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Comment by northerdome | Hacker News Reader

While school specific recruiting trips maybe drive results for recruiting teams, there is no way to get away from inherit bias. By only recruiting at "top schools" you skip talent that couldn't afford tuition at an elite school and chose scholarships over paying 60k a year. You optimize for who could do well on the SAT in high school, which is inherently a product of privilege and who could pay to study for the test and even knew it was a road block (I didn't realize the SAT was important until friends that went to "good schools told me to study for it. In school I was always told you couldn't study for it). Systemic doesn't necessarily mean any particular individual is biased. The entire way we conduct business is.

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On the margins, SATs are a "fairer", harder to game metric than most of the others.

Yes, rich people can put their children through test prep courses. However, the differential impact is much less than what they can do with grades or even worse, extra-curriculars.

A bright, economically disadvantaged teen can do very well on a standardized test. That same teen has no way of doing an impressive non-profit over the summer in another country, as many wealthier Ivy League applicants do.

Exactly! Every time someone brings up discarding standardized testing for college admissions, they ignore how the remaining admission criteria can be even better gamed by the wealthy and upper middle class. Standardized testing may be imperfect, but its one of the few ways an exceptional student from a less well off background can distinguish themselves.

Then why do minorities such as Indian Americans and other Asian Americans do so well in tech? Is it systemically biased for Asians? Where in the world do they do this correctly, by the way? What country or nation in the world has bias figured out so well that they have perfect proportionality among all races and sexes among all career paths?

All good questions.

The answer is probably complicated. I'd guess that India pushing tech in their education system is one factor. Indians and Asians are also a numerous and growing cohort, whose families are immigrating from higher populated regions. Their families may also encourage their children to go into tech. And the racist stereotypes these populations face are likely very different than others, such as African Americans.

It has nothing to do with India's education system.

It's that if you are Indian, you will not be allowed into the US unless you have a bachelor's in something leading into some high paying occupation. In fact, your odds are pretty bad unless you have a master's from an American university.

The majority of Indian and Asian Americans you see in the US are self-selected to be the richest and most successful ones from their country. Those who don't come from rich families, those who didn't go to the top schools in their country, are much more likely to just stay home, instead of get sponsored by their families to go to the other side of the world to search out the best opportunities.

> The majority of Indian and Asian Americans you see in the US are self-selected to be the richest and most successful ones from their country.

For Indian and Asian Americans, “their country” is the USA, and especially for Asian Americans, it's not uncommon that was true of their ancestors for several generations.

> especially for Asian Americans, it's not uncommon that was true of their ancestors for several generations.

A large majority of Asian Americans are foreign born. The only groups that aren’t majority foreign born are the Japanese and Hmong.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/22/key-facts-a...

>> The majority of Indian and Asian Americans you see in the US are self-selected to be the richest and most successful ones from their country.

This is absolutely not true for "majority." A significant minority of them, this is probably true about, but a cursory review of how Chinese-Americans arrived to this country will probably dispel this rumor fairly quickly.

54% of Chinese Americans have a Bachelor’s or higher, 50% for foreign born. Things have changed in the last 30 years. Trust me when I say 50% of Chinese in China do not have a university degree.

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fact-sheet/asian-americans-c...

Sorry, "majority you see in the US" is wrong. I'm thinking more along the lines of "majority that migrated over the last 50 years".

So the native population simply is not of the same caliber as the immigrant population?

Hmm, international students have to pay a full ride. So maybe you'd say that the immigrant population is roughly the same caliber as the portion of the native population that is too successful to qualify for financial aid.

Do you have any evidence for this you could link?

> Then why do minorities such as Indian Americans and other Asian Americans do so well in tech

Because for Indians and other Asians, doing well in tech is one of the main ways of becoming Americans. If we kicked out all the current black people and then had employment-based immigrant and dual-intent visas as the main route for blacks to enter the country and start the road to citizenship, then once there were Black Americans again, they'd seem like a pretty darn successful demographic.

Nigerians are the most highly educated ethnic group in America.

4% hold a doctorate, 17% a Master’s, 37% a Bachelor’s.

https://www.nairaland.com/5968663/nigerians-top-most-educate...

> What country or nation in the world has bias figured out so well that they have perfect proportionality among all races and sexes among all career paths?

All career paths is probably a bit of a strawman. I doubt you'll find anyone here who expects same number of men and women in every job. The more dangerous ones will always be disproportionately picked by men and that's ok.

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