Google's boy's club and minority inclusion issues are widespread

I have had an amusing time reading some of the articles regarding the witch hunt current and former female Google employees have engaged against the company. It's like the company has been so busy trying to be so PC to maintain an image that it tried to brush any sexual and racial hostilities against their scant minority employees under the sand instead of addressing the problem beforehand.

I'm hispanic, female and I studied a STEM degree ever since I was a child because I wanted to. I ended up studying medicine although I had a huge interest in getting a computer programming degree in college. Do I regret the degree I got? I never did and enjoy medicine very much despite the bad aspects of the profession.

However, while I would feel insulted that I was hired by a top notch company to be the token employee to fill out a checklist of minority new hire goals, maybe companies should look further to locate potential employees that might not have the 100% qualifications but might instead offer something else.

I really like my tablet for example. Android for the most part is a cool operating system and I have no complaints with the hardware of the Samsung products I own. However! Let's face it, these machines have a tiny amount of memory and Google's uber super brilliant PhD dudes believe that chugging a tablet or smartphone with 50 crap apps that nobody ever uses that take off lots of space and you seemingly can't delete was somehow a good idea.

Hogwash.

Decisions like that don't need an employee that belongs to a specific token gender or ethnic group, they need common sense from the common mortal.

If Google or other Silicon Valley corporations have a hard time finding token employees, maybe they should find more creative ways to locate them in the first place. I hold US citizenship but given I studied something that isn't engineering, I would never get hired by the company.

Quite frankly, I've never taken a look at the kind of positions they want. However, I have taken a look at the kinds of things the WHO asks to hire someone in a medical field. To work for a 50,000 USD salary in an exotic faraway location, a physician must be a specialist with a Master's Degree in Public Health, 10 years minimum experience in a very specific subfield and a dozen other arsinine requirements. It reminded me of the Neurologists in rural Brazil that started to associate Zika infection in utero and certain birth defects in children. These are the most highly qualified people in these specific diseases and yet they would never land a job at the CDC because of arcane minimum qualifications. And then the CDC complains they can't fill 70% of their job positions.

Back in the 1990's, companies used to hire people that had the right temperament, values that aligned with the motto of a company and other random traits and they paid the employee cash to get a Masters Degree or any other training needed for the job. Graduate School was still reasonably affordable and companies seemed to want to retain talent. After 2009 when fresh & unemployed college grads were a dime a dozen, companies went to the opposite end and became so picky that they can't locate ridiculously over qualified employees.

Associating a lot of these issues as a fantasy author, I have noticed that there is a current of people complaining that there aren't a lot of minority authors or whatever the hell that means. As a reader, I don't care about the skin color or sex of the author, I care about the book. But that's just my personal biased opinion.

As a hispanic, part of the reason why there are so few hispanic fantasy authors is either because most of them write in Spanish therefore limiting themselves to a smaller audience that can read the language or live in countries where people don't read books at all. I have already written a post a year ago regarding a library that was opened in Toluca which features some amusing photos of Mexico's desperate plea to convince parents to read a book to their children. They make it seem like reading books was a chore.

I still can't recover from the shock that Chileans read so many books and that Santiago's subway has a book sharing service in a lot of stations.

Should I open a support group for hispanic fantasy authors to band together and prove to readers we are here too and love to write as a hobby and a living?

It would be fun indeed. Sadly I work more than 100 hours a week for the time being and can't put the time & effort for now.

Would Google hire someone like me? I seriously doubt it. Instead of offering on the job training they want people fresh out of school with their pricey Master's Degree literally cutting themselves out of hiring a potentially amazing employee that could offer suggestions to improve their products.

Does Google even know how to make minorities feel welcome? I doubt it as well. If they want to attract more people like me, just watch Saint Seiya. We love that anime. One of the funniest experiences I had in Bolivia was chatting with locals which unanimously loved that anime along with Dragon Ball Z. The continent is huge and we're all a bit different, but it's cool to know we have some things that unite us.