Comment by gitlabuser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gitlabuser | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think that any of these examples show that Bay Area tech is a meritocracy or inclusive. The truth is the tech community has a culture and almost all the things you mentioned are almost stereotypical parts of it. These all fit within the tech culture:

* Going to burning man

* Going to SXSW

* Working with the LGBT community

* Tattoos / Dyed hair

* Pole dancing

* Wearing Stan Smiths

* Being obsessed with high end coffee

You shouldn't be patting yourself on the back that tech accepts these things. I've seen terrible examples of the community not accepting:

* Those who believe in gun rights

* Those who are strongly religious

* Those who are homeless

* Those who are lower class

* Those who are H-1Bs (Indian outsourcing bias)

* Those who are Republican

* Those who are black

* Those who are old / have grey hair

Being inclusive and meritocratic doesn't mean accepting things that are within your culture. It means accepting those that are outside. I remember a colleague talking about a Dropbox all hands meeting where every one was patting themselves on the backs because the recruiting team had hired many from the LGBT community. He looked at me and said "Why the f* is everyone so happy? We literally have 1 black person in a company of almost 1,000"

Seriously, if you think that having colleagues having dyed hair or going to Burning man is proof that you are meritocratic or inclusive you are in a huge bubble.

:[ I'm a gun-shooting libertarian. Don't assume my Tribe.

You're right, the "tech tribe" does have improvements to make in inclusivity, but at least it's a home for some people who would otherwise be outcasts in socially conservative businesses.

As for a few things:

- I think we're just as accepting of blacks, our high school education system has just utterly failed them so much that we don't have a good pipeline for getting black people into tech.

- There are a different set of values in India that cause some clash between them and Americans/Westerns. There's the culture of following the letter of the request/task, rather than the spirit of the request/task. (Similarly but differently, mainland Chinese suck at asking questions when they don't understand something.) But my overall biggest complaints with outsourced contractors is a culture of "get shit done fast, and do any hacks to get it done". Because contractors don't stay with projects for the long-term, it's not surprising.

- The homeless and lower class are, almost by definition, not people who are achieving a ton. Tech is a meritocracy, we respect getting shit done, and we're not a jobs program.

> The homeless and lower class are, almost by definition, not people who are achieving a ton.

:(

I agree that tech has been a haven for some who would be outcasts in other areas. Specifically the LGBT community.

To address your other points:

* I don't buy the pipeline argument. I've seen huge bias is how the tech community treats blacks. For example, I've seen a few black colleagues try to transfer into software engineering and get huge amounts of push back. Ironically I did the same thing (transfer from product management to dev) and I was supported. Why was I treated differently? Probably because I'm Indian so I am supposed to be a developer. In all the interviews I do, people assume I have a CS degree and lots of experience even though my resume says the complete opposite. I benefit a lot from the assumptions around my skin color while a black person gets the opposite experience.

* I get why people don't like offshore centers but that doesn't mean they should assume there aren't some very talented H1B developers. I have seen many. India has some of the best computer science programs in the world.

* I don't understand your comment on the homeless but the point I was trying to make was that verbally insulting poor people, the homeless, or old people is not inclusive or meritocratic. I've seen many examples of that in the tech community. I'm not asking people in tech to give free jobs to the homeless I'm asking people not to verbally insult them.

Some homelessness is due to untreated mental illness. Some homeless is due to other factors I am largely ignoring that, intentionally.

Tech is all about mental aptitude. Some mental health issues interfere with the required skills and some do not. Someone with ADD, bipolar or impostor syndrome is not strongly adversely affected, while someone with dissociative schizophrenia and cannot make decisions that keep sheltered will not succeed in tech and might not even with proper treatment.

What can tech do to better reach out to people who are homeless because they have mental issues that impact their decision making so much as to destroy their ability to maintain shelter? This problem is too big for a company to handle we need cultural and government change to address that.

I don't know what is up with your black colleagure, could you expand on that? I went from being a shitty programmer to a decent because a black programmer taught me a few key lessons about how to think, so there are at least a few mixed in with us.

I think tech is about as inclusive as it can be barring isolated exceptions.

Downvoted without rebuttal. :(

If I am wrong, then please tell me. I even asked for more information on something I was unsure of.

What does it even mean to respond to the criticism of how the tech industry treats black people to say "the high school system is failing them"? Aren't you describing, and excusing in yourself, the essence of prejudice? Individual black people who are being mistreated in our industry are not stand-ins for whatever phenomenon of all black life in America we happen to believe in.

> Being inclusive and meritocratic doesn't mean accepting things that are within your culture.

I think there's some subtle definition creep in the word "inclusive" these days. It's starting to mean "cosmopolitan". I recall the recent STEM girl scouts story. One of the commenters called the initiative "inclusive", which isn't quite the right. It's the same girls scouts doing something different, so it's not more inclusive, really. Beneficial? Sure. Eclectic? Yeah. Progressive? OK. Inclusive? I'm not following.

> It's the same girls scouts doing something different

Alternatively, it's a change by scout leadership which broadens the set of interests to which the Girl Scouts appeal, increasing the diversity of the population the scouts will be able to recruit and retain.

Hence, inclusive.

Hmmm... maybe. There's a sense of immediacy to 'inclusive', though. Like someone is already included. What you're describing is more like 'hospitable' or 'inviting' or, again, 'eclectic'.

> There's a sense of immediacy to 'inclusive', though.

Perhals, but there's no reason the recruitment and retention effect on people with the interests it addresses would not be, at least to some extent, immediate.

I work in a software development and we have someone with every item on the 2nd list except someone who is homeless (we might, but I would have expected that to come up).

Tech is hugely accepting. It is too easy to be punished by putting out bad products, so people put aside that which doesn't matter for the product and get to work. Skipping people for any of these reasons could mean not hiring the right person. Any team without enough of the right talent fails in the marketplace.

I would contend that whether a group is more or less inclusive does not solely depend on whether they have failed to include the homeless, black people, old people, religious people, etc.

It depends on whether the parameters of your group accepts more people, and another measure might look at whether or not your group accepts more kinds of people, or some weighted balance.

Also, if we were to add in some choice examples, I'd look at how the teaching profession treats LGBT people. Such people are under risk of being considered pedophiles. It's probably a career-killer, and any administration that backs that teacher would need strength to resist parents.

the problem is that liberals in the tech industries loves to pick and choose what constitutes as diversity while pretending that it accepts everyone.

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