danilocampos

>This whole discussion is absurd. Next thing we'll hear is that swimming pools are racist.

Um. For a long time they were. Public pools were subject to racial segregation.

Glad we have an expert on racism like yourself to help set us all straight here!

So you worked with film at the apex of its technological development and that makes you an expert on the beginning of the color era, when that technology was exceptionally expensive?

Cool story, bro.

Twenty years of Photoshop and actual, honest-to-God darkroom experience enough for you?

This community is so intellectually bankrupt.

Everyone needs someone saying something like the N word in an official document before they can buy that racism exists. It's not possible that capital follows racial lines (spoiler: it does) and that therefore incentivized products to develop in a particular direction, to appeal to the folks with money? You don't need "overt racism." You don't need a guy twirling his mustache, spouting white supremacist rants.

You just need wild, race-based income inequality.

Guess what?

That happened.

So to your mind it's more likely that the author is telling fish stories than it is the dominant financial caste ended up optimizing a given piece of tech to their best interest?

Bokay.

It's hardly an accident that one of the most successful capitalist systems in the history of the world has, since the automation of agriculture, shifted to storing millions of people (read: excess labor) in a vast, growing prison system.

I'm afraid this isn't going to produce much beyond anxiety in your candidates. This leads to the sort of interaction where I'd end the interview early, thank the interviewer for their time, and high-tail it out of there never to return.

It's a trivia quiz. And frankly, who cares if you know what iBeacons are? What's the likelihood a project requires knowledge of both iBeacons and HealthKit?

HealthKit AND HomeKit?

HomeKit AND Apple Pay?

Why ask about something as deeply specialized as Metal, a brand new 3D graphics API, when so few projects are likely even to need it—except in game dev shops?

And in what conceivable universe does someone need to know the screen resolutions of any given piece of hardware? I've been building iOS apps for six years now, and I barely remember at any given moment.

Anyone looking for great interview questions for iOS devs should instead consult Black Pixel's excellent post here:

http://blackpixel.com/blog/2013/04/interview-questions-for-i...

It talks through concepts as much as technologies, hitting the most common cases for what a developer will actually use.

You completely missed the "proportionally more dropping out," therefore expending three paragraphs saying nothing.

This is called the pipeline fallacy and ignores that companies hire at dramatically lower rates (0%-2% for blacks, 2%-3% for latinos) than there are graduates (4%-8%, depending on your source) for a given underrepresented background

The catch is Apple's supply chain management just got a ton simpler as they don't have to maintain separate SKUs by carrier for each iPad variant.

Well, I should hope so. That is part of why we link to them.

His words speak for themselves. His profile announced his role and place of work.

So, for me, as a person who's got a couple layers of outsider-ness from the typical tech workforce, I would be extremely uncomfortable working with this person. This is a person who made clear they supported public forums being open for bigots to say what they like.

So they can be educated.

Dang. That's awful. It suggests a terrifying lack of empathy. It's something I would want to know about. And certainly not something I'd want in a colleague.

Freedom to speak is not freedom from accountability.

I'm not here merely to help women.

I'm here to fight marginalization. That's my fight, too. In quite a big way.

I respect that your approach may be different from my own—as marginalized individuals, we do have common cause.

You can and should view HN however you'd like. But there's a lot to be angry about on the merits. And a lot to be angry about when those problems are excused or dismissed. I can't apologize for that. And I must maintain my original position: I would loathe to work with someone who is this unaware.

Where I do apologize is if my tone carried a righteousness you found alienating, and if my frustrated words denied you the sense of solidarity I would aspire to offer. That's crummy and worth examination.

Thank you for your candor and clarity.

> You know nothing about me except that I criticized your post for being misrepresentative. That's all.

I know you made the top comment on my article say you're glad when people say bigoted things so that the folks most impacted by them have to donate time to educating them. 'Bout all I really need.

> There are much more effective, humane ways to win the hearts and minds of others and achieve your goals.

Did you miss the part where I said that wasn't anything close to my goal?

Again: I expect people to demand the right things because they're the right things. Not because people are "nice" or not.

> you call me more names

Citation needed.

> When I say that I feel victimized by you

Whew. The privilege to call being disagreed with "victimization." Incredible. Tech in a nutshell, right here.

> Did I really deserve what Danilo threw at me today?

> Twitter privilege

Goodness. If anything, you got off easy, bub. Even now, oblivious, invoking concepts like "privilege" you clearly don't understand.

You don't get to run your mouth about things you don't understand and then escape accountability. You don't get to excuse a terrible status quo as being acceptable because it serves to educate people at the expense of the marginalized.

You are exactly the problem. Not the bigots. Not the overt sexists. Not the children posing as grownups, too young to know their indecency. The problem is mealy-mouthed folks who mistake differences of power for differences opinion. And who forgive the unacceptable on that basis.

And feel so righteous doing so.

Sorry if that's not the sort of coddling you're used to. But I'm not here for you. I'm not here to make you comfortable and I'm certainly not here to persuade you. I'm here because what you said was wrong and dangerous.

I'm a lot more concerned with the feelings of people who are being driven out of this industry because of exactly the sort of chicanery you're excusing.

Working for you sounds damn crummy. If you don't want that sort of observation leveled in public in the future, I have one suggestion:

read some books

Do the right thing because it's the right thing. Not because someone was nice to you or not on Hacker News.

> threatening my livelihood

And where is the threat to your livelihood, exactly?

If what you said was as acceptable as you claim, you face no danger.

If what you said was problematic, then why did you say it? Publicly? Flying under the banner of "Lead Software Engineer for Everlaw."

And why would you expect a public wrong to pass with impunity?

You're arguing both that you were perfectly reasonable—and that I was unreasonable to call you out for saying something crummy.

Pick one.

Working for someone who thinks this exercise has been "cherry picking," who thinks it's the job of marginalized people to educate bigots, would be a horror show. Especially given the lack of self-awareness you've displayed here. Saying so is not only okay—it's necessary.

https://twitter.com/kelseyinnis/status/516986016356261888

Please enjoy this comment from a user 2k days old with 11k karma:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6165385

> Rape has meanings other than non-consensual sex. GP: Please use the word rape to the full extent provided by the english language, and let those who don't like the word deal with it.

Hat tip:

https://twitter.com/AaronM/status/517372417233002496

I'm not here to have a "discussion" with someone who's desperate to defend the powerful from facing their own malfeasance. Your remarks and lack of self-awareness show that you're part of the problem. I don't see any benefit to investing meaningful time in reaching you.

I've provided a case and actionable suggestions here, at a length of 745 words. I'm not going to give you 745 more.

http://danilocampos.com/2014/09/y-combinator-and-the-negativ...

I'm not here to convince you. Your education is your job.

But I am thrilled to continue documenting how, say, software engineering leaders at startups contribute to a culture of exclusion and alienation by making it the jobs of marginalized people to "educate" their more privileged counterparts.

Y Combinator is a 30 billion dollar business. Hacker News is a big part of their operation.

It's not the job of seagulls to organize oil spill cleanup.

You're acting like I only have six pieces to point to. I have dozens. And this is only the set after I started hash tagging.

https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23hnwatch&src=typd

> I actually think it's good that short-sighted individuals express their bigoted views.

There's a word for this kind of viewpoint.

> It gives others a chance to provide them with some perspective.

While alienating entire groups of underrepresented backgrounds.

Sam Altman says tech needs to fix its exclusionary nature. So he actually agrees with me on this.

I say change begins at home.

>Having said that, I don't think any business has to do anything special for being inclusive to sex/race/gender etc.

That's nice.

The guy in charge of Y Combinator disagrees with you. Which is the whole point of the post.

http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups

Please note actual, accurate headline is "Mobile Wallet Laughingstock Clinkle Finally Launches To Let You Pay Friends And Earn 'Treats'"

"The reason why Women, Blacks and Hispanics are under-represented in tech boils down to the pipeline."

Oh yeah? Then how come with blacks taking 10% of CS degrees and Latinos taking 8%, their representation at Google and Facebook is only 1% and 2%?

Meritocracy?

Obsessing over the pipeline is a handwave that doesn't address the outsize attrition afflicting actual women in current technical roles.

To say nothing of how hostile the industry leadership can be to women (cf Richards/SendGrid, GitHub, Tinder, Urban Airship).

It's nothing to do with how you said it.

The point is that reading something like this, the least interesting topic is what the complainant could have done differently.

The principle discussion is: never shoulda happened. Inappropriate, unacceptable. Not second guessing the strategy of someone in an impossible situation.

But you led with that.

That's why you got called out.

That may be so, but I think it's not a little pernicious for someone with standing and reach to say "Hayyyyy, so, I'm sure everything's FINE" when everything is not at all fine. Sloppy and counterproductive.

"If I had to guess, I'd say Silicon Valley would be among the easiest for women to penetrate"

This is not an opinion grounded in any sort of reality. Attrition for women in technical roles is nearly double that of other industries. In finance, women make up around 20% of corporate boards. Not so in tech. Not by a long shot.

This is Scott Adams saying "hey guys, here's some stuff I think but haven't really tested even a little bit."

Classic HN.

"I'm 10 degrees removed from the facts but I'll betcha OP is super dumb. Give me points for saying so."

As a guy on the margins, I can't say I agree with you.