RSS
“Laszlo Bock, Google’s executive in charge of human resources, has argued that a diverse work force could be good for Google’s business.” Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times. Up periscope! Is that a Heidelberg U. dueling scar on Herr Bock’s left temple? Besides Jorge Ramos of Univision, does anybody go more out of his way in how he dresses to emphasize his blue eyes than Laszlo Bock?
At a corporate party in the 1980s in Chicago, one executive complained to the top boss about the poor performance of the company’s head of Human Resources. The head guy patiently explained that having a black woman in charge of HR made us look a lot better to the EEOC and to juries in the constant stream of discrimination nuisance lawsuits from fired employees. So, he’d just have to grin and bear it as long as the black lady in charge of HR didn’t screw up too badly.
Amusingly, immensely profitable Silicon Valley firms have, until very recently, assumed that they were too disruptive and virtuous and anti-evil to have to put up with this kind of thing that applies to most of corporate America For example, here in the New York Times today is a picture of Google’s head of HR, Laszlo Bock, discussing his plans to make Google more successful by being more diverse.
By the way, Bock has claimed in interviews to have been a minor movie star after graduating from Pomona College in 1993, but I can’t find anybody under his name in IMDB. If he gets back into the movie game, I could see him, say, peering through his U-boat’s periscope at a helpless refugee ship while his minions salute and address him as “Mein Kapitän.”
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Laszlo Bock has blue eyes so that makes him even more extremely non-diverse, since blue eyes is a rare feature among vibrant diversity.
The NYT does allow non-PC comments. Here was mine:
**********************************************************************
Beliavsky
Boston
“In the lecture, Dr. Welle shows a computer simulation of how a systematic 1 percent bias against women in performance evaluation scores can trickle up through the ranks, leading to a severe underrepresentation of women in management.”
By the same token, if men in tech are just 1% more able than their female colleagues, that also could lead to “severe underrepresentation”. The vast majority of breakthroughs in technology have been made by males, and we don’t know that the distribution of ability is the same in the two sexes.
**********************************************************************
Another commenter backed me up, writing as follows:
**********************************************************************
Alexander
Boston, MA
That the vast majority of breakthroughs in technology are made by males is patently obvious — both figuratively and literally. In the United States the great majority of patents — a useful index of innovation — are still held by men, and in past eras that majority was overwhelming. Beyond patents, one need simply look at the technological innovations shaping our lives today — smartphones, operating systems, medical devices, advances in energy technology — anyone who keeps up news stories profiling the creative heavyweights in these fields would be hard pressed to deny that men dominate.
As to why that is the case, even the most sincere egalitarian should admit that discrimination is only one explanation, and arguably one that becomes less and less compelling as the decades wear on and ever greater attempts are mounted to encourage gender equality generally and women to enter STEM fields specifically. Ultimately, we might find that these tenacious job disparities result mainly from very stubborn gender differences in the distribution of interests, motivation, and, yes, even talents.
**********************************************************************
“No doubt, I can create a very diverse mail room!
Oh wait, Google uses email. Damn, where are those black computer geniuses Hollywood promised us?
Holy cow, if we don’t diversify, Obama will bomb us!”
Hungarian first name + German last name shows diversity.
The most famous Laszlo was a Mexican:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1zaro_C%C3%A1rdenas
IMO, the man was the best leader Mexico has ever had, and at minimum the best of the 20th Century:
1. Traveled the country by horseback, never used bodyguards
2. Nationalized the oil industry, allowing the government a large source of revenue without imposing taxes
3. Tried to avoid violence in the election of his successor by supporting a moderate as the next president, at a time when the far-left was at the peak of its influence
4. Supposedly the only recent Mexican president not to get rich off corruption
5. Saved Mexico from further civil war and revolution and co-opted the radical left by adopting some, but not all, of their reforms
6. Rapidly expanded rural education (and cut the rural birthrate, which is correlated to female illiteracy) and expanded infrastructure
7. His successful support of a moderate as his successor also stopped the left from continuing his campaign of nationalizations beyond areas, like oil and the old gigantic haciendas, where it made economic sense
8. Continued to serve his country as secretary of defense
9. Welcomed in educated European immigrants fleeing the Depression and associated political instability
4. Of recent Mexican presidents, Zedillo (1994-2000) didn't seem to get rich off corruption and Fox (2000-2006) was already rich when he took office. That makes a nearly 60 year period after Cárdenas.
6. The expansion of education, especially rural education, took off under President Álvaro Obregón (1920-1924) and Secretary of Education José Vasconcelos. They created the Mexican national identity by feeding free meals to kids from the local communities if they would attend school and learn to read. The teaching was only in Spanish; our host Mr. Unz is famous for pointing out that bilingual education is a disaster. Mexico went from being a country like Guatemala or Honduras with no majority language and culture to a Spanish speaking country with pride. Vasconcelos also coined the phrase 'la raza cosmica,' often called 'la raza' in English to give mestizos a blood and soil nationalistic agenda.
The post-revolution reforms of Obregón, Vasconcelos, and Cárdenas are largely responsible for the emergence of Mexico as a wealthy first world nation decades later while neighboring Central America is facing a poverty and overpopulation crisis with dozens of fighting ethnies and languages and sending millions migrating to the USA.
7. The land reforms Cárdenas implemented were among the very few world wide that divested nobles and huge land grants without starvation and mass violent death. The plan was hatched by Emiliano Zapata in his Plan of Ayala and implemented over two decades. It follows Mexican easygoing pragmatism and make-do spirit without any call for vigorous ideological purity or class revenge like the twentieth century's many Fascist and Communist attempts to accomplish the same thing.
To bring this back around, Mexico's Laszlo played down its diversity and learned to take small steps forward with what they had. Google's Laszlo is trying to force its workforce to pretend to be something it's not.
We have many famous László's in our history.
Bock is from german origin, we have many families with Bock last name, for example one of the bst vinery's of Hungary (Bock Vinery).
One of the days I’m going to look at the Fortune 50 or 100 list and see how many heads of HR are WoC. Anyone want to place any bets? I’ll say 65%.
Papa Lugash was head of HR of a fairly large company up until the early aughts. One of my most vivd memories was of Mama Lugash asking him for advice on how to end run her HR department and be able to use tests during the interview process. If I recall correctly, she had to spin up a ~100 person department around 1990. She wanted to test for the ability to do simple percentages. Naturally, this was against the rules. I think she had use a college degree as a proxy, and a big chunk of them still couldn’t do it without a calculator.
I wonder if Google, Intel, Apple etc. have gotten away with being non envibrated by working with the NSA?
We were talking about the ancestors of Germans earlier. Here’s Tacitus on the high status of women then:
They had some vices as well:
Don’t most companies get the heat off by simply creating departments of “diversity and inclusion” and/or “community relations” with well-paid but largely do-nothing vibrant VPs and staff?
“Oh wait, Google uses email. Damn, where are those black computer geniuses Hollywood promised us?”
If there were so many Black computer geniuses in real life than why don’t Blacks create their own Silicon Valley in Detroit or PG County, Maryland for example.
They can call it Chocolate Valley or Chocolate Tech.
Fantasyland is not just a section of Disney World theme park, it is alive and well in Hollywood.
Southern Baptist theoretical physicist (and Rice alumnus) discovers his great-grandfather was likely an Ashkenazi Prussian or Pole who came to Houston in the 1850’s, where he married a wealthy widow.
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw144.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Cramer
I sometimes shed a single tear thinking of how much more these men would have been able to accomplish had they known the blessings of diversity.
We’d have been golfing on the moons of Saturn by now
I’m sure the students at his childrens’ private school enjoy 5%-7% non-white diversity. Racist!
http://i.imgur.com/y70rnu4.jpg
We'd have been golfing on the moons of Saturn by nowReplies: @The most deplorable one
I suspect you mean a bitter tear.
Oh, I expect there are more Asians than that in his kids’ school.
Funny, he doesn’t look much like famous Resistance fighter Victor Laszlo… are we sure they’re related?
Time to short Google? I am told by an acquaintance that Boeing plans to hire almost exclusively female engineers. Time to short Boeing?
The good thing about diversity is that very soon not only will the NSA not be able to read your email, google itself will go away and maybe Alta Vista will return.
Oh hell Bing is behind this. Diversity, diversity, diversity!
2. Nationalized the oil industry, allowing the government a large source of revenue without imposing taxes
3. Tried to avoid violence in the election of his successor by supporting a moderate as the next president, at a time when the far-left was at the peak of its influence
4. Supposedly the only recent Mexican president not to get rich off corruption
5. Saved Mexico from further civil war and revolution and co-opted the radical left by adopting some, but not all, of their reforms
6. Rapidly expanded rural education (and cut the rural birthrate, which is correlated to female illiteracy) and expanded infrastructure
7. His successful support of a moderate as his successor also stopped the left from continuing his campaign of nationalizations beyond areas, like oil and the old gigantic haciendas, where it made economic sense
8. Continued to serve his country as secretary of defense
9. Welcomed in educated European immigrants fleeing the Depression and associated political instabilityReplies: @(((Owen))), @Anonymous, @Tony
4. Of recent Mexican presidents, Zedillo (1994-2000) didn’t seem to get rich off corruption and Fox (2000-2006) was already rich when he took office. That makes a nearly 60 year period after Cárdenas.
6. The expansion of education, especially rural education, took off under President Álvaro Obregón (1920-1924) and Secretary of Education José Vasconcelos. They created the Mexican national identity by feeding free meals to kids from the local communities if they would attend school and learn to read. The teaching was only in Spanish; our host Mr. Unz is famous for pointing out that bilingual education is a disaster. Mexico went from being a country like Guatemala or Honduras with no majority language and culture to a Spanish speaking country with pride. Vasconcelos also coined the phrase ‘la raza cosmica,’ often called ‘la raza’ in English to give mestizos a blood and soil nationalistic agenda.
The post-revolution reforms of Obregón, Vasconcelos, and Cárdenas are largely responsible for the emergence of Mexico as a wealthy first world nation decades later while neighboring Central America is facing a poverty and overpopulation crisis with dozens of fighting ethnies and languages and sending millions migrating to the USA.
7. The land reforms Cárdenas implemented were among the very few world wide that divested nobles and huge land grants without starvation and mass violent death. The plan was hatched by Emiliano Zapata in his Plan of Ayala and implemented over two decades. It follows Mexican easygoing pragmatism and make-do spirit without any call for vigorous ideological purity or class revenge like the twentieth century’s many Fascist and Communist attempts to accomplish the same thing.
To bring this back around, Mexico’s Laszlo played down its diversity and learned to take small steps forward with what they had. Google’s Laszlo is trying to force its workforce to pretend to be something it’s not.
No, time to consider Greyhound, Amtrak and the QE2. For travel, not just investment. And schedule a tune-up for the ol’ station wagon.
Also, if you are under any major flight paths, consider living underground.
The good thing about diversity is that very soon not only will the NSA not be able to read your email, google itself will go away and maybe Alta Vista will return.
Oh hell Bing is behind this. Diversity, diversity, diversity!Replies: @Chubby Ape
With all-female engineers, the NSA and Google would not only lose most of their ability to read our email, they’d also lose any interest in reading it. The girl engineers would only be interested in tweets and emails that involved them, people they knew personally or the celebrities they follow as if they knew them personally.
Just the other day I heard that “Sara Haider, a mobile engineer and technical lead at Twitter for the past four and a half years, announced on Friday that she plans to leave the microblogging company to join Secret, the buzzy anonymous social startup that launched just two months ago. “. So she left Twitter to help maintain an app designed to let someone be even more catty and nosey than is currently possible with existing technology:
http://recode.net/2014/03/21/more-departures-at-twitter-as-android-lead-leaves-for-secret/
I like the photo of the other senior Twitter ex-employee mentioned in that article. He looks like a US Air Force captain circa 1960. “Twitter VP Cayley Torgeson” was apparently one of the guys who actually made the thing work.
http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2014/09/episode-31-rise-fall-and-rise-of-sam.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11119062/Incest-a-fundamental-right-German-committee-says.html
Google’s doing something right.
Many companies would have defaulted into putting women’s studies majors in charge of their HR.
Bock could be diverse by being married to a man.
„Google’s extremely non-diverse HR guy”
Really? Google this: „Google: Foreign workers are key to our success“
Excerpts:
Bock himself said he fled communist Romania with his family as a child in the 1970s. His mother, who started a business consulting firm upon the family’s move to Claremont, Calif., sat behind him at the hearing and, after she was publicly introduced, pulled out a handkerchief to dab her eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.
A Google executive on Wednesday credited the company’s phenomenal success to the United States’ openness to immigrants and called on Congress to let in more foreign workers.
“It is no stretch to say that without these employees, we might not be able to develop future revolutionary products like the next Gmail or the next Google Earth.“
“Bock could be diverse by being married to a man”
Gay White men are considered vibrantly diverse in the bedroom, but on the surface at first glance they are not seen as vibrantly diverse.
Because phenotype wise, a Homosexual White man still looks closer in appearance to officer Darren Wilson than to Michael Brown.
And if a Homosexual White man has blond hair and or blue eyes, that is even more vibrant diversity points taken away from him.
I have seen articles from the PC police complaining about the overrepresentation of Gay White males in LGBT media and how there needs to be more Gay Nonwhite males and Lesbian women regardless of race being represented in the media.
“„Google’s extremely non-diverse HR guy”
Really? Google this: „Google: Foreign workers are key to our success“
Excerpts:
Bock himself said he fled communist Romania with his family as a child in the 1970s.”
Laszlo Bock is from Romania, but Romania is not considered a vibrantly diverse country like Mexico, Pakistan, or Somalia for example.
Romania is considered a creepy ass Cracker country. Romania is not vibrantly diverse enough for the PC police. China even though it’s a Mongoloid country racially, has honorary creepy ass Cracker country status. Hence why Chinese tech workers in Silicon Valley are not considered vibrantly diverse enough either for the PC police.
Bock himself said he fled communist Romania with his family as a child in the 1970s."Laszlo Bock is from Romania, but Romania is not considered a vibrantly diverse country like Mexico, Pakistan, or Somalia for example.Romania is considered a creepy ass Cracker country. Romania is not vibrantly diverse enough for the PC police. China even though it's a Mongoloid country racially, has honorary creepy ass Cracker country status. Hence why Chinese tech workers in Silicon Valley are not considered vibrantly diverse enough either for the PC police.Replies: @reiner Tor
From his name, I have to admit that this person hails from an ethnically Hungarian family. (His father could be ethnically German, but because of having mingled with Germans for centuries, many Hungarians have German names, too. László is unquestionably a Hungarian first name.) I’d personally be happier if he was a bloody Romanian, so that, as a Hungarian, I wouldn’t have to take responsibility for him.
In Hungary he’s referred to as having Hungarian ancestry.
Also, Bock is the name of one of the biggest names among Hungarian winemakers.
He looks like a white laboratory bunny except his eyes are blue instead of pink.
So the idea of being loyal to White people is just utterly passé?
“…she comes to her husband as a partner in toils and dangers; to suffer and to dare equally with him, in peace and in war: this is indicated by the yoked oxen…”
Does this refer to the marriage ceremony practice of yoking the bride and groom together with a wooden ox team yoke and parading them around? Or is that from somewhere else?
“Lot says:
Southern Baptist theoretical physicist (and Rice alumnus)…………”
Not theoretical, experimental.
2. Nationalized the oil industry, allowing the government a large source of revenue without imposing taxes
3. Tried to avoid violence in the election of his successor by supporting a moderate as the next president, at a time when the far-left was at the peak of its influence
4. Supposedly the only recent Mexican president not to get rich off corruption
5. Saved Mexico from further civil war and revolution and co-opted the radical left by adopting some, but not all, of their reforms
6. Rapidly expanded rural education (and cut the rural birthrate, which is correlated to female illiteracy) and expanded infrastructure
7. His successful support of a moderate as his successor also stopped the left from continuing his campaign of nationalizations beyond areas, like oil and the old gigantic haciendas, where it made economic sense
8. Continued to serve his country as secretary of defense
9. Welcomed in educated European immigrants fleeing the Depression and associated political instabilityReplies: @(((Owen))), @Anonymous, @Tony
Lazaro is not László. László is one of the most common, ancient hungarian first name (one of our saints is Saint László, King of Hungary in the 11-12. century).
We have many famous László’s in our history.
Bock is from german origin, we have many families with Bock last name, for example one of the bst vinery’s of Hungary (Bock Vinery).
2. Nationalized the oil industry, allowing the government a large source of revenue without imposing taxes
3. Tried to avoid violence in the election of his successor by supporting a moderate as the next president, at a time when the far-left was at the peak of its influence
4. Supposedly the only recent Mexican president not to get rich off corruption
5. Saved Mexico from further civil war and revolution and co-opted the radical left by adopting some, but not all, of their reforms
6. Rapidly expanded rural education (and cut the rural birthrate, which is correlated to female illiteracy) and expanded infrastructure
7. His successful support of a moderate as his successor also stopped the left from continuing his campaign of nationalizations beyond areas, like oil and the old gigantic haciendas, where it made economic sense
8. Continued to serve his country as secretary of defense
9. Welcomed in educated European immigrants fleeing the Depression and associated political instabilityReplies: @(((Owen))), @Anonymous, @Tony
The most famous Laszlo was in Casablanca.
There are a couple of purported black computer geniuses in the latest Terminator movie, but they stand around in business suits exhibiting mystification at the genius of John Connor….