Doesn't seem like a valid hypothesis. Programming computers was originally predominantly done by women, remember, so why is SV mostly white guys? We've already seen both genders can do the work. I've worked with lots of women at hackathons and know some who went through coding camps and landed software engineering jobs at places like Etsy, so know they aren't excluded because they "can't do the job best" like you imply.
If some white guys with money thought other white guys with money do the work best, and made sure to hire other white guys, don't you feel like that's discrimination? Why would a claim that it "just happened" mean it isn't discrimination? I've definitely seen this happen at lots of startups I've worked at. I knew a Princeton C-level from a top 10 app company who would always only hire people from the same school that pretty much looked like exact clones of him.
Similarly, at work, I've had directors agree to let me work on big, ground breaking projects, but as soon as they see I'm disabled they immediately change their tune from a transfer being "one easy email" to "oh, we changed our mind, deal with it, don't talk to me, talk to HR".
But somehow fresh college grads are highly sought after in tech, while experienced developers get pushed out of the industry entirely, despite the fact that physical attributes that decline with age and are relevant to sports are completely irrelevant to tech.
Everyone in tech is looking for their young "Einstein". Except there was only 1 Einstein, and nobody is getting him for their startup.
Some diagnose systemic issues and some apply positive discrimination, which is just discrimination with a supposedly correct reason.
I think it is unhelpful, builds animosity and I disagree with the generally accepted orthodoxy in that field.
We actually see that more free societies show more unequal distributions of demographics in some fields. Until there is an explanation, I regard these ambitions as unscientific and dogmatic.
To discriminate against white or asian people for injustices of the past is real racism and real discrimination. If we want to get rid of racism, you need to get rid of people perpetuating it first. Otherwise it become a self fulfilling prophecy.
What on earth makes you imagine this to be the case in absolutely any situation?
How can one possibly think this is a given?
But that is already a compromise to the position that explains unequal demographics with discrimination. There are countless examples where demographics did change after civil rights got extended, psychology is an example.
I think CS has a distorted (self) image that can make it unattractive to women, but that is also something that either changes gradually or reflects the type of person drawn to the field. In the latter case there is no problem. Actually I think carelessly attesting systemic racism/sexism keeps more people out than actual discrimination.
You can easily falsify that when you look at academic juniors where there wasn't even any room to discriminate anyone and their later representation in the work force.
I don't feel to happy to justify myself for not wanting to discriminate against anyone and why I think that a Bloomberg author might have not a good grasp at what he/she writes about. Sorry, didn't look up the name/sex/race because I just don't care.
Why?
Because they are taking and end result and, instead of trying to discover or understand the many factors which go into said end result, they are slapping the old "racism" sticker on it and inferring causation.
This way of thinking is pathological and it is infecting the entire tech industry, which is supposed to be reliant on science and reason, but is sacrificing itself to horridly formed arguments
GP's comment, far from hand-waving away 'anything they don't like' actually seems to be an argument against hand-waving based on a narrow, constricted view of societal problems (i.e. on the level of individuals and particular firms). The theoretical model propounded in the top-level comment should be questioned. If we still end up at the same answer even after questioning, that's fine - but it still needs questioning.
I don't think anyone actually argues that SV hiring practises are 'evil' or deliberately a particular way. GP seems to agree - evil is very much an element of conspiracy or deliberate action. We need to look wider than that, and not assign blame to people working within a system. When one says "that's just the way it is" - the correct answer is not "because of evil people", but rather to answer with a question in return - "why is that the way it is?". That way, you can start investigating the system rather than the individuals within it, who work to their own ends (as libertarian economists are fond of pointing out).
The constant dichotomy in these discussions set up between 'equality of outcome' and 'equality of opportunity' can only perceive individuals and individual firms. That dichotomy is worth questioning if we want to even consider the systemic view. The systemic view, as every philosopher I can name (on the right or the left) propounds, considers equality of opportunity. Marx himself famously rallied against these abstract notions of 'equality'.
There is only one philosopher in the whole of Western political and philosophical thought who propounds some kind of exactly equal distribution: Barbeuf, and he lived in the 18th century, and his ideas are not currently popular.
Every year it gets harder to make the case for basic numeracy when thinking about issues like this.
Edit: Lol, why would anyone downvote this!?
When you see 1% of tech founders are black, you think that's just their preference? They don't feel like founding tech companies? Or do majority white VCs not offer them funding, and their majority white peer group doesn't take them seriously? Or maybe it's because Black households have tens of thousands of dollars less wealth on average because of discrimination
So when we talk about "preferences" here, it's not about adult preferences, it's about childhood preferences.
Most careers don't, and shouldn't, require you to choose them in childhood.
So unless you want to actively go out and discriminate positively and force certain hirings and situations, you aren't going to be living in some theoretical utopia. Maybe silicon valley just hired who it thought was best 20 years ago, rather than based on some inclusivity quota. And therefore it ended up as it did. Not because it was malicious or discriminative, or evil, it just happened that way.
You might think that is evil, but that is more of a political point and an opinion than fact.
Sigh... rant over, queue the downvotes, this is HN after all.