Google's Progressive Paradox

Robbins and Judge (2017) paint Google as a paradox, helping to modernize workplaces around the world while maintaining an old-fashioned workplace of its own. The evidence that Google modernizes companies is seen in the widespread adoption of its technologies in machine learning, maps, natural language search functionality, among others (Hanna, 2019).

The primary reason Robbins and Judge suggest the company’s workplace is old-fashioned is that it scores low on diversity ratings in that it is skewed heavily toward males (70 percent overall, 83 percent of the engineers, and 79 percent of the managers are male) (Goldenberg, 2014). While it is true that this male-dominated workforce does reflect the male-dominated workforce of prior generations, I cannot say Google’s workplace is necessarily old-fashioned because of this.

As Robbins and Judge point out (2017), Google intentionally seeks out a certain type of employee, one they call a “smart creative” and has a set of very particular traits. They do this presumably because their employees do a very particular kind of work in computer engineering and because they have found that the smart creative is the best candidate for this kind of work.

Schmidt and Rosenberg (2014) indicate that one way that managers find candidates is through a sophisticated method of personality testing. The idea is to find the kind of person who will provide them with the kind of mindset that will provide the company with the best results, namely, risk takers who are easily bored, job-hoppers, intellectually flexible people, a mix of technical know-how and creativity, and analytical thinking.

As one ex-Google employee famously argued (Damore, 2017), it is possible that the smart creative traits sought by Google are displayed by males more than females. If that is the case, it would follow that it was their hiring strategy, and not any hidden bias, that led to the majority male workforce. While it is clear that Google’s hiring strategy has led to a majority male workforce, it is because of modern techniques and not what Robbins and Judge (2017) imply is old-fashioned bias.

References

Damore, J. (2017). Google’s ideological echo chamber. Retrieved from https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320

Goldenberg, S. (2014, September 25). Exposing hidden bias at Google. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/technology/exposing-hidden-biases-at-google-to-improve-diversity.html

Hanna, T. (2019). 8 amazing Google APIs (and how to use them). Retrieved from https://www.creativebloq.com/features/google-apis

Robbins, S.P., Judge, T.A. (2017). Organizational behavior, 17e. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Schmidt, E., Rosenberg, J. (2014). How Google works. London: John Murray.