Measuring What Matters: Diversity at Uber(newsroom.uber.com)
newsroom.uber.com
Measuring What Matters: Diversity at Uber
https://newsroom.uber.com/diversity-report/
12 comments
Proportion of whites in the US: 63.7% (down from 87.7% in 1970)
Proportion of whites at Uber: 49.8%
Ars Technica: "Uber's labor force—in particular its tech staff—is overwhelmingly male and largely white." ( https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/03/new-diversity-repor... )
So whites are under-represented at Uber, even a minority, yet we're told that's still too many. Will they be happy when there's only 40% of them? Or 10%?
Proportion of whites at Uber: 49.8%
Ars Technica: "Uber's labor force—in particular its tech staff—is overwhelmingly male and largely white." ( https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/03/new-diversity-repor... )
So whites are under-represented at Uber, even a minority, yet we're told that's still too many. Will they be happy when there's only 40% of them? Or 10%?
The colorscheme on the "US Race and Ethnicity" ... ring? ... chart seems purposefully difficult to decipher. On a phone, the colors seem to blend into each other.
Does anyone else find the trend to push diversity into everything disturbing? The incentives around programs like these seem misaligned. No company discusses why there are clear gender divides in jobs, i.e. more women in nursing, more men in tech. Or the reason minority groups fall into the career breakdowns they do. Why are we trying to do anything other than giving all people the opportunity to do whatever they want?
Growing up, I had a small group (3 white males) of extremely close friends, they all grew up to be good people. Going into college, that group grew into 6 people, the 3 new additions were a mix of gender and ethnicity. You know what noticeably changed? Some of the people I spent most of my time with were now female or a different ethnicity. Everyone had a different background, everyone had different experiences. Everyone contributed differently. But everything wasn't suddenly remarkably better because there was diversity.
Diversity doesn't inherently make you better. Hire good people. You want credit for diversity? Work on making sure people who come from poor homes have access to learn difficult topics (STEM fields) without having to deal with the stress of paying for school, housing, food, having a part time job to makes ends meet, getting into massive debt, etc. and work on figuring out why these groups aren't likely to go into tech---why aren't they getting their degrees in tech fields? Until then, I'm going to argue the quotas for diversity that seem to be prevalent in tech are disturbing.
I didn't write this initially, but I know it say's they're donating $3 million a year towards select groups. While that's good, I still find forcing inorganic diversity (meaning the amount of people of an ethnicity in the field being way lower than the ratio you're trying to hire) to be a counter intuitive, random PR shot in the dark approach to trying to be better.
Growing up, I had a small group (3 white males) of extremely close friends, they all grew up to be good people. Going into college, that group grew into 6 people, the 3 new additions were a mix of gender and ethnicity. You know what noticeably changed? Some of the people I spent most of my time with were now female or a different ethnicity. Everyone had a different background, everyone had different experiences. Everyone contributed differently. But everything wasn't suddenly remarkably better because there was diversity.
Diversity doesn't inherently make you better. Hire good people. You want credit for diversity? Work on making sure people who come from poor homes have access to learn difficult topics (STEM fields) without having to deal with the stress of paying for school, housing, food, having a part time job to makes ends meet, getting into massive debt, etc. and work on figuring out why these groups aren't likely to go into tech---why aren't they getting their degrees in tech fields? Until then, I'm going to argue the quotas for diversity that seem to be prevalent in tech are disturbing.
I didn't write this initially, but I know it say's they're donating $3 million a year towards select groups. While that's good, I still find forcing inorganic diversity (meaning the amount of people of an ethnicity in the field being way lower than the ratio you're trying to hire) to be a counter intuitive, random PR shot in the dark approach to trying to be better.
I tend to agree. This reads like "Measuring what matters: Skin color". Are we absolutely sure this is progress? I can't help but think that this is why we are often called the "regressive left".
Engineering is, in many ways, a bad job. I was a software engineer for years and can assure you that it isn't an attractive profession. Many of the tech companies I worked for where ruthless body shops with very long hours, bad management and high turn over.
Nursing is also a phenomenally in-demand job which requires high amounts of education and has high standards but also has very intense working conditions. Nursing is also quite technical - you can't walk off the street and begin injecting chemicals into people without spending a significant amount of time in class.
Yet we see very little push to create more white male nurses, the topic is always intensely focused on STEM.
Nursing is also a phenomenally in-demand job which requires high amounts of education and has high standards but also has very intense working conditions. Nursing is also quite technical - you can't walk off the street and begin injecting chemicals into people without spending a significant amount of time in class.
Yet we see very little push to create more white male nurses, the topic is always intensely focused on STEM.
Pushing for diversity and making sure people from poor homes have access to learn difficult topics are mutually exclusive. Your quote on figuring out "why these groups aren't likely to go into tech" needs to be applied to people who are underrepresented in the tech field. Example : Why are women underrepresented in tech? Is it because they are feeling unwelcome here? Are we as a society unconsciously typecasting women and men into different job profile? What if a man wants to be nurse? I think pushing for diversity in this respect is required.
I feel like that's chasing symptoms though. If you push a bunch of women into tech and women aren't treated well in tech, you haven't solved the problem of women being treated poorly in tech, instead you've made more people be treated poorly.
Normally a push for diversity doesn't bother me particularly, but in this case it seems weird... because is this about "diversity" really? The recent furor was never about "Uber doesn't hire enough women" for example. It was about "Uber hires women and then harasses them to the point of tears." 36% of their workforce is female, K great. How many of those were harassed to the point of tears? Well, that measurement doesn't "matter" apparently, and was either not measured, or just doesn't advantage the company's PR enough to release publicly right now.
I guess I'm impatient with the baby steps. If you're going to make a big show of owning up to needing a culture change, be disruptive and aggressive like you claim to be. In short, show some balls. And yes I see the irony of putting it like that, but I don't really mean it ironically. It takes more balls to be a man who protects (edit: but not in a paternalistic/controlling way) and respects women and owns up to his mistakes than one who's still afraid of mommy or just wants to chase skirts. In short I guess I'm saying Uber doesn't hire enough MEN. And it hires too many boys.
I guess I'm impatient with the baby steps. If you're going to make a big show of owning up to needing a culture change, be disruptive and aggressive like you claim to be. In short, show some balls. And yes I see the irony of putting it like that, but I don't really mean it ironically. It takes more balls to be a man who protects (edit: but not in a paternalistic/controlling way) and respects women and owns up to his mistakes than one who's still afraid of mommy or just wants to chase skirts. In short I guess I'm saying Uber doesn't hire enough MEN. And it hires too many boys.
I wonder how different racial diversity numbers would be at these big tech companies if they had decided to open their HQ in Atlanta instead of San Francisco. I imagine the number of black employees would be much higher.
Now, I'm aware that African Americans are only one under-represented minority in tech, but they're still an important one. Latest numbers show that educated, middle-class black Americans are choosing to move to southern cities (especially Atlanta) at high rates. Some of them are moving for job opportunities, to be closer to family, to afford a higher standard of living, to escape winter weather in the North, or just because they like the city and culture there.
I work at a place with large office in ATL, and we've had a positive experience hiring very talented people from many different backgrounds. The ATL office is far more diverse than west coast offices and every bit as good at their jobs.
I think it's time to acknowledge that trying to "import" diversity into SV is not a real strategy for making tech more diverse. It's not fair to expect minorities to exchange their preferred community for a predominantly white one (with a far higher cost of living) just to have a chance of cashing in some sweet startup equity.
I wonder how diversity numbers at tech companies doing all-remote (like Zapier) compare to SV-centric tech companies.
Now, I'm aware that African Americans are only one under-represented minority in tech, but they're still an important one. Latest numbers show that educated, middle-class black Americans are choosing to move to southern cities (especially Atlanta) at high rates. Some of them are moving for job opportunities, to be closer to family, to afford a higher standard of living, to escape winter weather in the North, or just because they like the city and culture there.
I work at a place with large office in ATL, and we've had a positive experience hiring very talented people from many different backgrounds. The ATL office is far more diverse than west coast offices and every bit as good at their jobs.
I think it's time to acknowledge that trying to "import" diversity into SV is not a real strategy for making tech more diverse. It's not fair to expect minorities to exchange their preferred community for a predominantly white one (with a far higher cost of living) just to have a chance of cashing in some sweet startup equity.
I wonder how diversity numbers at tech companies doing all-remote (like Zapier) compare to SV-centric tech companies.
I don't think this has anything to do with diversity, and I don't know of any way this could be measured, but I'd love to see the difference in the level of passion for the average engineer hired in SF vs ATL. I moved across the country to SF to work in tech because this is perceived to be the land of opportunity for tech. I'd imagine a lot of people passionate about what they do come here, and if you're less passionate you may be less willing to do that move. But that's total speculation, and I don't think diversity has anything to do with that. Just something your comment made me think of.
Over the years, I noticed more and more that diversity as a topic in high tech had morphed from something positive into a witch hunt against white men and against people who were generally friendly towards the idea of diversity yet did not practice sufficient rigor in enforcing a very specific idea of diversity at their events.
A great example is Nodevember kicking out Douglas Crockford because he made a couple relatively non-offensive jokes using secret accusations against him. Another great example is the ongoing attempts by social justice warriors to force the Drupal community to discriminate against a relatively harmless follower of the Gorean movement for his private life.
Still other examples include unsubstantiated accusations of sexual harassment at OSCON by an anonymous blog. I have been to OSCON and saw absolutely nothing like what was being complained about in that blog post. Yet another example is the continuing efforts to pressure the organizers of Lambda Conf to ban people who privately have non-politically correct views.
Instead of diversity being a "positive thing," it became "if you don't do diversity, if you don't invite 50% female speakers, if you don't have a code of conduct...you are racist."
I also noticed Meetup organizers and conference organizers coming under continuous direct public shaming pressure by screaming mobs online when they didn't have a precisely calibrated gender balance amongst speakers despite a numerical discrepancy in submitted talks. On top of that, I frequently see female engineers now actually complaining about being asked to talk about diversity at conferences too frequently because they are in a minority who are able to fill these gaps.
Finally, and most boring, diversity-related content has creeped into many Meetups, conferences and other events to the point where formerly content-filled events are now 30% diversity-related content by weight. Instead of interesting information about Python, we get 7 talks about how Python programmers can be more diverse and what it is like being a female Python programmer.
I find these changes disturbing. I find conduct codes to be sinister and a form of creeping control by the Left to attempt to extend safe spaces into industry and other places they don't belong.
We have a code of conduct in the United States, it is called the law. The constitution is the code of conduct we need to be concerned with now.