Facebook only hired seven black people in 2013, latest diversity report says | Hacker News Reader

Facebook only hired seven black people in 2013, latest diversity report says

theguardian.com

FTA: "The company did not provide a breakdown of the exact numbers of people of different ethnicities in different ranks at the firm. It is required to do so by US law ..."

Really? Federal law? That's horrendous ... but then I'm continually surprised by the outright racism of 'affirmative action' programmes and the like; I suppose if you have those, you need to get some supporting data from somewhere.

"Only seven black people". So how many should they hire? Seriously, what's the number? 20? 50? Would 50 be Ok?

Liberals and sjw keep whining about not enough diversity, but what is the concrete target here? When will there be enough black people? Or women? Or transgender? What's the actual number/ratio to satisfy them?

I think you make a mistake in suggesting a specific number is what is being looked for, or that it's a purely external issue which people are "whining" about.

Facebook says it wants more diversity. Research, which Zuckerberg cites in the article, suggests that more diverse teams perform better, so you can consider this a way to improve job performance.

That said, African Americans are 12.2% of the U.S. Population. 12.2% of their 2013 hires (1,231) would be ~150 black people. How about that as a goal? Seems reasonable.

That wouldn't actually fix the disparity within their company, given the current makeup has less then 1% black people currently, but it would be a significant step toward their stated goal.

150. OK. Now how about 140? Is it still OK? 120? Do we still get an article like this one if it's 120? How about 170? Do we have the opposite problem or is 170 still good diversity?

And it's not just for black people. We need the same numbers for women, Latino, native, Asian, transgender, homosexuals, bisexuals, body disabled people, people with mental disease, people from low income family...

An of course we need to define each category. When are you black enough? Do you need both your parents to be black or is one enough? How about Asian? Are Indians considered Asians here? At what stage of your transition should you be to be considered transgender? Do you have to transition to be included in the transgender bucket?

I'm not at all sure what point you are trying to make.

I would say working to increase diversity is a lot like firefox, or the linux kernel, or another open source project, where you keep working and making things better, but you never really finish.

As you work, you also develop better tools and metrics that more accurately reflect performance. It's a process of improvement, not a solution.

HN is full of articles complaining about technical job interviews and candidate selection procedures that result in replicating the status quo.

These statistics may be a meaningful manifestation of that, as may many other sources.

That many? That has to be a record for Silicon Valley companies. Anyone who has worked in the valley knows there aren't any black people.

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