She resigned because Google would not disclose the identity of a researcher who essentially denied her paper. Well she threatened to resign, which in multi-billion-dollar-companies language is basically walking out of the door.
This is just one problem of playing the identity politics game, you won't win. Now any firing of a Back person will be seen as a hostile move, regardless of whether or not it was warranted. You have the Twitter mob decide for you that those firings were wrong regardless of evidence.
How about go back to hiring people for their merit, instead of filling up "diversity slots"?
Would you stop reading them if they had, lets say, 60% of black employees? Or women?
I never liked Vice and I don't read their articles, but when I read something it's because I find it interesting, not because of the colour of the skin of the author.
It you don't base your reading of the skin color of the author, that's ok if your reading the correct things. You just have to punch that much harder however when you find another company doesn't quite have the proper blend of people.
Look at management: 70% white, 5% black. For a company based in New York that isnt hiring PhDs, tell me how this happens?
How is it Vice cant hire more than 5% black managers (or 8% overall) when half their staff are fresh-out-of-college trust fund kids living in parents-paid Park Slope brownstones?
How is that "much worse"? Those numbers sound about the same as Google to me.
To a large extent, SV tech firms and media companies are hiring from the same pool of upper-middle-class social climbers who went to elite universities.
This does seem worse. Google is at the mercy of hiring from the pipeline of universities CS programs and graduate programs.
Vice is hiring journalism, english, art history, classics majors and all random degress where there is absolutely no constraint.
It is much, much easier to find a black entry level employee who has ANY undergrad degree (journalism) than it is to find a black entry level employee from Stanford CS (tech).
I live in a predominantly black neighborhood and no one follows this. Mostly feelings are negative toward Google because they are perceived to be contributing to gentrification. Also to some degree ordinary black people feel little connection to the hardcore STEM folks that Google focuses on hiring.
Part of the problem is the US immigration system. Instead of hiring the best talent possible at the highest wages possible, they hire the cheapest overseas talent -- by means of flooding the system with applications. This is bad for immigrants who are truly are top talent, and who deserves to be paid more.
This is also bad for local workers, especially minorities w/o connections, because Big Tech would rather higher an overseas worker at a low wage as an indentured servant while they work their way out of the H1B system over a decade.
Do you have numbers to back that up? Last time I've seen such discussion it turned out that FAANG H1B application numbers are quite low and most of the quota is consumed by "service" companies.
> Last December, Dr. Timnit Gebru, a world-renowned AI ethicist and one of the highest profile and highest ranking Black women at Google, announced the company had fired her for speaking out about racism and censorship of anti-racist research
No, she menaced to resign and they accepted, she was not fired for speaking out about racism, which coincidentally was her primary role at the organization. There's a vast difference.
In normal situations, they would've discussed her conditions with her, and told her that they couldn't accommodate it. When people resign, they normally give two weeks+ notice. She was on vacation, and wasn't even aware that they'd "accepted" her resignation, effective immediately.
Doesn’t take a genius to recognize that fewer Black engineers at Google means more biased ML models -> more bad/embarrassing publicity for Google -> more unwelcome attention from a Democrat-controlled WH and Congress.
Is this the intent for the company’s long term vision and branding strategies?
Side comment: it’s scary how some group came with the idea that we had to capitalize Black as a racial/ethnical epithet and now every major news media does it for fear of not being sensitive enough. Not considering whether there’s any sense behind that practice.
It's Orwellian. If you want to identify the despots, look at the language they use - it's convoluted, contrived and emotionless. Prefixed and negated, loaded with ideological meaning, instead of just saying simple words everyone already knows.
This goading on of race consciousness is toxic and racist. It's a way to descend into reducing everyone to their skin color under the banner of social progress.
One of the things that goes unasked in these debates is how the hiring of minorities is affected by foreign hires, permanent residents or recent immigrants. I saw a stat that said that Google sought ~10K H1Bs. Given that these people are almost all in technical roles and that they don’t tend to come from the parts of the world where black people are prevalent it kinda acts as a cap on what percentage of technical employees can be black. A significant percentage of those that are American are first generation immigrants or green card holders — probably with similar demographics to the H1B employees. If we assume that this describes 1/2 - 2/3 of employees, and everyone else is completely representative of the American average, you’d be looking at between 4.5 - 6 % of employees as black.
> All of these companies, she said, “must increasingly walk the walk and not view their relationships with Black employees and organizations as transactional.”
I can't think of any relationship more transactional than an employment relationship with a corporation.
I question if Google even cares. Their pipeline to talent as a whole is pretty epic and wide. They may have lost opportunities to hire great black employees, but those same gaps will be replaced with equal talent. Google only seems to care about diversity if it interferes with profit.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 85.7 ms ] threadHow about go back to hiring people for their merit, instead of filling up "diversity slots"?
You can sleep soundly knowing that most black people, lacking her fame, well have bad experiences at the FANGs and no one will give f*ck.
Vice seems to succeed and we all continue to read them despite them having only 8% black employees and even less in management. https://company.vice.com/diversity-and-inclusion/
I never liked Vice and I don't read their articles, but when I read something it's because I find it interesting, not because of the colour of the skin of the author.
How much diversity does Vice have? You can see at: https://company.vice.com/diversity-and-inclusion/
Look at management: 70% white, 5% black. For a company based in New York that isnt hiring PhDs, tell me how this happens? How is it Vice cant hire more than 5% black managers (or 8% overall) when half their staff are fresh-out-of-college trust fund kids living in parents-paid Park Slope brownstones?
To a large extent, SV tech firms and media companies are hiring from the same pool of upper-middle-class social climbers who went to elite universities.
Vice is hiring journalism, english, art history, classics majors and all random degress where there is absolutely no constraint.
It is much, much easier to find a black entry level employee who has ANY undergrad degree (journalism) than it is to find a black entry level employee from Stanford CS (tech).
At any rate, you were quoting stats for management roles, so undergraduate majors are irrelevant.
The only ones who benefit are BigTech.
Sheesh ...
Tech people, sure. Silicon Valley, sure. But...I mean. Connection here?
No, she menaced to resign and they accepted, she was not fired for speaking out about racism, which coincidentally was her primary role at the organization. There's a vast difference.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-a...
Says she’d quit as a threat, and they accepted.
Ok, bye then.
In normal situations, they would've discussed her conditions with her, and told her that they couldn't accommodate it. When people resign, they normally give two weeks+ notice. She was on vacation, and wasn't even aware that they'd "accepted" her resignation, effective immediately.
A rose by any other name...
Is this the intent for the company’s long term vision and branding strategies?
This goading on of race consciousness is toxic and racist. It's a way to descend into reducing everyone to their skin color under the banner of social progress.
Tech created by white folk, who bring in their own biases, will lead to problematic tech. It's a difficult pill to swallow, but it exists.
I can't think of any relationship more transactional than an employment relationship with a corporation.