“Apple became the latest tech company to reveal statistics on employee diversity Tuesday,” James O’Toole reports for CNNMoney. “The results? Predictably unimpressive. The company’s 98,000 worldwide employees are 70% male, a figure that jumps to 72% for leadership roles and 80% for technical positions.”
“Apple’s U.S. employees are 55% white, compared with 63% of the general population, though whites account for 64% of those in leadership roles. Asians make up 15% of the company, with Hispanics at 11% and blacks at 7%,” O’Toole reports. “The nation’s overall population is about 63% white, 17% Hispanic, 13% African American and 5% Asian, according the Census Bureau, with women making up 49% of the work force.”
“Google reported in May that its staff is 70% male. The search giant is 61% white, 30% Asian, 3% Hispanic and 2% black,” O’Toole reports. “Facebook said in June that it was 69% male globally, with its U.S. workforce 57% white, 34% Asian, 4% Hispanic and 2% black.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
A message from Apple CEO Tim Cook on diversity – August 12, 2014
Jesse Jackson calls on Obama to scrutinize tech industry’s ‘lack of diversity’ – July 28, 2014
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
Forced diversity will Kill Apple as it has Killed the Federal Goverment.
You are so right. Think NASA, the armed forces and the post office to name but three.
huh? The federal government is a reflection of the constituents who elect it. If you think that the feds are big, fat, ignorant, and lazy, perhaps you should look around. Change starts by doing whatever it takes to have a responsible, conscientious, informed and educated citizenry. Observation shows that the complainers who hate “guvmint” are the same individuals who pride themselves in being a parasite on everyone around them.
“Observation shows that the complainers who hate “guvmint” are the same individuals who pride themselves in being a parasite on everyone around them.”
that sure is scientific.
And of course INCORRECT! 😀
In my retirement, I do volunteer work in a deeply rooted generational poverty community. Some want to get out of the poverty situation and are trying, some are unsure if they want to, and some not at all and are pure parasites. I don’t hold back my help to any of these regardless of how they view the world.
And I live around people who hate “govmint”. These two groups, parasites and govmint haters are NOT the same! They are two extremes. But “ignert” people don’t know the difference.
Dayum! Botty gets an elbow from the sky. Kablam!
“Show me a man who’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and saya prayer for him
“Forced diversity”? Please. In the lack of Affirmative Action & quotas, what you have is *not* a natural balance, but one driven by discrimination, which does *not* hire the best-qualified people. Diversity hiring is about *not* hiring in an unnatural way, and emphasizes *only* hiring fairly from the pool of qualified workers. I’ll bet you even believe that AA requires employers to hired workers no qualified for the position, or somehow less qualified–something that has never been true, and has happened only when employers believe the fictional tripe coming from conservatives about non-discriminatory hiring, and hire poorly out of irrational fear. To say that non-discriminatory policies have “ruined” the federal government is shallow and unthinking, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of how things actually work.
Do you actually believe that drivel you just wrote above?
-jcr
Are you claiming that Affirmative Action has never resulted in someone being admitted to a school based on race, and not based on a “blind interpretation of their qualifications”? Or that no one was hired based on AA as you call it based on their race or gender but solely based on their qualifications?
That’s provably false.
Thank you for pointing out what should be obvious, and is obvious to anyone who hasn’t been brainwashed. Affirmative action is about our choices between candidates who are both perfectly qualified to do the job. It has never been about hiring those who are unqualified. It is about recognizing that employers are more comfortable hiring people who resemble themselves in class, gender, and ethnicity. Left to their own devices, white guys tend to hire white guys, even if there are other applicants who offer diversity in addition to their other qualifications.
The reason women tend not to go into engineering is that they know really early in the game that they will rarely be hired if a qualified male applies for the same job.
I knew a woman who graduated as valedictorian from one of the two best metallurgical engineering schools in the country and was offered jobs as a secretary. She wondered why she bothered. That was before affirmative action. Today, she’d be supervising the obviously less qualified men who refused to hire her.
Their way of saying if you’re a white man don’t bother applying for a long while. I’ve actually been noticing lately at other places, that its getting harder for white men to get a position.
Your personal observations versus official unemployment statistics. Which is more likely to be accurate on a macro scale?
what do you think of the Asian?
to ‘balance out’ tech companies would not only need to freeze Asian hiring but fire a whole bunch as the Asian percentage is already higher than population stats.
In the university I went to 50-60% of the engineering, tech, science and math classes were Asian (admittedly a whole bunch were foreign students from China etc) but for an Asian American to get a job in company that espouses politically correct ‘diversity’ means that the chances for an Asian in getting in is zero (as the percentages are already overfilled) or you would need to have top grades with a PhD vs Bsc from somebody else…
asians should fight for Diversity in the NBA, NFL etc…
” but for an Asian American to get a job in company that espouses politically correct ‘diversity’ means that the chances for an Asian in getting in is zero (as the percentages are already overfilled) or you would need to have top grades with a PhD vs Bsc from somebody else… ”
Show me a single company, anywhere in America, where this is actually happening. There are claims that whites (and Asians) are losing jobs due to “diversity” on one hand and actual unemployment statistics on the other. As the unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics is FAR higher than it is for whites and Asians, there obviously cannot be that many “diversity hires” being made.
OK. So you can downvote me. Fine. But can you cite an instance where a black or Hispanic person with a B.S. got hired over a white or Asian person with a Ph.D.? Or do you have more than anecdotal wishful thinking of “white males need not apply” that would be able to explain the higher unemployment rate among blacks and Hispanics? (Keep in mind that there are six times as many whites in the work force as blacks or Hispanics which makes the claims of whites being forced out of the workforce particularly ridiculous … it would take full employment amongst the other races for that to actually happen. In other words, if there are 7 white workers for every 1 black worker, then ALL the black workers would need to be employed before the white workers would start having real trouble finding jobs. It really is just simple applied statistics.).
Look, I would be the first person to acknowledge that the lack of nonwhites at Apple (and Google and Microsoft and IBM and everywhere else) is due to the lack of nonwhites with the required skills/experience. Just go ahead and state that – the truth – and leave the other nonsense be, because it isn’t true.
“But can you cite an instance where a black or Hispanic person with a B.S. got hired over a white or Asian person with a Ph.D.?”
I didn’t say it happened , I said if diversity rules were implemented it might happen as Asians are already over the population percentages.
Also I can easily ask you back
“Why don’t you quote me one instance where a qualified African American was denied a job at Apple because a less qualified white or Asian took it” ?
Before you spout ” As the unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics is FAR higher than it is for whites and Asians,”
I’m talking about Apple and the tech industry, so….
Go compare the hiring rates vs the COLLEGE TECH GRADUATION RATES AND THE GRADE AVERAGES (from the graduates) vs the employment rates.
ONE EXAMPLE:
Look at the stats from Southern state College with Plenty of african americans: Louisiana Tech:
Black students: percentage of student body 18% Graduation rate 35%
Asian: percentage of student body 1%, Graduation rate 75%
NOTE: Louisiana has 35% African american population
the Asian population is so small Wikipedia doesn’t even give percentages but states: it has 100,209 people of Asian descent.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE:
Caltech ( a top tech college)
Asian students make up 40% !!!!
African american: 2% !!!!
white 31%
WHAT I’M SAYING IS THAT MANY ASIAN GO FOR TECH IN SCHOOL IF YOU HAVE POLITICALLY CORRECT ‘DIVERSITY’ INITIATIVE IT WOULD MEAN MANY ASIAN TECH GRADATES WOULD BE LEFT OUT.
DIVERSITY SHOULD BE LINKED TO TECH GRADUATION STATS.
note I’m NOT saying African americans are ‘stupid’ etc or there are not some stellar African american scientists etc, I’m just saying from STATS and DATA not many of them population percentage wise graduate with tech degrees. Those are just the facts, no matter how people want to twist it.
Jesse Jackson etc SHOULD PERHAPS PUSH MORE AFRICAN AMERICANS TO STUDY IN TECH COURSES RATHER THAN BEAT UP ON APPLE ETC FOR DIVERSITY.
First off, no direspect to Louisiana Tech, but it really should not be compared to Cal Tech, a school of like 700 students where nearly everyone has perfect GPAs and SAT scores and were already doing college level work while in like the 9th or 10th grade, in any context other than having “Tech” in their names.
“Go compare the hiring rates vs the COLLEGE TECH GRADUATION RATES AND THE GRADE AVERAGES (from the graduates) vs the employment rates.”
That has already been done.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/black-men-need-more-education-to-get-the-same-jobs/375770/
I was not going to mention this, but since you brought it up …
The dirty little secret in physiological research is that Asians mean IQ, as compared against the general population is a full SD (15 points) higher. For Blacks it’s .5 SD (7.5 points) lower. Researchers never mention this fact because when they do they are routinely hounded out of their careers, but the numbers are there. Since the average IQ for undergrads is 115 and post grad candidates is 125, it’s easy to see why the universities are overpopulated with Asian students. UC Berkeley has had to devise methods of discouraging Asian applicants in order to maintain diversity standards.
The dirty little secret on the web is that 90% of statistics cited without a source are bogus.
I’ll give you a source on that …. after you give me your source.
Just did an internet search based on Zeke and your posts.
(I was not aware of the IQ differences)
seems like there’s more data supporting Zeke including Wikipedia IQ stats which shows a over 1 SD difference between white and African american IQ mirrored by scholastic tests.
Quote : “in a review of the results of a total of 6,246,729 participants on other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, found a difference in mean IQ scores between blacks and whites of 1.1 SD.”
to refute this all most African american sites say IQ test are biased etc…
(I find this personally hard to grasp as most IQ tests I’ve seen are logic, puzzles etc although it’s proven, I done it myself, you can score higher IQ by practicing IQ tests… ).
Here’s a quick citation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Validity_of_race_and_IQ
“Rushton & Jensen (2005) write that, in the United States, self-identified blacks and whites have been the subjects of the greatest number of studies. They state that the black-white IQ difference is about 15 to 18 points or 1 to 1.1 standard deviations (SDs), which implies that between 11 and 16 percent of the black population have an IQ above 100 (the general population median). According to Arthur Jensen and J. Philippe Rushton the black-white IQ difference is largest on those components of IQ tests that are claimed best to represent the general intelligence factor g.[43] The 1996 APA report “Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns” and the 1994 editorial statement “Mainstream Science on Intelligence” gave more or less similar estimates.[44][45] Roth et al. (2001), in a review of the results of a total of 6,246,729 participants on other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, found a difference in mean IQ scores between blacks and whites of 1.1 SD. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate sections (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).[46]
North East Asians have tended to score relatively higher on visuospatial subtests with lower scores in verbal subtests while Ashkenazi Jews score higher in verbal and reasoning subtests with lower scores in visuospatial subtests. The few Amerindian populations who have been systematically tested, including Arctic Natives, tend to score worse on average than white populations but better on average than black populations.[46]
The racial groups studied in the United States and Europe are not necessarily representative samples for populations in other parts of the world. Cultural differences may also factor in IQ test performance and outcomes. Therefore, results in the United States and Europe do not necessarily correlate to results in other populations.[47]”
This is an extremely well known phenomenon in psychological research circles, but it is rarely discussed except to try to debunk it because of the dangers posed to the careers of those whoso discuss it positively.
I stand corrected. Thanks for the quick reply. However, the most reliable source linked (the 1996 APA report) shows that your claim for Asians is incorrect: “Regarding Asian Americans, studies had shown slightly lower to slightly higher scores compared to White Americans.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns#Group_differences
McDruid, there is a difference between south Asian IQ and east Asian IQ, the former being about 1 SD lower than whites, and the latter being about .5 SD higher than whites. When taken as a whole, that population would come out slightly lower than whites. But the Asians I had in mind were those from east Asia (e.g. Japan, Korea, China), rather than Malaysia.
Scientific study of human intelligence and its distribution in populations is a dangerous enterprise, if the researcher wishes a quiet academic career without pickets in front of both home and classroom. There were loud outcries when a book titled The Bell Curve was published some years ago.
Following is a quotation from a commentary on that topic, at http://www.chabris.com/Chabris1998a.html
“THE MOST basic claim put forth by Herrnstein and Murray was that smart people do better than dumb people. What is so troubling about that? We rarely encounter an argument over the fact that beautiful people do better than ugly people, or tall people better than short ones, though each of these propositions is also true. Is an intellectual meritocracy less just or moral than a physical one?
The answer, unfortunately, is that whenever intelligence is said, “race” is heard; whenever race is said, “genetics” is heard; and whenever genetics is said, “inferiority” is heard–even though these issues are not necessarily connected in any way. When I mentioned to friends that I was writing an article on intelligence, many were surprised, and some wanted to know why. I can only imagine how Herrnstein was treated by his colleagues during the last 25 years of his life. The public protests may have bothered him less than the fact that people in his own community never thought of him in the same way again: he had disturbed a pleasant conversation by bringing up unpleasant facts.
Since The Bell Curve, intelligence is stronger than ever as a scientific concept, but as unwelcome as ever as an issue in polite society. It would be reassuring to think that the next twenty years, which promise to be the heyday of behavioral genetics, will change this state of affairs. But if the past is any guide, many more phony controversies lie ahead.”
Individuals differ widely in cultural background, education, talents and proclivities.While humans have equal rights, as in basic human dignity, we are not all equal in many respects, as Harrison Bergeron demonstrated. Forced “equality” is dehumanizing.
I was impressed by JFK’s attempt to fill his administration with the best and the brightest (although that wasn’t without problems).
Are there conflicts between merit and diversity? I tend to favor MLK’s focus on the individual.
The other dirty little secret is that IQ tests are not valid measures of innate intelligence. They cater to specific skills and abilities that are large taught. I scored really well on IQ tests because I was raised in a culture and educational setting that was very compatible with that type of test.
Many poor people who had more difficult educational environments do poorly on IQ tests.
IQ is largely just another measure of education, which means it has nothing to do with physiological differences, but instead is a reflection of classist (often racist) policies that provide defective education for the poor and under-privileged minorities.
That’s a nice “feel good” rationalization, but it is unfortunately, not accurate. IQ tests were devised not to measure intelligence, but to predict academic success in school children. They do that very well. And to the extent that employment involves intellectual ability, they also predict success in employment very well. The fact is that intelligence is about 60% heritable (genetic). The other 40% comes from environment. To the layman that sounds inconclusive, but 60% is a hugely important correlation. If the bulk of IQ were not genetically inherited IQ could be changed through environmental (cultural) efforts, but the fact is that it can’t. Research shows that while programs like Head Start can temporarily accelerate learning, but by the time a child who tested at given level at the age of 6 grows to be about 20 years old, his or her IQ will test out at almost exactly the same level that it was at the age of 6, regardless of efforts to improve it.
The sad fact is that some people are not as sharp as others, and most of that effect is the result of genetic inheritance. That’s just the way the world is.
I’m not comparing L. Tech to Caltech,
I’m just showing you that even in Southern states with large numbers of african americans plenty of Asians graduate from tech while the numbers are even higher for top tech colleges like Caltech.
what I’m saying that lack of number of african Americans in tech is not necessarily bias but from stats more likely because fewer of them gradate in tech.
you spout a lot but I’ve already shown how much you’re saying is nonsense and you use a lot of ‘straw man’ arguments or arguments that are opinion and impossible to refute with data.
“There are claims that whites (and Asians) are losing jobs due to “diversity” on one hand and actual unemployment statistics on the other”
seriously as you’ve twisted my original proposition (about diversity in tech) to employment in general.. SO why don’t YOU show me ” actual employment statics to show that tech companies like apple are BIASED towards blacks and Hispanics, i.e not hiring them in spite of their expertise (Tech diplomas, grade averages, etc) Vs expertise of the other races . “?
Aha, so you are going by “unemployment” stats for blacks and hispanics without regard to the % of available employees that are black and hispanic. Gotcha.
I would assume that you are then not aware that to be hired at a tech company for a technical position requires qualifications. This usually means a university degree in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) degree. How many hispanics and blacks do you think graduate with these types of degrees?
Without an available pool of these types of employees, there is no way that this mythical “diversity” will occur.
Frankly this entire topic has the reeking stench of racism, as it will mean that additional whites will have to be exceptionally better than additional blacks or hispanics for new positions. This should never be the case in a race-blind society.
If there is a problem with racial mix in technology companies it is cultural. Hispanics and blacks do not choose to major in STEM degrees, and or they do not complete them. There needs to be more effort made on the part of these types of students if they want to fill these positions to achieve this mythical balance that is desired by a very racially focused (and quite frankly racist) left that wants to divide people by race, gender, sexual orientation, and shoe size.
I’m not so sure about that. I think it just boils down to the demographics of the market as a whole. Consider that Apple, Google and FB are all within 1% of being 70% male worldwide. I think that’s just how the tech market currently breaks down.
The same can probably also be said about ethnicity. But, look! The percent of white employees in leadership roles matches the general population within 1%.
Landing a job with any of these companies is very hard for anyone. I doubt race or gender play a direct role in the hiring decision.
I’m willing to bet that this has more to do with the demographics of graduates with relevant degrees [and ultimately qualified applicants] than quotas.
I was just speaking with a friend who has a PhD in Diversity and Equity in Education about this very issue. Apple and the rest are undoubtedly hiring the best candidates and are not directly responsible for the demographics of the people coming out of Colleges and Universities. Tim Cook addressed in his letter on diversity that Apple has committed $100 million for getting technology tools to underprivileged schools. This will possibly help the future demographics of the hiring pool, but it is a long way out.
Yeah, I’m a little less clear about race than gender. It seems like there are two problems though: (1) our education system fails many students (particularly women and minorities in STEM) somehow along the way and (2) different groups have different interests.
I am admittedly clueless about how to rectify these issues. I honestly don’t even understand the problems fully. I would love to know more about why girls lose interest in math, for instance.
If all students/schools were on an equal footing AND if all demographics had similar career goals, I think we would see Apple’s diversity numbers level out.
I think you will find that in the long run, the brains of men and women are literally wired differently. Men tend to be problem solvers, natural puzzlers. They want to fix things. Women are more on the verbal side. . . And want to fix people and other softer issues. There is a lot of cross-over between the sexes, but generally, there are major differences in the way we humans think because of our natural biological bent, establish by our sex. You can see it in the unforced play of toddlers and the toys and unforced choices they make. Boys are more rambunctious and gravitate one way, girls another. No matter how much people try to say everyone is the same, they simply are not in their interests or talents.
Anatomically, adult males have 15% larger frontal lobes than adult females. The frontal lobes are the seat of higher analytical and creative functions.
Try being a white male, 50+ years old, and physically disabled. Good luck trying to find any job. I’ve been disabled since Summer 1998, and I still cannot find any IT position despite having a two-year degree as a Computer Analyst/Programmer AND a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. :/
These technical positions are mostly self selecting, so it is unsurprising it is mostly men. My experience with the company is that it is very serious about diversity, but that doesn’t mean setting quotas on hiring. Apple is very focused on performance, so competent women are just as likely to get hired as men.
Diversity and political correctness are the downfall of America. If they are qualified for the job, then hire them. If they are not qualified, they shouldn’t get the job. Done. Hiring based on characteristics of the person is abysmally stupid.
Yep. Things were much better during the Jim Crow era, right?
Leave your brain in the jar by the bed, did you?
“Diversity is the downfall of America.” Which means that things were better when opportunity went exclusively to whites. He wrote it so take it up with him. Curious that his statement gets 13 upvotes while my challenge gets nearly all downvotes.
…thought that was Eleanor Rigby.
It’s an equally stupid approach to set the quota at zero or equal to the percentage of the population at large.
Show me a single company that actually uses quotas and then we will talk.
You would be unable to verify any answer I might provide. Quotas can’t work in tech fields anyway, because the trained candidate pools are too small in all under-represented groups. Not enough blacks, women or Hispanic-surnamed engineering grads to fill the ranks. Companies like Apple recruit from top schools. They aren’t going after the top grads from East Elbow Engineering and Catering Institute, no mater their membership in an underrepresented group. But, if a company is hiring grads from the lesser schools and is under pressure, say due to Government procurement provisions, to show progress toward diversity in management, then any grad entering the tech workforce who is a member of an under-represented group has a inside track to help resolve the companies shortfall. Not exactly quotas, but real world.
heh…”East Elbow Engineering and Catering Institute”
It’s located in Dumptruck, Iowa.
And yet, hiring on personal characteristics is the norm. Employers do hire whites over non-whites and men over women* while overlooking who is the best qualified.
* Except for some occupations where women are preferred.
And mostly ridiculously successful.
What was it Dr. King said?
Something about content of character not color of skin…
I guess that was just” speach-filler” material.
So what?
I will say the same the next time a reverse discrimination claim is filed.
How much of apples employes are over 55, and how many are in leadership positions? As I believe most older people are discriminated against in the stores.
Seriously? If women wanted the jobs and were qualified I’m sure Apple would hire them. Why the hell would you want to hire unqualified people and let them cruise through a career not doing nearly as much as someone with better talent had? It has nothing to do with someone’s gender, it just happens to be the stats of their top talent. If it were mostly women instead and people were still complaining I would say the same thing. Maybe parents and high schools and universities should encourage women to be successful in these fields. It’s not Apple’s fault. So shut the fuck up.
The First Lady, Assquatch, noted last week that women are smarter than men..I’m heartened that our First Lady is above discrimination.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/06/michelle-obama-women-are-smarter-than-men/
Yeah, and how many porkers work at Apple?
Pfft.
all the pigs are in security.
some pigs are more equal than others
“Oink.” – Napoleon
heh.
I’m not so sure about this notion that Apple’s workforce should exactly mirror the demographics of the countries it employs people in.
That’s a good point, I don’t think it should either.
National stats are an interesting benchmark to weight the Apple numbers against, but shouldn’t be considered a goal.
This article is really dancing around discrimination, referring to “Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson” urging tech companies to recruit minorities, but didn’t even visit Apple. When we don’t know what the qualified applicant pool looks like, we can’t really evaluate discrimination.
Yeah, at the least they could cut out tech workers and compare them to the demographics of where Apple employs tech workers. Silicon Valley is nowhere near 13% African American. I doubt if even the make-up of Apple stores is the same as nation-wide statistics.
I demand that more people of the east coast persuasion be hired by Apple. Using this diversity logic, it is only right. Apple hires too many people from the west coast.
59% of Americans live east of the Mississippi River. Therefore, Apple should have 59% east-coastians among their ranks. I am sure they don’t. They refuse to publish their east-coast/west-coast hiring statistic. What are they hiding?
They don’t hire nearly enough illiterates either. . . Especially in upper management.
Hire the best. I am sure Apple would love to find more people that share their dream and are the best at what Apple needs that are of different races. Are we ever going to get to a point where race does not make a difference? It just seems that when white males are involved, hire the best goes right out the window. Wonder if these same individuals that are so concerned about Apple’s race makeup would apply the same rules and concerns to the sports world? Can we just get to “hire the best” and move on?
I would argue that the statistics show that Asians are underrepresented, especially at the managerial ranks. So it would appear that more than a few whites are being promoted over more highly qualified Asians. Incidentally, this happens throughout the tech world, and throughout private enterprise in general. Ironically, it is precisely the lack of an Asian equivalent to the NAACP that so little is said and nothing is ever done about this. Look at it this way: how many Asians are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies? How many Asians are presidents of our elite (or even mid-level) universities?
Food for thought.
Once again, downvoting is easy, refuting inconvenient facts not nearly so much.
I don’t think I would have replied if it hadn’t been for your “refuting inconvenient facts” comment, because I sort of double-taked on that to go back and see what facts you laid out. Your first sentence is “argue” and your second is “appear” And you tie it up with a “food for thought” question about Asians as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. None of those meet any definition of “facts” that I know of. But, hey, I don’t know how many Asians are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, so I went to the Fortune site where they share all that information…. and learned that the Fortune 500 list is US companies. I would have expected Asian representation if the list included countries from Asia, especially given this current journalistic concern that Apple’s work force should represent the demographics of the countries it employs people in. But since the Fortune 500 is just US companies, and by definition the largest companies, I’m not surprised that the heads of oil companies are not Asian, nor is the head of WalMart, Costco, etc.
There may be good cultural reasons why Asians are not represented proportionately in the Fortune 500 CEO population. Asian culture places heavy emphasis on following the rules and not challenging authority. It may be that it’s difficult to rise to the top of a corporation like Apple without breaking some rules and challenging established authority.
I believe when he said Asians, he meant Asian Americans (just as the discussion has been above about other minorities, such as African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, etc).
Right, probably so. And (tongue-in-cheek) we should be upset that most oil companies are headed up by Texans.
Atlman, how about Sam Hayakawa, President of San Francisco State College, during the turbulent period of 1968 to 1973, when the Free Speech movement began? Later Senator S.I. Hayakawa. As for Asian CEOs, there are currently 96 Asians on the boards of the Fortune 500, and Microsoft’s new CEO is Asian born Satya Nadella. Ajay Banga of Master Card, Francisco d’Souza of Cognizent Technologies, Indra k. Nooyi of PepsiCo (a twofer because she a she), Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, and Ravi Saligram of OfficeMax. If you are talking the Fortune World 500, the majority are Asian. Any other questions?
True as you say, it would be nice to hire color-blind. But every study we have shows that the bias is in favor of whites and in favor of men. It is so bad that even if your name looks black ON YOUR RESUME, you have a substantially worse chance of getting an interview compared to the same resume with a “white” name.
If you qualify for the job then your hired. Martian, Green, Orange doesn’t matter. Is that such a hard concept to process?
Well, the hard-working Martian would be labeled an “illegal” and sent home by the local boys who can’t tolerate someone who, despite coming from a land of oppression and lack of opportunity, is willing to better himself and work his butt off.
Go back 200 years and that “illegal” would have been branded a patriot. How funny that so many natural-born Americans fight so hard and vote against the modernization of the law which would allow qualified workers of any origin to contribute — you know, exactly the way the vast majority of Americans’ ancestors did, when all it took was an oath at Ellis Island to be a law-abiding citizen to walk in.
I get pretty tired of the lazy comparisons between people coming to North America today versus a couple of hundred years ago. When you came ashore at Ellis Island you registered. If you didn’t work your butt off there was no social security net to protect you; there was community, and they would kick your butt to get you back to contributing just fine. The current illegal immigration problem is similar in so few ways.
Who cares!!!!!!!!! Where is my GD Mac Mini?
Here comes Al Sharpton in 3….2….1….
Reverse Discrimination is still discrimination. It implies that a less qualified individual was hired in order to make a quota. How does that break stereotypes and empower those being hired?
there is no such thing as “reverse” discrimination.
And stupid me thought all along that people were hired based on their ability to do the job best.
Sorry, but the majority of people going in college who enter into tech fields which Apple needs (engineering, computer sciences, etc.) are male and white. So what should Apple do, hire a black woman who has no skills in the area simply to change its diversity percentages?
If [enter name of diversity-promoting organization here] wants this to change, then it needs to start back in elementary/middle school by ensuring minorities receive education which gets them interested in the sciences. Otherwise it’s just wasted electrons complaining about the end result.
Apple (probably) looks to hire only those at the top of their game.
That determines the spread of employees. So a tech company has engineers that are predominently male – no shi*
and has a large number of Asians – which from my experience tend to have programming /maths skills – because they are pushed hard by their parents at an early age to succeed in education – compared with many other ethnic groups.
Pandering to the PC brigade will do nothing for the company or its future products.
I’m not sure why is it that nobody here understands the whole point of this diversity drive.
Nobody is that stupid (certainly not Jesse Jackson) to ask these companies to hire on quota. The point is that these successful companies are asked to help right a wrong: find a way so that more underrepresented groups end up as competitive engineers in tech sector. You can’t do this in six months (or six years). It takes a whole generation, but something must be done to encourage those whose numbers are low in the data above (girls, Hispanics, blacks, etc) to step out of their stereotypes and challenge them. It can be done, but somebody has to make an effort.
I am one who does understand, Predrag. What I am not is a capable explainer. You are far better at that than I.
Predrag, that’s not the result Jesse Jackson is looking for, trust me. He’s going to trot out these statistics every 2 years and jump up and down that “no progress is being made”. You’ve already said yourself that it takes a generation, but no media person or Jesse Jackson type will wait that long.
When you start hiring by attribute, (i.e., right sex, race, sexual orientation, political affiliation) as a criteria you will not hire the best, but rather those that check the most boxes. This will be the downfall for a company like Apple that depends on innovation, hard work and passion for success.
So what!
The amount of diversity isn’t detained by their hiring practices. They have a limited pool of talent to choose from. I’m sure they are hiring all the qualified people they can find. Very few (if any) engineering grads don’t get hired. Diversity is a good thing, but you can’t force feed a diverse but less than qualified pool of people into a business. The business would suffer as would those that aren’t qualified. They would just give a bad name to the race or gender as they would end up as the least effective performers. The diversity must start in the lower schools by steering promising kids with technical aptitudes into engineering schools.
As I stated in another post:
Gender ratio of engineers completing bachelors degree is
5:1 male:female
Percentages to complete bachelors engineering degree once enrolled
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%
Exactly, and why isn’t Jesse Jackson questioning why minorities are so dramatically under represented in these scientific fields of study?
Answer, he doesn’t care. He just wants this attribute to become a hiring criteria thus tiping hiring in favor of his constituents.
So, Apple scores very well on racial diversity with fewer white employees than you would expect from the racial mix of the general population.
It is no surprise that there are few women in technical roles – for whatever reason fewer women choose careers in this field. And, since Apple is a technology company, senior roles are generally filled by people with a technical background so it is not surprising that Apple’s senior management is male-weighted.
Which is not to say that Apple do not appoint women to senior roles – they have notably done so in retail.
Female students should be encouraged to pursue science and technology streams – but until they do they will be under-represented in this sector.
Why should female students “be encouraged to pursue science and technology streams”?
“Detained” was supposed to be “determined”