Hacker News Reader

Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

For whatever reasons, it seems to me that relatively few black people study for engineering and science degrees. At least that's my feeling in Europe.

Then it's simply a trickle down effect, like for women in tech: Few choose this path so even fewer end up being tech entrepreneurs or at Google/Facebook, etc (since the article mentions the workforce of these companies).

So, once again, education from primary/secondary school is key and needs a long term investment. After that, all these talks about "increasing diversity" in tech by 'tweaking' hiring practices or what not is just PR fluff or virtue signalling because this tries to fix a consequence while ignoring the cause. Silicon Valley's giants should instead reach out to help on education if they wanted to do actual good long term.

View on HN

I've pointed this out for the women in tech debate. Probably 3 of the 30 or so CS students were women here.

So the question becomes why do blacks and women want tech jobs without becoming qualified for said tech jobs? or do they even want tech jobs in the first place? is it just someone else who wants them to have tech jobs?

For real-life trolling fun at a university, head over to the people who are really complaining about the lack of women in STEM. They'll be in Gender Studies or something like that. Suggest that they can take action against the problem by changing their major to something in STEM.

There's never been many women in technical subject in Western countries. I think this stems from the traditional view that some jobs are for men, and some jobs are for women.

That's why we now have campaigns here in the UK to make girls in primary and secondary schools interested in these subjects and to make the message that girls can study anything they want. The same goes for boys and 'girly subject' though the push seems less visible.

There are many, many non-technical founders. Most jobs at Google and Facebook are not in engineering. A lack of blacks in computer science might explain why the engineering department has only two black employees but how do we explain the sales team?

Thought.

Old school. If you needed another team member HR and the Boss would hire one. And you'd have to work with them. If the company thought they weren't hiring enough women and blacks they'd just hire some women and blacks.

New way, we only hire from the top schools and programs. And we allow members of the team to act as gate keepers over vague things like 'cultural fit'. Over time your team becomes composed entirely of upper class whites and a few model minorities.

This is interesting: "upper class whites and a few model minorities"

Discrimination against the lower class is invisible within the white population. It just goes undetected. It is never reported to the government. Group photos doesn't raise suspicion.

If race and class are correlated, then one type of discrimination can be misdetected as the other.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com