Google reports soaring attrition among Black women(reuters.com)
reuters.com
Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/google-reports-soaring-attrition-among-black-women-2021-07-01/
440 comments
As someone who works for Big Tech outside of the US, it's kind of comical to us foreign workers. From out point of view it seems like Americans are truly obsessed with diversity, or rather being perceived as diverse (PR), to the point where we can't help but laugh at the weekly corporate emails we get from the US leadership and the regular diversity training we have to do.
It’s equally comical to many non-foreign tech workers. Problem is that if you criticize it openly, there will be repercussions to your career. Corporations will take action against you due to the fear of activist employees and the news media which has been largely infiltrated/influenced by woke/post-modern critical theory activists.
Exactly this.
In the quest for universalism they're splitting the population in an ever increasing number of sub groups, the irony is lost on them I guess.
In my country it happens on both side of the spectrum, they're just instrumentalised differently, I don't think it's a left vs right thing
In my country it happens on both side of the spectrum, they're just instrumentalised differently, I don't think it's a left vs right thing
A fun exercise for you! Next time you hear about "diversity and inclusion," sit back to consider what the company in question actually does to promote an atmosphere of inclusion. Is it a slack message about celebrating XYZ Group Week, in the midst of an atmosphere where dissent is persecuted?
i also like to try to unpack "diversity" when i hear it - do they mean diversity of skin colour, or a broader definition that includes people of various economic and social classes in addition to ethnicity.
"we only hire stanford grads, but some of them are black!" isn't really diversity.
"we only hire stanford grads, but some of them are black!" isn't really diversity.
"Diversity" = Identity based approach to society
"Inclusion" = Restricted speech and justification for purges
"Equity" = Equality of outcomes
"Inclusion" = Restricted speech and justification for purges
"Equity" = Equality of outcomes
It is super irritating to apply to american companies, most of them ask for your race (optional input) and list latin and white as different options.
I am white as milk from a Latin America country I dont know what I am suppose to complete. I consider myself latin but companies may think I am not brown enough to fit the category.
I am white as milk from a Latin America country I dont know what I am suppose to complete. I consider myself latin but companies may think I am not brown enough to fit the category.
That form is mandated by the government, not the company. Anyone with a Spanish speaking heritage is considered to be hispanic.
The problem is that the terms are often not understood correctly or confused. Hispanic, indeed, refers to Spanish speakers... of any race. It includes, for example, Spaniards and some Filipinos.
But GP didn't say Hispanic. He was referring to Latin America, whose people are called Latino.
Neither of the terms carry racial connotations. If you're Argentinian of pure Italian descent, you're still Latino. If you're one of the 2 million Spanish speakers of the Philippines, you're Hispanic. If you're one of the Guarani indigenous languages speakers of Paraguay who doesn't speak Spanish at all you're still Latino but not Hispanic.
But GP didn't say Hispanic. He was referring to Latin America, whose people are called Latino.
Neither of the terms carry racial connotations. If you're Argentinian of pure Italian descent, you're still Latino. If you're one of the 2 million Spanish speakers of the Philippines, you're Hispanic. If you're one of the Guarani indigenous languages speakers of Paraguay who doesn't speak Spanish at all you're still Latino but not Hispanic.
oh that is nice to know, thanks
So Brazilians aren't Hispanic?
Yes. Hispanic refers to Spanish language and culture.
Brazilians mostly speak Portuguese...
(I don't know if that leaves them considered "Hispanic" or not. I think it does leave them considered Latin, though.)
(I don't know if that leaves them considered "Hispanic" or not. I think it does leave them considered Latin, though.)
you may be looking for :
G. CRISTINA MORA , Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats and Media Constructed a New American (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2014)
https://www.igs.berkeley.edu/people/g-cristina-mora-0
G. CRISTINA MORA , Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats and Media Constructed a New American (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2014)
https://www.igs.berkeley.edu/people/g-cristina-mora-0
You can usually put any race with Hispanic from my experience. It’s listed as an “ethnicity” not a race. I’ve always put White/Hispanic
Voting democrat is to provide approval of this ideology and to give it a greater platform. Many americans are equally perplexed at this, and a lot of republican voters exist precisely as a reaction to it.
Voting Republican is to enact fascism and tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible. The ideology you cite is remarkably tame by comparison.
Hmm that's interesting. Who told you that? The US just had a republican president. Many states have had republican government for decades. Do we see this happening? No. Instead here we are talking about a real and tangible event, largely championed by mainstream democrats.
If you think the average republican voter would support enacting "fascism [to] tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible", then I suggest you talk to some more. You may be quite surprised.
Regardless, I think this is a major pitfall of the two party system. What you say certainly has truth. What I say has truth as well. However discourse usually devolves to attacking the extremists in each group and no real discussion can be had. I am optimistic about the future. Have a nice day.
If you think the average republican voter would support enacting "fascism [to] tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible", then I suggest you talk to some more. You may be quite surprised.
Regardless, I think this is a major pitfall of the two party system. What you say certainly has truth. What I say has truth as well. However discourse usually devolves to attacking the extremists in each group and no real discussion can be had. I am optimistic about the future. Have a nice day.
You're definitely not the only one, but I think it's staying around because of a real societal need. The civil rights era was a recognition that background wasn't a valid basis on which to stereotype strangers. In the intervening decades, we mostly stereotyped strangers based on how they presented themselves, with a few recognisable 'types' of people that had little variation within their clades.
Then the internet happened and society fractured along personal interest, whatever one is into now there are dozens of people with the same interest online. It became impossible to distinguish people on the basis of fashion either.
But to interact with strangers, we need some way to stereotype them, and so intersectionalism has tried to fill that gap. It won't work in its current form because nobody who presumes to declare on behalf of an identity group as to what is a proper way to treat members of that identity group is actually representative of any group. But the need to stereotype strangers somehow remains, so social offerings like this will continue to be brought forward.
Then the internet happened and society fractured along personal interest, whatever one is into now there are dozens of people with the same interest online. It became impossible to distinguish people on the basis of fashion either.
But to interact with strangers, we need some way to stereotype them, and so intersectionalism has tried to fill that gap. It won't work in its current form because nobody who presumes to declare on behalf of an identity group as to what is a proper way to treat members of that identity group is actually representative of any group. But the need to stereotype strangers somehow remains, so social offerings like this will continue to be brought forward.
>LGBTTQQIAAP
I had to look up if this acronym was some kind of joke.
I had to look up if this acronym was some kind of joke.
To save other people from looking it up: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LGBTTQQIAAP
The dumb thing is we actually have a word for this.
The word is queer. I'm still unsure as to why this word isn't used for most contexts where the LGBT[...] are currently used. We use the word "gay" and that used to be an insult like "queer" was too.
The word is queer. I'm still unsure as to why this word isn't used for most contexts where the LGBT[...] are currently used. We use the word "gay" and that used to be an insult like "queer" was too.
I think 'Queer' is one of the Q's. The definition I heard for it now was that 'gay' is someone who wants to have a mainstream life with their same-sex partner while 'queer' is someone who considers their sexual identity a form of rebellion.
From the first sentence on the Wikipedia article:
> Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer
Now, some people personally identify as queer instead of lesbian, bi, or gay for all sorts of reasons; but it is the umbrella term.
> Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer
Now, some people personally identify as queer instead of lesbian, bi, or gay for all sorts of reasons; but it is the umbrella term.
Seems like Dividing by Equality and Diversity
It feels like an "emperor has no clothes" situation. I'm sure that even the people at Reuters find the terminology stupid, but they're afraid of what others might think of them if they say so or if they don't use it.
"The ideology of individualism is dependent on a denial of the past as relevant to the present… Individualism denies the significance of race." -- Robin DeAngelo
Robin DeAngelo, is a frontrunner of 'white guilt', CRT, and other strange sides of the woke movement.
This quote pretty much sums it up, they want to put group identity first, above individualism.
Robin DeAngelo, is a frontrunner of 'white guilt', CRT, and other strange sides of the woke movement.
This quote pretty much sums it up, they want to put group identity first, above individualism.
I see this criticism of CRT/wokeism etc very often and I really want to address a point about people talking past each other. Proponents of CRT don't say they want to divide people based on group characteristics, they say people are divided based on group characteristics and they recognise that whilst individualists deny what is evidently true. Essentially it's the position that people are negatively impacted due to the group they're in so they should advocate for themselves as part of that group.
The remedy to injustice is to treat people on their merit. Not come up with different ways to divide them in the name of social justice.
> 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. I have a dream today.
> 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. I have a dream today.
If there is injustice, then the correct response is to recognise it and combat it, not to do nothing whilst it continues. The problem with your appeal to treating people on merit is often merit is the result of unequal conditions. So all you’re doing is baking in the existing inequality and then quite insultingly tell people “oh it’s a meritocracy” . It’s not a coincidence that the most privileged people end up having incredibly meritorious children.
It’s about using racial rhetoric in a self-serving way. Isn’t that what people are talking about here?
I'm not a fan of CRT, but you're 100% right.
The issue with CRT is that every other theory and research of this subject (eg. IQ differences) has been shut down or obscured due to allegations of racism or fear of how society would react to such knowledge. And that poses a problem. You can't even propose any alternative theory in the current climate.
Second, the same criticism applies to CRT. There is a double standard. For the sake of simplicity, let's see what Wikipedia has to say about it under the "Academic Criticism" section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory#Academic
> Farber and Sherry additionally posit that the anti-meritocratic tenets in critical race theory, critical feminism, and critical legal studies may unintentionally lead to antisemitic and anti-Asian implications.
I don't think I have to explain to anyone why this theory would have any antisemitic or anti-Asian implications, everyone has to know it on some level. You might not necessarily agree with it, but you should know why. But the most interesting and telling thing about everything surrounding the CRT is what this criticism doesn't say. Nowhere does it even mention anti-White implications. Imagine reading something explicitly focused on the overrepresantation of Jewish people in positions of power and saying "wow, this could hurt some innocent Europeans".
I agree that the divisions are already here (and pretty much always have been for that matter), and that individualists are wrong in just pretending like the problem doesn't exist. But forcing this down everyone's throats without any possibility of defending yourself will only end up in a disaster.
The issue with CRT is that every other theory and research of this subject (eg. IQ differences) has been shut down or obscured due to allegations of racism or fear of how society would react to such knowledge. And that poses a problem. You can't even propose any alternative theory in the current climate.
Second, the same criticism applies to CRT. There is a double standard. For the sake of simplicity, let's see what Wikipedia has to say about it under the "Academic Criticism" section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory#Academic
> Farber and Sherry additionally posit that the anti-meritocratic tenets in critical race theory, critical feminism, and critical legal studies may unintentionally lead to antisemitic and anti-Asian implications.
I don't think I have to explain to anyone why this theory would have any antisemitic or anti-Asian implications, everyone has to know it on some level. You might not necessarily agree with it, but you should know why. But the most interesting and telling thing about everything surrounding the CRT is what this criticism doesn't say. Nowhere does it even mention anti-White implications. Imagine reading something explicitly focused on the overrepresantation of Jewish people in positions of power and saying "wow, this could hurt some innocent Europeans".
I agree that the divisions are already here (and pretty much always have been for that matter), and that individualists are wrong in just pretending like the problem doesn't exist. But forcing this down everyone's throats without any possibility of defending yourself will only end up in a disaster.
Your account has been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of which ideology or politics they're battling for, because it destroys this place for its intended purpose.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I had to scroll through dozens of your comments to find even one that didn't fit this description. That's clearly over the line, so I've banned this account.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I had to scroll through dozens of your comments to find even one that didn't fit this description. That's clearly over the line, so I've banned this account.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> The issue with CRT is that every other theory and research of this subject (eg. IQ differences) has been shut down or obscured due to allegations of racism or fear of how the society would react to such knowledge
No, it hasn't.
Not even your specific example (racial IQ dofferences), on which there continues to be new work published (both on the differences and on influences, both genetic and environmental.)
So if “the issue” with CRT is just this thing that is neither true nor about CRT, then that’s pretty much the same as there being, in fact, no issue with CRT.
No, it hasn't.
Not even your specific example (racial IQ dofferences), on which there continues to be new work published (both on the differences and on influences, both genetic and environmental.)
So if “the issue” with CRT is just this thing that is neither true nor about CRT, then that’s pretty much the same as there being, in fact, no issue with CRT.
ttt0(1)
As a European right winger, I find it strange how group identity, which is important to us, is valued by left wingers in the USA.
Simplistically... The right wing believes in keeping the old traditions and the left believes in modifying those to 'fit the day's or to achieve 'progress'.
In this framework the difference you notice makes absolute sense.
America is a country founded on enlightenment ideas, which were part of the leftist school of thought in the old borderline ecclesiocratic aristocracy that would have formed the 'right wing' of Europe.
Thus the american right wingers look back to what you'd consider leftist thought as their model of keeping society as it should be, whereas a European right winger may look back to the older days of European monarchs, national identity and religion.
In america, the right wing, looking back towards our american enlightenment ideals, wouldn't really believe in any of those things in the same way.
There are some bits of overlap, especially in the social issues since those are recent changes. But overall an american right winger is going to be a European classical liberal which is typically considered leftist.
In this framework the difference you notice makes absolute sense.
America is a country founded on enlightenment ideas, which were part of the leftist school of thought in the old borderline ecclesiocratic aristocracy that would have formed the 'right wing' of Europe.
Thus the american right wingers look back to what you'd consider leftist thought as their model of keeping society as it should be, whereas a European right winger may look back to the older days of European monarchs, national identity and religion.
In america, the right wing, looking back towards our american enlightenment ideals, wouldn't really believe in any of those things in the same way.
There are some bits of overlap, especially in the social issues since those are recent changes. But overall an american right winger is going to be a European classical liberal which is typically considered leftist.
It wasn't abelist but I don't understand the analogy with schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is characterised by a difficulty properly categorising and integrating experiences, so it actually seems like a fairly good analogy.
It's the biggest victory of the rich in the last decade. They turned a socio-economical class problem (poor workers vs rich) that infects the current state of capitalism into a race warfare. Turn people against each other so we can live free.
divide et impera, working perfectly
divide et impera, working perfectly
While I partially agree - too often a class problem is recast as a race problem to narrow the range of possible solutions - there is also a race problem that should not be ignored.
> * Oh boy was that ableist ?
It was hate speech against your neurodiverse colleagues. Doubleplus ungood.
It was hate speech against your neurodiverse colleagues. Doubleplus ungood.
When it comes to social issues, the republican party is typically more in line with international norms, whereas the democratic party is far far to the left.
People will mock this sentiment perhaps, but it's true. Take the polarizing issue of abortion for example. If the USA had the same abortion restrictions as Germany, you'd likely see the GOp drop most of its prolife stuff. Right now, the democrats are very extreme on abortion and other social issues compared to international norms.
It's why places like France are now also explicitly condemning american leftism despite nominally and fiscally being far to the left of the democratic party too.
People will mock this sentiment perhaps, but it's true. Take the polarizing issue of abortion for example. If the USA had the same abortion restrictions as Germany, you'd likely see the GOp drop most of its prolife stuff. Right now, the democrats are very extreme on abortion and other social issues compared to international norms.
It's why places like France are now also explicitly condemning american leftism despite nominally and fiscally being far to the left of the democratic party too.
Well, France is condemning American "woke" leftism. France thinks it's something different from "normal" leftism. And they're probably right...
This is a malliciously uninformed take; which you seem to imply you already realize with your provocative self attack mocking 'ableism'.
If you have an issue with "Putting people in smaller and smaller box"es then you should start your rants by addressing religion or American voter policy.
Your take reads like in America's history black people were always able to vote and Civil Rights was really a rebranding of their rights because Black Americans collectively just wanted to now call it the 'Black Vote'.
Religions are predicated on in-group out-group dynamics, and the shared schizophrenic delusion of a, specifically old white male in the case of the dominant American religion Christianity, in the clouds telling them to hate homosexuals.
Your take ignores the fact that the oppressor is often the one compartmentalizing.
For example, the church refusing to marry same sex couples. So homosexual specific civil rights movements organize to force the hand of the chuch to begrudgingly allow them to marry.
But some people still want to tell trans people they are forbidden from using a bathroom. So now a T specific civil rights movement is needed from the previous compartment they were just lumped into of 'homosexual' because the L and Gs can use bathrooms without issue.
I agree the end goal should be one category: Entropic Debris. It encompasses all that is and will ever be.
I think compartmentalizing humanity as separate from the rocks we see in the night sky is unscientific, but I can recognise that such a take fails to address any of the frought and nuanced elements of contemporary human social interactions that need to be addressed with specificity.
If you have an issue with "Putting people in smaller and smaller box"es then you should start your rants by addressing religion or American voter policy.
Your take reads like in America's history black people were always able to vote and Civil Rights was really a rebranding of their rights because Black Americans collectively just wanted to now call it the 'Black Vote'.
Religions are predicated on in-group out-group dynamics, and the shared schizophrenic delusion of a, specifically old white male in the case of the dominant American religion Christianity, in the clouds telling them to hate homosexuals.
Your take ignores the fact that the oppressor is often the one compartmentalizing.
For example, the church refusing to marry same sex couples. So homosexual specific civil rights movements organize to force the hand of the chuch to begrudgingly allow them to marry.
But some people still want to tell trans people they are forbidden from using a bathroom. So now a T specific civil rights movement is needed from the previous compartment they were just lumped into of 'homosexual' because the L and Gs can use bathrooms without issue.
I agree the end goal should be one category: Entropic Debris. It encompasses all that is and will ever be.
I think compartmentalizing humanity as separate from the rocks we see in the night sky is unscientific, but I can recognise that such a take fails to address any of the frought and nuanced elements of contemporary human social interactions that need to be addressed with specificity.
This was not a rant.
I hear you and I mostly share your view tbh. As we speak, Republican lawmakers are pushing for legislations that aim to exclude voters from democratic expression ; Flint residents still don't have drinkable water. All of this exist, racism exist, poor people are suffering and even dying from it, minorities in larger proportions.
Still, is the X of Latinx the solution ? Or is it smoke and mirrors in the Big Tech goal of being perceived as noble ?
Respectfully.
I hear you and I mostly share your view tbh. As we speak, Republican lawmakers are pushing for legislations that aim to exclude voters from democratic expression ; Flint residents still don't have drinkable water. All of this exist, racism exist, poor people are suffering and even dying from it, minorities in larger proportions.
Still, is the X of Latinx the solution ? Or is it smoke and mirrors in the Big Tech goal of being perceived as noble ?
Respectfully.
> Still, is the X of Latinx the solution ?
Hardly, though this seems a strawman since anyone who advocates for the X in Latinx would be unlikely to claim it solves the Flint water crisis.
> Or is it smoke and mirrors in the Big Tech goal of being perceived as noble ?
This feels like conflating. The X in Latinx is independant of the Tech industry, and was most definitely used long before any Tech HR department caught on.
Latinx came out of the intersectionality of minority rights and issues of gender. Latin languages are gendered but we want to address Latin-American issues without profiling a single gender, a la Latino or Latina.
As another tool in the toolbox to fix oppressive systems the X in Latinx is a fine thing and people have been empowered by it, but it in isolation is certainly going to fall short of addressing the myriad of issues within this domain and I doubt any advocates for change would claim otherwise.
I think business leaders will do anything to avoid dilluting their ownership, which will be an important effort toward real positive change, and if their tactic is to distract organizers with superficial changes then organizers will need to remain diligent.
Take what is offered and keep working until what is offered is what you need.
> This was not a rant.
Maybe, but your replies seem to point to a specific interpretation of your comment of villifying, or at least mocking, of people who see themselves represented in LGBTTQQIAAP and its advocacy ilk, and a plea that the only reasonable response is to reject the activism wholesale.
Hardly, though this seems a strawman since anyone who advocates for the X in Latinx would be unlikely to claim it solves the Flint water crisis.
> Or is it smoke and mirrors in the Big Tech goal of being perceived as noble ?
This feels like conflating. The X in Latinx is independant of the Tech industry, and was most definitely used long before any Tech HR department caught on.
Latinx came out of the intersectionality of minority rights and issues of gender. Latin languages are gendered but we want to address Latin-American issues without profiling a single gender, a la Latino or Latina.
As another tool in the toolbox to fix oppressive systems the X in Latinx is a fine thing and people have been empowered by it, but it in isolation is certainly going to fall short of addressing the myriad of issues within this domain and I doubt any advocates for change would claim otherwise.
I think business leaders will do anything to avoid dilluting their ownership, which will be an important effort toward real positive change, and if their tactic is to distract organizers with superficial changes then organizers will need to remain diligent.
Take what is offered and keep working until what is offered is what you need.
> This was not a rant.
Maybe, but your replies seem to point to a specific interpretation of your comment of villifying, or at least mocking, of people who see themselves represented in LGBTTQQIAAP and its advocacy ilk, and a plea that the only reasonable response is to reject the activism wholesale.
> The company nearly doubled the number of Black+ people in U.S. leadership to 7.1% last year
It’s cool they’ve been able to find qualified people, taking a long time to fill those roles but very nice they are doing it!
They will more adequately address additional markets with this talent gravitational pull.
What is the percentage of Black+ in the population? The US census doesn’t have a + section, so we can deduce that it is at least 12% for standard tier Black, but when including the premium tier what percentage is that?
It’s nice that it is getting much closer to proportionate representation, it’s not clear how close
It’s cool they’ve been able to find qualified people, taking a long time to fill those roles but very nice they are doing it!
They will more adequately address additional markets with this talent gravitational pull.
What is the percentage of Black+ in the population? The US census doesn’t have a + section, so we can deduce that it is at least 12% for standard tier Black, but when including the premium tier what percentage is that?
It’s nice that it is getting much closer to proportionate representation, it’s not clear how close
They're using "Black+" as "all Googlers who identify as Black, plus those who identify as Black and any other race".
The census does track people identifying with multiple races. Pew, citing the census, says there are ~46.8M (40.7M + 3.7M + 2.4M) Americans who identify as Black (and possibly as something else as well) so about 14%.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/03/25/the-gro....
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
The census does track people identifying with multiple races. Pew, citing the census, says there are ~46.8M (40.7M + 3.7M + 2.4M) Americans who identify as Black (and possibly as something else as well) so about 14%.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/03/25/the-gro....
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
Yes, the census does track multiple, it just wasn’t clear what the + in this context was referring to
14%, thanks
14%, thanks
Is that a mistake? In the charts on this year's report, the Black Leadership % went from 2.6% to 3.0%. https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/
Best I can see is maybe a 7% increase!
The article got that very incorrect
The article got that very incorrect
Black people are currently less educated as a result of systemic racism than their Asain and white counterparts. That would make achieving 12% leadership particularly difficult, since black people are on average less qualified(on paper, at least) relative to applicants from other races.
Asians are proof the power of systemic racism to hold minorities down in this day and age is not very strong.
Some specific cultures with Asian heritage in the West. Not intentionally trying to be obtuse, but to support that talking point it is important to recognize that there are other Asian people in the West that are underserved by this overly broad racially prejudiced assumption.
There have always been cultures that adapt to certain states of the world. For example, German efficiency was there and irrelevant before the industrial era, and when the world valued efficiency their culture was the beneficiary. In reference to some cultures from Asia operating in the West, they are also benefactors of the family support systems that they are able to maintain, even if there are psychological issues with that model, it is accurate that many are able to achieve social standing in Western society. You are hoping for that to prove the wrong thing, or disprove the validity of other group's experiences as if they are not worth further analysis and support. This doesn't help y/our society.
There have always been cultures that adapt to certain states of the world. For example, German efficiency was there and irrelevant before the industrial era, and when the world valued efficiency their culture was the beneficiary. In reference to some cultures from Asia operating in the West, they are also benefactors of the family support systems that they are able to maintain, even if there are psychological issues with that model, it is accurate that many are able to achieve social standing in Western society. You are hoping for that to prove the wrong thing, or disprove the validity of other group's experiences as if they are not worth further analysis and support. This doesn't help y/our society.
Maybe if some culture is not adapted to the state of the world, we should try to fix that culture, and not modify the world around it. Or, at least, just let that culture be maladapted and leave it be. No one was hiring inefficient people during the industrial revolution for diversity, regardless of how inefficient the person's culture seemed to be.
You seem to not be aware that a lot of people are working to fix underperforming cultures for the reasons they are underperforming
Tech companies have not been inspired enough to do so, not suggesting it is their role
But many organizations interested in the tech industry are
Tech companies have not been inspired enough to do so, not suggesting it is their role
But many organizations interested in the tech industry are
But Asians are being systemically held down by affirmative action and racial quotas. Proof that the power of systemic racism is very real no matter your income or class, or no matter if you're a minority or not. You are not safe as long as the cultural zeitgeist has decided so.
I'm curious - how did you come to this conclusion?
>Black people are currently less educated as a result of systemic racism than their Asain and white counterparts.
but why? end exams are standarized and in my opinion fair
but why? end exams are standarized and in my opinion fair
> end exams are standarized and in my opinion fair
there is actually a lot of ongoing discussion about that and there is no resolved consensus on your opinion
there is actually a lot of ongoing discussion about that and there is no resolved consensus on your opinion
and what arguments are that this process is not fair?
current approach challenges pure intellectual output, any other way implies bias which current system strongly avoids
current approach challenges pure intellectual output, any other way implies bias which current system strongly avoids
The arguments are rationalized after the fact. Black people do worse on the exams, thus the exams must be unfair. The rest of the exercise is trying desperately to twist the data to support this, or when that fails, just say "systemic racism" and wave your hands vaguely.
If a standardized test said "what is the Yiddish word for rag?", is that test fair? It asks everyone the same question after all. But I'd bet you find that Jewish people were passing that test at a higher rate than anyone else.
Obviously the biases in actual standardized tests are more subtle, but a lot of the question have an inherent cultural bias and assume some basic cultural knowledge in their test takers.
Obviously the biases in actual standardized tests are more subtle, but a lot of the question have an inherent cultural bias and assume some basic cultural knowledge in their test takers.
In my country exams are:
basic (mandatory):
math, country_lang, other_lang
advanced level (your choice): cs, math, physics, biology, chemistry, country_lang, other_lang, history, other...
I don't think there's wide room for questions like that.
basic (mandatory):
math, country_lang, other_lang
advanced level (your choice): cs, math, physics, biology, chemistry, country_lang, other_lang, history, other...
I don't think there's wide room for questions like that.
> I don't think there's wide room for questions like that.
You'd be surprised. There is ample research showing that even the most simple math and reading comprehension questions have cultural biases.
You'd be surprised. There is ample research showing that even the most simple math and reading comprehension questions have cultural biases.
Ok, I agree that it is possible that question like that exists (e.g counting cards)
but on the other hand they appear on previous years questions as often as other (I think), thus you can easily prepare and learn how to count cards or stuff
but on the other hand they appear on previous years questions as often as other (I think), thus you can easily prepare and learn how to count cards or stuff
That's actually a perfect example. Any problem that involves cards assumes you know what cards are, what the suits are, how many of each there are, etc. That's cultural knowledge not everyone has, and often breaks down by race.
So yes, you could learn it, but the kids who grew up playing cards with their family have a distinct advantage on that question.
So yes, you could learn it, but the kids who grew up playing cards with their family have a distinct advantage on that question.
but still, how many questions are like that?
on math exams in my country (basic+advanced) I noticed only 1 question like that - those cards
System is not perfect, but do you have any better alternative?
on math exams in my country (basic+advanced) I noticed only 1 question like that - those cards
System is not perfect, but do you have any better alternative?
The biases must be subtle indeed if you are unable to describe one and have to resort instead to an absurd thought experiment.
Runner is to Marathon as Regatta is to_________________
(You need to be wealthy and coastal to know what a Regatta is)
If you have a number system where each place is a power of two greater than the one next to it, and only the digits 1 and 0, how do you represent the number 1033?
(This was an actual question I remember from a test, which I aced because I already knew binary but most of classmates were dumbfounded by the question)
Any question in English to a kid who grew up in a home that didn't speak English.
There are lots of studies you can Google with more examples.
(You need to be wealthy and coastal to know what a Regatta is)
If you have a number system where each place is a power of two greater than the one next to it, and only the digits 1 and 0, how do you represent the number 1033?
(This was an actual question I remember from a test, which I aced because I already knew binary but most of classmates were dumbfounded by the question)
Any question in English to a kid who grew up in a home that didn't speak English.
There are lots of studies you can Google with more examples.
>Any question in English to a kid who grew up in a home that didn't speak English.
On english exams (here) the question is written in native language
On english exams (here) the question is written in native language
Ok, so I would do poorly then since I don’t speak the native language.
What do you meaan?
e.g Polish students in Poland take english exams and the "what you have to do" part is written in Polish, but the task itself challenges english skills
e.g Polish students in Poland take english exams and the "what you have to do" part is written in Polish, but the task itself challenges english skills
For the math part, are the instructions in Polish or English? As a native English speaker, I would have trouble doing math if the instructions and word problems were in Polish, even if Polish were my second language.
Usually standardized tests are in one language regardless of if you're a native speaker or not, putting immigrants at a disadvantage.
Usually standardized tests are in one language regardless of if you're a native speaker or not, putting immigrants at a disadvantage.
it seems the article is wrong and it is much lower %
I was surprised by the 7% metric and found it improbable too
I was surprised by the 7% metric and found it improbable too
Sorry, people are downvoting this because it is out of the Overton window of acceptable discourse, and the fact that it happens to be true is irrelevant.
What is Black+ and Latinx+?
This is the first time I'm hearing this term and can't find anything about it in the report or online.
This is the first time I'm hearing this term and can't find anything about it in the report or online.
Maybe the reason for the attrition.
I'm a white dude but work in a foreign country (also predominantly white). For the most part I'm just "one of the guys". I only really feel like an outsider when corporate policy dictates we have to talk about cultural sensitivity towards foreigners and I happen to be the only foreigner in the room.
For people of different races, I assume this feeling is switched on practically all the time because now the differences aren't only felt during HR mandated meetings. And moreover, they're not differences that have any bearing on the person's contribution to the company (any more than my status as a foreigner does).
I'm a white dude but work in a foreign country (also predominantly white). For the most part I'm just "one of the guys". I only really feel like an outsider when corporate policy dictates we have to talk about cultural sensitivity towards foreigners and I happen to be the only foreigner in the room.
For people of different races, I assume this feeling is switched on practically all the time because now the differences aren't only felt during HR mandated meetings. And moreover, they're not differences that have any bearing on the person's contribution to the company (any more than my status as a foreigner does).
I don't understand it. I've never been in the minority where I live but this is how I imagine it feels being in a group that is being singled out for some reason or another. Every person is a completely unique individual and focusing on things like skin color just seem insane to me. Why not focus on the fact that we are 99.9% the same but have different experiences which make us valuable and interesting.
Old tactic: divide and conquer. If people stopped bickering about race, they’d quickly realize their economic class similarities, leading to things like unionization. BigCo can’t allow this, for obvious reasons.
It worries me that more of HN doesn't understand this.
It’s kind of a case of the more you talk about how different something or someone is the more you kind of focus on the difference. At least seems that way.
I work in a US company that has an African American VP of diversity and they regularly post in a diversity focused slack channel. The responses are 95% white people posting platitudes and saying how great the VP is. They do however force people being interviewed to answer on the spot diversity / anti racism questions that really almost no one is prepared for, forcing people to just make up answers to check a box. Seems forced.
You don't solve problems (or racism) by ignoring them, and your experience as a white person in another majority white country is not particularly informative on the experience of a black person in a country with the history of systematic enslavement of, disenfranchisement of, and discrimination against black people. A head in the sand approach isn't workable. It was the black employees themselves who were most vocal in arguing that the company should address race issues head-on, e.g. during the George Floyd protests last summer.
Interesting. Can you name a country that does not have a history of systematic enslavement? Perhaps the commenter is living in a Slavic country where whites were enslaved?
Slavery is just one aspect. Almost no one in Slavic countries (afaik) complains about slavery affecting them to this day because - in all likelihood - probably somewhat difficult to tell who is descendant of slaves and who isn’t. Isn’t as difficult to tell in the US. And the policy that followed after the end of slavery wasn’t done to help those who had been slaves or were descendants of slaves… the policy tried to make them second or third rate citizens. So, the consequences of those things are still felt to this day and are very real. It’s why so many cities in the US are heavily segregated to this day. (Look at a racial dot map of Chicago)
We are almost all descendants of slaves. The issue is not if … it’s when Your descendants were slaves.
Not sure anyone can speak for all Slavic people. However, just because someone complains about something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to others.
Can you name a city in the world that doesn’t have some sort of racial, religious, economic or other form of segregation?
Not sure anyone can speak for all Slavic people. However, just because someone complains about something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to others.
Can you name a city in the world that doesn’t have some sort of racial, religious, economic or other form of segregation?
"The data in this section allows people of two or more races to more accurately state their
racial background. For example, Black+ includes all Googlers who identify as Black, plus
those who identify as Black and any other race."
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/...
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/...
This is almost as thoughtful as Slack enumerating all user skin tones via 5 integer values.
I thought making everyone cartoon yellow was more empowering.
Especially on the Internet, with pseudonymity, we're all nothing more than the ideas we present.
An egalitarian dream was twisted into a woke nightmare for bad actors to earn free PR by pitting people against each other.
Especially on the Internet, with pseudonymity, we're all nothing more than the ideas we present.
An egalitarian dream was twisted into a woke nightmare for bad actors to earn free PR by pitting people against each other.
My theory is that we're all red. Peel back the skin layer of any living human being, and red is what you'll see.
If you say that to a person who insists on taking offense, he would tell you that a white person using red icons might be offensive to Native Americans or people with albinism.
I don't mean "red" as in Native American, and I wouldn't use Native American icons. I mean, when you peel back the skin, we all bleed the same color. Even albinos do.
The point is, once you move past the skin, all our blood looks alike. We all share that.
(I agree, though, that some are likely to insist on taking offense. Also, I note that albinos might have a case to complain about non-albinos who are called "white"...)
The point is, once you move past the skin, all our blood looks alike. We all share that.
(I agree, though, that some are likely to insist on taking offense. Also, I note that albinos might have a case to complain about non-albinos who are called "white"...)
Ha, I set my emojis to the precise colour of my skin, someone (I know IRL) complained that it wasn't my race ... like, that was, at the time, my actual skin colour.
Why is yellow the “neutral” color? Why not black, or red, or white?
Letting people pick whatever color seems more empowering to me.
Letting people pick whatever color seems more empowering to me.
I always thought it was because of The Simpsons, but going as far back as the Tracy Ullman show, so that could have been an influence as far back as 1987.
How is it empowering? How long do you think a white employee could post with black colored emojis before someone said something?
empowering for what exactly?
Thanks. Is there a hierarchy? Like if I identify as both Black and White, am I counted in Black+ or White+ or is it double counted? Does the employee provide a ranking?
It's not a hierarchy, and they don't add up to 100%, so there is double-counting. I just did the math on one of the rows from the report using the + labels and that row added up to 104.6%, so we can deduce that 4.6% of people fit into two categories (or maybe slightly less than that including people that fit into 3 or more categories).
My interpretation is that you'd be in both "Black+" and "White+"
The only other group as obsessed with racial hierarchies as the modern woke left was Nazi Germany. Their published classification would seem to fit just fine at Google.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws#Classifications...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws#Classifications...
Doesn't seem like you have any idea what "hierarchy" means.
In the anglosphere (and especially in the US), the ethnic background of a person is given much attention. They have very odd labels with the intent to be more inclusive towards the "corner cases". The 'x' probably stands as a placeholder for 'o' and 'a' to capture both the male and female version.
This seems to be a oddity of the english-speaking cultures and not very relevant to other parts of the world.
This seems to be a oddity of the english-speaking cultures and not very relevant to other parts of the world.
"Latinx" is especially great because it sends such a clear message: "We wish to use this ethnic group to make us look like we're concerned about the problems social justice, but we don't actually respect that 97% of the people we're describing don't use that term or want that term."
Americans fixed the word.
They also fix their dogs.
I guess neutering jokes aren't funny to a community that really likes Unix.
[deleted]
Invented terms. Latinx is extremely unpopular among Hispanics according to Pew Research, with just 3% using it. [1] A significant majority of Hispanics say it should never be used to describe them in any circumstance.
It's forced cultural desecration, and it's totally unwanted by the targets of the term.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
It's forced cultural desecration, and it's totally unwanted by the targets of the term.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
I think it's for being Black + Gay or whatever other minority.
Latino is for males, Latina is for females so Latinx is for both and other genders and I guess the + indicates belonging to another minority group.
As a non-American this all seems silly but I see the point of it.
Latino is for males, Latina is for females so Latinx is for both and other genders and I guess the + indicates belonging to another minority group.
As a non-American this all seems silly but I see the point of it.
I see the point as well, but it seems like a lot of theatrics at this point.
For example: the rainbow flag has always been for the LGBTQIA+ community. Now the flag has the added triangles with white, brown, aqua, and magenta for... black and trans folks? If that visibility makes folks feel included then by all means, but the rainbow colors on that flag weren't meant to specifically represent each aspect of that community to begin with. Maybe I've missed issues of representation in that community but I also don't think of LGBTQIA+ as an organization, just a sort of flag to represent non-cis folks.
And then there's Latinx, which is interesting because >98% of folks actually from Latino countries loathe that and don't recognize it. It's purely an American appropriation of another culture's terminology by the same folks who generally raise issues of appropriation.
I'm trying my best to be an ally but I have trouble keeping up with a lot of these things, even those which are a bit paradoxical. The best course of action I've found is to just treat everyone with kindness, respect, empathy, and an open mind.
For example: the rainbow flag has always been for the LGBTQIA+ community. Now the flag has the added triangles with white, brown, aqua, and magenta for... black and trans folks? If that visibility makes folks feel included then by all means, but the rainbow colors on that flag weren't meant to specifically represent each aspect of that community to begin with. Maybe I've missed issues of representation in that community but I also don't think of LGBTQIA+ as an organization, just a sort of flag to represent non-cis folks.
And then there's Latinx, which is interesting because >98% of folks actually from Latino countries loathe that and don't recognize it. It's purely an American appropriation of another culture's terminology by the same folks who generally raise issues of appropriation.
I'm trying my best to be an ally but I have trouble keeping up with a lot of these things, even those which are a bit paradoxical. The best course of action I've found is to just treat everyone with kindness, respect, empathy, and an open mind.
Google doesn't track sexual orientation. Black+ means black or black plus some other ethnic minority (Native American, Latino, etc.).
Google does track orientation of employees. They have a breakdown of intersectional hiring in their 2019 report. It may be voluntarily reported.
But the + doesn't stand for orientation. I don't see how being gay makes you any more or less of a racial identity
https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb78...
But the + doesn't stand for orientation. I don't see how being gay makes you any more or less of a racial identity
https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb78...
[deleted]
According to this[0] people can self-identify as "Black+" so if it's purely racial how could people self-identify as that?
0.https://developers.google.com/learn/certificates
0.https://developers.google.com/learn/certificates
> so if it's purely racial how could people self-identify as that?
Mixed race people. My kids would be Asian+ and White+ for example.
Mixed race people. My kids would be Asian+ and White+ for example.
I dont suppose the term was coined by Google so.. Following the same logic, LGBTQ+ doesn't refer to sexual orientation?
What is White+? Maybe Google’s editors add pluses to all ethnic categories?
I want to know also.
My guess is Black or Latino of every gender/sexuality.
My guess is Black or Latino of every gender/sexuality.
I don't think so because in their 2019 diversity report they have breakdowns of Asian+, Black+, Latinx+, Native American+ and White+ in an "Intersectional workforce" chart. I think that has to do with gender and sexuality, so those shouldn't be +
Their hires and workforce representation are ~40% Asian+ but I don't think that qualifies as diversity.
https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb78...
Their hires and workforce representation are ~40% Asian+ but I don't think that qualifies as diversity.
https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/93d9a4094693cb78...
It also has the effect of pushing as many people into the +buckets as possible, making it so all marginal cases are included.
This could be a modern incarnation of the 'one drop' rule, thinking that if you're part minority, that is still the most important part of your makeup. Or, more likely, it's to inflate numbers as much as possible for PR.
This could be a modern incarnation of the 'one drop' rule, thinking that if you're part minority, that is still the most important part of your makeup. Or, more likely, it's to inflate numbers as much as possible for PR.
If I had to guess, I would say Black+ means anyone who has Black heritage, even if mixed. But it could be a sexual orientation thing too.
Latinx(+) is a term I’ve never heard a latino person use in real life. It seems like needless kid gloves and bastardization of language.
This is woke signalling and is a kind of public performance.
They're not for use in real life, they're for statistical aggregation of e.g. someone who is both Black and Latino. It's a way of saying "X plus maybe also other things" rather than "X only".
I don’t have data for this, but it is probably language popular in Black and Latino Twitter communities. I’m assuming those not engaged in those communities don’t use the “x” or “+”.
Because the people who come up with these silly monickers are all about subverting language and changing the definitions of words. It's their modus operandi. He who controls language, controls thoughts.
Ruby, Ruby on Rails, React, jQuery, Vue, Svelte, Vagrant are terms I’ve never heard a regular person use in real life. The former in particular seems like needless kid gloves and bastardization of language.
I also don't use the term "White British" to describe myself even though it is the demographic I select on surveys.
These terms are useful for demographic measurement, not for personal description. Another commenter gives a good explanation – that the + is there to include those who identify as mixed race. Latinx is used to aggregate Latino/Latina identities.
These terms are useful with even the smallest amount of interest given to why they might be. I'd encourage you to be more curious rather than jumping to the conclusion that this stems from some cultural over-sensitivity.
These terms are useful for demographic measurement, not for personal description. Another commenter gives a good explanation – that the + is there to include those who identify as mixed race. Latinx is used to aggregate Latino/Latina identities.
These terms are useful with even the smallest amount of interest given to why they might be. I'd encourage you to be more curious rather than jumping to the conclusion that this stems from some cultural over-sensitivity.
There’s an easy word for this: Latin.
I'm Italian and I speak Spanish and Portuguese relatively fluently.
Using the term "Latinx" in my opinion is a form of cultural appropriation, because it imposes a way of using grammatical gender that is typical of the English language (think e.g. about the "singular they") upon neo-latin languages where the perception of grammatical gender is very different. In neo-latin languages such as Italian or Spanish, grammatical gender doesn't have the same weight that it has in English, e.g. when I think about "scrivania" or "armadio" (those are the Italian words for "desk" and "closet", the former is feminine and the latter is masculine) I don't imagine in my mind that the desk has feminine features, or that the closet is somehow manly. This is just not how those languages work.
Edit: when I speak English I'm absolutely in favour of things like singular they. I'm just saying that this doesn't work as well in other languages.
Using the term "Latinx" in my opinion is a form of cultural appropriation, because it imposes a way of using grammatical gender that is typical of the English language (think e.g. about the "singular they") upon neo-latin languages where the perception of grammatical gender is very different. In neo-latin languages such as Italian or Spanish, grammatical gender doesn't have the same weight that it has in English, e.g. when I think about "scrivania" or "armadio" (those are the Italian words for "desk" and "closet", the former is feminine and the latter is masculine) I don't imagine in my mind that the desk has feminine features, or that the closet is somehow manly. This is just not how those languages work.
Edit: when I speak English I'm absolutely in favour of things like singular they. I'm just saying that this doesn't work as well in other languages.
Imperialism has continued, but it’s just been rebranded as a pseudo-religious movement. There is only one Truth and any cultures that disagree are “behind” or “anti-progressive.”
"BY THIS SIGN YOU WILL CONQUER."
Ha, I always thought the ‘x’ was for eXtended, like the + in LBGTQ+. Anyways, yes all of my South American friends think it’s bullshit corporate speak.
"Latinx" is not cultural appropriation. On the contrary, it was coined by people of Latin American heritage who feel uncomfortable with the gender binary or who have an explicit non-binary gender identity. These people felt unrepresented by their own native language, so they tried to find a term they could use to describe themselves that would make them feel comfortable. There have been other attempts too, like "Latine", "Latin@" and so on. And Spanish is far from the only language where this is happening - native speakers of many gendered languages who are non-binary have been trying to find ways to assert their identity in their own language.
Personally, I don't use "Latinx" in normal, everyday conversation. "Latino" or (in English) "Latin American" works fine. But if I know I am speaking about a group of people where there are non-binary members who care about this, or if the topic is diversity/inclusion in particular, then I try to use Latinx. Why not? There's nothing appropriative about trying to use language that marginalized people have asked we use to better include them.
Personally, I don't use "Latinx" in normal, everyday conversation. "Latino" or (in English) "Latin American" works fine. But if I know I am speaking about a group of people where there are non-binary members who care about this, or if the topic is diversity/inclusion in particular, then I try to use Latinx. Why not? There's nothing appropriative about trying to use language that marginalized people have asked we use to better include them.
> it was coined by people of Latin American heritage
Were they predominantly people of Latin American heritage who lived in Latin America and spoke Spanish or Portuguese, or people of Latin American heritage whose primary language might have been English because they lived in a predominantly English speaking country?
Let's say a person of Latin American heritage, but whose everyday language is English, modifies their Latin American language in ways that conform to the English language. How do we evaluate that?
Yes, I agree that we could not call it appropriation, because that person is indeed of Latin American heritage, but is this not still a form of "cultural imperialism", where a language that is dominant for political or economical reasons imposes itself over other languages?
And does it not become cultural appropriation later on, the moment that word spreads and becomes mainstream mostly among people of non Latin American heritage, while Latin Americans seldom use it to refer to themselves?
> There have been other attempts too, like "Latine", "Latin@" and so on.
Yes, it is true that there have been some attempts at making the language more gender neutral in other languages too, as I said above I'm Italian and I saw some attempts in Italian as well, things like "Cara/o cliente..." ("Dear customer..." where "dear" has both the feminine and masculine termination, separated with a slash). And I don't have issue with those attempts.
But I take issue specifically with this: why attempting to make the language more gender neutral, using a device (grammatically neutral words) that is typical of the English language and doesn't really exist in Spanish? I am of the opinion that you can use an inclusive language while still speaking Spanish, e.g. you could say "Latinos y Latinas", or for brevity you could write both terminations with a slash like in the Italian example above, there is no need to force an English language device onto Spanish.
Were they predominantly people of Latin American heritage who lived in Latin America and spoke Spanish or Portuguese, or people of Latin American heritage whose primary language might have been English because they lived in a predominantly English speaking country?
Let's say a person of Latin American heritage, but whose everyday language is English, modifies their Latin American language in ways that conform to the English language. How do we evaluate that?
Yes, I agree that we could not call it appropriation, because that person is indeed of Latin American heritage, but is this not still a form of "cultural imperialism", where a language that is dominant for political or economical reasons imposes itself over other languages?
And does it not become cultural appropriation later on, the moment that word spreads and becomes mainstream mostly among people of non Latin American heritage, while Latin Americans seldom use it to refer to themselves?
> There have been other attempts too, like "Latine", "Latin@" and so on.
Yes, it is true that there have been some attempts at making the language more gender neutral in other languages too, as I said above I'm Italian and I saw some attempts in Italian as well, things like "Cara/o cliente..." ("Dear customer..." where "dear" has both the feminine and masculine termination, separated with a slash). And I don't have issue with those attempts.
But I take issue specifically with this: why attempting to make the language more gender neutral, using a device (grammatically neutral words) that is typical of the English language and doesn't really exist in Spanish? I am of the opinion that you can use an inclusive language while still speaking Spanish, e.g. you could say "Latinos y Latinas", or for brevity you could write both terminations with a slash like in the Italian example above, there is no need to force an English language device onto Spanish.
I really don't see this as something worth making a fuss about. Languages change all the time based on how people use them in the real world. Concepts and ideas that did not exist 100 years ago do exist today, and the language evolves to express those.
Given Spanish is spoken as a first language by hundreds of millions of people in tens of countries around the world, I don't think it should be seen as a problem that some of those Spanish-speaking people are finding new ways to express an experience that perhaps other Spanish-speaking people don't find relevant to them. There are 40 million native Spanish speakers in the United States, and millions more who speak it as a second language. At least some proportion of those consider themselves non-binary, and would like to have a term that explicitly recognizes that identity. (Note that your suggestion of "Latinos y Latinas" does not explicitly include non-binary identities.)
I don't think it really matters if "Latinx" is a word that was developed in the United States by people who live there. It might be a bit crass to refer to people across the entirety of Latin America using that term, but I don't see anybody doing that.
As far as appropriation goes: just like Spanish, the English language is evolving too. Sometimes we adopt foreign terms into English, and often we bastardize them, and that's not considered especially remarkable. We took "diva" from Italian and use it for both female and male "divi". I don't think that's cultural appropriation.
To be clear, I am not an American, so I am sympathetic to your view that American politics and culture tends to push itself into other countries. Here on HN that happens a lot. But I don't think this particular term is something worth worrying about. The way I see it there are many worse things Americans could be doing than creating a new word that people there have a use for.
Given Spanish is spoken as a first language by hundreds of millions of people in tens of countries around the world, I don't think it should be seen as a problem that some of those Spanish-speaking people are finding new ways to express an experience that perhaps other Spanish-speaking people don't find relevant to them. There are 40 million native Spanish speakers in the United States, and millions more who speak it as a second language. At least some proportion of those consider themselves non-binary, and would like to have a term that explicitly recognizes that identity. (Note that your suggestion of "Latinos y Latinas" does not explicitly include non-binary identities.)
I don't think it really matters if "Latinx" is a word that was developed in the United States by people who live there. It might be a bit crass to refer to people across the entirety of Latin America using that term, but I don't see anybody doing that.
As far as appropriation goes: just like Spanish, the English language is evolving too. Sometimes we adopt foreign terms into English, and often we bastardize them, and that's not considered especially remarkable. We took "diva" from Italian and use it for both female and male "divi". I don't think that's cultural appropriation.
To be clear, I am not an American, so I am sympathetic to your view that American politics and culture tends to push itself into other countries. Here on HN that happens a lot. But I don't think this particular term is something worth worrying about. The way I see it there are many worse things Americans could be doing than creating a new word that people there have a use for.
> I really don't see this as something worth making a fuss about.
I see it as a problem when it's used to identify a minority that overwhelmingly rejects this term as it's been noted elsewhere in this thread. That's something that is usually true of racial slurs. Of course, I'm not saying that Latinx is a racial slur, but that it shares this characteristic with racial slurs.
> Languages change all the time based on how people use them in the real world.
Of course, but that doesn't justify forcing terms onto minorities.
> Note that your suggestion of "Latinos y Latinas" does not explicitly include non-binary identities.
I think it does, because in Spanish, Italian and similar languages the masculine grammatical gender is also used for plurals where the grammatical gender is indeterminate (it's used as a substitute of the neutral gender, due to the fact that we don't have the neutral gender in our grammar)[1]. That is why I fail to see how someone who is a native speaker of those languages, and is familiar with the grammar, would find that definition non-inclusive. Unless they were projecting a way of thinking that is typical of the English language (where grammatical gender = gender identity) onto that other language.
> As far as appropriation goes: just like Spanish, the English language is evolving too. Sometimes we adopt foreign terms into English, and often we bastardize them, and that's not considered especially remarkable. We took "diva" from Italian and use it for both female and male "divi". I don't think that's cultural appropriation.
Yes of course you are right. But people don't use "diva" exclusively to refer to people of Italian descent - so it's not the same as "Latinx", which is being used to define a minority - which overwhelmingly rejects that term apparently. Speaking of Italian words assimilated into the English language - my personal pet peeve is English speaking people saying "Bravo!" at the end of an exhibition, even if the performer is not a woman ("bravo" is masculine).
> I am sympathetic to your view that American politics and culture tends to push itself into other countries. Here on HN that happens a lot.
Yes, sometimes in HN discussions it's considered as a given that they are talking about the USA and I often interject and ask "in what country?" I'm like the "internationalist police" of this forum ahah :-D
[1] An example would be: "Tutti gli italiani, uomini e donne, dovrebbero vaccinarsi" - "All Italians, men and women, should get the vaccine" - "Italiani" is grammatically masculine but it's being used as a neutral here. To an external observer this might seem masculinist, or you might see it the other way around (the masculine grammatical gender ends up being de-emphasised because it's often used for non-masculine nouns).
I see it as a problem when it's used to identify a minority that overwhelmingly rejects this term as it's been noted elsewhere in this thread. That's something that is usually true of racial slurs. Of course, I'm not saying that Latinx is a racial slur, but that it shares this characteristic with racial slurs.
> Languages change all the time based on how people use them in the real world.
Of course, but that doesn't justify forcing terms onto minorities.
> Note that your suggestion of "Latinos y Latinas" does not explicitly include non-binary identities.
I think it does, because in Spanish, Italian and similar languages the masculine grammatical gender is also used for plurals where the grammatical gender is indeterminate (it's used as a substitute of the neutral gender, due to the fact that we don't have the neutral gender in our grammar)[1]. That is why I fail to see how someone who is a native speaker of those languages, and is familiar with the grammar, would find that definition non-inclusive. Unless they were projecting a way of thinking that is typical of the English language (where grammatical gender = gender identity) onto that other language.
> As far as appropriation goes: just like Spanish, the English language is evolving too. Sometimes we adopt foreign terms into English, and often we bastardize them, and that's not considered especially remarkable. We took "diva" from Italian and use it for both female and male "divi". I don't think that's cultural appropriation.
Yes of course you are right. But people don't use "diva" exclusively to refer to people of Italian descent - so it's not the same as "Latinx", which is being used to define a minority - which overwhelmingly rejects that term apparently. Speaking of Italian words assimilated into the English language - my personal pet peeve is English speaking people saying "Bravo!" at the end of an exhibition, even if the performer is not a woman ("bravo" is masculine).
> I am sympathetic to your view that American politics and culture tends to push itself into other countries. Here on HN that happens a lot.
Yes, sometimes in HN discussions it's considered as a given that they are talking about the USA and I often interject and ask "in what country?" I'm like the "internationalist police" of this forum ahah :-D
[1] An example would be: "Tutti gli italiani, uomini e donne, dovrebbero vaccinarsi" - "All Italians, men and women, should get the vaccine" - "Italiani" is grammatically masculine but it's being used as a neutral here. To an external observer this might seem masculinist, or you might see it the other way around (the masculine grammatical gender ends up being de-emphasised because it's often used for non-masculine nouns).
I am not sure where the evidence is that people "overwhelmingly reject" the term, or that anyone classifies it as a racial slur.
The Pew study that is commonly cited[0] makes it clear that 76% of Latino or Hispanic identifying people have not even heard of the term. Only 3% use it, increasing to 7% amongst younger people (18-29) and 14% among young women. The study also notes that most people of that background prefer to be called Hispanic, which makes sense because Hispanic is an older term in the first place, and it is also the term used in US government documents like the census. Of the 23% who have heard of the term, only 12% "disagree or dislike" it, with a far greater number understanding that it is useful as a gender-neutral or LGBTQ-inclusive term. This really is not the kind of big deal that some people are making it out to be.
This has all happened before, of course. For example, in the 70s some American women started to refer to themselves as "womyn". The term grew popular amongst some groups, and it's listed in the dictionary, but it never really caught on. Around the same time some American activists decided to take an actual slur - queer - and reclaim that as a term to describe everyone under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Plenty of Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts were not happy about that, but eventually the term stuck, and now most people in that group would probably accept the fact that "queer" is a valid umbrella term, even if amongst themselves they still use a more specific or more old-fashioned terminology.
I see "Latinx" as just another one of these linguistic trends. Maybe it will catch on, maybe it won't. For now, it's pretty well-established in HR departments of big American tech companies, so if you work in tech and you're talking about HR... Then it makes sense to use the term. In other contexts, well that's up to you.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
The Pew study that is commonly cited[0] makes it clear that 76% of Latino or Hispanic identifying people have not even heard of the term. Only 3% use it, increasing to 7% amongst younger people (18-29) and 14% among young women. The study also notes that most people of that background prefer to be called Hispanic, which makes sense because Hispanic is an older term in the first place, and it is also the term used in US government documents like the census. Of the 23% who have heard of the term, only 12% "disagree or dislike" it, with a far greater number understanding that it is useful as a gender-neutral or LGBTQ-inclusive term. This really is not the kind of big deal that some people are making it out to be.
This has all happened before, of course. For example, in the 70s some American women started to refer to themselves as "womyn". The term grew popular amongst some groups, and it's listed in the dictionary, but it never really caught on. Around the same time some American activists decided to take an actual slur - queer - and reclaim that as a term to describe everyone under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Plenty of Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts were not happy about that, but eventually the term stuck, and now most people in that group would probably accept the fact that "queer" is a valid umbrella term, even if amongst themselves they still use a more specific or more old-fashioned terminology.
I see "Latinx" as just another one of these linguistic trends. Maybe it will catch on, maybe it won't. For now, it's pretty well-established in HR departments of big American tech companies, so if you work in tech and you're talking about HR... Then it makes sense to use the term. In other contexts, well that's up to you.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
Yes I agree with you I guess we will see whether it will catch on or not. It just seems to me like a term made by an elite and then forced upon everyone else, rather than a term that grew in usage organically, from the bottom up. But maybe I'm wrong.
Not even speaking about languages without gendered nouns. :) Sometimes I use she instead of he or the other way around, and the listeners likely don't realize that I have to pay extra attention using he/she when talking about people because my mother tongue doesn't even have a similar concept whatsoever.
Anyway, we know that most of the time it's not about actually respecting the other person.
Anyway, we know that most of the time it's not about actually respecting the other person.
I have a problem that is somehow similar to yours. In Italian, the grammatical gender of possessive pronouns works the other way around, e.g. if a boy has a girlfriend, in English you say "his girlfriend", "his" is masculine. But in Italian, possessive pronouns work the other way around ("la sua ragazza", where "sua" is feminine). To this day I still get it wrong sometimes e.g. if I'm tired at the end of a long day.
I have noticed this in some speakers (for example finns and chinese), and thought that this might be the cause. :)
I have studied Spanish and am currently studying Portuguese (my partner is Brazilian) and I think about this a lot. I would take the other side of the bet here. I would bet that this deeply ingrained gendering of objects does show up elsewhere and influence attitudes. Surely there have been studies on this? Of course I respect your experience as a native speaker and the fact that you know more native speakers than I do, but right now we're just battling anecdotes.
There are studies that show that polyglot speakers tend to think in slightly different ways when they switch languages. It is probably true that speaking a language where every noun is gendered might slightly change the way you think, but in my personal opinion not in the way you imagine.
What I mean is that when masculine or feminine are used to describe mundane everyday objects, it's very well possible that the idea of masculinity or femininity might be de-emphasised in the mind of the native speaker, rather than reinforced.
What I mean is that when masculine or feminine are used to describe mundane everyday objects, it's very well possible that the idea of masculinity or femininity might be de-emphasised in the mind of the native speaker, rather than reinforced.
I'm learning German at the moment. Everything is gendered. Such a strange way of looking at the world.
And the unfortunate "das Mädchen" [0] - the German word for "young woman" is neutral gender (because it's a compound noun and the "-chen" suffix is neutral). I wonder how that affects German society when all young women are objects. Does this de-emphasise their femininity, or increase their "sexual object"-ness?
[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/M%C3%A4dchen
And the unfortunate "das Mädchen" [0] - the German word for "young woman" is neutral gender (because it's a compound noun and the "-chen" suffix is neutral). I wonder how that affects German society when all young women are objects. Does this de-emphasise their femininity, or increase their "sexual object"-ness?
[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/M%C3%A4dchen
> Does this de-emphasise their femininity, or increase their "sexual object"-ness?
Or secret option c): it has absolutely no effect on how they treat their women because they aren't actually that dumb.
Or secret option c): it has absolutely no effect on how they treat their women because they aren't actually that dumb.
Theres also “das kind” (the child). And I’m sure other examples. You simply don’t understand how other languages work, and you’re projecting your own ideas onto them.
And German is a whole different class than Latin and Slavic languages - AFAIK there’s now way to “tell” the gender of a word in German. In contrast, in Spanish, Italian (not sure about French) and Slovenian words actually “sound” either feminine or masculine (or neutral, but those are rarer and mostly for inanimate objects), because gender is based on word endings.
And German is a whole different class than Latin and Slavic languages - AFAIK there’s now way to “tell” the gender of a word in German. In contrast, in Spanish, Italian (not sure about French) and Slovenian words actually “sound” either feminine or masculine (or neutral, but those are rarer and mostly for inanimate objects), because gender is based on word endings.
> AFAIK there’s now way to “tell” the gender of a word in German
That's incorrect, there are rules. (These rules have a few exceptions.)
m: -en, -er, -ig, -ismus, -ist, -ling, -m, -or
f: -ät, -e, -ei, -enz, -heit, -ie, -ik, -in, -ion, -keit, -schaft, -ung, -ur
n: -chen, -lein, -ment, -nis, -tum, -um
That makes the proposed contrast weaker than you initially thought.
That's incorrect, there are rules. (These rules have a few exceptions.)
m: -en, -er, -ig, -ismus, -ist, -ling, -m, -or
f: -ät, -e, -ei, -enz, -heit, -ie, -ik, -in, -ion, -keit, -schaft, -ung, -ur
n: -chen, -lein, -ment, -nis, -tum, -um
That makes the proposed contrast weaker than you initially thought.
Yes. I am projecting my own ideas on them. That's how brains work. Also the wonderful nature of travel is being exposed to other cultures and their strange ideas about the planet. This isn't negative.
Yeah, I gather that Germans intuit the gender of a new word - it just "feels" masculine or feminine (or neutral). Fascinating.
Yeah, I gather that Germans intuit the gender of a new word - it just "feels" masculine or feminine (or neutral). Fascinating.
Interesting I didn't know that. In Italian there is no neutral gender, Latin had it but in modern Italian it has been lost.
> Does this de-emphasise their femininity, or increase their "sexual object"-ness?
My hypothesis is that having it might de-emphasise the link between grammatical gender and gender identity of a person, this link is very strong in the English language because in English the only time you use gendered language you are talking about a person, in those other languages you use gendered words to refer to a pot or a chair :-)
> Does this de-emphasise their femininity, or increase their "sexual object"-ness?
My hypothesis is that having it might de-emphasise the link between grammatical gender and gender identity of a person, this link is very strong in the English language because in English the only time you use gendered language you are talking about a person, in those other languages you use gendered words to refer to a pot or a chair :-)
Things that are “different” are not “strange.”
they are to me. Is there a problem with being "strange" to someone from a different culture?
The word strange implies otherness and inferiority.
not to me. I love strange things. They challenge my status quo.
Totally agree with your "other side of the coin" assessment that this gendering of everyday objects could diminish the importance of gender overall.
To my original point, one of the most interesting examples that I can think of is how you gender groups of humans in Spanish or Portuguese. If I understand correctly, no matter the distribution of the group, the group becomes masculine once there is one man in it. It could be 999 females and 1 male and the proper way to label it is masculine.
To my original point, one of the most interesting examples that I can think of is how you gender groups of humans in Spanish or Portuguese. If I understand correctly, no matter the distribution of the group, the group becomes masculine once there is one man in it. It could be 999 females and 1 male and the proper way to label it is masculine.
Yes the group becomes masculine no matter the distribution, this is also the case in Italian. If I remember this correctly, this is because the old Latin neutral gender, in those modern languages, has been assimilated into the masculine gender. (If you study Latin you might notice that in many cases the neutral terminations are more similar to the masculine ones so, in a way, it makes sense that at some point the line started to blur I guess).
My understanding of historical linguistics is that gendering in Indo-European languages has its roots in animate vs inanimate objects, with a feminine category splitting later on from the animate category (possibly as a way to distinguish singular from collective initially, before being retrofitted to « female » things later on).
Add on nouns shifting meaning over time and you've got a relationship between grammar and sex that is extremely loose. I'd take any notion that it « influences attitude » with extreme carefulness.
Add on nouns shifting meaning over time and you've got a relationship between grammar and sex that is extremely loose. I'd take any notion that it « influences attitude » with extreme carefulness.
> I'd take any notion that it « influences attitude » with extreme carefulness.
For sure. Similar to sociobiology, my original line of thinking can quickly lead to some offensive ideas.
For sure. Similar to sociobiology, my original line of thinking can quickly lead to some offensive ideas.
I was wondering if it was just internet bias that made “latinx” look unpopular, but no - it’s pretty unpopular in real life as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
> Surveys of Hispanic and Latino Americans have found that most prefer other terms such as Hispanic and Latina/Latino to describe themselves, and that only 2 to 3 percent use Latinx.[1][2] A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that roughly three-quarters of U.S. Latinos were not aware of the term Latinx; of those who were, 33% said it should be used to describe their racial or ethnic group, while 65% said it should not.[3][2]
Honestly, with support that poor I’m not sure why you’d bother.
(Aside, but iOS doesn’t even recognize latinx as a word)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
> Surveys of Hispanic and Latino Americans have found that most prefer other terms such as Hispanic and Latina/Latino to describe themselves, and that only 2 to 3 percent use Latinx.[1][2] A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that roughly three-quarters of U.S. Latinos were not aware of the term Latinx; of those who were, 33% said it should be used to describe their racial or ethnic group, while 65% said it should not.[3][2]
Honestly, with support that poor I’m not sure why you’d bother.
(Aside, but iOS doesn’t even recognize latinx as a word)
3% of Hispanics use the term, and an overwhelming majority believe it should never be used to describe them. [1]
Honestly it's disgusting it's still in use. When does it be come a slur given it's used against a population against their wishes?
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
Honestly it's disgusting it's still in use. When does it be come a slur given it's used against a population against their wishes?
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
Hispanic != Latino/a/x
They're not describing the same population.
They're not describing the same population.
To play devil's advocate here (I don't personally care one way or another what hispanic people are typically called), I don't think polling sentiment is necessarily a good indicator of something's morality.
For reference, 75% of polled people in the US disapproved of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the year he was assassinated.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-kin...
If we go by your logic of purely going off of polling, MLK, Jr. was an all around terrible man going against the wishes of the population. I don't think any reasonable person these days would agree with that.
For reference, 75% of polled people in the US disapproved of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the year he was assassinated.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-kin...
If we go by your logic of purely going off of polling, MLK, Jr. was an all around terrible man going against the wishes of the population. I don't think any reasonable person these days would agree with that.
This isn't about how everyone feels but about how the group that this is supposed to represent and name feels about it. It's like someone decided that your name is now Alice. You had no say in it and you don't like the name but you're now Alice. You had a name you called yourself but they didn't care and now you're Alice.
Are you implying it's okay to call a class of people a term which they explicitly do not want you to use against them?
What sets this apart from a racial slur apart from a marginal difference in support?
What sets this apart from a racial slur apart from a marginal difference in support?
It seems Latinx is a word used in some circles the U.S. and it's a word choice specific to their language. Much like how the U.S. use of plain "America" is contentious in the rest of Latin America - words have different meanings in different contexts and spheres, but there's is conflict when it leaks outside the boundaries.
Thank you for saying this. This has been my pet peeve for a while now.
LatinX is not just appropriation, it's cultural imperialism at its finest.
It's the "woke" American cultural hegemony trying to dictate what the Latino community can call itself. It's almost disrespectful to our autonomy, our culture and heritage.
And I say this as someone who's completely pro the gender-neutral language revolution in his native tongue, Spanish.
Latinos can call themselves whatever they want, we don't need the US to start telling us how we need to gender-neutralize our community.
LatinX is not just appropriation, it's cultural imperialism at its finest.
It's the "woke" American cultural hegemony trying to dictate what the Latino community can call itself. It's almost disrespectful to our autonomy, our culture and heritage.
And I say this as someone who's completely pro the gender-neutral language revolution in his native tongue, Spanish.
Latinos can call themselves whatever they want, we don't need the US to start telling us how we need to gender-neutralize our community.
The feeling you’ve described is how many Americans feel about the woke telling them how they can speak too.
Oh, absolutely. The appearance of "x" instead of the "a" or "o" is an immediate signal of someone who is trying to signal wokeness, but isn't actually.
Signalling wokeness is wokeness. It's not like there's some authentic wokeness - calling it wokeness is accusing it of being inauthentic.
Okay; and that's fine by me, as I do consider it a rather shallow minded concept anyway. But it does mean something in certain communities, and there are indicators when someone is mouthing words without understanding their meaning or weight. To claim there isn't an "authentic wokeness" is not exactly correct.
I don't think its cultural appropriation. It's not like people saying that are adapting features from latin people and adding it to their own culture. In fact, it is sort of the opposite. It is people forcing the latin culture into their own framework. Not sure how to term that, but not at all cultural appropriation.
I think you are right, maybe the correct term would be "linguistic imperialism" because it forces something typical of the English language onto a Spanish word?
Learning German for the better part of the last two years, I agree with the thought of your comment. The only way I could wrap my head around the notorious German genders is by divorcing myself of the English concept that gender in language depends completely on the object referred to. Rather, I had to see gender as an arbitrary grammatical category; so just get used to it!
However, I (an armchair linguist, I should note) am also a big adherent to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: your language affects your world view. And in terms of gender, there's at least research[1] that shows linguistic gender affects our perception of things. Of course, as with all research, it's open to critique, but I don't have the training for evaluating research in this field. Maybe someone else better equipped could chime in.
Interesting quotes:
> In one study, we asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender. For example, when asked to describe a “key” — a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish — the German speakers were more likely to use words like “hard,” “heavy,” “jagged,” “metal,” “serrated,” and “useful,” whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say “golden,” “intricate,” “little,” “lovely,” “shiny,” and “tiny.” ... This was true even though all testing was done in English, a language without grammatical gender.
> Look at some famous examples of personification in art — the ways in which abstract entities such as death, sin, victory, or time are given human form. How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be painted as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is predicted by the grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language.
The second quote struck me in particular because when I first came across this, I just had a vacation in Paris where I visited the Pantheon. In one of the Pantheon's pillars is a depiction of Death (French: La Mort, feminine) and it struck me as very curious that in this depiction, Death is female. The only other work I knew of to do that was Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
(This is already long enough, but going back to the topic of "Latinx" terms...I don't intend my point above as an endorsement of this practice. In fact I find them quite virtue signalling. I have more thoughts on this but I think the majority of gender (and racial) activism is distracted on bike shedding issues such as using this "x-form". But enough said for now.)
[1] https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-o...
However, I (an armchair linguist, I should note) am also a big adherent to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: your language affects your world view. And in terms of gender, there's at least research[1] that shows linguistic gender affects our perception of things. Of course, as with all research, it's open to critique, but I don't have the training for evaluating research in this field. Maybe someone else better equipped could chime in.
Interesting quotes:
> In one study, we asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender. For example, when asked to describe a “key” — a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish — the German speakers were more likely to use words like “hard,” “heavy,” “jagged,” “metal,” “serrated,” and “useful,” whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say “golden,” “intricate,” “little,” “lovely,” “shiny,” and “tiny.” ... This was true even though all testing was done in English, a language without grammatical gender.
> Look at some famous examples of personification in art — the ways in which abstract entities such as death, sin, victory, or time are given human form. How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be painted as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is predicted by the grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language.
The second quote struck me in particular because when I first came across this, I just had a vacation in Paris where I visited the Pantheon. In one of the Pantheon's pillars is a depiction of Death (French: La Mort, feminine) and it struck me as very curious that in this depiction, Death is female. The only other work I knew of to do that was Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
(This is already long enough, but going back to the topic of "Latinx" terms...I don't intend my point above as an endorsement of this practice. In fact I find them quite virtue signalling. I have more thoughts on this but I think the majority of gender (and racial) activism is distracted on bike shedding issues such as using this "x-form". But enough said for now.)
[1] https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-o...
> your language affects your world view
As a linguist, my personal opinion is that it tinges your world view, but does not have a large influence on it. I only adhere to a very light interpretation of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. tldr: culture is a much stronger influence on world view, it also strongly influences language.
A simple, but clear example is rhyme. By having words that rhyme in your language, you are more likely to pair them together in a song or a poem, like love and dove, but these words don't rhyme in Chinese so you a Chinese speaker is less likely to pair them when rhyme is needed. It also affects word play. A counter argument would be imperfect rhyme, the culture or desired effect forces a rhyme on words. The speaker finds a why to manipulate the language for their needs.
A stronger argument argument against Sapir-Whorf is that there are native speakers of a language that have very different cultures like native speaker of American English and native speakers of Indian English. They both speak English, but have very different world views, and change the language to suit their communication needs. The opposite can be true as well, speakers of different languages, but related cultures can shape their languages in similar ways. For example, many Singaporeans are native or high level English speakers and the language has evolved patterns and communication styles found in Chinese languages.
As a linguist, my personal opinion is that it tinges your world view, but does not have a large influence on it. I only adhere to a very light interpretation of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. tldr: culture is a much stronger influence on world view, it also strongly influences language.
A simple, but clear example is rhyme. By having words that rhyme in your language, you are more likely to pair them together in a song or a poem, like love and dove, but these words don't rhyme in Chinese so you a Chinese speaker is less likely to pair them when rhyme is needed. It also affects word play. A counter argument would be imperfect rhyme, the culture or desired effect forces a rhyme on words. The speaker finds a why to manipulate the language for their needs.
A stronger argument argument against Sapir-Whorf is that there are native speakers of a language that have very different cultures like native speaker of American English and native speakers of Indian English. They both speak English, but have very different world views, and change the language to suit their communication needs. The opposite can be true as well, speakers of different languages, but related cultures can shape their languages in similar ways. For example, many Singaporeans are native or high level English speakers and the language has evolved patterns and communication styles found in Chinese languages.
> Rather, I had to see gender as an arbitrary grammatical category; so just get used to it!
Exactly
> Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: your language affects your world view
I also agree on this. The study you mentioned about German and Spanish speakers is fascinating.
However I see this under a slightly different light: I suspect that speaking a language where all nouns are gendered, your gender-related biases might end up being de-emphasised over time[1]. I would love to read research papers about this topic.
[1] see my other comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710620 and here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710812 where I attempt to explain what I mean by that
Exactly
> Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: your language affects your world view
I also agree on this. The study you mentioned about German and Spanish speakers is fascinating.
However I see this under a slightly different light: I suspect that speaking a language where all nouns are gendered, your gender-related biases might end up being de-emphasised over time[1]. I would love to read research papers about this topic.
[1] see my other comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710620 and here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710812 where I attempt to explain what I mean by that
> your language affects your world view.
It absolutely does. That's why learning new languages can heavily widen one's perspective.
That's also why people who can influence word definitions, especially legal ones, are the most influent and powerful people on earth.
Talking about French, the English word "mortgage" always sounded extremely sinister from a French perspective, given its linguistic implications.
It absolutely does. That's why learning new languages can heavily widen one's perspective.
That's also why people who can influence word definitions, especially legal ones, are the most influent and powerful people on earth.
Talking about French, the English word "mortgage" always sounded extremely sinister from a French perspective, given its linguistic implications.
Is attrition a "normal" English word in this context, or is it also GoogleSpeak like Black+?
It's relatively normal. I guess the dictionary doesn't agree exactly with how it's used here, but it's listed as meaning 2 in this dictionary here and then also further on. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/attriti...
The elephant in the room is the ouster of Timnit Gebru. Regardless of who you think was in the wrong there, a lot of people who left did so because they thought Google was in the wrong, and left in solidarity or maybe even because they thought they might be next for being similarly outspoken.
I think it's super hypocritical to be well paid a company while also trash talking them on Twitter. I wouldn't call that being outspoken.
My intent with saying "Regardless of who you think was in the wrong there" was precisely NOT to re-litigate the entire saga (that's old and played out here).
Regardless of who you think was wrong, it had a big effect on black employees' perceptions of their employer.
Regardless of who you think was wrong, it had a big effect on black employees' perceptions of their employer.
On some black employees' perceptions.
This is hard for people new to working and living alongside minorities in America, but these are individuals and not a monolithic group. Identity politics is dangerous because the loudest mouths on the issue are definitely not representative of any whole group. And yet culturally we're demanded to see things their way to an increasing and alarming degree.
This is hard for people new to working and living alongside minorities in America, but these are individuals and not a monolithic group. Identity politics is dangerous because the loudest mouths on the issue are definitely not representative of any whole group. And yet culturally we're demanded to see things their way to an increasing and alarming degree.
One look at Blind app and you get to see just how out of touch tech employees are about people that don't look like them
Seems very pervasive to have a heavily distorted view of black people
What I most commonly see, on Blind, is people assuming that black people - mostly US citizens their entire lives - have a completely different culture that has to be tolerated, as opposed to a mostly shared American culture
Its kind of weird
Seems very pervasive to have a heavily distorted view of black people
What I most commonly see, on Blind, is people assuming that black people - mostly US citizens their entire lives - have a completely different culture that has to be tolerated, as opposed to a mostly shared American culture
Its kind of weird
Not necessarily, you'd probably be surprised that many black employees don't really care about this whole ordeal or affirmative action in general.
Which is understandable; if you're confident in your skill set and take pride in your work, the last thing you want to hear is "we hired you for diversity reasons".
exactly lol. They want google to be government controlled now, wtf
It would be super easy for me to not say anything for two years for a million dollars.
Did Gebru get a payout? I missed that part of the story. What are the details?
The point is that people don't need to become corporate martyrs given how brief and highly compensated their stint at big tech companies are
It’s discretionary
It’s discretionary
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> some people from underrepresented backgrounds have said they continue to feel unwelcome in the tech industry, and they also remain high in demand elsewhere as companies compete to increase diversity.
This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps, but it seems like many policies which seek to boost individual company population ratios to be significantly higher than the comparable tech-industry ratios are prone to this problem.
Competing for talent and working hard to ensure that underrepresented group members have a fair shot? Should be standard practice and a baseline of ethical corporate and human behavior.
Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me.
We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. That’s observable from the industry-wide figures. Moving an underrepresented group member from industry company A to industry company B doesn’t change that industry-wide measure at all, which should be obvious but seems to escape mention.
This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps, but it seems like many policies which seek to boost individual company population ratios to be significantly higher than the comparable tech-industry ratios are prone to this problem.
Competing for talent and working hard to ensure that underrepresented group members have a fair shot? Should be standard practice and a baseline of ethical corporate and human behavior.
Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me.
We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. That’s observable from the industry-wide figures. Moving an underrepresented group member from industry company A to industry company B doesn’t change that industry-wide measure at all, which should be obvious but seems to escape mention.
A problem I have heard female friends speculate about is with promoting women in higher positions.
If the female population is too low, and you try to get them into higher positions, two effects occur according to this theory.
First of all, with a low female population there probably aren't enough proven and qualified women to fill the desired number of slots. This leads to imposter syndrome / worry about people thinking "she only has this position because of gender". It also leads to these women sometimes doing poorer jobs, just because there aren't enough qualified women in the company to fill those positions.
Secondly, you drain the lower rungs of the company from women. This leads to under-representation in the lower rungs. Meaning fewer women getting the training time one needs to properly move up the ladder. It also means a dearth of female perspective on the lower rungs. Hurting both diversity of views, and the culture. That second point makes the company less attractive to women trying to enter the company, which perpetuates the problem.
First of all, with a low female population there probably aren't enough proven and qualified women to fill the desired number of slots. This leads to imposter syndrome / worry about people thinking "she only has this position because of gender". It also leads to these women sometimes doing poorer jobs, just because there aren't enough qualified women in the company to fill those positions.
Secondly, you drain the lower rungs of the company from women. This leads to under-representation in the lower rungs. Meaning fewer women getting the training time one needs to properly move up the ladder. It also means a dearth of female perspective on the lower rungs. Hurting both diversity of views, and the culture. That second point makes the company less attractive to women trying to enter the company, which perpetuates the problem.
Women were well represented in the early days of computing. The gender imbalance only started in about 1984. Some researchers think that was because home computers started to become affordable at about that time and were mainly marketed to men.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
Women are also currently well-represented in computing in Eastern Europe, Iran, China, and somewhat in Russia.
None of these regions particularly care about "women in tech", and most of them are certifiably more patriarchal than any of the Western countries currently suffering from under-representation of women.
One can conclude from facts on the ground that neither gender equality nor pro-diversity movements correlate with desirable representation outcomes. Yet, those appear to be the only approaches attempted here in the West.
We're not serious about tackling the problem. We are, however, quite good at grifting off the problem with proposals we know don't work.
None of these regions particularly care about "women in tech", and most of them are certifiably more patriarchal than any of the Western countries currently suffering from under-representation of women.
One can conclude from facts on the ground that neither gender equality nor pro-diversity movements correlate with desirable representation outcomes. Yet, those appear to be the only approaches attempted here in the West.
We're not serious about tackling the problem. We are, however, quite good at grifting off the problem with proposals we know don't work.
According to an article in the Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more..., "nations that have traditionally less gender equality [tend] to have more women in science and technology than their gender-progressive counterparts do".
There's a plot of % women STEM graduates vs. a measure of opportunities for women. Algeria has the highest percentage of women STEM graduates on the chart. The Nordic countries have some of the lowest.
There's a plot of % women STEM graduates vs. a measure of opportunities for women. Algeria has the highest percentage of women STEM graduates on the chart. The Nordic countries have some of the lowest.
> We're not serious about tackling the problem. We are, however, quite good at grifting off the problem with proposals we know don't work.
Could it be that women tend to care about stuff like a healthy work-life balance, and things like the 996.ICU working week can discourage them from applying? Whoops no, we've been told that's sexist wrongthink.
Could it be that women tend to care about stuff like a healthy work-life balance, and things like the 996.ICU working week can discourage them from applying? Whoops no, we've been told that's sexist wrongthink.
Could it be that computers are boring af and most of these people who genuinely care about computing are somewhere on the autism spectrum (which is mostly populated by males)
We’re all in the spectrum. That’s why it’s called a spectrum. :-)
If women were afraid of long, brutal hours then they wouldn’t make up 52% of all new doctors.
Your comment is great and more observant than most everything in this thread. The answer is freedom, when women have lots of choices they don't choose to play with things as often as men.
>Eastern Europe
>None of these regions particularly care about "women in tech"
there are initiatives of promoting IT among women in Poland, afaik.
there are initiatives of promoting IT among women in Poland, afaik.
Women's representation peaked at around 1/3rd in the mid 1980s. While higher than present days, it was never close to parity. The narrative that personal computers were marked to boys is criticized: a significant market segment was secretarial work, which was predominantly made up of women.
The drop in women's representation in computing corresponds to the elimination of overtly sexist policies in other fields. E.g. medical schools removed gender quotas (maximum not minimum quotas, sometimes as low as 10%). Mary Ann Wilkes initially wanted to be a lawyer, but changed to computing when she encountered explicit sexism in law firms. After the expansion of women's right, women in her position were able to pursue their original passions.
I doubt it boils down to any one cause, but I think it's crucial not to ignore women's agency in making career decisions.
The drop in women's representation in computing corresponds to the elimination of overtly sexist policies in other fields. E.g. medical schools removed gender quotas (maximum not minimum quotas, sometimes as low as 10%). Mary Ann Wilkes initially wanted to be a lawyer, but changed to computing when she encountered explicit sexism in law firms. After the expansion of women's right, women in her position were able to pursue their original passions.
I doubt it boils down to any one cause, but I think it's crucial not to ignore women's agency in making career decisions.
I know quite a few female programmers. Almost all of them wanted to be something else, and only became programmers as a second choice.
Another thought: compared to other technical careers, programming careers are uncredentialed. No legal or even social prerequisites other than skill.
If you want to be a doctor, you must apply to college, be accepted to college, matriculate, graduate with a degree in sciences. Then you must take the MCAT, apply to medical schools, be accepted to a medical school, graduate, apply to a residency, complete the residency, and become board certified.
And then you are an entry level doctor, licensed to practice in a single state, with no job, no patients, no practice, and no insurance network contracts.
If any of those steps are sexist/racist, a woman or minority is less likely to make it past that step.
Programming doesn’t have as many gatekeepers. That’s good for people who have been kept out of things.
Another thought: compared to other technical careers, programming careers are uncredentialed. No legal or even social prerequisites other than skill.
If you want to be a doctor, you must apply to college, be accepted to college, matriculate, graduate with a degree in sciences. Then you must take the MCAT, apply to medical schools, be accepted to a medical school, graduate, apply to a residency, complete the residency, and become board certified.
And then you are an entry level doctor, licensed to practice in a single state, with no job, no patients, no practice, and no insurance network contracts.
If any of those steps are sexist/racist, a woman or minority is less likely to make it past that step.
Programming doesn’t have as many gatekeepers. That’s good for people who have been kept out of things.
Any history of the industry needs to address what analysts did vs. what programmers did. “Programming” was clerical work, converting flowcharts or pseudocode into machine code on cards or tape. That role was obsoleted when computer time became cheap enough to spend running compilers and linkers, which enabled analysts to write code by themselves in a higher-level language.
It wasn’t until later that obsessed nerds could teach ourselves from scratch at home.
It wasn’t until later that obsessed nerds could teach ourselves from scratch at home.
You assume that all applicants are of equal attainment, ability, and motivation.
However, women have to fight an in-built discrimination. While men are more forced into work because our gender role expects it of us.
Thus, women who are candidates for promotion are likely to be more motivated and more ambitious than their male counterparts - they've had to fight harder against more obstacles to get to that point.
I see this in the gender balance of programmers. Female programmers have had to fight against a constant discouragement from pretty much everyone in their lives, while male programmers have had nothing but encouragement. So it's not surprising that female programmers tend (on average) to be better; they're more motivated, they really want this, and that's usually because they're good at it (if they weren't they'd have given up earlier).
However, women have to fight an in-built discrimination. While men are more forced into work because our gender role expects it of us.
Thus, women who are candidates for promotion are likely to be more motivated and more ambitious than their male counterparts - they've had to fight harder against more obstacles to get to that point.
I see this in the gender balance of programmers. Female programmers have had to fight against a constant discouragement from pretty much everyone in their lives, while male programmers have had nothing but encouragement. So it's not surprising that female programmers tend (on average) to be better; they're more motivated, they really want this, and that's usually because they're good at it (if they weren't they'd have given up earlier).
> I see this in the gender balance of programmers. Female programmers have had to fight against a constant discouragement from pretty much everyone in their lives, while male programmers have had nothing but encouragement.
As a male growing up in the 80ies and 90ies in Europe I must say this must be somewhere else.
If this was the case then there would be some merit to the idea of "male privilege".
From what I saw encouragement came in two forms:
- generally for everyone
- and in addition, specifically for girls
I.e. I've seen activities for "kids who code" or "girls who code" but never for "boys who code".
I also have some personal experience regarding encouragement: from I was a young boy and until I had almost finished my Bachelors degree I was more than once discouraged from IT and encouraged to get a "real job" so either I was very special or the idea that boys get "nothing but encouragement" is plain false
As a male growing up in the 80ies and 90ies in Europe I must say this must be somewhere else.
If this was the case then there would be some merit to the idea of "male privilege".
From what I saw encouragement came in two forms:
- generally for everyone
- and in addition, specifically for girls
I.e. I've seen activities for "kids who code" or "girls who code" but never for "boys who code".
I also have some personal experience regarding encouragement: from I was a young boy and until I had almost finished my Bachelors degree I was more than once discouraged from IT and encouraged to get a "real job" so either I was very special or the idea that boys get "nothing but encouragement" is plain false
The most powerful type of privilege a person can have is access to good advice.
Do you mean I should have quit my Bachelors degree in IT?
Sorry, but I don’t understand what you are seeking with this question.
Did your BA in IT limit your access to good advice? Did it contradict the good advice you received?
I don’t see the conflict between a BA in IT and good advice.
Could you maybe ask the question again in a different way?
Did your BA in IT limit your access to good advice? Did it contradict the good advice you received?
I don’t see the conflict between a BA in IT and good advice.
Could you maybe ask the question again in a different way?
I'll try:
I wrote about being a boy and getting what I think is bad advice.
You comment "The most powerful type of privilege a person can have is access to good advice."
I wonder if you think that what I got is good advice.
(BTW: BSc, not BA :-)
I wrote about being a boy and getting what I think is bad advice.
You comment "The most powerful type of privilege a person can have is access to good advice."
I wonder if you think that what I got is good advice.
(BTW: BSc, not BA :-)
> while male programmers have had nothing but encouragement
I really hate this stereotype as growing up in 80s "liking computers" was this thing only "nerds" liked in my area. Getting called a nerd was not at all positive and a derogatory slur. I loved computers at my own (social) peril.
I really hate this stereotype as growing up in 80s "liking computers" was this thing only "nerds" liked in my area. Getting called a nerd was not at all positive and a derogatory slur. I loved computers at my own (social) peril.
Yep. In elementary school I was called a computer nerd every day. Want to know who usually flung that insult? Girls. Typically ones that would say "ew, math is gross."
Now they're the ones posting the 70 cents on the dollar misinformation to their FB feed.
Now they're the ones posting the 70 cents on the dollar misinformation to their FB feed.
Exactly. The narrative changed when iPhone / Smartphone took over the world. Now everyone knows what is an "App". And somehow Silicon Valley took over the world. Mainstream Media has all sort of Tech reporting in their front page. Stock investment are also dominated by tech. All of a sudden software programming is cool and you get some sort of social status with it.
But in the 80s/ 90s picking up a Pascal or Delphi book was about the dumbest thing you do in social circle.
But in the 80s/ 90s picking up a Pascal or Delphi book was about the dumbest thing you do in social circle.
I get that. But talk to a female colleague about her experience with it. They get not only the "nerd" label but also the whole "choose something that's feminine, no boy wants to marry a girl smarter than him" thing. It's fucked up.
Me too. I suffered few years being called "Clive" and "Sinclair" by bullish peers.
In the UK there is an often-repeated statistic: the 20% of girls who take A-level physics outperform the 40% of boys who take it.
And of course they do! It's like saying a team comprised of footballers from the top division will beat a team comprised of footballers from the top two divisions.
The few women who go into tech or board rooms or whatever will typically be the women who are good at it, and they will typically outperform the larger cohort of (necessarily) more average men.
You don't need tales of struggle or diversity to explain this. Minority groups will tend to perform better.
And of course they do! It's like saying a team comprised of footballers from the top division will beat a team comprised of footballers from the top two divisions.
The few women who go into tech or board rooms or whatever will typically be the women who are good at it, and they will typically outperform the larger cohort of (necessarily) more average men.
You don't need tales of struggle or diversity to explain this. Minority groups will tend to perform better.
You're so close! If the majority group and minority group have equal distribution of ability in a subject, why are the minority a minority?
Women are 55% of the population. Why aren't they 55% of tech workers? Why are only the 20% who are really good at it working in tech?
Saying "the minority are always going to be better" doesn't explain why. And the why is really important.
Pro tip: talk to women who would like to work in tech but aren't for an answer.
Women are 55% of the population. Why aren't they 55% of tech workers? Why are only the 20% who are really good at it working in tech?
Saying "the minority are always going to be better" doesn't explain why. And the why is really important.
Pro tip: talk to women who would like to work in tech but aren't for an answer.
You say you don't need discrimination to explain it, but your explanation assumes discrimination ie. you have to be really damn good in order to even have a chance as a woman. There is another explanation, the distribution of IQ between men and women:
> Another factor affecting perception may be distribution of IQ ... Although [men and women] are on average the same, the people at the very top and the very bottom of the IQ bell curve are more likely to be men. That is a pattern that we see in the university setting, with men either being at the very top of the class or at the bottom.
https://www.newsweek.com/men-women-and-iq-87117
> Another factor affecting perception may be distribution of IQ ... Although [men and women] are on average the same, the people at the very top and the very bottom of the IQ bell curve are more likely to be men. That is a pattern that we see in the university setting, with men either being at the very top of the class or at the bottom.
https://www.newsweek.com/men-women-and-iq-87117
You also see a similar situation with "places in society". The majority of billionaires are men, but the majority of people in prison are men too. Women in general seem to have a more "stable" place in society compared to men. It seems harder for them to climb higher but also harder for them to fall completly at the bottom. If I wanted to sum it up, it would be something like "the glass ceiling comes with a glass floor". This is just my speculation though, and not in any way a judgment of value.
An important point here is that this glass ceiling or glass floor is only relevant to talk about on the level of all women. It has no bearing on an individual.
I'm not attempting to explain the under-representation of minorities. I'm explaining why minorities in teams will naturally perform better than average.
> However, women have to fight an in-built discrimination. While men are more forced into work because our gender role expects it of us.
I’m very skeptical about this. Firstly, the popular studies that purport to show bias against females are variously flawed (including using old data from other fields) but also because women have done very well in other fields at other times which were much more hostile to them (medicine and law, for example) than tech. Similarly, women do well in tech in countries that have much more gender inequality than we have in the West (indeed, there’s an inverse correlation between a country’s gender equality and its female representation in technology). All of this suggests that discrimination isn’t responsible for as much of the gender gap in tech as we suspect.
I’m very skeptical about this. Firstly, the popular studies that purport to show bias against females are variously flawed (including using old data from other fields) but also because women have done very well in other fields at other times which were much more hostile to them (medicine and law, for example) than tech. Similarly, women do well in tech in countries that have much more gender inequality than we have in the West (indeed, there’s an inverse correlation between a country’s gender equality and its female representation in technology). All of this suggests that discrimination isn’t responsible for as much of the gender gap in tech as we suspect.
> Thus, women who are candidates for promotion are likely to be more motivated and more ambitious than their male counterparts - they've had to fight harder against more obstacles to get to that point.
This is very much the case if promotions are done without considering gender diversity. This can be compensated for by considering gender diversity when looking at applicants. However, that compensation can overshoot. This is especially likely if, for internal promotions, a goal of diversity is set that is too high compared to the total number of women already in the company.
That specific overshoot, caused by having diversity goals that are too ambitious given the number of women in the company, is what my comment was about. I raised the issue because women have raised it to me. Specifically when discussing blanket boardroom diversity quotas that were being considered by politicians in the Netherlands. Such quotas are more likely to cause this specific scenario, because they are made without consideration for the fraction of women working in the company, or even industry.
This is very much the case if promotions are done without considering gender diversity. This can be compensated for by considering gender diversity when looking at applicants. However, that compensation can overshoot. This is especially likely if, for internal promotions, a goal of diversity is set that is too high compared to the total number of women already in the company.
That specific overshoot, caused by having diversity goals that are too ambitious given the number of women in the company, is what my comment was about. I raised the issue because women have raised it to me. Specifically when discussing blanket boardroom diversity quotas that were being considered by politicians in the Netherlands. Such quotas are more likely to cause this specific scenario, because they are made without consideration for the fraction of women working in the company, or even industry.
Yes, this bothers me as well. If 40% of all graduates in a particular field (like engineering) are women, and a company wants to have 50% female employees, that would mean they are overrepresented, since the employment pool isn't the general population. Same thing for all kinds of groups, like disability, race, ethnicity, etc. Everyone should feel comfortable and welcome, but we shouldn't aim for certain gender or racial ratios as the measurement to optimize.
> We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt
What is the correct racial / gender / sex breakdown for a tech industry with no diversity problems?
I’m not sure how we can say we have a problem if we don’t know what the correct breakdowns are. We’re implementing all these solutions with no metric to measure success. That seems like a perfect system to create more discrimination.
What is the correct racial / gender / sex breakdown for a tech industry with no diversity problems?
I’m not sure how we can say we have a problem if we don’t know what the correct breakdowns are. We’re implementing all these solutions with no metric to measure success. That seems like a perfect system to create more discrimination.
I think this is a complicated question to answer, but I'll give it a shot:
Within the tech industry, the correct proportion of minorities should be representative of your hiring pool (which is why I think they ask you to self report), or maybe even proportionally to "all qualified potential candidates", not sure how you'd measure that out.
The problem is even within qualified potential candidates, many minorities are still under-represented. This is a societal problem outside of the tech industry, but one that leaks into it.
More opportunities for these minorities to get a leg up to enter the field would bring the proportions closer to normal, stuff like affirmative action for schools.
It's a tough answer and nobody wants anyone in the chain to take responsibility for lifting up those that have been put down, it's definitely a flawed approach but I'm glad to see businesses attempt it.
Within the tech industry, the correct proportion of minorities should be representative of your hiring pool (which is why I think they ask you to self report), or maybe even proportionally to "all qualified potential candidates", not sure how you'd measure that out.
The problem is even within qualified potential candidates, many minorities are still under-represented. This is a societal problem outside of the tech industry, but one that leaks into it.
More opportunities for these minorities to get a leg up to enter the field would bring the proportions closer to normal, stuff like affirmative action for schools.
It's a tough answer and nobody wants anyone in the chain to take responsibility for lifting up those that have been put down, it's definitely a flawed approach but I'm glad to see businesses attempt it.
I don't think it's fair to assume that genders and ethnicities should match either the general population or the hiring pool. Geography plays a huge role: if you have a company in a city with a substantially higher asian population (like Seattle or the Bay Area) that geographic distribution is going to have a significant influence. Likewise, a product used primarily by women might have higher representation of women because of the userbase. Pinterest is a good example here.
I think the solution is to realize that it's wrong to pick outcomes a priori, that we shouldn't trying to find the "correct proportion". Instead, focus on eliminating discrimination and biases in the hiring pipeline. Anonymize the gender and ethnicity of applicants. Use voice altering software to prevent the ability to discern between genders when interviewing. If the goal is to eliminate discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics, create a hiring process that isn't able to distinguish between these characteristics in the first place. Then, whatever proportion that results is the "correct proportion".
I think the solution is to realize that it's wrong to pick outcomes a priori, that we shouldn't trying to find the "correct proportion". Instead, focus on eliminating discrimination and biases in the hiring pipeline. Anonymize the gender and ethnicity of applicants. Use voice altering software to prevent the ability to discern between genders when interviewing. If the goal is to eliminate discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics, create a hiring process that isn't able to distinguish between these characteristics in the first place. Then, whatever proportion that results is the "correct proportion".
> Within the tech industry, the correct proportion of minorities should be representative of your hiring pool
How do you know all your hiring pools should produce evenly like that? There’s a lot of factors (cultural, genetic) that need to be understood. It would be very strange for interest in any industry to be even across racial groups.
How do you know all your hiring pools should produce evenly like that? There’s a lot of factors (cultural, genetic) that need to be understood. It would be very strange for interest in any industry to be even across racial groups.
> We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt.
We should be a bit more exact. We do not have a underrepresentation problem in tech, but a misrepresentation problem.
There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries!
But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out.
We should be a bit more exact. We do not have a underrepresentation problem in tech, but a misrepresentation problem.
There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries!
But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out.
> I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries!
And I’m guessing you’re not one of the affected minorities. Otherwise you might see that “the system works for this subset of people so it must be working for everyone” is a flawed and untrue argument, at least in tech.
People pushing for more equal treatment of certain minorities didn’t happen out of the blue. There’s a long history of certain subgroups getting passed up during interviews, underpaid, getting passed up for promotions, etc. As an example an ex-colleague had a really hard time landing his first job in the industry. No one would call him back. He wondered whether his Hispanic sounding name was hurting his chances, so he anglicized it and tried again. He said it was like night and day. He found a job soon after. Perhaps you haven’t witnessed something like this first or second hand.
I think many companies are butchering their diversity recruiting efforts. They try to “fix” the issue with superficial and inefficient policies. But the problem they’re attempting to address is very real.
And I’m guessing you’re not one of the affected minorities. Otherwise you might see that “the system works for this subset of people so it must be working for everyone” is a flawed and untrue argument, at least in tech.
People pushing for more equal treatment of certain minorities didn’t happen out of the blue. There’s a long history of certain subgroups getting passed up during interviews, underpaid, getting passed up for promotions, etc. As an example an ex-colleague had a really hard time landing his first job in the industry. No one would call him back. He wondered whether his Hispanic sounding name was hurting his chances, so he anglicized it and tried again. He said it was like night and day. He found a job soon after. Perhaps you haven’t witnessed something like this first or second hand.
I think many companies are butchering their diversity recruiting efforts. They try to “fix” the issue with superficial and inefficient policies. But the problem they’re attempting to address is very real.
>Otherwise you might see that “the system works for this subset of people so it must be working for everyone” is a flawed and untrue argument, at least in tech. //
I interpreted their argument as "people who want to can get on in tech". Being non-discriminatory doesn't lead to representative demographics (unless everyone likes/wants the same things equally, which is clearly not true).
I interpreted their argument as "people who want to can get on in tech". Being non-discriminatory doesn't lead to representative demographics (unless everyone likes/wants the same things equally, which is clearly not true).
a good example of this is the disabled. any of those same brilliant tech workers could acquire a disability at any time - they come from the same group of people, but we seem quite under-represented. and the developer tools themselves tend not to be accessible (I can find literally nothing online, or even internally, about using Visual Studio with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.)
it's curious, right?
it's curious, right?
> I can find literally nothing online, or even internally, about using Visual Studio with Dragon NaturallySpeaking
My Talon project is capable of voice controlling Visual Studio, both at the interface level and at the code insertion/editing level. It can use Dragon as a speech engine, or my own engine. It has an existing Visual Studio integration, and Talon makes it easy to write your own context specific app commands or integrations.
- https://talonvoice.com
Here's some Visual Studio support for it:
- https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/tree/master/apps/vi...
As well as vscode:
- https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/tree/master/apps/vs...
Here are a couple of public GitHub issues about dictation support in vscode:
- https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/40976
- https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/117980#issuecomme...
My Talon project is capable of voice controlling Visual Studio, both at the interface level and at the code insertion/editing level. It can use Dragon as a speech engine, or my own engine. It has an existing Visual Studio integration, and Talon makes it easy to write your own context specific app commands or integrations.
- https://talonvoice.com
Here's some Visual Studio support for it:
- https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/tree/master/apps/vi...
As well as vscode:
- https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/tree/master/apps/vs...
Here are a couple of public GitHub issues about dictation support in vscode:
- https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/40976
- https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/117980#issuecomme...
thank you so so much! you may have saved my career. I'll definitely be supporting you on Patreon.
It is, but honestly I don't think I could comprehend code that was read out to me. It's very much something I do with the visual parts of my brain in terms of following the logic, etc.
I'm not saying that it's impossible, and I don't know what kind of difference something like braille would make. Idk, are there any blind programmers that you know of ? Surely there must be some programmers who have gone blind, I wonder if they just decide to switch careers idk.
I'm not saying that it's impossible, and I don't know what kind of difference something like braille would make. Idk, are there any blind programmers that you know of ? Surely there must be some programmers who have gone blind, I wonder if they just decide to switch careers idk.
I know of blind programmers but don't know any personally. But I was actually talking about the reverse: dictation. I'm losing use of my arms, and even ergonomic keyboards aren't cutting it. Rehab set me up with a copy of Dragon so I can dictate, but even Microsoft Teams isn't really accessible with it, much less Visual Studio or any kind of terminal. I can see the code just fine, I just can't dictate it.
I am sorry for your health problem. I don't know if anything like that exists, but could you use your legs/feet to drive a mouse-like device? When I was a child, a teacher told us of a woman who learned to type on a typewriter (it was before computers became popular) using her toes. I wish you luck with figuring out what works for you.
thanks. that's a good thought. unfortunately my condition affects my whole body (my joints constantly dislocate and I have various nerve problems), so my legs aren't much better.. but something like a foot pedal could work. honestly I'm hoping for something like Neuralink to succeed, and that voice typing will tide me over.
Can you dictate to plaintext (notepad?) and use an oral markup - if punctuation is the problem - like saying "bang" for "!". Then parse your input, cut-paste into the IDE.
It seems very niche, which is why I'm not surprised not to see mention of it in the docs?
Why did you see it as particularly curious that VS and Dragon weren't setup for interoperability?
It seems very niche, which is why I'm not surprised not to see mention of it in the docs?
Why did you see it as particularly curious that VS and Dragon weren't setup for interoperability?
I think my best option is to write Python scripts with Dragonfly [0] to make a Visual Studio or VS Code extension that gives me accessibility, and/or a neovim plugin to let me say vim commands efficiently.
Dictating plaintext and copy/pasting works for writing code, but navigating through VS menus and code files and e.g. running unit tests is still a nightmare. Maybe an accessible mouse would help.
It sounds niche, but Visual Studio is perhaps the most popular IDE, and Dragon is the only real option for voice access on PCs. Any programmer without use of her hands would need this. It suggests that none of the programmers on the Dragon team have really dogfooded their product, at least for accessibility.
What I find truly heinous though is the Chrome plugin. It has two stars and thousands of reviews, and either doesn't work at all or breaks minutes in. When it works it's great, but it almost never does.
0. https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly
Dictating plaintext and copy/pasting works for writing code, but navigating through VS menus and code files and e.g. running unit tests is still a nightmare. Maybe an accessible mouse would help.
It sounds niche, but Visual Studio is perhaps the most popular IDE, and Dragon is the only real option for voice access on PCs. Any programmer without use of her hands would need this. It suggests that none of the programmers on the Dragon team have really dogfooded their product, at least for accessibility.
What I find truly heinous though is the Chrome plugin. It has two stars and thousands of reviews, and either doesn't work at all or breaks minutes in. When it works it's great, but it almost never does.
0. https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly
Maybe learn to use a large trackball with your feet?
Something like X-Keys L-Trac (Formerly CST2545-5w)
I've developed carpal tunnel, and to mitigate my problems I now use a mouse at work and trackball at home (strain different muscles). The clicking of the mouse bothered me for awhile, so for that I tried two mice. Right hand would control position and left hand would do the clicking. A foot pedal for the clicks would have been so much less awkward.
Something like X-Keys L-Trac (Formerly CST2545-5w)
I've developed carpal tunnel, and to mitigate my problems I now use a mouse at work and trackball at home (strain different muscles). The clicking of the mouse bothered me for awhile, so for that I tried two mice. Right hand would control position and left hand would do the clicking. A foot pedal for the clicks would have been so much less awkward.
Back in time I switched completely to left-handed mouse. It took about a week to get to a workable speed.
People who are deaf, legally (but not totally) blind, on dialysis, or with a slew of other disabilities are not visually distinguishable from people who do not have a disability.
People with disabilities are the most neglected of any demographic because they are not easily exploited for political gain.
People with disabilities are the most neglected of any demographic because they are not easily exploited for political gain.
And it really irks me that most diversity initiatives don't even mention persons with disabilities. One exception is Microsoft, which will always have my respect for considering disabilities in both product design and hiring.
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> There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries!
How do you get to your conclusion from your statement? Simply having some minority groups overrepresented doesn't mean that the industry is welcoming. It may mean its welcoming to those groups.
And people w/o formal education isn't really a minority group. Any more than PhDs in computer science is a minority group that is overrepresented in the tech industry.
> But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out.
This isn't about political expedience, but its about understanding the context of the discussion. Either you're new to the US or simply are ignorant to the issues of the post.
How do you get to your conclusion from your statement? Simply having some minority groups overrepresented doesn't mean that the industry is welcoming. It may mean its welcoming to those groups.
And people w/o formal education isn't really a minority group. Any more than PhDs in computer science is a minority group that is overrepresented in the tech industry.
> But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out.
This isn't about political expedience, but its about understanding the context of the discussion. Either you're new to the US or simply are ignorant to the issues of the post.
> And people w/o formal education isn't really a minority group.
They’re a minority / highly underrepresented in other highly paid professions (law, medicine, finance). That’s something that IMO makes tech a truly exceptional industry!
(Technically, women aren’t a “minority” either.)
They’re a minority / highly underrepresented in other highly paid professions (law, medicine, finance). That’s something that IMO makes tech a truly exceptional industry!
(Technically, women aren’t a “minority” either.)
Rightfully so, at least for law and medicine. What happened to merit?
We are all minority and majority at the same time for different groups. And that's ok.
We are all minority and majority at the same time for different groups. And that's ok.
The problem being described is an identifiable group feels like they are unwelcome or an otherwise hindered group within the industry. They use the population ratio as a mere point of evidence to argue it’s not just anecdotal.
Pointing out what groups _aren’t_ underrepresented is like saying “Yeah, we’ll, all lives matter” in response to “Black lives matter”.
Pointing out what groups _aren’t_ underrepresented is like saying “Yeah, we’ll, all lives matter” in response to “Black lives matter”.
Communication is hard, and having to dance around the topic to be PC makes communication much harder.
Your parent was responding to this statement:
> We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt.
And their response - that tech is, in fact, diverse and meritocratic - is a fair response to that statement.
I think what OP meant by their statement is that there is a diversity problem _pertaining specifically to people of color_ in tech. Which is true.
I think we would all benefit by being a little generous with each other when trying to discuss these sensitive issues.
Your parent was responding to this statement:
> We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt.
And their response - that tech is, in fact, diverse and meritocratic - is a fair response to that statement.
I think what OP meant by their statement is that there is a diversity problem _pertaining specifically to people of color_ in tech. Which is true.
I think we would all benefit by being a little generous with each other when trying to discuss these sensitive issues.
If someone wants to express a complex and nuanced opinion, they should actually explicitly state the nuanced bit. Being generous and giving people the benefit of the doubt at best perpetuates a bad habit which people who are not acting in good faith take advantage of. If you wouldn't feel comfortable expressing an opinion clearly and unambiguously, you probably shouldn't express the opinion at all.
> Being generous and giving people the benefit of the doubt at best perpetuates a bad habit
It's actually a great habit that helps facilitate polite discussions. It's called the principle of charity and unless I'm mistaken it's actually one of the rules of this site.
It's actually a great habit that helps facilitate polite discussions. It's called the principle of charity and unless I'm mistaken it's actually one of the rules of this site.
I was referring to not communicating clearly as the bad habit. By simply assuming a meaning instead of calling it out, the person who initially spoke ambiguously gets no feedback that their statement was unclear.
And the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation. It means that if a statement could be read in an irrational way or in a rational way, you choose the latter. So if for example I said "sheep are white" you could interpret that to be the obviously false claim that 100% of sheep are white with no exceptions, or as the much more reasonable statement that sheep are typically white, where the principle of charity would be assuming the second interpretation. It has nothing to do with bending over backwards to make a statement palatable.
The hacker news guideline you are thinking of is "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
And the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation. It means that if a statement could be read in an irrational way or in a rational way, you choose the latter. So if for example I said "sheep are white" you could interpret that to be the obviously false claim that 100% of sheep are white with no exceptions, or as the much more reasonable statement that sheep are typically white, where the principle of charity would be assuming the second interpretation. It has nothing to do with bending over backwards to make a statement palatable.
The hacker news guideline you are thinking of is "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Saying "We do have plenty of representation of some minorities" is not a refutation of "we have a diversity problem in tech".
In fact, it is exactly these kinds of attitudes that directly contribute to perpetuating the diversity problem in tech.
And if you think you "have to dance around [a] topic to be PC", then chances are, what you're struggling with is either internalized bias (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc)—or the fact that you're just a bigot yourself who's upset that their bigotry is no longer socially acceptable.
In fact, it is exactly these kinds of attitudes that directly contribute to perpetuating the diversity problem in tech.
And if you think you "have to dance around [a] topic to be PC", then chances are, what you're struggling with is either internalized bias (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc)—or the fact that you're just a bigot yourself who's upset that their bigotry is no longer socially acceptable.
I think you are not participating in good faith.
> Saying "We do have plenty of representation of some minorities" is not a refutation of "we have a diversity problem in tech".
Nobody is trying to refute anything. Your knee jerk reaction is to attack anyone who doesn't 100% agree with you. _You_ are turning a nuanced discussion into an argument.
> And if you think you "have to dance around [a] topic to be PC", then chances are, what you're struggling with is either internalized bias (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc)—or the fact that you're just a bigot yourself who's upset that their bigotry is no longer socially acceptable.
Again, there is no reason for you to go full offence here. You are deliberately choosing the least charitable interpretation in order to make me the enemy.
I was referring to OP's own statement:
> This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps
I was giving a reason why OP's comment was a little generalized.
> Saying "We do have plenty of representation of some minorities" is not a refutation of "we have a diversity problem in tech".
Nobody is trying to refute anything. Your knee jerk reaction is to attack anyone who doesn't 100% agree with you. _You_ are turning a nuanced discussion into an argument.
> And if you think you "have to dance around [a] topic to be PC", then chances are, what you're struggling with is either internalized bias (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc)—or the fact that you're just a bigot yourself who's upset that their bigotry is no longer socially acceptable.
Again, there is no reason for you to go full offence here. You are deliberately choosing the least charitable interpretation in order to make me the enemy.
I was referring to OP's own statement:
> This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps
I was giving a reason why OP's comment was a little generalized.
Well, all lives matter
That's a good point. I think part of it (at least in tech) is due to the fact that big tech companies focused on hiring the best people from all over the world, which reduces even more the chances of local unfavored minorities. I'm from France and stories of people going to the USA to work at companies like that are common. I don't think I would feel underrepresented as a French if I worked at Google or Facebook or an equivalent. This allows the USA to do a brain drain of global talent, which helps a lot at being the best in the world. On the other hand, that means that the local people are compared against a global market, which makes things harder from them.
> There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries!
I don't know if there's a name for this, but as a Russian immigrant this sentence reminds me of how in Russia, because everyone is generally white, people are stereotyped by region. E.g. there are specific stereotypes for Muscovites, people from Siberia, Ukrainians (it was the USSR at the time), etc.
The point being that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a fractal process. You can zoom in on a demographic and then subdivide it again and again on various criteria until you come up with a small group of people you can call a minority. But doing so says nothing about why a sizeable demographic like PoC (30% of US population or so) is underrepresented in tech. There are certainly PoC immigrants, "autists", and people without formal education. Why aren't more of them in our "meritocratic" industry?
I don't know if there's a name for this, but as a Russian immigrant this sentence reminds me of how in Russia, because everyone is generally white, people are stereotyped by region. E.g. there are specific stereotypes for Muscovites, people from Siberia, Ukrainians (it was the USSR at the time), etc.
The point being that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a fractal process. You can zoom in on a demographic and then subdivide it again and again on various criteria until you come up with a small group of people you can call a minority. But doing so says nothing about why a sizeable demographic like PoC (30% of US population or so) is underrepresented in tech. There are certainly PoC immigrants, "autists", and people without formal education. Why aren't more of them in our "meritocratic" industry?
> There are certainly PoC immigrants, "autists", and people without formal education. Why aren't more of them in our "meritocratic" industry?
There are, they’re called “Nigerians”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Americans
> In 2018, Nigerian-Americans had a median household income of $68,658 - higher than $61,937 for all overall U.S. households.
https://www.ft.com/content/ca39b445-442a-4845-a07c-0f5dae5f3...
> Similar Nigerian success is reflected in the UK, where many in a highly-educated diaspora work in financial services, IT, and the legal and medical professions.
Admittedly I couldn’t find information about their representation specifically in the US tech industry, so if you do, that would be a strong indicator that the tech industry is racist (which would go against my priors and therefore change my mind), but they’re overrepresented e.g. in medicine, so ... well... for the time being, I’ll keep my prior.
There are, they’re called “Nigerians”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Americans
> In 2018, Nigerian-Americans had a median household income of $68,658 - higher than $61,937 for all overall U.S. households.
https://www.ft.com/content/ca39b445-442a-4845-a07c-0f5dae5f3...
> Similar Nigerian success is reflected in the UK, where many in a highly-educated diaspora work in financial services, IT, and the legal and medical professions.
Admittedly I couldn’t find information about their representation specifically in the US tech industry, so if you do, that would be a strong indicator that the tech industry is racist (which would go against my priors and therefore change my mind), but they’re overrepresented e.g. in medicine, so ... well... for the time being, I’ll keep my prior.
> a sizeable demographic like PoC (30% of US population or so) is underrepresented in tech
Is this true? My understanding is that PoC overall are overrepresented in tech, and certainly so in individual companies like Google. The attempt to elide minorities from a vast swathe of Asia containing a massive chunk of the world's population seems to fit your description of motivated-reasoning slicing-and-dicing description much more than the example you used. Hence the promotion of the term BIPOC, so that square achievement gap pegs can be forced into the round hole of "white supremacy" by brazenly ignoring immigrants from half the world's population to make due to their inconvenient success.
Is this true? My understanding is that PoC overall are overrepresented in tech, and certainly so in individual companies like Google. The attempt to elide minorities from a vast swathe of Asia containing a massive chunk of the world's population seems to fit your description of motivated-reasoning slicing-and-dicing description much more than the example you used. Hence the promotion of the term BIPOC, so that square achievement gap pegs can be forced into the round hole of "white supremacy" by brazenly ignoring immigrants from half the world's population to make due to their inconvenient success.
> The point being that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a fractal process. You can zoom in on a demographic and then subdivide it again and again
Or, zooming out, "me against my brothers. Me and my brothers against my cousins. Me and my brothers and my cousins against the stranger".
Or, zooming out, "me against my brothers. Me and my brothers against my cousins. Me and my brothers and my cousins against the stranger".
underrepresentation is clearly a context, and the context is clear, you missed it and chose to assume everyone else is wrong
> people without formal education
That's an odd way to write, "modern educations for gifted people so fancy that their brand comes from their status at the world's biggest corporations instead of universities, but have nothing in common with the experiences of a typical person who did not receive a formal education.
That's an odd way to write, "modern educations for gifted people so fancy that their brand comes from their status at the world's biggest corporations instead of universities, but have nothing in common with the experiences of a typical person who did not receive a formal education.
> Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me.
I've been trying to call this out for years, to no avail.
Trying to boost the diversity metric scores without actually working to remedy the underlying structural problems boils down to a very simple goal: "We need to poach the diverse talent from out competitors, while making sure they fail to poach ours."
I've been trying to call this out for years, to no avail.
Trying to boost the diversity metric scores without actually working to remedy the underlying structural problems boils down to a very simple goal: "We need to poach the diverse talent from out competitors, while making sure they fail to poach ours."
> I've been trying to call this out for years, to no avail
I think a sizable chunk of the industry feels this way. But the incentives of PR are driven more by the baying of influential parts of the public than by rational consideration of and conversation about what's just.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the "metrics diversity" folks are definitely wrong. Just that the environment has long been one that responds to good-faith questions about the effectiveness of its approach with screeching instead of thoughtfulness.
I still remember, early in my career, when Google held a diversity-focused TGIF (internal all-hands). There were obvious, gaping holes between the approach and its stated goals, and I care about representation and especially about identity-driven discrimination, so I was chatting with teammates about it afterwards.
I pretty quickly picked up on the fact that everybody thoughtful that I knew considered diversity efforts to be little more than theatre, designed to appease the loud and dumb and corrupt, and that breaking the kayfabe in the name of actual social justice was professionally costly.
I don't hold quite as cynical a view as this (see a couple paras up), but the degree to which the process is widely considered to be a jobs program for useless HR people was really striking, and a formative moment in my professional life.
I think a sizable chunk of the industry feels this way. But the incentives of PR are driven more by the baying of influential parts of the public than by rational consideration of and conversation about what's just.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the "metrics diversity" folks are definitely wrong. Just that the environment has long been one that responds to good-faith questions about the effectiveness of its approach with screeching instead of thoughtfulness.
I still remember, early in my career, when Google held a diversity-focused TGIF (internal all-hands). There were obvious, gaping holes between the approach and its stated goals, and I care about representation and especially about identity-driven discrimination, so I was chatting with teammates about it afterwards.
I pretty quickly picked up on the fact that everybody thoughtful that I knew considered diversity efforts to be little more than theatre, designed to appease the loud and dumb and corrupt, and that breaking the kayfabe in the name of actual social justice was professionally costly.
I don't hold quite as cynical a view as this (see a couple paras up), but the degree to which the process is widely considered to be a jobs program for useless HR people was really striking, and a formative moment in my professional life.
You're assuming that companies care about the industry wide measure and aren't just competing for the best PR between themselves.
Which is absolutely what they're doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5CTxckRywg&t=43m15s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5CTxckRywg&t=43m15s
This is straight up comedy?! Brilliant speaker.
True. Underrepresentation should be something addressed at a higher level.
Anytime an organization treats one group of people differently it creates at least two problems: others in the organization resent the preferential treatment and more importantly the targeted group does not get proper credit for their accomplishments, since they and others feel like their accomplishments were due to the advantages conferred to them by the organization.
Anytime an organization treats one group of people differently it creates at least two problems: others in the organization resent the preferential treatment and more importantly the targeted group does not get proper credit for their accomplishments, since they and others feel like their accomplishments were due to the advantages conferred to them by the organization.
> addressed at a higher level.
Odin?
Odin?
>This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps
It's a dangerous time when it's considered dangerous to express an opinion.
It's a dangerous time when it's considered dangerous to express an opinion.
It's always been dangerous to express unpopular opinions.
It may be less dangerous here and now than most places in history.
It may be less dangerous here and now than most places in history.
This is a retort I see online a lot, and it is not a good one.
When people say how its dangerous to voice opinions nowadays, they aren't using medieval Europe as a reference point (where it was also very dangerous to voice unpopular opinions). The reference point people use is their own experiences online from ~10 years ago.
People used to be able to say whatever they wanted online, and now doing so is dangerous. You may think that is a good thing, but it is still unequivocally true that voicing unpopular opinions online is more dangerous than it used to be.
Making some snide remark about history is completely missing the point.
When people say how its dangerous to voice opinions nowadays, they aren't using medieval Europe as a reference point (where it was also very dangerous to voice unpopular opinions). The reference point people use is their own experiences online from ~10 years ago.
People used to be able to say whatever they wanted online, and now doing so is dangerous. You may think that is a good thing, but it is still unequivocally true that voicing unpopular opinions online is more dangerous than it used to be.
Making some snide remark about history is completely missing the point.
I feel quite confident there are unpopular opinions from 10 years ago that would land you in trouble. "People used to say whatever they wanted" is hyperbole.
None of these statements were even controversial twenty years ago:
"Sex and gender are the same; they are immutable; and there are only two of them."
"Every child has a right to a mother and a father."
"An individual can't change his race."
"China is the world's worst human rights transgressor and currency manipulator."
"Sex and gender are the same; they are immutable; and there are only two of them."
"Every child has a right to a mother and a father."
"An individual can't change his race."
"China is the world's worst human rights transgressor and currency manipulator."
The person upthread claimed nothing was controversial/ unpopular 10 years ago, the internet was some sort of free speech utopia.
I'm not sure how bringing up anti LGBT crowds typing things like "it's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" 20 years ago shows there was no controversy on the internet 10 or 20 years ago.
If you are correct that typing things like that was not controversial, it sounds like identifying as gay or LGBT was indeed controversial, putting false the claim that the internet was a free speech utopia where you could type anything and nobody would care.
I'm not sure how bringing up anti LGBT crowds typing things like "it's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" 20 years ago shows there was no controversy on the internet 10 or 20 years ago.
If you are correct that typing things like that was not controversial, it sounds like identifying as gay or LGBT was indeed controversial, putting false the claim that the internet was a free speech utopia where you could type anything and nobody would care.
I used the word "dangerous", not "controversial". In the past, you could have a controversial opinion online without risking your livelyhood and safety. No longer.
The conservative cancellation of Dixie Chicks in 2003 would seem to suggest otherwise. From wikipedia "At a 2003 performance in London, Natalie Maines of the American country band the Dixie Chicks, now known as the Chicks, made a statement criticizing President George W. Bush and the imminent Allied invasion of Iraq. The criticism led to backlash from country listeners, who were mostly right-wing and supported the war. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by thousands of country radio stations, and the band members received death threats."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Womyn%27s_Music_Fes...
The immutability of gender was controversial in 1991, but okay.
The immutability of gender was controversial in 1991, but okay.
In 1991, the immutability of gender might have raised the ire of 1 in 10,000 -- if even that many.
That's a gross underestimate of the number of transgender people. And given that we haven't been recognized as legitimate until very recently, historical statistics are extremely shoddy. I personally knew two people who identified as transgender in the late 90s, in my high school class of ~450. They didn't transition until much later in life, so wouldn't be counted in stats.
"it is still unequivocally true that voicing unpopular opinions online is more dangerous than it used to be."
This is because the online audience is much larger than it used to be. I could say something on usenet in 1994 and the reach was pretty limited.
To be clear, stating unpopular opinions has always been dangerous if the wrong people hear them. Now its just that they're much more likely to hear it online.
This is because the online audience is much larger than it used to be. I could say something on usenet in 1994 and the reach was pretty limited.
To be clear, stating unpopular opinions has always been dangerous if the wrong people hear them. Now its just that they're much more likely to hear it online.
In the communities I participated in in the 90's, although most of them were left-leaning politically, people with different opinions were welcomed. People wanted to hear counter arguments and they wanted to hear the other side of the story.
As far as I can tell, that is all gone now. People with unpopular opinions just get banned immediately. Sometimes it is the same exact people in the exact same communities who 20 years ago would have wanted to hear that unpopular opinion. I don't know if the cause is that they have been trolled one too many times, they just got older and changed, something in the culture, who knows. The big sort keeps getting bigger though.
As far as I can tell, that is all gone now. People with unpopular opinions just get banned immediately. Sometimes it is the same exact people in the exact same communities who 20 years ago would have wanted to hear that unpopular opinion. I don't know if the cause is that they have been trolled one too many times, they just got older and changed, something in the culture, who knows. The big sort keeps getting bigger though.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...
Normal people joined the internet and they want normal people things.
The internet is almost like real life now. Communication has consequences in real life, as kindergartners find out.
Normal people joined the internet and they want normal people things.
The internet is almost like real life now. Communication has consequences in real life, as kindergartners find out.
Meh ... saying it is dangerous doesn't make it so.
By saying it, you both get to piss on the 'woke' (which I assume this person is not), plus, if you happen to say any of the quiet parts out loud, you are somewhat protected.
By saying it, you both get to piss on the 'woke' (which I assume this person is not), plus, if you happen to say any of the quiet parts out loud, you are somewhat protected.
> Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me.
This depends on other factors. For example, are there high numbers of qualified underrepresented candidates that often get no job offers and are left to leave the industry? If so, this can help absorb those qualified candidates.
But if it is just simply shuffling the deck then I agree with your take.
This depends on other factors. For example, are there high numbers of qualified underrepresented candidates that often get no job offers and are left to leave the industry? If so, this can help absorb those qualified candidates.
But if it is just simply shuffling the deck then I agree with your take.
I agree with your extension/modification.
I do have some doubts that there are high numbers of these cases, given how much overall excess demand there is for qualified candidates. It is surely possible and worthy of examination, though.
I do have some doubts that there are high numbers of these cases, given how much overall excess demand there is for qualified candidates. It is surely possible and worthy of examination, though.
> Competing for talent and working hard to ensure that underrepresented group members have a fair shot? Should be standard practice and a baseline of ethical corporate and human behavior.
> Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me.
How about competing for underrepresented groups, then targeting resources to ensure their success? The industry has created an environment that either is or appears to be hostile to these underrepresented groups. Perhaps they should take responsibility to change that in meaningful ways. Meaningful ways means more than filling quotas.
> Competing specifically for underrepresented group members with a metrics-driven goal to boost ratios at one specific company above the relevant benchmark? Not obviously good to me.
How about competing for underrepresented groups, then targeting resources to ensure their success? The industry has created an environment that either is or appears to be hostile to these underrepresented groups. Perhaps they should take responsibility to change that in meaningful ways. Meaningful ways means more than filling quotas.
Isn't this the free market at work? How would all the companies collude to collectively bring in more marginalized people? It's like saying "I want higher wages but I don't think one company raising wages will achieve that". The companies are competing because that's the system they exist in - some of that competition will be zero-sum, but according to arch capitalists some of it will be a net positive
> How would all the companies collude to collectively bring in more marginalized people?
Supporting pipeline programs (middle and high school education, summer programs, internship programs, bootcamps and other career-change programs, etc.) seems to be the obvious paths for companies to exert lasting positive influence on the industry and world.
Sure, there's some fringe backlash when some company supports a program that is targeted at underrepresented groups, but I think that's the way to create lasting change.
Unfortunately, it doesn't move the needle on D&I OKRs this quarter or next. Poaching from someone else is the fastest way to move a key result metric.
"Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."
Supporting pipeline programs (middle and high school education, summer programs, internship programs, bootcamps and other career-change programs, etc.) seems to be the obvious paths for companies to exert lasting positive influence on the industry and world.
Sure, there's some fringe backlash when some company supports a program that is targeted at underrepresented groups, but I think that's the way to create lasting change.
Unfortunately, it doesn't move the needle on D&I OKRs this quarter or next. Poaching from someone else is the fastest way to move a key result metric.
"Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."
>>Sure, there's some fringe backlash when some company supports a program that is targeted at underrepresented groups, but I think that's the way to create lasting change.
It's not "fringe backlash". It's a recognition that success in the job market isn't determined by skill despite what's claimed but by quota. The companies partaking in these diversity and inclusion ventures however don't want to admit the full depths of their assessment regarding the "underrepresented" but still try to keep the PR benefits that come with it.
>>Unfortunately, it doesn't move the needle on hiring OKRs this quarter or next. Poaching from someone else is the fastest way to move a key result metric. "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."
Yes. Because any sensible business would take the least risk needed to produce highest payoff. Showing proof of success at a major competitor is a great indicator of that and that also works wonders for employees in the form of massive pay raises.
It's not "fringe backlash". It's a recognition that success in the job market isn't determined by skill despite what's claimed but by quota. The companies partaking in these diversity and inclusion ventures however don't want to admit the full depths of their assessment regarding the "underrepresented" but still try to keep the PR benefits that come with it.
>>Unfortunately, it doesn't move the needle on hiring OKRs this quarter or next. Poaching from someone else is the fastest way to move a key result metric. "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."
Yes. Because any sensible business would take the least risk needed to produce highest payoff. Showing proof of success at a major competitor is a great indicator of that and that also works wonders for employees in the form of massive pay raises.
By fringe backlash, I meant to reference programs like "Girls who code", "Black Girls Code", internship programs for under-represented groups, and the like.
I'm 100% supportive of these programs, while being opposed to quota-based hiring models.
I'm 100% supportive of these programs, while being opposed to quota-based hiring models.
Aren't discriminatory programs insulting to the intelligence the youth? And communicates to them that cultural stereotypes aren't just stereotypes, they're truths that need intervention programs to fix? Isn't it a put-down to tell the targeted group that they need the extra help the program is meant to deliver? Isn't it a disrespect to someone who wants the thing a program aims to deliver, but isn't part of the target population?
These are fringe concerns?
Fuck me then I guess.
Just wondering though: Are we assuming that the youth are too stupid to notice what we're doing? Or are we assuming they already know the score well enough to bite their tongues when we deliberately foist more of their parents culture war into their faces?
These are fringe concerns?
Fuck me then I guess.
Just wondering though: Are we assuming that the youth are too stupid to notice what we're doing? Or are we assuming they already know the score well enough to bite their tongues when we deliberately foist more of their parents culture war into their faces?
I think it depends. If there's some cultural or expectations bias that is self-reinforcing to reduce the number of women who consider tech (to include their peers thinking that tech isn't cool/is nerdy/whatever), I think these programs are a fantastic way to interrupt that cycle. I don't see it as insulting to their intelligence in any way, but maybe I'm not understanding your concern properly.
>I don't see it as insulting to their intelligence in any way
Were you not exposed to hamfisted intervention programs growing up?
They say that you never notice the propaganda that works, and I think there are lots of programs that are just outright good that even a cynic can't cut down, but I remember lots of insulting messaging baked into "lets fix X" initiatives too.
Were you not exposed to hamfisted intervention programs growing up?
They say that you never notice the propaganda that works, and I think there are lots of programs that are just outright good that even a cynic can't cut down, but I remember lots of insulting messaging baked into "lets fix X" initiatives too.
I grew up watching “this is your brain on drugs” commercials*, so yes I know what you’re referencing there.
“Girls who code” and similar programs don’t strike me as the 2020s version of the war on drugs, though.
* https://youtu.be/GOnENVylxPI
“Girls who code” and similar programs don’t strike me as the 2020s version of the war on drugs, though.
* https://youtu.be/GOnENVylxPI
An interesting effect is that railing against bootcamps in general is common and uncontroversial.
But railing against any of the bootcamps you named above would be career suicide.
But railing against any of the bootcamps you named above would be career suicide.
techbrobane(2)
Curious that most of the comments here are attacking the choice of language instead of engaging with any of the actual reasons this is happening.
Language is our main tool for expressing ideas. IMO that means language choices can help include more people in the conversation, or (more often than not) act as a diferenciation factor between the "enlightened ones" (woke ones ?) and the rest.
Given people stay respectful, I think that's fair to criticize languages choices and the barrier they create.
"Freedom is Slavery"
Given people stay respectful, I think that's fair to criticize languages choices and the barrier they create.
"Freedom is Slavery"
How statistically significant are these numbers?
Given large jumps in both directions for various groups, it’s hard to figure out if this is just noise or a meaningful number (eg last year: attrition for whiteX-males was higher, this year it’s higher for blackX-females).
Given large jumps in both directions for various groups, it’s hard to figure out if this is just noise or a meaningful number (eg last year: attrition for whiteX-males was higher, this year it’s higher for blackX-females).
The interesting thing is that the top of the funnel is still heavily tilted towards e.g. men. I'm not claiming whether this right or wrong, but this is how it is. Now good luck for your small company to hire minorities. It's extremely hard. I have talked to a recruiting agency recently about getting some engineers on board, and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any genders?"
So as far my experience goes it is pretty difficult to hire non-male engineers if you're on a budget, then you end up with a full male team and then you might end up being accused with bias and discrimination against women. (I've seen this happening.)
So as far my experience goes it is pretty difficult to hire non-male engineers if you're on a budget, then you end up with a full male team and then you might end up being accused with bias and discrimination against women. (I've seen this happening.)
> and their first question was "Are you only looking for female engineers or are you OK with any genders?"
If that isn't outright blatant sexism, I don't know what is.
If that isn't outright blatant sexism, I don't know what is.
As someone who has been involved in the hiring track at a couple different places, you're absolutely right that it is sexism (and racism). All this shit ends up doing is making me very hesitant to visit a minority doctor or work with a minority contractor or whatever else. How can we ever know, with these kinds of hiring practices, if they are actually qualified?
"Anti-discrimination", if you behave rationally, must lead to further discrimination. I guess behaving rationally is not at the forefront of most of these peoples' minds.
"Anti-discrimination", if you behave rationally, must lead to further discrimination. I guess behaving rationally is not at the forefront of most of these peoples' minds.
This is extremely common among my recruiter friends. I know several and keep in touch in order to have my finger on the pulse of the hiring industry.
The vast majority of their clients seem to word it like "we'd love to have great talent" followed by "do you have any non-white, preferably women engineers?"
Since this is all off the books conversation it would be difficult to bring up a sexism or racism case. But there is currently a distinct, non-meritocratic, sub-industry cropping up in recruiting and it's getting more aggressive. Companies are being subverted in the name of "Diversity and Inclusion".
I have personal experience with this. When I was working out of a bay area consulting shop the "diverse" candidates were most often hired onto client projects despite experience levels not being the same. Again, the internal sales people had no choice. The companies would ask for "diverse" engineers off the books. I've also been passed up for promotion vs less tenured (but similarly experienced) engineers because the next rank up wasn't diverse enough. This one was not confirmed through any source but was deduced by the racial make up of promotion and personally knowing the promoted engineers. You'd expect it to be more random.
Racism is acceptable to big tech. It's both obvious and appalling.
The vast majority of their clients seem to word it like "we'd love to have great talent" followed by "do you have any non-white, preferably women engineers?"
Since this is all off the books conversation it would be difficult to bring up a sexism or racism case. But there is currently a distinct, non-meritocratic, sub-industry cropping up in recruiting and it's getting more aggressive. Companies are being subverted in the name of "Diversity and Inclusion".
I have personal experience with this. When I was working out of a bay area consulting shop the "diverse" candidates were most often hired onto client projects despite experience levels not being the same. Again, the internal sales people had no choice. The companies would ask for "diverse" engineers off the books. I've also been passed up for promotion vs less tenured (but similarly experienced) engineers because the next rank up wasn't diverse enough. This one was not confirmed through any source but was deduced by the racial make up of promotion and personally knowing the promoted engineers. You'd expect it to be more random.
Racism is acceptable to big tech. It's both obvious and appalling.
Would be nice to see a leak of this somewhere. A smoking gun that this is happening, followed by the legal hammer would be what we need here.
I happen to be very familiar with Google's diversity efforts and have many Black and Latinx friends and acquaintances in the company.
Google is one of the most racially inclusive tech companies in the world. It really tries hard to fix historical disparities between races in ways that you don't see in most companies, ranging from very active promotion of minorities to programs dedicated to hiring them. The interview process, while not perfect, also tries to erase bias by forcing gender and racially-neutral terms in interview writeups.
I have my own explanation for the problems the article describes, but I think it would be hard to accurately represent it in a HN comment. This is part of a VERY complex situation rivaling the historical Middle East conflicts in resistance to analysis.
For all of its faults - and it has many - Google is trying much harder the most companies to right past wrongs in our industry regarding racism.
Google is one of the most racially inclusive tech companies in the world. It really tries hard to fix historical disparities between races in ways that you don't see in most companies, ranging from very active promotion of minorities to programs dedicated to hiring them. The interview process, while not perfect, also tries to erase bias by forcing gender and racially-neutral terms in interview writeups.
I have my own explanation for the problems the article describes, but I think it would be hard to accurately represent it in a HN comment. This is part of a VERY complex situation rivaling the historical Middle East conflicts in resistance to analysis.
For all of its faults - and it has many - Google is trying much harder the most companies to right past wrongs in our industry regarding racism.
Google's outcomes are pretty weak. I work at a large tech firm that has significantly higher percentages of employees who are black and/or hispanic compared to Google. We are at 2-3x the rates Google publicly reports. At my current company, I regularly work with Black employees, but when I worked at Google, I could go weeks, if not months, without working with a Black person.
You can tout all the sophisticated programs about conquering bias or what not, but the truth is many of these initiatives have shown little actual evidence for improving outcomes. Our company is probably doing 1/10 of what Google is doing with 2-3x the outcomes. One major difference I see between Google and us; we actually have offices in cities with high concentration of black and hispanic talent. While I was at Google, leadership pushed people towards the HQ and in fact they were shutting down offices that were in more diverse areas of America. You can tout all the sophisticated programs Google runs, but I believe that Google misses the most basic steps for how to increase diversity in their workforce.
Our metrics aren't great, but they are a significantly better than Google. We aren't a unicorn, I know of a handful of tech companies that are at the same level, and the common pattern I see is very basic steps towards hiring that Google refuses to consider. As an outsider (and an insider several years ago), my experience is that Google invests in lots of programs that give a credence of caring about diversity, while actively avoiding doing impactful things.
You can tout all the sophisticated programs about conquering bias or what not, but the truth is many of these initiatives have shown little actual evidence for improving outcomes. Our company is probably doing 1/10 of what Google is doing with 2-3x the outcomes. One major difference I see between Google and us; we actually have offices in cities with high concentration of black and hispanic talent. While I was at Google, leadership pushed people towards the HQ and in fact they were shutting down offices that were in more diverse areas of America. You can tout all the sophisticated programs Google runs, but I believe that Google misses the most basic steps for how to increase diversity in their workforce.
Our metrics aren't great, but they are a significantly better than Google. We aren't a unicorn, I know of a handful of tech companies that are at the same level, and the common pattern I see is very basic steps towards hiring that Google refuses to consider. As an outsider (and an insider several years ago), my experience is that Google invests in lots of programs that give a credence of caring about diversity, while actively avoiding doing impactful things.
They aren't trying to force outcomes. "The interview process, while not perfect, also tries to erase bias by forcing gender and racially-neutral terms in interview writeups."
Its easy to boost your outcomes if that's what you want. You just specifically hire people of some race.
Its easy to boost your outcomes if that's what you want. You just specifically hire people of some race.
I'm curious how the interview process at Google compares to other tech companies. I don't mean the text written afterwards but the actual interview process.
My female friend interviewed at a number of large tech companies, not Google due to it's COVID hiring slowdown, and generally there was at least one interviewer that made comments I never, as a white man, have heard from an interviewer. Not outright sexist but things like (paraphrasing) "clearly you must have only worked on part of this project and not do the whole thing." It wasn't a question "which parts did you work on?" but a direct statement questioning her claim to have done the whole project.
My female friend interviewed at a number of large tech companies, not Google due to it's COVID hiring slowdown, and generally there was at least one interviewer that made comments I never, as a white man, have heard from an interviewer. Not outright sexist but things like (paraphrasing) "clearly you must have only worked on part of this project and not do the whole thing." It wasn't a question "which parts did you work on?" but a direct statement questioning her claim to have done the whole project.
This has been my experience as well. There are usually 6-8 men on the panel interviewing me. Most of the interviewers are completely normal and fair, but in almost every interview there are 1-2 men who seem to be trying to figure out what fraud I am pulling.
Sounds like something other female colleagues of mine have experienced. Very normal for them.
I will say - as a man - that I rarely heard this question when interviewing.
I will say - as a man - that I rarely heard this question when interviewing.
I imagine most interviewees hear things I've never heard during their interviews- interviews can be a very divergent experience based on company, personality, and experience.
When I was an employee at Google and did interviews, I was told that for diversity reasons, I couldn't ask where an interviewee "was from" because that would bias my decision.
I'm sorry, but other companies and fields don't prevent this question, and have far less bias (well, employee distributions that more closely map to underlying population distributions) in hiring. Most of what Google is doing is to reduce its legal exposure to class action hiring lawsuits, not righting wrongs, as much as their leaders like to say they are.
I'm sorry, but other companies and fields don't prevent this question, and have far less bias (well, employee distributions that more closely map to underlying population distributions) in hiring. Most of what Google is doing is to reduce its legal exposure to class action hiring lawsuits, not righting wrongs, as much as their leaders like to say they are.
Just because other fields or companies do something doesn’t mean they’re not problematic. You might be living off of selection bias.
I know for a fact that people in my area discriminate based upon where people are from. If they know you’re from a certain area, they have a particular disdain for you from the get go. So, don’t rule it out as being a real thing.
I know for a fact that people in my area discriminate based upon where people are from. If they know you’re from a certain area, they have a particular disdain for you from the get go. So, don’t rule it out as being a real thing.
If you have a problem with people discriminating on place of origin, telling them not to ask where somebody is from is not the answer.
HR is used to make people fill a series of checkboxes - it isn't there to actually change people.
You're not going to somehow convert these folks to not be discriminatory overnight or even in a few years (as evident from HN). It will be something that will require a lifetime of work and more than just HR doing something.
HR is there to just prevent the assholes from being able to outright do it in the public eye and then the company being held liable for jackass clearly discriminating based upon where the person is from. If you never ask the question and the employee decides to not hire because, "seems like she's from Missouri, never did like those Kansas City Chiefs. Fuck 'em!" Well, employee and company can't be held liable for that decision because only the employee knows they discriminated for that reason and no one else does. But you ask the question - opens the box.
You're not going to somehow convert these folks to not be discriminatory overnight or even in a few years (as evident from HN). It will be something that will require a lifetime of work and more than just HR doing something.
HR is there to just prevent the assholes from being able to outright do it in the public eye and then the company being held liable for jackass clearly discriminating based upon where the person is from. If you never ask the question and the employee decides to not hire because, "seems like she's from Missouri, never did like those Kansas City Chiefs. Fuck 'em!" Well, employee and company can't be held liable for that decision because only the employee knows they discriminated for that reason and no one else does. But you ask the question - opens the box.
> I'm sorry, but other companies and fields don't prevent this question
I'm pretty certain that if I asked HR about this, they would say what Google said: Don't ask this question as it could be viewed as discriminatory. I don't think Google is an outlier here.
I'm pretty certain that if I asked HR about this, they would say what Google said: Don't ask this question as it could be viewed as discriminatory. I don't think Google is an outlier here.
National origin isn't even a relevant interview question. Regardless of the legal issues you shouldn't ask because it's a total waste of time.
wtf hahaha.
How do you know Google is working harder than most other companies? Perhaps taking such an active approach is not the right strategy.
Would be interesting to hear your insight.
Would be interesting to hear your insight.
I happen to be fairly engaged in the "diversity" space and I've worked in a few large tech companies myself. Google is not the only company trying hard. But Google is extremely data and metrics centric, and I think this aspect of their culture is one thing making a positive difference here. Also, there are more Google employees working on this problem than the entire staff of some medium sized companies.
What I'm trying to say is that this is a hard problem and perhaps this attrition, paradoxically, is an unexpected consequence of trying to to tackle the problem head on - rather than lack of effort and investment in trying to solve it.
What I'm trying to say is that this is a hard problem and perhaps this attrition, paradoxically, is an unexpected consequence of trying to to tackle the problem head on - rather than lack of effort and investment in trying to solve it.
I think you may be hitting the nail on the head.
Spending so many resources creates an image or a sense of urgency. This sense of urgency creates pressure within the organization, which also would pressure even more so the employees that Google is trying to help. No quantity of metrics and calculations are going to reach this type of observation. Google is probably one of the least qualified companies to tackle this being that it is driven by a scientific mathematical calculus and is one of the most corrupting organizations in the world mainly due to their major privacy violations and manipulation as it relates to their search products. Other companies particularly those that deal with artistic areas are more likely to come up with useful solutions to this problem.
Google may be better served sending money to another organization to study and research how to achieve the goals of counteracting the under representation.
Spending so many resources creates an image or a sense of urgency. This sense of urgency creates pressure within the organization, which also would pressure even more so the employees that Google is trying to help. No quantity of metrics and calculations are going to reach this type of observation. Google is probably one of the least qualified companies to tackle this being that it is driven by a scientific mathematical calculus and is one of the most corrupting organizations in the world mainly due to their major privacy violations and manipulation as it relates to their search products. Other companies particularly those that deal with artistic areas are more likely to come up with useful solutions to this problem.
Google may be better served sending money to another organization to study and research how to achieve the goals of counteracting the under representation.
Why do you use Latinx if the people who actually should go under that umbrella? Let me guess you're a white coastal elite, right?
this is why i'll never work for google. Seems like a bunch of left'ist crowed, that just want more and more, goal post is now changed to effect outcome, when it never comes out.
I’d be interested in reading your hard-to-represent analysis. You can find various ways to contact me, including email, at vinneycavallo.com. Send it over!
Let's look at the data, shall we? In 2019:
- 0.95% of CS degrees were awarded to black women
- 0.86% of degrees were awarded to women who identify as two or more races
- 1.63% were awarded to latina women
Looks like they're hiring a larger share of individuals in these demographics (1.8% hire rate in each group) than receive degrees. It's not by a lot, but it's definitely not stagnant or moving backwards.
(Note this obviously doesn't include other professions, but these other professions, at Google, aren't nearly as large a part of their labor pool. It is significant, though, considering 20% of blacks have BS degrees, and 19% of hispanics do.)
I've really soured on these efforts. It seemed to me the diversity group formed at the company I work for has a narrow focus on the specific identities that (surprise, surprise) the "leaders" on the team fit in. This is what identity politics in America is these days. It's not about inclusion, it's about using the politics of identity in a self-serving way--kinda like any other corporate maneuvering.
- 0.95% of CS degrees were awarded to black women
- 0.86% of degrees were awarded to women who identify as two or more races
- 1.63% were awarded to latina women
Looks like they're hiring a larger share of individuals in these demographics (1.8% hire rate in each group) than receive degrees. It's not by a lot, but it's definitely not stagnant or moving backwards.
(Note this obviously doesn't include other professions, but these other professions, at Google, aren't nearly as large a part of their labor pool. It is significant, though, considering 20% of blacks have BS degrees, and 19% of hispanics do.)
I've really soured on these efforts. It seemed to me the diversity group formed at the company I work for has a narrow focus on the specific identities that (surprise, surprise) the "leaders" on the team fit in. This is what identity politics in America is these days. It's not about inclusion, it's about using the politics of identity in a self-serving way--kinda like any other corporate maneuvering.
It is very strange to work in a company where an individual of a given race with the power to fire or at least harm career progression tells another race how to treat members of the powerful individuals race. All the diversity training and questions delivered from this leader then imply that the white employees getting the training are the problems and are inherently racist. Just does not sit well with me.
Unpopular opinion…
Could it be that women (in general) want something more in life than working in a big company for a nice wage?
Study after study after study show that women want families and other things other than the standard mega corporation employment that society has trained us to expect.
I’d bet if one looked at the numbers one would see that women as a whole are leaving google and other companies just as much as black women.
And it’s not about google. It’s just about people wanting something different that working in a mega corporation.
Could it be that women (in general) want something more in life than working in a big company for a nice wage?
Study after study after study show that women want families and other things other than the standard mega corporation employment that society has trained us to expect.
I’d bet if one looked at the numbers one would see that women as a whole are leaving google and other companies just as much as black women.
And it’s not about google. It’s just about people wanting something different that working in a mega corporation.
Google infamously fired a male engineer for speculating on such things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
I have found it extremely strange, mostly of "anti-right" crowds, to never see an educational moment in anything. Its just "if you weren't exposed to our views by this point in your life and don't accept them uncritically then you are ostracized"
is that useful?
is that useful?
That's because if you actually start digging at some of these moments, you will quickly find that their arguments fall apart. The only way to prevent this is with the assumption "oh well if you don't already understand then you never will"
Emphasis on some
which is indistinguishable from people open to other perspectives that simply haven't been articulated well, or could be discussed amicably, or perspectives that really shouldnt be accepted uncritically yet
which is indistinguishable from people open to other perspectives that simply haven't been articulated well, or could be discussed amicably, or perspectives that really shouldnt be accepted uncritically yet
The message is clear then, avoid all conversations about this very topic at your work place and let the chips fall where they may.
I completely agree. But there was hypocrisy: Google allowed (maybe still does) conversation on that topic -- but the views he had on that topic didn't agree with the narrative that was/is popular. Those chips fell quite unfairly.
The common theme I see is that people keep thinking they are comfortable on Google’s message boards when they should just ignore it for their duration at Google
Yup.
And at the time I thought he was wrong.
But even though he was an ass, studies have proved him absolutely right.
But even though he was an ass, studies have proved him absolutely right.
Studies have "proved him right" because he used studies in his memos! He wasn't really talking out of his ass, he referenced tons of studies irrc. Whether you agree with those studies or not is a different story. (not you personally)
He was fired because many employees refused to work with him. How can you employ someone who can't communicate with his coworkers?
> He was fired because many employees refused to work with him. How can you employ someone who can't communicate with his coworkers?
No, Google is huge, they could have put that guy in another team or whatever. He was fired because someone leaked his memo and the press managed to make it bad PR for google. He was fired for PR reasons nothing more, in an era that was all about "girls in tech" in a patronizing fashion.
No, Google is huge, they could have put that guy in another team or whatever. He was fired because someone leaked his memo and the press managed to make it bad PR for google. He was fired for PR reasons nothing more, in an era that was all about "girls in tech" in a patronizing fashion.
Teams have to work with each other. If he needs help from someone who is disgusted by his manifesto google has a problem.
> If he needs help from someone who is disgusted by his manifesto google has a problem.
This is mostly a cultural issue. Being professional is being able to work with people you fundamentally disagree with from a political perspective. But maybe Google shouldn't be a space where people discuss wedge issues to begin with, or write memos about anything on the matter.
This is mostly a cultural issue. Being professional is being able to work with people you fundamentally disagree with from a political perspective. But maybe Google shouldn't be a space where people discuss wedge issues to begin with, or write memos about anything on the matter.
Sure, but the fact still remains. There absolutely are people who would behave this way within google, so google's choices are fire hundreds or maybe thousands of people or fire him. It was an easy choice.
People who publicly talked about views far more extreme views than Damore are still working at Google. People can work with each other even if they don't like their views, the only reason Damore was fired was because he was dumb enough to write his thoughts in an easily shareable format rather than just a string of chat messages.
seems to be a good reason to remove discussions of politics, race, gender from work and focus exclusively on the product. Most people have at least one closely held belief that would alienate others. If everyone stops working with everyone they disagree with the company dies.
Coinbase had the right idea.
Yes, women would hate working at a big company with a great salary, great family leave benefits, flexibility to work from home, and flexibility on when to start their day. They'd much rather work in female dominated professions like teaching, retail, and hospitality where there is no flexibility to work from home, no flexibility on when to start their day, lower salaries, and fewer family leave benefits. sarcasm
Teaching is an interesting case, you have the opposite there, where male teachers are not looked upon favorably.
I've conducted technical interviews for a FAANG company for several years, and been explicitly told to go easy on and inflate the scores of minorities. On one hand it makes sense as we're trying to hire minority groups on a greater ratio than they're coming out of college. On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me they retention rates a lot lower when often they're thrown into positions they would otherwise not be really qualified for.
Isn't that technically illegal according to federal law? I.e. aren't you effectively discriminating against other people based on their sex and/or race (by making their interviews more difficult explicitly because of that reason)?
The probability that the DOJ would investigate / prosecute this particular bias is near zero. Where I work, if you submit a bad review for an underrepresented minority you will get a call from HR asking “are you absolutely sure? You don’t think that’s too low?” (even if you also submitted good reviews for other employees of that racial group).
What’s funny is: in five years researchers looking at the data will say “oh! There’s a higher attrition rate / poor performance even though prior reviews marked them as good! THAT must be where all this systemic racism we are trying to find is!”
What’s funny is: in five years researchers looking at the data will say “oh! There’s a higher attrition rate / poor performance even though prior reviews marked them as good! THAT must be where all this systemic racism we are trying to find is!”
I’ve witnessed candidates pass interviews yet fail to be advanced for open positions because they were not in the correct demographic - this was put in writing as the explicit cause. Ironically these were not “white guys,” but candidates who would be considered a minority in the tech industry, just not the right one for executive metrics.
This seems to be quite illegal according to the EEOC website, yet as another poster notes there is no chance that it would be pursued if reported.
This seems to be quite illegal according to the EEOC website, yet as another poster notes there is no chance that it would be pursued if reported.
Yes, it's illegal.
I wonder why they don’t help them get more qualified if that is the goal of the company. My guess is that it would be admitting the new hires are deficient which could backfire.
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I feel discourse nowadays could be substantially advanced by a new science of Discourse Mechanics which would include a Schrodinger operator to quantify the superposition of states applicable not only to the identity of participants in a discourse, but also to their opinions.
As science advances and the vagaries of thought are linked to organic and atomic, physical processes I expect the Grand Unified Theory of Quantum Mechanics to explain Discourse Mechanics too.
As science advances and the vagaries of thought are linked to organic and atomic, physical processes I expect the Grand Unified Theory of Quantum Mechanics to explain Discourse Mechanics too.
Kinda' sad that there is mostly discussion about what to call people or how they might feel singled out if we acknowledge their cultural differences and mixed backgrounds.
I'm mixed mixed ethnicity and it's definitely easier to just pretend everyone is treating me fairly and we're all the same. I was pretty much raised to do that.
Unfortunately, that has badly impacted me over my lifetime. It lets people single me out and pretend it's not a racist prerogative. It often is, but people don't even want to admit that to themselves. They hold other ethnicity to higher standards to "fit in" or "be a cultural fit". Meanwhile, some rude, abrasiveness, ignorant guy who looks like them gets a pass.
I'm mixed mixed ethnicity and it's definitely easier to just pretend everyone is treating me fairly and we're all the same. I was pretty much raised to do that.
Unfortunately, that has badly impacted me over my lifetime. It lets people single me out and pretend it's not a racist prerogative. It often is, but people don't even want to admit that to themselves. They hold other ethnicity to higher standards to "fit in" or "be a cultural fit". Meanwhile, some rude, abrasiveness, ignorant guy who looks like them gets a pass.
I realise this isn't the point of the article, but I'd be interested in knowing a few more numbers:
* Absolute numbers of people leaving over time * Absolute numbers of employee * Average tenure
(And you could break those down by group.)
My thinking is: maybe there's a background effect? Google used to have the reputation of being the most exciting and desirable place to work in tech, and maybe it deserved that reputation? Now?
* Absolute numbers of people leaving over time * Absolute numbers of employee * Average tenure
(And you could break those down by group.)
My thinking is: maybe there's a background effect? Google used to have the reputation of being the most exciting and desirable place to work in tech, and maybe it deserved that reputation? Now?
So what exactly is a white+, black+, latinx+?
It is just my browser stuffing a plus sign at the end?
It is just my browser stuffing a plus sign at the end?
Downvoted and I still don't know what the '+' is.
Some sort of gender or kink letter? Code for a cyborg? Programming language?
Some sort of gender or kink letter? Code for a cyborg? Programming language?
That's plus as in "doubleplus" from newspeak
There are many posts in this thread asking the same thing and receiving answers
The stats I want to see are “average days to first promotion” and average tenure for male/female groups and also grouped by minorities. Tech companies love to point out how they have “equal pay for equal work” (which I believe, this is easy to audit by having salary bands per level) but what about “equal career advancement for equal work”? If members of a minority group take say 25% more days on average to get promoted what is that evidence of?
Google did stats for this and there was no difference. Not sure if they are viewable outside Google. Google is about as equal as you can get on these points since they are really easy to fix via top down mandates and asking pointed questions at those who don't fall inline. They have quotas over how many should get promoted in each org etc, having race and gender play into that is super easy.
I hope woke culture is the anti-trust mechanism that will actually succeed at breaking up the FAANGs!
I'm curious, if this is a matter of self-identification, why don't people "play the system" by identifying as whatever-moves-the-diversity-needle in order to get themselves ahead?
Why don't "straight white American men" tell HR they identify as "homosexual black Latina women"? Not like the HR is in a position to dispute that, right? Is there a mechanism to avoid this?
Why don't "straight white American men" tell HR they identify as "homosexual black Latina women"? Not like the HR is in a position to dispute that, right? Is there a mechanism to avoid this?
All these big corporations use virtue signalling as an alternative to actually being virtuous. They preach equality of opportunity while engaging in the destruction of the free market system; the only system known to humanity which has ever managed to deliver equality of opportunity in the history of the world.
Perhaps they found better jobs with more accommodating employers, maybe it's not so great working at a company like Google? Good for them!
Why even mention the skin color, unless you’re racist what’s the difference between black and white Google employees
Do a search for [why is I don't see color racist]. Much smarter people than I have written a lot about this.
well, that's wrong and un-American, I thought everyone is created equal.
I'm not sure what the reason for this recent surge of neo-racism where every "tribe" has to be treated differently.
I'm not sure what the reason for this recent surge of neo-racism where every "tribe" has to be treated differently.
Everyone may be created equal, but they are not treated equally as they grow up, making them unequal as adults.
You both seem to agree on that.
You are only disagreeing on the methods for fixing that. I think one of you is saying 'we need to fix the root cause and stop being racist', and another is saying 'we need fix the symptoms right now because they're suffering.'
What's frustrating is pretty much everybody thinks racism is wrong, and I legitimately think over 99% of the posters here are appalled by racism. But for various reasons, they disagree about methods to correct the issue, and end up despising each other.
You are only disagreeing on the methods for fixing that. I think one of you is saying 'we need to fix the root cause and stop being racist', and another is saying 'we need fix the symptoms right now because they're suffering.'
What's frustrating is pretty much everybody thinks racism is wrong, and I legitimately think over 99% of the posters here are appalled by racism. But for various reasons, they disagree about methods to correct the issue, and end up despising each other.
One side thinks the other are deranged horseshoed abyssal caricatures of the racists they try to fight
The other side thinks the other are moderate enablers too dumb to think at system scale or understand why it's thought that the game theoretic ends justify the means
The other side thinks the other are moderate enablers too dumb to think at system scale or understand why it's thought that the game theoretic ends justify the means
I think the real issue is on whether we need to fix the symptoms. I think most everyone agrees we need to fix the systemic issues (just not on the details on how to do that), but disagreement is on fixing the symptoms.
separating people into groups based on race and treating them differently is literally the opposite to treating everyone as equal
By “affirmative action” Google perpetuates racism
By “affirmative action” Google perpetuates racism
I do analyses like these for companies sometimes. They almost always get it wrong. I'm surprised Google's report doesn't seem to do it correctly either.
The issue is rarely that people of a specific race are leaving faster than other races. The issue is almost always that turnover is high in lower level roles and that's where the bulk of your black / latinx population sits. You CANNOT look at overall attrition rates for a company. You must segment it by level unless your levels have equal mixes of races, and they never do. I'd bet heavily that low level attrition is just higher than usual. You can see it in their charts that attrition has increased across the board. It just fails to notice that attrition is going to be among low level employees and low level employees are more likely to be black.
In order to not have black employees leaving at higher rates than white employees overall, while black employees occupy lower level roles, you would need black employees to leave at significantly lower rates than their white colleagues, normalized to level.
edit: and I'll also note, for a growing company the more important number is hiring. They're at 8.8% black/latinx each up from ~6% each last year. That's very good. The overall representation has improved by ~0.6% since 2020. That's also very good. Headline is misleading. Google's making strong progress on its diversity goals.
The issue is rarely that people of a specific race are leaving faster than other races. The issue is almost always that turnover is high in lower level roles and that's where the bulk of your black / latinx population sits. You CANNOT look at overall attrition rates for a company. You must segment it by level unless your levels have equal mixes of races, and they never do. I'd bet heavily that low level attrition is just higher than usual. You can see it in their charts that attrition has increased across the board. It just fails to notice that attrition is going to be among low level employees and low level employees are more likely to be black.
In order to not have black employees leaving at higher rates than white employees overall, while black employees occupy lower level roles, you would need black employees to leave at significantly lower rates than their white colleagues, normalized to level.
edit: and I'll also note, for a growing company the more important number is hiring. They're at 8.8% black/latinx each up from ~6% each last year. That's very good. The overall representation has improved by ~0.6% since 2020. That's also very good. Headline is misleading. Google's making strong progress on its diversity goals.
Is this Simpson's Paradox? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
Yes! Maybe a slight variant. In this case the overall effect is evident when you look at the whole, and not when you group by level.
The important question is whether it seems causally reasonable to group or not group. In this case, grouping makes sense.
The important question is whether it seems causally reasonable to group or not group. In this case, grouping makes sense.
Are these based on self-identification? How do you account for that in the analysis?
Very few people opt out of sharing race with their employer. It's not generally an issue.
Probably because minorities like myself don't like being pandered to.
Reading the linked annual diversity report was worthwhile. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/... It touches on so many points, the breadth of effort is frankly amazing. Mental health, accessibility, addiction, mentorship, child care, and so forth. Bravo for Google measuring themselves.
Knowing nothing, I can't put this in context. Three curiosity followups I'd ask:
#1 How does Google compare with other huge organizations? vs Fed Govt, military, education, FAANG, interationally ...?
#2 I'm most interested in retention efforts. Daylighting the reasons people say they're leaving. Revealing this info is fraught with danger, I know. Maybe with large enough sample size, across organizations (eg all FAANGs), it could be done safely.
#3 For people to advance, there need to be opportunities. If I had a cushy job, why would I leave to make room for another? What's Google doing there? One radical solution is the "up or out" system used for high powered consultancies (lawyers, accounting). I'm sure there's downsides to any proposal. But ya gotta break some eggs to make omelets. The kind of cash Google has, they could just buy people out.
Knowing nothing, I can't put this in context. Three curiosity followups I'd ask:
#1 How does Google compare with other huge organizations? vs Fed Govt, military, education, FAANG, interationally ...?
#2 I'm most interested in retention efforts. Daylighting the reasons people say they're leaving. Revealing this info is fraught with danger, I know. Maybe with large enough sample size, across organizations (eg all FAANGs), it could be done safely.
#3 For people to advance, there need to be opportunities. If I had a cushy job, why would I leave to make room for another? What's Google doing there? One radical solution is the "up or out" system used for high powered consultancies (lawyers, accounting). I'm sure there's downsides to any proposal. But ya gotta break some eggs to make omelets. The kind of cash Google has, they could just buy people out.
"Black+", "Latinx+", "LGBTTQQIAAP". Putting people in smaller and smaller box in the name of equality and diversity.
I am the only one to feel this is coming to an absurd point ? I'm not an alt-right fan, nor would I vote Republican if I could, I'm a leftist in what's considered a traditional sense in my country, but this is beyond my understanding.
* Oh boy was that ableist ?