Maybe this cognitive diversity reveals itself in coding.
But I've lived in the Bay Area my whole life and I have never seen anything as monochrome, dull, and self-obsessed as the culture of tech. Regardless of race, they are startlingly lacking in true cultural diversity. The only thing that seems to matter to them is the same five status symbols—Tesla, iPhone, appropriate Bay Area zip code, overpriced exercise wear, and the right restaurant reservation.
The Bay Area used to be about freedom. But tech culture is positively oppressive in its narrowness and lack of imagination.
8
There are not too many whites who play NBA basketball and the main reason is that whites are less talented than blacks on average especially according to how the game has evolved in last couple of generations. NBA teams are trying to get the best talent they can apart from "diversity" considerations. Most people don't have too much problem admitting this.
But for some reason they will have a problem admitting in public that the reason blacks and Latinos don't get many jobs in Silicon Valley is that they are less talented on average than whites and Asians at high level programming and software engineering. Most firms want the best talent they can get. All the huffing and puffing about" diversity" won't change that.
Firms will buy off the race racket and the diversity industry with a few jobs for people of color to run the workshops, the trainings the seminars and the encounter groups. But that's it!
25
I might be beckoning a firestorm on myself, but is some diversity more needy than others? I noticed when the article cited percentages of minorities employed it did not mention Asians.
23
The left cannot seem to get over the fatuous nonsensical concept of 'diversity'. Social science agrees imposed political diversity to be highly divisive, corrosive, leads to negative outcomes in society. In fact, tech is only interested in recruiting individuals with the highest intellectual capacity to obtain the intended outcome. Imposing arbitrary political ethnic/racial hiring quotas to obtain diversity outcome is antithetical to common sense, modernity. Hiring the most cognitively individuals may result in disparate outcome, but it only reflects reality. Please... spare us from further ideological baggage..
18
This is interesting because diversity has been sold as beneficial to the comapny because different viewpoints bring value to the organization. In putting together a design team I would avoid a black person who thinks like me in favor of a white guy who doesn't any day of the week. You are looking for diversity of approach and not people who look different. However it is much easier to find diversity of thought in different groups then within your own. Just to posit, who brings more to a middle aged white guy leading a team, a white guy who grew up poor in appalachia and worked their way through school, or the black guy who was son of two college professors and breezed through school. It all depends on what is different from you.
I'm not saying there is a problem with excluding people who do not look like you, but diversity is about bringing different skills to the problem solving and those skills are in the head, not in the skin. It should not be used as an excuse to not consider people for a position however.
10
Why can't we see diversity as having multiple axes: an external appearance (race/gender) axis, and a life experience (socio-economic status, veteran status, religious experience) axis? Consider the case of someone who grows up in a rural area and serves in the military before going on to study computer science and working in Silicon Valley (there are many such people, believe it or not). It does not in any way detract from the experience of women or ethnic minorities to say that this veteran is diverse, too.
Furthermore, my observation as a Silicon Valley tech worker is that much of the resentment surrounding discussion of diversity stems from an exclusive emphasis on diversity of appearance. As long as diversity is defined as "not white and/or not male" and nothing else, it is entirely predictable that individuals with diverse life experiences will bristle. We need a more expansive conception of diversity that can acknowledge both types.
9
I believe that to have true diversity you need all types of diversity. I believe that what is being stated is that diversity is not EXCLUSIVELY not-white. But if you are not including cultural, racial, and gender-based diversity you are not truly diverse, no matter how many ex-Landis farmers you admit
1
Ms Williams creates a straw person here. There is no evidence that Ms Smith used or referred to cognitive diversity at all, instead, it is more likely that Ms Smith enjoined the idea of ethnic, cultural, sexual, disability and socioeconomic identity in her assessment of difference for a conjectured dozen persons who casually appear similar. Indeed, it is less so the side track of cognitive diversity, and more so the proliferation of claims for historic harm based on identity, that have created a problem of justice in the hiring and employment practices of Silicon Valley. It just happens to be common in the neighborhood, particularly since the California Civil Rights initiative (Prop 209) in 1996 that impacted on public hiring and college admissions. While whatever Affirmative Action may remain at the Federal level, and on hiring in the private sector, public employment has been reduced to a system of obsessive fairness at the expense of justice, on the one hand, and on the proliferation of claims for protection. It seeps into the mindset, if not the practices, of Silicon Valley because – well, it’s in the air. It is all a distraction, in any event, because it does not exact greater taxes, or demands for corporate responsibility to the citizens of California and instead focuses on the promotion of an “I won the lottery” through employment at Google mentality.
4
37 years in IT i have never equated intellectual diversity with workforce diversity. To do so is both self serving and dishonest. Providing a framework for a broad reach of opportunities to historically excluded communities is crucial for any sort of real social justice. Trying to obfuscate by hiding behind diversity of “thought” is, frankly, utter nonsense. The NY Times would likely not let me use my first choice of words.
8
As an engineer I like to have terms defined. Perhaps you could define "social justice" for me? It seems to be very ambiguous and amorphous meaning just about anything.
9
I work in HR, and have recruited for large engineering and science companies. The idea, not necessarily promoted in this article explicitly but held by some, that there is this cabal of straight white men who hire preferably other straight white men is illusory. All companies I've worked for and know make extraordinary efforts to recruit diverse candidates - mainly with the goal of mirroring their customers' demographic makeup (I've never heard anybody use the highly politicized term "identity" outside of the academic and political debate). This is held to bring bottom line benefits through innovation and a deeper understanding of customer needs. It should not be a tool - my personal opinion here - to redress past injustices: (most) businesses are not primarily social organizations. As has been said often in the comments, cognitive diversity is very important, though if you consider the aforementioned mirroring of customers, it's not the whole story. In closing, though I do believe it was most likely a misstatement, I took offense to a phrase in the last paragraph: nobody "deserves" to work in tech, or anywhere for that matter - hiring needs to be meritocratic at it's base, and that is not a racist, or anti-diversity statement.
17
It may seem that way to you, but us white guys don't really all look the same.
I think a lot of the strong reaction to diversity advocates is because so many people are classified as "white guys" by women and people of color, but as not "white guys" by the folks in charge. We feel squeezed -- no one invited us into the old boy network, and no one will work with us to break in. We don't offer diversity of complexion, but we do have a different perspective to offer.
6
Of course everyone is different and has their unique viewpoint.
But if you are looking at a stack of employees and every one of them is white you claim there is no white privilege? I am speaking as a white guy here and I see the obvious faulty logic going on
5
Amazing that "diversity" only relates to skin color. What's more diverse in the workplace, A. a black man who went to Harvard and a white woman who went to Harvard or B. an Asian woman who went to Princeton and a white man from community college in Nebraska.
Answer - A. Why - because in our backwards view of the world, anything that involves a white man can not be considered diverse. Even though the two Harvard grads probably think exactly the same, it meets the skin color quota test.
12
Straw man argument.
I think any group that ONLY contains white men may not be diverse enough.
3
Either we are all the same in which case diversity doesn't matter. Or we admit we are different with different levels of skills, but then that's racist.
Quite the Catch-22 we've gotten ourselves into.
11
This is nothing more or less than a long-winded rationale for implementing/keeping-in-place sex and race quotas, rendering diversity of thought as being of secondary importance.
Identity politics activists (as Williams obviously is) inevitably tunnel-vision focus on fields that don’t have the right “numbers”, and stay willfully blind to those fields dominated by women and blacks.
If Williams applied her diversity rationales to the fields of nursing (women comprise over 90 percent of RNs) or teaching (more than three-quarters of all teachers in kindergarten through high school are women), or the NBA or NFL, the absurdity of her logic would be glaringly evident.
16
Another whining essay about the assumed tragedy of not having a precisely proportional workforce in alleged to be high status and well paid professions. Another indoctrination of the implicit implication that our society ought to set up the same semi secret quotas for the ever greater number of proliferating racial, ethnic and sexual sacred victim identity groups, and then require all businesses to obey them as government agencies and universities have been forced to do. The problem is that in addition to as we've seen in quota driven gov and academia, that most diversity hires end up being mediocre white daughters of rich people with a few just barely adequate minorities sprinkled in, businesses actually have to get work done and compete with other businesses. Compete with businesses (many now overseas) who can still hire the most qualified workers available. Just because quota driven government and academia don't really have to get anything done, and there is no real way to measure their efficiency and they have little or no competition and can get away with hiring the unqualified and just plain don't really want to do the job types that end up in Human Relations does not mean that businesses that have to make a profit can handicap themselves with a largely unqualified work force and survive. Get women and minority citizens to get educated & equally qualified in STEM, and stop the flood of slave-wage immigrant STEM workers, and under represented citizens will get hired.
12
I can assure you that the proportion of well-trained and qualified candidates who are not white is greater than 0%. If we were looking at a closer mapping of hires to applicant pool demographics then we would not be having this discussion.
1
I have a big problem with this diversity thing; its not that I oppose, but don’t think it should be an end in itself. Diversity in campus and business should be the logical consequence of changing demographics, but even then it shouldn’t be a requirement as if written in stone. A STEM technician first requirement should be to be a STEM technician, not black, or white or woman or transgender.
Then Look at this title:
Tech’s Troubling New Trend: Diversity Is in Your Head
“New”?!!! I thought diversity of thought was THE reason for having a Leonardo Da Vinci and a Rodin. A Bach and a Lennon. A Pasteur and an Einstein. A Bill Gates and a Steve Jobs! How “new” is that? The only “new” thing is this progressive stupidity that every field needs be filled with people that look physically different, just because it makes you all feel good. NO relationship or warranty whatsoever, that that in itself will warrantee a final better product.
An article I read the other day nails it about the contradictions and irony of these new diversity trends:
If the basis for encouraging diversity of looks is that minorities solve analytical problems differently than white and Asians, while at the same time affirm that race and gender are socially constructed concepts, why then would females and underrepresented minorities think differently if their alleged differences are simply a result of oppressive social categories?
10
Your argument would bear more weight if you were not looking at such a lopsidedly weighted final pool of hires.
Many of the comments I'm reading about this piece range from 'who cares' to 'there's a lot of Indian guys' to 'merit v diversity' to 'diversity is just a PR stunt' 'It's San Francisco, who cares'.
These are a diversity of expressions of viewpoint.
These are all saying _the exact same thing_.
5
"I have a dream that ... one day ... [people] will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Apparently Ms. Williams does not share this dream.
11
The current concept of "diversity" seems to be that race drives how people think and this is a largely bogus and superficial idea. there are white people who are trapped in poverty and crime stricken neighborhoods and there are black people who are trapped in poverty and crime stricken neighborhoods. society should be focused on reducing poverty and crime stricken neighborhoods not on trying to engineer outcomes for certain groups based on race.
6
Given that a dozen blue-eyed people can be something like a Slav, a Finn, a Dutch, an Italian, a Latino, a Muslim (pick a country!), a Jew, someone gay, someone disabled, and so on, I don't necessarily see the premise as factually incorrect. There probably can be more diversity than in a group with US-born whites, US-born blacks, and Mexico-born Latinos.
5
How come no tech has come out and simply stated, “We are funding full ride scholarships to underrepresented populations with a guaranteed job at the time of graduation”? They can write in non-competitive agreements so they are guaranteed a payoff for their investment.
4
Now that sounds like a new form of indentured servitude....
Diversity should not be the goal. The goal should be not to discriminate on the basis of all the statutory prohibitions. A company's demographic make-up should not necessarily reflect the demographic make-up of society; it should reflect the demographic make-up of the pool of talent with the skiils required to do the job. The group filling the truly tech jobs on that basis would be expected to have a make-up disproportionately weighted with Asian or White males because they disproportionately acquired the degrees, knowledge, and skills required for their jobs.
9
And in this vein, a relevant consideration is the diversity of the applicant pool, a set of statistics we almost never see. Why?
3
Have any of you ever been to San Jose? There are so many Asians no one would ever characterize it as all white.
Secondly, these kids have invented the 21st century. And they are making a profit, something that seems to elude many American industries. Are you sure you want a sociologist telling them how to manage their business?
9
White guys? The IS department that I work for has hundreds of workers. In my decades of work, it has gone from "white guys" to Chinese, Indian and Russian with a smattering of "white gals and guys".
What is obviously missing from any of the technical fields in my department are blacks and Hispanics. Figure out how to get more of those two groups into tech and you will start solving a lot of problems we have in our country.
5
Const!
Can you handle the truth!
Blacks and Hispanics cannot fulfill the academics that are required to do the jobs you mention. Thus they cannot apply for the jobs
Yes there are a few. However most do not even want highly technical jobs!
2
Can we move on NYT? It's not simply gender or race that paints everything around us, nor should be what defines a person.
14
No mentions of other races besides the same old standbys: Whites, Blacks and Hispanics. What about all the breeds of Asian and Indian as well? I bet those diversity management-level job numbers stand on their side.
7
For those curious about what it is actually like programming-while-black at Apple at the overall Silicon Valley vibe from a brown faced perspective you can read my Medium piece:
https://medium.com/jopwell-stories/lessons-from-a-former-apple-engineer-...
3
Diversity begets diversity. This is true in "cognitive diversity" but more compelling and needed in underrepresented minorities.
However, I will spot one area that we need a review of "cognitive diversity" and that is the SCOTUS. Last time I checked I found the following:
Five went to Harvard (John G. Roberts Jr., Atonin Scalia, Athony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer, and Elena Kagan), three went to Yale (Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Sonia M. Sotomayor), and one went to Columbia (Ruth Bader Ginsburg).
We need more representation from schools like Howard, University of Alabama and UC Berkeley (Marshall, Black and Warren).
As for Diversity begets diversity ... if all you do is hire from the same schools and social/personal networks are the best way to recruit, you need to make sure that your baseline recruitment (schools - grad or drop out), you will get the same result.
1
One group missing from the Supreme Court are white Protestants who went to non Ivy League Schools. We need more diversity on the Supremes!
2
They’re all “numbers people” and as such, lack social skills and empathy. When you get right down to it, techies are merely overpaid drones who have been duped into thinking that they’re Masters of the Universe. When the tech bubble bursts, let them try and sell their “cognitive diversity” in an economy that has done with shiny object tech toys.
Sadly diversity is usually code for skin color and gender quotas. I have been in a lot of meetings with African Americans and women who on a transcript would be indistinguishable from white male colleagues. Yes, we need diversity of race and gender but we all so need diversity of thought and experience. If we populate the system with old boy replicants in new packaging we are not really creating a more inclusive world.
18
Two comments:
1) Not every workplace decision/ discussion will hinge on factors of race, sex, nationality, gender, etc. But you'll be every glad to have that representation in certain situations: look no further than disastrous ad campaigns by Dove, Coca-Cola (in China, still remembered after all these years, where their translation of their product amounted to an insult), and Pepsi or companies experiencing turmoil like Uber. In our own research group, I and my senior colleague were educated by our younger trainees about how to ask sex/ gender questions in an appropriate manner for our medical research.
2) People in less powerful groups are often cautious about what they say/ do in the workplace, which may also be why you think their words would be "indistinguishable" from your male white colleagues. They want to fit in and not be seen as outsiders, which they are already merely by how they look.
I once worked in a medical department where over a third of the MDs were of Chinese origin, although some were 2nd-3rd generation Chinese-Americans and those who were immigrants came from a variety of countries (Vietnam, Germany, Burma, Hong Kong, etc.). We used to have catered lunches. One of the most memorable experiences I had was going to lunch and realizing everyone was either speaking in Chinese or about the upcoming Chinese holiday. As soon as the first non-Chinese person stepped in, out of politeness, the room suddenly switched topics and language to English!
So if I'm putting together a group of twelve people, what is the proper diversity breakdown? Please consider race, age, gender, height, economic background, political ideology, religion, weight, nationality, and other. I'll wait.
4
You're right, best to give up and just default to hiring the same group of dudes that would have been hired if you didn't have to think about stuff like this.
Is diversity one of the group's goals?
Diversity is all well and good, and I don't diss anyone who fights for it, but it irritates me when the talk of diversity reaches this particular sector. Programming and other tech related jobs require skill, being able to produce something, and if they can't produce something(code or whatever you're tasked with making), then they won't be hired.
Black, white, or yellow.
Blaming racists for the lack of diversity in this sector of the economy is like holding a Trump banner in a crowd of triggered liberals.
6
There are some comments here about how Silicon Valley is diverse because of the presence of Asian-Americans. I live in Silicon Valley. The people who run the corporations by and large are NOT Asian-American. It's similar in other fields -- law, medicine, accounting, science, etc. -- while low-level and mid-level workers are often Asian-Americans, they're not the ones who lead or own the companies. This is called the "bamboo ceiling."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2016/01/20/how-asian-americans-ca...
9
What about Google CEO or Microsoft CEO or Uber CEO? Etc etc
3
Identity diversity is only one of several ways in which companies can achieve the ultimate goal of cognitive or viewpoint diversity in their workforces. How companies choose to achieve that ultimate goal should not matter - unless of course you believe that the real goal of identity diversity is to right alleged current (or past) discrimination in hiring practices. If that is what you believe, then just come out and say so, instead of suggesting without any factual support that the most "meaningful" way to achieve cognitive diversity is through identity diversity.
4
How much does Apple's "Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion" make per year, and how can I get that job?
As a white male at one of the major tech companies in the US, I've seen plenty of people not hired because they weren't talented, but talent is all we look for in my particular group and we're among the best because of it. I'm also in the racial minority where I work, as it's been mentioned that most people in this field are Indian/Asian. It's plenty diverse, just not the way "Bärí" A. Williams wants it to be. The bottom line is that diversity offers the company nothing and hurts them if employees are hired based on anything other than merit; engineering is not a subjective field, and there isn't a whole liberal arts rainbow of valid opinions on how to solve a given problem.
7
I spent 24 years in the Marine Corps and found that no disaster arrives without warning and great successes require collaboration by very smart people who each look at things differently. Getting the smartest people into the room for a meeting requires recruiting the smartest people, which requires having as big a a crowd to select from as possible. If participants in meetings keep being white guys, it is very likely that the recruiters did not cast a wide enough net and that there are peoples of other descriptions that the recruiters should have talked with and recruited. Diversity is not about fairness but about stacking the deck in an unfair way that promotes my organization's success.
8
Affirmative action is only justifiable as a means to eliminate wrongful discrimination.
Anything more (i.e., attempting to boost up underrepresented minorities to correct for past racial wrongs) is wrong for the same reasons racism is wrong--reducing individuals to their racial group.
I think that's what the author is advocating--that we need affirmative action to guard against hiring biases.
But if you truly believe that then I'd imagine you'd more readily concede that hiring two men--one from say Korea and one from say India--might in some cases make your workforce more diverse, nimble and competent than hiring two women or underrepresented minorities from the same socioeconomic background and culture.
3
Two notions, seemingly aligned, but through passage of time, now fully opposed: "let's have diversity and inclusion" or "let's have Justice."
We now have neither the false errand or the true one. Tragic failure for the nation.
You have to have skills to succeed - - - and more young people have to have better education. Still, most of our history teaches that skills of unfavored groups are simply not even visible to those who acquire control. Are we to think that men in tech ore so different that they do not have a bias towards seeing others like themselves as the most desirable hirees?
Diversity is, as we all know a relevant and pervasive issue. The focus on diversity is necessary but not sufficient in finding the best solution. For the best, and the right solution, we need to look at inclusion as well -- and not relative population numbers by groups. Inclusion in all the groups that matter -- not just lip service. And when it comes to the tech sector, inclusion on teams that make decisions and directly effect the overall direction and impact of people, products and customers.
How many black children are empowered to feel at home studying science thanks to Neil DeGrasse Tyson? A key component of diversity is making the next generation know it is possible. And you won't get all of the best and brightest without it. So any company that feel they are going to be around for 10 years WILL BENEFIT.
7
The reality is that Silicon Valley is no different from corporate America. Whatever forward thinking persona they adopted many years ago was either a facade or was inherent in the individuals that started the industry but are no longer central to what we call Silicon Valley today.
1
Actually, the only significant diversity that exists does mostly originate within our heads, or actually, from the lifetime of cultural programming that put it there. The apparent differences that we can see from a shallow visual inspection are only things like gender or skin color, or subtle differences in appearance that humans are wired to notice so they can recognize each other and determine who is likely to be part of their group. What is far more important are the cultural differences that people accumulate during their upbringing within their families, schools, churches, communities. Now, it turns out that these cultural differences usually are associated with racial differences, so it is often used as a shortcut criteria to select people who appear different from the outside, with the assumption that they will also have different cultural background, and will then contribute different cultural inputs into an organization. And is certainly likely that a group of white men are more likely share more cultural aspects, as would any other group of people with outward similarities. But the assumption that this is necessarily so is exactly what is wrong with America's attitude toward race and diversity. We expect people of physically diverse appearance to also be cultural diverse. They may be, but not necessarily. A black guy with dreadlocks could be a computer nerd, raised on dungeons and dragons just like some of his white peers.
6
Diversity is a result, not a goal. It is a result of good educational systems and equal opportunity accessing them. It is the result tolerance and respect practiced among all communities - in all directions. It is the result of cultural development where common definitions of achievement are assimilated. It is the result of a society which makes itself blind to differences in color, in gender and in other factors not relevant to the job.
In baseball, you get your result, winning games, by focusing on hitting, running and pitching. You don't win a game by telling the team they need to score 5 runs. You get there by teaching them how to swing the bat.
The goal should be a fair chance for all, the appropriate level of diversity will happen.
51
Sounds nice but if the people at the top are white men who went to Harvard, MIT, or Stanford,it’s a good bet they’ll choose the white guy who graduated from Stanford over the woman who graduated from another university and is just as qualified or even more qualified. Humans tend to choose those who mirror their own backgrounds. Your idea sounds great. Sadly, you white guys don’t want to share your “toys” with the rest of us.
7
What makes you think I am white, or a guy?
1
The very fact that so many commentators view this as as an argument between "merit" OR "diversity," starkly reflects the problems elucidated by this article's contributor. When "merit" and "attainment" are synonymous, one can rightly agree that President Trump's successful election was due solely to "merit:" the mere fact that he attained the position is testament to his fitness for the position. If you recognize the ridiculousness of this viewpoint, please recognize the specious nature of all such "either/or" arguments. This kind of lazy thinking is definitely not a marker of superior intelligence or capacity to excel in any profession.
6
These companies are dying trying to higher more women and people of color. However, if you go in to any college IT or CS class you will see it it 90% white men. This problem starts well before the application gets to Google.
We do not promote women in technology and many people of color live in areas with sub-standard schools.
5
The underlying problems are hardly ever addressed - making the youth aware of the opportunities exist. Those who are best positioned to address often spend more efforts on 'protecting' their OWN interests and shortchange the supposed beneficiaries.
1
I am not sure which schools you have observed, but IT and CS are utterly dominated by Asians, Indians, Pakistanis, Iranians and other minority groups -- what you do not see is a lot of Africa-Americans. And only a few women.
3
Knowledge of positions is irrelevant if they do not obtain the requisite skills.
A very good article; let’s look at an example of gender inclusion in the tech industry and [lack of] diverse sensibilities in advertising. There is a new I-Phone 8 commercial with an attractive young WHITE female strutting down the street softly singing a song. Every several frame she appears in a different blouse; in the part of the commercial where she is walking down the crowded street past the clothing store with a garage door-type store front she steals a hat yet NOTHING is done, security doesn’t come after her, she just goes about her carefree way.
Privilege?
As a sometimes hiring manager in technology, my focus has always been on recruiting technically A+ players with the A+ collaboration skills to form a team that clicks. When that kind of team comes together to create and deliver disruptive innovations, well, the rush and camaraderie are completely addictive.
Recruiting A+ technical players is more than hard enough, without further limiting the field by discriminating for any reason not directly related to task performance. Fostering espirit de corps when working within aggressive schedules and budgets is similarly more than hard enough, without trying to cater to any technically talented team member who won't collaborate with others on the team because of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or anything human attribute that has nothing to do with being a solid technical and team player.
The argument about cognitive diversity is ludicrous, as some measure of cognitive diversity comes for free by having more than one talented engineer on a task. A dozen talented engineers will have at least a dozen and half strong opinions among them, maybe two dozen. (That disinclination to go-along-to-get-along is one of the reasons non-engineers find us to be hard-to-work-with, can't-read-the social-clues dweebs. :-) )
I can build a far greater measure of cognitive diversity into a team by hiring technical, collaborative A+ players from different backgrounds.
4
This author is way off the mark. Private enterprise has a legal and moral obligation to provide equal opportunity to all. It does not have an obligation to remedy problems in our society not of its own making. A company should seek a diverse workforce only if it is beneficial for it to do so. There is little demonstrable benefit in hiring someone solely because of their racial identity. Diversity of viewpoint is the only justification for hiring a diverse workforce.
9
Mr Lewis,
First can I call you Tim! I want to talk to you like a wise counselor.
Tim, You are viewing diversity all wrong. You are not seeing diversity as a requirement for intrinsic high performance from a technological competitive work force that is dominant in its markets.
I can see why. Lets proceed slowly? Are you not influenced by the high performance NBA or NFL workers where diversity abounds on the field of performance. The white performers are reduced to a paltry few.
Yes Tim, American technology should become more diverse like, lets say China. They by the way are eating our competitive lunch. Maybe all of our white guys should go there for a job and fix the Chinese competitive problems. India!! Now that is a great idea that country is filled with black guys and gals. In fact we cannot get enough Indians here on visas. So for example Apple goes there. http://www.apple.com/in/newsroom/2016/05/19Apple-Opens-Development-Offic.... Not sure from this article if Apple hires 4000 or 600000 in India. However numbers do not matter; the work force is diverse. A better example is IBM, 450,000 India employees in India, about 1/3 of its entire workforce.
Tim, the point is as we have done to have better football teams and basketball teams we must use the same approach to have better technology companies to achieve diversity we must seek diversity by creating high value technology opportunities in other countries.
"There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse, too, because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”"
Sorry but in my experience, white male programmers tend to not be diverse in their life experiences. They like the same movies, they come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, they have similar quirks and fascinations, and their life experience is pretty much programming, programming, programming.
In fact, being a physics and tech nerd myself, I have found that I am more similar to those men than I am to a random group of 12 women.
I think this "diversity" business is really just a nice PC attempt to interrupt the systematic intellectual and sexual bullying of women in science and technology by a minority of dedicated misogynists.
I was bullied by guys like this all though physics graduate school. I was told by a professor that women can't understand physics, and the women who get A's on their physics exams are only able to do so by "rote learning."
I was accused on a regular basis of wanting to institute hard quotas for women in physics that would have to be satisfied by admitting women who were 100% unqualified.
Then there were the spatial skills experts who would assault me by challenging me to defend the lack of spatial skills among women.
Just stop these kinds of men from bullying and harassing women, and diversity will blossom like flowers in the spring.
12
Ms. Smith's ill-considered comments and my own opinions on the critical importance of racial, gender, and cultural diversity aside, the author of the article seriously misses the point behind the focus on viewpoint and cognitive diversity. You can take the most diverse set of individuals and, through a corporate culture that rewards conformity, end up with a bunch of cookie-cutter employees. The point is that diversity doesn't end with hiring, it starts there.
2
No one wants to talk about the definition of diversity success. How can it be anything but this:
A company's diversity matches the diversity of equally-qualified job seekers.
We know there are fewer tech job seekers with minority status. We know that, on average, minority tech graduates have somewhat lower qualifications (grades, graduate work, best schools, etc.). How can a company do any better than the stats of the applicants? This idea that a tech company can have 50% women in the next few years is impossible; there are not enough women tech applicants. Who gets to decide what an "adequate" number would be?
7
It should be noted that current thinking emphasizes not just diversity but inclusion. That's a whole different thing — it requires a commitment on the part of everyone in a company to embrace differences and allow people to feel at home.
All other things being equal diversity of race and gender could be a desirable goal. A suggestion: in order to cull the available applicant list to those truly qualified, make the initial selection process blind to the applicants. Give each applicant a number and then have them perform a critical task central to the position they are applying for. Rank order the results. Draw a line through the applicant pool based on their performance of the task above which demonstrates desirable proficiency (as selective as the employer desires). Select those in the high performance group for further evaluation and possible selection. Unmask the results and select from the group of high performers with the goal of diversity among those most qualified.
3
Social justice warriors majoring in gender "studies" instead of STEM wind up serving cafe mocha to techies.
24
The froth on a cappucino is nothing to the froth in the tech industry. After the 2001 tech crash, lots of male programmers wound up serving cafe mocha to women shoppers in shopping mall food courts. Keep that in mind. The power and privilege male techies enjoy now can be washed away by one bad week on the NASDAQ. So try to be more generous to the half of the population who are your customers.
8
Patricia: that was well before smartphones and apps, and the utter dominance of Apple and Google, and before internet shopping swept away bricks n' mortar retail.
It won't happen again; we are now too dependent on tech to live without it.
1
Don't be so sure. Some businesses that existed only as internet-based are now dipping their toes into brick-and-mortar. Customers till often want to see, touch, experience the product. I am a Seattle native and live in Silicon Valley and it's been surprising to me the trendy/ hip shops I've come across in the last year that when I ask how long they've been around, they say they're been on the Net for years but now want a few physical stores. Most recent example is Amazon but there are others:
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/04/30/amazon-experimenting-physical-stores/
Also, Apples maintains physical stores across the US.
For Liberals diversity only means different skin color, and whatever gender identity you prefer to be on that day. No matter, a room full of Hillary voters who are white, black, Latino, and LGBT is considered extraordinarily diverse. Difference of opinion is not diverse to liberals.
23
I lived in Silicon Valley for years (as a grad student, and then as a stay-at-home mom with little kids) and hated it -- so smug and self-assured about its own exceptionalism. Then a year ago I moved to Boston -- what a breath of fresh air it was to see WOMEN, just normal, professional women -- going about their business, heading to work, getting coffee -- doing all those normal things that you just doing see women doing in Silicon Valley, because there are no women in Silicon Valley. Horrible place.
34
That said, if a board consists of two white men, three white women, two Asian men, one Asian woman and one black man, yet they all went to the same type of prep school for high school and Ivy League colleges, would it STILL be diverse? Oh, I forgot to mention they all golf at one of two country clubs.
11
I look forward to the day when we look at people, and not race. White males dominate the SCV for a variety of reasons, but this is not necessarily suggestive of racism or sexism, in the same way that, oh, whites once dominated the Old South.
Rather, it's a function of our society: women are half the population, but do they go into "STEM" fields? Do they show up at recruitment drives? Same for the black population.
I worked at Apple, as a hiring manager. When I hired people, it was solely a function of what was presented to me in the applicant pool. I have a fiduciary responsibility to my company to hire the best talent, and that's how we proceeded, ranking candidates solely based on criteria needed for the job. I hired blacks, gays, hispanics, a Samoan, and, yes, a TON of white guys. Because that was the pool.
The kind of "affirmative action" racism advocated by this article is disgusting and unethical. When the candidate goes beyond the credential: when they clearly lived in the computer lab in college, educated themselves outside the job, and show initiative, they deserve the job, regardless of color or whatever silly school logo they decided to associate themselves with.
Apple did an exceptional job focusing on color-blind and sex-blind hiring, focusing instead on job requirements, in my experience, and the results speak for themselves.
18
This must be a joke. Only people utterly out of touch with the world beyond their inner circle could take this cooped version of 'diversity,' seriously. Frightening that this Op-Ed could appear in a serious news outlet.
14
Serious news outlet?
1
"“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
13
The most important diversity is political.
Universities, and the New York Times, should set quotas, like for Blacks,
to see to it that faculty and reporters and editors are Republicans and Democrats on the same proportion as the national average of US Representatives and Senators, state Governors, and state legislators.
You can use "holistic" criteria as long as the basic quota are met.
10
Once again, there is the charming assumption in the comments that there is some tension between diversity and merit.
We have this stupid idea that prejudice couldn't possibly blind the judgment of capitalists when it comes to things like hiring decisions.
There are studies on this; it is patently untrue. It is very likely that, in the tech world as in other places, qualified candidates are being passed over in favor of men who fit the pre-conceived notion of what a competent, intelligent programmer looks or acts like. As long as they perform well enough, there is no need for capitalism to correct this error, since it is only ever as efficient as it needs to be.
4
You know, it’s kind of funny that there was a recent article in thi# paper about a Black American family’s experience in China where the Chinese were all busily snapping photos of them because they had never seen a black person in real life before. Then, a couple of days ago, there was a story about some museum in China removing an African exhibit because it compared black Africans to monkeys. And in that story, the journalist actually had the gaul to describe China as a “diverse” society. Yeah: 97% ethic Chinese, and the rest virtually all related Asian ethnicities.
But, my oh my, Sikicon valley “only” has 30% women, 10% blacks, and 5% Hispanics. What an awful non-diverse country we live in!
And BTW, the woman who said 12 white men are diverse was just as right as if she had said 12 black men in a room were diverse. But if she had said the later, she would have been praised for her recognition that not all black people are the same, instead of being forced to retract her statement because she dared to say the same about white men.
18
"Tech firm seeks senior managers. Preference will be given to those who think the moon landing was faked."
That'll get ya some viewpoint diversity.
Please.
8
One thing that makes for this situation is that if you represent race/gender diversity, then, until you’ve established yourself, you’re likely to play it safe as a cognitive/viewpoint conformist.
What? Another campaign ad for Trump?
Insane.
11
The liberal media have repeated the diversity message so often that more and more people are tuning out. While Americans remain divided over identity politics, nothing of note will be achieved.
Identity politics is toxic.
22
As a white male, I can tell what discrimination looks like. At my NYC job I am not even getting interviews for a promotion. I have a professional license and 29 years of managing people and a multitude of projects, yet I am continuously overlooked in favor a women, none of whom have my credentials. I have trained and continue training staff that gets ahead of me, just because of their sex or color. Meanwhile, they all keep coming back to me for help. When staff is selected or promoted on anything else other their skills and abilities it is Discrimination. It can affect anybody.
30
I am an African American (AA) engineer with + 30yrs working in Silicon Valley (SV) and at some of the nations top National Laboratories with an elite pedigree similar to many of my professional peers. Undergrad engineering @ CMU, Grad degrees on scholarship from Stanford.
What I have experienced first hand in both sectors, private and public is the conscious and unconscious bias of the majority group to hire, promote and advocate for those like themselves irrespective of true merit. The majority thinks diversity is lowering standards, to the contrary, it is making the playing field level, so that all can participate. Again, contrary to what the majority would have you believe, white mediocrity in SV and throughout the tech sector is real and widespread. Let’s be absolutely clear and transparent SV is not a pure meritocracy, it never was. It is often who you know and how you know them, socially, professionally, what school(s) you went to and what you look like. I have experienced all kinds of bias once people attached my non ethnic sounding name to my unambiguously AA face. I can testify that the diversity my cohort of fellow underrepresented graduates of these elite institutions represented made the products and projects they worked on superior because they were plain smarter (technically and otherwise) That is a concept hard for whites to fathom, that someone whom they have always been told they are superior to may be just as smart or smarter.
20
Economic diversity--don't forget that one!
A persons background--hardships, easy-street etc. play a huge part of what "viewpoints" people have.
But the tech world's watering down the definition of "diversity" is absurd.
The arrogance of the tech world to expect that whatever they do is to be heralded and revered so they should be given free-reign to do whatever they want, is jaw-dropping.
2
Whenever I read articles about diversity, especially as it relates to Silicon Valley and tech, I usually perform a search command for the word "Asian" before I read the article in full; I'm annoyed but not surprised that I found 0 hits.
I'm not trying to discredit the need for diversity or inclusion for all races and both genders, I just thought I'd vent a bit and see if anyone else agrees with my frustration at this omission.
14
I always wondered about that too. Mostly in tech or education-related articles.
2
People who think their little bubble is the entire sea are not capable of understanding diversity until they leave their bubble and truly experience the sea. The arrogance of bubble people is beyond understanding because actually believe they know something about nothing, but actually know nothing about everything. Why should I or anyone else trust folks that think this way, behave this way and treat others as if they don’t matter? Whatever they build will always serve some, no doubt, but will never come close to serving all.
1
Some diverse thought.
No one has ever tried to explain why diversity, as it is commonly understood (blacks, Hispanics), is "our strength" and improves the quality of the workforce. Does that mean that China and Japan will be unable to compete successfully with us because they are totally lacking in these groups?
Silicon Valley workforce is 41 percent Asian. Are Asians no longer considered to be a minority group?
The unspoken premise of diversicrats is that, absent discrimination, all racial and ethnic groups and both sexes would be represented in every occupation in the same proportion as they exist in the population. This belief flies in the face of all human experience. It also implies that all racial and ethnic groups and both sexes are alike in every impoprtant respect, that is, there is really no such thing as diversity.
The dominance of white men, and more recently Asians, is as unjust as the dominance of blacks in basketball.
21
I am a programmer - and a woman. In my experience, the worst teams for everyone looking exactly like the manager are the Indian teams - all Indian male. But same can happen on all white male teams. My team is quite diverse, but some are not, and it is not about the qualifications - everyone on my team, male, female, Asian, Indian, middle-eastern, white, black, etc. is highly qualified. If you are only hiring one race, it's not because of qualifications, it's because that is a bias.
10
At it's core, the issue of diversity, like affirmative action, is about equality of opportunity. It amazes me that in the supposed 'land of opportunity,' so many Americans resist and/or deny any serious efforts to foster equal opportunity. Suggestions that discussion/promotion of diversity is somehow responsible for DJT confirms my point in that he and his supporters want to take the U.S. back to the good ol' days when white men only had to compete with each other, and even then it wasn't equal.
If we truly wanted equal opportunity, we'd ensure all Americans had access to a high quality education (and quality public health) at all levels. Instead, we prefer to let those with more money buy the supposed "talent" and "merit" many commenting on this article have mentioned.
I guess that's why it's called the 'American dream.'
36
Do you call talent and merit "supposed" because you don't believe there are such things? If that's the case, perhaps you'd like to have a third grader perform your cancer operation if ever you need one.
2
Your comment absolutely has merit, but is this the responsibility of businesses? Do businesses need to step in where society fails? I think not - their rightful prerogative is to create products that generate earnings. If a diverse workforce is amenable to that, companies will seek it, but it can not be expected this will be embraced as an end in itself. Though public pressure of course will have this effect - partially rightfully. Still, society as a whole needs to come to a new consensus on the value of education - and equal access to it - for the future of our country. We can't argue for the onus to be on our businesses to make up for our shortcomings.
So does that wonderful term "diversity" include white men or doesn't it? Does a serious push for diversity mean reverse discrimination or doesn't it? I mean the real answers. These are serious questions, with a lot of ramifications depending on the true answers. But we've been skirting around these questions for years, with most of the articles and comments about it moving us further from an honest discussion. (This article is somewhat better.)
I hope we can get to a point where they can be discussed, at least partially resolved, with as few feeling left out of that resolution as possible. It would help if a win:win is at least attempted, although achieving one might not be possible. If not, it would be a start if at least a win:win could be defined. It would likely take some creativity to do this, which would not be facilitated by a fully hostile or defensive environment.
Assumptions about motives and who actually has privilege because they are classified in one way or another could be on the table, but it should be remembered these are just assumptions, until verified or rejected.
If we don't get this mostly right, or don't even try, one of those ramifications is more force to a second Trump term, whether we see it coming this time or not.
2
Ms Williams falls into the common trap of conflating skin color with diversity. While a person's race inevitably does affect viewpoint diversity, the effect is not consistent or even within individuals of a particular race. The African American son or daughter of two physicians raised in an upper middle class suburb has much more in common with his or her classmates than with the child of a black single mother in the inner city. And yet the racial bean counting promoted by advocates of racial "diversity" utterly fails to take this kind of subtelty into account.
We need more nuance, not less, in ferreting out the real diversity among applicants for jobs in tech or in college admissions. Ms. Williams singular focus on skin color hardly helps the situation.
4
The people who inhabit the media seem to think that "diversity" is axiomatically a benefit to the company-it is the bubble they inhabit. It may be true in an industry that has as its business model the goal of reaching a diversity of customers. In tech, diversity of economic, racial or gender is meaningless to the end result.
An algorithm doesn't have a gender, race or any other human attribute.
9
never do I see mention of age diversity in the high tech workplace. not only is an exclusive focus on a younger workforce wasting the wisdom and experience of older workers, the result is all too plain to see in corporate output, such as screen design featuring text characters that are difficult for anyone with eyes over 28 years old to see. an example: the immutable, minute, blue, sans serif alphabet running along the right side of the contact list on even the newest iphone. it surely isn't that a geture like this couldn't be done better, it is that nobody even thought to ask the question... as a result of age discrimination.
10
Ms. Young's observation about the 12 white blue-eyed blond guys could go farther. Among those guys I can pretty much guarantee you that there is nothing like fair play. One will have a connection to the boss, another to a big client, another will have a degree from a hot school, etc. The same thing could be said of a room full of Black, Asian, or Hispanic people. One thing to realize when it comes to diversity is that, even among an ethnically homogeneous group, there is no such thing as a fair playing field. Sure, unfairness in work has a racial component, but there is no reason to take that as the reason for any disappointment. Racial and gender nonsense happens, yes, but so does generic nonsense.
What needs to be fixed is the lousy shape of technical management. The big idea in tech is that facts matter, but in real life very few of the facts are well established. So goals are fuzzy, standards are either fuzzy, poorly known, or so complex that the managers haven't got a clue. That's the space where people who "manage up" well will thrive, almost independent of their technical skills or contributions.
1
Do you really want companies trying to determine what an applicant's "race" is? As a recent, highly publicized study shows (on skin pigmentation) in addition to many others, the very concept of race is becoming scientifically meaningless. This leaves only the highly subjective notion of the applicant's "identity"--so that one identifies as a non-existent concept!
If we are to accept the dubious concept of "gender fluidity" then the same problem arises: if one of those blonde, blue-eyed males identifies as a woman, do you count them as a female employee? Or can the company force them to undergo DNA testing? Will the company be required to force them to undergo DNA testing?
Now we have a neologism I haven't heard before: "cognitive diversity," probably just as meaningless as the rest (although it appears to carry negative connotations).
What if we just have blind interviews throughout the entire hiring process? Nobody knows what the applicant looks like or sounds like until they show up for work after being hired. I have serious doubts that it would make any difference in "diversity" but it would be fair wouldn't it?
1
Ms. Smith is actually on to something. For all of his problems as a President, for example, George W. Bush put blacks and women into some real positions of power in his White House. None of that diversity prevented the Iraq War or the recession of 2008. Diversity of life experiences and viewpoints is very important and has real meaning.
6
Another article on tech industry diversity that totally misses a single mention about the rampant age discrimination that permeates across all gender and ethnic dimensions. When are we going to address that glaring issue?
8
Article seems to imply that racial or gender diversity is inherently valuable for itself, not for the viewpoint diversity it brings. I find this a dangerous road to go down. Race or gender themselves are not qualifications and cannot be allowed to be qualifications - that is the whole point of the 14th amendment. If you start going back to a world where race and gender are qualifications...that is very unlikely to help minorities in the long term.
Racial and gender diversity in employment is beneficial because it tends to correlate closely with diversity of experience, viewpoint, thought processes, etc - and that is what is really important.
In a very real sense, a white male who grew up in, say, rural Bolivia, is likely to bring more true diversity of experience, thought, viewpoint, etc to a company than a black woman born and raised in San Francisco - especially if your company already has a couple black women born in San Francisco. Most white men probably wouldn't - but that particular white man would.
4
I think before we can say the tech companies are only hiring white guys we need to look at the pool of applicants. Who are the students in the Computer Science programs?
As a sociologist, I tend to think that viewpoint diversity will be grounded in experience and experiences differ to some extent here on the planet Earth based on race, ethnicity, and gender. And, of course, social class. Otherwise, we have to fall back on the idea that people are born unique . . . perhaps even born programmers.
3
Capitalism doesn't care about your culture. Either do the job better than the person next to you, or get out of the way.
Some people are fortunate enough to have connections, in which case, it doesn't matter what they do or don't do. This fact may bother some people, but let me remind you that Apple cannot survive entirely on nepotism and lowered standards for well networked white men. To stay on the cutting edge they NEED to engage in a cut-throat meritocracy and hire the best of the best.
2
Diversity of viewpoint is completely incompatible with the silicon valley ideal of "meritocracy," which serves to elevate and promote those who most mimic the status quo. The whole industry becomes an echo chamber, full of people congratulating each other for radically improving the lives of people who already have it really good.
1
Anyone who believes that 12 white men represent diversity is out of his or her mind. It is a willful, self-constructed alternative reality bubble. These powerful people are trying to justify years of prejudicial employment practices that weeded out qualified non-white males. This type of statement really shows just how far they still have to go towards real-world thinking.
As an addendum to my earlier comments, the organizations that I have observed or have had first hand experience with, who walk the talk of diversity, recognize its power, and are the beneficiaries of successful implementation of diversity and inclusion policies, procedures and practices span our country. From Salesforce here in SV, to the NFL (Coaching and leadership) and finally to the US Military, the finest fighting force the world has ever seen.
3
Based on data, decades of data, is a black community of wealth more diverse than a white community of poverty? Is a poor black community more diverse than a poor white community?
Is diversity driven by race? By ethnicity? By income variance? I would propose that there is more diversity between poor and wealthy communities than communities of poor (or wealthy) black/white communities.
I'm tired of the two-faced discussion where proponents of diversity (whatever forced social engineering definitions you want to apply from a liberal Ivory tower) claim that diversity enhances the country economically and socially. My neighborhood is diverse in that we have whites, Hispanics (considered white by the blacks, and NYTimes when it's convenient) blacks, Muslims, Christians, etc. But it's not very diverse outside the occasional pot luck dinners because it's middle class and all the families are family-focused. Black parents don't want their kids walking around with pants around their ankles and white parents don't want their kids to shave their heads. Not that kids always listen. But the parents push for society norms as they want their kids to go to college, get a job, and behave as professionals.
We are diverse, but not.
4
Readers often like to point to EU or Asia as comparisons for what is wrong with the US. Surprisingly (not), they don't do that when it comes to diversity. That's because there is no such thing as affirmative action or diversity hiring mandates. Same is true for college - it may be free in some countries, but you have to be accepted first and that depends on your academic achievement. Period.
Why is the US so absorbed with diversity (a.k.a affirmative action)? It was/is a response to poor education in inner cities where blacks often live. A response to historical discrimination of African Americans, and to some degree gender bias (more of late). But as a policy, it is an utter failure. We need to stop thinking in terms of black and white if we are to minimize racism. It's the obsession with this that leads to racial bias to begin with!
5
With all the diversity in Silicon Valley, including South Asians and South Asian Americans, why are there still machines with sensors that don't detect dark skin?
1
This is were a valid argument disintegrates. When you describe something erroneously as an "entitlement". The author says "members of underrepresented communities ... who deserve to work in tech as much as anyone." Nobody "deserves" to work in tech. Nobody "deserves" to work at Google, Apple or Facebook. What is important is that any qualified person regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc. have the same opportunities to "EARN" a spot in tech or at these companies. "Deserves" has nothing to do with it.
4
As others here have noted, achieving diversity is possible only when the applicant pool allows for it. Affirmative action, or any other program that has the goal of increasing the numbers of underrepresented communities, needs to begin in preschool, not in college or beyond. I've hired (directly or indirectly) many thousands of employees in my work in Silicon Valley, and the best I can do is an employee base that is more representative of the community than the applicant pool from which I draw. I wish it were otherwise, but that's my reality.
I was once attending a high school soccer match at a pitch that's nestled right in the middle of low income project housing in San Francisco. I got to talking with an African-American high school student who told me he was interested in studying science. I gave him all the encouragement I could, along with my phone number should he ever want to talk about his future, but I never heard anything back.
More than anything I would love for my employees to look collectively like the community in which I live, but I won't lower the bar to realise my hopes: It's not fair to anyone to do so.
11
The idea that 'cognitive diversity' and other forms of diversity are separate from each other is itself wrong headed. Cognitive and viewpoint diversity are inextricably bound up in, and formed by, lived experience. Similar lived experiences will produce similar cognitive structures and viewpoints.
A bunch of 25-30 year-old tech bros may indeed be different from each other in a variety of meaningful ways, but that range of diversity does not reflect, represent or account for a much wider set of experiences that very much need to be addressed in our world.
That relatively narrow base of cognitive diversity will not ultimately produce sustainable thinking or practices that will stand the test of time in our world.
24
"A bunch of 25-30 year-old tech bros may indeed be different from each other in a variety of meaningful ways, but that range of diversity does not reflect, represent or account for a much wider set of experiences that very much need to be addressed in our world."
Whatever needs to be "addressed in our world" is none of the employers' business. Their business is profit (if it's a corporation) or a product, and only those two things count. If these objectives can be achieved by robots with inbuilt 'cognitive diversity' (what an awkward term to define creativity!) all the better. For the liberal PC crowd they can paint them in different stripes.
Besides, Jess, what makes you think that you or me, or them are the authority in deciding what should be "addressed in our world?" If you're so much into 'diversity', can you appreciate that my world is different from yours, and you and I have different issues to address?
1
I can express my opinion on this issue very simply: I believe that everyone should have an opportunity for employment in tech, or any other line of work. I do not believe that everyone has a right to be hired. This should depend on the applicant's qualifications for the job. Employers should reach out to under-represented groups, yes, but the bottom line is, if you haven't prepared yourself for the job, you can't expect to be hired for it. That is "fairness".
19
And no one promoting diversity says different. I've seen outstanding, over the top excellent programmers in all colors, all genders, all over the world.
This is a very wrong-heading article. It suggests that the kind of diversity which matters most is based on things like race, gender, and ethnicity.
This philosophy has led to the explicit and implicit quota systems that are now an entrenched part of admissions, hiring and promotions at most universities. It’s why Elizabeth Warren infamously found it beneficial to claim she was a Cherokee on multiple employment applications, even though she isn’t. It’s why many schools have faculties with multi- racial and ethnic composition, but where 90% of the faculty are liberal Democrats with political persuasions matching those of the Times’ editorial board.
This is why Affirmative Action has gotten, deservedly, a bad reputation, and understandably generated great resentment from those to on the short end of the quota straw. SCOTUS has, to its great discredit, disregarded the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment; one hopes that this will not stand forever. Justice O’Conner thought 25 years was appropriate, and we’re over half way there.
Yes, ethnicity, national origin, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, are meaningful. But racial quotas are a bad thing, as they are used today. Contrary to what this article argues, and contrary to what many universities practice, the diversity which matters most is what this article terms cognitive diversity.
A backlash against the philosophy espoused in this column is a major part of why Donald Trump won the election.
77
This is the typical response to any argument by those who are inherently against it, but who do not have any intelligent or meaningful way to argue their point so they must propose extreme versions of what they are against. Akin to gun advocates saying that limiting assault weapons will lead to criminalization of all guns. Where did the author every argue that we should have quotas? That was not the point of this article. And anyone who thinks that true diversity in this country can be achieved by not considering ethnicity, national origin, race, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic status clearly has no understanding of what diversity actually is, nor understands its' value or has made any attempt to look beyond themselves. It is this same kind of selfish and short sighted and ultimately self destructive vision of the world that has been ingrained into far too many people in this country that did help Trump get elected. Great how that has worked out, right?
6
You have it backwards, Alex. This is not suggesting that "the kind of diversity that matters" is based on race, gender and ethnicity. Race, gender and ethnicity are based on diversity. Yes, affirmative action is not perfect but it must do until we, as a society, can come up with something better that achieves diversity.
Way back in 1974 the Canadian government wanted to promote gender equality in middle and senior management in Canada's workforce. It set the goal of gender equality within 10 years. It became a policy goal for the federal government but the banks and private business said they wanted to do it voluntarily. Canada, being (usually) a sensible country, agreed to let them try.
In 1984 the results were in - the federal government did not achieve gender equality but affirmative action policies did improve the ratio. The banks and the privates, for all their lip service, went backwards. At the end of 10 years, there were proportionally fewer women in middle and senior management.
If we agree, as a society, that we want to increase diversity, then we have to come up with a way to actively make it happen. Wishful thinking and good intentions won't do it.
Unless all the white, blond, blue-eyed men who are saying here that they disagree with affirmative action actually do not want diversity. Is the stark truth that some men simply don't want to share? It's starting to look as if some men really do want anyone who isn't just like them to always be second class.
6
I feel that people like me - pudgy, bald, middle-aged men - are seriously underrepresented in the workforce of High-Tech industry.
And my IQ is higher than Trump's...
25
A lot of these articles criticizing tech diversity miss a lot of crucial points and average readers are getting the wrong impression about Silicon Valley. It’s not so much a problem with tech as much as it’s a problem with the Bay Area.
Tech’s biggest diversity problem is not race or gender, it’s AGE. All these companies put out diversity reports and all of them omit age data. Their diversity data is sort of useless if they don’t include age.
Second, having lived in San Francisco, the ethnic makeup of the entire Bay Area is different than any other metropolitan area. As a hiring pool you will see mostly white or Asian people. It’s not discrimination, that’s the demographic that lives closest to Google, Apple, Facebook etc.
If these companies were located someplace else you would probably see more diversity. If these companies simply encouraged a remote workforce you would see more diversity.
29
Having worked extensively in Silicon Valley, I respectfully disagree. Your analysis of the Bay Area is spot on BUT the large majority of those employed in Silicon Valley are recruited from across the country and around the world. Which underscores another big issue, why are they skewing so white, male, and young? Answer: Racism, Sexism, Ageism.
7
1) Do you think that perhaps the demographics in the Bay Area might not also be an _effect_ of Silicon Valley? Hardly all of those young white (and Asian) men are starting out in San Francisco.
2) San Francisco has a significant population of Latinos which is not reflected in the makeup of tech companies.
In any case, I would suggest you look at the tech industry offices in New York City and see if you can replicate your very incorrect conclusion. And, in any case, it does nothing to explain away the lack of women in the industry.
As for age, I don't disagree that that is a problem, but age is hardly a protected category, and the discrimination attendant on racial prejudice and sexism are harsher and more far-reaching in their consequences.
1
Please consider age in your underserved populations. Before applying to a job, I try to look at the composition of staff. If they are all in their 20s or 30s, I don't waste my time, knowing my resume will be the electronic equivalent of circular filed.
41
Exactly. It is amazing that almost every single article about diversity issues almost always excludes the age component.
5
The word "diversity" means diversity of thought ,experience and perspective everywhere in the world.In the US we apply a narrower definition, principally to address discrimination against minorities.When we argue that "diversity" is good for business, we are addressing both the narrower, legally oriented definition and the broader one which the Apple executive seems to have been talking about.We should continue to focus on both but remember that ethnocentric diversity is itself assumed to be a source of diversity in the broader sense.Too much focus on the narrower definition results in the backlash we are witnessing, in which everyone loses.
21
Very true but as a white man, I can empathize with people of color and women, but I will never know what it feels like to be distrusted, followed, and policed. Or ogled, fondled, and harassed over and over all day long.
7
It seems to me that there are two distinct reasons for supporting diversity: to bring different perspectives to the table, and to give everyone a fair shot.
You can hire different kinds of people to give your enterprise a wider range of knowledge and capability, or you can do it because a) it is fair, b) in many instances the government mandates that you do it, and c) it is good PR.
These two goals are not the same but they are compatible.
If a company really wanted a diversity of experiences to inform their decision making process, they would allow non-executive types to have a say in their board meetings, but I digress...
4
I am 100% behind hiring for ability and skill and promoting based on productivity metrics that quantify merit.
What I want to know is what is the metric that will make the complainers happy?
Black people are 17% of the U.S. population and only 11% of that 17% hold degrees.
Women are 51% of the population, but less than 1/3rd of American women hold degrees. Subtract from that the number of degrees in non-business and non-technology fields. Subtract from that result the number of women who elected to leave the working world to raise a family, which does affect their seniority and current skill relevancy when they return to the work world. The remainder is small.
White males have for the longest time been the "bread winner" in the family and business world, meaning they went after the higher paying jobs so their spouses could stay home.
So which of these white males should lose their jobs in leadership and in the C-suite to accommodate the demands for instantaneous diversity?
A far more problematic number is how many Blacks are there with the degrees and experiences to fill ALL the roles in EVERY industry that people like the author demand be made diverse?
I agree that in a perfect world, one that is racially perfectly balanced, a completely diverse workforce would be doable, but we don't live in that world, and until we do, those that keep making these type demands need to come up with some solid numbers that quantify their demands for diversity.
25
I note that this rather lengthy comment did not include the percentage of white males with college degrees. One would like to think that is not because of the well-known fact that the percentage of college educated women in this country has for many years now well exceeded the percentage of college educated men - suggesting that, if we factored in the numerical considerations mentioned here, the current cohort of office professionals, and all hires from this point forward, would have to be overwhelmingly female to reflect that reality. Any result that includes a greater percentage of a much less-qualified group (men) over a far more-qualified one (women) would have to represent the sort of artificial attempt to achieve diversity this comment laments, no?
32
Unfortunately, a college degree, and most credentialism, is an extremely poor predictor of success in most parts of life (apart from life in an ecosystem which values a college degree, which is a lovely bit of reductio), but that's a whole other thread.
2
No. A college degree as a screening function applies mostly to entry-level jobs - and, of course, the kind of degree also has importance. After that, the degree becomes less and less significant as actual job performance becomes the primary qualification for advancement.
Hence, the disparity in numbers among those receiving degrees is hardly the key qualification that explains the subsequent lop-sided numbers in all the fields where diversity remains elusive.
2
"Diversity" as a code word was always a political cover for a more fundamentally honest premise: that this country has intentionally disadvantaged black Americans and therefore it is appropriate and permissible under the 14th Amendment to advantage them in some circumstances to counterbalance that historical (and, in some cases, ongoing) active negative discrimination. Justice Marshall, in his concurrence in Bakke vs. Board of Ed., the case that created "diversity" as a standalone value, called out this sophistry in no uncertain terms. We should have diversity initiatives, but they must be honest. The point is not that having a racially balanced team of software engineers will produce better software. The point is that having a racially balanced professional class (and political class, and artistic class and so on) will produce a better country.
12
Thank you. So true.
I'm all on board for increasing diversity in businesses. However it does not follow that women should make up 50 percent of leadership roles and 50 percent of technical roles at major tech companies rather than the figures of 30 percent and 27 percent respectively as quoted. If the candidates applying for such positions are much more than 30 percent and 27 percent female I'd be very surprised.
It's not just a matter of different distribution of talent but different distribution of ambition between the sexes as collectives. Individuals - whether male or female - should be chosen on merit whatever the field. If talented and motivated men are being rejected in favour of less talented and motivated women then that's prejudice. Supposing men and women collectively should be equally talented and inspired by tech when they are not is pointless and absurd howling at the moon.
19
Trying to have this discussion is what got Damore fired from Google.
4
I am a left-leaning liberal University professor in the Physical Sciences. I voted for Obama twice, for Bernie in the primaries and for Hillary in the general election. I am disgusted by Republicans in general and Trump and his followers in particular. Yet I am sick and tired of this diversity nonsense, and of political correctness as a whole. Diversity has zero to do with intellectual prowess, capability for hard work, honesty and proficiency to do a good job. Forcing diversity on universities, businesses, government and society in general has two consequences. First, it suppresses real talent. Second, it fuels trumpism.
For the record, I grew up in Argentina, the son of immigrant parents, Galician (NW Spain) father and French mother. My two mother tongues are Spanish and English, as I was educated at a British school. My culture is 100% European. I do not consider myself "Hispanic".
53
"Suppresses real talent??" So you're suggesting that the people who are not getting opportunities because they're women, ethnic minorities, disabled, or because of their sexual orientation aren't really talented? By that measure, the majority of the few that get opportunities would fail; flame out.
I hope you see what's wrong with your statement.
6
There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of my statements. As I said, this whole diversity nonsense is a complete waste of time.
4
Understand also that the diversity referenced here is not necessarily connected to Title VII's mandates on employment discrimination. Under Title VII, employment discrimination exists only when it can be shown to occur with reference to the pool of available applicants for a position. In other words, there is no Title Vll discrimination in the tech industry if the pool of applicants contains 98% males and 2% females and a company workforce has only one female for every 50 males. Desirable diversity is another matter.
6
Years ago I was in a band with a guitarist who insisted on always playing with overdriven distortion on his guitar. When we asked him to change the sound to something more appropriate to the song we were playing he fiddled with the knobs on his amp a bit, but the result sounded almost identical. I joked that he was playing in "different shades of red (rather than different colors)." This is the same. Some difference in shading or detail doesn't change the fact that there is more common ground and experience in the upbringings of all those blue-eyed blonde men than if the group were more heterogeneous. Ms. Smith's comment pays lip service to the very concept of diversity--not to satisfy some requirement too minimal to even be a statutory definition, but to actually BE diverse, providing opportunity and reaping the experience of the infinite variety of people on this Earlth
4
These articles are fine, but I want to see more articles about declaring google, amazon and facebook, etc monopolies and shredding them into tiny tiny pieces.
7
Race and gender, but why not class? Troubling indeed.
13
Actually one of the most troubling trends is the tech diversity debate is the assignment of whiteness to Asian-Americans to come to the conclusion that tech is overwhelmingly white and shuts out minorities.
Facebook's workforce is 50% non white. Can anyone link me to a major media outlet, Wall St firm, or big law firm that is 50% white? So what is the problem with tech again?
18
Economic class diversity is the most important viewpoint to have, and bringing in people with lower economic class backgrounds would be disproportionately minority.
When "diversity" was first a mantra, all I saw was what I called "multi-complexionist monoculture." Genuine diversity has value, but I welcome the move away from complexion and genitals as the standard of "diversity."
4
We are tribal. If women were the majority, they would have to be compeled to let men into good jobs in their cliques too.
The most incompetent people are Human Resources, Diversity leaders etc. The profession needs to be changed to hire more qualified professionals.
Otherwise, how can anyone explain that there has been no progress made with diversity in years. And things like sexual harassment remain as prevalent as ever.
The HR folks in our office are always running in circles. When we meet with them, we rarely have any of their staff that understand the language of business.
The statement made by this woman is hardly surprising. She has probably never examined the reason for decades of failure of diversity, and is doing the HR thing of staying in a glass house and darting out to "arrest wrong doers"... She ought to resign. Seriously!
4
Women are the majority, at around 51% of the population, as we live longer.
1
Women are the majority.
1
So *this* is the part of diversity mania you think is troubling, is it?
This ranks way, way down on the list. It's much more troubling that the idea forces us to choose people for positions on the basis of almost-entirely-irrelevant characteristics like race, sex...and even sexual orientation (and now even fabricated characteristics like "gender identity"). Oh, and: it's thin camouflage for advancing a politically-non-neutral agenda.
We'd certainly be better off ditching the *term* entirely, since it's dangerously euphemistic, and has become a kind of mantra. I tend to think: if you can't bring yourself to say what you're doing clearly, you probably ought to reconsider doing it. If you're going to give hiring advantages on the basis of race, sex, etc., you should at least be able to say so openly.
"Diversity," as the author notes, is an idea that gained currency after Bakke, on the shaky grounds that it would bring different perspectives to universities. Now that the argument is actually being taken seriously, and people are suggesting that "diversity" of thought should actually count...*now* it's "troubling"...
I'm not dead set against affirmative action. Like any reasonable person, I'm torn about it. But I *am* against the excesses of the contemporary cultural left, its cultish devotion to its shibboleths, and its dogmatic intolerance of ideas that are, from its perspective, heterodox.
7
You'll never get *enough* viewpoint diversity without actively insuring your workplace is sufficiently diverse in other ways. Of course 12 white men will bring some diversity to the table. Just not enough.
4
How much is enough?
What this argument comes down to is that your thoughts and ideas don't matter as much as being the right color and gender.
5
So many white men commenting here. Why am I not surprised?
The comments made in response to this Op-Ed piece are an excellent example that "12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room" do NOT contribute to cognitive diversity.
16
Factual premise. The commenters are blue eyed white men.
Reality. No. The factual premise is wrong.
Why
Oh why
Am
I
Not
Surprised? Try to get a beta out with that type of engineering "talent"
First of all, you have no idea how many commenters here are white men. Second of all, how dare you disparage your fellow commenters based on their race and gender, implying that their voices should not be heard because of how they were born. You have just laid bare the naked hatred that lies just beneath the surface of the diversity push.
5
Diversity initiatives exist because members of excluded groups stood up for themselves and said, "You can't exclude me just because I'm a woman/am black/whatever."
If discrimination didn't exist, we wouldn't need these initiatives. The guys who feel threatened by them tell us that these programs are unfair and bogus besides, because...merit.
Yet every week, we get more evidence of the troglodyte views that have kept so many of us on the outside: Harvey Weinstein, the creeps who pretended to care while sending emails to Milos Yiannopoulis (e.g. "Please mock this fat feminist"), Charlottesville, etc.
And then there's the "reasonable" guy who says, "We can't have a rational discussion about women or others in tech" as a prelude to an insulting statement implying that the people revealing the discrimination are the unreasonable ones. Bottom line: there are egos at stake here, and outsiders who are better at coding or math than the privileged males are big threats in that regard. Grow up, please, gentlemen.
16
Justice and fairness and non-discrimination and broader recruitment efforts and checking biases are one thing. The need for these things is incontrovertible as far as I can see.
Setting diversity goals is quite another thing. People and groups of people end up choosing and thriving in different kinds of training and careers for all kinds of reasons. Those differences should be recognized and not socially engineered away.
The important things are that the processes must be just and fair for everyone--and that discussion and debate about these difficult matters not be closed down.
7
@Nathan simultaneously missed my point and gave a perfect example of a faux-reasonable guy making a claim about "differences" that sounds reasonable but isn't.
The plausible deniability clause here is that the "diversity" crowd is really just refusing to see personality and other traits, and is trying to pretend that we have to "socially engineer" women and others into jobs they don't really want. But this is a dog whistle, and the other dogs know that he's really referring to "biological differences" which mean that wimmin and blacks and hispanics aren't good at writing code, that women prefer "caring" jobs, etc. And they can all nod knowingly when no one is listening.
The diversity initiatives exist because too many guys want to hire people who look like them. They don't want to admit this, so they tell us that "people are different" and that we can't "close down the debate," which is one of another one of those code phrases that means, "There are biological differences! Will you people please stop complaining? We've hired enough of you, for heaven's sake."
3
It's very hard to have a reasonable discussion when someone dismisses what you actually say because they already know what you must "really" be saying. It's a good combat maneuver, but I don't see how it advances the discussion or creates mutual understanding.
2
The author essentially insists on categorizing people by their race, sex, and sexual orientation and using that in hiring decisions. How is this not what we need to be fighting against?
12
Isn't much of tech in the business of selling us things? Why do white men believe that they posses the life experiences required to sell to women or minorities? I'd argue that in most cases, they don't which explains how we end up with I-phones that are too big for the average American woman's hands (much less any woman in Asia).
Twitter (despite an over-representation of black American users) and Facebook are facing extreme criticism now because their teams aren't diverse enough to understand how to come up with policies that protect all users from sexual and racist abuse. Reddit, which hired Elaine Pao, has been able to shut down its nastiest trolls and make the platform more inclusive to all users.
Diversity in tech isn't just about doing the right thing morally. It's also about having the humility to seek representatives of the different groups that tech is trying to sell products to.
12
If there are all these talented people who can't get hired because of their race, gender or whatever why don't they just start their own company? With all that diversity it would be world-beating.
Also, how is it that very non-diverse South Korea can produce a top company like Samsung? How is this even possible when they don't have the super-powers that diversity brings?
Just asking.
8
Columns like this are perfect to help reinforce the absurdity of what has become of thoughtful discussion on topics like diversity. It is so painfully obvious that ethnicity and sex are included in the diversity officer’s job that when they remind people that diversity of backgrounds is important as well they are publicly shamed. Diversity of opinion: apparently that is the evil?
It would be a real problem if HR thought all white men with blue eyes were the same. I mean we all know they are obviously descendants of Washington and none of them had poor, abusive homes or emigrated to the USA recently or maybe even had surgery to change their sex?
11
Though she forgot to mention that all 12 would also be under 40.
8
“That’s right: a dozen white men, so long as they were not raised in the same household and don’t think identical thoughts, could be considered diverse.”
And the problem with this idea is what, exactly? I’ve been the only person of my color in my neighborhood in a major American city; I’ve been told to get out of a country where I lived because I wasn’t from there; I’ve been attacked by racists; I’ve lived as a foreigner overseas as an adult. And guess what? I’m white. Do all white people have my background and experiences?
I’m so sick of being judged by the color of my skin by the very people who will absolutely howl in offense at the idea of people being judged by the color of their skin. “Diversity” has been turned into a weapon by the modern left to bludgeon anyone who dares disagree with them.
And to dispel another judgment: I’ve voted for the Democrat in every presidential election since I turned 18 in 1993.
23
Cognitive diversity and viewpoint diversity are the ONLY forms of diversity relevant to intellectual activities.
8
So let’s magically leave our innate and learned cultural preferences at the door when we enter the workplace. Please explain how that’s done? The creation of more and more powerful tools of computation is not an intellectual exercise. It has real world consequences and drives culture and policy. If real diversity is not called for here then where else?
3
The overwhelming majority of comments are critical of Williams. As someone who lives and works in the area, I find that hilarious. First, coding is not rocket science. Second, like the screed-writer at Google, many techies lack real world experience - especially the white boys. Third, Asian immigrants don't exactly support women inclusion. Fourth, the products they work on will not thrive under the mindset they have. Luckily many in the Valley recognize something has to be done.
7
Right. The tech industry has been a huge creative and economic failure.
It doesn't succeed or fail as a whole. Many companies fail, some succeed to different degrees. Do you think the industry is anywhere near optimal? Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
Recognizing the value of "cognitive diversity" doesn't invalidate or threaten race- and gender-based diversity.
If someone says they like sprinkles, does that mean they can't like donuts? Of course not. That would be silly. There's a good chance they like donuts with sprinkles.
I guess at every institution in this country we need diversity like in our Supreme Court - you have every color, sex, religion, and age. But everyone went to Harvard or Yale.
How about this revolutionary idea? For technical roles, judge someone by their technical knowledge.
6
Isn't cognitive diversity the entire point of diversity? To bring other ideas and concepts to the table.
5
The dozen white men do not represent diversity, because they have all grown up white. They have all benefited from the status and privilege that being white men brings them. Whether they are American or European, poor or rich, they all share the same experience of being white, which creates a particular point of view and understanding of the world that they all share. It's nearly impossible for white men to grasp what it is to be non-white and non-male, and to live without the implicit advantage that being white confers on them.
9
Pure sexism, this comment. How do you know that "it's nearly inpossible for white men to grasp what it is like to be non-white and non-male." Do you have published empiric results to back up this statement or is this just how you feel? To my knowledge, there is no validated evidence that a majority of white men are severly handicapped in regards to empathy or theory of mind.
2
Regarding diversity and lack of people of color in tech: Is it really a surprise then that another recently heralded, burgeoning tech scene is taking off in Salt Lake City?
1
Well, it also could be that there are tasks which are better and more efficiently performed by 12 white blond blue-eyed men (or by 12 black one-eyed lesbians for that matter) than by a team selected solely on the basis of "diversity". As long as we live in a capitalist society economically driven by the profit motive, it is hard to argue that businesses should sacrifice efficiency for the sake of diversity. Those who do that will simply be less efficient and less competitive, unless the sate intervenes with some diversity-imposing laws. Of course, such monopolists as Google or Facebook can unilaterally impose diversity without fear of competition an maybe they should. But that would based entirely on their monopolistic position and would not work as a matter of general principle. You can shame tech entrepreneurs all you want, but unless it is required by law they will always select their teams based on skills and expertise rather than on some concept of diversity. They would not survive in that business otherwise.
1
I I live and work in the Silicon Valley. I am surrounded by people from China, India, Iran, Turkey, Israel and Vietnam. Our best friends are a mixed Russian-Israeli couple. When we go to events either in my husband's or my own company, we hear more languages than in a UN session. This is not enough diversity for you?
10
No, we need 'under-represented' minorities. You missed the memo.
Wait...so the comments of a high level woman in tech (and Apple exec no less!) are disparaged because she promotes something outside the standard definition of identity diversity! Wow! That's irony. Isn't Apple's most popular slogan "Think Different?"
Also, what this article omits is that much of tech includes Asians, east and south. Are these folks now "white" too? So is the only definition of diversity satisfied by the presence of blacks and Latinos, or gender differentiation? What is the percentage of blacks and Latinos interested in this field? Can we deduce from graduation rates? What about socioeconomic class diversity, within the "white" community? Doesn't that count for something? Or ethnic diversity?
Maybe we are focusing TOO much on identity politics. Hmmm...
8
'Diversity' campaigns take investment & sustained focus.Current exec & sr mgmt incentive/comp plans don't incorporate 'diversity' as a measurable element. Also, this type of change doesn't happen over the course of a week, month, year or years. Like any other industry, the power in tech lies w/in the board, the exec team, the VCs, the PE firms(if applicable)& shareholders.The industry is anchored on seeing itself as being on a grwth continuum that never ends - meeting qtly targets are imperative to ensure &/or make it appear the firm is on a constant trajectory of grwth. When they don't hit the #'s; they cut expense(certainly programs that fund 'diversity') & course correct to get back on a grwth trajectory. The 'diversity' campaigns are feigned attempts to build the illusion that tech is 'democratic' & leaders are addressing diversity proactively. But, funding for these programs are a constant struggle & participation is in addition to their overworked day job. Ideas1) more of the millennial generation need to get into the leadership roles to make 'diversity'work; its embeded in their cultural mindset, who knows for how long that could change as they age2) the boomers, & many of the gen-x'ers aren't interested. If you want them interested, then change elements of their incentive plans to have a measurable target on 'diversity' however that target is to be defined. Now they're focused on hitting their qrlly targets to reap their monetary rewards & to exit the industry ASAP.
Everyone wants to be famous. Everyone wants to be Einstein. Everyone wants a unicorn.
Grandiose daydreaming is the first most unifying color under the skin that America has.
The second most unifying American trait across all race and gender is that should fate smile and we get position or power we will not see luck but a well deserved outcome. We will tweet 'blessed' but feel vindication.
The third most unifying trait of all colors, genders and creeds is that once we have attained power we will build a wall and do all we can to hold on to it and keep anyone else from taking it back. And I mean everyone no matter their 'diverse' cred. We will do this in part by asserting that we are being attacked by forces of discrimination.
This is because we live in The United States of superlatives.
Outwardly a nation of racial and sexual disharmony. Inwardly racially and sexually united in our equal capacities to be unreasonable in our needs and demands, our preference to blame, our incapacity to forgive, our dislike of hard work, our passion for revisionist history, and our seemingly boundless capacity to be a jerk.
So we are so much more alike than we think and Silicone Valley the grand fiefdom of jerkiness should be open to a more diverse population of those who share their exact same traits.
3
So-called Diversity is being used as a weapon by the Social Justice Warrior Class to bludgeon anyone who opposes their chosen narrative.
What diversity means varies greatly. What it sounds like to many in the cheap seats is a quota system that will push less than qualified people at the expense of more qualified people because of demographics. If that is what diversity is by your definition, then I am wholeheartedly opposed to it.
We should strive for a workplace and a merit-based society defined by equity, respect and tolerance. Should a business headcount the staff to see if there are too many of (x) therefore we need to hire some (y)s? Of course the answer is no, we should hire the best people because they are the most qualified regardless of who or what they are or are not.
It should not matter if the Apple Board is all women or all men, all gay or all straight, all brown people or white people, all Stanford grads or all Cal Tech Grads. What should matter is that they are the best people possible who want to do the work and can get it done. Hiring anyone or not hiring anyone because they are a whatever is stupid in the extreme.
There are multiple programs already in place to encourage and mentor women and minorities to enter Engineering and Sciences. Every company has a non discrimination policy and a zero tolerance for harassment. The next step is on the students who choose NOT to get a STEM degree and then whine about Tech's lack of diversity.
2
Pursuing arbitrary goals where candidates self-select their technical schooling at an early stage is irrational - as any good engineer will tell you.
Black engineers graduate at about 4% of the total - so guess what Ms. Williams - exactly how many black engineers can you expect in a randomly assembled group of 12 engineers - it's a stats sampling problem and easily calculable.
Just in passing - Ms. Williams' Tech Credentials are lacking as well - no science or engineering degrees here either.
Can we suggest a truism - you are bound to have trouble getting a job in "Tech" without an actual - you know - technical degree and that the "professional" critics of tech should at least have some actual tech chops.
6
I am a strongly left-leaning liberal university professor in the physical sciences. I voted for Obama twice, for Bernie in the primaries and for Hillary in November. I hate and despise Republicans in general and Trump in particular. But I am sick and tired of all of this diversity nonsense, and of political correctness generally speaking. What matters is how good you are at doing something. What is your intellectual acumen and your capacity for hard work. Period. "Diversity" has never and will never contribute anything to science nor to any other meaningful human achievement. The only thing that forcing diversity on universities, businesses, government, etc. accomplishes is to force out talent in the name of political correctness.
For the record. I grew up in Argentina the son of immigrant parents, Galician (as in NW Spain) father and French mother. My mother tongue is Spanish. My culture is 100% European. I do not consider myself "Hispanic".
6
At least the author is open about the purpose of "diversity" hiring: to discriminate against White men and ensure there are fewer of them in tech jobs.
I'm sure that culling the very group that brought us the microprocessor, the digital computer, the programming language and virtually every other significant technology of the past two centuries is justified in the interests of diversity.
6
Investigations of numbers by race in technology companies usually ignore the percentage of Asians, which is usually much higher than the population as a whole. The statement that it will be 'all white men' is thus untrue.
6
Though Asians are often middle management and not on executive boards. Still, the industry itself is probably more "diverse" than media lead us to believe. Because well, Asians are often not included in these minority/diversity stats.
1
In other words, don't believe all that propaganda we've been shoveling about how diversity makes for better decision making. We were just yanking your chain. All we are interested in is pillaging a little of Silicon Valley's vast pile of money.
2
Groups constantly demanding unearned gateway crutches minus gruntwork deserve skeptical welcoming reception.
2
I have seen this brand of cynicism, laziness, and white male supremacy in my own workplace, which is certainly not in the tech industry. Generally, though, the best available people in any field don't need to shore up their dominance with cynicism and laziness. The best available people undertake the challenge of working with those who don't remind them of their own reflection in the mirror without seeking out ways to nudge that challenge into meaninglessness.
Part of the problem here is, of course, that the very word "diversity" came to represent the remedy for white male supremacy because it is malleable in that way. Let's say it right out loud and specifically. White male supremacy is a problem in the workplace, it is a problem everywhere, and that means that no matter the delightful individual differences and viewpoints distributed among white males, nuanced as no doubt they are especially when they are slightest, a conference room fully stocked with the "diversity" of white males only does nothing at all to end white male supremacy.
5
What you say about the word "diversity" reminds me of something I've thought of since my first year in college, the "slogan" for New Student Week that year, 1992. We all wore T-shirts that said, "Unity Through Diversity," which, now that I think about it, might as well have said, "We're all the same because we're different," (???) which, now that I think about it even more, says pretty much nothing at all. I--along with many others--might have preferred T-shirts that said, "End White Male Supremacy."
1
Diversity is not in your head it is evidence in the number your tech company hires as H1 B visa employees. The company saves a bunch of cash, the board of directors is happy that you are saving money in salaries and impacting the profit the shareholders would eventually benefit from. And talent is out there hirable trainable and willing to work for less pay —Philippines Israel India Mexico ...
2
I work in Silicon Valley, and there are preferences in hiring that go against diversity. Managers hire the people that they are comfortable with.
Chinese mangers hire Chinese. Taiwanese managers hire Taiwanese. South Asian (Indian) managers hire South Asians, and American managers, in my case, hire all of the above.
At a micro level there is not much diversity. At a macro level there is. Silicon Valley, by any objective criteria, is the most diverse work force there is. Yes we need more women, Blacks, and Latinos.
How do we make this happen? Promote people in these groups to first level managers.
2
'Diversity'......widely used code word of the 21st century employed to promote the hiring of unqualified and under qualified individuals. See also 'Political Correctness'.
3
In diversity discussions, cognitive diversity usually refers to Neuro atypical people, rather than diversity of thought.
In the end all that matters is, who can do the work. Nothing else.
4
The author should visit some big name companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, where 80% percent of their tech workforce is composed of Chinese and Indian nationals on OPT and H-1B visas. Ask those Americans (usually older and white) whose jobs have been displaced so that companies can have a docile workforce, what they think about "diversity".
3
'DIVERSITY'......widely used code word of the 21st century employed to promote the hiring of unqualified and under qualified individuals. See also POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
1
Must the obvious be stated? If you hire a truly diverse workforce, then you’ll achieve your “cognitively diverse” goals.
I retired from the tech industries after over 30 years,and I have a contrarian viewpoint. When I worked on a project team, and later when I led them, I had absolutely no interest in the team member's pigmentation or genitalia. All I cared about was what they could bring to the team from between their ears, not between their legs.
I worked with many brilliant professionals, and many who were less than stellar, and I noticed no correlation between skills and race, gender, or anything else. Tech companies, like any other company, should be hiring the best and brightest they can find if they want to succeed.
2
There is a lot more diversity of thought and experiences between a white male born/raised/living in San Francisco and one born/raise/living in a rural/farm community, than between that white male from San Francisco and an Asian or Hispanic woman from San Francisco.
Gender and race may be an attribute. But regional, political (conservative vs liberal), urban/rural, often brings much more diversity.
Take the NYT as an example. What it needs to be more diverse is some rural, NRA members in its editorial staff. Not another urban minority journalist.
2
Women, of every color and nationality, can “think different” too.
Silicon Valley is not mostly white men. It has a large, diverse population from all over the world, particularly Asia. That may not match the politically-driven definition of "diversity" in America, but it resembles the world more closely than American racial-quota schemes.
3
LIGO doesn't care. Neither do the neutrinos from which we are all "technically speaking" created.
1
Again, just because you can think it doesn't mean you should say it.
When you fail to meet a standard, or the standard doesn't benefit white guys, just change the definition.
When you replace Ms Smith with Ms Jones, you will get a ton of diversity at Apple.
The President of Spelman College said at the National Press Club her school was diverse, they had students from 43 states. The school is 98% African American. Nobody laughed.
2
Why do people judge diversity by the color of the skin or the gender of the person?
What the diversity proponents are saying that all white males are the same, and that their experiences and points of view are identical and thus are not valuable.
Isn't that exactly what racists do?
3
For the Animal Farm progressive left, gay folk are "born that way" but no other human preferences have any basis in biology. These progressives attack evangelical Christians for denying Darwin's discovery, but themselves refuse to accept the evolutionary origins of basic human drives.
They cloak the wolf of discrimination in the sheep's clothing of surface diversity.
They are anti-science. They are totalitarian.
2
What do you expect of a culture shaped by people like Larry Frankenstein Page who won't even tolerate an engineer having to listen to someone who isn't an engineer.
White men will rule.
Since the number of Silicon Valley Chinese and Indian tech workers rises by the day and are apparently, based on the premises of this opinion piece, now white males, white men have the numbers. About half the planet population. And most all the outlier coders.
But I am sure there is some mindless slogan that makes the Indian presence in Silicon Valley irrelevant, as irrelevant as with the desperate defense of those immigrant visas for the big brains by the Silicon big boys.
2
Inclusivity of viewpoints and ideas goes back to the founding fathers and is as American as it gets and gets at the most noble traditions our country can claim.
Viewpoints, and non-conventional ideas are what have moved civilization forward...because so often, 'the truth' (whatever is supported by science, observation, and prudential) reasoning is inconvenient or goes against tradition.
Racial and 'gender' diversity doesn't contribute anything in and of itself. There is nothing gained by having more shades of pigment on your engineering team. Sorry, there just isn't.
Race and 'gender' can be good proxies for sub-populations of people that have different, non-conventional ideas that are worth preserving and examining...but let's not get confused. It is the ideas that matter...not genetics and lifestyle choices.
Yet this remains the shibboleth of the left because 1) there are a lot of people whose jobs depend on their being ethnic axes to grind and 2) mental laziness; you can 'see' the difference.
Have no doubt about it people. The diversity commisars have a great deal of interest in keeping the nation divided into groups with petty rivalries...divide et impera.
You, John (or Jane) Q Public, have a much bigger interest in resisting them and embracing diversity the way our grandparents did...in setting aside differences and becoming a new body politic...Americans.
Would you rather have the person next to you match a diversity checklist requirement, or be competent?
1
The TImes reports that skin color is a relatively superficial genetic factor.
Genes for Skin Color Rebut Dated Notions of Race, Researchers Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/science/skin-color-race.html
So, cognitive diversity seems to be more important than skin color.
4
Is diversity the problem, or it really "hostility to others?"
You get less diversity from a visual pallet of Stanford grads then you can picking the median white guy in every county along I-5. If diversity is valuable for anything other than meeting affirmative action targets, then you have to look at people and cultures, not skin tone.
1
Race considered a social construct unless unprepared subaltern--not Asian though--demands unearned occupational award.
4
Ok gang...let's go over this again what Lincoln taught us.
Fight discrimination tooth and nail but do it legally and slowly and without malice.
It is a fine line liberals and feminists thread here. Separate discrimination and playing the card....ie women must get 50% of everything because they are
female.
2
Perhaps the problem is that Americans themselves are not very good at these jobs, once you get beyond the first or second generation of immigrants. In my experience, quite a few of the "white skins" are on Russians, Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners and others who don't fit neatly into the white/black/latino theology of American "progressivism". And the Indians and Chinese seem to have magically disappeared. Funny that.
This article is simply nativism masquerading as diversity. It's ugly. And ominous.
2
I'll feel diversity advocates will be legitimate when they insist the NBA and NFL have quotas for Asians, disabled people, transgendered people, short people, women,etc.
1
The latest in a series of anti-Tom Steyer hit pieces intended to peel off Democrats.
Bernie Bros 2.0
Try not to fall for this routine again.
1
It is great to see a newspaper with a nearly all-white executive team (see https://www.nytco.com/executives/ ) having the courage to promote the idea of racial diversity at other companies.
2
"Diversity", per se, is a net benefit why?
Because it is a feel good thing? Because you collect racial and gender "Types" as if they are Lincoln Head pennies?
Absent a clear benefit to the financial well being of a company, why is this anything other than another vapid progressive virtue signaling device?
3
Denying the "law of the jungle" will be a waste of time
1
Somehow these articles never mention the number of Asians. Why?
2
A black female diversity officer deviating for a millisecond from the party line? No wonder it makes it to the op-ed section. Not to worry, articles like this will re-educate her soon enough.
3
Include women, PoC, LGBTQ people, and other underrepresented minorities and you get cognitive diversity for free! #MindBlown
30% of Google employees are Asian.
http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/
California's population is about 15% Asian.
The US population is about 5% Asian.
Google does not have a 30% Asian workforce because of white racism. They hire the best they can find. Tech lives and breathes brain power, not race. Groups that score 0.9 standard deviations below the mean on the ACT and SAT are not going to be heavily represented in tech.
6
Your first hire: the best engineer. So far so good. The next hire... that’s where problems start. Since the first one happened to be a white male, the second hire has to be black. Then, Asian. Then Latino. Then Muslim. Then Jew. Then women... one of each religion and race. Then fat, then thin. Then, we have to throw in some gay and bisexual because yes, sexual orientation is extremely important in the tech world. Only then, when you have satisfied all of the diversity requirements you can hire your second best engineer, who fell to the twenty seventh place.
This is simply Absurd. The diversity histeria just does not make sense and makes the world and companies mediocre and inefficient.
1
This is why these so called diversity experts are a waste of time. A company that hires the best regardless of race, gender or orientation does not need a diversity VP. What Ms Young has proved is she is the equivalent of Apple's "black friend"! You know the one black person you flash to show the world your hip.
hiring someone for their skin color is just as stupid and wrong as disciminating against a person for it. report the number of indiand working in tech. they certainly werent hired for the color of their skin. if you interview with me no amount of color will make up for a lack of coding ability. and if you can code you can make it anywhere in tech.
2
March in step now, children of the regimented present and enslaved future, lest you appear a tad too "diverse". The abject idiocy of the ascendant thought fascism is on display with every spurious contrivance such as this column of comedic conjuring. Unfortunately a great horde of over-educated poltroons consider it their messianic duty to talk this talk, which renders mute anything else they might contribute. Out of key can be corrected; tone deaf is an entirely different matter.
It's sad to see anti-intellectual pieces being puffed up at the top of the Nytimes. Whatever happened to not judging someone by the color of their skin but instead by their ideas and abilities?
Identity politics is going to rot away the American social fabric. I hope the editors at the NYTimes think about reining this in and leaving this type of journalism to the Breitbart of the left--Huffington Post.
2
I guess, all those Indians and Chinese in the tech industry do not count as diversity.
6
i worked at a group of 150 that was 90% south indian. Is that your idea of diversity?
2
Thank you for confirming "diversity" is politically-correct code for "racial quotas."
2
it'd a fallacy that diversity can only be achieved by the color of your skin. Where you are from, what religion you follow, what your educational background is, your family background all make you what you are, as well as your race and gender. An Italian American from Brooklyn may will have a different perspective than a Swedish American from Minnesota. Lumping them together because they are White is just as Racist as saying all black people are alike.
2
The author's contempt for the only kind of diversity that should matter--intellectual divwersity--puts on full and shameful display the entitlement ethic of identity polics. Shameful, insulting to human dignity, and unAmerican.
2
So long as you believe that one group cannot be included in "diversity", you are being destructive, discriminatory, and biased.
2
Using skin tone to measure diversity is called racism.
4
Companies should just hire the most qualified people they can find.No reason for govt to force anyone or company to hire anyone based on race,age,etc.End fascism now.
1
I've been in HR for 30 years, at top companies. Diversity hiring is PR, that's it. It's superficial nonsense, just like this article, which sheds zero light on why so few blacks are in tech. (A substandard public school system that does not give them a fair shot.)
Employers won't hire unqualified people.
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Blame the public schools? That's all you've got?
1
and women?
1
Dude, if this is true of the companies you worked for, why did you stay? My experience is that companies want and need to be able to tell the public and shareholders that they are making progress on diversity, but in no case at the cost of hiring unqualified candidates. What's wrong with that?
1
Yeah? Well I don't know about anyone else but I don't much care for the garbage apps and tinker toys those 12 white men are spewing out and telling me I can't live without.
How about some real diversity so we can actually get some products to address issues rather than the peter pan fantasy land of a bunch of inexperienced privileged white geek boys.
3
What issues do you want apps to address?
The diversity problem with software companies isn't just the lack of minorities and women in the programming and leadership areas, it's also in the diversity of locations or rather location. These companies are headquartered in the Bay Area, next to Stanford and Berkeley - so everything is expensive, geekish and crammed together. These companies have to pay a small ransom for talent, and then they want 60 hours a week in return for the privilege of living inside a campus setting. How unreal can you get?
My recommendation is to establish satellite companies near major state universities and make use of the local talent - indeed, set quotas for hiring local talent, instead of using foreign workers. The armed forces found that ROTC produced much more grounded and adventurous officers than those produced by the academies (where they got mostly "yes" officers). Local talent ensures diversity, not only of race and gender, but of ideas that are more grounded in reality.
8
As a woman who spent my entire working life in 'Tech' (BS. Engineering Physics. MS. Theoretical Physics, Ph. D. Theoretical Physics, MSME) then 42+ years as either a Physics prof or an ME prof, I resent the implication that 'no' women have the intellectual 'whatever' to be seriously considered for 'tech' jobs in comparison with 'any' man. I'm sure that a number of blacks, Hispanics, and other underrepresented people feel similarly. To be written off immediately 'because' one is assumed not to have the capability when one has earned all the credentials is a serious insult.
10
I agree that that is a serious insult and inappropriate, but would you also agree that in those fields that you worked, few women strove to get the credentials you obtained? how about Blacks or Hispanics?
If you do agree, then you should also agree that a demographic like race or gender is questionable as a prime driver in hiring and also that incumbents should not lose their jobs based on trying to force diversity by hiring less qualified individual.
To put it another way, how would you feel if some pretty young woman with less ability and fewer degrees was hired to replace you with all your accomplishments? would you be okay if it was a pretty young black or latina woman?
Let's cut to the core of the matter. This is part of a national conversation we're having about merit vs diversity (affirmative action). What does Silicon Valley value more:diversity or merit? You can either hire for “diversity,” or you can hire for merit, but to the horror of SJW everywhere you can't have both. SCOTUS has never held that all workplaces must be racially or gender balanced. The Court will never embrace the presumption that the profiles of particular workplaces should reflect the composition of the broader population.
This presumption makes no sense unless people from all groups are equally qualified for positions at all levels only then will every group be represented in each occupation exactly in proportion to its share of the broader population. If members of one group are more qualified for particular positions than others, they will be hired in disproportionately greater numbers; persons from a less qualified group will be under-represented in those jobs. Right now under represented communities have chosen not to study computer engineering & coding in college...that's why they're under represented. The problem for diversity & equality advocates is that critics of quotas have framed the debate in a way that sets up an irreconcilable tension between the principle of merit & the goal of diversity. It won't work. Merit is going to win. There's no proof that hiring members of actual underrepresented communities add tangible, bottom-line value to a company.
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"There's no proof that hiring members of actual underrepresented communities add tangible, bottom-line value to a company."
Except all the proof that it does... I actually agree with you, the problem is that all these companies are ignoring merit and letting biases (both conscious and unconscious) influence hiring. If we actually had a world where companies were hiring on only merit, then you'd be completely correct, but we do not live in that world. There is, of course, a danger of over compensating, but we don't yet seem to be there.
10
If a company hires based on biases then they will lose in competition with other companies' hiring based more on merit.The free enterprise system takes care of this,in the long run.
1
Assuming adequate competition for true free market capitalism. Does the tech industry have enough competition for a true free market? And assuming the biases aren't so widespread that what competition there is isn't also perpetuating them.
1
Surely there is someone at Apple who could write an algorithm to determine that in order to have cognitive diversity you would need people who are cognitively different. While two white males one from Wharton and one from Stanford may be different cognitively from one another they are not any where as different say as the white guy from Stanford and a Hispanic woman from the University of Michigan. I'm a 67 year old white guy and for the life of me cannot figure out why this is so hard for white (men in particular) people to understand.
4
Because their salaries depend on it. "Diversity" means a larger pool of potential hires. And we can't have that, god forbid.
1
yet that hispanic woman from Stanford vs. the White guy from UW is, in your mind, an okay level of diversity?
you like the others are failing to quantify what diversity looks like. How many Hispanic women with advanced degrees are working in the U.S. Business world?
'do we just say hey you, the latina with a doctorate in spanish and english literature are now the CEO of a robotics firm or bio-celluar research firm?
people have to be qualified to do the jobs and be in leadership, and right now some populations are seriously under-represented in qualifications for some jobs.
Articles that presume the correctness of an argument based on its current popularity are lazy. Was Ms. Smith's statement inherently wrong, or just counter to the current popular thought? I don't know, but I think it's worth a conversation rather than a rush to judgement.
In how many cases is cognitive diversity gaining traction? Too many. What did James Damore pen that got him fired at Google? A screed.
It's an opinion piece so it's fine for the author to share her opinion. But it would be far more effective if she proved her arguments rather than just present them as accepted truth.
This article posits a goal - more minorities and women in certain companies - while conveniently leaving out any proposal for how to achieve it.
There is a worse sin than lack of "diversity" - racial and sexual discrimination. How can companies be expected to comply with the former demand without engaging in discrimination - something the Left typically decries?
Instead of requiring quotas of engineers of different skin colors and genitalia, let us address lack of opportunity and social pressures that occur much earlier in the talent "pipeline", i.e. in schools and families. While more difficult, this is the only ethical path.
4
It is a shame that so much of this debate is devoid of history. A few comments from a career that spanned 4 countries, 4 decades and a few degrees:
- much of the initial discussion of diversity in business arose in the 1960's
- a seminal business case, still studied in the early 1990's, was looking at the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. One key conclusion was that a lack of diversity of opinion resulted in groupthink, and WW3 was almost started
- in Management, you get what you measure. If you want attributes that are difficult to measure, you try to find a measurable proxy, and select for the proxy instead. Diversity of opinion/mind/style is very difficult to measure; diversity of experience/background is much easier to measure, but does have some correlation with diversity of opinion/mind/style
- the social discussion about the need for the diversity started a couple of decades AFTER the academic discussion of the perils of groupthink and the benefit of diverse opinions
Anecdotally, I tried to keep any group from becoming more than 75% one-dimensional, whether that dimension was male-female, US-Canada, or Pakistani-Indian -- because 75% seemed where monoculture became detrimental. I personally found that "mixed" groups were more challenging to manage, but produced better results than any homogenous group. However, those challenges presented to Management by mixed groups can be time consuming, and overworked management may take the shortcut of selecting the familiar.
1
you are trying to apply a sociological hypothetical to actually running a business, and like the others on your band wagon, you are offering no real metric on what would satisfy the diversity demand or plan on how to get enough of the disenfranchised folks trained and skilled to rise into those jobs.
I completely disagree. I believe people should be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I think it's time we became a truly colorblind society and stopped labelling people first and foremost by their race and gender. Any time you see evidence of discrimination, call it out and prosecute it. But the fact that only 3% of Apple's board is African-American does not in itself indicate that anyone's rights have been violated. This is a society of equal opportunity, not necessarily of equal outcomes according to identity grouping. And of course cognitive diversity is the most important kind of diversity. We should all be judged by our minds, not our bodies.
5
The original “Sullivan Principles” initiated by General Motors addressing apartheid in South Africa and work place diversity date back to 1977, expanded to U.N. Global Principles in 1999. This resulted in a large number of corporations appointing Chief Diversity Officers and setting internal diversity goals for employees and supply chains. The actual track record of businesses effectively implementing racially diverse policies are very poor.
McKinsey, PWC, Senator Robert Menendez Corporate Diversity Surveys and many others have documented that gender/racially diverse firms offer better financial returns and create greater shareholder value. Let's hope the rhetoric of " Cognitive" Diversity does not replace "REAL" Corporate diversity.
1
Are stock analysts making recommendations based on diversity? Is there a mutual fund seeking great returns by investing in companies because they are diverse?
If diversity really helps a company's bottom line, the investment community will be eager to jump on board. I haven't seen that happening.
Silicon Valley has the most diverse workforce in the nation, and native-born white men are actually underrepresented in the workforce. The only "over-represented" part of the workforce are Asians.
-
Silicon Valley only lacks diversity IF you actually claim that Indians, Chinese, Ukrainians, Dutch, and white Arkansans are somehow be part of the same homogeneous "white-Asian" ethnic group.
6
The only diversity that matters is what's in people's heads. The rest is just an excuse for racial discrimination and patronage.
Roger Williams, William Penn and Cotton Mather had more diversity among them than the entire faculties of most American universities.
3
When they figure out a way to measure what is in people's heads accurately, they can use that for their diversity program. Until then, they use what they can see, which like the cover of a book is only the surface.
The time to start is Head Start, elementary school. By the time kids are old enough to be applying to MIT it is too late to go back and diversify the applicant pool, even later to have tech companies fighting over a handful of "diverse" engineering grads.
6
Diversity for diversity's sake accomplishes nothing.
A truly diverse workforce based on the abilities of the individuals as well as their individual life experiences will likely add depth and scope to the company, bringing in constantly fresh viewpoints and solutions to the daily problems managements face.
And while race based diversity is no guarantee of success, it is an important factor in understanding the markets most firms deal with.
And in this highly competitive day and age, market intelligence and understanding may be the single best insurance against being left on the proverbial dust heap of failure.
1
I am sorry but Apple in no way represents the big tech companies in King County, Washington. There are not enough qualified developers. Amazon, in particular, has a workforce predominantly educated in India. At this moment in time they are actively reaching out to applicants because Alexia is chasing after Siri. They are digging deep to find qualified employees. Alexia may soon manage your household tasks. You say you are out of eggs, she will arrange a delivery from Whole Foods. She can turn on and off lights. She can turn on and off some televisions, but not others. There is a huge coding gap between what tech personal assistants can assist with and the devices end users use.
I’ve worked in an elementary school that had the largest percentage of Hispanic students in Seattle. Reading was taught by a bank of computers, essays were pasted on the walls rife with spelling and grammatical errors. I could not pay my car insurance working there. Socioeconomic stratification of education plays a huge role in hiring options.
I wonder how many thousand job applicants of Hispanic descent with computer science degrees are not landing tech interviews due to nepotism. It is an interesting question.
There has been excellent research done on this topic at MIT. One conclusion worth noting is "“Being with similar people serves a very basic psychological need to belong and feel comfortable,” “We’re not arguing there’s no value in that. We’re arguing there is a trade-off with that. The social settings that make us feel good are not necessarily the ones that produce accurate judgments.”
http://news.mit.edu/2014/new-approach-diversity-research-0604
http://news.mit.edu/2010/collective-intel-1001
Also "When it comes to intelligence, the whole can indeed be greater than the sum of its parts. A new study ... documents the existence of collective intelligence among groups of people who cooperate well, showing that such intelligence extends beyond the cognitive abilities of the groups’ individual members, and that the tendency to cooperate effectively is linked to the number of women in a group."
1
Why should the tech world or any other sector have quotas to satisfy the self appointed PC police of academia and the mainstream media who act as though it's still 1950? Academia and the main stream media are so ensconced in their echo chambers that they have very little concept of reality and become less and less relevant each year. The DNC has the same problem as well as does the RNC but the RNC is not as badly afflicted.
4
We're moving towards becoming a minority majority country. Companies that don't recognize the need to appeal to a diverse country will eventually be left behind.
Case in point, the recent issues with Facebook where Russia targeted Americans with specific prejudices to stir up animosity towards specific communities in America. Might a black person or Jewish person have identified the problem before it became a public nightmare and suggested better safeguards to ensure that such racist advertising wasn't possible. Group think seems safe but it also leads to blind spots.
The problem is, Ms. Smith is right. The reason we want racial, gender, etc. diversity is because it brings in such a large degree of thought diversity, which can only be good for any company. She worded it horribly (or she possibly didn't actually mean what I'm ascribing to her), but the idea is correct.
Racial diversity is extraordinarily important for that reason, as well as for combating unconscious (or conscious) bias. But don't fall into the trap of turning white men into a monolith either. That isn't the way to move forward.
1
Perhaps this will be controversial, but I feel that it must be stated. What about the legions of brown-skinned wage laborers responsible for actually performing the exhausting, poorly paid, and often mentally and physically dangerous work of assembling the signature products sold by major technology companies? What about the obscene material disparities that come to light when we step back from the much-discussed boardroom and consider the broader, transcontinental networks of exploitation in which this industry is enmeshed, from the horrific Coltan mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to overcrowded South Asian sweatshops? Forgive my Marxism (yes, a dirty word), but wouldn't a real commitment to diversity entail elevating or at least properly addressing the people at the bottom of the ladder?
>and who deserve to work in tech as much as anyone.
The only people who deserve to work in a sector are the people who are the most apt and talented in that skill. No one has an entitlement to be hired at a certain place because they belong to X group.
1
Gender and ethnic diversity also leads to cognative diversity. Different backgrounds nuture more ideas.
If you have 20 new hires - 10 women, 10 men and among those a percentage of gays, whites, browns, blacks, yellows, reds and polka dots that is equal to the percentage of the general population and all those new hires share the same religion, believe in American exceptionalism, belong to the same political party, love the NFL, support capital punishment, a woman's right to choose and the second amendment and agree on just about everything else - is that meaningful diversity? I'll answer that for you: No. It's not. True diversity, the important kind, comes in the form of diverse thought.
I think diversity itself is not the goal. The goal is equal treatment and opportunity for everyone, irrespective of their background. A big part of that is fairness. White, blond, straight blue-eyed boy should not pay for his ancestors' sins any more than a Native American girl should be subject to discrimination.
We generally take the lack of diversity as evidence of discrimination. This is correct to some point, but there are other factors. For instance, why so many Pakistani taxi drivers in New York? Why so many Irish cops? Italian politicians?
Insisting blindly on diversity as defined in some guideline can backfire in unexpected ways.
One of them would be that "progressive" tech companies companies practice the same good old boy game, with a good heaping of age discrimination and Ivy League-only promotion practices - as long as they have their quota of token African American, gay, female, handicapped, etc. employees they can put in their ads and on their brochures.
1
The author states that differences of race and gender are primarily and especially responsible for the formation of cognitive patterns. It is difficult to distinguish these arguments from the google "screed." The author seems to equate race and gender with personal belief. Is there a nuance that I'm missing?
I spent 25 years working for tech companies in Silicon Valley and never once was I in a room with just a dozen White guys born in the USA. I distinctly recall one meeting where there were about ten of us in the room, and I was the only White guy born in the USA. One thing is for sure, you can't do a diversity head count in Silicon Valley by counting only Whites, Blacks and Hispanics. There are very significant numbers of Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Filiipinos, Israelis and people from various other regions and races. The two most common characteristics among all the people I worked with in Silicon Valley were lots of education and a strong desire to work in the tech industry.
2
Wow, this is mild. And it completely misses the point. It completely erases the discrimination that links to gender and color in this country. Talk about co-opting an issue. I'm apoplectic here but let's just stipulate to the fact that all living beings manifest cognitive diversity and get back to the problem of equality of opportunity.
Diversity is diversity--no one can be more 'different' than anyone else.
Try being a white male and also be deaf at the same time. Or blind. Diversity is about the different ways difference manifests itself. There isn't enough room on a job application form to list all the little boxes that make diversity a meaningful term. Even if you had 10,000 boxes to check.
Otherwise, don't call it 'diversity'--call it affirmative action or something else.
1
What if the "underrepresented" groups don't want to work there? They won't apply. So hiring the people that do apply (and are qualified) is suddenly discriminating. Why does the ethnic and gender makeup of criminals and employees need to match the general population anyway? Perhaps some groups are "over or underrepresented" somewhere is because they really are that way in the general population.
What is wrong with what Ms. Smith said? Honestly, I can have 12 white, blued-eyed blond men with different characteristics:
1. One grew up in homeless
2. One is a military vet
3. One cannot move without a wheelchair
4. One used to be a professional musician before joining tech
5. One is a child of a mixed race couple but looks white
6. One grew up in foster care
7. One is a son of a billionaire
8. One is a recent immigrant from Argentina
9. One did his Ph.d. in cancer immunotherapy
10. One struggles with episode of debilitating depression
11. One started his own start-up in college
12. One wants to be the governor of his state in five years
Why is their viewpoints not diverse?
1
As this article makes clear, "diversity" has always been a code word for affirmative action and quotas.
Affirmative action and quotas are hard sells, because it's clear that one group benefits at the expense of another. The magic of "diversity" is that you can obscure this fact, and pretend that *everyone* benefits. That was never the point though, and it was always obvious that some people were more diverse than others. The fact is, if you are white and male you possess *negative* diversity, i.e., you make the group more vibrantly diverse by leaving!
Unfortunately some people -- the "cognitive diversity" people -- have been going off message. They are forgetting that the true goal of diversity is not to increase the effectiveness of an organization, but to increase the number of blacks and Hispanics and women in an organization. They need to be brought back in line! They need to be made to understand that the "old-fashioned kind" of diversity, identity diversity, is what matters. Otherwise they can expect to get their hands slapped, like Ms. Young Smith.
BTW, for anyone who is actually interested, here is the Harvard Business Review reporting on a study that looks at cognitive diversity and finds that it actually does improve group outcomes, while ethnic and gender diversity have little impact:
https://hbr.org/2017/03/teams-solve-problems-faster-when-theyre-more-cog...
3
Yes, a group of blonde white men with totally different backgrounds and experiences is more diverse than a group of mental-duplicate sociologists from every race and gender combination (or communications majors from Berkeley). There is more to people than two demographic variables.
1
If the technology industry is going to abandon racial diversity in pursuit of an enabler (cognitive diversity) to further the industry's monolithic approach to employees, then racial minorities should abandon purchasing technology company's product/services to as great a degree as possible.
1
No one, other than you, suggested increasing cognitive diversity alone. This article is full of hyperbole. Perhaps racial, gender and cognitive diversity are ALL important. Perhaps we should be aware that people are more than their skin color or gender. Hiring a staff of people who look differently from each other but all think alike is a false and incomplete diversity.
Why twist Ms. Smith's intended message to create an exaggerated conflict? This is the kind of hypersensitive interpretation of comments that so many people are tired of. Some people got so fed up they voted for Trump to speak out against political correctness run amok. It seems we have learned nothing from the past year. Please give people a break about their word choice, think about their larger message, and most of all, be more inclusive in your definition of diversity. Irony intended.
The goal should be that everyone gets the chance to gain entry to the field that they have the talent and ability for-- access and opportunities for all. We should not simply replace a bad old quota system with a new updated one.
"Diversity" in and of itself is just a feel-good photo op, like all the TV advertising we see today.
70
Engineering companies in the San Francisco Bay area form a minuscule part of the US labor pool. Who cares what they do about diversity in the workplace? Advertising, essentially what these companies do, is not a growth industry at the national level. SF Bay Area companies are not interested in the Black and Latino college pipeline. They're interested in the foreign programmer pipeline, which passes through the highly profitable foreign student tuition-paying Asian multitudes that populate US universities, leading to ultra-cheap foreign labor. Desperate for a green card, the foreign student-graduate is more than ready and willing to work very long hours for very little pay, like his or her foreign undocumented farm worker alter-ego. Working 80 hours a week for $80k nonstop for three or four years until landing a Green Card means facebook and google and whoever else are paying in effect $40k per year, per programmer. An American worker will not put up with this and will demand $160k a year in the SF bay area so he or she (well, basically he) can pay off his school loans, buy a house and start a family at an American standard of living, and enjoy himself. Any company that can reduce its production costs by 75% like that is not ever going to give up the advantage. So you get the Asian churn of foreign programmers working double time for a quarter of the salary, this for three years until baby Green Card arrives, and then it's by-bye sweatshop work conditions.
78
And so the solution to that problem is to reform immigration law, particularly the H1B visa program. The paramount concern and the job of ANY country's government, whether it be Russia, France, or the US is to provide for the general welfare of the citizenry, repeat citizenry of their own country. The US, via multilateral trade agreements, had done a wonderful job raising the living standards of people in Mexico, China, Indonesia, and other countries at the expense of our own people. This is lunacy and the primary cause of the income inequality, economic insecurity and social unrest which led directly to the election of DJT.
Interesting idea. Do you have evidence that it is the case that foreign tech workers work for lower salaries just to get a green card?
spot on. We outsource non-skilled labor jobs to sweatshops offshore and insource it here with visas.
This piece misses the big picture, democracy. As more and more of the political power in the U.S. is turned over to corporations, then, if we are to be a democracy, the corporations must yield power to the masses. Giving a board voice to women and minorities is one way to accomplish that. Otherwise, the Marxist analysis of corporate control is coming to pass. The tech industry is the best forum for democratizing, as it steals more and more private information from the masses to sell to its clientele The convergence of political and economic power can either doom democracy, or reform itself and open the door to a stable era.
If you are going to advocate for increasing the workplace's diversity of points of view, you should probably figure out a way to measure the diversity of points of view. The argument for diversity in the workplace these days is about the perceived benefit to the employer, not an obligation to correct perceived wrongs to unprivileged racial/gender/religious affiliations or racial/gender/religious imbalances relative to the general population. How exactly do we decide whether a workplace's points of view are diverse? After all, as the argument goes, it is a diversity of points of view that leads to better decision making, not specifically a diversity of race/gender/religious affiliation.
3
If minorities, women, other "excluded" folks had the skills the tech companies require, there would be no diversity issue. To demand that the companies dumb down to accommodate some vague idea of what's the correct mix is interfering with their corporate governance.
22
That's not even wrong, john.
Unfortunately that's simply not true. It would be great if hiring at tech companies were based on merit. But there's a large component of "being a good fit" which turns out to be being the sort of person the interviewer was in a fraternity with. Having been in Silicon Valley for 30 years, I can attest to the fact that things have actually gotten worse. In the 80's, the field was opening up to women and minorities and there was a wave of successful female CEO's. Now more and more startups are filling their ranks with "Tech Bros", because that's who they're comfortable with. Many of the more successful companies, like Google and Apple, have more diverse workforces than the Silicon Valley average.
1
I have worked in the Valley for more than 35 years and cannot imagine working in a more diverse field. We have people from all over the world routinely working together. When I was at Intel, I was a member of a group of 30 engineers that came from 19 different countries (we had great potlucks!). I have worked with countless Asian and Indian engineers and have often been the only "white guy" in the room. Some of those Indian engineers have darker skin than any African America and that has not limited their opportunities. I also learned that there are not just "Asian" engineers but Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. engineers. Good engineers are hard to find and when you find them you hire them regardless of where they came from, how (or if) they workship, what they eat, what they wear, and how well you understand them. All that matters is they get the job done and they get along with their coworkers (most jerks are not worth the trouble). The Valley could not be more ethnically diverse.
At the same time we have not done so great hiring women. I have worked with a few women engineers over the years and they have generally been very good. From my perspective it has been more a supply issue than anything else but there are also clearly other issues at play.
18
Yes, US and foreign-born Asian are highly sought after in tech, which is itself a cliché. You'll notice that the article didn't include them as part of the lack of diversity. The gender supply issue stems (see what I did there?) from girls not being encouraged to engage with math and sciences courses as far down as kindergarten. The Black and Hispanic supply issue stems from a lack of opportunity as well. Believe it or not, your tiny tech universe isn't as diverse as you might imagine.
The term "people of color" is something that sound like its from South Africa of the 1890's. And that is that they grouped all people of the world into two basic categories, those who were white and the rest of the world who were not. However back then the idea was not that all people who are non white share anything in common, the whole category was based purely for purposes of racism, in that they had in common that one single thing that they were not white.
However to use this term in regard to a category that adds diversity of a particular sort is one of the most insulting ways of describing people whose ethnicity and nationality is not white. Latinos, blacks, eastern Asians, Indians, Muslims, Pakistanis and every other nationality on earth share nothing more, and nothing less, in common with each other than they do with whites.
So by having an Indian as part of a group what we have in regard to diversity is that he adds an Indian way of looking at things, and if he were Latino he will add by being Latino in particular.
So the idea that the inclusion of non whites provides a particular type of diversity, and it makes little difference if that person is Chinese or Latino or Black, because the diversity in having them is nothing more than the fact that they are not white is insulting in the extreme to all peoples who are not white, and the idea that there is a distinct category of people who are simply non white is racism itself.
12
Nice try--you simply echo in color what the author was describing in cognition. The fact remains that people of a certain color--not Asians, which as a reader above has pointed out, have obviously busted through the ethnic barrier in tech--do NOT have the same opportunities as those of other colors--just the facts. Twist yourself into that argument all you like, you're arguing from a racist perspective, one that desires simply to keep the status quo. As for women, so they're so far off your radar that you can't even imagine them in tech.
It’s incredibly how many ways and angles are being used by the priority class of white bred, mostly males and some females to legitimize the status quo of race relations and economic privilege.
But then again, we should not be surprised. Because it’s been going on since the get go. The in groups do whatever they can to outsmart and outwit the out groups.
Unfortunately, the notion that all white males are diverse enough because they don’t think alike, is completely ludicrous. Because that’s exactly what they do, think alike. They have the same goals, the same outlooks, the same notions of success and many times the exact same upbringing.
Why? Because likeness is a survival tactic. It’s by definition a way to keep the outsiders out and the enemies at bay.
That’s why Donald Trump casts his net of hatred far and wide, not to support any kind of agenda, but to support the in group and to circle the wagons against the very enemy that now is taking up arms, or merely taking a knee, for their rights to protest and to demand an equal place at the table.
The engines of Silicon Valley are not made from ideas, to liberate the masses, rather they are made from ideas, to circle the wagons of champions of tech, to harness the internet, tech and electronic media to generate vast amounts of cash, for themselves and for their likes.
10
You have a very provincial understanding of "white men". A group consisting of a a Russian from Novosibirsk, an Irishman from Cork, an evangelical Texan, a Hungarian, an Argentinian, a UMass Grad from Mansfield and an Italian from an old Milan family could be entirely white men with blue eyes and will still probably be more diverse than a random ethnic grab-bag of Black, Asian and Latino Americans.
2
The problem with cognitive diversity is that it robs progressives of the ability to say that racial/gender diversity is good for business because it provides for a diversity of ideas and viewpoints. If you can already achieve meaningful diversity by hiring all sorts of white men with different viewpoints, then the companies would achieve what they need. Increasing racial and gender diversity then become exercises mainly of public service; while this would seem fine to me, it's not good enough for most progressives, who demand that diversity itself is viewed as being good for business beyond just being good for society at large.
8
Ah, the irony of being lectured to by executive from an organization like Stubhub. Scalpers, pure and simple. If one can still use that term. Doing quasi legally what others get thrown in jail for if they do it in the streets.
7
I suspect the author would herself adjust the meaning of diversity so it is unachievable. There is no inherent reason for a company to seek diversity except to mollify "progressives", and America is sick and tired of mollifying "progressives". That is why we voted for Trump.
5
And are you happy with the results of your protest vote, Jaco?
Affirmative action didn't work in colleges. In other fields, it served to discriminate against qualified applicants who represented the wrong demographic while giving unfair advantage to other individuals. Tokenism didn't benefit the tokens; it set them up to fail.
Will we ever face the reality that in order to achieve fairness and eliminate discrimination in the workplace and society, we have to change ourselves? And that's a slow process. One election or even changing the complexion of tech boards in Silicon Valley won't do it. When women and minorities are treated as equals in kindergarten, and thereafter, we will have arrived at that point. In the meantime, I suppose it doesn't hurt to point out the obvious. Blonde hair/blue eyes is not a great qualification for leadership, anywhere, anytime.
1
What the men so deeply resent is the two hours of required anti-harassment training. Such training only helps find perpetrators, it doesn't teach men how to include women. Many men resolve the harassment problem by excluding women, refusing to be alone with a woman at a meal, in their office, in their car, or at a meeting. In being excluded, women get less exposure to opportunities and less experience and therefore less consideration for future management positions.
1
The assumption here is that racial or gender diversity is a good in and of itself. I don't think anyone has ever been able to prove that, but the left treats it that way regardless. There is nothing wrong with diversity either, it just is in this country. If you believe in the meritocracy, nothing is more an affront to that than to engage in social engineering. I have long thought that intellectual diversity was the superior form because it is a guarantee of innovation. And I came up with the thought on my own, rather than having it rammed down my throat like the other form was my whole life. Being forced to think something leads to resentment. It was refreshing to see others had the same thought about how real diversity is accepting others with different thought! It actually seems compassionate, as opposed to judging people based on race or gender. You would think minorities would fight against the same type of thought that kept them down for so long, racism. The problem with the conventional/old form of diversity (based on race or gender) is that it more likely guarantees some form of intellectual homogeneity. To keep up the facade that racial and gender diversity is a good in and of itself, it requires that everyone think that. There is too much evidence pointing to that not always being the case, and if it is forced on a people, problems begin when their freedom of thought, freedom to think differently, is infringed.
8
It's a complete fallacy that differences in physiology automatically mean differences meaningful to diversity. Conversely differences in thinking always matter as a point of diversity. And in particular as any honest evolutionary biologist will tell you, "race" is meaningless for distinguishing between people either qualitatively or for predicting potential. A Nigerian can be closer genetically to a random Norwegian than may be a German Looking at groups with overemphasis on what they are in physical form as opposed to who they are inside is bigotry, unless you are building a zoo or loading an ark or designing Muppets.
Hiring for diversity in an interview should be done exactly as though the applicant were not visible, ie behind a screen, with their voice masked. The outcome should aim to be completely divested of the corrupt PC conscious intent to create a rainbow flag of workers.
4
Heaven forbid embracing the idea that people are really different from each other irrespective of their skin colors. We must judge by race, gender, etc!
11
People are still missing a significant point. Why is it important that a particular group representing N percent of the population, have a comparable representation among your employees?
Consider women. Women are discriminated against, and this is one reason (probably the main reason) they're underrepresented in technical fields. But it's likely true that many women simply aren't interested in technical careers, probably because women see the world differently.
Consider nursing, traditionally a woman's job. Is anyone complaining that there aren't enough male nurses? Probably not.
7
Great points, great discussion, but you missed a couple of points that I think are essential to this discussion.
1. How do you measure diversity in thought? As every executive will tell you, If you can't measure it you'll never get it
2. Where is the discussion on ageism, the biggest source of the lack of Diversity in the workforce in Silicon Valley?
3. Why is there no inclusion of Asians in a diversity discussion? The percentage of Asians in tech far outweighs their proportion in the population.
8
Addressing diversity in tech, or any industry, at the hiring stage is addressing it too late.
The percentage of women majoring in computer science or engineering is 18%, 6% for blacks, 8% for Hispanics. Similarly, those taking the AP Computer Science exam are 18% were female, 4% black, 8% Hispanic.
If you want real change in the proportion of women and minorities in tech, you need to start back in high school and college. Say a tech company hires only the top 1% of people. It's likely that the diversity of the top 1% will reflect the overall percentage (and if not, again, needs to be addressed earlier in education). The only way to boost the percentage of a group higher than the percentage of those graduating (e.g. women from 18% to 50%) is to hire individuals from those groups who are not in the top 1%, at the expense of those who are.
Yes, there are many problems with the tech industry's "boys club," but the most effective ways to address it, long term, are more focused efforts on getting more women and minorities into tech programs in college. To do otherwise is to require companies to sacrifice quality of employee, which puts skin color and genitalia above merit.
7
Selections should be merit based, just like Stuyvesant HS. The result will be the best and most qualified candidates. Anything else is window dressing. Ultimately a racist or gender based disservice to others, as expressed by Justice Scalia.
7
One needs to wonder who the mentors were who caused Ms. Young to embrace the convictions that led to her original statement, which most would interpret as what she really believes. It also would be interesting to determine what forces, legitimate in their own convictions or perhaps merely cynical and defensive, that caused her to amend that original statement and apologize for it.
1
Perhaps in her mind, her cognitive diversity causes her to believe she is a blonde, blue-eyed man. Why not be that if you cognitively believe it?
1
rac:
That response is sufficiently bent to appeal to me.
1
Diversity is not the “ultimate goal” of a business. It is a reasonable return to investors, profits to keep the business viable, and competitive employee compensation in order to attract and retain the talent necessary for those ends.
Companies are not educational institutions. In pure economics, diversity in points of view are valuable to the extent that they help a business.
The above are statements that entice my friends to argue with me. Like them, I believe in a strong social safety net, universal healthcare, very limited foreign intervention, higher taxes (much higher in some cases) on the wealthiest among us, and a liberal secular democracy. But I also like to play devil’s advocate.
I can see how diversity in education, social engagement and cultural growth are not just very helpful, but fully necessary. No one has documented to me, though, how specific diversities forced upon businesses help economic strength, the very engine that can drive our social programs to even better heights.
8
I don't know about other people, but I actively seek out businesses with diversity among its employees, in addition to its product's strength and value, when I am getting ready to spend my money. If your business' ultimate goal is profits, and you are going to lose my patronage because I don't find your business interested enough in diversity, it's going to affect your bottom line (economic strength) eventually. And I can assure you that I am not the only one who looks at the whole company profile before I give my hard earned money over to them. Document that!
Study after study has found that greater diversity in a business coincides with stronger performance and revenue. This isn't just a bleeding heart cause. Tech companies are excluding women and people of color at their own expense.
Put 50 smart men and 50 smart women in a room and give them a software challenge. If the women perform at the same level, then the tech industry has a bias problem. If the women do not, then tech is simply hiring on best results from an employee. (See the movie Social Network for the scene of Zuckerberg hiring employees via a coding challenge.)
16
In my experience, movies are not great sources of info. Scholarly studies of tech industry bias have already put smart men and women in the room together and come to the conclusion that gender bias is alive and well.
Tech companies could try eliminate bias from the evaluation the way orchestras do, by hiding the identity of the job candidate from the hiring committee. And even that will only take care of the first part of the problem, getting hired. Women hired to tech positions continue to face bias and discrimination, as is well-documented.
5
Sorry, the diversity police would be quibbling with the definition of "smart," claiming inherent bias. Remember, the author is unequivocally supporting "...diversity - the old-fashisoned kind,..." We all know what that means: equal ratios (quotas) of race/ethnicity in the work place, regardless of ability, i.e. race/ethnic-based hiring vs. ability-based hiring, with which the diversity police would find inherent bias as well. Can't get around it.
Oh please. You interpret software - no one codes the same. It's a classic way to let bias in.
4
I'm always a little baffled and somewhat irritated when journalists promote this idea that tech is 100% "white guys." Yes, it is dominated by men, but I live in Silicon Valley and if you walk on to Google's campus or down the street, you'll notice that white men make up no more than 40% of tech workers. East Asian and particularly Indian employees often make up well over half of companies workforces, thanks to the value Indian and Chinese schools place on computer science and math. I agree that tech needs more diversity but I'd prefer an honest accounting of the reality of the tech industry instead of this false narrative of "it's all white guys," as easy as we are to scapegoat.
237
It's not the schools in Asia, it's the parents. And it's not even them, really, but the population size.
Look at the managers. Those who get hired into mid-level and senior management. In my company it's 90% white men. Non-whites are typically stuck with the technical heavy lifting and lack opportunities to move upward. Your observation is accurate on general population of the area. But you need to open your eyes about the work environment too.
18
Sorry, that fact is inconvenient and doesn't fit their pre-determined narrative.
1
It is a good idea to hire people who are of different ages, different colors, different classes, from different schools, with different backgrounds and different beliefs, different viewpoints.
It makes orthodoxy difficult.
Want to survive rapid change? Start with a group of people among whom there are folks willing to notice and point out that the emperor is naked.
Kudos if Silicon Valley has noticed that they need diversity of thought. They might go that one sep farther, and realize they will get more of it if they hire more people from different backgrounds, different schools, of different classes and colors and genders.
They sell products to everyone; they might want a view into those markets they don't even know they don't understand.
14
Wrong-tech targets the innovators and early adopters which is comprised of a younger, more nerdy group. That group determines which products\services make it to the next level of consumer. So you better staff with those types. Procter and Gamble et. al. has a different audience.
I noted that the statistics of racial diversity focused only on black and Latino populations. In tech we see far larger percentages from Asia, which is itself highly diverse.
What the writer really means, but cannot state it, is that diversity is only good when certain (black and Latino) quotas are met.
46
Maybe instead of trying to find the definition, importance, existence of "diversity" in the work world, it would behoove society to start making it important in preschool and then developing it through those "growing up" years.
By the time we're in the work world, it's too late. Think about it.
14
I have noticed that trend where I live as black candidates would not be invited to interview even with the best resume or credential possible. Its a pity that upper management and HR are being taken over by people less sensitive to diversity that is a key element in keeping harmony and social balance. Why not just interview and hire the best regardless of their age, gender and race...it's too much to ask....
4
Saying that 12 white men could be a meaningfully diverse group, reminded me of this rather old joke. "The race does not always go the swift of foot, nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet. " If you really want diversity, and to be a model of diversity, calculate the odds and seek out diversity in background, color, gender and wealth. That is the way to bet.
4
Citing statistics about racial,ethnic, and gender disparities is a meaningless diversion.
There is a pronounced diversity of skills and talents among humans.
True diversity in employment and leadership would require choosing the winners by lottery and disregarding their abilities.
6
Flawed arguments here. In tech, you just have unproportionally more men that are in the field period. It is a field dominated by white men, Indians, and Chinese. Chinese and Indians from overseas need to get H1B or similar visas that are capped, which also shoud be taken into consideration. Nobody will hire based on race or gender in tech but rather by the skill set. There is a shortage of good engineers - and even average could be hard to find. Companies would hire aliens if they could pass the interview process to fill those positions. I participate and have participated in hiring interviews at software companies for years and work for a startup software company now. We rarely, if ever, receive resumes from women, much less from African Americans. Equal consideration is given to everyone based on the same number of questions that include logic, programming, and other technical questions. This topic is way more complicated than these guys suggest in this or similar articles.
10
"We rarely, if ever, receive resumes from women, much less from African Americans."
I believe part of the point is that "you" are likely not trying hard enough to recruit those people.
Excellent thoughtful comments. Refreshing. Thank You all.
I'm a very liberal person, and a minority in the sense that I am gay. However, I feel like we are forcing "diversity" in places where discrimination is not actually taking place. Just because you had "ten white men" in a group at some company does NOT mean that there is necessarily a problem. The problem would be if minorities were applying and being passed over for white men solely because of their race.
I believe in EQUALITY. Equality to me means you pick the most qualified and best candidate for the job. If that happens to be ten white men, or ten black women, or WHATEVER, so be it --- as long as you picked the most qualified candidates based purely on their skillset,
Isn't that what we were supposedly fighting for? For people to be chosen not based on the color of their skin, or sexual orientation, or gender, but what they can do? We're losing sight of what matters here.
28
Those doing the hiring are not soliciting applications from a wide enough range of people. That is the problem.
5
That is not true.
2
Baloney, the one language they all speak is green. If your skills generate a net positive for the company you get the job in the tech world. Been there, done that.
One aspect of diversity that seems to have fallen completely off the radar in the discussions of diversity in high tech is that of age discrimination. The average age of employees at Facebook is 28 years old, LinkedIn and Salesforce come in at 29, Google, 20, and Apple, 31 (based on data published in September 2017).
I fall on the far right on the age diversity sine curve, but received positive performance reviews as a Silicon Valley employee until last summer when there was a department shake-up. Our team got a new supervisor in her 20s. Within eight weeks, she was making snarky comments that I was slow on the uptake—not actionable, but misery-inducing. I knew that the likelihood that a women in her early 50s would easily find new employment in Bay Area, so I doubled down. But when review time rolled around, I was pegged as a poor performer despite positive input from other team members. Soon after, I was "terminated" (among the ugliest words in the English language).
The Bay Area has always been home and my family, including aging parents, live locally. It is not feasible in the short run to pack up and relocate to a geography were turning 40 is not a death knell. But when I read about the lack of sexual and racial diversity in high tech workforces, it is hard not to feel that the lack of diversity in age is also an issue that needs to be addressed.
62
I fear this comes across as sour grapes. There are infinite reasons for personnel decisions, and it feels like age was a factor in the decision to let me go. But in reality, I do not know.
1
Oh, I definitely believe age in tech is an issue. My husband is 55 and has lost 3 jobs in the last 3 years. I realize part of the problem is the niche he's in, which is IT support. This area is not profit producing, so it's always a numbers game and the easiest way for the department to finesse its numbers is to cut personnel.
But the other aspect is that he's now at an age where he's often older than his boss. The boss is never comfortable knowing he's (it's always been a "he") not the most knowledgeable one in the room.
I remember reading about this issue during the economic crisis. Many out of work former managers "of a certain age" were finding it difficult to gain employment again. Specifically, they were seen as inflexible and to have a lack of creativity when compared to their Millennial counterparts. These are stereotypes for sure. But they have a definite effect on the ability of older folks to find employment, especially in highly competitive fields like tech. Experience actually begins to count against you at some point.
2
If you want a job, be willing to relocate. That is one advantage younger people have, as they have fewer roots; you can have the same advantage if you rethink your need to stay where you are.
"must not come at the expense of hiring members of actual underrepresented communities who add tangible, bottom-line value — and who deserve to work in tech as much as anyone."
That's not saying much.
Those who are able to obtain positions in premier companies like Apple are a small minority of those holding engineering and computer science degrees (you can also throw in the minority of math, physics and music majors who are able to walk into a software development position as easily as breathing).
Now start with the number of African Americans or women who have the engineering or computer science degrees and back out a similar percentage as the white (or Asian or Indian) who do not qualify for the positions at Apple.
You'll probably find that African Americans or women do indeed already represent their respective demographic group "as much as anyone".
"As much as anyone" - your words.
4
This article (and others about Silicon Valley) are misleading. Silicon Valley is one of the most diverse workplaces in the world. Traditional American 'white males' are the minority in skilled (non-managerial) jobs in tech and engineering. If you go to the R&D of any engineering/tech company you will be hard-pressed to see native white Americans.
'The definition of diversity has been watered-down to include ..' I got a laugh out of that. The entire world understands diversity in a different way. Ever heard of a 'Diversity Index'? Look it up; it's actually used in many software applications.
6
In nearly 20 years of managing technology teams, I've never had a problem building truly diverse teams but I've never worked in silicon valley which is aparently a diversity desert. Maybe companies that actually care about diversity should move to a more diverse place.
7
They don't care, Hal. I guess that's what has come out. It's window dressing. It's the arrogance that's there.
Diversity of thought and world view are the most important attributes of a "diverse" work force, not the physical attributes listed categorically as essential to "diversity". Upon meeting me one would see a middle aged caucasian woman, fit, married to a man, with a PhD in chemistry and working as a scientist/manager. I'm certain the prevailing story about my life would include middle class or affluent background, traditional family and educational trajectory, etc. This is so far from my reality that it is laughable; I grew up in a Southern California ghetto, first predominantly African American, then Hispanic (after moving at 12). I lived in poverty until I was close to 30, didn't have health insurance until I was 36, dropped out of high school, was an opiate addict for years, .....I could go on but won't. My world view is light years away from the majority of my colleagues, and it is this difference in perspective that yields diversity.
Instead of focusing on external trappings that may or may not signify true variation, I suggest considering life history instead. The advantage is that it may result in less us-versus-them reactions, and focuses on individuals, which is what America should be striving towards.
8
Well you know, it is common to claim that diversity is good for companies because you get different perspectives etc. This is one of the only things people really say to explain why companies ought to hire a diverse workforce. Talking about "cognitive diversity" is a way of calling that bluff.
And it was not a good idea to say, at an event about fighting racial injustice, that "There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse, too, because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.” But that does not change the fact that it is clearly a true statement.
10
The Google workforce is 31% women and that number is growing. Newspapers across the country employ 37% women, a number that has remained steady for years. The idea of cognitive diversity is, as noted, a bunch of mularkey. But at the end of the day, it's the numbers that matter. And submitting an editorial to a newspaper targeting tech without noting that newspapers are about as bad strikes me as tailoring the message and kowtowing to the industry that gives the writer a voice.
3
Whataboutism at its finest right here.
This op/ed mystifyingly overlooks the fact that the tech industry is one of the most aggressive utilizers of H1B visas, which are frequently employed to bring in workers from South & East Asia, who surely represent a diversity that is both cultural & geographic, & would seem to contradict some of the assertions of the writer. The tech industry is highly competitive, profit driven, time sensitive, & values innovation above all. It will try anything to give itself advantage. If it sees something it wants in a candidate for employment, it will squeeze that person for every drop of value it can get out of him or her. Op/eds like this, which seem to encourage hiring based on a limited vision of diversity, might result in more hires of various groups, but there is a possibility that they will be marginalized & even resented as dead weight if they don't fit the dominate culture of the company. The author here concentrates on blacks & Hispanics, but my guess is that native born white males from places like the deep South are underrepresented as well. The answer is for American schools & American youth to step up to the plate & do better at teaching & learning STEM subjects. Tech devours talent of any kind, & isn't always kind, but that's another story. Workers have to have the skills first.
5
Its fine if tech companies make fortunes, pay generously, and hire “great” people but let us remember that most people are average, will never be “ great” or white for that matter but still deserve a living wage.
1
A number of commenters seem to want to do away with the goal of diversity and replace it with the practice of nondiscrimination. I believe that at one time these two notions were aligned (and still are for many): diversity is the natural result of nondiscrimination.
I, too, am in favor of nondiscrimination. But I have some questions for those who would do away with diversity:
1. How do you, in practice, propose to achieve nondiscrimination?
2. How do you expect to measure the extent and effect of nondiscrimination?
3. And what quality will be possessed by groups of people who result from nondiscriminatory selection if it is not diversity?
If you can't articulate workable solutions to these issues then perhaps we had better work out acceptable notions of diversity, after all.
4
Study the U.S. Army. There you will find an institution that looks like America and they recruit and retain people who can do the job, no matter their color or gender.
1
I once worked at a public school in Philadelphia. My principle at the time (a white woman in her late 40s who grew up in the midwest) reminded me that I came from privilege, a top university, and that my life experiences were so much richer than the children I served. She told me I needed to understand them more. It must have been my blonde hair, blue eyes, athletic build, and strong academic background. I politely let her know I grew up 10 minutes from the school. It was the reason I wanted to teach there. She was speechless and the awkward silence said it all.
Diversity has its challenges because it focuses squarely on race and gender. In doing so,white men from lower socio-economic places are further alienated. I grew up in a row home in Philadelphia with one advantage. My blue collar parents sent me to Catholic schools and sacrificed food for education. (I know what it's like to go hungry.) Throughout my college life, I had to leave school for semesters at a time to earn money so I could return to college. (I snuck into the cafeteria to get a meal.) I finally earned a degree from a prestigious university through hard work. Is my experience different, darn right it is. Our culture is full of people who just work hard. When I interview for jobs, I wonder if I'm on the short list because I'm white even though I have more in common with the black man from North Philly than the white man from the Main Line.
23
I agree strongly with both Ms. Smith and Sean James. Categorizing people by the characteristics at birth totally ignores not only their total life experience and achievements, but their character. Isn't this the very thing all this diversity talk is trying to drum into out heads?
Why the apparent contradiction? Or is it hypocrisy? Or ideology-driven blindness?
1
Tech understands diversity in terms of original approaches to technical issues. It’s interest in people and their diversity is only as prospective customers that need to be understood only to the extent that understanding helps to identify what products these people can be persuaded to buy.
4
I am a development engineer in high tech; an American citizen, 50+ years old. My stats make me a minority in my profession. During my career I've watched young H1Bs from India displace young H1Bs from China who displaced older engineers from the US. H1Bs work for less money and are not protected by the same labor laws as American citizens. And the icing on the cake? Smart companies exploit our twisted tax code which encourages discrimination against older American workers.
Let's also acknowledge Silicon Valley is embracing disparity, which is a subtle and insidious discrimination against the poor. To compete against the low-cost H1B labor market, rich parents are paying for college planners, tutors, summer programs, computers and equipment, after-school clubs and providing all the expensive financial support their kids need to achieve exceptional standard test scores and make it into the most exclusive schools.
The idea of cognitive diversity in high-tech is laughable. Corporate executives are deliberately creating a mono-culture of elite, normalized high tech workers with the same elite world-view. They are focused on their excellent test scores and unwilling to speak truth to power.
Denise Young Smith is not a bumbling outlier. She is the true horrific face of our technocratic elite. Companies like Apple, Facebook and Google aren't solving the world's problems, they are creating them.
43
Diversity of ethnicity contributes to diversity of viewpoint and experience. Middle class white men, while they may have some diversity of experience, miss the difference in background, experience, viewpoint and social sense that a diverse work force provides. Many of the products the tech industry develops need to appeal to a wider segment of society than white men, and having a diverse group developing them will create the kind of product that will appeal to a diverse population.
12
I think the point is better explained by the fact that racial diversity might not.be as diverse as it looks. Eg a group of elite private school kids from big cities around the world are actually very similar even though they are from different cultures and racially mixed. Similarly it is possible to have a diverse set of people even if they're the same gender and race - even if its not the most diverse set possible.
5
Racism is bad. Discrimination is bad. Diversity is a made up category, a product of the academic left. Diversity has an esthetic appeal but past that it is meaningless as categories will proliferate and in part undercut other categories - class will upend, not support gender and race as it will reintroduce white males as "diverse" elements in target groups. Ms Smith was right in her initial comments and should have stuck to her guns. What is important is diversity of thought not of experience.
5
If you don't have "diversity of experience," how do you know whether or not it is important?
It remains unpopular and politically incorrect to challenge the concept of "diversity," but its bedrock belief is pernicious: that so-called "race" is the crucial, primary way to differentiate human beings, along with the corollary notion, that within designated races people are relatively, though not quite totally, homogeneous.
There has to be a better road to protection against discrimination than this blind alley we have followed, which has gotten us nowhere and reifies damaging views of the importance of race that should have been put to bed many years ago. Yet, we are so immersed in "diversity", we can't even dream of a race-blind society; even the ideal itself is mocked.
The concept of "cognitive diversity" ultimately only muddies the waters. The true radical step will be to throw out the concept of "diversity" entirely, while actively, vehemently fighting discrimination -- because discrimination is unjust and wrong, not because "diversity" does or does nor add "tangible, bottomline value."
11
That's a nice sentiment but, in fact, lack of diversity perpetuates discrimination.
The converse of "viewpoint diversity" is "viewpoint equality", the bizarre and outrageous position that all views have an equal claim to our consideration and approval, and that discriminating against someone because of their politics is somehow tantamount to discriminating against someone because of their identity. It's this kind of relativistic nonsense that has led to the recent slew of publications arguing speciously that conservatives are now a vulnerable minority, particularly in liberal enclaves like college campuses.
It's worth bearing in mind (from now till eternity) that even the smallest gains towards equality for the rest of us inevitably provoke impassioned backlashes from the bastions of privilege, all under the guise of reason, right and productivity.
1
Perhaps you could define equality? From a mathematics perspective it has a very specific meaning, from a "progressive" perspective it seems to be ambiguous and somewhat amorphous.
If I were an employer in this industry I would want diversity of race, gender, and so on but I would balk at the overweening arrogance of dictating to other people that their “identity” is defined by my perception of their race or gender.
5
If cognitive diversity is truly the goal then how could racial, sexual and gender diversity not be considered a paramount? Of course all white, straight, blue eyed etc etc men can think differently from each other and if we were to plot their views or cognitive abilities on a graph relative to each other no doubt we would find wild differences reaching far and wide. However, is it assumed that being a woman or being gay or being black or being all three of those things doesn’t add cognitive diversity? Add these people to the data-set and I would guess the range would explode. The diversity of thought brought by people who have different minds AND different backgrounds AND have lived with different experiences these white men data points can never fathom surely must appeal to anyone with real interest in reaching fullest potential through diversity of thought.
9
Part of the problem is that 'diversity' is just a bad, watered-down term. A better one is 'inclusion'. (I wonder why Apple uses both.)
At any rate, 'cognitive diversity' IS the reason why 'diversity' is a good idea for companies. The greater the spread of life experiences and backgrounds, the greater 'cognitive diversity' you get. Ideas don't get formed in a social vacuum.
7
A tech company in Singapore serving Southeast Asia - Grab - that operates as a Uber competitor somewhat inadvertently hired a blind programmer from Vietnam. Inadvertent because he had been screened using an online coding test, which he aced. When he came into the office he was able to observe things about the app that didn't make sense to a blind user, such as buttons with no textual description. That's what objective diversity brings to the table - a sense for how to improve things that somebody else simply wouldn't have thought important. You can imagine yourself into seeing some things merely through willful empathy.
7
It is not a coincidence that women and racial minorities are significantly underrepresented, relative to their share of the population, in the ranks of tech company employees.
And in the corporate executive offices.
And in Congress.
And among millionaires.
And in the most prestigious colleges.
And so on.
There are several different conclusions one might reach from this fact. One is that racism is essentially correct and that women and racial minorities just so happen to be worse than white men at, say, software engineering. And running for Congress, accumulating wealth, writing entrance essays and taking the SAT, etc. This is the position of the fired Google programmer.
Another is that it is somehow all just a gigantic coincidence, which we certainly need not do anything about.
Another is that it is not a coincidence, that people who aren't white men have just as much talent and capability, and that the economic and societal forces which have held them out of the best opportunities and the best outcomes need to be countermanded, today, now, by equal forces in the opposite direction. That would be my personal view.
10
I've been working in technology in NYC for more than 30 years starting out as a computer operator on a mainframe and working my way to a C level manager. In my career I have managed hundreds of people and have interviewed hundreds of candidates. In my experience there were never that many female candidates for roles as server engineers/network engineers/security engineers. More often you'd see women apply as programmers or Data Base Administrators.
When we did hire a female I never consulted with HR and said "sine this is a female candidate let's pay her less". That's totally ridiculous. How about the possibility that less woman want to perform many of the above roles?
All I have is anecdotal evidence, but I have worked in data management and in app development and support for well over a decade. My last 3 bosses were female. Two of those had female bosses themselves. My first boss was female. There are women in every position I can see. Perhaps it's because the companies I work with are not tech, but finance, so the environment is a bit different.
Ms. Smith - if accurately quoted- needs to find a new line of work. Cognitive and intellectual diversity may be a true thing but imagine all of that which one would get if they hired racially and gender diverse individuals? Because our input always informs our output.
6
I don't see what's so controversial about what Ms. Smith said. Surely diversity of thought and ideas is preferable to diversity of pigmentary phototype? Yes, one is more likely to achieve a diversity of thought and ideas if there is racial diversity, but racial diversity itself should not be the goal. And if there is an underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in tech, the answer isn't then to lower the bar for them to make sure more are included. Same argument applies for race-based affirmative action for colleges. If you *really* want to solve the problem of black/Hispanic underrepresentation, invest in their communities and in their early education. Vote for politicians who are serious about strengthening our public school system. Make them competitive enough so that they start applying to these jobs at the same rate as whites and Asians. That's how you really fix this problem. And speaking of Asians, I find it interesting that in a column that has to do with racial diversity in Silicon Valley, Asians aren't mentioned once. Funny, that.
7
It would be helpful if the various Opinion pieces on this matter included some statistical analyses of the available talent pool in the tech field. Particular demographic groups disproportionately pursue specific educational paths and have particular career goals that are shared by those within the group. Is apple responsible for the social engineering required to induce more women and minorities to choose a career in tech so as to have a work force that mirrors the general population? Parents, the education system and yes, the individual all need to help mold our future workforce. Demonizing Silicon Valley because society has not produced a proportional diversity from which it can build it's workforce is intellectually dishonest. They can and are doing better. They do need to be called out sometimes of course. There is much complexity when social engineering is expected of free enterprise because society has failed to create equal opportunity for all. The victim perpetrator narrative fuels the pages of the New York Times. This approach enhances the moral outrage and the division that we are all awash in.
Great article, couldn't agree more. And organizations seeking actual diversity need to stop looking at it from the perspective of how many boxes they can check off for "diverse" employees. It is a common practice to double-count individual employees; for instance, a woman of color or gay woman is counted in the gender statistics AND in the racial or sexual orientation statistics. This "two-fer" practice masks an ongoing high and disproportionate representation of white men, and disadvantages straight, white women. Instead of counting and double-counting the employees who are under-represented, it's time to focus on counting the ongoing overrepresentation of white men in workplaces and leadership roles.
However, it would be wise to acknowledge also that "white, blue-eyed, blond men" can in fact be diverse in ways that meet traditional diversity goals: they may be Hispanic, or Jewish, or gay, or from non-US countries, etc. Diversity issues are complicated. There are no simple solutions. Employers need to dig deep and really work in good faith to ensure a truly diverse workplace, instead of only checking off boxes.
1
As the complexity of the problem increases those who cannot understand the innerworkings of the problem will no longer be able to contribute their fair share to the solution. It is important to have everyone working on the problem with a cognitive level no less than some minimally acceptable one. It has nothing to do with skin color or gender or life experience.
My company had a series of diversity & inclusion events recently. One outside speaker was introduced by our CFO, who went on at length about how choosing "the best" team members to solve problems had always served him well, and always resulted in diversity - he has approximately a dozen direct reports, all white, two of whom are women. The speaker kicked off her talk by asking us about diversity in the room - how many of us were from Sales & Marketing vs. R&D vs. Corporate. Only a glancing mention was made of a Latino ERG (Employee Resource Group) and a nod to mothers. There was zero mention of race, gender, or anything even remotely uncomfortable. It was a real life example of what the columnist fears, and it was a shame.
3
I thought the original comment from Ms. Smith was actually a nicer and more inclusive thing- I'm a white male in tech- than the majority of what I've heard from diversity leaders for a long time. Taking offense at that statement suggests to me that people are becoming far too sensitive to innocuous statements, we should probably all be more robust at hearing ideas that are not the same as ours, but claiming a group of men can't be diverse, or contribute to a meeting simply because they're from a perceived monoculture, is just insulting without helping.
4
No. There is more diversity of thought when there is more diversity of life experiences, and no one is talking about "lowering" cognitive levels.
Having had a glimpse of how these types of companies operate, from the inside looking out, in Silicon Valley, I can see where this woman was coming from. Sadly, a huge driver behind the lack of diversity isn't always bigotry, but a drive to recruit people from the "best" schools and graduate programs, which is already a very narrow funnel full of bias. By the time you make it past those hurdles, the likelihood that you're "diverse" in a visible way is almost nil.
I've also witnessed firsthand a bizarre sort of groupthink take hold, perhaps because of the uniformity of the pool from which the most prized employees are extracted, that isn't likely to be broken by hiring a black graduate of a Stanford professional school.
I think this is where the argument for "cognitive diversity" comes in. What it's trying to do is transcend affirmative action and try to keep the door open for people with no visible differences but whose socioeconomic circumstances wouldn't have landed them at Harvard Law.
6
Diversity has more than one dimension and cognitive diversity is largely the outcome of many other kinds of diversity. If cognitive diversity is truly important then measure it explicitly. And if you're going to rely on cognitive diversity then show how you're going to avoid biasing that diversity by adherence to corporate culture. And even if you do want to encourage cognitive diversity, you haven't obviated the need to address the other kinds of diversity in the society in which you exist.
1
First, the author speaks of "underrepresented" groups. This suggests that employers should be free, if not required, to pursue proportional representation among their workforce by race, ethnicity and gender. Yet Bakke, which the author references, rejected proportional representation by race and ethnicity as a legitimate governmental interest. If some races and ethnicities are underrepresented, after all, others are overrepresented, and so employers may or must refuse to consider, e.g., Jewish or Asian job applicants. Problematic.
Second, why don't employers who want the diversity that only members of one gender and some races and ethnicities can offer just be honest and put it in their job listings? "Since white males are overrepresented among our workforce, no white males need apply for this position." They would face a civil rights lawsuit, of course, but that would be a great opportunity: their lawyers could cite the author's arguments to persuade the world in open court that laws like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which ban discrimination against "any person," are unjust and must be repealed. To ensure that employers maintain the diversity that only members of a particular race, ethnicity, or gender can provide, that is, they must be allowed, if not forced, to discriminate on those bases in hiring. They must not be constrained by anachronistic laws like the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The goal of diversity must prevail over the law's express command of nondiscrimination.
1
This will continue to be an issue until the ghettoization of public education is no longer the norm. Kids who do not win the ovarian and geographic lotteries of life start way behind others and will not (overall) have the same level of resume that others have.
Like hiring like is a safer bet for businesses that incur high costs of turnover. If we broaden the pool of "like" we can solve this.
1
The problem is an uneven education system and educational opportunities being available to everyone. Is the Silicon Valley racist? Not overtly but judging by who gets hired and who's running these companies it's not a good look especially when you're shouting to all who will listen that you are out to change the world. Identity politics creates more conflict. Fix the access that young people have to the education needed to work at these company's and you'll have the workforce necessary to put such issues to rest.
1
I am not sure the author is aware of the implications of the piece; that diversity of ideas, experience, and background is a matter of color, that there is something unique and hardwired in a person of a particular color that can be found no where else. So if I want an employee good in math, I go with white, someone with good in industrial design black, and so forth. There is no evidence to support the notion that people have abilities and characteristics unique to color, and that is a good thing because there aren’t enough colors to make it work. The author is only interest in a diversity of color and nothing else. It’s called Crayola Politics.
There seem to be two complaints here: one, that companies don't hire diversely. Secondly, that their products don't target a diverse audience.
As another commentator alluded to, companies don't exist for the sake of promoting diversity. They aim to make a profit, subject to legal conditions dictating terms of conduct (such as banning discrimination, or even promoting inclusion).
If you want to explicitly promote diversity and the market is not helping, other possibilities not subject to the reality of market competition (and yet not entirely free of competition) may exist: ngo's, government programs, academic projects.
Also, big grand software is usually meant to be relatively "boring": broadly accessible and uniform (generic) in appeal. By virtue of these properties, software will appeal to the average consumer (although perhaps the median, which can be a problem). Perhaps, being used to getting precisely what we want, living in the age of the long tail, we forget that we also live in the age of industrialization and mass consumerism?
It is odd however that the goal of creating software should in any way influence the gender/racial makeup of a software company. It shouldn't. Frankly, if you want to work with a bunch of nerds and sit on front of a computer all day, I don't think that race, ethnicity or gender should impede you.
1
A not insignificant percentage of tech users are over the age of 40. I wonder how well their viewpoints are represented in Silicon Valley? Not very well, if one looks at the products it churns out.
1
One of the key reasons why actual diversity, not the nonsense described in this article, is important is that these are the people who are building the future. Technology has such a profound impact on every aspect of our lives today, and will exponentially more so in the future, shaping our lives in ways we cannot foresee, let alone control. It's not hard to imagine that a technology-driven future designed by white men, based on what their "cognitive diversity" believes everyone needs, will fall short for a great many people.
Tech companies that discriminate based on anything other than talent (broadly defined) will not get off the ground or will not long survive. Talent that is locked out on narrow grounds of race, gender, etc. will be like gold nuggets on the ground for companies that that don't discriminate. If we want all protected classes to be equally talented and equally successful, we had better start much earlier than entry into the tech job market and had better have the stomach for massive early-life intervention. But who has the stomach for hard things when bashing tech for its success is so easy and convenient?
As an old-school liberal who was 100% in favor of the women's movement some 40-plus years ago, I find much of the discussion on 'diversity' misguided at best and terribly naive at worst.
While I have a scathing assessment of modern feminism ('men are existentially evil'), in my work world I have consistently and actively promoted women with talent and motivation. Several of these women were more important to our work effort than most of the men, and I treated them accordingly, much to the chagrin of the others.
However, giving someone a consistent a repeated and open-ended advantage based on race or gender (or, for that matter, military service) is nothing more than reverse-discrimination, and our society does itself no favor is pursuing such a course.
1
Question, with preface: It seems to me that because of all the attention given to diversity and quotas, that tech and other companies want to hire women and minorities. Is that correct?
If so, then author is basing their argument on the premise that HR depts are making a conscious decision to not hire women and minorities. If this were true then of course these companies should be reprimanded. If this is not true, then what is the solution to this problem? Is there a way to approach this problem that doesn't demonize the faceless hiring managers (and therefore result in polarizing essentializations?)
p.s. In agreement with the author, cognitive diversity seems like a silly and not so helpful concept, but if it were true, I think that different experiences will produce more cognitive diversity. Race, gender, and ethnicity all have a lot to do with how we experience the world. Let's not use this idea to avoid getting at the root of the problem.
2
In our small town, everyone who is hired to work in our school system is a townie. Not just one generation, but several generations back. It wasn't always this way and there are still a few of us who are not originally from here. It makes for a very shallow world view and there exists a strong "us vs them" mentality. They expect their children to be favored above the others and it is getting to the point where many are related to each other. Reminds me of the "inner ring" of behavioral economics.
7
In the abstract, skin color and gender shouldn't play a role in judging a person. But pushing for race and gender diversity is the right thing to do, given the historical treatment of minorities and women in this country.
The problem with an article like this is that by failing to state the actual reasons for a racial/gender diversity push (righting historical wrongs), it superficially appears to advocate for external physical traits over internal individual traits, which is clearly absurd.
The term "identity diversity," which appears later in the article, is interesting. It seems like a useful way of talking about the kind of diversity that isn't connected to a specific historical context. But the question of how valuable "identity diversity" is in a given industry or workplace is a separate one.
Even if cognitive diversity is the true goal, let's face it: no one is going to represent the experiences, needs, and outlook of women better than women. Same can be said for all under-represented groups.
1
Well, Denise Smith is actually correct. Within a group of 12 white men there can actually be quite a bit of social diversity, religious diversity, and economic diversity, as well as diversity in sexual orientation. There just won't be any racial diversity or gender diversity. Diversity is a broad word that extends far beyond just the implications of race and gender.
1
Hard to believe that the tech industry that classically above all values intelligence and ability over everything else would be so stupid as to hire those with the lesser of these qualities over those who had the most. If true, which I doubt only because it's so suicidal, then those doing the hiring need to be removed.
Diversity is NOT inside a persons head. This is absurd. This is a point of view being used to implement an ongoing policy of exclusion. By and large those being excluded are Black and brown and female. Those who are always included are white and male. This is old fashioned discrimination refurbished and presented in a shiny new box. America is the most diverse country in the world. It is unfortunate that those who control the hiring in the tech industry feel uncomfortable in the presence of women and minorities. They will have to get over it in order to stay relevant in the 21st Century. Our Nations cultural,racial,ethnic, religious and life experience diversity is it's greatest strength. Our modern technology industries must reflect that.
1
The fundamental problem is our early-education schools are simply failing the students and the society. In my opinion, there's too much emphasis on cultural correctness and too little emphasis on critical thinking.
1
I think many folks are missing the whole point of diversity when it comes to hiring. To my mind, there are a couple of reasons any good company should aim for this. The first one is to create the best products. The second, perhaps ancillary although I'd argue not less important, is to give opportunities across the board and be a good civic partner.
I recently watched the Ken Burns / Lynn Novick documentary on the Vietnam War and was struck by the utter lack of diversity in the decision making. Not that it surprised me, given the time period. However, I wonder if the same decisions would have been made if there had been literally anyone from southeast Asia involved in the decision process. I know it's a thought exercise at this point since we can't go back in time and have a do-over, but our leaders' lack of knowledge about the culture of the people we were supposed to be allied with was fairly shocking by today's standards. It was painful to me to watch old film of a room full of old white men sitting around plotting the fate of millions of people halfway around the globe, based on nothing more than their political ambitions for the next U.S. presidential election. I know diversity doesn't inoculate against this type of hubris, but I believe it has to help.
Designing cell phones certainly isn't the same thing as avoiding the next Vietnam. But any company would want to create products that appeal to the broadest range of people, right? We're not all white men, aged 18-34.
1
This article underscores exactly what the "Google Memo" was lamenting - that diversity, to those like the author, is not about getting new and different ideas to create the best product. It is about ticking off check boxes for representation. Diversity of ideas does this. Diversity of gender or race - while possibly creating diversity of ideas - does not necessarily do so.
The author cares about social engineering and quotas. Companies should only care about making the best product. Two identical folks with different backgrounds achieves that better than two different looking folks with the same background.
Gender, race and sexual preference diversity do not equate to cognitive diversity. I completely agree with Denise Young Smith's original statement. I have worked with people of the same race who came from different backgrounds, and their life experiences and views points are drastically different. For example, a blue-eyed white male colleague who grew up in Ukraine and lived through the times of Soviet Union collapse, had completely different view from another white male grew up in New York and went to a prestigious college. Based on current
"diversity" trends, these two colleagues would have been categorized the same, when in fact their life experiences were way more diverse than someone of a different race/gender who grew up in similar environments.
"Cognitive diversity" would be further enhanced by the greater differences in "life experience and life perspective" of people who *must* lead different lives.
"Employees typically recommend people similar to them in racial identity and gender, so it requires dedicated effort to recruit and hire people who don’t already have" similar identities.
The key wording here is "dedicated effort." Elite private schools and colleges know well the meaning of these words and the weak representation of diversity -- "the old-fashioned kind" -- when that effort is absent. But make no mistake about it, the effort needs to be substantial because of the many economic, psychic and academic barriers standing between potentially capable, say, Ivy League applicants, and their ultimate realization of a diploma from an elite school ... or a job at a cutting edge tech firm.
"A Hope Unseen" tells the story of a grad from a DC high school -- Cedric Jennings -- who faces many challenges as he makes his way through Brown University. Without mentoring plus a meager stipend and his force of will, the journey might have never reached its end.
One complaint, however: The "screed" by Google engineer James Damore was anything but. It was well-reasoned, footnoted and respectful of women engineers he worked with. Damore's objection: a 50-50 male-female split among Google engineers is not realistic because taken as a whole the genders do not evenly balance out when it comes to engineering prowess, and other skills as well.
You may disagree but to cast his essay as a screed unfairly demeans it.
And here is a case where more cognitive diversity is in order.
1
Footnotes don't have anything to do with whether or not an argument is "well-reasoned."
I've sat through corporate diversity seminars. Long talks filled with generalizations without a single instruction about how to implement diversity in the workplace.
The company where I worked which seemingly put the most emphasis on diversity, publicly and internally, was caught charging minorities higher prices for their services, so I'm kind of cynical on the topic.
Now we have "thought diversity" to contend with, which may be an even less substantial topic.
With this talk of two flavors of diversity, it's too easy to lose sight of the company's bottom line.
I understand the intent of diversity as an extension of equality and fairness in America, but I believe that quantifying and enforcing diversity via ethnic "identity" makes no business sense and does the cause of liberalism a disservice. For example, the article cites 12 blonde hair blue eyes men in a room as a "short coming". Well, what if two of the men are 65 years old, 3 are in their 20's, 2 are European, 2 others lived and traveled widely throughout Japan, a 3 more are under 12 years old? Is it still a disservice? What if they're a small tech company that builds products whose end users are predominantly white men from Scandinavia?
Yes, in business, diversity can be an asset (but I don't believe it is always an asset. We should simply judge people in their merits and qualifications and focus on equality of opportunity. If Apple received 100 applications from China and 2 applications from Cbile, statistically they should receive more resumes from qualified Chinese then from Chileans. Identity is arbitrary and forcing the composition of a business to adhere to arbitrary conceptions is more likely to result in poor rather than beneficial decisions.
The central notion of western civilization is that each person is an individual. That is the single value most in need of nurture today. Be yourself, strive for your own goals, don't be bound by the negativity of others. Respecting the individuality of others helps, too.
Approximately 20% to 25% of graduating engineers each year are women; nearly all white or Asian.
Approximately 4% of graduating engineers each year are black.
The high tech industry requires top skilled engineers in its leadership roles more so than any other industry. High tech industries depend primarily on electrical / computer engineers much more so than say mechanical engineers, the most commonly awarded engineering degree. Electrical / computer degrees are a small subset of the annual total because they are the most difficult degrees to achieve.
The point is that diversity for the sake of diversity is nonsense in a field that requires fundamental skill sets.
The problem for "under-representation" of gender or race lies in the education and interests of the students before reaching college.
At some point it would be useful for such authors as Ms Williams to address the root causes of why more African Americans do not pursue the basic qualifications to compete for leadership roles in high tech. Racism is not the issue. Education is the issue.
1
Institutional racism is a large part of the reason that "education is the issue."
Exactly correct. This is the problem in my own profession. We have tried unsuccessfully to increase diversity when the number of applicants is far below the representative population. If the interest or educational background is not there, it is nearly impossible to change. And sadly, race/ethnic-based "affirmative-action" efforts often resulted in student failure, even with strong institional resource efforts. It is a very difficult problem to address.
I find the idea of a division between sanctioned and non-sanctioned diversity deeply troubling.
When I was young, I was taught that the concept of race was biologically meaningless, because about 85% of genetic diversity was between individuals rather than between the ethnic or racial groups they might be associated with. I suspect that the social concepts at play in 'standard diversity' are similarly meaningless when they are applied to particular individuals.
8
While genetically we are mostly the same, culture and socio-economic experiences make our differences vast. Thought experiment: Identical twins- one raised in peaceful, middle-class home, another raised in Tibet. I doubt their outlooks would reflect a meaningless genetic similarity. What we are facing right now is more dangerous than previous generations, because what these groups of young, white men-- those inclined to thinking 'rational' thoughts and inclined to be fascinated with manipulating data and relating to robots-- is that they are creating a 'virtual world' which is rapidly taking control of our every activity. That includes finance at one end-- and, for example, simple breathing at the other end (all those stupid 'healthy living' apps to monitor and track our pleasure.) These young men aren't civic-minded. They are power-minded. Their parents thought they were doing the right thing when they encouraged them to 'think big'.
Bottom line: these young white men simply don't want to work with people who challenge their robotic way of thinking. When they have to switch gears because a woman is presenting a viewpoint that doesn't fit with theirs, they suffer. They don't want to sit among a group of people who will ruin their utopian circle. Right now they are living the dream! They go to work and everyone around them 'gets them'. What bliss.
Rather than trying to increase diversity within any one organization, it would be better to increase the number of woman-owned and minority-owned businesses. (And this can be applied in any industry -- not just in tech.) Women, minority, and other socially disadvantaged entrepreneurs and leaders should be sought out and funded. Investors would be wise to mentor these individuals for the first three to five years at least to ensure that business ventures are viable and can compete against the larger, established organizations. Expanding the pool of companies can achieve the objective that we all seek -- diversity in race AND gender AND thought. More companies bring about competition to force each other to change, adapt, or fail. At the very least, supporting woman-owned and minority-owned businesses will provide them with an equal opportunity to introduce their ideas to a wider market in which consumers can decide whether or not they succeed or fail.
We cannot expect Apple, Google, and other tech giants to change their internal processes now. But surely, they can change if they see that new and alternative businesses, which might threaten their market dominance, are succeeding with new and better approaches. Change can come from the outside -- namely more companies that reflect the population across the country.
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There is a relatively simple way to help minimize the "like hires like" problem of unconscious bias in the workplace: HR departments should remove all identifying information (age, name, etc) from all applications and resumes or CVs before submitting applications to the hiring group. Then candidates are judged on their credentials, not on their presumed difference or sameness. There are numerous studies that show convincingly that the same applications, when headed by names that are identified as gendered or as "ethnic" get different treatment in the hands of hiring committees or groups. Get rid of the names and photos at the application level--and then conduct interviews with a diversity officer in the room.
The fact that so many (the majority, probably) of companies are unwilling to do this is suggestive that those running the show don't really want diversity in their companies because then they would have to work with people who really do think, respond, and live differently.
It is not enough to bemoan the lack of diversity in a company. It takes concentrated effort, good will, and a firm and vocal commitment to principles of inclusion and equity--at every level, from the boss all the way down. Otherwise it is just empty noise.
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They don't want people who are over a certain age either though. Their creds may get them an interview but there is no way to hide that they're not 30 anymore so no dice. The minority or female might get an interview as well but still once they have the interview there is no hiding who/what they are.
Some professional orchestras handle auditions by having the musician play behind a screen. In this way there is no way to tell the musician's age, race or gender or if they are friend or enemy. Seems to work well.
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Great idea, and as you may know the leading symphonic orchestras conduct auditions behind curtains so the judges know nothing about the applicant other than how they play the music. This has maintained the excellence of performances. The trouble now is partly because HR department's are unsatisfied until their results show a diversity of numbers; de facto affirmative action. With your suggestion, would those wishing a diversity of talent go along with the results if choosing based only on talent demonstrated behind a curtain led to a disproportionate number of any category?
The 21st century has brought increased awareness of economic and other discriminations against people of color, First Nations peoples, women, religious minorities and the l.g.b.t.q communities. It has become a time to reconcile these disparities resulting in movements and policies that sometimes exceed the bounds of common sense. However, I believe that most of the results of action to increase diversity in the work force are going to benefit society. We must all participate if only with patience and a realization of where we, individually stand in the context. I am a successful, middle-class male living in Canada. I am privileged to be a US citizen as well. I look around and know that I must stand aside and share my good fortune with newcomers, Original People (why we call them "Aboriginal is something I don't understand) and those who do not fit in with the classic, white European definition of who one must be to be accepted as an equal.
To be meaningful, the conversation about workplace diversity needs to first come to terms with some fundamental truths. Businesses exist primarily to generate profit. In this context diversity will always be seen as a means not the end itself. In the real world, the pool of candidates for hire or promotions is not populated by people of equal talent and experience. The consequence of a mis-hire or bad promotion on operations is substantial, costly, and morale sapping. There were times during my 30+ years of corporate life when "diversity hires" were given roles with signficant titles, but relegated to the sidelines with no real authority, or sadly proved to be ineffective or incompetent. Experience, expertise and "fit" are vital to success. Fit involves point of view, work ethic, relationship building, cultural adaptability, and the ability to translate these into meaningful and relevant contributions. What's challenging about "fit" is inevitably unconscious bias is always operative. The statistical argument to diversity is interesting but incomplete. To positively impact the challenge of diversity, its advocates should avoid at all costs the tempation to hire or promote someone who visually is diverse, but emphasize business outcomes, technical capability, and practical ways to surface and address unconscious bias in the staffing decision as well as the non-business related realities of the operational culture like sexual harassment.
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If Ms. Williams is suggesting that businesses should prioritize the hiring of underrepresented minorities over others, I cannot agree. I hope for all of our sakes that we get to the root of the problems facing equality and not focus on the end product by pressuring companies to pass up the applicants most fit for their work.
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The curtain is getting pulled back and we see that "diversity" is being defined by progressives using their typical sorting mechanism of skin color and their goal is proportional representation. In other words, quotas.
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Even identical twins have through diversity. While having a range of viewpoints is always good for an organization, that kind of diversity will always be a product of tending to other forms of diversity - race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, religion and even socio-economic background.
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In the United States people tend to focus on race and ethnicity in defining diversity while ignoring other aspects. It is not so in other countries. Cognitive diversity is one part of being diverse. Everyone is diverse and should be valued as such. Diversity cannot be the default Affirmative Action.
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The problem with extreme political correctness is it will inevitably invite extreme political incorrectness.
That is why President Obama never used the race card. Too bad some of his followers didn't understand that.
Diversity is important and redlining is real. But meritocracy is important too. Before my retirement, I was happy to be a contracting consultant so not to get sucked into office politics. I have seen it all though. While there were discriminations, there were also people exploiting the system. HR becomes a paralegal department, not human resources. Incompetent people hang around because of the color of their skin and not their work ethic or competency. Some even got promoted. So the coin definitely has two sides. A lot of times though it is minority v. minority. And how are you going to settle the score?
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Although I am a strong supporter of the type of diversity Ms. Williams advocates in this article (which I will call "standard" diversity as opposed to cognitive diversity), I am wondering if there have been any reputable studies that show that standard diversity is beneficial to a tech company's bottom line; being able to refer to such studies would tend to support the idea that standard diversity is not simply social "engineering" that may degrade performance.
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If there has been any studies showing this, the pro racial diversity camp would be quoting them. Instead we're just told it works. Of note, in sports we don't see the same push for quotas because performance is obvious. In business and education, it's difficult to show either way so we're told that hiring for race or gender is beneficial.
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The percentage of women graduates in computer science, is about 18%. So that means it's mathematically impossible for the Tech corporate workforce to reflect our population's diversity. It's the same for other minorities. That aside there're no reputable studies that prove diversity is beneficial to a tech company's bottom line. If there were the author would have cited them. Diversity is code for affirmative action...which no one wants to use because it's a loaded term. Silicon Valley hiring to a large degree is based on merit...only the best and brightest get in. Diversity (affirmative action) advocates don't want to be in the position of arguing against merit. So they have made unsubstantiated claims that it is better for the bottom line. They have also stated tech hiring doesn't reflect the general makeup of our population because of unconscious bias. The idea being you can be racist & not even know it. This of course is a lie. Recently researchers including one of the founders of the IAT ...the “Implicit Association Test” from Harvard, UVA & the University of Wisconsin–Madison analyzed the results of hundreds of studies of the test involving almost 81,000 participants. The researchers found that the correlation between implicit bias & discriminatory behavior is very weak. In the Chronicle’s words, “everyone agrees that the statistical effect linking bias to behavior is slight. They only disagree about how slight.” The real issue is forced diversity fair? It isn't.
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You won't find those studies, at least not objective studies. I'm sure that PEW has some articles in support of their PC stance, but their data are always lacking as they start with a bias.
Social engineering doesn't work. Diversity mandates don't work. Never have.
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Ms. Williams hits the nail in the head. And many of the commenters here prove the point. Minority candidates are somehow perceived as being less well trained, less "efficient," or less prepared --meaning, the company and the "team" would so very much like to find well-qualified minority applicants, but there aren't any...
There could be nothing farther than the truth. Many minority candidates are actually far more flexible than the "standard-issue" average engineering graduate. A minority candidate has often had to overcome discrimination in school, in admissions, in the classroom, and in team projects --and in consequence is far more flexible and adaptable, less brittle, and far more independent. And a different life background can not be compared to the "diversity of thought" possible among individuals sharing the same cultural milieu.
Of course, next time the team says the candidate is great but is not a good "cultural" fit, with no concrete findings, that's discrimination at work.
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"A minority candidate has often had to overcome discrimination in school, in admissions, in the classroom, and in team projects".
Yes, positive discrimination, also called Affirmative Action, which would tend to lead said minority to feel entitled to whatever position he/she desires. Which in turn probably explains the outrage felt by underperforming minorities when the race/gender card surprisingly doesn't get them their "quota slot" in a competitive company whose hiring relies on performance and aptitude rather than "diversity". The omnipresence of Asians in the tech industry pretty much tramples all over the usual myths of "white boys club" purposeful domination of the field at the expense of women, Blacks, and Hispanics.
"Of course, next time the team says the candidate is great but is not a good "cultural" fit, with no concrete findings, that's discrimination at work. "
So discrimination is good when it benefits your preferred ethic/gender group, but not in the opposite case. That's called bias, and if it's not acceptable from your opponents, you shouldn't be displaying it either.
Most engineering graduates are "minorities" in US terms, given the prevalence of Asian engineers.
I disagree. Minorities are NOT thought to be less competent. Just as majorities (is that a white male, or is it a white female, or?) are not thought to be competent. You should be judged on your accomplishments, education, and other aspects of your life's experience. Not as a minority or a majority.
We are all minorities in some way or another. Who is to say which minority is most important?! White LGBT, white single mother, white male from an alcoholic family, black male from an Ivy league school?
When one is hired because of their color, that is discrimination, not diversity. And that kind of diversity hiring does NOT improve the 'diversity' of a company. We are all diverse. PS different life backgrounds can be compared to 'diversity of thought' - your background drives thought, not your race.
When I select somebody, from a number of candidates, I don’t know how clever they are, or what they will contribute. But being human I’m likely to think somebody like me, who comes from a similar culture, is a better fit than somebody who has a foreign accent, or dresses rather strangely, or has habits that offend my sensibilities. There isn’t a truly objective criteria.
Living in Europe I often see software features that make perfect sense to somebody whose only life experience is living in California or Seattle, but are based on assumptions that don't apply, zip codes, telephone number formats and so on are obvious examples, but many are more subtle. So I expect that also applies to communities within the US.
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I'd like to see a real commitment from Silicon Valley companies to mentor and educate young people of diverse backgrounds into jobs on a continual basis. Make it more than an internship program and ensure mentees have a viable career path.
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The premise underlying nearly all discussion of "diversity in tech" is that these elite programming jobs at Apple and Google and Microsoft and Facebook are somehow finite in number, and with all the jobs going to qualified white males, there are fewer left for qualified nonwhites or nonmales.
(And this is particularly bad and worth dwelling on more than, say, diversity in academic hiring, or in basket-weaving, because Silicon Valley is the new Wall Street, and access to elite socioeconomic status comes with access to those jobs.)
Nothing could be further from the truth. Simply put, there is a shortage of qualified hires of any background compared to the number of positions these companies would love to fill. They have bidding wars for qualified employees (and frankly more aggressive offers for the ones who, on top of incredible credentials, also let them check the right diversity boxes).
Sure, we should want there to be a more diverse set of qualified applicants. But if there isn't, it isn't primarily because of zero-sum competition for jobs between the diverse and less diverse applicants. And the point at which the inequality can be equalized is long before these applicants are applying - it's probably somewhere in grade school, but high school isn't a bad place to concentrate our efforts.
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Looks like they are doing a good thing. Being more inclusive of different viewpoints is important and does not mean they are stopping or halting other diversity efforts. There has to be a way to include everyone if an organization is truly going to be diverse.
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We all want the opportunity to work at a successful company. The question that challenges managers building successful companies is how to build teams that are efficient. By efficient, I mean a team that solves a challenge and moves to the next challenge. This priority on efficiency encourages managers to look for like-minded people.
Interestingly, I think many successful ideas come from diverse sources. We hail the "innovator" for his brilliance. However the brilliance may simply be an openness to other ideas that like-minded people ignore.
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After 20 years in one field I decided change careers and go into tech. I enrolled at my local university and learned multiple programming languages. I've taught entry level classes and volunteered at conferences, including a diversity conference. This is what I have to say about diversity in tech: diversity ends at 40. I can't get an interview, let alone a job. But those in theirs 20s that I taught? Yeah, they have jobs. Tech is not interested in diversity except to tick off boxes.
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This is true not just in tech. I tried the reverse - 35 years in tech, Ph.D. On math, needing a change. I was naive in thinking that could happen.
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Perhaps hiring managers should factor into recruitment policies -- and job training, remember that? -- their user/client populations who are 40 and up. Adjusting their hiring to meet that proportion will give them a better "user-experience" than if a 20-something were trying to figure out what makes for a better UX for this age group, no doubt attractive to advertisers.
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I got hired as a developer by one of the big five at fifty-five. Programming is a performance profession. Having a degree in computer science is nice, but it's like having a degree in music. You can get an BFA in music with a 4.0 GPA, but if you want to get a paying gig, you have to be able to play in the audition. If you want a gig as a programmer, you have to be able to code in the interview. I've interviewed people with master's degrees and years of experience who could not, and I've worked with self-taught programmers with no college who were terrific. Here's the problem we have: https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
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Shouldn't it depend on the job? If it's designing an Amazon algorithm that attracts more customers, then diversity clearly adds value. If it's designing a computer chip that runs faster, it's not as clear that diversity is useful. Any gender or race inequality of applicants in the latter case is generated by the decades of educational inequality that preceded it, and that inequality should be addressed at the educational stage, not by forcing a company in a hotly competitive field to compromise their effectiveness by compensating for the injustices visited on the disadvantaged.
With all due respect to the commenter avrds, the cause of the Challenger disaster was figured out not by someone with diverse background who thought differently from the others, but by Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize Laureate physicist whose training was very similar to the others. He asked a very simple experimental question that no one else had asked. It had nothing to do with diversity, and everything to do with thinking out of the box.
It makes sense to correct for the effect of employees introducing inequality by recommending people similar to themselves, but the best way to achieve diversity is by early education.
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I take your point about the importance of education, but the rest of your argument depends on our expecting the average tech worker to be a future Nobel laureate. Life in the middle, far away from the extremely good or bad, has plenty of space for all of us.
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"If it's designing an Amazon algorithm that attracts more customers, then diversity clearly adds value." No, it's not at all clear, any more than it's clear that for designing a faster chip diversity does, or doesn't, add value.
Diversity is not about adding value, it's about hiring people who can do the job without de-facto segregation or discrimination.
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That is a nice story about Feynman (it's always a good story when you can insert a Nobel laureate), and there are accounts that support it on his namesake website (http://www.feynman.com/science/the-challenger-disaster/). However, the evidence is clear that Morton-Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjoly identified the problem and did everything he could to fix it a well before Feynman was appointed to the Rogers Commission (http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/12703.aspx). FWIW, this appears to have been acknowledged by Dr. Feynman.
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New trend? Seems like the same old thing packaged in new language. Same thing as when we were all given Myers-Briggs tests in the 80s and told that the real diversity was between ISTJs and ENFPs, not genders or races. Same old excuses for keeping the Old Boy network going.
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Was that seriously ever the case with the MBT? I find that hard to believe.
I've seen industries full of companies with the old boy's club in full swing. In tech, there's always an Uber or a 'bro' start up; however, putting things into perspective tech largely has been more progressive, and accepting than any other industry I can think of.. From my past experience inside an old boy's club run organization, the tech industry pushed them to be more flexible and make additional cultural changes to attract and retain technology folks.
In the large tech company where I worked we used to have affirmative action meetings each year, late 70s early 80s... then those got renamed to "diversity" meetings and they definitely did use Myers-Briggs for that purpose, to try to deflect from race/gender to personality-type diversity.
Few people considering hiring from the employer's viewpoint, and in particular the poor saps who actually have to do the hiring. These guys are line-level managers who be in a lot of trouble if they hire someone who doesn't work out. Unfortunately, they don't have the advanced interviewing skills to evaluate candidates, and know that they have this shortcoming. After all, they were originally hired as technical workers, not HR interviewers.
So if they manage to hire someone who turns out well and is valuable to the team, they will seek to hire more employees just like that. They feel it lessens the risks of screwing up, and saves time. After all, their primary job is getting the work done, not hiring new employees.
I remember back in the late 70s/early 80s, when Russian emigres first appeared. Some got hired as programmers, they worked hard for a low salary, so employers hired more of them. Many of them were not that great, but they were considered a safe choice, and at least they were willing to put in the effort. So for a time, many departments were mostly Russian emigres.
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Actually most Russian programmers are quite good.
2
@older and wiser - Where I worked, we had some real dogs. One poor girl was supposed to take a Cobol program that did a lookup in an internal table and convert to do the lookup in a VSAM file. She struggled for weeks trying to get it to work.
She wasn't in my department, but I felt sorry for her, as she was 8 months pregnant and had broken her leg in a car accident. I was able to make the changes to the program in about two hours. She spent another week 'testing' to make everything look good.
Another guy did work for me. He was assigned to write a program that would produce an advice that could be mailed out to customers on one of those old dot-matrix printers with multipart forms.
He tested it, and it seemed to work OK. The first day, it printed one advice and stopped. When I came in that morning, he said "Oh, Jonathan, don't worry, I have found a small bug that can be fixed quickly". The next night it started printing the same advice over and over again, and the operations group had to shut the printer off to stop it.
He was a monorail engineer in Russia....I hope they didn't let him work on anything important!
I'd love to know how personal, non-technical, experience can positively influnece a decision about which sorting algorithm to use on a large dataset. The fact that I'm an immigrant doesn't help me one bit when I am tasked to come up with a scalable, modular design of a TCP/IP stack. I do, however, prefer to socialize with other immigrants at work.
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A different personal perspective can be useful, for example, in pointing out that facial recognition software performs exceptionally badly on dark skin. It's not always easy to predict what the use of diversity will be.
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Well, that's just wrong--many computer vision systems don't even use visible light--but let's assume it's right. It doesn't take dark skin to know that a particular technique doesn't work on dark skin. It takes expertise in that practice area. This is obvious.
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maa--if you're doing scalable, modular designs of TCP/IP stacks at this stage in your career, you probably need to find other work. TCP/IP stacks are a commodity--there are plenty of open-source versions to choose from.
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Ms. Williams,
I strongly and most heartily applaud your wish for diversity. It is mine too.
But here is one problem. Simply because someone is of a different race does not mean that she brings any more diversity than, say, a conservative evangelical who teaches at a secular state university. They are different kinds of diversity, to be sure. But one's skin color does not guarantee diversity, nor does it guarantee sameness.
As a white male who was hired by a college to represent the "continental philosophical" point of view in an all "analytic" department, I know what it is like to be treated as the "other." As a female member of another department said to me when I told her how I had been treated, "so you know what it is like to be a persecuted minority." After I raised my jaw from the ground, she explained that my experience was essentially the same as those of many women or persons of color who had been hired to "check" some sort of box of diversity.
If we are truly going to value diversity, it cannot be limited to color or ethnicity or any one "approved" set of factors. To hire someone who is ethnically diverse but still holds to the generally accepted views of a community is really not doing all that much to uphold diversity. It is more window dressing. The problem is that, so far, the range of diversity has been determined in highly artificial ways, ones that end up too much like checking a box.
So, if we are to promote diversity, what exactly does that mean?
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No, your experience is not "essentially the same". Being in a subgroup of the majority for a subset of your time in fairly tightly limited circumstances is not at all like being born into a category that you carry around EVERYWHERE you go. I'd advise you to talk to (or listen to) a more diverse selection of people.
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You're kidding right? Equating the academic dialogue you face at your cushy academic job with what minorities face in corporate America is insulting.
At least you got that posting that vexes you so. Many minorities do not even get the chance to be treated poorly at work because they are never hired at all.
Instead of feeling a little empathy towards people who are othered on a daily basis (which I suspect your colleague wanted) you tookyour experience to mean that you too are a minority and should get special treatment.
What is a legitimate set of norms around which to bond if not cognitive?
Much of the problem arises from the widely promoted notion that racial, ethnic, and gender diversity is important mainly because it provides cognitive or viewpoint diversity important for a companies success. This rationale for needing diversity opens up the discussion to include other potential sources of diversity. The real reason for racial, ethnic, and gender diversity diversity is fairness, equal treatment, and equal opportunity.
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How can you promote equal treatment in the eyes of men if you favor one man (or woman) over another solely because of a biological trait that cannot be controlled?
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But this was achieved a long time ago. Blacks and Latinos have always had the opportunity to work in Silicon Valley. It's just that these jobs are mostly very specialized highly competitive and not many minorities make the cut.
So we need then an additional rationale...the value of minority "perspectives" which is supposedly so great that it would justify hiring blacks and Latinos who would not be qualified otherwise.
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Talbot, below, makes the classic argument that you hire for talent alone (i.e., people like him/her), not for diversity. But without diversity on engineering and design teams, a company risks failing to miss the obvious to people outside the so-called talented group.
The classic example is the problem with air bags, which were designed to protect the men who designed them, not women or children who could potentially be injured or even killed by them. And in general, even though more women buy new cars than men, most had been designed by all-male teams not considering the values that women -- i.e., their largest customer base -- consider important.
I also remember reading that the Challenger disaster was caused, in part, by a culture that lacked diversity -- it was a room full of people who all basically thought the same, and that too led to disaster.
I'm sure there are thousands of more examples like these where if you have more diverse engineering teams, with a diversity of life experiences and points of view and the freedom to dissent, you have a more successful business/organization. And ultimately, isn't that what everyone wants ... even the tech industry?
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The Challenger disaster was caused by a roomful of managers who all wanted not to be the person who called off an important launch. If the roomful had listened to the warning from one of their working engineers, the Challenger would not have launched in the conditions that led to its explosion.
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That roomful of managers were under tremendous political pressure to get that space shuttle off the ground in order to please then President Reagan. Politics over common sense won the day and caused an unconscionable catastrophe.
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>>(i.e., people like him/her)<<
That bit of snark cost your argument a lot of rhetorical force.
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The best argument for racial and gender diversity in Tech would focus not why companies ought to hire with a mind to diversity, but why they urgently need to. As the larger culture becomes more diverse and inclusive, tech companies cannot exist in splendid isolation
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All other questions/issues aside,
Why not?
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Why not? They seem to be doing pretty well at taking over the world so far.
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If you want an organization of people that look different, then race and gender are going to be a primary attributes.
If you want an organization that has a certain percentage of people from various groups, then belonging to one those groups is going to be a primary attribute.
But no one in my field was ever more or less valuable as a colleague, or better or worse at their job, or more or less creative, insightful, a good manager, or an inspiring leader because of their gender or race. I've had superb and terrible male and female bosses. One of the best bosses I ever had was a black woman. Another was a white man.
One of the smartest co-workers I ever had was an Hispanic female, and another was a Jewish guy.
Diversity is great if it makes sure that everyone great has a chance to be there. It is not much if it satisfies some self-created belief that race and gender offer some magic something others lack.
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But the diversity of experience that comes with being various races, genders, and from various socioeconomic backgrounds DOES inform the thoughts, actions, behavior, and decisions of workers. If you have a homogeneous group with similar experiences they are not going to design software, for instance, that appeals to various groups. It won’t even occur to them! People are all the same - I get what you are saying! That is the point here. Let’s treat everyone the same and give everyone an opportunity. But it is naive to think that this society has treated them all the same. I’m an older white female engineer and I can tell you I have faced roadblocks to that all my life. I have also contributed a different perspective to projects that came from my experiences as a white female engineer. And I’ve been awakened by experiences of other diverse groups in my work who had other viewpoints to contribute. We can’t get to the point where we can just think of each other as equal humans until we make an effort to think of each other as equal humans and celebrate our differences at the same time.
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The true purpose of "diversity" is, or should be, precisely to make sure that everyone great has an equal chance to be there. We have a lot of inbuilt systemic discrimination to overcome before that will be true.
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I agree entirely. And I also think that the white/black/hispanic/asian/Native person who grew up on a ranch in remote rural America and was the first in his/her family to go to college also represents an essential kind of diversity in our times of a dangerously divided society.
4