[kevingadd]

The fundamental question is whether you think the population distribution of a company with thousands (or tens of thousands) of employees should look similar to the population distribution of the countries it's based in.

If the distribution doesn't look similar, why not? Is there a good excuse for being predominantly male, or predominantly white, or predominantly asian, or predominantly indian? What does that good excuse look like? I see people complain about these things all the time.

There's an assumption here that discrimination in the workplace only exists because of DEI which is a weird leap to make IMO. You could argue that DEI made the situation worse and that gets us somewhere but it's not clear to me whether that's your position.

[x3n0ph3n3]

The discrimination is likely occurring much earlier in the employment pipeline (this was obvious in 2008). Why is it Google's job to solve that problem?

[kevingadd]

I agree that it is probably occurring at multiple points in the pipeline. We recently observed one attempt at fixing this earlier in the pipeline (affirmative action at universities) being struck down, though - perhaps for good reason. So it seems like it's not allowed to fix it at the university level, and it's not FAANG's job to fix it in their hiring pipeline, so whose job is it to fix it? Elementary school teachers?

My instinct is that it has to be addressed broadly across all stages of the pipeline for there to be any results.

[Jensson]

> so whose job is it to fix it? Elementary school teachers?

Yes, if elementary school teachers discriminates against kids then that has to be fixed. And if its a funding issue for poor neighborhood schools then that has to be fixed. If good teachers refuse to work at poor schools due to crime and other problems, then that has to be fixed.

The fix should never be to discriminate based on race or gender, it should always be to remove discrimination. Positive discrimination based on race and gender will ultimately lead to more discrimination in other areas, since now race and gender is a sign you got positively discriminated and thus didn't compete on the same merits.

You will never remove the label "diversity hire" from peoples minds as long as you discriminate positively like that.

[x3n0ph3n3]

It's also a parenting and social in-group problem. Many young black kids avoid STEM because they can be seen as being "too white."

[perching_aix]

> Why is it Google's job to solve that problem?

This gave me a funny thought, can you imagine the absolute shitstorm if the government mandated ethnic and gender quotas for every workplace? Now that'd have been some real popcorn time, if I get my eyes roll over from all the overreach and oppression talk here now, that'd be a thread I would not dare to open for sure.