Silicon Valley Isn't Run by Straight White American-Born Men
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Women, for example, hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering. Therefore it is only common sense that they wouldn't be getting jobs that require these degrees at the same rate that men do. It's not because of evil white males not wanting to hire women (or any of the other groups that have claimed discrimination in SV) - it's because fewer of them choose the profession. The degree issue is also the reason that the CEO role is diverse - because it doesn't necessarily take an engineering degree to be the CEO of a tech company. Diverse qualifications will yield a diverse pool of talent.
I am not saying to put a stop to diversity hiring — it's necessary in the interim, because society and the education system can't change overnight — but it does not solve the actual problem and the longer the problem is left unaddressed, the harder it becomes to fix. We need to be putting serious resources into improvements in education and pushing cultural changes to how STEM careers are seen by the general public, and it needs to happen soon.
> Women, gays, and immigrants form a new majority at the top.
What? Looking at the union of all women, all people of color, and all LGBT people, and saying that this group forms a "majority" (non straight-white-U.S. born-males) shows what is wrong with how some view diversity.
Its nice that some women, some LGBT people, and some people of color make it to the top. The talk about diversity has never been that they don't.
The list shows 4 underrepresented groups in the top 10, as if that is a success, forgetting that:
1. There are two women only. 2. There are no U.S. born persons of color in that list.
The only valid statement is that non-U.S. born people seem to exist in healthy amounts. But those like me who are born outside the US shouldn't be helping Silicon Valley check "non-white" boxes off, pretending like race and socio-economic problems in the US that keep persons of color from attaining positions of authority don't exist.
Are you questioning whether a racial divide exists at all in America, where non-whites are subject to unique limitations that Whites are not subject to? Or is your objection different?
I also feel like a lot of people take that stance because they feel that those on the opposing side are claiming that it is only because of race. More often than not, we are merely saying that race and class are interconnected; they are neither completely orthogonal, nor exactly the same.
There are definitely cycles of racism, patriarchy, and homophobia that perpetuate class struggles that are difficult to break out of. There are also other class struggles that affect us all.
As someone who kind of feels all of the problems we have tend to come from class issues, I'm trying to understand what you mean.
First, let me preface, this is all my personal opinion, I don't know if I fit into a stereotypical group you're referring to...probably do...
> And class problems are completely independent of race.
Second, class problems definitely do not seem to be independent of race; racial distinctions in the inner-city for example.
That said, I do think there are equity issues completely unrelated to race. For example, in the American South, there are extremely poor areas of whites ("poor white trash"). Or, for example issues of ethnicity instead of issues of race--injustices in the past for "white" Irish or Catholics i.e. non-WASPs in America.
That said, I don't think my belief that all of these problems resulting from class problems precludes tackling all of the angles of the problem. For example, though I have some reservations about Affirmative Action legislation, encouraging e.g. diversification of student populations through AA is laudable and worth pursuing.
Another example, in a hypothetical major city composed 25% of some minority X, a company employing say 10% of the local population should reflect that population; we should see the employee population roughly match the city's population. Implementation can be difficult, obviously ("oh that guy was just hired to check the diversity box, ignore him"), but equity, providing opportunities for life improvement to everyone, is something we as a society absolutely need to pursue.
I guess what I'm saying is that I believe everything is the result of class problems, class problems being what always cause opportunity inequalities, but class problems are often dependent, though not completely, on race. Does that make sense? Do you feel like I'm way off base here?
(Quick aside, I think of the problem more as income and opportunity problems -- class problems and the rhetoric of bourgeois v. proletariat gets us side-tracked on capitalism v. communism/socialism, in my opinion a discussional red herring)
Most of my asians peoples prefer to be the smart math/computer programmer guys who do not want to do the boring day to day chores of running a company, and they prefer to just do amazing things with a computer instead.
Nothing wrong with that.
Please do not perpetuate these ridiculous stereotypes.
Not every Asian can get to the top. Just like not every White men can get to the top. The top is the top for one reason, the reason being that only the top percentage of people can get to the top.
Anyway, you're basically saying that in a country of White majority, the men most likely to get to the top of other men, is a White men, while in an country of Asian majority, the men most likely to get to the top of other men is an Asian men.
And not only that, not every men want to get to the top. Some men are perfectly happy with where they are. You can't just force those men who do not want to get to the top get to the top to take on responsbilities that they don't want to take on in the first place.
According to Gallup [1], only 3.8% of American adults identify as LGBT, so the fact that even one CEO in the top 10 (in fact #1) is in the club is actually somewhat remarkable.
[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/183383/americans-greatly-overesti...
We did it!
Oh wait 96 out of 100 members of the US senate is white. But we do have 31 women senators.
HNers should understand basic statistics. Saying 0 out of 2 is an underrepresentation is inaccurate.
[Added]:
And I'd take it one step further to see if there's real diversity or just the appereance of: how many of the women/blacks/asians etc are there with the exact same criteria as the others and not because somebody (always a white male) thought "hey, we have too many white men, let's put a woman/minority on this position, it will look good".
While that might still increase diversity, I see it as hypocrisy for 2 reasons:
1) If the straight white man put aside was better for the job.
2) Token diversity just hides the prejudices under the carpet.
3) Token diversity doesn't help with the underlying reasons behind the inequality (e.g. being poor with less schooling opportunities prevent many blacks to be able to get MBAs and CS education, and instead of helping change that for all, they make a mockery of diversity with random exceptions).
4) Isn't it still white males making those decisions about which token people to include?
That depends on what your goal with diversity is. One reason to prefer diversity is simply that a diverse team would naturally have more perspectives to a problem, more insights into more markets, etc. If this is your goal that simply being an underrepresented minority in tech is itself a qualification with legitimate business value [0]. If you goal is to reduce prejudiced, that token diversity could still be a good step, under the theory that it provides role models to inspire social change to improve the underlying causes.
[0] It is worth noting that this was the original argument in favor of affirmative action in colleges: a more diverse student population increases the quality of education for all students.
If that's your goal then you don't want to overdo it. E.g. if blacks are generally a poorer demographic so don't buy your expensive products, you shouldn't get that many blacks into the team, because you don't need their insights. And if you sell only to women then you don't want many if any men in your team.
I don't find that a satisfactory stance -- the "I'll only hire X demographic to get their perspectives and insight into the market".
First of all because the "non white straight male" CEOs are few and far between anyway, so it wouldn't give much advantage for your company to tout one when nobody expects you to (not to mention it could hurt in some bigoted demographics).
But second, and most importantly, because those doing the appointing care very much for the actual performance of the CEO (which affects their bottom line) to just put a token person in its place. Whereas for lower positions, even managerial ones, they can appoint the token person here and there much more easily.
I also don't believe a listing of 10 companies, especially without also enumerating also their whole boards, VCs, etc, is enough to make a point.
Besides Asians/Indians are taken as non-threatening and a "safe choice" even by bigots in these days (there's a reverse stereotype associating them with IT). I'd like to see some blacks, latinos, etc into that list (which IIRC make for a huge percentage of the Californian population, but are totally missing even from the "top 10" list).
1) If some candidates don't make it for real reasons, solve the real reasons first. For poor blacks, latinos etc for example, stop racial prejudice, invest in education and social support for their communities, etc, and help them reach middle class status. This includes lowering the towering college/university costs.
2) When hiring, don't hire because of token sensibility. That just helps a person here and there, who might not even deserve it (aside from their minority status). I guess hire blindly (based on CV, without even the name attached to it) is one way.