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Apple Releases 2015 EEO-1 Diversity Data Over Weekend (qz.com) 112

theodp writes: Just days after it came under fire for dismissing a call for diversity as "unduly burdensome and not necessary," Apple quietly released its 2015 EEO-1 diversity report (dated 10/6/2015, reflects the 8/1 payroll). Like other tech companies' diversity disclosures, Apple's EEO-1 raw numbers can't really be reconciled to the percentages based on undisclosed raw numbers that grace the infographic-heavy diversity progress narrative CEO Tim Cook spoke to last August. As to why they keep two sets of diversity books, Apple explains, "The EEO-1 has not kept pace with changes in industry or the American workforce over the past half century. We believe the information we report elsewhere on this site is a far more accurate reflection of our progress toward diversity." Taking this stance allows Apple CEO Tim Cook to boast that "in the United States, we hired more than 2,200 Black employees — a 50 percent increase over last year," while ignoring Apple's EEO-1 report, which indicates that Black employees showed a year-over-year net increase of only 1,475 employees and accounted for only 1.9% of the 4,333 YOY net increase in "Professionals" at Apple (White employees accounted for 50.6%, Asian for 42.1%). If you want to check the math, Apple's EEO-1 data (typed in from the content-copy-not-allowed 2015 and 2014 PDFs) and additional charts can be found in this Tableau workbook.
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Apple Releases 2015 EEO-1 Diversity Data Over Weekend

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18, 2016 @08:02PM (#51326307)

    Given that whites are already underrepresented at Apple compared to their share of the US population, should Asians be terminated so more people of other colors (and whites) can be hired?

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18, 2016 @08:06PM (#51326325)

      Diversity = no white males

      • "Diversity" means *my idea* diversity, not your idea of diversity.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        How do you get from "it would be nice if you had a more representative workforce" to "it would be nice if you had an unrepresentative workforce that excludes white males"?

        Opposition to diversity = feelings of inadequacy, because you know you suck too much to compete without an advantage. Look, you can't even form a reasoned, logical argument!

        • by Anonymous Coward
          When the advantage is "not being white" then there should be some frustration.
    • Exactly fewer Asians. Not sure how it is/was in the US of 'eh but in Canada they used to, if not still do, have quotas for number of visas available and from which countries/regions. Given how large the Asian population is in most metro areas I'm guessing they don't do it anymore (T.O. ~37% Asian, Vancouver 48%), though that could just be a simple matter of doing it but allocating the visas more fairly based on population of the region. Maybe tell Apple, Google and MS they can have the H1-Bs they want but o

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I expect a beer from my Asian colleagues for taking the brunt of the scapegoating.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The real question is why this is even an issue in the first place, and why does a corporation need to collect and record a persons race? Is it really any of their fucking business?

    • by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Monday January 18, 2016 @08:29PM (#51326425)

      Because dividing people is one of the routes to power. Here's the plan:

      1. Find a population of people who are doing adequately. Not perfectly, but they're getting by.

      2. Divide them into 2 groups. Encourage one group to hate the other. Hatred between the groups can be based on
      - Fictional stories
      - True stories of bad things that happened to people who died a very long time ago
      - Envy
      - Minor problems hyped up into a major drama
      - Entitlement mentality
      - Or something else. It's not hard. People hating each other is built into human nature.

      3. Lead (or "organize") one of the groups against the other. Viola! You're the leader, you have power. Now you can use your power to demand payments -- which you'll get to keep a large part of.

      That's what "organizers" do. They're fighting for you!

      That's why employees must be categorized by ethnicity.

      • by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @01:27AM (#51327435)

        Furthermore, there's a certain word you will want to use when encouraging people to hate each other. Hatred makes people want to hurt their enemies. But people don't like to think of themselves as evil. And intending to harm others seems evil to people (because it is). So you need a way to make it good to hurt people rather than evil.

        Fortunately for you, there's a ready-made concept that solves your problem perfectly: justice. You can hurt whomever you wish and still call yourself a hero simply by declaring it justice. There's nothing quite like justice to quiet the nagging voices of morals and ethics.

      • 2. Give one of them a red lab coat.

      • by chihowa ( 366380 )

        It's also a classic strategy for the ruling class to keep attention away from their own misdeeds and weaken the population's ability to effectively criticize or hold them accountable: Divide and rule [wikipedia.org]. In more recent history, the British Empire were masters at it (with some of their instigated divisions still raging), but it's been consistently throughout history.

    • by gfxguy ( 98788 )
      Agreed - as long as there's equal opportunity, the results don't mean jack, and will never, on their own, be proof of a lack of opportunity.
  • by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Monday January 18, 2016 @08:17PM (#51326371) Homepage

    How dare Apple call something that is unduly burdensome and not necessary, "unduly burdensome and not necessary".

    • How dare they hire people based on race rather than skills and ability, that is the government's job, not theirs!
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Burdensome and unnecessary* for them perhaps, but so are many laws, regulations, safety standards etc. We still expect them to make the effort.

      * Actually diversity benefits companies, so really they are just wasting money by sucking at it.

  • I clicked every dang link in that summary and couldn't figure out what the source article was. If this is your own personal research, have the decency to sum it up in a blog post instead of jamming it into the slashdot summary.

  • I don't care about the whole diversity thing, and apparently neither does my employer, because when they wanted to show us how inclusive they are as an employer, and how they employ people of all races they sent five white middle aged males to tell us. Oh, how the women and various ethnic groups laughed.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Because white males, unlike males of any other race or etnicity, are completely unable to explain inclusiveness if there are no token-vagina's and people of colour to help them along? Is that what you're implying? Because that would be immeasurably stupid.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Because it's totally acceptable to make jokes about white men who aren't 20-somethings?

      Who were these men and why were they chosen to give that talk? Did they have some special qualifications? Is their race, gender, or (especially around here) age a disqualifier for being able to speak on a topic?

      See, I usually laugh when the diversity speech is always given by minorities who were obviously selected for the task because of their skin color. They're usually the same ones who were selected for their actual

  • Given he is Afro-Asian? Does he get counted as 0.5 of a black person? i.e. What minority do you count or favour?

    This idea of race is increasingly becoming irrelevant.

    If you want a better metric, for the purpose of mitigating disadvantage, you should count every employee multiplied by a factor between 0 and 1 based on the economic and academic status of their parents.
  • White employees accounted for 50.6%, Asian for 42.1%

    So, what are those numbers even "supposed" to be? The "white" percentage is way below US population averages, and likely between US customer demographics. Depending on how big Apple is in Asia, the current statistics may well represent Apple's worldwide customer base.

    Can some progressive expert in the calculus of intersectionality and race explain what the percentages ought to be and why?

    • by gfxguy ( 98788 )

      .... what the percentages ought to be and why?

      Pondering the implications of using such a metric for hiring... and it's not pretty.

  • theodp, what you write is pure polemic. So Apple "dismissed a call for diversity". Here's the actual text of the rejected proposal at the last shareholder meeting:

    "Shareholders request that the Board of Directors adopt an accelerated recruitment policy requiring Apple Inc. (the âoeCompanyâ) to increase the diversity of senior management and its board of directors, two bodies that presently fails to adequately represent diversity (particularly Hispanic, African-American, Native-American and othe
    • by gfxguy ( 98788 )

      My dad says "colored" to refer to black people... it makes me cringe, but he's a remnant of his generation (raised in the 1930s). But then in PC America, calling black people black instead of "African Americans" makes a lot of other people cringe. It makes me cringe when the news refers to blacks in other countries as "African Americans."

      So, yeah, in PC America, the demographics in a company must match the demographics of the country, otherwise they're "racists." Nobody wants equal opportunity any more..

  • Staff need to be found on merit so they can design the future. Consumers pay a lot for branding over very low production costs and ensure a great profit.
    That takes real skills and smarts. Good branding and profits per device needs the best staff.
    How to get the very best people for the job?
    Find people who have had access to study and who had the freedom to learn to like and enjoy further education.
    Good new reading material, small class sizes, new equipment, professional teachers who could advance lea
  • when the animal rights nutters and the diversity nutters decide to join forces and hire a thousand monkeys to crank out our code for us. Oh wait...
  • It isn't the function of a commercial company to fix societies diversity issues. Apple is there to make money for the investors. People should get promoted depending on merit and not just to fill some quota.
  • (Of course, he's talking about the board versus the general employee base.) "Choosing a Board of Directors based on race and gender is a lousy way to run a company. Cypress will never do it. Furthermore, we will never be pressured into it, because bowing to well-meaning, special-interest groups is an immoral way to run a company, given all the people it would hurt. We simply cannot allow arbitrary rules to be forced on us by organizations that lack business expertise. I would rather be labeled as a person

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