It's not our fault we don't hire black people, says Facebook Facebook has explained away another year of dreadful diversity figures by claiming that there simply aren't enough minorities available for it to hire. Despite having been at the receiving end of years of criticism for its overwhelmingly white male workforce, the social media giant's latest figures show that only 4 per cent of …
"hire more people based entirely on the colour of their skin?"
it's what the 'affirmative action' weenies on "the left" would say, yeah, but Faceb[itch,ook] isn't practicing the kind of thing it probably (read: no doubt) preaches. Instead, they appear to be hiring on the basis of JOB SKILLS, which is what ANY responsible company would do (normally).
Perhaps Charles Barkley's take on "things of this nature" is the CORRECT explanation:
http://www.inquisitr.com/1563826/charles-barkley-unintelligent-black-community-holds-back-successful-minorities/
And if he's right, the relative lack of 'minority employees' at FB is mostly "self-inflicted", i.e. "not whitey's fault" nor outright racial discrimination in hiring.
just sayin'
@Voland's Right Hand
Reminds me of a time when my son was at junior school and they were talking about allergies. The teacher asked if there were any allergies in anyone's families.
My son responded that I am allergic to stupid people - which I am !
Even though I had indeed said about this to my son, apparently that wasn't the politically correct answer and we had an interesting discussion at dinner that night.
Seriously though, I wonder when people are going to stop trying to do everything with statistics and start focusing on what matters - capability of the person to do the job well and act as part of the single team. It shouldn't matter if they are left handed, have ginger hair; are short; tall ; have x colour skin, etc.
However, it does matter that they speak the same language as the rest of the team and have a common understanding of what needs doing and the appropriate skills to do it, this in turn means you can rely on the rest of the team to get the job done well.
"...that Facebook should go out of their way to hire more non-white people, in other words: hire more people based entirely on the colour of their skin?"
The issue is that they already are - just it is easier to get a job with them if your skin is white.
I refer you to an excellent post on this issue by Aral Balkan: https://ar.al/notes/on-false-dichotomies-and-diversity/
Not sure this is what they are saying.
Whether that is the underlying cause is another matter, and fundamentally applies everywhere, not just Facebook.
Diversity policies go against sound business practice. If you have to hire less competent people because of their skin colour, that's still discriminatory (just in a way that is inexplicably ok to those insisting on diversity policies). A business full of idiots is a business full of idiots. Doesn't matter that diversity regs have been met; that business is doomed.
The devil in the detail is surely the comp-sci graduate racial/gender distributions, and the applicant racial/gender distribution. If 97% of graduates/applicants are white males, well... doesn't take a genius to work out the hiring distribution will be predominantly white males.
Yet if 97% of graduates/applicants were minorities/female, would we even be having this discussion? Would Facebook get called out on it? I doubt it, because that doesn't fit the PC brigade agenda.
Hiring decisions should always and only be about competence, never about skin colour, gender, sexuality, age or any other bullshit. Diversity policies be damned.
If you're best for the job I will hire you.
If you aren't the best for the job, I won't hire you. End of. Entirely based on competence. PC brigade can bite me.
You didn't read that very interesting article linked above.
If you have 97% white applicants, then what is wrong with your hiring practices? Sure, choose the most able applicants. No question about that.
But the problem may be that you are only advertising in newspaper 'A' which has a 97% white readership. If you included newspaper 'B', which has a 97% black readership, then maybe your application figures would be much different. Or not. It is little, inadvertent details like this that are the problem.
@tealeaf
No, that isn't the problem. The problem is education. There are less black/women/minority applicants and employees because there are less educated people of this type. The why's and how's and political, socioeconomical reasons behind this are better discussed elsewhere.
The bottom line, as stated elsewhere in these comments is qualified applicants. I don't give a rats ass if you are black, white, yellow, purple or have 3 arms (might increase productivity now that I think of it). If you can do the job, you will be considered for employment - whatever the field. If not, not. Don't like it? Go get an education or learn a trade. Knowledge is just about free to acquire these days. It just takes time and dedication. So enough excuses! Get out there and make something of yourself. Or just keep playing gangsta poser.
First, my impression from occasional scanning of ordinary "white" newspapers is that very few IT related vacancies are posted there, and those generally have been for low level and insignificant positions for quite a few years.
Second, the implication that "black" potential applicants somehow lack the ability or wit to read the "white" press seems a bit condescending if not, indeed, quite bigoted.
If there are no good jobs in newspaper "B', the black jobseekers should start looking in newspaper 'A' But perhaps the black jobseekers are just as happy with the jobs they find in newspaper 'B' as the whites are with jobs in newspaper 'A'?
But in any case, if a company is getting a perfectly good selection of applicants when it advertises in newspaper 'A', why should it be obliged to spend money advertising anywhere else?
One big problem with starting out with a homogeneous workforce is that they often simply don't know what skills and knowledge they are missing out on by hiring only for competencies THAT THEY ARE AWARE OF.
American software companies are generally lousy at hiring people who know how to address customer issues outside of the US. They cannot even conceive how living in a different hemisphere, set of timezones, school system etc might be possible or require changes in the way that they design and support their products,
Case in Point, Facebook has not addressed a single internationalization bug that I have reported to them in the last five years. It's like asking their employees to breath something other than American Oxygen. They can't even imagine what it would take to solve such issues, and they don't hire people who might know how.
The fact that lots of people seem to agree with the post above makes me sad.
Who exactly is suggesting that people should be hired on the basis of their skin colour?
For me the issue is that when the break down of the workforce is massively different from the general population it suggests a problem. Maybe part of the problem is a lack of skills / qualifications and maybe - just maybe - part of the problem is the recruitment process.
Suggesting companies like Facebook don't employee significant numbers of minorities mostly because of a lack of skills / qualifications is a bullshit cop-out that lets people feel comfortable with the status quo and they can pretend that biases, conscious or un-conscious discrimination does not exist.
Have I gone through a time warp and found myself in the 1960s ?
"
For me the issue is that when the break down of the workforce is massively different from the general population it suggests a problem.
"
No, its suggests that there is some factor at work which may or may not be a problem. Different ethnic groups tend to follow different cultural norms, which can have an effect on both the skillset acquired and the choice of career. It is not necessarily disadvantageous to any group, but if it turns out that it is, the main thrust should be on getting the ethnic group concerned to change its habits rather than forcing companies to hire unsuitable employees. It only becomes discrimination when a company uses ethnicity as a factor in choosing who to employ, not if the company receives very few job applications from any particular group of people.
While men and women each represent about 50% of the general population, you will find that a heck of a lot less than 50% of nursery school staff are men, and a great deal less than 50% of lorry drivers are women. Those situationd did not arise as a result of any form of discrimination.
Wait. So there is no bias or discrimination at all in the employment process. It's just that "Different ethnic groups tend to follow different cultural norms ... " Realy ? So that's all there is to it ???
So if equally qualified and experienced afro-american and white american candidates apply for positions their chances are generally equal?
My experience suggests this is often just not true. I am not denying that "different cultural norms" exist and are a factor but to suggest that's it the only factor is a major over simplification. Like it or not there are many who still harbour racist views and suggestions that it's ALL down to "different cultural norms" allows them to hide their views and carry on unchecked.
Please stop over-simplifying it down to basically issues with the ethnic groups themselves. Yes - there are issues with cultural expectations and practices (on all sides) but also there are problems with the education system AND with employment recruitment practices.
Employers ( just like everyone else) should not be let off the hook
So the question is, are they actually seeking qualified people? Or just paying lip service?
Sorry.. this smells to like low grade fertilizer from FB.
We're was I? Oh yeah.. gotta keep digging as I'm pretty sure there's a large male bovine in here someone amongst this steaming pile.....
I do fail to see where having "quotas" will work as you'll just get unqualified people to fill a slot. Been there, saw the results back in the 70's and it wasn't pretty for anyone other than the PR types and HR spreadsheet types. These kinds of reports are bound to drive a "law" on hiring quotas...
Probably not seeking qualified people from outside their preferred network. The problem is many companies will hire from a selected group of universities and majors for their technical staff and ignore anyone who is competent but lacks the degree from the "proper" school. I would not be surprised if Facebook is not doing the same.
What happens is the pool they choosing from is not very representative of the whole pool but instead of looking outside their pool they moan about not finding minorities.
That explains part of the problem. To find talented programmers, FB recruits from "elite" universities with a "white bias". It's a naive decision by FB because it misses out so many talented people at other universities, but it makes life easy for recruiters.
As a growing company, FB employs people in commercial, customer support, internal support roles -- and these don't demand superhero-like skills. 115 point IQ scores or equivalent in social skills are enough for most jobs. Nine out of ten FB employees don't write code; they use IT and work in IT, but they don't create IT.
One would therefore expect FB employee representation to look more like the general population as the company grows. As the company gets bigger -- even if elite programmers are 100% white men -- one would expect diversity to increase if the company employs fairly.
All the claims about "not enough black and women trained as engineers" are waffle to distract us from FB's failure to recruit fairly in other parts of the business.
This article might give some insight into the skewed numbers?
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-high-school-dropout-rate-reaches-record-low-driven-by-improvements-among-hispanics-blacks/
If you don't go to school, companies are not going to hire you for tech jobs, regardless of the huffing and puffing of activists.
"If you don't go to school, companies are not going to hire you for tech jobs, regardless of the huffing and puffing of activists."
I would personally expect their recruiting to reflect the populus in general and forget about colour . So, the same amount of saddos, theives, autistic, disabled, gay, racist, political,geeky, nasty, sociopathic, empathetic, religious, fundamentalist ...
The whole gamut of society as we know it. Spouting about gender or race is divisive. The human race is the human race lets not break it down but make them show a median of the race rather than a median of a subset.
I do realise that given it is I.T. we might suffer from a lack of women, body builders and hot looking blokes but hey ho, we are what we are.
How many poor people from working class areas do they hire?
People like to ignore some of the things around hiring people, you a: hire someone who has the "correct" qualifications (these in the states tend to be expensive - especially as I expect in the states they exclusively get graduates except for 1st line call centre staff) and b: lives close to the office so they can get on site quickly - this will lead onto a chain of if you can't get an entry level role as you don't have the qualification or live close enough you'll never get the experience required to move on.
Then I don't live in the states so my assumptions may be wrong. They may indeed just be going "for the love of god, don't hire the darkies"
I doubt companies look at where you live, you don't need to provide that information. The do look at qualifications, in some cases to an extreme no doubt.
When I was hiring developers, designers and architects I looked at qualifications but experience and more importantly attitude is what tipped the balance.
Here. Here.
My company has a hiring philosophy that boils down to, 'does the person have the knowledge and ability to do the job and fit in with everyone else'. For all we care they could be a big headed little green man from Mars and if they fit that criterion for the particular job then they would be employed. I assume that Facebook has the same requirements - people that know what they are doing and how to do it.
@Ivan4
That's all good - but where does your company look for recruits, where do they advertise, and so on?
And "fit in with everyone else" sounds a bit slippery to me. A white male will no doubt fit in very nicely in a culture of white male co-workers. Not saying your company discriminates (perhaps subconsciously) in that way, but is it likely that your little green man from Mars is going to fit in that nicely? Dunno, like he smells a bit funny, due to his Venusian sludge-worm diet...
When we hire infrastructure staff we consider where people live, as you're concerned about people getting in to the office on time and importantly at odd times (if the systems go down at 1am and you need someone in to fix it) or you need people in to do a release - having to set off at 5am to start work at 7am can be problematic. Also when you're talking shift work. Also staying power, sure someone might stick about for a year with a 3 hour commute if they're desperate for work but the second something comes up they're out the door.
So it's very much a consideration.
People only hire people that remind themselves of... themselves. A white dude who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth is hardly going to see similarities with someone who fought and earned everything the hard way growing up.
Naturally there are exceptions to the rule, as there are nice people everywhere. But you'll see the majority of hires are clones of the hirer/hiring committee. The same school, preppy appearance, speech patterns..
"People only hire people that remind themselves of... themselves. "
I disagree. the purpose of a business is PROFIT. Therefore, you hire the person who will MAKE THE MOST MONEY FOR THE COMPANY. Unless the employee is a flaming ASSHAT, is VERY likely to sue you for some B.S. reason [i.e. an 'issues' person and it's obvious], has a poor attitude towards others, or smells like a sewer in the interview, chances are NONE of the characteristics that are so often touted in 'diversity' arguments will even be looked at for a SECOND.
Not if the company wants to MAKE MONEY, anyway. And yeah, "Mr. Issues" probably won't get hired because he's already advertising the desire to SUE YOU at the drop of a hat. And so on.
I guess walking into an interview with an attitude OTHER than "how can I help you potential customer" isn't going to help you later.
(then again I have been a contractor for EVAR and have an actual interview with a potential 'customer' soon...)
Facebook believes white pampered fratboys make them the most money and hire accordingly. Why? Because that's the company culture. Because Zuckerburg built up the company that way from scratch.
Now ask anyone from an ethnic minority if they'd like to work in a building full of white pampered fratboys. I don't know, I'm going out on a limb as I'm not an ethnic minority where I am and haven't experienced it but I suspect a sense of self preservation kicks in. I know I'd have one if I lived in a country where I could get shot by Rosco P. Coltrane because of the way I looked. Life is bad enough already without working with a load of fratboys on top of that.
And I wouldn't work at Facebook either because I don't agree with the data mining and they'd be insufferable.
I'm black and I'm female.
There are certain companies that while I have the skills and I am approached by recruiters to apply for I won't.
There are other companies who after meeting their technical employees and us getting on with each other, I am told that while I will get pass the techies at interview their HR - normally full of white, middle class females - who I won't get pass. Why? Cos they are afraid I will sue them for something!
Funny thing is in all the companies I've had no problem working for the people who try and sue them are other guys. This because the type of guys who have no problems hiring me ensure I don't work in a bad environment and I personally keep well away from HR. Over the years I've worked I've had far more s*** from the b****** in HR than from the guys I've worked with and I tend to give as good as I get.
"" the purpose of a business is PROFIT. Therefore, you hire the person who will MAKE THE MOST MONEY FOR THE COMPANY. ""
In theory. My experience of working in a big west coast software company is that a lot of managers would rather the company lost business of large market segments than they would have to address issues completely foreign to their way of thinking.
I've seen it time and time again. Smart people, but blinkered in so many ways.
Indeed they most certainly do! It is a form of confirmation bias, we all do it unfortunately, and it's difficult to avoid or negate. Research has shown that selection for interview without the silent/hidden clues to racial or social background leads to more diverse interview candidate selection. On a related topic have a read here. Certain non liberal factions get all worked up over positive discrimination, however to overcome this bias there is only one method that works. FB should know better, and ought to be going out of their way to put this right.
As a 'white boy', with perhaps a slightly silver spoon, I would have to disagree, but maybe that's because I am British. I've interviewed all sorts in my time, and am pretty sure I recommended the best person for the job, irrespective of the colour of their skin, or their background. That includes Greeks, Nigerians, Romanians, Chinese, Indian, English, Scottish, and some others.
No gingers though, since I used to be one.
Please don't tar everyone with the same brush.
While I dislike the idea of hiring people because of their skin colour, the massive corporation I work for sent a team to our site to lecture us on diversity last year.
A site filled with Chinese, Filipinos, Maoris, Niueans and white people of both genders.
They sent us 5 middle-aged white men.
I got in trouble for laughing.
The ruling classes of China or India are unlikely to be white. There are probably one or two other countries, some also quite populous, that aren't run by "white people" either. Maybe e.g. Japan might count?
Presumably you are considering only a subset of ruling classes ... such as those in a distinct subset of all countries. Is there a reason you are predisposed to consider only that subset?
Japan is notorious for xenophobia. It's exceedingly rare to find anyone not of a Japanese origin in charge at a Japanese company. And by that I mean anywhere that's not Japan. When I grew up in the North East of England my dad worked for a Japanese company. All the senior management were Japanese. I wasn't going to complain though, I was 7 and grew up eating Japanese food as I went to school with my dad's boss's kids (even now I seem to be the only one in the restaurant actually using chopsticks properly)
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