Hacker News Reader

Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

> I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general.

You might consider reading the excellent paper, "Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal? A Field Experiment On Labor Market Discrimination": http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

My take is that if tech really, truly has no race or gender discrimination problems, that would be remarkably different than a lot of other US industries. One quick way to check is to ask your friends in those groups whether that's case. The ones I've talked to mostly disagree with you.

> The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel [...]

I am strongly opposed to the notion that there is one real way to solve this problem. That you believe you have a plausible solution that might help is great. Definitely do it. But that's no reason to discourage people from trying other solutions.

View on HN

It is remarkably different. The amount of Asians/South Asians in tech is very high. If there were material racism, then you wouldn't see this. I don't know anyone who wouldn't hire a smart person based on their race. I'm sure it exists in small quantities, just like everywhere else, but I believe it's much smaller in tech than any other industry. The reason why there aren't a lot of blacks and Hispanics in tech I believe is because there simply aren't a lot going to school for it. Again, this was my experience in college, and the experience of most of my colleagues. Which again is because the poor education system especially in poor areas, not because companies are racist against blacks and Hispanics.

I gave my opinion. This is what a discussion consists of. Nowhere did I discourage people from trying other solutions.

The article itself says that only 4.5% of CS graduates from the top universities are black, so if you're only hiring graduates of those universities then you're never going to have a diverse workforce.

Exactly. There are numerous HBCUs that have very well structured CS programs. I'd be willing to put money on the fact that those graduates don't even get a second look. Valley people are too preoccupied with the optics of having a BIG SCHOOL NAME to actually care if an employee without the school name can do the job just as well or better.

This is generally false in Silicon Valley, both currently and in the past. The only company that made having a big school name important was Google, and even then it's only a factor. The vast majority of Silicon Valley companies don't care where you come from, or even if you graduated from college. All they care about is if you're smart and if you can contribute quickly.

Half my current team at a well-known company doesn't even have CS degrees. The youngest one never went to college, but he's one of the smartest members of our team. I was recently hired, and I'm in my 40s and there's another guy who's older than me. My boss was a high school teacher, and he was one of the instrumental programmers in the entire company for the last several years.

Over the last several years, I've been intimately involved in hiring, and I can tell you straight up that no one looks at schools, and anyone who has half a chance at passing a phone screen will get a call. People might get more excited if they have a good name on the resume, but we called everyone that seems like a decent candidate.

"All they care about is if you're smart and if you can contribute quickly."

You do realize that both of those descriptors are immensely subjective, right? How you assess "smart" is different from how I do, and there's no guarantee that the environment you create will allow me to contribute quickly compared to another one.

Sure. Except that the OP of this on Medium went on to detail a very different scenario, outlining behavior that mirrors exactly what I said. You assert that the companies you've worked for do it differently? Ok, that may be so. But you're also not the bellwether for the entire industry, no matter how you may characterize your 20 years of work. I've been in it half as long, and as a person of color I can tell you unequivocally that you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to exposure, opportunity or lack thereof, or general desire to be involved in technology as a profession from that community.

Exactly. I wasn't aware of the decree that excluded Asians from white racism in school/work.

Given the number of Asians in tech, it appears white racism is lacking.

This is a remarkably facile understanding of racism, one that ignores both the model minority phenomenon as well as the fact that Asians are significantly underrepresented in management positions in the tech industry [1].

1. http://www.npr.org/2015/05/17/407478606/often-employees-rare...

Well, then I should have said Indians.

You're doubling down on the "remarkably facile" thing. It's not a good look.

There's probably a language factor involved as well. An otherwise brilliant programmer can scrape by with spotty English, but it's a lot harder for a founder or an executive.

> If there were material racism, then you wouldn't see this.

This shows a very poor understanding of both the history of racism and modern-day racism.

> Nowhere did I discourage people from trying other solutions.

When you say "X is not the right way to solve the problem" and "The real way to solve the problem is Y" you are definitely saying other solutions are less legitimate than yours.

Given that this is a topic where you know little and admittedly aren't doing anything yet, maybe you could try listening to the people who have spent their lives studying and working on the problem?

> This is what a discussion consists of.

Not really. You making a series of bold, uninformed assertions doesn't make for much of a discussion. Indeed, your assumed mantle of superior insight harms the discussion.

> I don't know anyone who wouldn't hire a smart person based on their race.

You know lots of people who won't say they base decisions on race, and who think they're not basing decisions on race, but I bet if you double blind tested them with fake resumes you'd find bias.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com