Intel offers big bucks for black women

Intel will tie executives' pay to their ability to bring more women and minorities into its workforce, CEO Brian Krzanich said in his CES keynote on Tuesday evening. He announced the chip giant will set aside $300m over the next five years to achieve equal representation "at all levels" within the company by 2020 – ensuring …

[MooJohn]

Forget true equality

Don't worry about hiring the best candidate for the job without regard for race or sex. Now you've got to make sure that your employee pool checks all the right boxes on the "diversity" survey. You may not end up with the talent you need but you'll sure win the PR battle!

If he had made the same announcement about white men there would be an uproar over the "racism" at Intel. Quotas are bad, period.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Forget true equality

I hope that this isn't just going to be tokenism and all the women hired will be in marketing or secretaries - it's important that 50% of the chip designers are women.

And don't let them use the old boys club excuse of demanding some elitist IVY league PhD first.

Of course Intel could argue that Intel are an oppressed minority now that they are so far behind ARM .

[codejunky]

Re: Forget true equality

@ MooJohn

I could apply except I am disqualified on the grounds of race and sex. Doesnt that qualify them as 'isms' and isnt that discrimination?

[Indolent Wretch]

Re: Forget true equality

This is the problem though isn't it:

"Don't worry about hiring the best candidate for the job without regard for race or sex."

What makes you think that's what was happening?

Have you not been paying attention?

Have you not seen the figures on diversity in these industries?

Either you think that white men should make up 90% of any industry on talent alone or you're happy with your "quotas" being secret rather than open.

If a room full of white men can't bring themselves to hire anyone other than another white man then maybe, just maybe, until things are better, until such things are no longer institutionalized, they should have that decision made for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Forget true equality

"Have you not seen the figures on diversity in these industries?"

There doesn't seem to be such a diversity problem in domestic terrorism or on Crimewatch though. Perhaps that's why no one wants to hire them?

[Alfred]

Blah blah crimewatch

On the other hand, if we had a situation in which white men were routinely relegated to the shallow end of the employment pool, we would see Crimewatch heaving with white faces. Perhaps you've got cause and effect backwards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Blah blah crimewatch

"...we would see Crimewatch heaving with white faces. Perhaps you've got cause and effect backwards?"

Maybe a quick look up may of helped you out. Seems a pretty mixed bunch in there.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/58Wdsb8FKdhTWWNBHGRLsLf/wanted-faces

[Alfred]

Re: Blah blah crimewatch

Indeed, it may HAVE helped me out. My suggestion stands, though; I would expect to see proportionally more faces from ethnicity X on Crimewatch if economic opportunities are more limited for ethnicity X.

Given that in 2011 the UK was about 87% white, I'm seeing a lot of non-white faces in that link; it may well be a mixed bunch, but it's certainly not representative of the UK population.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Blah blah crimewatch

@ Alfred

Given that in 2011 the UK was about 87% white, I'm seeing a lot of non-white faces in that link;

This is the problem with Stats:

Take where I live, it's about 99.5% White. (yes you CAN count the number of Chinese and Afro-Caribbean people very easily).

2 murders in 15 years

1 by a white woman

1 by a black male

Neither were from the area

So the stats show that 50% of murders were carried out by black males, 50% by white females.

So there would be NO white males in the line up, ever.

Now go to Birmingham where "White British" only make up half the population, has a much higher crime rate, would it be so unreasonable to see more black and Asian people in the line ups.

So to put it better, the Crime watch line up reflects the cultural make up of the areas that tend to have the highest serious crime rates. Now you can attribute that to many factors, poor wages, less employment, more rented property, less educated people...what ever, but to say there are X number of whites in the WHOLE UK population, therefore there should be Y number of white people on crime watch is utter bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Forget true equality

"Have you not seen the figures on diversity in these industries?"

Those figures reflect the fact that less females, and less non whites have put themselves through the education required to get these jobs. We need to educate first and also make girls/non whites believe that it is OK for them to go for them - if they want to. That's what needs to be targeted, not jumping straight to sexist /racist quotas.

In the event that someone can prove that two candidates are put forward and sex or race did come into the selection then we should then ensure the person responsible is removed from that position so it doesn't happen again...

That would be equality.

[James Micallef]

Re: Forget true equality

"Those figures reflect the fact that less females, and less non whites have put themselves through the education required to get these jobs."

Firstly, even accounting for the fact that women and minorities might be less likely to take up technical studies, they are still under-represented in tech. Secondly, big tech companies have huge amounts of non-tech staff - Accountants, Lawyers, Marketing etc which are professions / careers where both genders are equally represented... and yet CFOs, companies' Legal counsel, heads of marketing etc are STILL overwhelmingly white and male.

"In the event that someone can prove that two candidates are put forward and sex or race did come into the selection"

This can almost never be proven, firstly because even the crassest racist knows enough to not leave any written trail, and they can always make up a legitimate-sounding argument as to why they selected their preferred candidate after the fact. Secondly, even the most well-meaning and non-racist managers/executives have unconscious biases. For example repeated experiments have shown that identical CVs with 'white' names are viewed more favourably than ones with 'black' names. Because of this, some highly qualified people might not even be being interviewed as they are cut at the CV review stage. This type of unconscious bias needs to be guarded against.

As to the argument that pushing women/minority quotas will negatively influence performance, I think it's very early days to say whether that's true or not. However (anecdotal evidence caveat!!) Apple, Google and Facebook pride themselves in being pretty diverse, and they're not doing too bad

[Terry Barnes]

Re: Forget true equality

"Those figures reflect the fact that less females, and less non whites have put themselves through the education required to get these jobs."

...because all the evidence available to them suggests that there's no job at the end of it for them if they do. That's the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Forget true equality

@ Terry Barnes

No, like pond scum they float to the top and they're now politicians...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Forget true equality

"...because all the evidence available to them suggests that there's no job at the end of it for them if they do. That's the problem."

The tech industry is massively short of good engineers - let alone female engineers. That's why it pays 'relatively' well. So if that mentality exists, we need to prove it, and then it needs squashing.

I work for a pretty small company, and am occasionally looking for devs or support engineers. Seriously the last two times I've put ad's out, or talked to recruitment agencies not one female has responded....out of hundreds of applicants and I'm fairly sure I know why. When I graduated in 2006 only 3 girls graduated with me, of whom only two decided they wanted to take their computing degree's further and move into industry (which they did with no problem), compared to about 80 guys. Comparatively the drama class that often followed our lectures was full of girls...

I doubt that's changed in the last 10 years or so.

---------------------------------

The argument about accountants, top managers etc is probably a good one.

One thing I would say is that most larger companies use a Human Resources team for finding people...in the first instance and these often seem to be dominated by females...

Maybe we need more Men in HR to resolve the less Women elsewhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Forget true equality

"Maybe we need more Men in HR to resolve the less Women elsewhere?"

I don't actually believe this... I'm sure women are perfectly capable of employing other women.

[Snowflake]

Re: Forget true equality

The least diverse part of any tech company I have worked for is HR, where there is a near absence of men.

[Andrew Tyler 1]

Re: Forget true equality

At my school, just a few years ago, the undergrad computer engineering department had about 150 students. Two of them were women, they were both exceptionally bright and academically successful and neither felt they were being discriminated against in any way by other students (though there was some typical social awkwardness, but probably nothing like that coming from the dude bro fratboys at bigger schools) and certainly not by the faculty at all. The software engineering department had one woman among 250 students and it was the same deal there. The electrical electrical engineering department (500 students) had none during the time I was there. The school's overall claimed 85/15 split was almost entirely down to the biomedical engineering department, and still I think they were cherry picking an old statistic from a particularly good year.

Racially, there were five African-American students, and about twice as many Asian-American students (all men). There were indeed a significant number of other non-caucasian students (mostly Asian and Indian), but having come from other countries, it's not quite the same thing, though it will become so if they stay in the States.

The school certainly wasn't turning down female or minority applicants, and they did go to a good deal of trouble to get them to apply. They just didn't. Since it was a smaller school, it's probably an extreme example. The only reason I can imagine why there weren't more female applicants is because the idea of being such a small minority gave them second thoughts (perhaps why the women in particular tended to be unusually competent).

The problem is way, way deeper than undergraduate schools, and probably even high schools. I have no idea what it is, and maybe more visible role models would help some, but my money is the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) lingering stench of America's puritanical past.

[Wraith Leader]

Re: Forget true equality

Good news for fans AMD. They can hire all the engineers Intel can't (won't) hire because of diversity concerns.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Forget true equality

+1, it's racism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Forget true equality

As somebody wrote in a post about getting women into the technical fields in equal numbers, this push for equality seems to apply only in the clean, well paying jobs. Nobody seems to worry about the lack of female miners, construction workers or garbage men. Why are no equal numbers of male nurses, typists primary or nursery school teachers? Sorry, forget the last one, if a guy applied for it he would probably be classified as a pedofile and all the parents would remove their kids from the school.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sexist pigs.

Facebook, Google and now Intel join the lists of sexist pigs who will discriminate against men to get cheaper employees.

Still, nice to know which employers men should avoid.

[WatAWorld]

Pretty soon every racial and gender group will have an aversion to working for Intel

Pretty soon every racial and gender group will have an aversion to working for Intel.

You've got the groups who don't want to work for Intel because of their cultural preferences, how they were socialized growing up, cultural heroes, etc.

And you're going to get additional groups who don't want to work for Intel because now they'll be discriminated against.

Sure they'll attract more black women, or more women in general.

But will attracting 50% more black women and 20% more women in general make up for a 20% drop job seekers from Asian male and white male backgrounds?

And it is the Asian, both Chinese and Indian, who are hit hardest (even harder than us white men) by this kind of racial discrimination, because they like these kinds of jobs and their culture steers them towards.

We have been having this in Canada for decades, where our quiet obedient natural character lead us to take affirmative action (what we call "Employment Equity") seriously.

We don't have "quotas" because quotas would be unfair.

Instead we have "targets", changing the name makes it fair somehow.

Now don't get me wrong. If you're not in Southern Ontario or BC, if you're in an area where people are less ambitious and there are few HQs, you won't see this. You need to be where the big head offices are, in and around Toronto, and then you'll see this plenty.

[The Dude]

Re: Pretty soon every racial and gender group will have an aversion to working for Intel

Toronto, yes Vancouver, yes... and also any government town in the country.

[WatAWorld]

That is it, Intel, take away the motivation for most of your existing workforce.

Answer me this: Why take the risk of making significant suggestions or working unpaid overtime if you cannot get promoted?

If you can't get promoted why not just work like an stereotypical "coolie" from the days of Empire:

Keep your head down,

Don't ask questions,

Do exactly what you're told,

Don't make innovative suggestions, and

Hate your employer.

If you can't benefit from making waves why take the risk in making them?

People outside of "statutory preference groups" can't fully benefit from their innovative suggestions to employers any more than they could in the days of the British Empire when the colours were swapped around and white and male was the "fashionable shade and gender to be".

[Craigness]

Re: That is it, Intel, take away the motivation for most of your existing workforce.

Head East, young (white) man.

[Blatantly Obvious]

Re: That is it, Intel, take away the motivation for most of your existing workforce.

That's one hell of a massive assumption WatAWorld. There is nothing to support the claim that any minority group makes better / worse suggestions than any other group, or that they are less likely to benefit from it.

The truth of it is that there shouldn't be discrimination anywhere, against any minority or majority group. To openly state as a company that you will be specifically excluding certain groups, be it majority or minority crosses that line and will label the company in a very negative light.

[Robert Grant]

Re: That is it, Intel, take away the motivation for most of your existing workforce.

That's one hell of a massive assumption WatAWorld. There is nothing to support the claim that any minority group makes better / worse suggestions than any other group, or that they are less likely to benefit from it.

That wasn't what was being said. A little less overreacting would be good in this thread.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Positive" discrimination has been proven to fail, time and again

I guess the powers that be have a plan to ruin Intel.

[James Micallef]

Re: "Positive" discrimination has been proven to fail, time and again

And yet, what is being mentioned is not positive discrimination, it's removal of EXISTING discrimination

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "Positive" discrimination has been proven to fail, time and again

If the problem is that only 5% of suitable candidates are women, because women don't do maths/physics/engineering degrees - then how are you going to make your workforce 50% women without positive discrimination ?

[James Micallef]

Re: "Positive" discrimination has been proven to fail, time and again

"If the problem is that only 5% of suitable candidates are women, because women don't do maths/physics/engineering degrees - then how are you going to make your workforce 50% women without positive discrimination ?"

You are right YAAC, however note 2 of the 3 fields that Intel will spend money on: "fund initiatives to support more participation and positive representation of women and under-represented minorities in technology and gaming; and increase the pipeline of women and diverse candidates entering the technology field.""

So 2 of the 3 action areas are dedicated specifically to increase the number of female/minority candidates, so that instead of 5% you start having 10-20%. Item 1, "Grow Intel's diverse population" clearly cannot happen without the other 2 items.

Also, I do note that the article mentions "to achieve equal representation "at all levels" within the company by 2020 – ensuring there's a fair mix of men and women of all colors on staff.".

This is not a direct quote so it's difficult to know exactly what was said, however "equal representation" is not the same as "fair mix". I doubt that Intel is aiming to have 50% women, fixed racial quotas etc, more likely that if 20% of applicants are women, 20% of it's staff are women, and if 20% of it's staff are non-white then 20% of it's top management are non-white. And as another commenter pointed out, this is something that needs to start at the boardroom level.

[Anonymous Coward]

Waiting to see the same effort to bring more players under 6" in the NBA...

People without arms or legs in the NFL... Or more blind drivers on public transports, and more singers unable to sing and with no need to look so sexy on album covers, concerts and gossip sites.

This is really becoming a farce, but will have tragic results. It's OK to try to avoid that some ethnic group develop silly sub-cultures (like black and latinos did) that keeps them away from good jobs, but trying to resolve the problem from the wrong side will be only dangerous.

Companies need the best people to compete, and if the best people happen to be male white or Asian, well it's not a company problem. It could be an education system problem, and often even some minority problem when they stubbornly glue themselves to silly subcultures (often based on machismo - the very issue company should fight - LOL!) that look at learning, culture, cleverness with disdain and think like is only singing, dancing and playing some silly sport (and ending to be drug dealers and criminals).

Sorry if white males have no such a reductive outlook of life and spend some times on books and other activities alike... now they must be punished for that "Hey you, damned white (Asian) male, why did you spent so much time on books and computer and become so skilled, competent and proficient? Now you need to lose your job because we need to hire this black/latino woman who never opened a book, has five children without a father because she was told by her men it's right woman must be men's toy to be a real woman, while dreaming to become the next Beyoncé, she can't code, she can't even use a computer, but you're just one white male too many, and thereby you need to become unemployed, while our company wastes money in unskilled worker so our annual "minority reports" look good, and we, the executives, can cash our bonuses!"

Guess I won't upgrade to any product built with people hired just for their ethnic origin, and not because of their true skills. We already saw what happened when cheap workers were used instead of skilled ones, not it will be even worse.

[Geoffrey W]

Re: Waiting to see the same effort to bring more players under 6" in the NBA...

RE: People without arms or legs in the NFL

Great analogy; because black females in IT are totally equivalent to a limbless football player, or a blind driver! No wonder it will be "Tragic" and "Dangerous"

[Cipher]

Re: Waiting to see the same effort to bring more players under 6" in the NBA...

Geoffrey W:

No, hiring people based on race & gender instead of skills will be "Tragic" and "Dangerous." For Intel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Waiting to see the same effort to bring more players under 6" in the NBA...

Do you believe black, latinos and women are not hired just because they are black, latinos and/or women? Or because in those ethnic groups there is a far lower number of people interested to achieve the right skills? Forcing companies to hire people without the right skill only to achieve a gender/ethnicity "balance" is alike asking the NBA to hire players below 6" (and women too!) - just because most people are not taller than 7". Or to ask the NFL to hire people with disabilities (and women too) - why shouldn't they play professional football and access those huge pays? Or they simply hire the people who have the right physical and technical skills to play the roles required, and who cares if in the NBA it means they are almost all men around 7" and black?

And why no one complains if today female singers are all of the sexy type? Are we sure someone less "sexy" could not sing far better with a far better voice? I guess today someone like Barbra Streisand would go nowhere because of her nose - not what music market needs to sell singers, the right body can make most people forget about a so-so voice... that's discriminatory as well, but no one complains (women first - they just want to become the same).

Sure, there is a root problem - women and some ethnic groups often don't like or can't get easy access to the education needed to achieve the skill required in IT, for example. The solution is to change their mindset - trying to make them understand there's a real world beyond media created dreams that require some types of skills and some way of living, and disdaining and refusing it just because it's a "white one" is purely silly , and enable them to achieve those skills - and then let them compete for those jobs on a purely meritocratic ground. It will take time, and for a while, there will be an imbalance.

Asking the company to hire *now* people with less skills of others just because they are not male and white (or Asian) is exactly like to ask the NFL to hire someone in his (or her) fifties, overweight and with no physical training, or put visually impaired drivers in buses "just because" we need to avoid only people with good enough sight driving - it's discriminatory, isn't it??

And moreover being physically impaired is something that happens, while being unskilled and ignorant is often something one decided to be.

[Craigness]

Gamergate

"I don't like your art" is different from the actual criticism, which was more like "Your art should not be allowed." Charlie Hebdo, anyone?

"Fine, go away and create your own games, and stop using discredited claims about connections between gaming and violence etc" was the response, not "We hate women." If the intention was to target women and get them out of gaming, there would have been a LOT more "victims" (it's really not hard to find women in the videogames industry!), and the victims would not be so worthy of the attention they received.

When ZQ got The Fine Young Capitalist's campaign for more women in game design stopped it was ignored, because she's a woman. When Gamergate stepped in and funded the project they were ignored because it didn't fit the narrative of misogyny. Harassment, doxing and sexist attacks on gamers are allowed, because gamers can be dismissed as male. Criticism of women is not allowed because women are the supreme gender. Truth is, nobody wants women out of game playing or design, but the narrative that the industry/subculture is anti-women HAS lead to women pulling out (and in 2 cases, being pulled from school by their frightened parents!).

Literally Wu lied, the world's media ran with it because they like the misandrist narrative and "war on women" theme, and now women think they'll be unsafe in gaming as a result. But Wu's Patreon is over $15k/month now (privilege much?), she has an excuse for her Kickstarter being so late, and the gender-baiting media got a lot of clicks, so it was all worth it.

http://pastebin.com/fAv1aU3h

Meanwhile, Intel has teamed up with an organisation which promoted a blacklist of "harassers" which included KFC and one of their own senior staff members, and another organisation run people who promote the sexist idea of "toxic masculinity" and that “San Francisco is full of repugnant white dudes who believe capitalism and their personal technology idea will the save the poor brown people.”

I oppose sexism, racism and hate groups so I won't buy Intel products.

[The Dude]

Re: Gamergate

I for one welcome our new gender and racially-balanced overlords.

Actually, the "Your art should not be allowed." has been done here in Canada, many times. By none other than our benevolent, helpful and friendly, federal government. In fact, they went so far as to recommend that Parliament amend the criminal code and jail people who voice any objection to "gender balance" policies and that sort of thing. So, Intel is doing what is necessary to stay on the right side of the powers-that-be.

[mafoo]

Discrimination

Discrimination is discrimination.

If you fill a job role because of a persons sex or race then thats sexist/racist.

I also think its insulting to the person hired as they will constantly be the shadow hanging over them that they might not be most qualified person for the job.

Encouraging people at the educational stage to join your industry is only genuine way to increase diversity in the workplace.

[Indolent Wretch]

Re: Discrimination

You're right they'd be much happier if they didn't get the job.

[YARR]

I wonder what the definition of "minority" is for a global corporation?

Women generally outlive men so they're a majority in most countries.

In ethnic terms the largest population groups on the planet are Indians, Chinese and sub-Saharan Africans so will those groups be discriminated against in favor of smaller populations like Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians and the native (non-Hispanic) tribes of central and southern America?

Perhaps they should adopt a different criteria in each region or country based on the local demographics? I'd imagine that offices in Africa, the Middle East and Asia probably have the least diverse local populations, so the policy should be applied there most rigorously.

[Mark 85]

I'll buy all this when....

companies shake up the board room and senior management for "equality". Until then, it's just PR and lip service and will probably cause a lot of the best candidates for a given job to look someplace else.

And while I'm not buying things... El Reg.. your headline was pure a pure and simple racist one. No where in the selected quotes did the CEO of Intel mention anything other than making it a "fair mix of men and women of all colors " The only time I read or heard "black" in the story and links was in your headline. Talk about feeding the frenzy... sheeeeshhhh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamergate + Intel pulling ads

The article that got Intel to pull their ads is called: 'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over. ( http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php ).

What upset gamers about it is that it called for the end of gamers. It had nothing to do with sexism or speaking against it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing

...that the PC police have been able to corrupt most of society with the diversity card. Hiring less qualified people to meet some artificial quota or perception that hiring minorities and whackjobs some how improves the work place culture is a pretty absurd belief. I have yet to see any place where the diversity mentality resulted in a better or more productive environment.

[James Micallef]

Re: It's amazing

" Hiring less qualified people to meet some artificial quota or perception that hiring minorities and whackjobs some how improves the work place culture is a pretty absurd belief"

That is perfectly correct, however NOT what is being talked about here. What this means is if there are EQUALLY qualified people, one of whom is a minority, they will get a conscious preference. Is that unfair? Hell, yes, if you're a white male. However, the situation has always previously been that if there were EQUALLY qualified candidates, the white male got the job. If there were 2 equally qualified white male, the tallest / best-looking more likely than not was selected. Is that fair? Nope, not that either.

If you, like me, are a white male, chances are that you are better off than you would have otherwise been if you were not a white male, so be thankful of that fat instead of bitching that some people are trying to level the playing field. Please note that I'm not saying you don't deserve what you have, I KNOW that anyone in a decent IT job must have worked hard to get there. I'm just saying that others who have worked equally hard also deserve the same.

[Terry Barnes]

It's amazing to see all the middle class white males bristle when someone takes a tiny step to redress their inherent advantage in tech jobs.

Any successful organisation will have a make up that reflects the make up of the community in which it conducts its business. If it doesn't there must be some inherent bias. That bias has been proven time and time again in lots of organisations by researchers submitting the same CVs with different names and thus different sex or perceived ethnicities of the supposed applicant. Guess which group is reliably invited to interview above all others?

Women and people from different ethnic groups are just as intelligent, capable and skilled as white middle class men, so if those people are under-represented in an organisation something is wrong. The only way to overcome that bias is through policies like this - for reasons that should be obvious. People who aren't white or male tend to be less inclined to apply for jobs in a business they perceive as almost exclusively white and male.

Or, looking at all this from a different angle - you want customers who aren't exclusively white middle class males? Then you'd better employ some people who aren't white middle class males.

[nijam]

> Any successful organisation will have a make up that reflects the make up of the community in which it conducts its business.

Not necessarily. The only way to achieve balance is to appoint/promote exclusively on ability/performance, by some pre-defined objective measure. Doing so might achieve the same balance as the wider community, but might not, for reasons quite outside the organisation's control. And, of course it would be a slow process, which is the kind of thing that motivates the calls for quotas - but quotas are always guaranteed to be discriminatory.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you see as people bristling (and I assume you're guessing that the people here are while males?), is a common phenomenom in software development, where it's made up of people who will argue the right answer no matter how it makes them look.

E.g.: you claim the people writing software don't have to be the same ethnicity/gender/background as the people using it. That's obviously false, and should be disagreed with by people of every opinion, but if you're stuck in the PC bubble, where every statement saying that men are lazy and useless is met with raucous laughter and any statement saying that maternity leave has a huge negative effect on SMEs is shrieked out of the room, you may not understand that not every point people make is about just choosing a side and agreeing with people on your side. No matter who's saying what, if something stupid is said, people from every point of view should say it's stupid, and the lack of that in the PC bubble (which I'd distinguish from the general decent PC lot who want discrimination removed, as opposed to quotas met) is one of the reasons why this sort of thing is always a fight: they aren't used to having to defend their more ridiculous claims.

[Terry Barnes]

"E.g.: you claim the people writing software don't have to be the same ethnicity/gender/background as the people using it. That's obviously false,"

What? Your argument is that white people can only use software written by white people? I hope to hell that with your logical skills you don't write software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Performance related pay

FANTASTIC!

Now Intel don't hire on the basis of ability or experience for the job. However, they do openly discriminate. If you're a white male, expect to take them to court when they discriminate against you because you're the wrong gender or background.

Even better for the staff working there will be phase 2 when they aim to "equalise pay". All those unskilled unsuited minorities that are underpaid will get hefty rises to bring them on par with the rest of you. If you wonder why you don't get a pay rise the next few years, despite your hard work and great performance, it's because you're not a minority. Seems fair eh.

[Indolent Wretch]

Re: Performance related pay

What makes you think this policy change suddenly means the interview stage is now full of utterly uneducated, unqualified black people and women, with one poor looked down on balding 40 year white guy?

A policy that means the final choice from the candidates that are qualified for the role should not be influenced by gender or ethinicity is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's an unqualified good thing. It's an utterly undeniably good thing.

You racist/sexist arsehole.

"If you're a white male, expect to take them to court when they discriminate against you because you're the wrong gender or background"

You racist/sexist arsehole.

"All those unskilled unsuited minorities that are underpaid will get hefty rises to bring them on par with the rest of you"

You racist/sexist arsehole.

I keep re-reading your post in the attempt to detect perfectly hidden sarcasm. But it just isn't there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Performance related pay

"What makes you think this policy change suddenly means the interview stage is now full of utterly uneducated, unqualified black people and women"

Have you tried putting an advert out recently for an IT support person in the UK? That's much what the vast majority of CVs back these days are - many Black + Asian - and generally very low quality.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Performance related pay

"What makes you think this policy change suddenly means the interview stage is now full of utterly uneducated, unqualified black people and women, with one poor looked down on balding 40 year white guy?

A policy that means the final choice from the candidates that are qualified for the role should not be influenced by gender or ethinicity is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's an unqualified good thing. It's an utterly undeniably good thing.

You racist/sexist arsehole.

"If you're a white male, expect to take them to court when they discriminate against you because you're the wrong gender or background"

You racist/sexist arsehole.

"All those unskilled unsuited minorities that are underpaid will get hefty rises to bring them on par with the rest of you"

You racist/sexist arsehole.

I keep re-reading your post in the attempt to detect perfectly hidden sarcasm. But it just isn't there.

"

When you've quite finished with your swearing and trolling, you'll find I'm specifically against discrimination of ANY variety. Clearly you're a racist sexist arsehole yourself, who quite openly wants to discriminate against white males.

Personally I believe there should be no discrimination, but jobs should go to those that will perform them the best. Hell if we didn't do that we'd have our current government and education system. Point proven lol

Clearly you must be right though, paying people based on their gender and ethnicity MUST be a good idea right - because that's exactly what you're unwittingly promoting.

What I'm saying, If you actually took the time to read it and understand it is that there should be NO consideration of gender or ethnicity when it comes to pay. If a black woman does the best job she should be paid more than everyone else. The same I would hope would apply to ANY gender or ethnicity. Without rewarding performance you'll see companies like intel go the same way as the education system. Breeding the next generation of illogical ill thought out, unproductive and emotionally irrational clueless idiots. Down the pan.

[Snowflake]

Brian Krzanich Intel's CEO should lead by example and give up his job in favour of a woman from a minority group.

[Dick Pountain]

So El Reg finally got a KKK subeditor - no big surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.der-kkk.de/

[MrXavia]

surely this is discrimination?

I absolutely HATE any form of positive discrimination and 'targets' such as this in business.

Just hire the right person for the job regardless of sex/colour, if it happens to be your whole office is full of white males, then so what?

I don't care if my colleagues are black/white/green/blue/yellow, or whether they are male/female or somewhere in between, but I do care if they can do the job...

[Terry Barnes]

Re: surely this is discrimination?

" if it happens to be your whole office is full of white males, then so what?"

Then it means your recruitment process is sexist and racist, because society isn't made up of white males. That won't be fixed by the magic equality fairy and so action has to be taken - like this one by Intel - to redress the balance.

[The First Dave]

Re: surely this is discrimination?

" it means your recruitment process is sexist and racist, because society isn't made up of white males"

No, it merely reflects the fact that the Universities and Colleges churn out white males with science-based degrees, and 'others' come out with liberal arts degrees.

In other words, the makeup of any company's workforce will tend to reflect the makeup of the applicants for its jobs.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: surely this is discrimination?

My physics degree at Imperial (many years ago) was 43 men an 1 women.

The 1 women was Japanese and couldn't work in the UK

How were employers supposed to hire 50/50 from that group?

[hplasm]

Re: surely this is discrimination?

"In other words, the makeup of any company's workforce will tend to reflect the makeup of the applicants for its jobs."

This.

[MrXavia]

Re: surely this is discrimination?

"Then it means your recruitment process is sexist and racist, because society isn't made up of white males."

Racist? Not really, unless you choose a white person because they are white not because they are good for the job... Considering the UK has a White British population of > 82% it stands to reason that the majority of the staff will be White... Add into that the choices of careers will vary based on culture, you will end up with some areas dominated by White British males, others by other colours...

Sexist? not really, in the past 10 years I've not seen a single Female applicants CV to an IT post I've interviewed for. This is a failure of the education system/society possibly a factor of genetics which affects peoples interests.

Men & Women are different, they make different choices.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: surely this is discrimination?

No, it may just mean there aren't many non-white women willing to work in that area, at that company or for that sort of money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well let's all cheer...

the institutionalised racism and sexism of INTEL who are clearly favouring as a policy females and black people over every orther option.

[El_Fev]

The headline

Pretty bloody offensive and I'm west Indian and not really into all this PC(political Correctness) rubbish!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about male under-represented career fields?

What about the nursing and elementary school teaching career fields? Both are overwhelmingly female with little male representation. You don't see hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to recruit males into these fields.

[Donkey Molestor X]

Re: What about male under-represented career fields?

Nurses have to clean up blood, puke, and other body fluids. Elementary schoolteachers have to corral screaming children and mark assignments after work. In the United States elementary schoolteachers frequently pay for their classes' school supplies from their own pocket.

IT workers can spend the day in chairs in air-conditioned offices and have more upward career mobility than either of those two women-dominated occupations.

Tell me: as a man, if you are a man, in all honesty, would a million dollar campaign be enough to blind you to these facts about these jobs and make you switch careers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Misandric bias

One of the problems with this sort of 'positive' discrimination is that is applied in a discriminatory way.

If you look at any of the STEM fields whether it is physics, any engineering discipline or maths there is huge efforts to get more women into the areas, endless school based initiatives, programs run by professional bodies, scholarships and subsidies for study, awards for students and new practioners.

Contrast this with areas where men are under represented like teachers or for that matter nurses. The professional bodies do nothing to encourage a more even gender balance in fact if anything they active discourage men. They certainly have nothing like the programs present in engineering to encourage women. Add to this the shoking disparity between booys and girls educational achievement. The fact is that in everything except STEM girls are doing much better than boys and dominate university admissions. The is almost nothing being done to address this is which a much bigger problem in terms of numbers and it has unsuprising led to much higher unemployment amongst young men than women. There is no suggetsion that this disparity is due to discrimination another example of the double standards present in this area.

Overall the discrimination is strongly against men and in favour of women. There is nothing wrong with encouraging women into science and technology and I am in favour of this by itself but a situation where every real or perceived disadvantage to women is addressed and all of the disadvanatages of men are ignored is in fact strongly discriminatory against men.

If you recruit for technical roles in engineeringa s I have done fof rmany years the fact is that the proportion of women candidates is quite low and if the best will in the world thsi is going to be reflected in the proportions of staff unless you take measures that will affect a business badly. In our case the only way we could get anywhere close to parity even if we accepted every women candidate irrespective of our assesment of competency would be to run the business with less people than required.

[Master Rod]

Re: Misandric bias

Ah, I must say, To Members of the Trollitarit, If you can't dazzle them with. Brilliance, dazzle them with bullshit. Either way, whoo cares about this BS.

Master Rod

[Dan Paul]

Quotas are reverse racisim, ageism!

This "quota system" has already been proved to be reverse racism.

"Diversity" is just another name for the same thing when it often overrides the real deciding factors.

The following removes all of the BS from the process.

0) Sanitize age, race and gender from all resume's before leaving HR. No contact between HR and decision makers.

1) Are you FULLY qualified to do the job? Yes or No

2) Show me PROOF of that. Yes or No

3) Rate against other candidates based on those standards alone.

No weighting for age, race or gender allowed because the decision makers don't even know.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Quotas are reverse racisim, ageism!

1, Fully qualified because they went to Oxford/Cambridge/Harvard/Yale etc?

Hint - why is the cabinet composed only of people who went to Eton?

2, Proof because they already worked for IBM/Intel/Microsoft etc?

If they happened to work freelance because IBM/Intel/Microsoft don't hire women then you wouldn't consider them.

3, How do you rate candidates without meeting them?

PhD scores 10, a degree scores 5, a MSCE scores -5, C scores 10 knowing Java scores -5 and add up the results ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Quotas are reverse racisim, ageism!

"3, How do you rate candidates without meeting them?

Their name often gives a lot of clues and can help to avoid migratory resources...

[Donkey Molestor X]

I don't know why all of you are so dead-set against efforts to get more women into IT jobs. You lot have been convinced and pressured by your bosses to spend so much time at work that the only way you're ever going to MEET any women is at the workplace.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a single, I would really like to see more women at the workplace :) And I'm not racist too, thereby I won't really mind about ethnicity. Just, I do not want to be forced to work even more because unskilled workers are brought in to embellish annual reports, and to avoid to lose my job because if the company goes bankrupt then I could even have troubles to find a new one, because I'm a bloody white male), work so hard and for so long I would really have no time to date any co-workers or not, who would be in turn happily free to meet someone outside the workplace, maybe some white male working in marketing, lawyers, brokers, trainers, etc. etc. and laugh about at those all "white male nerds" working so much to deliver a good product - they can't really understand why someone likes to work so hard...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't know why all of you are so dead-set against efforts to get more women into IT jobs. "

Simply not needed with the modern widespread use of Coffee Machines and Dishwashers...

[Master Rod]

No one is dead set against women in IT. IT is a place where logic rules. Understand that women bring all sorts of baggage into the equation. My boyfriend left me, I'm pregnant, I can't lift this 10 pound box, stop looking at me, does this dress make me look fat, you like chocolate, I'm looking for a spouse, and on ,and on.....I got a headache coming on....

Master Rod

[Anonymous Coward]

So as usual something like equality won't happen unless there's a financial reward for someone as a result of achieving it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is called Economic Contraception

Basically if you want to reduce a specific population then giving careers only to women means they are much less likely to have lots of kids. Here in the UK "positive bias" has reduced population growth to the point where we needed massive immigration to maintain the status quo I.e low wages for the masses and continued affluence for the minority.

The end result of this approach is a general reduction in high calibre employees of said group as the best are having careers rather than children. Then you can say they are too stupid to have good wages without fear of consequence as you have bred intelegence out of the group and hence anyone smart enough to oppose you

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: It is called Economic Contraception

There is also whats known as the "Scandinavian rebound"

When a country first drags itself out of the dark ages and starts educating women there is a massive drop in birth rate as half the population see a future which doesn't involve squeezing out sprogs.

Then a generation later when these women are at the top of political and business organisations they start to introduce policies that allow people to have children and still work - the birth rate goes back up.

You can tell how civilized your country is by it's position on this scale (PIGS <-> Scandinavia)

[Donkey Molestor X]

My impression of the average redditor^WEl Reg commentard:

*commentard's 19-man, 1-woman IT shop hires another woman, becomes 19-man, 2-woman IT shop*

commentard: "OH MY STARS AND GARTERS the number of women at my workplace just went up 100% in a single day! THE PENDULUM HAS SWUNG TOO FAR. TEH WHITE MANS is an ENDANGERED SPECIES. I'm going to have to tamp down my puerile patter of dick jokes and Star Wars references to a DULL ROAR."

[AsherGoldbergstein]

Unintelligible comments only make you look stupid.

[Florida1920]

Wow, how progressive!

I hate to toot my own horn, but this article really got me cranked. I was seeking out and recruiting qualified employees socially defined as "minorities" more than 40 years ago. I'm so glad Intel has awakened and discovered it's the freaking 21st century.

[Brian Allan 1]

It's known and already been said but let me repeat, "Quotas are bad, period!".

Companies should only hire the best of the best! Quotas open the doors to much worse hiring quality and ultimately hurt companies. If women and minorities wish to be hired, let them be the best available NOT simply because the company has to have a few more women or minorities on the payroll; dumb, dumber and dumbest!!

[Master Rod]

Looking for black chicks? "Wot rong widat ma niggas"?

Master Rod