Apple’s diversity chief out after outcry
nypost.com
nypost.com
> Young Smith had been talking with Apple CEO Tim Cook about the next phase of her career and life since about a year ago, according to a source. Over the last few months, Apple has been searching for a successor to replace Young Smith. It’s not quite clear, however, when exactly Young Smith decided she would leave Apple. But based on that timeline, it seems as though Young Smith made up her mind before those comments in Bogotá, Colombia for which she later apologized.
Yes, journalists are too quick to argue causality when there is only correlation. IMO, the burden more on the TC reporter to explain why she accepts her anonymous source's claim, which implies Apple was incompetent enough to hire someone for a highly publicized position who had planed to quit 2-3 months after getting the job, as opposed to being pushed out for not being wanted in the position, even if she had never made those controversial comments.
Harder to swallow is that if this really were the case, then why is an anonymous source pushing this angle. Why would Apple try to hide the innocuous explanation for Smith's departure?
Indeed, diversity is about filling a quota on visible traits like genders, shade of skin color and so on.
> “More importantly, I want to assure you Apple’s view and our dedication to diversity has not changed.”
Well it's good to know what Apple's view of diversity is.
Sometimes it can be ambiguous and one might actually believe them when they say "We deeply believe that diversity drives innovation". But this cleared it up. Yeah they don't really believe it drives innovation. If they did every manager in the chain and team member would go out of their way to hire "diverse" people because it would directly improve the product and the bottom line, but they don't believe that as institution.
Neither does Google or other big tech company. They wouldn't need a "diversity president" if they did. Diverse candidates would find their way to their new positions pretty easily, helped by stock options, good salaries and so on. Look how efficiently these companies seek and find leaders in various technologies or project or areas of interest.
What they believe is avoiding bad PR. They don't want to be criticized by some tech gossip blog about not being "diverse" and deep down they know how that tech blog measure "diversity".
Also tangentially related, notice how many times age is included in "diversity" spectrum? Somehow hiring people of various ages is not seen as improving diversity because well, it's not about gender or skin color, so gossip tech blogs won't notice and still criticize them.
In light of that, it makes complete sense that Denise had to apologize. But it was a very useful move as well simply because it made the true values more transparent. Given everything else, at least it's good to have more transparency and clarity.
This sort of language is problematic and harmful in that it implies that "white guys" (not even white people, just men) by default can always "do the job," and that anyone outside of that group must be judged to some sort of different standard. It makes it challenging to talk about diversity when statements start off with racist and sexist undertones.
This is getting to a point that even genuinely talking about it, and rightly so, risks backfiring at you because there’s always somebody willing to make 10 extra mental steps to find it offensive.
Group 1:
1) white man (Democrat Stanford grad)
2) white woman (Democrat Stanford grad)
3) black man (Democrat Stanford grad)
1) white man (Democrat Stanford grad)
2) white man (Libertarian Kansas kid self-taught)
3) white man (South Africa bootcamp grad)
If that was the idea that Denise Young Smith was trying to get across, that nuance got lost in the backlash.
* Why are there only three seats at the table?
Diversity and inclusion is about analyzing and addressing systemic assumptions and the arbitrary, exclusionary constraints we put on ourselves as an industry.
Contrived hypothetical scenarios fail to frame the real problem because those contrived scenarios are exactly what good policies push back against.
Neither more diversity of thought between members of a group OR a single leaning, shared by all members of a group imply higher value.
> In [Group 2's] case, diversity of thought is valued more than diversity of skin color.
And you claimed, quote, "Why assume Group 2 has, or can produce, higher-valued thoughts?"
Value of Thought and Diversity of Thought are two independent properties that can coexist independently.
Sure. But that's not what parent is claiming. Parent is claiming that the company that prefers to hire Group 1, values diversity of thought over diversity of skin color.
The assumption there is that Group 2 can't offer that same "diversity of thought." Parent doesn't consider whether "diversity of thought" actually follows from how parent defines Group 1, or that valuing "diversity of thought" in the way that it's claimed will make the company better.
This means diversity of thought necessarily follows form the example given as it was defined as such (group 1 has diversity of thought, group 2 not).
The importance of diversity of thought can be illustrated by using machine learning; if your learning factor (diversity of thought) is too low, not all solutions are explored, instead a local minima is found and then reinforced by the ML algorithm. If the learning factor is higher then the algorithm can freely explore for other local minima and maybe even find the absolute minima. (If it's too high then you also don't get anything useful either but that's not quite the point)
Diversity of thought is important for a company that wants to make better product, if you only have people who think alike, regardless of their other properties, they will not find the best optimal solution, only a local optimal solution.
Now, even I am being painted as "Not diverse enough" for the contingent of which you speak. Recently, I read this and it sums up where it's all heading next.
https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/straight-black-men-are-...
The reasons are many, but the biggest is that I feel that hiring people that are bad at their job but have some physical characteristic, will make the problem much worse in the long run by "proving the biased people right" about their biases.
I think it's not good to simply assume that you can insert any random person in a job and they'll "just become not bad" at it.
And this is not restricted to any nationality, gender, etc, either, you can take any two random humans and they'll (with high probability) like and perform at a job at different levels, irrelevant of the amount of learning performed (respective to the learning level atleast)
It's not some innate quality, it's just how people all over the globe are made: different.
"Some people", as in, anecdotally? Or some groups of people? I don't think any diversity initiative calls for random people to be inserted into jobs.
>Or some groups of people?
I've deliberately not singled out any specific group of people but there is some evidence from Sociology and Biology studies that certain genetic or social groups of people will not have as much interest or understanding of computers.
Of course the social groups can "fix" this much easier, provided they have a desire to do so.
But again, not mentioning any specific groups specifically because it is not necessary. You can get the same results by replacing "computer skills" with any other skill or job and repeat to get the same results.
>I don't think any diversity initiative calls for random people to be inserted into jobs.
The assertion of the comment I responded to was that "People can learn on the job and can become not 'bad'" and asking if maybe there is something that makes some people bad at computers naturally, to which I responded as you have seen.
The theory states that inequality is due to racism and anyone who is part of the dominant race not only benefits from racism but unconsciously perpetuates it. This is why everyone is so sensitive, because this is what is taught in the humanities in college. "Everything is racist, everything is sexist, etc."
The other 15k+ people were trying to pass their classes, partying, or both.
Also, you mention an office of 45% women and 40% minority. Is the split the same for your technical team?
The company is certainly innovative but it's predominantly (2017) white and male but on the other hand Apple don't say what % diversity is needed to do this driving. Don't they just choose employees on merit irrespective of any other consideration? They'd be dumb if they didn't.
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-releases-2017-diversity...
If you look at some of the most innovative places in history, they weren't particularly diverse. It doesn't seem to have held them back. Renaissance Florence wasn't especially diverse, it was a bunch of Florentines sitting around doing Florentine things. Victorian London wasn't all that diverse, either, but they were innovating at an astounding rate.
Bell Labs in the 1960s was mostly nerdy white dudes with pocket protectors, and they were massively innovative -- because what drives innovation is thoughts like "What if we laid down amorphous silicon dioxide directly onto the wafer and annealed it to reduce electron traps?" rather than thoughts like "omg, I just saw a person with a different colour skin, my mind is totally blown".
People from different social and cultural backgrounds can bring different experiences and skill sets. There are many, many examples of this throughout history.
It would seem many of the diversity programs are in some ways meant to address past racism in this country. That may be a whole different topic.
>Denise Young Smith, who was named vice president of diversity and inclusion in May, made controversial comments last month during a One Young World Summit in Bogotá, Colombia.
>“There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation,” the inaugural diversity chief said.
>“Diversity is the human experience,” she said, according to Quartz. “I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.”
>Her comments appeared to defend Apple’s overwhelmingly white and male leadership at a time when the company’s makeup is markedly uneven.
Wow what a shit show, even if she believes this nuanced, thoughtful view of diversity, she should have realized that she was hired for one reason only: racial extortion. Now apple can go out and hire the shakedown artist they deserve.
Her comment was almost certainly false, though public humiliation and firing after a 20 year career is a bit of an excess. Why not discuss the matter and ask for a gracious apology?
I think you are confusing the shallow tribal identity groups with weak ideological consciousness on the left with the far left; the complex multidimensional nature of diversity and privilege is pretty much the core of intersectionality, which is a pretty key concept for the left, especially (much of) the far left.
Or you're talking about the narrowly economic faction of the far left that sees non-class identity largely as a distraction from class issues, with diversity as a non-issue, and all privilege and discrimination boiling down to class warfare. But even they don't really miss multidimensionality, they just see the multidimensionality as a multipronged distraction.
Here is an example. Being male is not a privilege for a young black man being stopped by a police officer in the United States. On the contrary, it greatly increases the odds he will soon be unjustly killed.
Similarly, being Jewish may well be a privilege for a wealthy London banker, but is just as easily a death sentence for anyone, including an elite, in Lebanon over the past 25 years.
IME, to the extent that occurs, that's not at all typical of the far left, but (to the extent it happens at all), the weakly-ideology tribal-identity left.
> Here is an example. Being male is not a privilege for a young black man being stopped by a police officer in the United States.
It actually is in some ways; the ways gender interacts with race in that scenario is complex.
> On the contrary, it greatly increases the odds he will soon be unjustly killed.
It greatly increases the chance of being unjustly subject to non-sexual violence by the police; OTOH, it very much seems to (though numbers are much harder to come by) greatly decrease the chance of being subject to sexual violence by the police. Now, police sexual assault gets less attention (for many of the same reasons sexual assault more generally doesn't, regarding publicity being retraumatizing for victims, etc.), But it's a serious issue, with significant racial aspects, too.
Also, I should admit it's difficult to tell who is further left than whom these days. The political spectrum itself is very multi-dimensional once one abandons the lens of a specific tribe. One must look no further than the reactions to Maajid Nawaz to see a prime example.