Comment by tsunamifury
2 years ago
Why? Google is an international organization and its technical employment is heavily skewed towards these two origins. Also Americans come from other places? Regardless of their last name…
What is this about?
2 years ago
Why? Google is an international organization and its technical employment is heavily skewed towards these two origins. Also Americans come from other places? Regardless of their last name…
What is this about?
Are you trying to find a controversy?
They're making an observation. As you noted, there is a lot of technical people that are immigrants at Google. It is stunning because it implies native born americans are dramatically under represented. Inclusion means include everyone. This is just as bad as CEOs at most companies being all of european ancestry.
Most "Indian looking", forgive me the crude way of saying it, native-born Americans in my kid's school have traditional Indian names.
It is very common for children of immigrants to be high achievers because being a legal immigrant strongly correlates with high personal achievement - which is generally transmitted to children. Of course this isn't exclusive to immigrants, but it's a form of selection bias.
That's generalizing. Many immigrants from places other than India or China immigrate and don't find academic success at the same level. Why are these immigrants doing better than others. Part of it is cultural (placing social behind academics) and the negative pressure of lower marks. Part must be selection bias (the best and brightest come because of the hurdles they need to overcome to even get accepted).
We don't see these rates with latin American immigrants, African, Middle eastern or europeans. Part of that is opportunity locally (the best and brightest don't leave when opportunities exist locally).
You see so much more cheating with the first immigration group. Is that because learning isn't as important as grades? Why don't locals cheat more? Too much effort?
Has the false promises of education (education will fix all) registered as more apparent in the west and many are choosing to skip or is the system designed for other outcomes.
4 replies →
You are right, so the fact that people without immigrant parents or immigrant themselves are underachieving is a problem.
Would I still get downvoted if I said black americans are under represented instead of european?
Nigerians are the most educated immigrant group for example, tons of Nigerian doctors but why are they missing in tech?
You all really just want the appearance of inclusion so you can check boxes! Downvote away lol
2 replies →
> implies native born americans are dramatically under represented.
Two things:
1. I see few Native Americans at graduate levels in technical fields. Maybe because the American culture, unlike Eastern countries, does not encourage students to go to college? Maybe because there are way more jobs out there that don't require that high-ed degrees? Maybe because Americans already live in the US whereas for a typical Chinese/Indian person, getting a Ph.D. is a ticket to come to the US?
2. DEI policies in the industry and academia sometimes lead to over-presentation of those nationalities (speaking as a foreign national myself). Companies can treat an H1B visa holder any way they want because the visa holder wouldn't get another job if they got fired, but the comapny can't behave like that towards a native American.
Like i posted in a different comment, what about Nigerians who are well educated?
If 90% are Chinese and Indian it isn't a big deal. If 100% are Chinese and Indian than something is really wrong.
Native American means something else. Probably shouldn’t capitalize “native” if you want your point to be clear.
> Maybe because the American culture, unlike Eastern countries, does not encourage students to go to college?
This couldn’t be further from the truth. See: common complaint of everyone with a pulse having been convinced of going to college by the boomer generation.
Relative few people get Masters+ because it’s not a ticket to get into the US for people already here.
> implies native born americans are dramatically under represented.
Isn't London a major location for Google AI expertise?
Also, native-born Americans have family origins, and therefore names, from all over the world. (I'm assuming from context that by native born you don't mean actual Native Americans)
how do you know they're not native born?
I assume if one of the names in the paper was O'Shaughnessy you would immediately think: "Irish immigrant!" Schmidt? German immigrant!
No it was just a bizarrely naive observation -- not even in a racist way, just really dumb and implied things that were not true.
I think the controversy was in making the observation