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Comment by weiming | Hacker News Reader

I'm not originally from America, so I seem to be missing something in articles like this. Why does no one talk about the "pipeline problem," that is, encouraging many more people from "minority" groups (black, women, and so on) to pursue coding from young age? (Edit: or encouraging these groups to enter the field at any age, such as through the community college system/Coursera/etc.)

It seems like examining the end of the funnel (and placing blame squarely on tech companies) is all too easy, and is much easier than addressing a root cause (not enough people of these groups studying CS to begin with.)

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Because addressing the pipeline problem means admitting that racism is still alive and embedded in the foundations of our education and work force system.

You can't expect there to be more workers if there's no applicants. There are no applicants because there is a severe lack of Black people (among other groups) represented in Engineering/STEM degree programs. That stems from a lack of good public school education.

But like you said, it generates more clicks-per-article to blame the Big Bad Tech Companies for not being diverse enough, when really we as a national don't honestly want to see marginalized groups succeed. Americans operate by and large on a zero-sum assumption. Many believe that if one group of people succeeds, it somehow will undermine their own success.

> when really we as a national don't honestly want to see marginalized groups succeed

How does that explain the success of Asian Americans?

I think that depends on how you measure success.

Strictly in business terms, sure they have more success than other groups, but I don't think (assuming here, no facts) they have over taken White people as the predominant group in leadership roles, high paying positions, or otherwise 'stakeholders'.

If that's not true, feel free to correct.

See [1] and [2]. For example, 2015 median household income for Indian Asians is $100K while the same statistic for white non-hispanics appears to be $63K.

[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fact-sheet/asian-americans-in...

[2] https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/visualizations...

They also have much lower crime rates, much higher entrepreneurship, and higher educational attainment.

Skilled immigration is awesome for the US.

This tends to be true for all recent immigrants, 1st and 2nd generation immigrants have much higher acheivement.

I think the other comments here point to the fact that this systemic racism argument doesn't hold up well against actual studies and data. It's an ill defined spectre that vanishes when you look closely.

> over taken White people as the predominant group in leadership roles, high paying positions, or otherwise 'stakeholders'

Is that the bar here? Median household income has always been the bar when talking about the success of racial groups, not the number in leadership roles etc etc. I mean, are we only supposed to be satisfied when 4.8% of all leadership roles are held by Asian Americans? What about their cultural preferences? What about regional populations?

The truth is actual a lot more nuanced. It essentially boils down to a cultural and pipeline problem:

The study:

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race...

The liberal viewpoint:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...

The conservative viewpoint:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/28473/nyt-claims-groundbreaki...

The counter arguments logic is hard to ignore. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

> when really we as a national don't honestly want to see marginalized groups succeed

This sounds like a very big statement and probably something that can be a long post in itself. Would you be able to expound on that?

There's a popular theory among the American left that classical liberalism (free speech, freedom of association, "equality of opportunity", etc) is actually an oppressive social structure devised by powerful white men to keep the poor and disenfranchised (minorities and women) from rising through the economic ranks. In the estimation of the American left, the "hands-off" approach of right-wing American politics is actually a "hold them down" approach since no one that is poor or disenfranchised can rise from poverty to wealth on their own. Instead, they favor increased spending on public institutions (like more money for public schools) that will theoretically pull the poor and disenfranchised out of poverty and into the middle or upper classes.

The American right, on the other hand, contends that providing social support to the poor and disenfranchised creates a "victim mentality" and a dependency on the system for advancement. They often accuse the American left of trying to make the United States into a communist nation akin to the Soviet Union and tend to favor the maximization of non-government power as much as possible. In practice, this manifests itself as a sort of "hyper-capitalism" where the American right grants tax breaks to the rich and large corporations in the name of both economic freedom and as a reward for their success in the free market.

It is very hard to reconcile the two perspectives.

EDIT: And just to add my own view here for clarity - I think both the left and right make salient points. The left is correct that there is no equality of opportunity without adjusting for the complexities of other aspects of life and financial constraints of a poor individual's starting position. I think the right is correct that a victim mentality is extremely dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. I think there is a centrist position to be held that works for everyone, but both sides despise centrists, so I am hated every time I talk about politics.

I think the right is correct that a victim mentality is extremely dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.

This can't go understated. Life is hard and often tragic. Everyone will be a victim of injustice, often grave injustice, at one point in their lives or another. The worst thing a culture can do is demotivate folks to face their tragedies because something about their personal identity (race, gender, geography, religion, etc) made it impossible to overcome.

> so I am hated every time I talk about politics.

For what it's worth, I think the U.S. (and the world) could use more centrists!

Cynically Maxine Waters seemed to be engaged in sociopathic manipulation tactics instead of actually trying to solve anything. It looks like a shakedown. Either they give contributions to shut her up or she gets to try to score points by beating on a boogeyman.

Last I heard the AAAs in the tech were leading the pack in minority hiring of all stripes by sector. If it was mostly company culture to blame one would expect most black workers to be concentrated in small businesses or self owned and operated. Not saying that is a solution for discrimination by any means; self starting isn't easy especially when lacking opportunities but that it is a hint as probably pipeline sourced.

Everybody talks about the pipeline problem, it's just whatever specific stage of the pipeline you're at it's much easier to shunt responsibility down to an earlier stage.

Having problems hiring black tech workers? It's the college's fault.

Having problems graduating black students with BSs in STEM? It's the high school's fault.

Having problems graduating black students from high school? Really it's the fault of the community/family that raised them.

Having problems fixing the community's culture? Really it's the fault of poverty.

Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will hire us.

The answer is that everyone plays a role and that includes google. We all like to envision that we're not a part of the 'pipeline', we're exactly where it ends. It never ends, the pipe is your whole life and you never leave it. Seen that way, one pipe connecting to another and another and no one outside ever feeling that it's really their place to intervene is how we get oppression handed down through the generations. There is no 'root' cause because it's a circle, wherever you exist in this pipeline is where you have the power to help solve the problem so let's stop shunting blame down the line.

> Why does no one talk about the "pipeline problem," that is, encouraging many more people from "minority" groups (black, women, and so on) to pursue coding from young age?

This is talked about endlessly. Its a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Merely encouraging is not good enough when people don't have role models who are from the same background as you. Never seeing any black engineers cannot be replaced by 'encouragement' , neither can encouragement replace social inertia.

There was a time when there were no people of Italian descent in positions of success in America. How is it that largely impoverished Italian migrants where able to achieve parity in American society on a level with other groups?

What about people of Asian descent? How have they been able to succeed when at one point in American history they were scorned and shunned?

It's all about culture.

The short answer is that Google has money and articles like this are about activists trying to get money from Google to fund various programs.

The meme that you need to start programming from a young age to be successful is dangerous and needs to die.

I agree and I edited post for clarity.

My experience is that most tech companies are falling all over themselves to hire minorities of all kind and the problem is more with high schools steering black students away from stem and just generally segregating black students in general.

I don’t know how much has changed but when I went to a high school that was at least 30% black and I had 1(!) black student in any of my classes in 4 years. Honors and so-called ‘gifted’ programs have often been used as a way to resegregate supposedly integrated schools.

That kind of bullshit has repercussions for generations. You can’t just say ‘oh my bad’ and expect things to turn around on a dime.

I think the key factor you're missing is that this issue is deeply political and historical. This isn't just a question about what's on the label, ie. black people being hired proportionally, but also about whose fault/responsibility it is to fix. If you say "should we look at other parts of the pipeline?" you're aligning yourself with the political faction of "it's black peoples' problem, not society's." If you advocate for hiring quotas or similar, then you're aligning yourself with the "it's society's problem, not black peoples'"

Of course real solutions to the problem are somewhere in between, and you can argue until you're blue in the face that suggesting looking at other parts of the pipeline is NOT actually saying it's black peoples' problem, but it won't matter. You're in a space where there are powerful political divisions with the entire socioracial history of a large population at sake, and you're going to ruthlessly rounded to either US or THEM.

That's a big part of the reason it's so hard to talk about, and harder still to solve, even before you get to the fact that even without the deep psychological and political baggage it's already a super hard problem.

That's certainly a good point--and tech companies are pumping money into teaching minorities to code (check the partners of YesWeCode, WomenWhoCode, BlackGirlsCode, AnitaB, etc.). But you don't have to exclusively treat problems at the root.

I think one of the oft-overlooked ideas behind hiring diversity initiatives and affirmative action policies in general is that creating more role models, leaders, and advocates for minorities does have an impact on making the field more welcome for young minorities.

> It seems like examining the end of the funnel (and placing blame squarely on tech companies) is all too easy, and is much easier than addressing a root cause (not enough people of these groups studying CS to begin with.)

If you wouldn't blame companies then the problem wouldn't be fixable by the market. Which would go against the religion that true capitalism solves all problems.

> Why does no one talk about the "pipeline problem,"

If you go too far, it gets uncomfortable. You have to start asking about genetic, parenting, and culture differences. It's way easier to just implement affirmative action or something similar.

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