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by DiggityDug7 4404 days ago
Does there have to be a business goal? Making society more fair is a good goal. Reducing the white male preference in the job market should be a social responsibility for a company that greatly impacts our daily lives.

There could be business goals though: it improves people's public opinion of you and in this case may help protect them from lawsuits.

This link at the bottom of the page has some more info... http://www.google.com/diversity/

4 comments

> Making society more fair is a good goal. Reducing the white male preference in the job market should be a social responsibility for a company that greatly impacts our daily lives.

The data Google just posted contradicts you. 61% of Google employees are white, while 80% of the total US workforce is, see e.g. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/google-releases-emp...

That means white people are under-represented at Google.

The group whose representation is most diverging from the population as a whole are Asians, who are hugely over-represented.

Overall, the numbers show that Asians are over-represented, which may explain much of the under-representation by all other groups. So the story here is certainly not one of "white male preference in the job market". You might be right about male, but not about white.

OT: I had this in mind when the character on House of Cards complained that she'd feel like a token Asian minority if she worked at Google.

Writer research failure.

How is it unfair to hire what you perceive as the best candidate to work at your company? Something that's actually unfair would be disqualifying a better candidate purely because of his skin color/gender.

Also, just to emphasis what others have already replied to you; Whites are actually underrepresented at Google relative to the ratios seen in the rest of the workforce.

DiggityDug7, if only 5% of the country was black, say, would having under 10% of your workforce be black be considered unfair?

Likewise, if the number of comp sci graduates in the country is 5%, the same question can be asked. Who is the one being unfair?

Yes it takes the idea of a corporation strictly being beholden to shareholders and extends it to all stakeholders, which includes impacted society.