Is Silicon Valley going crazy? Tell me
Yahoo, within one and a half year, has turned top managers from 20% females to more than 80% in a big org. And intentionally demote or lay off male employees. Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/06/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-led-illegal-purge-of-male-employees-lawsuit-charges/ Airbnb has a goal in 2017 they gonna turn 50% company's Eng population to females (considering 18% of CS degrees are held by women). And this lady has already turned Airbnb's Data Science department from 10% females to 47% in a short time. Source: https://vimeo.com/album/3967705/video/167377165 (password: DataEngRocks1646) Intel's VP of HR indicated they gonna hire women like crazy. They have diversity quotas, and meeting quotas ties to management bonuses. Every other day I hear similar news from this or that Silicon Valley company. What's going wrong recently?
Vimeo
Hiring is not like drawing marbles from a bag and assuming you should get a random sample of demographics. The people in your company are actually people, and when you are a lone woman in a room of 8 people, you feel alienated. The last thing you want is everyone calling each other bro, and then treating you like you're a special snowflake entitled to 12.5% of the discussion... yet this is the reality of the industry. It pushes women out and exacerbates the problem. This is very much against the values we hold at Airbnb. We aim to foster a culture where everyone can belong, and one of the ways we do this is with a commitment to fixing this problem.
No, you pick out the best marbles for your use (let's say size represents qualifications for role), and disregard the color of the marble (gender and sex), unless someone is showing bias towards a particular color (only want white marbles for example). The key is to not over correct in the other way... or you become the thing you were fighting against... and possibly at a lower skill level (smaller marbles). And as a disclaimer, I'm a minority so it doesn't benefit me to say what I'm saying. Just don't think we should always be quick to over index, which is what seems to have happened in the article.
On the flip side, we need to encourage more women to join STEM fields (make it less taboo in culture), and also fix the disparity at the leadership levels (pretty much across the board). 18% graduation -> 5% management is unacceptable. I'm sure it is from some women leaving the workforce for raising a family (not being sexist, it's a fact), but only 2-5% could probably be explained by that. The rest is the boys club as you call it.
I heard indirectly from top management (thus not directly substantiated by me) that pension funds are demanding more gender and ethnic diversity for top holding selection. There's some evidence of this if you google.
These are government employee unions and other more politically-motivated interests... they should just focus on earning returns, as most of them are dangerously underfunded.
On the surface, it seems the tech society now is sexist against men. But it actually hurts women ourselves - it easily makes people think you as a woman is on the table not because of your competency but sexual privilege. It's eventually sexist against women.
Exactly, why is gender even relevant in hiring?
Lol u made a point and that is you can almost always add a sexist angle to anything.
Such stories make me lose faith in these bs diversity groups like lean in etc.
I am a woman. Gender quota is sexist! It treats women as if we do not have what it takes and need special "help" to get a job. I joined Google 4 years ago; over my four years at Google I did not feel that people consider me incompetent or treat me different becAuse I am a woman. I do worrythat once after tech companies start to have gender quota, employees would start to look at their female coworkers differently, and they would have the reason to do so - after all, when women have a lower hiring bar, it is very fair to say they are likely to be "less than" their male counterparts. I would like companies to consider women as "people" instead of some poor minority group that needs help. For myself, I do not need other people's pity to get a job, and I would not be happy to take an offer if the company considers women as inferior candidates who can only get in with a lower hiring bar.
^^this
Couldn't agree more.
Omg. Thought Only Expedia is like that.
It's a phase, it'll pass, give it a few years
Agreed, this ends as soon as the tech industry faces a crunch time
Which is pretty near :)
In a free market these companies would have poorer bottom lines if they are actually diluting talent. Let them be.
Did you hear Peter Coffee (long-tenured senior mgmt at Salesforce) on stage at Dreamforce talk about how "..we're gonna make sure there are NO middle age white guys on stage!" -- in reference to our "equality day" at Dreamforce??? I found that really ironic.
holy crap if that ain't bigoted
She is a disaster.
Hiring a specific minority should never outpace the demographics of that position. Example: if 20% of engineers in the workforce are female, then 50% of your engineers in a large company should probably not be female. If it happens accidentally totally fine, but intentionally? You are most likely diluting your talent. Same goes for black, Asian, latino, etc.
By that logic, Millennials shouldn't be more than 34% of your company. Yeah right. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/11/millennials-surpass-gen-xers-as-the-largest-generation-in-u-s-labor-force/
I'm confused as to what your point is. Millennials are age 18-34. Working age is ~16-65. So 49 years is the age range of working adults, and 18 of those are made up by millennials. 18/49 = 36.7%. So seems like things are falling right in line according to this article. Obviously some industries/companies will over index towards millennials, so ratio might seem different at Amazon/Google. And age is a little bit different than sex or race. Sex and race should have no impact on your ability to perform the job, where as age (aka experience) might have an impact. In tech you might want young people that learned the latest tech and methodologies, where as for lawyers and research scientists you might want experience. Just depends.