That one could have been flagged off the front page, these kind of discussions are tricky to keep civil. This one will probably be flagged out in a similar manner.
Hiring a diverse team can be great in lots of ways. Especially for a global product, like many of the ones Google provides, you want a product team that can understand the lived experiences of a rich and varied user base.
Diversity means many things, not just gender and ethnicity. Some of the biggest blind spots I’ve noticed in Silicon Valley companies come from lack of diversity in age and class.
Diversity should be about inclusion, not about exclusion. All people involved in hiring should understand the (common-sense, in my opinion) boundaries set by the Civil Rights Act. Regardless of what you might think when reading certain parts of tumblr or twitter, “only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups” is not forward thinking or progressive. To the extent that it is what it appears to be—slightly coded language for filtering resumes based on gender and race—it’s illegal.
There are so many brilliant people out there, often overlooked. Graduates from un-fancy colleges. Engineers a few years from retirement, but unsatisfied with their current job. A high school contest coder looking for an internship. A person from a poor family who bootstrapped thru community college. To me, diversity is about taking the extra effort to find excellence everywhere, rather than just looking in the default places.
I don't know if this guy has taken a look around, but Google is like 75% white and Asian males, and 25% everyone else. That might even be slightly generous. It skews even more for those in power. Doesn't seem like these classes are having any trouble succeeding at the company.
It might not be hard to convince a jury that it would be 80 or 85% if Google stopped all pro-diversity measures. It might be hard to convince them to penalize Google for it, though.
(FWIW, I'm on a team that consists solely of white and Asian males, and everyone on my chain is a white or Asian male, all the way to the top.)
> Google is like 75% white and Asian males, and 25% everyone else.[...] Doesn't seem like these classes are having any trouble succeeding at the company.
At a first glance the racial category "white" on its own is obviously underrepresented at Google both relative to the population of California and relative to that of the United States.
If it can be shown that Google refused to interview certain candidates because of their race or sex, that is illegal discrimination, regardless of the demographics of Google's workforce.
I mean, an email explicitly saying "We should only consider L3s from our underrepresented groups" seems pretty clear no? Or did you not read the article?
I see that there is a claim that such an email exists. I don't think this has actually been established yet. Even if this email was sent, I expect that either we'll find that in context it wasn't exclusionary (e.g. the group in question was to be dedicated to hiring from underrepresented groups, while other groups handled candidates from all backgrounds), or we'll find that it was in contravention to Google's policies on the issue. We'll also eventually learn that objecting to this email was not why the plaintiff was fired.
Since you mention that you deal mostly with whites and Asians, what kind of issues do you deal with that you wouldn't think we be as bad under a more diverse team.
I am not one who espouses a utility perspective on diversity. The research I've seen, such as it is, does not seem compelling. I care more about the justice aspect.
What If I said there was evidence to say diversity is a net-negative? From communication issues to cultural conflicts between employees?
Would there be a point where the negatives of diversity can outweigh the justice (Which i assume is something along the lines of offering employment to those who otherwise wouldn't be offered)?
The article has nothing to do with who you want to work with.
The allegation is that Google was systematically dismissing candidates who fell into a certain (protected) class, from being even considered at a certain stage of the interview process. That's illegal.
You mention you are asian so would you prefer working in an office with 100% ethnic asians or 100% ethnic indian. Even just assume that both are culturally citizens of the country.
That is a libertarian argument for not having anti-discrimination laws. But if we do have such laws, they should applied on behalf of all races and both sexes, lest we create categories of second-class citizens.
