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According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is doubling referral bonuses for women, minorities and veterans. Employees can receive $4,000 bonuses for suggesting candidates that meet the company's diversity goals. Intel had previously pledged $300 million over the next five years to address "Silicon Valley's disappointing diversity numbers," and has set a goal of "full representation" of women and under-represented minorities by 2020:
The new programs at Intel and across the tech sector come as companies report little-changed diversity numbers. Intel's diversity statistics for 2014 showed 24 percent of Intel employees are female. The company is also predominantly white and Asian, with only 3.5% black and 8% Latino employees. The company did not include statistics about veterans in its report.
Christine Dotts, a spokeswoman for Intel, said in an email that higher recruiting bonuses have been used by the company in the last decade, but she declined to comment on when or how much the bonuses were for.
Also at The Register.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:46AM
I'm still waiting for that reasonable explanation where things get better just cause they hire a certain number of females, minorities and veterans (or any other group for that matter). Is it the feelgoodfactor?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:54AM
Collectivism doesn't do reasonable explanations. Nor does socialism. It's all emotional appeal, and reason is banned from the discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:45PM
Could we say "Because God says so in his autobiography" and you'd be happy now?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:20AM
Its not the feelgood factor.
Its the little checkbox on the tax form.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:29AM
And also the ensuing nightmare of having all these people that work for you that are impossible to fire.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:02AM
> Its the little checkbox on the tax form.
Which checkbox would that be?
Seriously, name a tax benefit that companies get for reducing their employee monoculture.
(Score: 4, Informative) by anubi on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:18AM
This one. [doleta.gov]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:34PM
> This one.
Did you read the contents at the other end of that link?
It doesn't say anything about females or minorities. Just veterans, felons and people on welfare.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:06PM
Seriously folks. If you're going to mod something Informative, please make sure it actually is. This is the list of groups eligible for the credit, from the link:
Employers can hire eligible employees from the following target groups for WOTC.
Unemployed Veterans (including disabled veterans)
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Recipients
Food Stamp (SNAP) Recipients
Designated Community Residents (living in Empowerment Zones or Rural Renewal Counties)
Vocational Rehabilitation Referred Individuals
Ex-Felons
Supplemental Security Income Recipients
Summer Youth Employees (living in Empowerment Zones)
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday August 06 2015, @01:44AM
Then how about this one [dol.gov]? ( Affirmative Action ).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:42AM
Are you actually reading these documents before you post them? Just googling "affirmative action" clearly isn't working for you.
What this document actually says is that if you are a government contractor you must not discriminate. If you're a big one, you have to put a disclaimer on some forms and also not discriminate. That's it. A cursory scan is all that is necessary to see that tax benefits are not mentioned anywhere.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:31AM
I can't speak for actual corporate/business performance, but I used to work at Intel years ago, and there were far more female engineers there (proportionately) than any place else I've ever worked, by far. It was also in most ways the best workplace I've ever worked in, and having a reasonable number of female co-workers was a big help that way. Unlike engineering school and most workplaces, I didn't feel like I was trapped in some big sausagefest. On top of that, one other odd thing I noticed about Intel was that there were a LOT of tall people there. I'm a little over 6', and I seem to tower over everyone in most workplaces. But not at Intel; I felt like I was *average* height there.
Anyway, the women I worked with there didn't seem, on average, to be any more or less competent than the men. However, they were nicer to work with; there were some men who were assholes, but not a single woman was, they all had at least decent personalities, without exception. For that reason alone, I'd rather have more women in the workplace. Maybe this doesn't hold true for other professions (I've heard horrible things about women being bitches in some other workplaces, particularly legal), but in engineering, I've never met a woman who had a bad personality.
(Score: 3, Troll) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:17AM
I have had two different experiences in offices with lots of women. One was constant back-stabbing and all sorts of factions. This was only among the women, and didn't include any of the men.
It was a very nasty atmosphere, and one of the reasons I left.
My current job has about 40% women I guess. They are almost all Chemists (Chemical Engineering degrees mostly) and the atmos is great. They seem to get along very well, and I haven't noticed any factions at all.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:27PM
One was constant back-stabbing and all sorts of factions.
Was she an engineer?
I'm talking about female engineers, not generic females. I've heard bad things about women in certain office environments too, especially law offices. The type of women who go to work in law offices are NOT the type of women who go to engineering school. Same thing goes for men.
Women in HR can be a real pain too.
My current job has about 40% women I guess. They are almost all Chemists (Chemical Engineering degrees mostly) and the atmos is great.
See? My point exactly. Women in engineering = great. Women in legal and HR = bad.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:19AM
I may have phrased that badly. By one I mean one faction.
Yes, the fractious groups were all clerical type women, working in an open plan office, quite closely.
The Chemists are all nice enough people. It may be a coincidence but the only woman I don't really like is the HR woman.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday August 07 2015, @02:24AM
It may be a coincidence but the only woman I don't really like is the HR woman..
I seriously doubt that's a coincidence.
I've spent a fair amount of time and energy on online dating at different times in my life. The **only** time I remember a woman getting mad at me just in an email exchange (or really any time during dating; I emailed and even met lots of women, there just wasn't any interest on one side or the other) was a woman who worked in HR at a major retailer. The conversation went straight downhill when she complained about the quality of applicants she got in her job, and I suggested that maybe the low pay they offered had something to do with it and if they wanted better applicants, they needed to offer more money. That got a really nasty response from her and that was the end of that.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:50PM
SJW companies/projects go hand-in-hand with backdoors(intel vpro) and convoluted misfeatures that open up vulns (systemd).
They're made to make sure bad men cannot keep secrets (from the cunts and their government)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:39AM
Yep nice to know that no matter how hard you work to better yourself or how hard you study all that matters in the end is the color of your skin and your sex.
Remember kids you can't spell reverse racism without racism!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:57AM
Only if old age was one of the valued attributes...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Troll) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:47AM
What I personally love is those that claim they are for "social justice" which then promptly spit on the memory of Dr King by using the exact.same.racist.shit. he was fighting against, only thinking by changing which race is being targeted that somehow makes it right!
That is why I urge all that remember the civil rights movement to stand up to these bigots, so that one day Dr king's words will finally come true: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." And I'm sure if he were alive today and saw this bullshit he would have added " they will not be judged by the color of their skin or their sex" because he was fighting for EQUALITY, not for preferences, tokenism, or treating any race or sex as inferior and therefor needing special privilege just to get what others do by hard work.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:49PM
What I personally love is those that claim they are for "social justice" which then promptly spit on the memory of Dr King by using the exact.same.racist.shit. he was fighting against, only thinking by changing which race is being targeted that somehow makes it right!
Shows how little you know. [cnn.com] How unsurprising. MLK said things like:
"A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro."
And in an interview with Playboy: [kinja.com]
Playboy: Do you feel it's fair to request a multibillion-dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or for any other minority group?
King: I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages—potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America's wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of two centuries of unpaid wages plus accumulated interest. In any case, I do not intend that this program of economic aid should apply only to the Negro; it should benefit the disadvantaged of all races.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:00AM
msicar?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:26PM
What the fuck is "reverse" racism?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:00PM
What the fuck is "reverse" racism?
"Reverse racism" is an american idiomatic expression for racism directed in the opposite direction of historical stereotypes, most commonly referring to racism directed toward white people by black people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:40PM
> most commonly referring to racism directed toward white people by black people.
That is incorrect. Reverse racism is a term nearly universally applied to anti-racism programs in attempt to discredit them by simplifying context out of the equation, exactly as hairy used it in his post.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:30AM
Hiring managers and recruiters have no idea how to place veterans, so they get left out of jobs that they qualify for. There was a time, not long ago, when the veteran unemployment rate was over 30%.
Not everybody who goes into the military goes to war, and not everybody who goes to war is infantry. There are mid twenty veterans with the type of management skills that corporate spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours per person to develop in house. There are technical skills that veterans have right now ... US military is probably the biggest entity using FreeBSD+ZFS, for example, that would draw a blank stare from a recruiter looking for someone with "NetApp" experience. And then there's the intimidation factor by young managers unwilling to hire someone with potentially more management and technical experience.
I won't speak about the affirmative action by race thing. But there are cultural differences in the military and private sectors that can be remedied by changing hiring preferences, to the benefit of both entities.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:17AM
> I'm still waiting for that reasonable explanation where things get better
Based on your tone, I'm going to guess that you think such an explanation does not exist and that you wouldn't recognize one even if it jumped up and bit you.
> Is it the feelgoodfactor?
What do you care? It's their damn money. Are you some kinda pinko commie telling private companies how they can spend their money?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:29AM
No.
This is being required by the Federal Government. [dol.gov]
^^ Notice this *is* a department of labor / government link.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:30PM
> No.
What exactly are you no'ing?
FYI, you linked to a requirement that the government puts on its suppliers. Just like any customer can specify contractual requirements to its suppliers. When you are spending the money, you get to make the rules.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:53AM
There is intense competition for the best applicants in tech. Companies like Intel need the best people to maintain their market leading position. By expanding the pool of candidates to the ones that other companies are not able to attract, they are tapping in to a supply of skilled labour that the competition doesn't have access to.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:50PM
That's a legitimate question. Can people who are not white males bring valuable perspective to a technical or business question? Maybe they can, maybe they can't. But there's no question in my mind that selection processes can be designed in such a way as to bias successful candidates for a certain racial/ethnic/educational background. Maybe in Intel's case, that's not relevant. They design processors. Will a woman design a better processor because of her higher estrogen? Will a black man design a better processor because of his different experience with the dominant power hierarchy in his society? Who knows.
I can tell you that it's relevant in other spheres. For example, I went through the application process for the United States Foreign Service to the end. All the tests and essays were easy for me because I was the right ethnicity and had the right college education for the job description. Nothing was more difficult than your average high school AP (Advanced Placement)-level exam. And as I won through to the end of the process, I noted that there was not a single person of color in the final cadre of candidates. Through side conversations with the other WASP candidates I learned I was the only one who was not from a wealthy NorthEast family. That, I am convinced, has a real effect on how the United States is represented throughout the world, and how its geopolitical relations are managed. It takes a very narrow slice of our society and presents that to the world as though that's the entirety of our society, and negotiates our treaties as such. In that context, it would be very much better for the United States and the world to have a Foreign Service that was representative of the population of the United States.
So, yeah, diversity matters.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:29PM
Can people who are not white males bring valuable perspective to a technical or business question?
The evidence is disproportionate numbers of asian males try to at least ;).
If you look at lots of high profile tech places in the USA, asians are overrepresented if you consider their percentage in the general population.
FWIW I'm an Asian male living in Asia, and I find lots of these stories amusing and silly in various ways.
Why keep trying to encourage women in the USA to go for jobs that can and are being outsourced to cheaper places in Asia? It makes sense to encourage women in Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, etc to go into such jobs (where they'd be the receiving end of outsourcing). But why spend so much time and resources to encourage women in the USA if they're not that interested? The barriers to enter tech in the USA are already low- want to code? Start your own project. If you're not that interested you're far more likely to be mediocre, and if employers were going for mediocre, they might as well go for cheaper mediocre elsewhere than expensive mediocre in the USA.
In contrast the many women do seem to go for jobs that are not as commonly outsourced to other countries - secretaries, nurses, auditors/bookkeeping, waitresses, receptionists, maids, hairdressers/hairstylists/cosmetologists: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873003.html [infoplease.com] (see those that are > 80% women).