I think when you're in a minority and you are not rising to the top as fast as you expect, you use your minority as leverage to propel yourself.
I am also in a minority. I've often felt cheated that my career isn't Musk-esque. And sometimes I even ask the question, "Am I being held back because I'm [in my minority]?"
Then I snap back to reality.
It's not the minority that holds you back. It's a class system.
For society as a whole, spotting some of those things and trying to remove them can be very beneficial.
Telling yourself that you're a victim of other peoples bigotry even if true tends to lead to paranoid, non-growth mindset attitudes when to actually succeed you'd be better served by an open, growth attitude.
So what is the alternative? To sit back and hope the problem solves itself?
Yes, obviously using minority status as a mental excuse for under-performing is a bad strategy.
But I'd claim it's no better to simply ignore the issue.
In reality, for a person in a minority group, success is a function of personal achievement and minority status. That's just life. To deny that is, to me, simply unrealistic. To use a somewhat incendiary example, this idea is encapsulated in the concept of "white privilege".
As to the alternative? I think that attempting to achieve in your area and simultaneously trying to fix society are big asks. I've noticed some minority high achievers seem to have deluded themselves into not believing that they have been much discriminated against when they clearly have. I think that that is a strategy that can help some people (although they will sometimes then say unhelpful things in the context of a wider discussion). This self delusion is, I believe, part of their maintaining the non paranoid outlook and the growth mindset that has helped them achieve what they have.
> success is a function of personal achievement and minority status. That's just life. To deny that is, to me, simply unrealistic.
I'm explicitly not denying this, I'm acknowledging it and I want society as a whole and companies and other groups of people to spot this and try to fix it. What I am saying, based on personal observation is that being on the look out for these kinds of discrimination is a strategy that may not be in the interests of specific individuals in terms of maximising their personal achievement.
Well, I'd counter that and claim it's actually both, and the former frequently contributes to the latter.
In particular, please edit the gratuitous provocations like "Hate to break it to you" and "Huh?" out of your comments here. Those things are (minor) violations of HN's civility rule in any thread, but when it comes to flamewar-prone topics like this one they're particularly harmful.
Given the previous study that said companies more likely hire men when names are removed from an application - it makes me curious about what it would be like to be a woman in tech. Would I get more interviews? Would my blog posts and tweets get shared more because women get better exposition in the developer communities?
Women have to try hard to break that ceiling, but men have to try harder to get there. Being in a minority puts you in a spotlight - people pay attention to you.
That doesn't make discrimination or sexual harassment okay and I'm not saying women should count their chickens but I can't help but feel numb to some of the noise that surrounds this issue.