6 ms·

Anyone who has worked for a large tech company in SF in the last 3/4 years knows that this has happened everywhere. In fairness, Google was one of the very las

Anyone who has worked for a large tech company in SF in the last 3/4 years knows that this has happened everywhere. In fairness, Google was one of the very last ones among large tech companies to play the quota game. But the problem is that that's a game that once the first company starts playing it, everyone else is forced to play it too. Company X publishes a report with amazing diversity numbers and brands itself as a great company for certain minorities and diversity in general, along with some unbelievable BS about how they achieved that. At that point, you have to introduce quotas too to get similar numbers or your brand and recruiting will be strongly affected.

cookiecaper 9y ago
It's not about recruiting. It's about lawsuits. Companies with more than 100 employees are legally obligated to report demographic information to the EEOC. The EEOC reviews this information when someone files a complaint alleging discrimination. If similar companies in the same industry and geography have numbers that show a more diverse demographic profile, the EEOC is much more likely to consider a discrimination complaint non-frivolous, which is required to file a lawsuit alleging employer discrimination (as I understand it; not a lawyer). Companies play this game a) to protect themselves against lawsuits; and b) to potentiate damage to competitors who are not yet explicitly playing this game, and therefore have correspondingly less demographic diversity.
- mkeedlinger 9y ago
  I did not know that, and that brings a whole new dimension to my understanding of this issue. Thanks.
wycs 9y ago
Then company X gets rightfully trounced by a Chinese firm 5 years from now which does not share our ridiculous racial taboos. Some crimes are self policing.
- HarryHirsch 9y ago
  No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Let's face it: the top tech companies have sufficient applicants, so they can choose whoever they want, and most jobs are drone jobs.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Many companies have failed due in part to internal politics. Also, weren't many of the companies involved in the financial crisis going along with the prevailing political winds, just before everything changed?
  - ghostcluster 9y ago
    > Management techniques in NASA, the report said, discouraged dissenting views on safety issues and ultimately created “blind spots” about the risk to the space shuttle of the foam insulation impact. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3077541/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/shuttle-report-blames-nasa-culture/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3077541/ns/technology_and_science-...
  - whatyoucantsay 9y ago
    > No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Let's face it: the top tech companies have sufficient applicants Many companies have been trounced by outsiders unconstrained by their political liabilities. Let's face it: Ford, Chevy and Chrysler all had sufficient applicants, even as Toyota and Honda were building the processes and company cultures that would dethrone them.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- vondur 9y ago
  Yes, this is how companies start to decline.
  - 9y ago
Clanan 9y ago
Or, instead of giving in, these companies could actually use their impressive power and reach to halt such practices and not let their brand be so affected. (Hello marketing budgets.) Big_Co is not a victim here, and portraying them as such is vastly unfair to the actual people being adversely affecting by discriminatory hiring practices. These companies can and should do better than "well everyone else is doing it!"
- neerkumar 9y ago
  I hope my comment didn't come across as I am portraying them as a victim. I saw first hand hiring based on quotas and I hated it (and I am an immigrant with dark skin). I was just stating a fact about Google, that they were among the last to implement quotas in Silicon Valley, and why I think they started doing it.
netheril96 9y ago
This starts with the [diversity pledge](http://thehill.com/policy/technology/284517-white-house-pressures-30-tech-companies-to-sign-diversity-pledge http://thehill.com/policy/technology/284517-white-house-pres...) pushed by Obama administration, including companies like Airbnb, Box, GitHub, GoDaddy, Intel, Lyft, Medium. No wonder many Asians sigh relief when Clinton failed her presidency, or she surely would have pushed for more.
- spicymaki 9y ago
  That is not accurate according to 2016 votes: http://aaldef.org/TheAsianAmericanVote2016-AALDEF.pdf http://aaldef.org/TheAsianAmericanVote2016-AALDEF.pdf 79% of Asians voted for Clinton.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Out of curiosity, how did they get the cast ballots with the voters race to do their count? Polling, particularly in the last election, was atrocious.
    - cjhopman 9y ago
      IIRC, exit polling was just fine.
    - spicymaki 9y ago
      How well do you suspect Trump’s anti-immigration and nationalist push play with the Asian community? Making it difficult for families to immigrate together via family visa and reducing work visas does not play well. The polling methodology is present in the report I posted.
      - alanlovestea 9y ago
        don't be fooled by the media. Trump supports legal immigration and is allocating more quota to legal immigrants. As a result, tons of legal immigrants support Trump.
mesozoic 9y ago
It's a false logical conclusion really (just as most things related to postmodernism and enforced equality of outcome through diversity are). You could just as easily reason that companies who aren't implementing these policies and actually hiring based on individual qualifications and not group identity will out compete their competitors in the free market. They'll surely get bad press for a while but eventually their haters will get tired and move on to the next news cycle. In the mean time the company has hired all of the "undesirable" straight white and Asian males (not intentionally but only because their value in the market has been artificially depressed) and they are easily outpacing the productivity of their rival firms. As the postmodernists reject possible logical conclusions from their actions and claim organization power they will eventually come face to face with the free capitalist market and the firms they overtake will fail. That is of course if they can't act quickly enough in manifesting their utopian vision of the destruction of capitalism itself.

cookiecaper 9y ago

It's not about recruiting. It's about lawsuits. Companies with more than 100 employees are legally obligated to report demographic information to the EEOC. The EEOC reviews this information when someone files a complaint alleging discrimination. If similar companies in the same industry and geography have numbers that show a more diverse demographic profile, the EEOC is much more likely to consider a discrimination complaint non-frivolous, which is required to file a lawsuit alleging employer discrimination (as I understand it; not a lawyer). Companies play this game a) to protect themselves against lawsuits; and b) to potentiate damage to competitors who are not yet explicitly playing this game, and therefore have correspondingly less demographic diversity.

mkeedlinger 9y ago
I did not know that, and that brings a whole new dimension to my understanding of this issue. Thanks.

wycs 9y ago

Then company X gets rightfully trounced by a Chinese firm 5 years from now which does not share our ridiculous racial taboos. Some crimes are self policing.

HarryHirsch 9y ago
No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Let's face it: the top tech companies have sufficient applicants, so they can choose whoever they want, and most jobs are drone jobs.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Many companies have failed due in part to internal politics. Also, weren't many of the companies involved in the financial crisis going along with the prevailing political winds, just before everything changed?
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  > Management techniques in NASA, the report said, discouraged dissenting views on safety issues and ultimately created “blind spots” about the risk to the space shuttle of the foam insulation impact. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3077541/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/shuttle-report-blames-nasa-culture/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3077541/ns/technology_and_science-...
- whatyoucantsay 9y ago
  > No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Let's face it: the top tech companies have sufficient applicants Many companies have been trounced by outsiders unconstrained by their political liabilities. Let's face it: Ford, Chevy and Chrysler all had sufficient applicants, even as Toyota and Honda were building the processes and company cultures that would dethrone them.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
vondur 9y ago
Yes, this is how companies start to decline.
- 9y ago

Clanan 9y ago

Or, instead of giving in, these companies could actually use their impressive power and reach to halt such practices and not let their brand be so affected. (Hello marketing budgets.) Big_Co is not a victim here, and portraying them as such is vastly unfair to the actual people being adversely affecting by discriminatory hiring practices. These companies can and should do better than "well everyone else is doing it!"

neerkumar 9y ago
I hope my comment didn't come across as I am portraying them as a victim. I saw first hand hiring based on quotas and I hated it (and I am an immigrant with dark skin). I was just stating a fact about Google, that they were among the last to implement quotas in Silicon Valley, and why I think they started doing it.

netheril96 9y ago

This starts with the [diversity pledge](http://thehill.com/policy/technology/284517-white-house-pressures-30-tech-companies-to-sign-diversity-pledge http://thehill.com/policy/technology/284517-white-house-pres...) pushed by Obama administration, including companies like Airbnb, Box, GitHub, GoDaddy, Intel, Lyft, Medium. No wonder many Asians sigh relief when Clinton failed her presidency, or she surely would have pushed for more.

spicymaki 9y ago
That is not accurate according to 2016 votes: http://aaldef.org/TheAsianAmericanVote2016-AALDEF.pdf http://aaldef.org/TheAsianAmericanVote2016-AALDEF.pdf 79% of Asians voted for Clinton.
- protomyth 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, how did they get the cast ballots with the voters race to do their count? Polling, particularly in the last election, was atrocious.
  - cjhopman 9y ago
    IIRC, exit polling was just fine.
  - spicymaki 9y ago
    How well do you suspect Trump’s anti-immigration and nationalist push play with the Asian community? Making it difficult for families to immigrate together via family visa and reducing work visas does not play well. The polling methodology is present in the report I posted.
    - alanlovestea 9y ago
      don't be fooled by the media. Trump supports legal immigration and is allocating more quota to legal immigrants. As a result, tons of legal immigrants support Trump.

mesozoic 9y ago

It's a false logical conclusion really (just as most things related to postmodernism and enforced equality of outcome through diversity are). You could just as easily reason that companies who aren't implementing these policies and actually hiring based on individual qualifications and not group identity will out compete their competitors in the free market. They'll surely get bad press for a while but eventually their haters will get tired and move on to the next news cycle. In the mean time the company has hired all of the "undesirable" straight white and Asian males (not intentionally but only because their value in the market has been artificially depressed) and they are easily outpacing the productivity of their rival firms. As the postmodernists reject possible logical conclusions from their actions and claim organization power they will eventually come face to face with the free capitalist market and the firms they overtake will fail. That is of course if they can't act quickly enough in manifesting their utopian vision of the destruction of capitalism itself.