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by krashnburn200 3427 days ago
To play devils advocate here, Google has been an absolutely mind blowing company. They didn't do it by being Average, and perfect diversity means exactly that... Average.

Why are people so interested in screwing up something that obviously works, and works so amazingly well in pursuit of absurd ideologies?
3 comments
djaychela 3427 days ago
I think you're using a wrong definition of average there. Yes, if you aggregated every quality of the populace, then you would be correct. But talking of age, for instance, wouldn't be the case. I'm quite sure there are plenty of people older than me (45) who could run rings round many of Google's employees, but wouldn't get the chance to do so (or maybe want to be there given the culture).

Google may have been 'mind blowing' but there is a bucket-load of things they simply seem unable to do (such as have a clear overall strategy, leading to the mess that is their approach to messaging), and in addition while they have clearly been hugely profitable, they may not give the best experience for some of their users (I've heard the phrase 'regularly cut off [their] own limbs' used). Whether this would be changed if their workforce was more diverse in terms of age (and therefore more experienced) we will never know, but I have my suspicions.

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rifung 3427 days ago
I believe it's because research supports the idea that greater diversity leads to a better workforce.

For example, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2014/01/14/reapi...

There have been specific times as well that being in our little bubble has hurt product decisions as well, although I don't think I'm supposed to go into those.

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bbarn 3427 days ago
Google got lucky. There were lots of sites out there when it was turned on that did the exact same thing. They figured out how to monetize searching before the others did, and once market share was had, it was and still is unbreakable.

Everything else other than advertising has failed or is held up by that ad revenue. They may want to play world leaders, but they're an ad company.

Now - back to your point about absurd ideologies, it's against the US law to discriminate based on age. This ad company needs to play by the rules, regardless of how many ads it has sold.

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