I used to work at IBM and a new black engineer joined around the time I joined the team. We both got stuck with the grunt work and bonded over late night conference room video game projector sessions, while running regression tests. I’ve gone on to a relatively successful career outside of IBM, but he was hit in a layoff, with his job sent overseas. Instead of continuing in tech, he moved home, and joined his fathers company as an accountant. I keep in touch and continue encouraging him to get back in tech, trying to hire him each time I have a position open on my team, but I’m finding that he hasn’t kept his skills up to date. I’d bend every rule to hire him, not because he’s black, but because he’s my friend. I just can’t get him past the loop.

Later in my career, I used to travel to St Louis to meet with large customers. In a city with demographics of 47% black, I’d expect to be working with a sizable number of African Americans. Out of the 100 engineers I worked with, half were white and the other half were Asian. The only black employees I met were the security guards.

Similar scenario in Atlanta. Although I did work with a number of Black engineers, their accent indicated a birth place of the Caribbean or Africa.

It feels like the H1B system has become a barrier to entry for African Americans born in the US. Something should be done to make US students more attractive to employers than H1B. I don’t want a quota system, just a tax on H1Bs which make companies take a hard look at why they’re not hiring US citizens. The article indicates there’s not a pipeline problem. Something else is amiss.