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Comment by d_burfoot | Hacker News Reader

I wanted to like this article, but I was annoyed by the second sentence, which asserts that the tech industry is extremely white and male. The "male" part may be true, but the "white" part isn't, and that fact is well known to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the industry. The big tech companies are actually LESS white than the US as a whole; it's Asians who are vastly overrepresented. In 2017, Google's tech hires were 47.1% Asian and 42.1% white. The 2018 Facebook tech hires were 51.3% Asian and 42.7% white. This compares to the overall US population which is 72% white and only 5% Asian.

I don't want to start a flame war about diversity, I just want to get the facts straight.

https://diversity.google/annual-report/

https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...

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This reads like you seized one sentence and stopped reading because you didnt like what was said so dismissed the whole article. Thats not fair IMO. I read the whole thing and the article uses the first sentences to set the backdrop for his argument that older engineers and programmers are forced into early retirement and companies in tech world and outside of it make rookie mistakes that could be avoided by treating engineering as a life long profession.

Alternating between complaints about White overrepresentation that aren't even true and politically correct terminology like "People of Color" and the entire article being a love letter to an underrepresented group is just jarring. It makes me wonder about how informed the author is about tech if he thinks Whites are overrepresented generally. There's either a lack of accuracy or moral consistency. Why the hell is the author even bring up his poorly informed opinions on racial topics in an article about ageism anyways?

Anyways the article as a whole is heavy on anecdote and low on data & facts. There is an emphasis on outcome metrics but the author doesn't bother to examine any data on productivity vs age.

The problem with your argument is that there are other diversity initiatives in the programming world which are mainly gender and race focused. That is undeniably true. There hasnt been the same thing at the same scale for older programmers. In fact there have been many articles on this very forum about how many tech companies filter out older engineers when searching for talent. Its not the first time this topic has been brought up. IBM was actively phasing out older workers and long term workers. Lets not act like data isnt there to support the claim even if it is just anecdotal.

I didn't really see anything substantiating a claim that eg 30 years engineering experience in tech is more valuable than say 20. It was just an assumption.

It's also very disingenuous to use these four oversimplified categories. There are no end of people who appear white, but don't personally identify as such for a litany of perfectly reasonable factors. And how much meaning does "Asian" have, when it's expected to somehow include two billion-person countries with vastly different genetic and cultural backgrounds?

That does not take away from the point that the industry is not as overwhelmingly "white" as people try to portray it.

You're right that it's a lousy set of categories, but I don't think it's disingenuous. Those categories roughly match the ones that large companies in the US have to track for their EEO-1 reports. I can't blame them for not doing more than is required of them for the sake of statistical accuracy.

I'd be interested to see aggregate demographics for software engineering, but I don't think that two, primarily SV, companies accurately portray our industry/field.

Comparing to the US population is a touch disingenuous. Those are California-based companies, and California has a much larger number of Asian residents than the US as a whole thanks to its proximity to Asia (15% as opposed to the 5% you quoted for the US). They're still over-represented, but not at 9.5x the base rate.

IMO, that’s not disingenuous when talking about an industry and using two well known companies as an example.

Asians, especially from India have an out of proportion presence in technology jobs. It is no different than any other ethnic industry affiliation. Irish were cops, Greeks own diners, and South Asians are huge in tech, and have ethnic social networks that connect folks to jobs, just like any other tightly meshed ethnic community.

I made it pretty clear that I agree they're overrepresented, but quoting the wrong base rate makes it look like a much bigger deal than it is. I work at a NY-based rather than CA-based company, and while the same is true there, we see a lot fewer Asian people in tech than the nearly 50% that West-coast firms claim.

It depends on what you’re doing. Some verticals in my neck of the woods are 65% or more Asian, mostly because the candidate pool is tight and often requires relocation.

FWIW I didn't get that impression. Seemed to me like the author, conscious of the women's holiday today, used the concept of social awareness as a segue into ageism.

From the author's second sentence:

> The organizers know how male and white the tech industry is, so they make a special effort to recruit a diverse speaker lineup.

Yes, the author was using social awareness to segue into ageism, but it is still factually incorrect (or at least highly misleading) to state that the industry is predominantly "white".

I'm looking at that Google report link and it says, for 2017 Tech, 39.2% asian, 53.2% white, whatever that means.

It's worth mentioning that for 2017 leadership, the Google numbers are significantly different: 26% asian, 68% white (and 75% male). So the decision making is still quite white and male.

> I wanted to like this article, but I was annoyed by the second sentence, which asserts that the tech industry is extremely white and male.

In case you missed the memo, the current cultural climate and trendy narrative structure demands that everything, no matter the topic, must include some reference to identity politics. Facts only interfere in this sort of narrative building, so please ignore your data and focus on emotional triggers instead.

While those two companies are large employers, does their labor force makeup the majority of developers in Silicon Valley? If not, then that’s two companies who have done well with upsetting the old balance, but what about the rest?

The organisers care about the colour of your skin and the type of genitalia you possess, not so much your technical accomplishments.

As a female developer I really don't like the idea that I might be selected just to fill a quota.

I refuse to read or react to articles hanging out troll-bait, so that the social trench war may creep to there page and bring in those sweet addmoneys.

Non engineering departments in tech will be white male majority.

Is that a quantified thing? I've only worked at 3 tech companies, but that was not at all my experience. Engineering was the only one that had predominantly men.

Of course not, but internet comments sections are begging for absurdity and falsehood.

Bonus points if it fits somehow into the very trendy culture war narrative.

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