* Going to burning man

* Going to SXSW

* Working with the LGBT community

* Tattoos / Dyed hair

* Pole dancing

* Wearing Stan Smiths

* Being obsessed with high end coffee

You shouldn't be patting yourself on the back that tech accepts these things. I've seen terrible examples of the community not accepting:

* Those who believe in gun rights

* Those who are strongly religious

* Those who are homeless

* Those who are lower class

* Those who are H-1Bs (Indian outsourcing bias)

* Those who are Republican

* Those who are black

* Those who are old / have grey hair

Being inclusive and meritocratic doesn't mean accepting things that are within your culture. It means accepting those that are outside. I remember a colleague talking about a Dropbox all hands meeting where every one was patting themselves on the backs because the recruiting team had hired many from the LGBT community. He looked at me and said "Why the f* is everyone so happy? We literally have 1 black person in a company of almost 1,000"

Seriously, if you think that having colleagues having dyed hair or going to Burning man is proof that you are meritocratic or inclusive you are in a huge bubble.

You're right, the "tech tribe" does have improvements to make in inclusivity, but at least it's a home for some people who would otherwise be outcasts in socially conservative businesses.

As for a few things:

- I think we're just as accepting of blacks, our high school education system has just utterly failed them so much that we don't have a good pipeline for getting black people into tech.

- There are a different set of values in India that cause some clash between them and Americans/Westerns. There's the culture of following the letter of the request/task, rather than the spirit of the request/task. (Similarly but differently, mainland Chinese suck at asking questions when they don't understand something.) But my overall biggest complaints with outsourced contractors is a culture of "get shit done fast, and do any hacks to get it done". Because contractors don't stay with projects for the long-term, it's not surprising.

- The homeless and lower class are, almost by definition, not people who are achieving a ton. Tech is a meritocracy, we respect getting shit done, and we're not a jobs program.

To address your other points:

* I don't buy the pipeline argument. I've seen huge bias is how the tech community treats blacks. For example, I've seen a few black colleagues try to transfer into software engineering and get huge amounts of push back. Ironically I did the same thing (transfer from product management to dev) and I was supported. Why was I treated differently? Probably because I'm Indian so I am supposed to be a developer. In all the interviews I do, people assume I have a CS degree and lots of experience even though my resume says the complete opposite. I benefit a lot from the assumptions around my skin color while a black person gets the opposite experience.

* I get why people don't like offshore centers but that doesn't mean they should assume there aren't some very talented H1B developers. I have seen many. India has some of the best computer science programs in the world.

* I don't understand your comment on the homeless but the point I was trying to make was that verbally insulting poor people, the homeless, or old people is not inclusive or meritocratic. I've seen many examples of that in the tech community. I'm not asking people in tech to give free jobs to the homeless I'm asking people not to verbally insult them.

Tech is all about mental aptitude. Some mental health issues interfere with the required skills and some do not. Someone with ADD, bipolar or impostor syndrome is not strongly adversely affected, while someone with dissociative schizophrenia and cannot make decisions that keep sheltered will not succeed in tech and might not even with proper treatment.

What can tech do to better reach out to people who are homeless because they have mental issues that impact their decision making so much as to destroy their ability to maintain shelter? This problem is too big for a company to handle we need cultural and government change to address that.

I don't know what is up with your black colleagure, could you expand on that? I went from being a shitty programmer to a decent because a black programmer taught me a few key lessons about how to think, so there are at least a few mixed in with us.

I think tech is about as inclusive as it can be barring isolated exceptions.

If I am wrong, then please tell me. I even asked for more information on something I was unsure of.

:(

I think there's some subtle definition creep in the word "inclusive" these days. It's starting to mean "cosmopolitan". I recall the recent STEM girl scouts story. One of the commenters called the initiative "inclusive", which isn't quite the right. It's the same girls scouts doing something different, so it's not more inclusive, really. Beneficial? Sure. Eclectic? Yeah. Progressive? OK. Inclusive? I'm not following.

Alternatively, it's a change by scout leadership which broadens the set of interests to which the Girl Scouts appeal, increasing the diversity of the population the scouts will be able to recruit and retain.

Hence, inclusive.

Perhals, but there's no reason the recruitment and retention effect on people with the interests it addresses would not be, at least to some extent, immediate.

Tech is hugely accepting. It is too easy to be punished by putting out bad products, so people put aside that which doesn't matter for the product and get to work. Skipping people for any of these reasons could mean not hiring the right person. Any team without enough of the right talent fails in the marketplace.

It depends on whether the parameters of your group accepts more people, and another measure might look at whether or not your group accepts more kinds of people, or some weighted balance.

Also, if we were to add in some choice examples, I'd look at how the teaching profession treats LGBT people. Such people are under risk of being considered pedophiles. It's probably a career-killer, and any administration that backs that teacher would need strength to resist parents.

Tell that to software engineers past the age of 50.

Look, every industry has its pros and cons. Sure tech is good for the Burning Man crowd (if you live in the Bay Area or other major American liberal city), but it certainly suffers from a ton of ageism, among other maladies.

I think it all comes down to what sort of industry you personally feel more comfortable in. For me, that's tech, but if my conservative Christian grandmother were alive today she sure as heck wouldn't be comfortable in the Bay Area tech scene.

Whenever you find yourself patting yourself on your back for being inclusive, just do the math - is your group really inclusive or is it just symbolically signifying inclusiveness?

Come work at a BigCorp. Here at Microsoft, every age range is represented, W/L balance is great (people supporting online services who are responsible for The Phone that week aside), and every team I have been on strives for diversity and inclusion.

That said, is it a pure meritocracy? Of course not, people who play politics and are good at getting assigned to high visibility projects get promoted faster. But good work is rewarded, and people are generally quite happy.

Edit: The food isn't free, but the on campus medical clinic, summer farmers market, and other tiny perks that come from having a huge and expansive campus set amongst what looks like woodlands, more than balances it out.

And, regardless of gender, no one will bat an eye if you go at 4:00pm to pick up your kids.

BigCorps also have stability which "old" people need to support their families, especially when the kids are going to college.

I have contracted with numerous companies with old engineers. Insurance, Embedded Appliances and Defense had a reasonable distribution ages.

I'm not trying to be negative towards your experience --- I'm glad you have a happy perception of the industry --- I just want to reinforce how important it is for us to improve diversity in all its forms before we start congratulating ourselves.

1. Many companies have a low interview bar. Anyone with a CS BS degree can get an interview at at least a few good companies. If not, you can spend time creating interesting Github projects to boost your chances.

2. Your performance in the interview usually depends on the amount of time you spend studying algorithms.

3. Most knowledge and skills in the industry can be found one click away. General software engineering jobs are self-learnable as long as you have an internet service and a web browsing device.

Additionally, networking plays a huge role in who hears about a job opportunity, who gets interviewed and who gets hired.

Tech's not perfect, but I think they do it better than most (all?).

None of them are, but tech isn't any better.

This does seem to be changing for the better thanks to the Internet, but there's still a very long way to go.

One thing for sure is that no industry in the world is all that meritocratic. But Music and Sports (even with the mainstream whitewash) for sure has a better social and racial distribution than any other industry I can think of.

I think you can be unpopular or stick out in a lot of ways and still be successful, but I don't think it's as simple as come-as-you-are. You'll do fine (I'm sure Eich is personally fine) but you can easily hit some challenges along the way.

Inclusion means accepting people as people, not accepting just the people who look, talk, and share the same beliefs as you.

No. There are some beliefs that run counter to our societies ideals. Those beliefs and the people who espouse them should be shunned. Harshly.

Sorry you (theoretical Republican) don't think Gay people should be allowed to get married. Keep your backward ass beliefs to yourself.

And I think using "backward ass beliefs" to describe Republicans seems pretty bigoted to me. It certainly doesn't win over the 40% who do support gay marriage from working with you and it excludes half of the country.

> It certainly doesn't win over the 40% who do support gay marriage from working with you and it excludes half of the country.

We're not trying to convince bigoted people to not be bigoted here. We're trying to cultivate a work place that doesn't discriminate against most people, and that _probably_ means that we can't tolerate certain bigoted beliefs. In my mind, not hiring someone who doesn't like gay people is quite similar to not hiring a jerk.

The OP called Republicans "backward ass belie[vers]" for not supporting gay marriage. I responded by saying that was a bigoted statement and doesn't make sense because 40% of Republicans do support gay marriage. The OP's larger point was basically that we should shun Republicans because of their "backward ass beliefs". I never mentioned that we should include anti gay workers, I didn't even mention gays. I just said we should be inclusive of Republicans. Are you agreeing with the OP's original assertion that we should shun Republicans?

Let me give another example. I am a male and I am not attracted to overweight / obese females. So I actively discriminate against overweight people in my dating life. It does not affect how I treat overweight people in any other aspect of my life, including my workplace. If I had a public dating profile which says I preferred petite females would that be grounds to not hire me? Or to give another equivalent scenario, if I was a female who discriminated against short males in dating would that be grounds to not hire me? Or to go further, would you think its fine for the tech community to blacklist people who voted for Trump?

There's something deeply troubling to me about going down that rabbit hole. That people can make such blanket statements about an entire political party, esp the party of Abraham Lincoln.

To me as a Bengali, it's no different from my parents stating "Well Pakistanis want us dead. They conducted a genocide of us 50 years ago and they feel no different. Don't cultivate relationships with them"

NO. You don't do that. You judge individuals by the individual. Not by the their political affiliation, not by their race, not by their sexuality, gender, etc.

You don't say "let's not hire this person because they are Republican and Republicans hate gays". You evaluate the individual and if you think the individual would not create a good environment for your gay workers you don't hire them. But you do that regardless of their party. I know plenty of Democrats who are bigoted, racist, or homophobic.

Seriously, this feels like a liberal version of McCarthyism.

It depends. If you wear a MAGA hat to work at this point, I wouldn't mind if you were fired for it. Keep that bigoted shit to yourself. If you wear that hat at this point, you're, in my mind, actively discriminating against certain parts of our population and deserve 0 respect from peers. I would want you out of my workplace. If you voted for him and keep to yourself, whatever. The important part is that all of my coworkers who traditionally have dealt with such discrimination don't have to feel it from you.

The other response to you basically the rest covered my point.

> That people can make such blanket statements about an entire political party, esp the party of Abraham Lincoln.

lol. What does the Republican party of today have in common with the republican party of Abe Lincoln? Seriously, I'd love to hear it. The Republican party of today is so far from what it was even 40 years ago, let alone 150.

> Not by the their political affiliation, not by their race, not by their sexuality, gender, etc.

If you were a member of the neo-nazi party, I would not want you in my workplace either. No political affiliation deserves respect merely because of its existence. If you align yourself with bigots, even if you aren't necessarily one yourself, be prepared to be treated as one.

I say this as someone who is independent; I think both parties suck. But if you're going to be a Republican who thinks that gays shouldn't get married, get the fuck out of my workplace. I don't want you here, and I'd guess most of my coworkers wouldn't want you here either.

The original point was that inclusion means accepting everyone and their beliefs. Regardless of how bigoted they are.

And that is ridiculous.

No one is saying don't hire republicans because they are anti-gay, anti-womens rights, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-muslim.

What we are saying is that if you have an bigoted opinion (such as homophobia), keep it to yourself, or you will be shunned (in tech).

You want limited government, guns in the classroom, no government medical care, trickle-down economics, fine, we can debate those policies all day long and never agree.

But sorry, no, you can't get to be a bigot and expect us to accept it.

So the majority republicans support bigotry. And we should accept that?

If someone holds well reasoned and logical beliefs for hating the gay-hater that person can at least suss out some amount of logic.

I am not saying that all homophic are stupid or that all haters of the homophobic are smart, but one of these uses evidence and logic and that correlates at loosely with intelligence.

If that means Tech is not inclusive--then you're right.

http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html http://ozarque.livejournal.com/176349.html

This might differ based on the herd, though. My uncle's cattle are beef cattle, so not much in terms of friendly human interaction. Dairy cattle might have less fear of humans.

Not here I don't. Every tech company I've worked in mostly had the same types of people there as everywhere else. I've never seen a single person with dyed hair, nor anyone who goes to Burning Man, is gender non conforming or has unusual hobbies like burlesque dancing.

Same with the companies I've interviewed at, applied for or toured around. I guess they'd skew younger than they would in other industries (though I haven't seen much of a difference on that front), but no one here is your hipster college student stereotype.

Still, maybe it's different over in Silicon Valley compared to London.

A few months ago, I made a sexist statement here on HN about women and that they don't think logically [0]. Well, I couldn't be more ashamed and sorry for that. I've known some incredible women in tech ever since, and came to realize that I was wrong. Tech is actually a place where women can shine.

[0] That statement got my account banned and I couldn't get it back.

Edit: corrected my sentences to better convey my meaning.

For the future, if you're actually contrite, you should probably stop referring to that belief as a "fact".

Also, if you want to keep tech weird doesn't that mean you need to reject the non-weird, the "conformists". How is that accepting at all?

There have been various criticisms levelled at the idea of "colur blindness", and I think that when people say they are in favour of a meritocracy, they are in favour of continuing this idea that people start on a level field in which everyone's merit can be fairly assessed. Merit is assessed by each member of the team, and thus personal bias comes into play. The mere operation on the assesment of merit is insufficient to remove these biases, if they do exist.

I don't like the idea of "sit down and do your work", beacuse to me it feels dehumanising. Yes, I know this is how "the system" works in the "real world" but I think this attitude is stopping us from realising that when working in a team we are all human and human issues need to be addressed. So in this sense I can appeal to you too in saying that efficiency may indeed be compromised with the "sit down and work" attitude when some people are clearly facing problems.

Our mode of production does not optimise for the human side of interaction, nor the psychological aspect of the effects of production (joint or not) (i.e alienation) and for this reason I would say that we're already too meritocratic. People turn out to be pretty poor judges of merit, at least from the arguments I have seen. Meritocracy can lead to someone regarded as more experienced or doing more "important" work shutting down someone else who has legitimate criticisms.