Updated Apple diversity numbers show growth in hires of black, female, and Hispanic workers

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  • Reply 21 of 112
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

     



    And they could hire even more people if the minimum wage wasn't a factor. 




    That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The minimum wage does not affect Apple hiring practices in any way. 

  • Reply 22 of 112
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post

     



    That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The minimum wage does not affect Apple hiring practices in any way. 




    It makes complete sense. There is a huge contingent of workers that are unemployable by Apple standards because the volume or quality of their output would not cover their wage. This affects everyone in the US to one degree or another. People who are unemployable at minimum wage rates may make perfect sense at much lower rates.

     

    In fact, you could kiss overseas labor goodbye if Americans could be hired at much lower wage rates.

  • Reply 23 of 112
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

     



    It makes complete sense. There is a huge contingent of workers that are unemployable by Apple standards because the volume or quality of their output would not cover their wage. This affects everyone in the US to one degree or another. People who are unemployable at minimum wage rates may make perfect sense at much lower rates.

     

    In fact, you could kiss overseas labor goodbye if Americans could be hired at much lower wage rates.




    I'm not arguing the relative merits of the minimum wage law, just that Apple only hires quality people at every pay grade of their various positions. Why on earth would they, say, only pay a gardener $5.00 who doesn't speak English, homeless, undependable and has no experience, when they can get a quality employee for $15-20 who is bilingual, has a car, a family and tons of experience?

  • Reply 24 of 112
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post

     



    I'm not arguing the relative merits of the minimum wage law, just that Apple only hires quality people at every pay grade of their various positions. Why on earth would they, say, only pay a gardener $5.00 who doesn't speak English, homeless, undependable and has no experience, when they can get a quality employee for $15-20 who is bilingual, has a car, a family and tons of experience?




    Because obviously the numbers of both qualified AND under-qualified workers are shrinking. Competition for workers in all industries is increasing. What did you think the real reason was for Apple to do this at this time? Because they are suddenly more generous and selfless? Nope. Because there won't be people available to fill needed positions in short order unless the ranks of people of all kinds are drastically increased (and here's a hint... this won't do it. You cannot fight a major demographic shift that is affecting every industry in every country on the planet).

  • Reply 25 of 112
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

     



    Because obviously the numbers of both qualified AND under-qualified workers are shrinking. 


    It is interesting that undocumented foreigners can hang out in front of Home Depot and get a day labor job for $10+ cash per hour, but you can't get an American to accept a manual labor job for twice that. They just don't want to work that hard. They'd rather collect unemployment.

  • Reply 26 of 112
    sumergosumergo Posts: 215member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    As promised, Apple on Thursday issued an updated diversity report, claiming that it hired the most diverse range of candidates in the past year than at any other point in its history.

     





    Apple has hired over 11,000 women since last year's report, marking a 65 percent increase, CEO Tim Cook said in a message included with the report. The number of black recruits rose 50 percent to 2,200, while Latino/Hispanic hires were up 66 percent to 2,700.



    Globally, the company spent $650 million on women- or minority-owned businesses, Cook added.



    Women represented 35 percent of new hires, but still only 30 percent of the workforce.



    Narrowing focus to the U.S., 19 percent of additions were Asian, 13 percent were Hispanic, and 11 percent were black. In the first six months of the year, half of U.S. hires were female, black, Hispanic, and/or Native American.



    Despite this, 54 percent of Apple's American labor was white. Asians accounted for 18 percent, while Hispanics and blacks reached 11 and 8 percent respectively.



    Apple has taken a number of steps to try to improve the diversity of its staff, for example by partnering with non-profit and educational programs. One example is Code2040, from which Apple is promising to recruit a dozen paid interns.



    Sigh.  What is this post about?

     

    Taking a snapshot of how many x, y & z types of beings Apple employed last year is a meaningless USA-focused PC metric.

     

    How many bald, 55-year-old, one-legged Ethiopians with a Bosnian mother did they employ?  None?  Appalling!!!  /s

     

    It is a corporation's right to hire the best employees that apply.  It is societies (yes, that's you and me) responsibility to ensure that everyone can apply.

  • Reply 27 of 112
    citycity Posts: 522member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

     



    And that's why the Federal minimum wage needs to be eliminated. Unskilled employees make no sense at $9 or $15/hr., but they might be eminently employable at $5/hr. or whatever rate the two parties can agree on. It would allow companies big and small to hire people of all skill levels and allow them to get a foot in the door. The minimum wage keeps people unemployed... the opposite of its intended effect.




    The competitive nature of capitalism put too much downward pressure on wages so we need rules to counter that. Employees of fast food restaurants work hard and deserve at least minimum wage. Workers need food and shelter too. Do you want to eat at a restaurant where the workers sleep in the brushes? Restaurants trying to compete are always looking to cut expenses. The minimum wage keeps a level playing field with regard to labor expense. A higher minimum wage may actually result in a lower rent expense for the restaurant as the cost cutting pressure shifts.

  • Reply 28 of 112
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    In a utopian world companies hire the best person for the job but the issue is what exactly constitutes "best"?

    So much of work and collaboration is working with people and knowing that you all meet the requirements and fundamentals but transcending all of the other variables. Our children today should be raised with a more international mindset and not assume that everyone they meet will be from the came culture or ethnic group. Easier said that done but large global companies like Apple are playing in many markets and must reflect the diversity of the markets they are in.
  • Reply 29 of 112
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by singularity View Post

     

    Good for Apple.




    Depends totally on motive. If Apple is hiring competent, creative, skilled women and minorities to promote diversity then fine. But if the motive is to simply satisfy political quotas then it’s bullshit on Apple. If a white male with better skills and credentials is passed over in favor of a less qualified but politically correct member of a protected subclass then Apple is headed for disaster.

  • Reply 30 of 112
    rayzrayz Posts: 814member
    As usual, folk read about Apple's work to improve diversity and get hot under their collective collar.

    This isn't about hiring people because they're black.
    It's about ensuring that qualified people are not turned away because they are black.

    Apple isn't telling its managers to give ethnic minorities the preferential nod. It's telling its managers to make sure they're not turning away the best person for the job because they're not Caucasian.

    Relax. As long as he's better qualified, no white man is going to lose out because of this.

    Unless you believe that being white should be qualification enough.
  • Reply 31 of 112

    Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, I am not sure that they are worried so much about "X number of minority employees" (which is anti-competitive), as they are about making sure they aren't ruling out sources of new talent in places outside their usual recruiting haunts - which, in the case of Silicon Valley, is not traditionally a bastion of ethnic diversity. I'm pretty sure Apple has no interest in ignoring the best qualified candidates just to score some P.C. points with the Libs. That's bad business. And I'm pretty sure being a competitive business is Apple's primary concern, as well it should be. Just assuming the best. 

  • Reply 32 of 112
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    rayz wrote: »
    As usual, folk read about Apple's work to improve diversity and get hot under their collective collar.

    This isn't about hiring people because they're black.
    It's about ensuring that qualified people are not turned away because they are black.

    Apple isn't telling its managers to give ethnic minorities the preferential nod. It's telling its managers to make sure they're not turning away the best person for the job because they're not Caucasian.

    Relax. As long as he's better qualified, no white man is going to lose out because of this.

    Unless you believe that being white should be qualification enough.
    I agree. Mention race and a large number of apparently smart people on this forum loose their wits. Do people really believe that Apple consciously will ever NOT hire the best person for the job? If not why the **** do they go on about it like a broken record?
  • Reply 33 of 112
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    nathanimal wrote: »
    Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, I am not sure that they are worried so much about "X number of minority employees" (which is anti-competitive), as they are about making sure they aren't ruling out sources of new talent in places outside their usual recruiting haunts - which, in the case of Silicon Valley, is not traditionally a bastion of ethnic diversity. I'm pretty sure Apple has no interest in ignoring the best qualified candidates just to score some P.C. points with the Libs. That's bad business. And I'm pretty sure being a competitive business is Apple's primary concern, as well it should be. Just assuming the best. 
    You give Apple the benefit of the doubt, just assuming the best? Really? Read you own post and think about it all a little more deeply. Forget about idiotic typecasting like 'Libs' and 'neo-cons' and don't worry so much about how people look at you. Now, do you really think you need to give Apple the benefit of the doubt?
  • Reply 34 of 112
    cornchipcornchip Posts: 1,945member
    Yay
  • Reply 35 of 112
    bluefire1bluefire1 Posts: 1,301member

    As long as they continue to only hire the best and the brightest, then I'm all for promoting diversity.

  • Reply 36 of 112
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    ralphmouth wrote: »
    But how can diversity help with engineering - which is what designing a mobile device is - a large amount of small engineering problems. You use math and science. Does a Black person know or an Asian person or a White person know Science differently from each other?

    If Apple was just about engineering, every product would be sterile metal boxes with no personality.

    In addition, there are multiple ways to solve a problem. One way might be more efficient or less costly or easily reproducible.
    future man wrote: »
    More PC BS! This sector of the economy was the last 'golden goose' that Political Correctness did not yet affect, it was the gold standard industry in which compentency, not gender or race had touched. There were never any barriers for entry into this field, except for being very talented and devoted to IT not only as a job, but as a lifestyle! BTW- How come no female or minorities are seeking entry into the male dominated sanitation industry or construction or the other labor trades? How about the female domnated industries? When was the last time males were the majority in the Human Resources sector? Or Nursing?

    Females were/are steered away from engineering and science jobs at an early age.
    I saw a documentary on LEGO and the chief product designer didn't realize girls wanted to built stuff too. That's why they now have the LEGO friends line.
  • Reply 37 of 112
    Diversity doesn't always work in business. You need to hire quality people instead of hiring a quantity of a certain kind of people. It's common sense. Business is numbers.
  • Reply 38 of 112

    I just can't understand why people think that Apple will not hire the right people for the job. It's foolish to think they'd go out of their way to hire someone less competent because of his ethnic origin just to score some brownie points.

    Would Apple jeopardise their position by wilfully hiring less competent people? It doesn't make any sense to me.

  • Reply 39 of 112

    The more companies like Apple go out of their way to implement "diversity" programs, the more I suspect any given minority group favored by those diversity programs will somehow be less competent than the norm...

     

    They didn't earn it by themselves, they were given an artificial boost based on their color, and it's hard to respect someone like that compared to someone that earned their way on merit. 

     

    Plus, the more you make race an issue, the more it becomes an issue. So instead of creating a work environment that DOESN'T see people for their color, and is more color blind, dumbasses like Tim Cook create a work environment where race is far more front and center, and that's just ugly.

     

    Apple is beginning to stumble on a lot of fronts, and I can't wait for Tim Cook to start facing his personal reckoning for what he's been doing to the company these last few years — i.e., turning my beloved Apple into an instrument for Progressive politics (which is anything but progressive) and losing sight of product quality and innovation.  

  • Reply 40 of 112
    singularitysingularity Posts: 1,328member
    This thread like all threads that deal with diversity is just so depressing. The usual arguments about how poor little white man will now be discriminated against and it's PC gone mad.
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