Tim Cook Says Diversity is the Future of Apple, Points to More Female-Driven Presence at WWDC

[Edgar Spayce]

Yep, now keep going along that line of thought…

Why are there more men going into computer science? I'd argue it's because women are deterred from the field by a combination of society pressures.

How can you convince them otherwise? How about showing them from an early age that women can, in fact, achieve success in those fields. That'd be one way to help.

And how can you do that? Well, it's hard, but doing something like having more female speakers leading the biggest developer day of the biggest (and most publicised) tech company in the world…? Yeah, that'll definitely help.

So thanks Apple, nice start!

(And yeah, OF COURSE this works both ways. I for one would be delighted to see more men get past the idea that certain professions are "not manly". Hopefully, there are leading figures in the fashion worlds etc. that are as forward-thinking as Apple!)

You are partially right in that more women should be encouraged to go into computer science from a young age, but you're completely wrong on the causes: it's mainly women, especially through women medias, magazines, marketing and consumption who are self-sustaining their own superficial clichés, not men, not society.

Women ARE NOT deterred from the field of computer science, they are never interested in the first place, because most other women, whether in medias are outside, are not interested or talking about it.

Positive role models can help but won't change anything if the feminine culture at large remains the same.

 

[apolloa]

Spoken like a true politician, reality is he can pay them less and thus suck up to the share holders even more, which is all he cares about, along with profit, being the CEO of a huge corporation.

He should be hiring women based on their ability to do the job and pay them the exact same as a male equivalent, but it doesn't work like that in the real world.

 

[darcyf]

Your model of privilege is so broken. Seeing as women outnumber men at post-secondary education at rates nearly 2:1 at all levels with the exception of computer science and a few other STEM streams, and there's still a huge amount of scholarships and pushes to make it super attractive to women to enter those streams.

So they have every opportunity to pursue it, yet many don't. Pretty well everyone is in favor of equal opportunity, but pushing for equality of outcome is quite different. And let's not forget we're forever being told that benevolent sexism is just as bad as blatant sexism.

You also overlook that the overwhelming majority of HR and hiring managers are women, even at tech companies. It isn't white males doing all the hiring.

I'm curious if you push for this diversity and inclusion in fields like mining, roofing, infrastructure (sewage, waste, roadworks, etc) or if diversity seems to only be important in the safe, comfortable, well paid jobs with regular hours.

Another thing not to overlook is how the people who pioneered the entire computer revolution, both men and women, were treated over the decades (social outcasts who were among the most bullied). It's only recently that the tech sector is seen as desirable.

Go on YouTube and check The Computer Chronicles episode where they talk about trying to get more women and girls in computing, and this was from the mid 80s (IIRC).

So women outnumber men in post secondary and yet men still make more money than women in the workplace by a significant margin -- women make 78% of what men earn. That's a clear indication that there is bias in hiring practices towards men.

The effort to diversify isn't about introducing biases. It's about ending them.

 

[bennibeef]

All this political correctness.

The ones saying are the women interested in the tech field? Then they should go for it but not being promoted into it.

I know some technical students which enrolled for a programming degree a couple years ago. There where like 7 girls, and guess how many there where after 2 years? None. Most of them dropped out after the first semester because it was "too complicated"

What does this tell you? There sure are the couple girls who really like math and logic and they will go through with it and will be successful with it but telling all the girls get in the tech field its awesome over here is missing the point. Its like the thing, everyone should learn how to write code. ******** then most of them write ******** code who dont know what they are doing or dont want to learn it in the first place because while everything gets computerised, not even close to everything needs people who need to use these system to know how to code it.

 

[CreatorCode]

i've never understood how diversity leads to 'better' products or is conducive for better productivity. why not just award people best suited for the job completely independent of their racial or sexual background?

Because Apple isn't hiring the one best person for one job. They're hiring dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people for their whole company over the next few decades. They don't just want the best person for the job... they want a hundred of the best people. So do Google and Microsoft and Facebook and everyone else.

So they end up hiring some second-rate people, and some third-rate people as well, because there's nobody else.

And then they look at the demographics, and they realize: they're not hiring the best people.

They're hiring the best men. The best white, and asian, men.They're hiring the best people they can, but they're hiring them from only 38.5% of the (US) population.

And they're thinking. What if, instead of having to pick the best of four...we got to pick the best of ten?

 

[atheist.]

It's not that there is anything wrong with one of the people you listed being hired, it's that Apple is hiring people for the wrong reasons.

Got anything to back that up? Apple's hiring process does not have a racial component to it just one based on merit. Time Cook's assertion could mean many things including the fact that women as children spend less time using a computer than men or that women are too often paid less than men when they are much more capable, Jennifer Lawrence being a prominent example. I am not criticizing Apple, 30% of its workforce is women despite women having 18% of CS degrees it's certainly better than Twitter which only has 10% of its workforce being women when again 18% of CS degrees are women or Google 21% (which is admittedly better than the 18%). Diversity is possible without racism. It just boils down to how these companies address bias.

 

[inhalexhale1]

It's not about quotas, it's about proactively searching for the best talent wherever it is. It's possible there could be some bias in the recruiters that women/blacks/whoever don't do tech. I'm sure that at some point someone said we don't need blacks in baseball- we already have lots of good white talent!

A made up baseball analogy. Cool.

 

[theluggage]

What's wrong with a ginger, a black transvestite, a deaf atheist or a homosexual drug addict being given a job if they can get it done better than anyone else?

Absolutely nothing.

The problem is assuming that they can do the job better than anybody else, because "diversity".

 

[dannyyankou]

Translation: You are being hired because it makes us look diverse, qualifications aside.

So based on your logic, Apple would hire my mom, who can't even figure out how to copy and paste on a keyboard, because it makes Apple look more diverse. Cool.

 

[69Mustang]

Yeah but in this case, Apple deliberately leaves out only white males from even being able to apply for the scholarship. That's stupid. I'm a student just like these other students and WWDC is pretty expensive. It's unfair that I can't have the same opportunity to get a chance at getting help to make my apps better. I don't think it's right to leave out one specific racial group from applying when you allow everybody else to apply.

Forgive me for being blunt, but what's stupid is your take on this situation. Maybe you would be better served by actually understanding the details of the scholarship before taking a 'woe is me' stance. Fact: the scholarship does not exclude white males.
Eligibility requirements: To be eligible to apply for a WWDC 2015 Scholarship, you must be either 18 years of age or older and registered for free as an Apple developer, or you must have permission to be sharing a Registered Apple Developer account with your parent or guardian if you are between the ages of 13 and 17. You must also be enrolled part-time or full-time in a course of study, or be a member or alumni of one of the listed STEM organizations. Nothing there about not being white.

The key to the scholarship is STEM. The goal of STEM is to increase the candidate pool for jobs that require expertise in Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math. Getting more kids (including white male kids) involved in STEM activities increases the potential talent pool and the diversity of that pool by making the program available to a large diverse group. So no, he's not excluding white males. That's just a cop out based on ignorance and laziness. Ignorance of what the scholarship is about and laziness in not taking the time to find out before rendering an opinion. Let me be clear. My intent is not to offend you, but when the links to the information are provided in the article a post like yours shouldn't be written. Take the time to inform yourself before complaining about some non-existent slight.

tl;dr you're wrong. read up on the scholarship

https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/scholarships/Scholarship-Guidelines-and-Terms.pdf

 

[SpiderDude]

You're confusing "things are going well" with "things could be a lot better".

Just saying.

Could be.
But I don't know man.
We're at a point where we get people more excited for the fact that a woman is on stage than for what she's introducing as new.
That kind of thing, in a society where we try to pass the message that the gender is not relevant, sounds like a paradox to me.

 

[RichTF]

Hey, I'm all for that. For all I care, promote the heck out of women in tech. Just don't expect the proportion of women to men being hired in certain tech-related fields today to be anywhere close to that in the general population, when there's only so many women going into those fields at this point.

Well I'm in agreement there.

I just believe we should be making a sustained effort today, so that this problem goes away in the future.

I also think it's harmful to simply pretend that there is no problem today, and we can just carry on as normal and things will fix themselves. They won't.

 

[RichTF]

Could be.
But I don't know man.
We're at a point where we get people more excited for the fact that a woman is on stage than for what she's introducing as new.
That kind of thing, in a society where we try to pass the message that the gender is not relevant, sounds like a paradox to me.

Gender is relevant, today. It would be great to get a place where gender is not relevant, some day in the (not too distant) future.

We are not there. And we will never get there if we don't face up to, and try and fix, the problems that we have today.

 

[slb]

All the white dudes here saying "hire solely based on skill" are ignoring the realities of institutionalized gender discrimination.

 

[Mums]

Looking forward to this. For those who think that "people should be hired / promoted purely on merit" — sure, that's an admirable goal and one that I share with you. But we can't simply pretend that we're already there, close our eyes, stick fingers in our ears, and carry on as if everything is okay.

Everything is not okay. Our industry is massively skewed and unrepresentative, and the root of the problem runs deep (often all the way back to childhood). We need action to give extra support to those groups who have been historically discouraged from the tech world, and I'm proud to support a company that, hopefully, gets this.

Try and take a long term view. This is about redressing a decades-long imbalance, so that one day we really can stop worrying about inequality in the tech world, and become a true meritocracy. That day is not here yet.

I call BS. But judging from your avatar, you are in the group which will suffer from the destructive ideology which you espouse, so more power to you in your masochistic self-annihilation.

Oh I take it back - after seeing that you live in the UK, where I live, I now understand why you are a feminist - because you have been so well indoctrinated into man-hating by your culture.

 

[ck2875]

So does this mean Angela Ahrendt will take the stage. echo, echo, echo

Remember the female-spoken Mandarin Chinese translation from the iPhone 6 keynote? What Tim is trying to say by telling us to expect a "female-driven presence" is that she's back and they're still not sure how to get rid of her.

 

[Mums]

Diversity in the tech world? Maybe if the same number of women show interest in the field but the number of resumes we get for a tech job is few and far between. For me to hire one woman because she's a woman even though there is 15 resumes of men infinitely more qualified is folly and leads to a lesser product. It's a numbers game. Not a fairness game.

Spot on - thank you for telling it like it is instead of spouting suicidal idealism like some other posters.

 

[Mums]

Considering it was women who pioneered coding, I'm glad they are flocking back to the field.

Women pioneered coding? Oh pray tell...

 

[RichTF]

I call BS. But judging from your avatar, you are in the group which will suffer from the destructive ideology which you espouse, so more power to you in your masochistic self-annihilation.

Yep, I'm a white male, albeit one who isn't blind to the vast amounts of privilege I get simply for being born into those two categories.

I'm more than happy to fight for a world where I get less privilege, and instead get to compete on a level playing field with those of different genders and races. Sadly, that is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, but every little bit of erosion to that mountain of privilege is welcome.

 

[Mums]

What utter tripe from Cook.

Diversity is neither good or bad. The complete works of J.S.Bach were written by one white man. In Cook's world, he would have preferred them to have been written by a committee consisting of one ginger, one black transvestite, one deaf atheist and one homosexual drug-addict.

Hire on skill alone. Nothing else matters.

Exactly right - I have a personal saying: "Art by committee is inherently mediocre."

 

[CdnBook]

I'll give you a really good example of why diversity's important. I'm a highly skilled professional who's had good fortune working with a variety of great organizations and some cool tech companies that I've consulted for. I used to be able to walk into a room of men, be instantly regarded as a pro in my field, taken seriously, listened to, and people would ask me for a ton of advice because they respected my ideas and knowledge.

I say "used to" because I've since transitioned from male to female - as a younger trans women, I've been able to transition so well on hormone replacement therapy that no one knows I'm trans, and everyone just sees me as a beautiful young woman. However, I now routinely get talked over by men in meetings, am taken a lot less seriously, and hardly anyone asks me for advice anymore or wants to know what my thoughts / ideas are. Did my ideas suddenly start being bad? No.

Male privilege is a very real thing that stifles innovation, and discourages women from entering those fields... just imagine being a woman who had to face that type of behaviour everyday... it's an incredibly daunting uphill battle that turns a lot of bright minds away because it's so discouraging and prohibitive. Also, because I’m now seen as a woman and men systematically place less value on what I have to say, I earn less too.

 

[Mums]

Yep, I'm a white male, albeit one who isn't blind to the vast amounts of privilege I get simply for being born into those two categories.

I'm more than happy to fight for a world where I get less privilege, and instead get to compete on a level playing field with those of different genders and races. Sadly, that is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, but every little bit of erosion to that mountain of privilege is welcome.

Wow - I can't believe you actually believe what you are writing. But if you do, then I have nothing to worry about in relation to any potential competition you might present me, as you offer to annihilate yourself for the good of mediocrity. I hope you're still young, so that you might have a chance to mature and realise how dreadfully mistaken your pseudo-idealism is. You might want to Google the phrase pathological altruism.

 

[Even Longer]

I agree with many above: it seems to be a diversity for the sake of diversity.

Other possible explanation:

Cook is already surrounded by the predominant male presence at the company, so he can probably not complain. That "male presence", on the other hand, wouldn't mind to be surrounded by some female-driven ecosystem as well, - so they did complain. Hence: Apple diversity.

 

[Mums]

As opposed to first class products and services?

Precisely - in favour of mediocrity.

 

[Mums]

Skill is probably one of the most important qualities to look at when hiring, but it is not the only quality. The person must have the right balance of potential, aggressiveness, acumen, collaboration, etc. Skill alone will not get you much in a large company.

Having said that, diversity is also important so that you do not become insular in the thinking that could mean missing the next leap in technology. Microsoft suffered from that and is just now starting to recuperate.

I think the only problem has been when someone is hired purely based on the diversity issue.

Get people that have passion, skill, and can push the company in new directions. That comes from many faces, some male, some female, and certainly from multiple races and ethnic backgrounds.

Let me get this straight: You are stating that Microsoft suffered from being populated by White males? How is that not racist, hateful, misandrous, bigoted, and ignorant?