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.