Slack got four of its black female engineers to accept a startup award
theroot.com
theroot.com
Listen to Reply All episode #52 for more info https://gimletmedia.com/episode/52-raising-the-bar/
When is the last time you heard someone advocating for more linguistic or geographic diversity? If these diversity advocates truly care about these studies for something other than political gain, they would be at the front lines advocating for more H1-Bs.
I love working in diverse, multi-ethnic teams, but based on what I've observed more diverse teams seem to be a wash at best in terms of results in the US and are a significant liability in China (possibly due to the demographics of the target market).
Possibly the most egregious example in the US would be Facebook. Not only were the employees narrow demographically, they also went to the same schools, were all in their early twenties or teens and the CEO publicly said like it was important to be "young and technical" and that young people were "just smarter". From everything I've read about it, it was basically run like a frat while it was bulldozing all competition in its path. (Snapchat appears to be a sequel of this story)
What sorts of problem-solving did the study look at? Is there a way to reconcile it with the conflicting outcomes from basically all the hugely successful startups except for Slack (assuming its founding team was diverse)?
The very fact that this is newsworthy says a lot about the lack of diversity in our industry. As a society we should try to find more ways to encourage women and minorities of all sorts to get into this industry.
Why? What's the benefit from this? They aren't barred in no way in pursuing these kind of careers
Even if I interpret that to merely mean actively barred, I still don't think it's true. But women and minorities are certainly passively barred from these kind of careers. By virtue of opportunity, environment, peer group, role model, education, and all sorts of passive mechanisms.
This however does not stop "female-rights-activists" from citing it over and over again. I'm sick of it.
I also don't like the notion that women are portraied as victims here. Most women I know don't want to go into tech-jobs because they think it's fucking boring. Live with it, people!
I know it's also due to socialization, but do we really want to change the entire society just to shoehorn exactly 50% in our employee statistics? Who benefits from this?
I know no woman who is sad because she just can't get hold in a tech job. If a woman is passionate about something, and pursues it, it will work out for her. Same with men of course.
Oh, and why don't people go berserk because we have like 96% women as educators (kindergartens, pre-schools, ...). Oh yeah, right, I know, because you can't earn as much money with that.
the fact that the women also worked less hours than men
Or maybe that women of a certain age are discriminated against during the hiring process because of maternity leave? https://books.google.com/books?id=26FB_ny0tVsC&pg=PA114&lpg=...
Or any of those many other reasons that people talk about that explain the statistic? The issue isn't as black and white as you want to make it.
I know it's also due to socialization, but do we really want to change the entire society just to shoehorn exactly 50% in our employee statistics?
Most women I know don't want to go into tech-jobs because they think it's fucking boring. Live with it, people!
If a woman is passionate about something, and pursues it, it will work out for her.
Oh, and why don't people go berserk because we have like 96% women as educators
I am not interested in this debate and further feel like it's not remotely germane to this thread, which is why I feel entitled to tell you how uninteresting I find that debate.
I suggest you write a story about how you feel harassed by people who seem to have an agenda, and then submit it to HN and see how it does, rather than using this story about Slack and these four engineers as a coatrack.
This is not a sarcastic comment.
Admittedly, this is about (academic) science, not tech, but Neil deGrasse Tyson disagrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM
> The very fact that this is newsworthy says a lot about the lack of diversity in our industry.
I don't like this logic. The news media has their own agenda, we shouldn't use "what they choose to write about" as a barometer.
I don't like this logic. It presumes that there's some dark cabal of web journalists conspiring to change the world.
Unfortunately their agenda is typically, 'will we get advertising revenue from our target demographic by publishing this?'
Nothing more sinister than that.
And given this was published to, uh, a _news site for and about POC_ and not a tech news site.... (take a look at the domain, maybe?) what nefarious agenda could they POSSIBLY be running? Maybe one that promotes POC, and responds positively to a company that celebrates its diversity?
But the parent of my comment couched the phrase as if there's some dark cabal pushing some evil agenda. It reeked of a cis-gendered cis-sexual white male privilege soaked persecution complex.
Regardless, being _biased_ is most definitely _not_ the substance of any interesting critique of media. Rather, it's trivially obvious that the production of media is intricately related to ideological beliefs and political agendas - precisely because media is the primary tool of mass persuasion. Look no further than the long, storied history of newspaper barons.
Fundamentally, media functions as a legitimation strategy for normative beliefs; a structure for the normalization of acceptable opinion.
> 'will we get advertising revenue from our target demographic by publishing this?'
I agree this is the most likely agenda. But it's not the agenda I want to use to determine what to do in this industry.
I can just see the execs at Slack, sitting back in their chair in some posh SF restaurant, recounting to their friends how they got four BLACK WOMEN to accept an award for them.
But I'm left wondering: stipulate that class is an issue, would you prefer to see less racial and gender diversity?
It does seem to me that class isn't talked about though. Sorry but a middle-class Ivy league black woman is not of a lower status than a white working-class male.
Slack posted demographics for every category except for race and management. I hope it's an oversight.
This is especially important given that only 3% of San Francisco's black population remains in the city, as economic pressure, along with intentional malfeasance on the part of the city government, has pushed most of them out over the last few decades.
It's neat that lots of high paying jobs are available in the Bay Area, but it won't really mean anything until the people who suffered through the hard times here are able to take part in the good times instead of being forced out of the way of progress.
So, thanks slack, it's a hard time to live in this part of the world right now but it seems like you all are really making an effort.
I'm a person, not a prop to be used by a corporation to score social points.
All the evidence in this story points to the conclusion that these particular people do not feel so used.
Considering this was done consciously what is message we are meant to come away with?
Is it
a) to show the world that black women can be engineers at successful companies?
b) to show the world that companies can be successful with black women engineers?
c) to show the world that companies are more successful with black women engineers?
In each of those cases what are the implications of them not feeling like a prop?
d) to show the world that companies are more successful when they don't adopt practices that exclude black women engineers?
Then, to be fully charitable, replace "black women" with "statistically underrepresented people", or whatever term you feel comes closest to that which will allow us not to pointlessly litigate.
Then, I think the answer is (a, b, d).
Finally, the simplest, most obvious implication of them not feeling "like a prop" is that they share the objective that their employer has in promoting the idea. The term "prop" is derisive. We don't feel like "props" when we work with other people towards shared goals, even though our work is, directly or indirectly, helping those other people as well.
I suppose that's not exactly a charitable assumption or provable.
But I'm generally happy when the interests of companies line up with what I believe to be the interests of society as a whole.
Companies that go out of their way to be environmentally friendly are most often doing that in order to seize a marketing niche. That's a signal sent with a profit motive. But that doesn't bother me; why should it?
Like you, I do remain wary of the motives of companies when they send signals about social values. Their actions might not match the signals they're sending, or, having firmly established those social values as part of their "brand", they may cease serving those values altogether. I think it's good to be wary of companies.
But I think we should be careful about about letting the social values themselves take flak due solely to that wariness. The ulterior motives of Slack are a small issue. Whichever way you feel about it, diversity is a big issue. Let's not lose the forest for the shrubs.
I suspect we may not entirely agree about the merits of the particular social values ("diversity", whatever) at stake here. I believe the underrepresentation of women and African Americans in tech is a major problem. But either way: you seem like a pretty reasonable person, so, thank you for being that way.
My company lost a woman engineer by badgering her about representing the company in terms of diversity. Turns out she just wanted to be an engineer.
You think minorities are treated the same by society, law enforcement and employers?
It's all in how they asked them, especially if they were given a real choice and allowed to express their ideas/concerns.
This is why "politically correct" exists in the first place. It forces people to practice best behavior even before they realize what they are doing/saying is wrong, until they "get it". At one point it was completely okay to employ only white males. Now it's not.
I think you've focused on the right question: is highlighting superficial differences now the best way to reduce discrimination against superficial differences in the future?
I don't find it obviously true, but I'm open the the possibility that it is. What's convinced you that it's the best approach? What would convince you that it's not?
But now our country has "original sin". Countering the damage that has been done by the generational, institutional holding back of minorities takes great effort.
There are far too many people who think there are no women who code, now add minorities to the mix.
So yes, right now we have to highlight such achievements.
Someday it won't be necessary.
I didn't start programming when I was 10 because there are Jews in tech. I never associated my race or ethnicity with any sort of permission to do anything. The thought never crossed my mind. I didn't grow up in a racialized community even though, yes, I was one of few Jews in the town I grew up in.
I appreciate this question because it gives further evidence that identity politics is detrimental to minorities and society at large.
Here we have a story about four engineers who seem to be extremely happy to be accepting an award on behalf of Slack, so your concern over how you would feel if you were pressured to take the kind of award you're considering seems entirely synthetic.
As I said, I can't speak to the experiences and perspectives of these women because the circumstances are very different.
On this topic of identity politics in the workplace I'm offering my perspective as a quasi-minority.
When you're put in any situation in which you're somehow singled out because of your background, you should, if you feel it warranted, quit and then write the story up. Then we can discuss your concern in a context where it actually makes sense. I was not being sarcastic: if that ever happens to you, I feel like most people on this site will be very sympathetic to your problem.
There is an old message board term for the practice of synthesizing a concern and imputing it to someone else for the purpose of argumentation. It isn't a positive term.
How is that not a reasonable way to start a discussion? I recognize that I will never fully understand the perspective of a black woman, however I still live in the same society as black women and must live with the consequences of identity politics whatever my relationship with identity is.
I am not a black woman so what would be a reasonable way to approach this story and its wider social implications?
I suspect you simply don't approve of this discussion taking place.
My issue is not that you chose to describe your own feelings, though I feel like those feelings are pretty banal and uninteresting. My issue is that you chose to share those feelings by reframing someone else's feelings. You would be uncomfortable. These people are not. Your circumstances are so different from theirs that we can safely assume there are plenty of valid reasons why they feel differently.
A cis-gendered heterosexual male WASP's perspective on this would still be a reasonable jumping off point for discussion to me. I simply offer my perspective as a Jew because at least it gives me some iota of room to criticize identity politics in the minds of people who believe deeply in identity politics.
Side question: Is slack really successful? I thought they were overvalued at 2.5 billion - 3 billion.
Either way, those two things are far from mutually exclusive.
Slack is one of the most popular things to clone now that people realize that businesses will use an IRC clone if it's packaged correctly, so I wouldn't go putting all your eggs in the basket of Slack's longevity as a company.
Well minorities, as that descriptor might point out are minorities relative to the population. So there are less of them.
Also, less of the "underrepresented" classes of people are underrepresented because they didn't formally or informally study engineering.
I think it is pretty good that Slack did this. The cynical part of me of course sees it as a political stunt, but on balance it does serve a purpose. It does stand out as such an irregularity that 4 black women would receive an award for technology and engineering that it is actully very unexpected. While there are obvious reasons that these demographics are not regular recipients, it is still fairly disappointing that such a display is as shocking as it was.
I understand issues like this need visability, but many times the author comes to the conclusion (as does on of the speakers it seems) that we should just hire more minorities/women/lgbt etc.? Like from fucking where? There aren't X demographic in tech because there isn't X Demographic in tech. You can't move a finite number of something around and change a percentage. Obvious.
We have a shitty pipeline and we are working on fixing it. I think an alright job has been done, but no one will know how effective it was for 4-10 years as the people going through these programs grow and develop as people and engineers and become successful. I look forward to that. Affirmative action is rediculously stupid. Creating a fair playing feild, especially at the training level (school, society, norms, etc) is paramount to a strong society and it isn't just diversity for diversities sake.
edit: I want to share an anecdote, which is indicative of why I think this way.
Several years ago I went to a code bootcamp. I became close with another student who was one of the top guys in our class of ~40. He went to some shitty online MBA program IIRC but he had worked his ass off and paid for it himself as well as this bootcamp which was >10k at the time. He might of got like $500 off for being black.
Another student was also a minority. I know she received scholarship and significant tuition reduction. She also had a lot of trouble with the work, and I do not think she prepared as well as she could have. She took offense to a lot of the jokes and things and complained. I think some jokes were crass, not sure if it was racial but maybe some sexual harassment type stuff. Not physical, just general bro-type humor. A few other students also complained and we had a 2 hour talk about race and sexual harassment.
My buddy said some pretty funny stuff during that and we cleared it up. It was pretty evident though that:
* He was obviously aware he was a minority
* Didn't want to be treated differently and had grown up with people doing that his whole life (positively and mostly negatively)
* On balance, he was pissed off he had to waste 2 hours not coding and working talking about this bullshit.
He worked his fucking ass off, was the guy many people turned to for help and he was putting himself entirely through the program (quite a risk considering he had just left a good paying job and had a kid and another on the way).
He was later hired at a fairly prominent tech company as an engineer. He had to learn a new skillset quickly as they used a different stack than he was accustomed to.
It isn't fair to him to say he got where he was because he was black. Complaining and asking for people to accomadate you is not as successful of a strategy as outworking everyone. If you have been the victim of something that violates the law, that is quite different. If you see someone say "slut" or "bitch" in hipchat or whatever, I would try to ignore it and get to a point in your career where you can set the culture if you disagree with it.
Let's totally forget you know, us Asians (people of color and a visible minority in the West) who contribute to tech companies at a high rate and who also have had to overcome racism, stereotypes, and artificial ceilings. Oh wait, we don't count when it comes to determining what contributes to diversity! Somewhere in the 20th and 21st century, our skin colour turned white and we're no different than white people.
Fun fact: in the beginning of the 20th century, you weren't white if you were Irish or Italian.
"White" in the US has little to do with skin colour. It's more of a social construct.
> The definition of white has changed significantly over the course of American history. Even among Europeans those not considered white at some point in American history include Southern Europeans (Italian, Spaniard, Greek, Portuguese, etc.), Irish people and Central Europeans (Germans, Poles) and Eastern Europeans (Russians) but mostly notably[citation needed] Polish people due to the Partitions of Poland.[21][22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans#Historical_and...
The fact is that being black is the US is very different from being anything else. Black people were slaves from the 1500s to the 1800s, and the US government was actively discriminating against black people (and preventing them from building family wealth) as recently as the 1960s. That simply isn't true for Asians.
I recently met someone who went to Stanford and was arguing that black people are genetically less intelligent than white people, even though the entire concept of race has no objective reality. I guarantee you don't have to deal with anything like that. I could think of a million other examples.
Maybe not until the 1960s, but Asians were treated very badly as well: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/123989795964998211/
And given the disparity in online dating stats and interracial marriage stats, you'd be hard pressed to tell me that stereotypes have zero bearing on the effect on Asian men (and Black women).
For ceilings, there are numerous studies and articles outlining how Asians may enter companies as employees but don't advance nearly as high as other ethnicities, being absent from some of the highest levels of the company. Consider the number of tech workers who are Asian and then compare it to the number of Asians who end up moving up to executive levels. Is it proportional? Not at all. Of course, critics will just say it's because of Asians not having the right skills. Strange. Couldn't we say the same about the lack of Blacks/Hispanics/women in tech? Look also into studies comparing the number of Asian lawyers compared to Asian judges. It's also not proportional.
Of course, we can also look at stats that show Asians often have to perform higher than other ethnicities to garner entrances into colleges. How is that not a penalty to their race?
The argument of Asians don't suffer as much as Blacks therefore don't have it bad is trite and non-constructive. Black and Hispanic vote counts much more in the political narrative than Asians. Even in my local city which has close to 40% Asians, our representation in the city council only has about 5-10% Asians council members. If you say something racist against a black person, like Donald Sterling or Paula Deen, you could lose a LOT. Yet if you say something racist against an Asian person on TV, you're barely forced to make a mea culpa.
Come off it. Race is an objective reality. Aside from the visually obvious large difference(s) in pigmentation of the skin, there are other hard biological differentiators, like facial shape, the frequency of certain diseases, and many others.
Taking the anti-racism movement into hard, blatant denialism is beyond ridiculous and will only create more people like the friend you're trying to avoid. When there's no one in the middle to temper and explain inconvenient objective realities, people feel like their only option is to go to the extreme that seems to align with their experiences. That hardening of extremity is really bad for everyone.
What is someone who is 1/4 African, 1/4 European, and 1/2 Vietnamese? What does their "race" tell you about them?
Even if you could do a genetic test of every single person who, say, applied for a job or a college, you still wouldn't be able to determine their race with any certainty most of the time.
Race is just not an objective definition, and if you knew anything about US history, you'd know that. Most of the landmark civil rights cases were about proving that you can't identify race by appearance, behavior, or even ancestry, since so many blacks had mixed ancestry.
* I don't think we should use demographics as a ruler for hiring.
* I don't think we should stop hiring (or start firing) Asians because they are overrepresented.
> Let's totally forget you know, us Asians (people of color and a visible minority in the West) who contribute to tech companies at a high rate and who also have had to overcome racism, stereotypes, and artificial ceilings.
I feel like you think this is some sort of rebuttal to me, but I find us saying the same thing. Many Asians studied sciences, and at disproportionate amounts relative to their population size. So now there are more Asians in desirable professional positions.
I personally find it super offensive when someone conflates success with 'whiteness'. The most salient example being the "You talk like you're white" statements often delivered as a compliment.
I think, as I stated above, building a pipeline is the most important thing. Not simply using demographics as a yardstick and removing the percentage of Asians above a line.
Also if we use a yardstick it should be family income or the median income in districts to capture people who are disadvantaged. This will have the affect of boosting disenfranchised populations like hispanics and blacks while capturing other races and segments who are also disadvantaged.
While I think hiring bias exists it is likely fading. The nice affect of promoting more education and skill at lower levels is that we will create more opportunities for nontraditional segments to start companies and set their own cultures.
Many people in the industry have instead focused on education instead of directly building companies because they feel a sense of need to help people overcome the hurdles it takes to become skilled (economic, demographic, cultural, etc).
I look forward to when they don't have to do that because mechanisms will be in place to serve these underserved places and people, and those entrepreneurs and engineers can get back to engineering.
There are a lot of hispanic people in San Francisco. There are next to no hispanic people in startup offices in San Francisco. Unless they're cleaners, but I think we can all agree that doesn't count for what we're talking about.
Same for black people. There are many of them in the streets in San Francisco. Next to nobody in startup offices in San Francisco.
etc.
A big part of it is, what are young people's ambitions? When you're white or asian or indian, society tells you that you should become a scientist or engineer or whatever cool and awesome. You have role models. Examples of things possible, if you will. So you strive for them.
When you're black or hispanic, society tells you that you might become a great athlete or singer or actor. Most people around you work blue collar jobs and your aspiration is to be the owner of a blue collar establishment. So you strive for that.
The expectations we as a society place on young people are a powerful thing. And they're really hard to break out of.
For instance, I grew up in a low middle class family in Europe. How do you think it felt to have started my first startup while at the same time listening to all my extended family and most of my friends that capitalists are dirty scumbags who exploit people. In general of course, you, Swizec, you're probably not like that. But "people like you", those guys suck.
... So there are less of them.
Do you really think no-one thought of this? The objective is for ratios to reflect the general population of the area. In general, thats kindof what we should expect in a meritocracy, right?
... underrepresented because they didn't formally or informally study engineering.
Which is obvious. Now: Why do you think that is? And what can we do about it?
As Itp says below '... women and minorities are certainly passively barred from these kind of careers. By virtue of opportunity, environment, peer group, role model, education, and all sorts of passive mechanisms.'
edit: I also don't agree with the sentiment of your anecdote explaining how minorities should outwork everyone else (i.e. work harder than everyone else) if they want to get noticed
(Edited)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Among other things, that will make your comments more persuasive, since incivility in comments tends to discredit them.
I think we should invest in areas with lower median incomes and promote education and technology. Which I stated.
I didn't say explicitly, but do believe, that we provide staples like food and access to computers if necessary.
The point, which I stated in my original comment. Was that many act like there is some huge population of extremely talented engineers who, if not for societal bias, would be working at tech companies.
There is, in fact, a huge amount of raw talent not being leveraged because a large subset of the population can't participate meaningfully in the economy.
I will continue to assert that hiring bias and 'passive mechanisms' are so much less important than 'opportunity, environment and peergroup' which we can retroactively correct.
I believe that this is regularly framed as some sort of zero-sum demographic war. Poor people, since fucking always, are probably not less intelligent than the general population. They are, at least in America, often not 100% white. This should be framed as disadvantaged not race.
to conclude, my anecdote was meant to highlight something similar to the analogy of sports.
If 2 teams play each other, the referees may make shitty calls. They usually make them fairly evenly against both teams but sometimes they swing a little bit to either side. Unless there is a particularly nefarious or well reasoned claim that the refs are interfereing, it is widely believed that the better team will win.
My point is not "black people need to work harder than their peers", although to some extent they may, it is that you won't have to convince the referee to make or change a call, if you have practiced well, prepared, and are a better team.
To clarify the framing, in this analogy the better team is meant to represent a single person, while the opposing team is just the general workforce.
"We have a shitty pipeline and we are working on fixing it."
But that doesn't mean that something isn't also broken at the hiring end of the pipeline. If you're a woman, lgbt, or non-white-European descended person, even if you make it through most of the pipeline, you're often fighting an uphill battle at the end of it. It is possible to simultaneously work on the rest of the pipeline while acknowledging and working on what's happening at this part of it too.
It also doesn't mean that something is also broken at the hiring end of the pipeline.
Currently, I can observe females in computer science simply being there for the quota, while more competent males get rejected. I just hope the quality hit will not hurt us too much and I hope society believes we have "normal" levels quickly.
Accept the side effect that quality is lower.
Currently, I can observe females in computer science simply being there for the quota, while more competent males get rejected.
Tell me, for someone who makes these types of logical leaps and uses anecdotal quips to support a bigoted statement -- do you believe yourself to be a "quality" employee? Because I'd fire you.
I'm not so sure if the number of people from a minority available for hire is fixed. It might be possible to target people who are currently not part of the workforce.
I'm thinking of things like offering part time positions. If you offer part time positions, you might reach mothers that might otherwise stay at home with their kids.
I have no clue if this specific measure would help, but I do believe that as a company you could do more to encourage diversity than just wait for someone else to fix the pipeline.
Working from home with the option for part time is the bees knees. I can keep up my skills and do motherly things as well, and just take a pay cut (from the hours) for a year .
Basically: privileged kids have the free time and structure to just end up "picking up" programming and other tech subjects on their own, as a hobby. Because of this, there's relatively little top-down structure supporting introduction to technical subjects at the age where kids' minds are most malleable to thinking in new mindsets.
If you want diversity in tech, you have to ensure that even the kids that will never think "oh, reading this C manual in my spare time sounds like fun" will still get introduced to the concepts, and to thinking analytically, while they're still forming a self-image. Because—if you miss that window—they end up—even in college, even if they were a straight-A student—as the type who thinks "oh, I can't go into [CS/math/engineering], that's not the type of person I am, I'd never be able to do it as well as the people who love that." (I.e., the people who define themselves in those terms, because it became part of their self-image at the right time.)
So, for example:
• Volunteer engineers' time at local schools (especially schools in lower-income areas) to give introductory-level talks. Get kids interested.
• Set up after-school clubs for e.g. game development (or any other tech-related subject that kids usually get fascinated by.) If those clubs already exist, donate to them.
• Lobby school boards and PTAs for initiatives to ensure 'equal encouragement' for minorities—none of this "counsellor discourages women from tech; says they'd do better in the arts" business.
There's probably tons more I'm not thinking of, too.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If you can't get through to someone that that language is not acceptable in a company workspace, at least try to get across to them that the screenshots wouldn't look good splashed across the front page of TechCrunch.
But then I remembered that other people actually like doing that sort of thing.
Aside from that, I'm pretty antipathic toward identity politics. It's a lot like attaching a long lever to your own head that lets other people control where it points, which is often just a way to ensure you are not looking at something genuinely concerning that is in a different direction. For instance, I heard on NPR's ATC a few days ago a segment on how feminists are pressuring women to support Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination because she is a woman. But that doesn't tell me jack squat about whether she shares or supports my values. It was just a bunch of people grabbing an identity politics lever and yanking on it.
So gestures like this make me nervous. It makes me feel as though someone is trying to manipulate my emotions for their own gain, except I cannot fathom how anyone could possibly gain from it.
I also find all this focus on "PoC" to be infantilizing, patronizing and objectifying. I'm a human not a pawn in the game of political correctness. I'm also confident enough in my skills that I don't want or need anyone making exceptions for me.
You may be a 'minority', but if you are Asian or Indian, then you don't count because you're not an underprivileged minority.
A lot of the poor white people I know ended up in legal trouble or worse, actually dead.
The solution that I would advocate for is one of individual responsibility and confidence to make your own choices. Nearly everyone I grew up around (regardless of race) thought it was "lame" that I was into technology. Having the strength to follow your passions in the face of that pressure is key. In fact I would say pressure from people of my own background to continue their lifestyle was much harder to overcome than the small amount of discrimination I've faced in the professional world.
It sounds almost too good to be true, but in the tech industry, if you can write great code you will succeed.
Yes, but the narrative is that minorities who don't write better code as good as the members of majority because the former never had privilege to learn how to write good code.
Also do check out the articles which convinced Github that Meritocracy is not a good thing[1]. And the site 'Is Tech a meritocracy dot com" [2].
[1] https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-dehumanizing-myth-of...
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
>The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews.
I mention it in another comment, but the pressure I faced to stay in the culture I was brought up in was much more of a deterrent to success than any headwinds I faced in the professional world for being "different".
This is attempting to encourage a larger group to get into the field in the first place.
I think it's also dangerous to provide this PR-esque track for advancement that has nothing to do with your skills. People should be judge by their actual contributions and not who they are.
Now if only they could stop the slack client for OSX from crashing everytime on load with a spinning wheel of death and taking the rest of the system with it (only a force-quit will kill it) then that would be even cooler.
Though Slack's mobile client is better.
When you get a lot of similar people in the same room they are likely to approach a problem in the same way. A diverse group might take longer to communicate because they lack as many shared experiences but for the same reason, they can often reach a better solution.
From a literature review:
"Results suggest that cultural diversity leads to process losses through task conflict and decreased social integration, but to process gains through increased creativity and satisfaction. "[1]
[1] http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/journal/v41/n4/abs/jib...
Honest question here regarding quoting of statistics.
If statistics showed that homogenous teams led to better solving of problems, does that mean the teams should discourage diversity?
If not, then clearly the reason why diversity is encouraged is not because it brings better results, rather that it is considered as a more 'just' position.
It's like when people say "Studies show that gay parents are better parents than straight parents" as a reason to support gay marriage. The idea is simple, even if it didn't, that wouldn't be a reason against gay marriage.
Now, evaluating these studies, we might then rightfully say, that IQ evaluation is erroneous and discourages minorities, and that social status has a huge impact on the IQ. However, when diversity leads to a lower social status and poverty, doesn't this defeat the purpose of arguing for more diversity? Just to give you an insight into my thought process on this.
Another point is: Did the lack of diversity really hinder the creative minds of the last millenia?
This is exactly the reason why I think this is probably a cause and effect confusion.
Better teams might attract a diverse crowd. Just like a better product can claim a more diverse group of users.
In fact it isn't even just about 'better products', it might just be the most popular product (without any specific reason behind it). For instance, you will find Windows users to be more diverse than Linux users, mostly because former is a lot bigger userbase than latter, and Linux usage requires users to be of a certain technical aptitude (hopefully 2016 will be the year Linux Mint becomes the majority OS) which is mostly shared by the majority demographic (i.e. White males).
The minority also overrepresents other areas. For instance, some brands of hair products are more popular on Asian males, than among non-asian males (possibly because it suits their hair type better). Where as fairness creams are more popular among Indian men and women, not because of some sort of physiological differences but because of cultural preferences.
The fundamental idea is that not all areas of life will reflect the population distribution of the demographics. When I went to a fountain pen show, most people were white. There is no pipeline failure there, there is no widespread discrimination going on against non-whites.
This is simple math. Personally, after reading this bit of your post, I am starting to believe your posts deserve to be downvoted. I do pity you though.
Asians make up 5.5% of the population of the US, this includes all Asians. I don't have figures for their representation in the tech industry at large but some quick googling shows they make up some 39% of Silicon Valley workers.
African Americans make up 13% and Latinos 17%, which means for every one Asian worker in tech, we should expect around two to three African American and Latino workers.
I don't think there should be quotas but the tech industry demographics do not come anywhere close to tracking with our country's demographics.
Every industry ranging from Construction to Accountants has gender/ethnicity disparity.
That's very interesting. Can you point me to somewhere I could find more information regarding this?
The best I could find on Google was this: http://www.academia.edu/1838697/The_Dilemmas_of_Male_Element...
It does mention that, but I couldn't find much about the efforts themselves, just research.