“Jesse Jackson called on the Obama administration Monday to scrutinize the tech industry’s lack of diversity,” Wendy Koch reports for USA Today. “‘The government has a role to play’ in ensuring that women and minorities are fairly represented in the tech workforce, Jackson told a USA TODAY editorial board meeting. He said the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission needs to examine Silicon Valley’s employment contracts.”
“‘There’s no talent shortage. There’s an opportunity shortage,’ he said, calling Silicon Valley’s record ‘far worse’ than many others such as car makers that have been pressured by unions,” Koch reports. “Jackson has lobbied nearly two dozen tech companies to disclose hiring data, and about a dozen have done so. The result is sobering: Men make up 62% to 70% of the staffs of Twitter, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn while whites and Asians comprise 88% to 91%, according to company data released in the last two months.”
“‘This is the next step in the civil rights movement,’ Jackson said, noting minorities represent a sizable share of consumers but not workers,” Koch reports. “He said it’s bad business not to include them. Of Twitter’s U.S. employees, only 3% are Hispanic and 5% black, but those groups along with Asian Americans account for 41% of its U.S. users. Pandora and eBay will soon release their hiring data, and Apple has said it will also do so but didn’t specify when, according to Butch Wing, a national political coordinator at the Rainbow Push Coalition, an advocacy group founded by Jackson.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What’s the logic for the demographic breakdown of electronics consumers to be echoed in the electronics company’s employment demographics? We fail to see the correlation.
Let’s change the scenario to test the soundness of Jackson’s “logic” with the following: Roughly 60% of the NBA ticket buyers are caucasian. Using Jackson’s logic, he should demand that of the five players each NBA team puts on the court, three of them should be white guys. However, the NBA instead seems to be saying that the teams should simply put the best players they possibly can in the game. After all, that’s what results in the best possible product for consumers.
So, Jackson’s “logic” is illogical. There’s no sound basis for the demographic breakdown of electronics consumers to be echoed in the electronics company’s employment demographics.
Diversity is good, but getting the absolute best would seem to be the better goal. Forced diversity carries its own set of problems. Would the group be comprised of the best-qualifed people possible or would it be designed to hit pre-defined quotas? Would some [employees], consciously or unconsciously, consider certain [employees], or even themselves, to be tokens meant to fill a quota?
This could also work in Apple’s and other company’s favor. Truly looking at qualified people from a larger pool could result in delivering different viewpoints and new ways of looking at things and tackling problems than a more homogenized [workforce] would be capable of delivering.
Regardless and of course, someday it would be nice for everyone to just be able to look at a group and only see people, not skin color and/or gender.
Related articles:
Tim Cook: Apple will release diversity data ‘at some point’ – July 9, 2014
Jesse Jackson targets tech’s lack of diversity; sends letter to Apple, Google, HP, others – March 19, 2014
U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. blames Apple iPad for killing thousands of American jobs – April 16, 2011
I want to see Jackson’s proof that it is not a talent shortage. I’m not saying that any race or gender lacks the ability to get a degree in a technical field, but articles I’ve read recently lead me to believe that women and minorities are still under-represented in technical degree programs. Tech companies can/will/should hire those who are trained for the job. This issue needs to first be addressed at the education level.
The wrong person was assassinated. Too bad it was Martin Luther King Jr.. Instead, we’re stuck with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
You can be rest assured that if you need someone to stir up some race issue, you’ll find one of those two available. I think they are on some kind of rotation.
Hey Jesse, if your worried so much about diversity, then get your’s and Sharpton’s sorry ass over to Foxxcon. It’s nothing but a sea of Mr. Spock hair cuts in there.
?! I’m a diversity-in-everything fanatic. But no way do I support hiring people for anything JUST because they’re the downtrodden-minority-of-the-week.
Quality and qualifications. THOSE are the goals! I’m constantly doing my personal best locally to encourage and assist anyone with talent and potential skills. I also wish I could throttle a few irresponsible parents and raise their children for them. I dream.
What do you know. We agree.
Thus speaks someone who has never been a member of any “workforce” — so far as I know, he’s never held a job as a full-time employee of an employer.
Jackson……… A jackass.
I really hate putting people in containers like this, but If Jesse Jackson insists – most of my black friends that are in the more studied professions are doctors or lawyers, for whatever reasons, they don’t give a shit about being engineers. I really wish he’d just go away. Trying my best to think of a time he was relevant, or anything but a trouble maker, or legitimately helpful to anyone, and coming up empty.
I don’t care what Jackson says. It’s far better today ( if more blacks means better ) than it was 20 years ago.
There are many reasons that blacks do not enter engineering or most of the sciences, math, engineering, and technology fields, not the least of which the fact that there are such opportunities is not made clear early on in education.
From the moment children speak English, they should be indoctrinated into the idea that there are opportunities out there, and that (if I might borrow from Apple’s greatest commercial) the only limits will be the size of your ideas and the degree of your dedication.
Instead in public schools we are taught nothing but political left claptrap about how limited we are due to racism. When black parents try to get their kids out of public schools through voucher systems, along comes someone like Obama to shoot it down. Nope. Can’t have that.
Opportunity, achievement, freedom, Americanism… these concepts should be drilled into kids. Instead they’re learning to be tolerant of Islam.
To look at this issue seriously instead of being partisan fanboys regurgitating talking points, it’s worth looking at what the situation is, and why it is this way.
I’ve working in Silicon Valley for a long time and in IT in another state before that. I’ve never encountered hiring bias against race, sex, religion or anything else. This area is extremely progressive and talented employees far to rare and valuable.
It’s a bit ironic that this issue comes up as much as the counter issue of outsourcing to India and visas for India (and elsewhere).
The reality of the situation though is that there are far fewer female engineers as well as far fewer engineers of various racial backgrounds (as well as other specialized tech workers).
There’s not some hidden pool of unemployed female/black engineers being turned away from jobs.
Instead of looking at the numbers at Apple, Microsoft, Intel, etc…, it’s worth looking at the numbers at Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc…
You’ll see that there has always been an equal correlation.
Now, if we decide we want to do something about any of this, the place to start is with education, and the place to start within education is early on where kids are forming their paths.
From here we see girls still being pushed away from math and the sciences as well as being pulled into other fields at the same time.
For blacks and other statistically lower-income minorities, what we see is that since schools are primarily locally funded those living in poorer conditions will replicate a cycle of:
low income -> poor schools/education -> low income
Again, it’s a question of *if* we want to do something about this.
If we do, looking at this as a racial issue misses the point. If the cycle of poverty->education continues, and grows, it affects the entire country, not just any race.
What is needed is a system to help ensure that education across the nation meets a minimum threshold with those capable from any school being encouraged to pursue various paths and given the opportunity (financially) to do so.
It would be like giving whites males basketballs and courts to practice on all day. They (most) already have them and they (most) have so many other things. For lower-income blacks (and other minorities) they don’t have much of anything else nor as many other opportunities. For many of them, the way out is to become a pro athlete or choose another career that doesn’t demand much in terms of having an education.
What he means by, “diversity” is taking over jobs by black ignorant homeless people. Have you flown Delta lately? Awful employees all in the name of diversity.
Rev. Jackson, face facts of business, diversity has nothing to do with it. Knowledge, skills, education are what are important. Regardless of ones ethnicity when you do not have the skill set you will not be hired.
Do you have the skills to support servers, software, write code? If not should you be hired for a tech job? You sir, are appallingly ignorant or stupid.
Liberals care about intentions, Conservative care about results.
From here in Chicago we know about the Budweiser distributorship Jesse extorted for his son. Its called the Chicago way, Jesse style. With Jr. in jail you think he would be as quiet as a Operation Push church mouse. Remember all the gun fire in Chicago is caused by no high tech jobs. Call out the guard, Jesse. More important things to worry about in CHItown.
I saw a report on how tech companies can do better and I believe that it is true: Make sure that applicants get an interview and get considered even if they don’t fit the stereotype of a techie. They might have talent even if they don’t have the PhD. They might be good coders even if they don’t wear the same kind of clothes or sneakers as stereotype coders.
Sad. Jesse spreads the unfortunate stereotype that all black people are retard loudmouths who have no idea how to do real work and try to make a living by complaining all day. There are talented, motivated black people out there Jesse, so why would anyone want to listen to you?
I have no idea what you are talking about in your first paragraph. You say you believe it is true and then write a bunch of things that make absolutely no sense. Are you writing a fictional novel? Seriously what are these stereotypes of techies you are talking about? You obviously have NO idea about the industry. I would be willing to bet that the tech industry might in fact have the LEAST amount of discrimination of any industry. As other’s (who actually have first hand experience) have pointed out, any techn company will bend over backwards to get ANY talented candidate. These people are rare and extremely valuable.
I think your beef is with the talent pool that is available. Which gets into the actual root of the problem. If you want to solve the problem get its source. The US desperately needs more people enrolling in science and engineering programs.
I want Jesse Jackson to look into the lack of diversity in the NAACP.
Gender ratio of engineers completing bachelor degree
Male:Female. 5:1
Percentages to complete bachelors engineering degree
Caucasian 63.4%
African American 31.2%
Latino 52.3%
Asian 72.8%
African American Representation in Engineering
Undergrads 13%
bachelors degree 5%
Engineering workforce 5%
Data for years 2008-2010
The problem isn’t in the hiring practices. There’s lots of reasons things are as they are, but the tech industry companies are hiring all the graduates. Global outsourcing of engineering is becoming an issue more than race or gender.
Tech doesn’t hire women and minorities. They hire white and Asian men. Are white and Asian men ALWAYS only the best? Tech is in the Lilly white wealthy suburbs and away from poor urban areas except in San Francisco. While it’s a good excuse to say only white and Asian men are the best, tech is NOT in Detroit, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Chicago’s South Side, or anywhere where even the white people are poor. Tech is about money. Blacks and Latinos are not where money is. Institutional racism thrives.
Read my comment above. They hire all that are there to be hired
LOL you have no idea how hard it is to find talent engineers. Companies will open offices in other regions of the country just to try and tap into local talent pools. They’ll do that but they won’t hire a woman or minority. Right… If you could point me in the direction of all of these talented, brilliant engineers who are currently unemployed… perhaps send me their resumes please.
Dude is it seriously that hard to understand the root of the problem? The only possible reason why tech is not in those areas you listed is racism? It has nothing to do with the lack of top schools in those areas? Why would I open an office in an area where there is not a large pool of talent available? Instead of wasting time pretending there is racism in tech, focus on why there are no talent pools in those areas. Of course that’s assuming you actually want to solve the problem. Perhaps you are like Jesse and you benefit from the problem existing.
Soooo…roughly 83% of the US is not black. Going by JJ’s formula…the NBA is racist.
Got it.