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.
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.
etc.
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.
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.
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.
It also doesn't mean that something is also broken at the hiring end of the pipeline.
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.
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.
Accept the side effect that quality is lower.
Currently, I can observe females in computer science simply being there for the quota, while more competent males get rejected.
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.
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.
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]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans#Historical_and...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe not until the 1960s, but Asians were treated very badly as well: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/123989795964998211/
* 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.
... 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
(Edited)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Among other things, that will make your comments more persuasive, since incivility in comments tends to discredit them.
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.
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.