Surprise: Silicon Valley Doesn’t Employ Minorities
blackweb20.com
blackweb20.com
Whatever the reasons are, it is a socio-economic problem, it's not a problem caused by any form of systematic discrimination in silicon valley.
I do not believe that I have ever seen any youtube video of a black person complaining about how he is fighting to get a job in silicon valley, but nobody is hiring him, even though he has a great number of projects online and everyone agrees his code is great.
It IS a meritocracy. If you put a bunch of bad black programmers in silicon valley and expect them to learn the tools on the job, then this will be an even greater disservice to the black community - as it would result in a negative stereotype about the quality of 'black programming'.
What's more is that it's damaging in how it proffers the idea up that Si Valley is now some system, some status quo, that people should be obligated to aspire to (or at least is some measure of "success" in the traditional sense).
Whereas getting a good education is something that everyone should aspire to, getting a job in tech?.. That's a personal decision that should come from the heart. Who the heck knows where the tech industry will be in 20 years anyway?
I think the graveness of this difference will become more apparent when you think of possible solutions. One that I offered was that there should be more magnet schools that cater to minorities, that would seem more accessible to them, because honestly, most of these schools are self-fulfilling prophecies anyway.
But what would you do for tech? Set up companies for minorities to go into? Seed funds? What would they invest in? See, I don't think there's really anyone who actually knows where the tech sector is going, so this is going to be difficult to implement.
Software (and presumably hardware/software stuff like embedded systems, chip design, etc.) is so amazingly competitive that there would not be room to turn down good programmers. I'd hire a purple-skinned guy who only spoke Elbonian if he was a real hacker, and if that's not your attitude in this industry, you're sunk.
It's a reason, sure.
If it were the reason, the percentage of black and Hispanic employees would be commensurate with the percentage of the "skilled IT" workforce made up by blacks and Hispanics. In addition, the stated decline of employed blacks and Hispanics would indicate a commensurate decline in availability of that skill set amongst blacks and Hispanics.
Vast oversimplification probably isn't useful in this case. It's quite likely that there are confounding factors besides the reason you named.
Mastery of technology is the last thing that most people want to achieve in life, race irrelevant. What's your point exactly? Come out and say what you want to say.
>> "As I’ve mentioned many times before there is no innovation without diversity"
OK, well I agree with the general premise, I'd like a little elaboration on what kind of diversity you're talking about. I'm going to make the assumption that the writer's talking about racial diversity, and pose the question: How does having black skin automatically mean you're going to bring a different outlook to the table? Why shouldn't I go to Russia and find someone with an entirely different culture, background, language and religion? By that logic, that candidate will increase the diversity in my workplace far more than a Harvard educated black guy who grew up in Greenwich.
As an aside, organizations like TiE are absolutely absurd. You're trying to fight a "boys club" by forming your own boys club. The battle of racism(1) was never won with additional racism. Additionally, you're further isolating yourself from the community as a whole. Assimilate, infiltrate and smash the system from within if you really think you're being discriminated against(2).
In terms of practicality though, outrage isn't going to get you ultimately anywhere. If you don't think the Valley employs enough minorities in startups, then _start your own_. The barrier of entry is literally a 15$ Dreamhost account and a weekend reading the Django docs(3). Fork a project on Github and do something clever with it. The valley wont care if you're a philandering albino, you'll get job offers left and right if it's clever enough.
(1) I'd argue you'd have to be actively searching for instances of racism in the Valley to actually find it. I'm a second-generation Indian-American. The startup community least discriminatory group of people I've ever encountered bar crust-punks and hippies.
(2) Hint: Odds are you aren't.
(3) I'm well aware of Norvig's http://norvig.com/21-days.html, this is just for the sake of argument.
Amen. I am Indian but I think TIE perpetuates a racist/ethnic mentality and I would never take a cent (or rupee :-P) from them. Indians can be very racist/exclusionary
I don't want to be judged on my skin color dammit, just judge me on how well (or not) I code (or do product design or marketing or whatever).
In one company I worked at (ThoughtWorks) the owner was a kind of weird socialist (he was a nice guy just had these weird political beliefs - he thought the USA had too many conservatives but China had a very nice political system and that Reagan was a tyrant but Chavez was cool and so on) who believed in "Affirmative Action" and many dumb folks (carefully not specifying ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion etc here, to avoid a conflagaration) were promoted based not so much on any skills or successes but because they fit into a predetermined "diversity" slot.
Soured me on the whole concept (No, I didn't want a promotion to management. I was (and am) happy being a dev).
Thankfully , to date, programming remains a field where affirmative action and other half baked political fantasies don't apply.
Agreed. How 'bout it. And while we're at it let me say that I'm appalled by the over-representation of black sprinters in track and field too. How can it be that they are so consistently and completely the best? There's obviously something amiss. The total number of gold medals and world records they own is astonishing and a perfect example of why more diversity is needed. How can there be any innovation in the sport without slow white guys like me adding my perspective 80 meters behind in a 100 meter race ?
Pure human athletics and complex digital systems are very unforgiving in many of the same regards.
Right, because having a diverse team means hiring incompetent people.
Trust me, the fact that you happen to be a slow white guy doesn't mean that I'm an intellectually slow black one. There are fast white people and smart black/Hispanic people: the fact that you aren't personally one of them, while sad, is certainly not an effective argument against a team or company recruiting from either group, respectively.
Your metaphor is a canard, plain and simple.
Digital systems could care less whether you're black, white, brown, red or yellow. If it turns out that one group is better than another at innovation, design and implementation then so be it.
It's simple. Usain Bolt is the best because of hard work, talent, and a belief in himself. He doesn't need diversity. He's competing in an arena where pure performance is all that matters. If I could beat him I would. I can't. But I'm not running around crying foul because I'm under-represented.
If the author of this blasted article wants to be part of some Silicon Valley success story then let her sit in the library or computer lab for years at a time like everybody else.
This is a great point but it's not applicable here. I'd agree with your argument if the article were, for example, insinuating racism because code written by blacks and Hispanics had more bugs in it or had poor test coverage. That would be absurd; as you said, digital systems don't care about your race. Sadly, people usually do.
Metrics like how fast you can run and how many users like your software are objective and essentially independent of race. The article wasn't talking about objective metrics like those but rather how many blacks and Hispanics are being hired — an area in which race-based discrimination is well-documented.
This you're-picking-on-me attitude is annoying.
I would love to see that supported. These things are parroted around a lot, always in relation to race. Is it true? Should VC's only fund companies with multi-cultural founders?
I'm pretty sure that it's most definitely not.
Where this becomes true when related to race and culture is in bringing different view points and ways of thinking. However, I believe the most important thing is that we get beyond race as a differentiator. I don't believe that the color of a persons skin affects their work.
Are we trying to have it both ways, where we say 'skin color doesn't matter', and at the same time saying 'mixing race is good for innovation'?
I'm confusing myself on this one.
There are very good black programmers out there but I don't think any startup in their right mind will trade skill for diversity. It's strictly business, not personal.