Silicon Valley Is a Big Fat Lie (2015)

Silicon Valley is not a meritocracy because ~75% of those in leadership positions are white males?

19% of engineering and 18% of CS BA were for women in 2014. For African Americans, 4% of BA were for engineering.

Regardless of whether or not there is an institutional/societal reason for this, it is absolutely moronic to blame the place where engineers WORK for not having a perfectly balanced distribution of engineers when the pool available is so clearly not perfectly balanced.

The judgement of a meritocracy should be on whether or not a qualified individual can succeed in that environment purely on their own merits. Judging that based off of the racial distribution and gender distribution of the resulting pool is completely nonsensical.

I put 1 red jelly bean into a jar for every 5 blue jelly beans. I set the jar out and let people eat. If 1 red jelly bean was eaten for every 5 blue jelly beans, does it make sense to say people like the blue ones 5x more? Would it only be even if people ate the exact same amount of each?

I grew up in silicon valley. My family worked in silicon valley since the military industrial complex days.

I barely ever left here because people come here instead.

And each day since, with the influx of people I've seen more nepotism, favoritism, racism, sexism in the valley.

I've used the internet since a 14.4bps modem and the connections made increases but that's turned into noise while the signals decreases.

I won a web design contest at 13 in whole other different country and I applied to YCombinator 6 times in a row since first read all of Paul Graham's essays in one sitting while hiding in a server room to avoid work and all I've ever thought was required is to avoid aging each year.

I dropped out of college when I can't bother to sit still while someone is explaining to me things that don't matter while all I wanted to do was write more HTML and put up more websites and making things that people wanted.

I've worked at big companies and small startups in all capacities but didn't get anywhere until learning to code myself during my nights and weekends off.

I lived in San Francisco during the boom, the crash, and the boom again.

And in the end all I want is to better organize, sort, filter, and amplify myself and people I care about with better technology.

From my perspective this is my life.

And I've only met a handful of people those espouse these things in the 20 plus years I've been here in the valley.

Where are the rest of you hiding?

The article and title are a bit sensational but makes valid points.