talented female engineers held back from promotion. Unless you look at the executive level, where it is all old white men.
Given the overall levels of women in the industry, Iâve had a disproportionally high amount of female bosses in my time (all there by merit) - which I imagined was because the women who do make it into engineering despite the sexism have to be more driven to even start.
Not the actual engineers, but why not take the people who work in the field without engineering degrees and develop their talent so that they can now do technical functions? For example, why not train a marketing person or technical writer to fill product development role?
That does happen. All the companies Iâve worked at have attempted to fill roles from within first. Itâs usually a lot cheaper to do that than go outside. The only time that doesnât work is if you need a specialized skill set and donât have time to train someone or no one within the company wants the gig.
Iâll bite. Nobody is asking the people who work at Google (or anyone else) to apologise for having a job there, even the people who do hiring. In fact, I think most people are willing to grant that Google is on the whole doing a good job where it comes to hiring. The question, and I donât think it has been answered here, is whether some sort of systematic bias exists that results in a workforce that isnât reflective of the population as a whole.
What you wonât say, but you are clearly thinking, is that you believe white males are there because they are better, that women are way underrepresented in management because they are not as good. The problem is bigger than Google or any one company. The fact youâve never personally oppressed someone does not mean you havenât benefited from the actions of those who have - and that is something that many white males canât get through their skulls. The idea of the self-made man - itâs bullshit quite frankly. One basic statistic that makes this clear is that black males are more likely to be arrested, charged, incarcerated and receive a criminal record for petty crimes as white males are. Even whites who come from working class backgrounds have a leg-up on blacks from with the same economic means. What I find most telling is how angry many white males get when itâs suggested that their success is not 100% their own.
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Yes, in general that is how hiring works. However, in engineering and other STEM jobs where there is a shortage of women, companies such as Google could actively seek to develop women and minorities who have already demonstrated an interest and ability in the field in order to even out the demographics in their companies. That I havenât seen.
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@madopal I hope you donât think I was excusing them. Notice that you completely failed to fully quote me.
My entire (reaaaally long) post (with attached references) was actually about problems in education and why there is such a small representation of women in the pool of possible candidates for hire. It was not about Google or their own failings. Those were the only two sentences I wrote even mentioning the company. I wholly agree that Google needs to make every effort to hire women. I also believe that women in CS may present a population as small as 10% or fewer the whole in the possible candidate pool (based on college graduations). We need to better at our overall attitude toward women in tech.
To be perfectly honest, I see these statements to be somewhat at oddsâweâre discussing how their makeup is largely white and male, and that itâs bad. Weâre also agreed that they should understand that they didnât get there solely on their merits, but have benefitted from a system that holds white males higher than everyone else.
I mean, call me crazy, but that sounds an awful lot like they should feel guilty for being there.
And I guess the reason it irks me is because I come from an area that wants to secede from the rest of Illinois; if they ever did that, we could replace the phrase âThank God for Mississippiâ with âThank God for South Illinoisâ, and thatâs even before we lose tax dollars from north Illinois. I had been working on a project a while back where Iâd considered stating that, in exchange for crowdfunding, Iâd give money to Girls Who Code, until I found out that these âdisadvantagedâ kids come from some of the most privileged areas in America (though Iâm willing to concede this may have changed since then). Iâm supposed to willingly fund a CS program exclusively for girls, when AFAIK none of the public schools in my region even offer CS? Okay, then; I think Iâd rather give it to the charity that buys beds and clothes for abused kids, who often have neither.
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They have 45,000 employees. How many of those are comp sci majors and how many are people from many other specialities?
You assume that they are making choices to begin with. Advertising and social pressure starting when you are very young guide you to a âchoiceâ that is acceptable to society. Thatâs on top of the incredible challenge of elevating yourself from the disproportionately high level of poverty that affects many minority groups.
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Googleâs hiring pool doesnât necessarily excuse anything.
If they choose to look at known overwhelmingly white male enclaves, itâs not the enclaves âto blameâ for Googleâs numbers. Google could proactively say âhey, the gender and minority disparity in tech majors is a well-known fact, letâs do something about it!â As opposed to going âoh, you know, what can you do, hunh?â
The chart confuses the heck out of me. Iâm a guy. Math if freakinâ hard â that is why I use and program computers, so I donât have to do all that mathy stuff. 1 is as high as I need to count (and you know how many times Iâm off by that amount anyway?).
It might be more constructive and less inciting to refer to people, companies and social systems as specific entities rather than just the term âwhite malesâ. Iâm pretty sure most âwhite malesâ didnât ask to be the whipping boys for the past sins of their ancestors (especially if their ancestors werenât responsible for these sins), No one likes being lumped negatively into a group based on a superficial physical attributes. IMHO, the responsibility for fixing systemic biases rests with those in charge of making the policies and decisions. If they wonât do it, then its up to the people to fight for change. Itâs not a crime to be lucky.
See, thatâs how I know Iâm going to win the computing race. Iâm not in that band. I differ in my approach. I embrace a multiplicity of cultural influences. I can be a person too.
Fine. Isnât that somewhat the point? The tributaries. On the baseless assumption that the data tells me <1% the engineering academic population is black, that would be a problem. No?
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I see weâve graduated to the inevitable mind-reading part of the discussion. Can you tell what I am âclearly thinkingâ?
Iâm thinking about voters, and about what they vote for⌠school choice, voucher programs, âneighborhood schoolsâ acts, magnet schools, âzero toleranceâ, charter schools⌠I have seen Jim Crow, and he is not Google, he is us.
Well, they break it down by tech and non-tech. The non-tech figures are much more in line with the population that has a college degree.
While I didnât respond directly to @jtf, I did make an attempt to provide an answer to the question asked there and by several people, âHow many women are even available for the jobs at Google?â (Because without a pool to select from, they shouldnât be expected to hire.)
Itâs not an easy question to answer, because colleges donât like to admit that individual programs are lacking in diversity. Instead, when they publish figures, they lump diversity of sex stats by degree level. (âX many women got Bachelors.â) That hides disparity. Since plenty of women attend college, the numbers look better that way. Unless independent studies are run, you wonât get those numbers.
According to Wikipedia, âIn 1984, 37.1% of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women; the percentage dropped to 29.9% in 1989-1990, and 26.7% in 1997-1998.â Thatâs true even though the actual number of women (and percentage of women to men) attaining Bachelorâs degreeâs has continued to rise since the 1980s.
According to the most Taulbee Survey, âThe fraction of women among bachelorâs graduates in CS increased to 14.2 percent in 2012-13, compared to 11.7 percent in 2010-11.â
In other words, Google is hiring at a rate higher than the graduation rate for women within their own population percentage. A more important question may be, âHow are the women working at Google treated?â If Google has created a welcoming atmosphere for women, one where they retain their jobs, thatâs an important thing and itâs different from a lot of other American companies. To make the other numbers change, we need to start earlier. Thatâs why I discussed education.
Iâm happy to see some people have chosen to check out the 2013 NY Times article I linked to above. It is long, but even a scan of it helps to explain that America is seriously different from other countries (and often very negative) in our behavior toward women in tech. Women have a very different experience from men when trying to gain a technical education in the U.S. We have to keep working to change this. Last thing Iâll do in this post is direct you guys to Googleâs âGoogle for Educationâ page which includes not one, but two scholarships for female students (as well as grants and scholarships for other underrepresented groups). It seems they realize where the problem lies.
(sources)
http://cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CRA_Taulbee_CS_Degrees_and_Enrollment_2012-13.pdf
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The most recent stats from the US Dept. of Labor report that the US workforce is 80% white, 5% Asian. That puts Google as having a more diverse workforce than the society it resides in. Similarly with other stats (though I havenât checked if comparable definitions are being used). I think the better response would be a small pat on the back for Google for making positive steps while acknowledging there is still a way to go yet. Google seems to have achieved more diversity than many in the engineer-heavy tech sector, and they shouldnât be outright thrown under a bus for making that progress. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
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