Open Letter to Apple
I've
interned at the Apple Special Projects Group for roughly 6
months now, through this process I have become
increasingly disenchanted by the political environment
within the company. In this open letter, I hope to air out
some of these qualms and incite some level of change.
Political Landscape
Just
like every other company I've worked at, I hoped that at
Apple I would be able to bring my whole self to work, be
able to freely express my point of view on issues and hope
to be heard as respectfully as I hear others.
Unfortunately,
the reality was far detached from this ideal viewpoint in
my head. There was a significant emphasis on undergoing
hidden bias and microagression training. I went through
these trainings with an open mind and afterwards I wanted
to express to my coworkers how I found them to be silly
and mostly just classes on common sense.
This
was met with terrible backlash, I was told that I was
extremely privileged and my opinion was completely invalid
because of it. I was told that just talking about my
thoughts was making others uncomfortable which was
absolutely appaling to me.
I
go to school at Purdue University, which is an incredibly
diverse school, it has a massive international student
population and never have I experienced the level of
aversion from discussion that I see at Apple.
Censorship and Fear
If
there's something that James Damore's memo showed us, it
is that there is a massive fear amongst like-minded
conservatives with voicing our opinion or even just trying
to have a conversation about our viewpoint. Despite
numerous times in his memo acknowledging both sides of the
argument and repeatedly stating that he's not
fundamentally against the idea of encouraging and
increasing minorities, he was still fired.
The
fact is, when we make diversity a "with or without us"
issue, it is incredibly hard to even begin to talk about
it. This is not a black and white issue, anyone who wants
to talk about the opposite side of diversity should not
have a target painted on their back.
Diversity and Affirmative Action
It
is no secret that Apple's intern program is one of the
most competitive and well paying amongst the industry. As
such, one would expect that with such a broad talent pool,
Apple interns would be absolutely the best in their class.
Unfortunately,
I have personally experienced this to not be the case:
Apple covets its 50% under-represented new hire
rate but this diversity doesn't
come without a cost. In order to actually overcome my
bias, I began noting down when a colleague demonstrated
lack of knowledge on basic CS topics and especially when
they made no effort to learn the topic.
While
I won't post the raw statistics here because they are
actually fairly disheartening, I would summarize it as
follows. There is a significant correlation between
whether a person was in an under-represented group and
their lack of knowledge. While I admit there might be some
causation-correlation fallacy going here (i.e new hires
might be from more under-represented groups and new hires
might be lacking in knowledge) this trend is far too
alarming to ignore.
Alternatives to Affirmative Action
Fundamentally,
I believe that change in the distribution of people at the
final level, that is, careers needs to come from a
grassroots level. By encouraging more minorities and women
to join CS at the school level, there will be a larger
selection of talented under-represented people to choose
from.
With
affirmative action, we only strive to stengthen the
imposter syndrome that so many women and people of color
already have. They have to second-guess themselves at
every step, wondering if they are a diversity hire or
actually earned their way through to their job.
Disparity in Distribution and its Causes
The
distribution of the general population doesn't necessarily
say anything about the qualities and interests of those
people. A simple example is the over-representation of
African Americans in basketball, just because the general
population is 13% doesn't necessarily mean that 13% of NBA
players will be black.
In
a similar light, it is important to consider that this
industry might be facing a similar situation. It could
just be that the interests and goals of the general
population align themselves to create the distributions we
see in companies today. As numerous · scientific studies have
shown, men and women do not necessarily have the same
interests. Thus, it is very strange to assume that the
distribution of men and women in companies will end up
exactly the same as the general population.
I'd
argue that there might be some level of systematic
oppression going on because the numbers are way too off
but it doesn't mean that every waking moment of our
careers have to involve supporting and shrinking the gap.
The Abundance of Wealth in Tech
The
tech industry is incredibly profitable to the point where
its easy enough to lose sight of the fact that it is a
business at the lowest level. While we can afford to
splurge on diversity hiring and needless training at the
moment, this will not necessarily always be the case. When
the going gets tough, businesses have to do what it takes
to keep afloat, and it is at that point that I truly think
these decisions will come to bite us in the back.
When
companies have to lay off large droves of people and they
risk being seen as discriminatory in their firings or go
bankrupt because they fired their more talented staff will
they truly learn the cost of diversity.
Discourse
This
letter is not just meant to be put out to the world, I
hope to start an honest conversation from it. If you have
any questions or concerns please open up an issue on this
repo and I would love to have a civil discussion.