There is diversity and then there's "diversity". This is ultimately a Americentric political movement. You only see American demographics as targets, ignoring the vast number of immigrants and foreign students that enter the industry.
When is the last time you heard someone advocating for more linguistic or geographic diversity? If these diversity advocates truly care about these studies for something other than political gain, they would be at the front lines advocating for more H1-Bs.
Paypal's cofounder made the argument for homogeneity in the book Zero to One. Not only were the founders of the typical demographic mix but they were also ideologically similar. They were all libertarian and all believed a digital currency would displace the US dollar. That was a very fringe view 15 years ago. They were fantastically successful, even after Paypal. Many other successful teams are 100% Asian or 100% Jewish in early days.
I love working in diverse, multi-ethnic teams, but based on what I've observed more diverse teams seem to be a wash at best in terms of results in the US and are a significant liability in China (possibly due to the demographics of the target market).
Possibly the most egregious example in the US would be Facebook. Not only were the employees narrow demographically, they also went to the same schools, were all in their early twenties or teens and the CEO publicly said like it was important to be "young and technical" and that young people were "just smarter". From everything I've read about it, it was basically run like a frat while it was bulldozing all competition in its path. (Snapchat appears to be a sequel of this story)
What sorts of problem-solving did the study look at? Is there a way to reconcile it with the conflicting outcomes from basically all the hugely successful startups except for Slack (assuming its founding team was diverse)?
That is a great move no matter how you look at it. I applaud the Slack team for this!
The very fact that this is newsworthy says a lot about the lack of diversity in our industry. As a society we should try to find more ways to encourage women and minorities of all sorts to get into this industry.
Well the news media write about a lot of things but that's different to being newsworthy. Readers decide that. It's why Yahoo's homepage might have a story about a wounded war veteran returning home next to one of Kim and Kayne. When Kim and Kayne get 10x or 100x the shares it's not Yahoo's fault right?
> The news media has their own agenda, we shouldn't use "what they choose to write about" as a barometer.
I don't like this logic. It presumes that there's some dark cabal of web journalists conspiring to change the world.
Unfortunately their agenda is typically, 'will we get advertising revenue from our target demographic by publishing this?'
Nothing more sinister than that.
And given this was published to, uh, a _news site for and about POC_ and not a tech news site.... (take a look at the domain, maybe?) what nefarious agenda could they POSSIBLY be running? Maybe one that promotes POC, and responds positively to a company that celebrates its diversity?
Frankly, this is wilfully ignorant. To suggest that the production of media is devoid of political or ideological interest beyond ad dollars is, I think, stretching the boundary of believability to a breaking point.
Well, sure. It's pretty impossible to be completely unbiased.
But the parent of my comment couched the phrase as if there's some dark cabal pushing some evil agenda. It reeked of a cis-gendered cis-sexual white male privilege soaked persecution complex.
You lost me with your jargon, not sure what your point is there.
Regardless, being _biased_ is most definitely _not_ the substance of any interesting critique of media. Rather, it's trivially obvious that the production of media is intricately related to ideological beliefs and political agendas - precisely because media is the primary tool of mass persuasion. Look no further than the long, storied history of newspaper barons.
Fundamentally, media functions as a legitimation strategy for normative beliefs; a structure for the normalization of acceptable opinion.
>The very fact that this is newsworthy says a lot about the lack of diversity in our industry. As a society we should try to find more ways to encourage women and minorities of all sorts to get into this industry.
Why? What's the benefit from this? They aren't barred in no way in pursuing these kind of careers
> They aren't barred in no way in pursuing these kind of careers
Even if I interpret that to merely mean actively barred, I still don't think it's true. But women and minorities are certainly passively barred from these kind of careers. By virtue of opportunity, environment, peer group, role model, education, and all sorts of passive mechanisms.
That's why colleges discriminate against whites and asians?
I want to be judged and to judge by merit, not by some leftist agenda of "equality".
And you come up with this argument without any proof, only that it's "well-known". I would like to see the numbers, if you may.
In Germany, a "study" is often cited saying that men were better paid than women. However, peer review uncovered that the media covering this study omitted the fact that the women also worked less hours than men and thus got less money (obviously).
This however does not stop "female-rights-activists" from citing it over and over again. I'm sick of it.
I also don't like the notion that women are portraied as victims here. Most women I know don't want to go into tech-jobs because they think it's fucking boring. Live with it, people!
I know it's also due to socialization, but do we really want to change the entire society just to shoehorn exactly 50% in our employee statistics? Who benefits from this?
I know no woman who is sad because she just can't get hold in a tech job. If a woman is passionate about something, and pursues it, it will work out for her. Same with men of course.
Oh, and why don't people go berserk because we have like 96% women as educators (kindergartens, pre-schools, ...). Oh yeah, right, I know, because you can't earn as much money with that.
Or any of those many other reasons that people talk about that explain the statistic?
The issue isn't as black and white as you want to make it.
I know it's also due to socialization, but do we really want to change the entire society just to shoehorn exactly 50% in our employee statistics?
Diversity increases performance. So yes, yes we do.
Most women I know don't want to go into tech-jobs because they think it's fucking boring. Live with it, people!
I guess all those programmers who were originally women back when men saw it is as "secretary" work and there wasn't a lot of money in it just absolutely found technology boring. Or all those game-designers/programmers who were women, before it became popular and the market crashed? No, you're right, there can be no other explanations.
If a woman is passionate about something, and pursues it, it will work out for her.
Just have to navigate all that there discrimination and sexual harassment and it'll be totally fine.
Oh, and why don't people go berserk because we have like 96% women as educators
Perhaps we can discuss why men aren't seeking those positions.
If you're looking to have a dispassionate and thoughtful conversation about a contentious subject, referring to other people's perspective as a "leftist agenda of 'equality'" isn't a great way to go about it.
So what you're saying is that rather than discussing this particular story, you'd like to discuss a different story, one about how you feel when you get into debates with some other group of people.
I am not interested in this debate and further feel like it's not remotely germane to this thread, which is why I feel entitled to tell you how uninteresting I find that debate.
I suggest you write a story about how you feel harassed by people who seem to have an agenda, and then submit it to HN and see how it does, rather than using this story about Slack and these four engineers as a coatrack.
Yes, having a iMac instead of a windows in the home, with a parent who forbid me from playing games but allowed me to write my own, made a lot of the difference. My peer group was not interested in anything to do with computers besides world of warcraft.
Diversity is so in right now. This is the just another way for white high-status individuals to show that's they're not just rich BUT also MORALLY better than you.
I can just see the execs at Slack, sitting back in their chair in some posh SF restaurant, recounting to their friends how they got four BLACK WOMEN to accept an award for them.
You're arguing that stories about racial and gender diversity overshadow some larger story about class divisions in Silicon Valley. Fine. I agree that there are real issues of class in tech startups.
But I'm left wondering: stipulate that class is an issue, would you prefer to see less racial and gender diversity?
Honestly I'm not very well versed in this space to have a real opinion. On a personal level, I judge people by their abilities rather than their race or gender though I fully appreciate that there are difficulties with this.
It does seem to me that class isn't talked about though. Sorry but a middle-class Ivy league black woman is not of a lower status than a white working-class male.
I don't understand how the point you're trying to make is important. A more inclusive workplace for white-collar employees is a small step towards decoupling income status from race and sex, and crushing racial and sexual prejudice. Regardless of how you imagine Slack's execs perceive or use this event, the message of ability it sends to the audiences that need it/benefit from it is salient, important and useful.
That's awfully cynical. I think they just wanted to send a message that diversity can pay dividends on it's own. Can't we just be happy for Slack and for these women?
I don't use slack, I don't even like the idea of slack, but boy, are they killing it when it comes to trying to make the tech industry a better place. They also gave their employees MLK day off. Excellent work all around.
This is especially important given that only 3% of San Francisco's black population remains in the city, as economic pressure, along with intentional malfeasance on the part of the city government, has pushed most of them out over the last few decades.
It's neat that lots of high paying jobs are available in the Bay Area, but it won't really mean anything until the people who suffered through the hard times here are able to take part in the good times instead of being forced out of the way of progress.
So, thanks slack, it's a hard time to live in this part of the world right now but it seems like you all are really making an effort.
I'm an male Ashkenazi Jew. I don't look stereotypically Jewish so I don't claim to fully be able to relate to these women and their experiences but if the startup I work for now asked me to accept an award on its behalf because I'm a Jew, I would feel incredibly patronized and would start looking for other work.
Well, when a firm pressures you into accepting an unwelcome award because you're Jewish, you can leave that job and write up your story. Virtually everyone on HN, regardless of their political persuasions, will sympathize with that story.
Here we have a story about four engineers who seem to be extremely happy to be accepting an award on behalf of Slack, so your concern over how you would feel if you were pressured to take the kind of award you're considering seems entirely synthetic.
Again: the people we're discussing in this story, as opposed to the one you've synthesized, appear to be very happy to be collecting this award on Slack's behalf.
When you're put in any situation in which you're somehow singled out because of your background, you should, if you feel it warranted, quit and then write the story up. Then we can discuss your concern in a context where it actually makes sense. I was not being sarcastic: if that ever happens to you, I feel like most people on this site will be very sympathetic to your problem.
There is an old message board term for the practice of synthesizing a concern and imputing it to someone else for the purpose of argumentation. It isn't a positive term.
I think understand your perspective. I just disagree with your contention that this story should be taken at face value or understood in a narrow context. I see this story as part of a more broad discussion about identity politics so I think what I wrote is within the purview of that discussion.
Perhaps you could come up with a way to express your concerns about identity politics without imputing concerns to the subjects of this story that those people clearly do not have.
I can only speculate on what I would feel if I were in their shoes given my own circumstances.
How is that not a reasonable way to start a discussion? I recognize that I will never fully understand the perspective of a black woman, however I still live in the same society as black women and must live with the consequences of identity politics whatever my relationship with identity is.
I am not a black woman so what would be a reasonable way to approach this story and its wider social implications?
I suspect you simply don't approve of this discussion taking place.
You are not a member of a statistically underrepresented population in software engineering, so when you decide to describe how you would feel if you were allowed to participate in an event because of your background, you should be more careful to add the disclaimer that your circumstances are not representative of these people's.
My issue is not that you chose to describe your own feelings, though I feel like those feelings are pretty banal and uninteresting. My issue is that you chose to share those feelings by reframing someone else's feelings. You would be uncomfortable. These people are not. Your circumstances are so different from theirs that we can safely assume there are plenty of valid reasons why they feel differently.
See I don't think it's completely safe to assume that the reasons are valid for one or more reasonable definitions of valid. That to me is what's interesting to discuss.
A cis-gendered heterosexual male WASP's perspective on this would still be a reasonable jumping off point for discussion to me. I simply offer my perspective as a Jew because at least it gives me some iota of room to criticize identity politics in the minds of people who believe deeply in identity politics.
I don't know that I agree, but I think if all the exposition in this thread between the two of us were captured in your original comment, I wouldn't have been so moved to reply to it.
But let's say you were asked to accept an award on behalf of your company from a group that had a troubled history of anti-semitic sentiment and it was thought that, amongst this group, there were still large swaths of members who held anti-semitic beliefs. Would you feel patronized and start job searching?
First, to come closer to the most charitable, least controversial framing of what's happening here, replace (c) with:
d) to show the world that companies are more successful when they don't adopt practices that exclude black women engineers?
Then, to be fully charitable, replace "black women" with "statistically underrepresented people", or whatever term you feel comes closest to that which will allow us not to pointlessly litigate.
Then, I think the answer is (a, b, d).
Finally, the simplest, most obvious implication of them not feeling "like a prop" is that they share the objective that their employer has in promoting the idea. The term "prop" is derisive. We don't feel like "props" when we work with other people towards shared goals, even though our work is, directly or indirectly, helping those other people as well.
That's a really good point. I suppose I'm cynical when it comes to corporations taking social positions. My first inclination would be to assume that there's an alterior profit motive in terms of the optics as it relates to marketing in addition to the virtue signaling on the part of the leadership - both of them being a result of the influence of identity politics.
I suppose that's not exactly a charitable assumption or provable.
I generally agree that companies are going to be inclined to signal social values when those values align with their own interests.
But I'm generally happy when the interests of companies line up with what I believe to be the interests of society as a whole.
Companies that go out of their way to be environmentally friendly are most often doing that in order to seize a marketing niche. That's a signal sent with a profit motive. But that doesn't bother me; why should it?
Like you, I do remain wary of the motives of companies when they send signals about social values. Their actions might not match the signals they're sending, or, having firmly established those social values as part of their "brand", they may cease serving those values altogether. I think it's good to be wary of companies.
But I think we should be careful about about letting the social values themselves take flak due solely to that wariness. The ulterior motives of Slack are a small issue. Whichever way you feel about it, diversity is a big issue. Let's not lose the forest for the shrubs.
I suspect we may not entirely agree about the merits of the particular social values ("diversity", whatever) at stake here. I believe the underrepresentation of women and African Americans in tech is a major problem. But either way: you seem like a pretty reasonable person, so, thank you for being that way.
Would you accept an award on behalf of your Red Cross organization for its work in Palestine, purely because you're Jewish and your organization thinks it would be good for other Palestinians to see Jewish people in a humane light?
Do you really not get that VISIBILITY is the first step to change and things improving?
You think minorities are treated the same by society, law enforcement and employers?
It's all in how they asked them, especially if they were given a real choice and allowed to express their ideas/concerns.
This is why "politically correct" exists in the first place. It forces people to practice best behavior even before they realize what they are doing/saying is wrong, until they "get it". At one point it was completely okay to employ only white males. Now it's not.
Do you really not get that VISIBILITY is the first step to change and things improving?
I think you've focused on the right question: is highlighting superficial differences now the best way to reduce discrimination against superficial differences in the future?
I don't find it obviously true, but I'm open the the possibility that it is. What's convinced you that it's the best approach? What would convince you that it's not?
In a perfect country where there was wasn't 100 years of slavery, if women had the right to vote from the start, equal pay, etc. sure, you would scratch your head at showcasing minorities.
But now our country has "original sin". Countering the damage that has been done by the generational, institutional holding back of minorities takes great effort.
There are far too many people who think there are no women who code, now add minorities to the mix.
So yes, right now we have to highlight such achievements.
I didn't start programming when I was 10 because there are Jews in tech. I never associated my race or ethnicity with any sort of permission to do anything. The thought never crossed my mind. I didn't grow up in a racialized community even though, yes, I was one of few Jews in the town I grew up in.
I appreciate this question because it gives further evidence that identity politics is detrimental to minorities and society at large.
No offense but that's a stupid question. There are no Indian NFL players, do Indians think it's because they CAN'T get into NFL or do they think that Indians just don't like to play sports? I dare you to ask any Indian-American you know this question.
He didn't assume such a thing. He stated how he personally would feel in such a situation. And yes, generalizing from one's own experiences and emotions is one valid way of interpolating how others would react in a similar situation.
Slack is a convenient messaging platform, even though there's nothing particularly innovative about it. It's essentially a web-based IRC client with a few obvious enhancements (object embedding, built-in cross-channel search, etc.).
Slack is one of the most popular things to clone now that people realize that businesses will use an IRC clone if it's packaged correctly, so I wouldn't go putting all your eggs in the basket of Slack's longevity as a company.
> "Tech companies, what's your excuse for your lack of diversity? We're diverse and successful. Now what?"
Well minorities, as that descriptor might point out are minorities relative to the population. So there are less of them.
Also, less of the "underrepresented" classes of people are underrepresented because they didn't formally or informally study engineering.
I think it is pretty good that Slack did this. The cynical part of me of course sees it as a political stunt, but on balance it does serve a purpose. It does stand out as such an irregularity that 4 black women would receive an award for technology and engineering that it is actully very unexpected. While there are obvious reasons that these demographics are not regular recipients, it is still fairly disappointing that such a display is as shocking as it was.
I understand issues like this need visability, but many times the author comes to the conclusion (as does on of the speakers it seems) that we should just hire more minorities/women/lgbt etc.? Like from fucking where? There aren't X demographic in tech because there isn't X Demographic in tech. You can't move a finite number of something around and change a percentage. Obvious.
We have a shitty pipeline and we are working on fixing it. I think an alright job has been done, but no one will know how effective it was for 4-10 years as the people going through these programs grow and develop as people and engineers and become successful. I look forward to that. Affirmative action is rediculously stupid. Creating a fair playing feild, especially at the training level (school, society, norms, etc) is paramount to a strong society and it isn't just diversity for diversities sake.
edit: I want to share an anecdote, which is indicative of why I think this way.
Several years ago I went to a code bootcamp. I became close with another student who was one of the top guys in our class of ~40. He went to some shitty online MBA program IIRC but he had worked his ass off and paid for it himself as well as this bootcamp which was >10k at the time. He might of got like $500 off for being black.
Another student was also a minority. I know she received scholarship and significant tuition reduction. She also had a lot of trouble with the work, and I do not think she prepared as well as she could have. She took offense to a lot of the jokes and things and complained. I think some jokes were crass, not sure if it was racial but maybe some sexual harassment type stuff. Not physical, just general bro-type humor. A few other students also complained and we had a 2 hour talk about race and sexual harassment.
My buddy said some pretty funny stuff during that and we cleared it up. It was pretty evident though that:
* He was obviously aware he was a minority
* Didn't want to be treated differently and had grown up with people doing that his whole life (positively and mostly negatively)
* On balance, he was pissed off he had to waste 2 hours not coding and working talking about this bullshit.
He worked his fucking ass off, was the guy many people turned to for help and he was putting himself entirely through the program (quite a risk considering he had just left a good paying job and had a kid and another on the way).
He was later hired at a fairly prominent tech company as an engineer. He had to learn a new skillset quickly as they used a different stack than he was accustomed to.
It isn't fair to him to say he got where he was because he was black. Complaining and asking for people to accomadate you is not as successful of a strategy as outworking everyone. If you have been the victim of something that violates the law, that is quite different. If you see someone say "slut" or "bitch" in hipchat or whatever, I would try to ignore it and get to a point in your career where you can set the culture if you disagree with it.
Re: pipeline, if a tech company really wanted to do well by minorities-in-tech, probably the best thing they could do would be to sponsor and support high-school-level education in tech in their own community.
Basically: privileged kids have the free time and structure to just end up "picking up" programming and other tech subjects on their own, as a hobby. Because of this, there's relatively little top-down structure supporting introduction to technical subjects at the age where kids' minds are most malleable to thinking in new mindsets.
If you want diversity in tech, you have to ensure that even the kids that will never think "oh, reading this C manual in my spare time sounds like fun" will still get introduced to the concepts, and to thinking analytically, while they're still forming a self-image. Because—if you miss that window—they end up—even in college, even if they were a straight-A student—as the type who thinks "oh, I can't go into [CS/math/engineering], that's not the type of person I am, I'd never be able to do it as well as the people who love that." (I.e., the people who define themselves in those terms, because it became part of their self-image at the right time.)
So, for example:
• Volunteer engineers' time at local schools (especially schools in lower-income areas) to give introductory-level talks. Get kids interested.
• Set up after-school clubs for e.g. game development (or any other tech-related subject that kids usually get fascinated by.) If those clubs already exist, donate to them.
• Lobby school boards and PTAs for initiatives to ensure 'equal encouragement' for minorities—none of this "counsellor discourages women from tech; says they'd do better in the arts" business.
There's probably tons more I'm not thinking of, too.
i couldnt agree with this more. i think most things related to diversity are currently being approached with far to much emphasis on short term and not nearly enough on the long term.
The larger point is that minorities are more minor in tech than in the general population.
There are a lot of hispanic people in San Francisco. There are next to no hispanic people in startup offices in San Francisco. Unless they're cleaners, but I think we can all agree that doesn't count for what we're talking about.
Same for black people. There are many of them in the streets in San Francisco. Next to nobody in startup offices in San Francisco.
A big part of it is, what are young people's ambitions? When you're white or asian or indian, society tells you that you should become a scientist or engineer or whatever cool and awesome. You have role models. Examples of things possible, if you will. So you strive for them.
When you're black or hispanic, society tells you that you might become a great athlete or singer or actor. Most people around you work blue collar jobs and your aspiration is to be the owner of a blue collar establishment. So you strive for that.
The expectations we as a society place on young people are a powerful thing. And they're really hard to break out of.
For instance, I grew up in a low middle class family in Europe. How do you think it felt to have started my first startup while at the same time listening to all my extended family and most of my friends that capitalists are dirty scumbags who exploit people. In general of course, you, Swizec, you're probably not like that. But "people like you", those guys suck.
> You can't move a finite number of something around and change a percentage.
I'm not so sure if the number of people from a minority available for hire is fixed. It might be possible to target people who are currently not part of the workforce.
I'm thinking of things like offering part time positions. If you offer part time positions, you might reach mothers that might otherwise stay at home with their kids.
I have no clue if this specific measure would help, but I do believe that as a company you could do more to encourage diversity than just wait for someone else to fix the pipeline.
It's a huge benefit. Currently pregnant and working in web development: working from home and part time are absolutely crucial to keeping me in the work force. Don't get me wrong I love my job and wouldn't want to give it up but there's no way I could breastfeed, raise a child and work full time in an office environment for the next year. Babies eat once every 2-3 hours! It's just not feasible. Then after a year off, skills would slide since things move so quickly in this industry and I'd be far behind where I was.
Working from home with the option for part time is the bees knees. I can keep up my skills and do motherly things as well, and just take a pay cut (from the hours) for a year .
"We have a shitty pipeline and we are working on fixing it."
But that doesn't mean that something isn't also broken at the hiring end of the pipeline. If you're a woman, lgbt, or non-white-European descended person, even if you make it through most of the pipeline, you're often fighting an uphill battle at the end of it. It is possible to simultaneously work on the rest of the pipeline while acknowledging and working on what's happening at this part of it too.
> If you see someone say "slut" or "bitch" in hipchat or whatever, I would try to ignore it and get to a point in your career where you can set the culture if you disagree with it.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If you can't get through to someone that that language is not acceptable in a company workspace, at least try to get across to them that the screenshots wouldn't look good splashed across the front page of TechCrunch.
I guess the strategy is: Apply political pressure to bring more minorities in. Accept the side effect that quality is lower. Wait for the culture to change. Once minorities are at "normal" levels, lift pressure and wait for quality to return.
Currently, I can observe females in computer science simply being there for the quota, while more competent males get rejected. I just hope the quality hit will not hurt us too much and I hope society believes we have "normal" levels quickly.
I'm curious about the logical leap you made when you stated;
Accept the side effect that quality is lower.
I'm also curious about the following;
Currently, I can observe females in computer science simply being there for the quota, while more competent males get rejected.
Without actually statistically backing it up and there being a significant different in performance. It's pretty anecdotal.
Tell me, for someone who makes these types of logical leaps and uses anecdotal quips to support a bigoted statement -- do you believe yourself to be a "quality" employee? Because I'd fire you.
God that statement made me roll my eyes. It felt so condescending.
Let's totally forget you know, us Asians (people of color and a visible minority in the West) who contribute to tech companies at a high rate and who also have had to overcome racism, stereotypes, and artificial ceilings. Oh wait, we don't count when it comes to determining what contributes to diversity! Somewhere in the 20th and 21st century, our skin colour turned white and we're no different than white people.
> Somehow between the 20th and 21st century, our skin colour turned white and we're no different than white people.
Fun fact: in the beginning of the 20th century, you weren't white if you were Irish or Italian.
"White" in the US has little to do with skin colour. It's more of a social construct.
> The definition of white has changed significantly over the course of American history. Even among Europeans those not considered white at some point in American history include Southern Europeans (Italian, Spaniard, Greek, Portuguese, etc.), Irish people and Central Europeans (Germans, Poles) and Eastern Europeans (Russians) but mostly notably[citation needed] Polish people due to the Partitions of Poland.[21][22]
Which is, of course, the problem with "white pride": "white" really just means "not an other". Italian Pride, Irish Pride, Polish Pride, all relatively noncontroversial. "White Pride", however, really means "proud of not being one of those others".
I'm South Asian. Asians certainly do deal with racism, but the stereotypes and artificial ceilings doesn't sound right to me. Where do you feel that any non-Muslim Asian minority is dealing with those things today?
The fact is that being black is the US is very different from being anything else. Black people were slaves from the 1500s to the 1800s, and the US government was actively discriminating against black people (and preventing them from building family wealth) as recently as the 1960s. That simply isn't true for Asians.
I recently met someone who went to Stanford and was arguing that black people are genetically less intelligent than white people, even though the entire concept of race has no objective reality. I guarantee you don't have to deal with anything like that. I could think of a million other examples.
Steven Yeun of Walking Dead talked about having to reject roles that specifically stereotyped Asians. Imagine doing that as an Asian man who traditionally finds it hard to find roles in the first place. Or look at the dearth of the lead roles for Asian men. Read this article from Aziz Ansari: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/arts/television/aziz-ansar...
And given the disparity in online dating stats and interracial marriage stats, you'd be hard pressed to tell me that stereotypes have zero bearing on the effect on Asian men (and Black women).
For ceilings, there are numerous studies and articles outlining how Asians may enter companies as employees but don't advance nearly as high as other ethnicities, being absent from some of the highest levels of the company. Consider the number of tech workers who are Asian and then compare it to the number of Asians who end up moving up to executive levels. Is it proportional? Not at all. Of course, critics will just say it's because of Asians not having the right skills. Strange. Couldn't we say the same about the lack of Blacks/Hispanics/women in tech? Look also into studies comparing the number of Asian lawyers compared to Asian judges. It's also not proportional.
Of course, we can also look at stats that show Asians often have to perform higher than other ethnicities to garner entrances into colleges. How is that not a penalty to their race?
The argument of Asians don't suffer as much as Blacks therefore don't have it bad is trite and non-constructive. Black and Hispanic vote counts much more in the political narrative than Asians. Even in my local city which has close to 40% Asians, our representation in the city council only has about 5-10% Asians council members. If you say something racist against a black person, like Donald Sterling or Paula Deen, you could lose a LOT. Yet if you say something racist against an Asian person on TV, you're barely forced to make a mea culpa.
>the entire concept of race has no objective reality
Come off it. Race is an objective reality. Aside from the visually obvious large difference(s) in pigmentation of the skin, there are other hard biological differentiators, like facial shape, the frequency of certain diseases, and many others.
Taking the anti-racism movement into hard, blatant denialism is beyond ridiculous and will only create more people like the friend you're trying to avoid. When there's no one in the middle to temper and explain inconvenient objective realities, people feel like their only option is to go to the extreme that seems to align with their experiences. That hardening of extremity is really bad for everyone.
There is no scientific definition of race. People do differ genetically and sometimes those differences can be found in certain ancestral groups, but there is no scientific way to draw hard lines between those groups.
What is someone who is 1/4 African, 1/4 European, and 1/2 Vietnamese? What does their "race" tell you about them?
Even if you could do a genetic test of every single person who, say, applied for a job or a college, you still wouldn't be able to determine their race with any certainty most of the time.
Race is just not an objective definition, and if you knew anything about US history, you'd know that. Most of the landmark civil rights cases were about proving that you can't identify race by appearance, behavior, or even ancestry, since so many blacks had mixed ancestry.
My point is that we need more people in tech, and we do that by leveling the playing field at the education level. Asians studied sciences disproportionately relative to their representation within the us population.
* I don't think we should use demographics as a ruler for hiring.
* I don't think we should stop hiring (or start firing) Asians because they are overrepresented.
> Let's totally forget you know, us Asians (people of color and a visible minority in the West) who contribute to tech companies at a high rate and who also have had to overcome racism, stereotypes, and artificial ceilings.
I feel like you think this is some sort of rebuttal to me, but I find us saying the same thing. Many Asians studied sciences, and at disproportionate amounts relative to their population size. So now there are more Asians in desirable professional positions.
I personally find it super offensive when someone conflates success with 'whiteness'. The most salient example being the "You talk like you're white" statements often delivered as a compliment.
I think, as I stated above, building a pipeline is the most important thing. Not simply using demographics as a yardstick and removing the percentage of Asians above a line.
Also if we use a yardstick it should be family income or the median income in districts to capture people who are disadvantaged. This will have the affect of boosting disenfranchised populations like hispanics and blacks while capturing other races and segments who are also disadvantaged.
While I think hiring bias exists it is likely fading. The nice affect of promoting more education and skill at lower levels is that we will create more opportunities for nontraditional segments to start companies and set their own cultures.
Many people in the industry have instead focused on education instead of directly building companies because they feel a sense of need to help people overcome the hurdles it takes to become skilled (economic, demographic, cultural, etc).
I look forward to when they don't have to do that because mechanisms will be in place to serve these underserved places and people, and those entrepreneurs and engineers can get back to engineering.
Your counterarguments strike me as mansplainingly unreflective.
... So there are less of them.
Do you really think no-one thought of this? The objective is for ratios to reflect the general population of the area. In general, thats kindof what we should expect in a meritocracy, right?
... underrepresented because they didn't formally or informally study engineering.
Which is obvious. Now: Why do you think that is? And what can we do about it?
As Itp says below '... women and minorities are certainly passively barred from these kind of careers. By virtue of opportunity, environment, peer group, role model, education, and all sorts of passive mechanisms.'
edit: I also don't agree with the sentiment of your anecdote explaining how minorities should outwork everyone else (i.e. work harder than everyone else) if they want to get noticed
> Now: Why do you think that is? And what can we do about it?
I think we should invest in areas with lower median incomes and promote education and technology. Which I stated.
I didn't say explicitly, but do believe, that we provide staples like food and access to computers if necessary.
The point, which I stated in my original comment. Was that many act like there is some huge population of extremely talented engineers who, if not for societal bias, would be working at tech companies.
There is, in fact, a huge amount of raw talent not being leveraged because a large subset of the population can't participate meaningfully in the economy.
I will continue to assert that hiring bias and 'passive mechanisms' are so much less important than 'opportunity, environment and peergroup' which we can retroactively correct.
I believe that this is regularly framed as some sort of zero-sum demographic war. Poor people, since fucking always, are probably not less intelligent than the general population. They are, at least in America, often not 100% white. This should be framed as disadvantaged not race.
to conclude, my anecdote was meant to highlight something similar to the analogy of sports.
If 2 teams play each other, the referees may make shitty calls. They usually make them fairly evenly against both teams but sometimes they swing a little bit to either side. Unless there is a particularly nefarious or well reasoned claim that the refs are interfereing, it is widely believed that the better team will win.
My point is not "black people need to work harder than their peers", although to some extent they may, it is that you won't have to convince the referee to make or change a call, if you have practiced well, prepared, and are a better team.
To clarify the framing, in this analogy the better team is meant to represent a single person, while the opposing team is just the general workforce.
As an introvert, for whom standing up in front of a crowd to receive an award and maybe even give a speech would be the purest and most excruciating of torments, my first thought was "Sure, go ahead and give them the scut work, you racist, sexist jerks."
But then I remembered that other people actually like doing that sort of thing.
Aside from that, I'm pretty antipathic toward identity politics. It's a lot like attaching a long lever to your own head that lets other people control where it points, which is often just a way to ensure you are not looking at something genuinely concerning that is in a different direction. For instance, I heard on NPR's ATC a few days ago a segment on how feminists are pressuring women to support Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination because she is a woman. But that doesn't tell me jack squat about whether she shares or supports my values. It was just a bunch of people grabbing an identity politics lever and yanking on it.
So gestures like this make me nervous. It makes me feel as though someone is trying to manipulate my emotions for their own gain, except I cannot fathom how anyone could possibly gain from it.
As a minority, I have to admit that this new fad of "diversity" feels really, really wrong. I want to be judged by my contributions, not my race. I don't want to tell anyone (including white males) that they should take a step back so others can stand in the spotlight. If you're passionate about what you do and you're good at it, that's all that should matter.
I also find all this focus on "PoC" to be infantilizing, patronizing and objectifying. I'm a human not a pawn in the game of political correctness. I'm also confident enough in my skills that I don't want or need anyone making exceptions for me.
To a first approximation, "zero" is the number of firms that believe they should hire "based off skin colour and not skill". Such a hyperbolic characterization over diversity concerns can't possibly generate a useful conversation.
It's a shame that study appears to have been comparing "weird" black names like Lakisha with "normal" white names like Greg. I'd be interested to see a study that uses "weird" white names like Track or Jairyd or Zaiden for comparison, because I suspect those would also suffer compared to Greg. (Even if an anti-"weird" name bias is all that's at work, this would still probably disproportionately affect black people, unfortunately. I'm just wondering about the causation.)
While I have probably faced what I would consider to be very minor discrimination, I would say that if you're good at what you do people will accept you and you can succeed.
I mention it in another comment, but the pressure I faced to stay in the culture I was brought up in was much more of a deterrent to success than any headwinds I faced in the professional world for being "different".
Diversity isn't about telling white males to step back. It's about encouraging other types of person to step forward, and creating an environment that welcomes and values them.
I'm hispanic (not that it should matter!) and grew up dirt poor. Yes, I lacked the privilege of many of my now peers. In the end though I've built a successful career for myself. I'm proud at having done that through working hard and being good at what I do. My ethnicity is only a distraction to my tale.
Do you disagree that there are underprivileged hispanics, or people who were in a similar situation as you, but didn't "make it"?? What solution do you suggest for them?
There are absolutely underprivileged people of every race! I happened to grow up around poor hispanics and whites. I would say on average that the hispanics have actually faired a bit better due to (imho) a stronger family culture that offered a bit of a support net.
A lot of the poor white people I know ended up in legal trouble or worse, actually dead.
The solution that I would advocate for is one of individual responsibility and confidence to make your own choices. Nearly everyone I grew up around (regardless of race) thought it was "lame" that I was into technology. Having the strength to follow your passions in the face of that pressure is key. In fact I would say pressure from people of my own background to continue their lifestyle was much harder to overcome than the small amount of discrimination I've faced in the professional world.
It sounds almost too good to be true, but in the tech industry, if you can write great code you will succeed.
> It sounds almost too good to be true, but in the tech industry, if you can write great code you will succeed. <
Yes, but the narrative is that minorities who don't write better code as good as the members of majority because the former never had privilege to learn how to write good code.
Also do check out the articles which convinced Github that Meritocracy is not a good thing[1]. And the site 'Is Tech a meritocracy dot com" [2].
Let me just be the devil's advocate here and suggest that (minority) engineers might not enjoy being asked to do public duties unrelated to their actual job in order to give their company an image of being progressive and diverse.
Or it could be that Slack are actually progressive and have a diverse workforce and these developers were very happy to accept an award on behalf of their company due to working in a place that they love working for.
I do see what you're getting at. But this situation at least seems more like four engineers, all women of color, were asked to take on additional public duties to reflect what appears to be a sincere initiative on the part of their company to be progressive and diverse. There's a fairly crucial difference there.
I said as much in my sibling comment. It's dehumanzing to be viewed as a representative of your race when all you want to do is write code and pursue the career you're passionate about.
I think it's also dangerous to provide this PR-esque track for advancement that has nothing to do with your skills. People should be judge by their actual contributions and not who they are.
Now if only they could stop the slack client for OSX from crashing everytime on load with a spinning wheel of death and taking the rest of the system with it (only a force-quit will kill it) then that would be even cooler.
I have chosen Hipchat, solely based on the fact that I can sometimes type faster than Slack's web interface can update, causing typos. All the feel-good stuff inside the interface that wants to make me love it, just makes this worse for me, because now I am thinking "You have had time to add that?! Make it fast first! It is a text-based chat, goddammit!!!11"
Could someone explain me how more blacks make the product or company better. Why this isn't also directed to other races/minorites (Asians maybe)?
We really should stop treating minorites like some special snowflake with this racism and sexism towards whites and men
Diverse teams bring different perspectives for solving problems. By problems I don't mean just technical ones, but also design, usability, and marketing.
When you get a lot of similar people in the same room they are likely to approach a problem in the same way. A diverse group might take longer to communicate because they lack as many shared experiences but for the same reason, they can often reach a better solution.
From a literature review:
"Results suggest that cultural diversity leads to process losses through task conflict and decreased social integration, but to process gains through increased creativity and satisfaction. "[1]
> Diverse teams bring different perspectives for solving problems. By problems I don't mean just technical ones, but also design, usability, and marketing. <
Honest question here regarding quoting of statistics.
If statistics showed that homogenous teams led to better solving of problems, does that mean the teams should discourage diversity?
If not, then clearly the reason why diversity is encouraged is not because it brings better results, rather that it is considered as a more 'just' position.
It's like when people say "Studies show that gay parents are better parents than straight parents" as a reason to support gay marriage. The idea is simple, even if it didn't, that wouldn't be a reason against gay marriage.
That is a very good point. It's easy to cite studies to support one's position. I could easily find studies which show that diversity actually decreases the mean IQ of the population.
Now, evaluating these studies, we might then rightfully say, that IQ evaluation is erroneous and discourages minorities, and that social status has a huge impact on the IQ.
However, when diversity leads to a lower social status and poverty, doesn't this defeat the purpose of arguing for more diversity?
Just to give you an insight into my thought process on this.
Another point is: Did the lack of diversity really hinder the creative minds of the last millenia?
> Did the lack of diversity really hinder the creative minds of the last millenia? <
This is exactly the reason why I think this is probably a cause and effect confusion.
Better teams might attract a diverse crowd. Just like a better product can claim a more diverse group of users.
In fact it isn't even just about 'better products', it might just be the most popular product (without any specific reason behind it). For instance, you will find Windows users to be more diverse than Linux users, mostly because former is a lot bigger userbase than latter, and Linux usage requires users to be of a certain technical aptitude (hopefully 2016 will be the year Linux Mint becomes the majority OS) which is mostly shared by the majority demographic (i.e. White males).
The minority also overrepresents other areas. For instance, some brands of hair products are more popular on Asian males, than among non-asian males (possibly because it suits their hair type better). Where as fairness creams are more popular among Indian men and women, not because of some sort of physiological differences but because of cultural preferences.
The fundamental idea is that not all areas of life will reflect the population distribution of the demographics. When I went to a fountain pen show, most people were white. There is no pipeline failure there, there is no widespread discrimination going on against non-whites.
Asians aren't really a minority in the tech industry. Hispanics, african americans, women and other demographic groups are still underrepresented relative to the general population.
>underrepresented
The tech sector (or the industry/science/etc. sectors) aren't the senate or whatever that they need to "represent" anyone. They should hire based on skill/merit and try to produce the best product that they can. Please stop pushing these crazy leftist agendas everywhere
>Please stop pushing these crazy leftist agendas everywhere
This is simple math. Personally, after reading this bit of your post, I am starting to believe your posts deserve to be downvoted. I do pity you though.
Whites are a minority race when you take the world thus we should reduce the number of non-whites to combat this underrepresentation inside the human species.
This is simple math. I also pity you for living in some delusion of botched equality
Asians make up 5.5% of the population of the US, this includes all Asians. I don't have figures for their representation in the tech industry at large but some quick googling shows they make up some 39% of Silicon Valley workers.
African Americans make up 13% and Latinos 17%, which means for every one Asian worker in tech, we should expect around two to three African American and Latino workers.
I don't think there should be quotas but the tech industry demographics do not come anywhere close to tracking with our country's demographics.
Whites and men already enjoy a privileged status in the USA in most areas of society and efforts like these are an attempt to even it out. Whether or not this example is the correct method, that is the motivation. Additionally, there are plenty of efforts using this principle to include men in traditionally female dominated fields like nursing and teaching.
I'm with you brother. It's a hard fact to accept that the majority of the tech-world is leftist.
And for those who think I'm wrong: Imagine company X sent 4 white blond-haired blue-eyed women on the stage with a "message" of this kind. Double-standards anybody?
Also, somebody has to explain to me how exactly the products of a company magically become better when more minorities worked on it. When I engage in work with people, I don't care what their skin color is or if they are male or female.
People embracing this culture of unfairness (because it's unfair to favor minorities over better-qualified non-minority applicants) should rethink what they are doing and who they are cheering at.
I strongly disagree with your contention that the majority of the tech-world is left-leaning in their politics. I have met many libertarians and conservative tech-workers in my almost eighteen years working in development.
I bet it's part of where we had our experiences. In Germany, it's almost exclusively leftist. It doesn't get in my way, because I care about the technology and don't think politics have a place there, but many people do strongly put both in one bin (if you allow me, I noticed that these are mostly people who do not really shine with their code contributions and want to "contribute" in other ways instead of improving their skills).
Moving from Madison, Wisconsin, to here was a bit of a shock. There are nerds around here whose geeky obsession is church. When I vote, many of the offices are simply uncontested, with just the (R) candidate appearing on the ballot. And even the Democratic candidates--when they even appear--may be more conservative than Republicans from more liberal regions.
Of course, as a libertarian myself, I don't feel much more disenfranchised now than I felt when I was surrounded by hippy-dippy liberals.
"That's the connection between technology and liberalism. Without exception the high-tech cities in the US are also the most liberal. But it's not because liberals are smarter that this is so. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and smart people by definition have odd ideas."
It's the american notion that in politics there can only be liberals and conservatives.
In my opinion, it's a more liberal notion to actually choose people based on their skills and knowledge rather than skin color or in the interest of "diversity", even if it only yields in a 100% white or 100% negroe or 100% asian team.
I could even understand the notion of those who propose "diversity" if they wouldn't shut up when a team is devoid of white people. I won't recite the extremist clause that "Anti-Racism" means "Anti-white", however, judging from what I've heard in my years of experience as a software developer and entrepreneur, we're getting closer and closer to that if we keep on shutting those people up who question this.
Listen to Reply All episode #52 for more info https://gimletmedia.com/episode/52-raising-the-bar/