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Comment by vgoh1 | Hacker News Reader

The nation is somewhere around 12℅ black, and a little over 50℅ female. Am I the only one that just doesn't see a problem with Apple being 9℅ black and 37℅ female? That is not close enough? Will people only be satisfied when companies exactly match the demographics of the countries they operate in? There are many more white, Asian, and Indian males that graduate with tech degrees, so Apple is to ignore this when hiring? It's not Apples fault that there are fewer minorities and women graduating with STEM degrees. America is so damn race obsessed.

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Nitpick: 32 percent female; 37 percent was for new hires.

More importantly:

> Critics have pointed out that Apple is more diverse because a significant percentage of the company’s employee base are lower-paid workers in its retail stores, which Google and Facebook do not have. But Apple’s gains this year did not come exclusively from retail. There was a 1 percent increase for women and blacks in technical jobs.

According to the actual report:

http://www.apple.com/diversity/

They give a breakdown on gender globally and race within the US. For tech workers, the numbers are 23% female, 8% black, 8% Hispanic (national 17%) - and 27% Asian. The race stats are not terrible, but 23% female is pretty bad (though it might be better in the US).

  There was a 1 percent increase for women and blacks in technical jobs.

No, there was a 1 percentage point increase, not 1 percent. That's an over 14 percent increase (using their grossly round numbers).

I don't consider it a problem because there is full employment nationwide even amongst the most marginalized engineers.

So why is the Washington Post obsessed with Silicon Valley, in particular Facebook, Google, and Apple.

Who even cares about what schools they recruit at? I didn't go to any of those and I get a recruiter from Google trying to poach me every 6 months, and I just assumed everyone else was too.

> So why is the Washington Post obsessed with Silicon Valley, in particular Facebook, Google, and Apple.

Because certain Silicon Valley companies (non-tech) are used by their owners to push their political ideals.

Some SV companies were backing the now defunct Gawker, presumably they've been using media as an anti-PR arm for a long time. It is like they are emulating the metapolitics of Washington.

> Will people only be satisfied when companies exactly match the demographics of the countries they operate in?

Well, why not? That would be a good way, in general, to eliminate discrimination, class and caste systems that hinder social mobility.

Moreover, those demographics should be consistent over each pay scale. I suspect Apple is making its figures look better by hiring low-paid minorities.

The way we should do this, is for every large company to cross-tabulate every pay scale by relevant demographic - ethnic group, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc - and do a chi-squared test against the official proportion of demographics in the United States. If the p-value falls below, oh let's say 0.001, we apply the corporate death penalty, and revoke the company's business license.

Now, some people would object to this. But it is a transparent test, and simple for companies to fix: just hire more minorities to redress the balance. It would result in the virtual elimination of all persistent inequalities. I think it would be worth it.

No, it's not close enough. You're acting like the low representation in tech companies is strictly because there are a lot more male white/asian/indian candidates, but that's not correct. A big reason why there are a lot fewer candidates from other demographics is in a large part because of the low representation. Lack of representation both means lack of role models, and it also serves as a big signal that someone in an underrepresented demographic is going to have a hard time succeeding in that industry. It also means that people of underrepresented groups who go into the industry anyway are not going to find very many people like themselves, which will make them less comfortable (which leads to fewer people going into the industry in the first place).

On a different note, why did you use ℅ instead of %? ℅ is U+2105 CARE OF, but you used it like a percentage.

Looks like you found a bug in the Google Keyboard on the final beta of Android Nougat on the Nexus 6P! That symbol shows up on the Google Keyboard in place of percent.

I do understand the need for people to see others that look like themselves, but at what cost? Here is the cost: when you say you want "larger percent of X demographic", you could also say you want a "smaller percent of Y demographic". A company is not simply going to have a bigger workforce to fit more black women, they are going to pass on some Asian man to fit them in. That's a disservice to some hard working people. We are, after all, people. We all want different things in life.

"A big reason why there are a lot fewer candidates from other demographics is in a large part because of the low representation."

Can you back this with a peer-reviewed study? Or this is one of things we are supposed to take for self-evident?

Have you ever actually tried talking to people in underrepresented groups? Asking for a peer-reviewed study for something that over 50% of the world experiences in their personal lives is just a tactic for shutting down the conversation.

Off-topic, this comment has the id 12222222. Neat!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12222222

> A big reason why there are a lot fewer candidates from other demographics is in a large part because of the low representation.

Citation needed? And how did we arrive at the large number of asian/indian professionals today, when they too lacked representation? I am very sceptic for claiming representation as the main ("in a large part") reason.

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