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Diversity at Amazon
- mtalantikite 12y agoI wonder if these numbers are actually just their full time employees or if they're including their migrant workers that they employee part time at fulfillment centers. Harper's ran a great article on Amazon's elderly migrant workforce back in August (paywalled): http://harpers.org/archive/2014/08/the-end-of-retirement/ http://harpers.org/archive/2014/08/the-end-of-retirement/
- mathgeek 12y agoI made the assumption that this is just corporate, development and the like. They certainly paint a very pretty picture that stands in rather stark contrast to the various stories about migrant workers.
- superuser2 12y agoAmazon does not actually own any warehouses, and it also likely doesn't employ any migrant workers. That is all contracted out. (Provides, among other things, plausible deniability and a liability shield for abuse claims/lawsuits by non-technical workers.)
- justcommenting 12y agotrue and important, but also not unlike other large companies, e.g. facebook moderators http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/ http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/ as happy as i am about tim cook's support for "human rights" the other day, i wish he'd apply the concept to apple's suppliers and their subcontractors more vigorously. but i agree that the key here is to see through the various means of juking the stats on this and hold companies accountable, especially when they make sweeping claims.
- pattisapu 12y agoSome of the contractors they work with like ABM violate labor laws like the FLSA for overtime pay, making janitors work off the clock.
- ultimape 12y agoCould you get more information on this?
- pattisapu 12y agohttp://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/ABM-Security-Services-Lawsuit-Guards-Break-Periods-161994885.html http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/ABM-Security-Service... http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/global-cleaning-company-investigated-improperly-pa/nftnH/ http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/global-cleaning-company-inve... http://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txndce/3:2014cv03215/251267 http://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txndce/3:2014cv03215/...
- desdiv 12y agoWhat about this? http://www.amazonfulfillmentcareers.com/ http://www.amazonfulfillmentcareers.com/
- bennetthi 12y agoIt's unfortunate they don't include any total numbers, just percentages, on the donut charts.
- amaks 12y agoIt must be really frugal diversity;-)
- dreamweapon 12y ago"We're Amazon. Our global workforce is incredibly diverse, but the working conditions and real take home pay for our rank-and-file fulfillment workers are uniformly miserable."[1] [1] Type "amazon workplace conditions" in any search engine.
- Animats 12y agoDiversity at Amazon would mean having more than one brand of warehouse robot.
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- waterlesscloud 12y agoAmazon posts a very positive and promising story on diversity, HN finds a way to post negative comments about Amazon. Makes ya think.
- influx 12y agoHackernews used to be full of people when shown something new would say, "yes AND!". Now it's full of people who shout, "no BUT!" I came from /. to k5 to hn. Anybody ready for the next iteration yet? I am.
- japesinator 12y agoYou might be looking for https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/
- alttab 12y agoNever heard of it. Whats the angle, who runs it, etc?
- japesinator 12y agohttps://lobste.rs/about https://lobste.rs/about
- yoasif_ 12y agoInvite?
- japesinator 12y agoNo problem, just give me an email and I'll add you
- duncanhill 12y agoYeah, I'd be interested in an invite if at all possible. I'll be the first to admit, though, that I tend to lurk and read more than actively comment.
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- mattparcher 12y agoNote: The two donut charts for "Race and Ethnicity" are visually misleading. The color assigned to each race or ethnicity is not consistent between the two charts, so a visual comparison of the two is much less useful. ("White" is represented by blue on both charts, but green is "Black" on the overall chart and "Asian" on the Managers chart.)
- martco 12y agoYou're right that they're not consistent between the two charts. That can be misleading. They are ordered by percentage descending, so you can quickly understand which is the 2nd most populous, 3rd most populous, etc. The ethnicity name is right by the percentage so you can quickly grok it, even though the colors don't match across pie charts.
- benrudolph 12y agoYou can still sort the pie charts by percentage and keep the same colors. This would aid in understanding the differences between the US and Amazon workforces which I believe is the point of using the two pie charts.
- dreamweapon 12y agoNot only that -- if anything the numbers behind them point to comparative ratios in mangers-to-overall workers that are, for Amazon's purposes, decidedly less than peachy: (asian=1.38, white=1.18, hispanic=0.44, black=0.26). Those are just "thumbnail" ratios, taken by dividing Amazon's percentages off the chart; we don't have enough information to infer the exact ratios, of course. But taking the case of gender, if we make a reasonable guess of a 4:1 ratio of workers-to-management, we can readily pop out a 60-40 split (male-female) for non-management workers, compared with the 75-25 split for management workers. We still don't have enough information to conclude evidence (from these charts alone) that Amazon has systematic problems promoting women or non-whites to management (we'd need more hard data, and some basis for comparing with other companies). But the point isn't that we've caught Amazon at something, or that the charts are lying; it's rather that the charts are meaningless. They're simply eye candy; just don't really convey anything one way or another about the fairness of Amazon's hiring practices, or about anything else really.
- FD3SA 12y agoI find it fascinating that this new wave of post-modernist "equalism" demands segmenting and dissecting every group into ever smaller minorities. Black, Asian, Latino, Gay Asian, Lesbian Latino, Hetero Black Woman, etc. Ignoring for a minute that post-modernism is an absurd philosophy based on the denial of empirical science, how is this in any way productive? Would it not make more sense to focus on an employee's skills and experience, rather than their genetic and ethnic backgrounds? It is increasingly obvious due to the irrationality of these initiatives that this is indeed a form of political posturing, and nothing more. Ironically, a community of entrepreneurs such as HN would pay the highest price for ignoring empirical evidence in favor of political posturing. Small companies can't trade political posturing for special treatment by the government. That practice is firmly reserved for established monopolies such as Amazon.
- throwaway5752 12y agoIgnoring for a minute that you're the one that inexplicably brought post-modernism into the discussion (and even more inexplicably tie it to anti-empiricism)... What empirically shows diversity is bad? Empirically speaking, certain groups are underrepresented in hard science. Empirically speaking, intelligence differences between those groups is somewhere between highly disputed and nonexistent. Therefore, a well-managed company would seek to exploit that arbitrage opportunity. edit: Empirically, good working environments improve business results. Most decent people see the benefit in a diverse workforce in furthering that goal. And it would be beneficial if it just weeded out the types of personalities that are strongly averse to diversity.
- FD3SA 12y agoEmpirically speaking, certain groups are underrepresented in hard science. And this is wrong, why? Post-modernism is at the heart of the entire "equalist" movement precisely because it ignores the scientific process of modernism. It begins with an a-priori assumption: racial and sexual representation in all disciplines must be in proportion to the population. If the representations are even slightly off, there is discrimination, racism and sexism. Proponents of this line of thought then look for statistics and conjure up conspiracy theories to explain these deviations from their own asserted optimum. This line of thought is absurd to anyone with basic training in scientific reasoning. Unfortunately, scientific literacy is a rarity in the modern world which was built by it.
- sbilstein 12y agoThis has less information than the numbers Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn released. There manager vs non manager breakdowns but what about tech vs not tech? I'm fairly disappointed to see so little information from Amazon. http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/06/building-a-more-diverse-facebook/ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/06/building-a-more-diverse-... http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/06/12/linkedins-workforce-diversity/ http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/06/12/linkedins-workforce-dive...
- dreamweapon 12y agoGood call, but the Amazon post wasn't meant to be "informative." It was meant to give you a warm, fuzzy feeling.
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- dmazin 12y agoWhat's the stance on clearly hateful comments like these, are we removing them from HN yet or are we going to continue to embarrass ourselves?
- ultramancool 12y agoApparently we're removing them. Personally I prefer the downvote and ridicule strategy myself. Makes it known that this sort of thing exists (many of us aren't exposed to it regularly or at all) but is not acceptable. Deletion just hides it.
- dang 12y agoNot sure what you mean by "we", but that comment was deleted by the commenter.
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- donatj 12y ago"Look at us, we're not racist, watch while we single out and show off our ethnic people" scoff/sigh.
- blazespin 12y agoYou have to wonder what their diversity looks like when you factor in salary. HQ versus Fulfillment centers.
- jiggy2011 12y agoApple and Google released similar figures, so of course there will be pressure on Amazon to do this also.
- Torgo 12y agoIt may be social signaling, but I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with companies publishing demographics.
- gambiting 12y agoI am being completely serious with this question - how is caring about "race diversity" not racist? It always strikes me as such - if you care about race diversity that means you perceive race as having a meaning, while in reality it doesn't have any. Am I the only person with such an opinion?
- jpwright 12y agoNo, don't worry, Stephen Colbert agrees with you. By not seeing race, he is by definition the least racist.
- DanBC 12y agoPeople have biases. Making sure your hiring[1] decisions are not subject to those biases are one way to avoid racist behaviours. It also helps an organisation to avoid institutional racism. Being polite: this is entry level stuff. A quick web search would have turned up some useful resources to answer your question. [1] and other
- smtddr 12y agoLet's try this from another angle: 1) Do you believe racism exists? 2) Do you believe we should do anything about it? 3) What would you do about it? (Hint: "Nothing", is the wrong answer)
- TTPrograms 12y agoI don't think counting how many of each they have in each bucket is the right answer, regardless.
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- lotharbot 12y agocounting buckets is a potentially useful metric, not a solution. If your counts are very far away from the expected distribution (based on your area's demographics, the demographics of people with relevant degrees, etc.) then it suggests further research.
- RealDiversity 12y ago(http://gasstationwithoutpumps.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/percent-bachelors-degrees-women-usa.png?w=873&h=907 http://gasstationwithoutpumps.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/pe...) Shows that < 20% of CS & Engineering Degrees go to females in the US Google employs 30% females (http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html) Facebook employs 31% (http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/06/building-a-more-diverse-facebook/ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/06/building-a-more-diverse-...) Amazon employs 37% (http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=tb_surl_diversity/?node=10080092011 http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=tb_surl_diversity/?node=10080092...) LinkedIn employs 39% (http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/06/12/linkedins-workforce-diversity/ http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/06/12/linkedins-workforce-dive...) Obviously these companies need to hire employees to do non-engineering tasks and in an effort to seem "diverse" They likely hire only females for these jobs. It would make sense that the company had 20%/80% doing actual engineering work as there is no reason females cannot do just as good a job with the same experience. That means that half the females hired at these companies are doing non-engineering work which pays lower. This would account for the pay gap. When people ask for further diversity at these companies and equal pay what they are asking is to give an unfair advantage to the less qualified. I am aware this is an unpopular opinion but I felt I needed to post it as I saw someone else posted it and then took it down after being harassed.
- skybrian 12y agoPlease do some research. What you're missing is that the pay gap is measured between people in similar jobs.
- sbilstein 12y agoYes. There are two pay gaps the way I understand things: 1) Females in the US are generally employed in less profitable fields for a whole host of reasons like access to education, poor work conditions for mothers, etc. This is where that 83 cents on a dollar stat comes from... 2) Females within the same field also see generally less pay on average for reasons such as hiring bias, raise bias, limited career mobility due to family obligations, and many more.
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