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New California forced diversity bill.

I have left jobs and I have watched other people leave jobs where there has been difficulty finding qualified people for those positions. I have never seen a company fall apart as a result.

You might want the absolute best candidate by your judgement (log has a few really good posts in this thread so far) but if they pull their resume or whatever you take the next person on the list. It all works out fine.


That said, I don't like this law. I think it's the wrong way to do this.
 
JimLes said:
Why wouldn't they be qualified? Why is the assumption that a bill like this would somehow lead to a company going out into the street and pulling the first black man they see into the office? There are thousands of people of every race, creed, gender identity, in the country that are perfectly qualified to sit on these boards. You really think Facebook will go broke because they hired a black woman over a white man whose GPA was 0.1 higher?
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Fair, not qualified was not fair. But not the best candidate is fair. But yes, generally this probably means nothing. Just the idea of the govt forcing companies to hire certain people feels very un-american.

But I agree this will likely not hurt any companies. It just feels off.
 
Interesting that the assumption seems to be that the white male is the most qualified. Do you honestly believe that companies will always pick the more qualified black female over the less qualified white male? If they did that, we wouldn't have such employment disparity as we do. Perhaps the focus should be on the decades of unfair hiring practices for minorities and women, and not so much on how unfair it might be to the random white guy.

Sadly, many companies will continue their discriminatory hiring practices unless forced to change.

Sent from my moto z3 using JazzFanz mobile app
 
Beer said:
Forcing them to put people who might not be qualified or be the best candidate is a big deal. If Facebook one of the biggest companies in the world only has 8 or 9 spots, making them fill 2 with a certain demo is a big deal, in theory at least.
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Again, from the general job description, this sounds like something anyone with an MBA is qualified for. Just a few months ago, SirKickyAss showed how there were maybe two auto executives on the board of GM. Finding qualified minority people won't be all that hard.
 
JazzGal said:
Interesting that the assumption seems to be that the white male is the most qualified. Do you honestly believe that companies will always pick the more qualified black female over the less qualified white male? If they did that, we wouldn't have such employment disparity as we do. Perhaps the focus should be on the decades of unfair hiring practices for minorities and women, and not so much on how unfair it might be to the random white guy.

Sadly, many companies will continue their discriminatory hiring practices unless forced to change.

Sent from my moto z3 using JazzFanz mobile app
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I don't think many, if any, companies have outright discriminatory hiring practices, but there are a lot of consciously, and unconsciously, biased hiring managers. And really we need to find a way to get more diverse applicants. This is as big a part of it as anything I've seen in hiring hundreds of people over 25 years as a hiring manager. When I post a job and get 90% white male candidates what are the odds the "best" candidate isn't a white male? Not even taking into account unconscious biases, which makes it worse, no matter how hard you try to mitigate it.

I like to believe I've overcome this in myself largely, and I will ask for more candidates from the recruiting team if all I see are presumably white males in the mix. And I regularly conduct interviews with all minority candidates just to make sure I'm giving an equal shake. I even at times have names removed from resumes to help my managers mitigate bias. But still, if 25 out of 30 candidates are white males, and you're really looking for the best candidate, odds are there will be at least a few that are at least equal to the best minority candidate in the hiring pool. It's not as simple as it sounds.
 
Most corporations will gladly go along with this because it's easier to throw one minority hire on the Board of Directors than make substantive changes from top to bottom or make changes to the way you deal with minorities in the way you do business.

Newsom knows this - it's a big game.
 
I am not racist, I almost hired a black guy once.









Almost.
 
Beer said:
Obviously. But wouldn't they all fall under the umbrella of "latino"?
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"All"? Not really.

Mexicans are latinos, but not all latinos are mexicans. Even then, some mexicans might not identify themselves as latinos and instead go for white, asian or indian (if they are 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation it's an important factor too). For instance, Peru (along with Brazil) has one of the largest number of Japanese descendants in the world. They are Peruvian, but most would identifiy themselves as from asian origin.

I'm just pointing out that nationality does not equal race or identity in all cases. Also, I find it pretty common that US residents/citizens tend to think about Mexico when referring to latinos. Furthermore, I've been asked several times if I speak "mexican". It's a bias that more people need to be aware of.
 
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Beer said:
Just the idea of the govt forcing companies to hire certain people feels very un-american.
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I'm not sure at this point calling something un-American is a negative thing.

That aside, I think you'd have to be very naive to believe that things can just somehow fix themselves. Not after the experience of last 50-60 years.

Assuming you want to have more minorities on boards of corporations, I'm not sure you can do that easily or quickly enough without some kind of compulsion.
 
latin jazz said:
"All"? Not really.

Mexicans are latinos, but not all latinos are mexicans. Even then, some mexicans might not identify themselves as latinos and instead go for white, asian or indian. For instance, Peru (along with Brazil) has one of the largest number of Japenese descendants in the world. They are Peruvian, but most would identifiy themselves as from asian origin.

I'm just pointing out that nationality does not equal race or identity in all cases. Also, I find it pretty common that US residents/citizens tend to think about Mexico when referring to latinos. Furthermore, I've been asked several times if I speak "mexican". It's a bias that more people need to be aware of.
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I know there is not one single race living south of the United States. I assume if your parents are ja
JimLes said:
I'm not sure at this point calling something un-American is a negative thing.

That aside, I think you'd have to be very naive to believe that things can just somehow fix themselves. Not after the experience of last 50-60 years.

Assuming you want to have more minorities on boards of corporations, I'm not sure you can do that easily or quickly enough without some kind of compulsion.
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I'm all for having minorities on boards. I don't think not having the "correct" % of them means anything is broken.
 
Beer said:
I know there is not one single race living south of the United States. I assume if your parents are ja
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It seems you couldn't finish your sentence. Anyway, my point is that even someone of latino heritage might choose another ethnic group, as the definition of latino encompasses way too many nationalities, races and ethnic groups. It's ambiguous. According to Allen et al (2011):

...the unique experiences of Latinos related to race and the discordance between understandings of race among Latinos and the predominant U.S. conceptualizations of this construct impact how Latinos respond to measurement approaches. As a result, data collection methodologies often yield ambiguous responses that reveal little about this population ...
 
Beer said:
I'm all for having minorities on boards. I don't think not having the "correct" % of them means anything is broken.
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Of course it does. If you have a large enough of a sample, things average themselves out. If they don't, something's up.
 
JimLes said:
Of course it does. If you have a large enough of a sample, things average themselves out. If they don't, something's up.
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9 to 12 people on a board is not a very large sample.
 
JimLes said:
There are many, many boards around the country. The problem isn't with just one.
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So what is the problem. Do you have the numbers? And what does the requirement need to be to alleviate the problem? If one board is 100% minority does that cover for X number of boards that are underrepresented? What does underrepresented mean, how is it quantified?
 
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