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Comment by worker767424 | Hacker News Reader

> Hiring more black people

It's not like there's a large, untapped pool of talented black software engineers.

I'm at a large tech company. There was a team I worked with for a big with some really talented people, the sort of team where really smart domain experts go. There was a black guy on it who asked questions showing he wasn't an obviously talented domain expert. I found out he was recruited for coming from an unconventional background and was spending time with different teams.

Large tech companies are trying really hard to finds diamonds in the rough, and they're taking chances on people that aren't talented enough.

The other issue is blacks are only 13% of the American population. Seattle is only 7%. Now imagine you're an even smaller minority. It's about people not being assholes, not "hiring more x people" because that will always fall short for some group.

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Respectfully, this is the wrong way to look at the problem. It’s true, objectively, that there are fewer minority/female CS graduates. But there’s no way that gets better if a person who is “not a subject matter expert” gets dismissed. That person needs to be trained. If they want to be expert at that subject, we as an industry need to be able to help them get there.

Increasingly I believe the problem with diversity in tech is a retention and training problem, not a pipeline problem. If you’re a woman and you want to be a coder but all you hear about is hell stories, why would you sign up for that major? Our job is to make those who are generous enough in spirit to decide they want to do this thing, in spite of all the pain they might face, the best coders they can possibly be. Only then will they be able to provide the positive reinforcement necessary to improve input pipelines.

Same applies to any underrepresented group.

Do you think there's any chance hell stories become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

> If you’re a woman and you want to be a coder but all you hear about is hell stories, why would you sign up for that major

I think this is a bit more complex; think of something like Revenge of the Nerds where computer peeps are all socially inept (sometimes borderline creepy) otherworldly nerds whose only interest in life is computers.

Would you want to work in an environment like that? I wouldn't. And luckily I don't because that's not really what most programmers are like. I can count the number of people I've met that fit this stereotype on a single hand, and I've met quite a number of programmers at conferences and such over the years.

I feel these problems run much deeper than just "hell stories from women". Luckily in the last ~10/20 years attitudes seem to be changing somewhat for the better, but for a long time during the 80s, 90s, and 00s the perception of the average programmer was not especially positive.

Fully agreed, there's a whole lot going on beyond stories of bad experiences. It's a complicated issue, I just think we're focusing on the wrong problem if we're just looking at this from a pipeline point of view and not asking what factors contribute to the pipeline being sub-optimal. Too often I hear, "women just like people more than men," and other similar BS, which lets us as an industry off the hook for creating sub-par environments.

There are a lot of socially enept developers out there. Maybe it’s changed a bit recently. But if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do?

Something you see often is developers who were bullied at school, finding refuge in their computer, finding something they enjoy, and then the feminists canceling them because they don’t have the social skills to understand all the new rules of what is not politically correct. E.g. James Damore - the fired Google guy - was just quoting scientific evidence regarding women in tech but without realizing the sensitivities of 2010+ and that some things are better left unsaid. This is simply a lack of social awareness, and now the nerds and re-bullied day in day out because they started making lots of money.

> if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do

Probably not too well, although I've known more than a few programmers that have also done sales. I have actually, and I'm very bad at it not because of my lack of social skills, but just because I don't like being pushy. Anyway, "not being good at sales" doesn't mean you're "socially inept" just as not being able to program a computer very well makes you "technically inept".

And maybe programmers, on average, are a little bit below average on social skills – I'm not sure if that's the case but it could be – but "a little below average" is still "normal" and not "inept", and it's a far cry from the stereotypes that were being propagated.

I don't really know enough about James Damore to say anything about this, especially not him as a person.

> I believe the problem with diversity in tech is a retention and training problem, not a pipeline problem.

I saw one guy setting up a hiring pipeline in large industrial/tech company in the south, and changing the face of a office for that company.

- When he start : The city is 60% black, almost not black dev. A few in IT/Support. - He strike a deal with a local bootcamp, being extremely specific on the training content. Basically the boot-camp became a dedicated training ground for that company. several hiring event a year, summer internship program. Young folks from diverse backgroun. usually a solid 40/60 female/male blend.

- 2 years later I see junior black devs male AND female in a lot of teams. When I left some were promoted senior and a few really good recruits were on track to become team-lead/architect/whatever they wanted.

It's highly anecdotal, and that was matching that industrial behemoth goal to 'blend' into the culture of the south. ( read : hire black folks )

But I do think that a hiring pipeline do make a difference. Maybe this particular exemple was just too easy. Again, more than a majority of folk here are black, so it just natural to find more black candidate.

Hi, I would really like to know more about this guy and his program, and maybe get in touch. My contacts are in my profile.

To be clear, I don’t think input pipelines are not a problem at all, I think they’re just a part of the problem. Sounds like this person is doing things right by investing time and effort across pipeline AND developing talent once hired. You can’t have success without both and the latter is often a secondary consideration at best.

you are very right. Junior hire were strategically placed in 'ok' teams. they had common "low-key" projects on top of their regular assignments, and a particular effort was put on exposing them to various roles ( dev, TPM, BA, design ). The idea was to create a community of new hires that can tap into to reach for help, advices and the like.

This person took advantage of a large company with a fat belly to do awesome thing. I'm not even sure they realized.

> but all you hear about is hell stories

The reality is distorted though. Like in this article many would argue that none of it is sexist and it is just human behavior.

Whereas other women reading this have their biases confirmed.

I really struggle to find any sexism stories that describe situations that don’t also happen to men.

Human nature is to pattern match. It’s easier to blame groups than to blame individuals than to blame yourself.

I used to think this way, but I think it’s a mistake. If something happens to men but happens far more often to women, then there’s a problem. The fact that we keep hearing about these stories, with various shades of face-palming awfulness should be a sign that something is wrong. “Use your femininity”? I’ve been working professionally in various STEM positions for 15+ years, never once has someone told me to “use my masculinity” to help smooth a working relationship.

We can assume that all of these people, across the industry, in dozens of different contexts are all just whining, or we can do some introspection and wonder if we could do better. Even if some things are unintentional, if they make people en masse feel less welcome, we should re-examine how we do things, and if they are truly necessary.

I’ve personally known several women who are insanely smart and good at what they do who have felt rejected, mistreated and unwelcome in tech. It’s a tragedy they faced that, and it’s sadly way too common. We cannot deny there is something systematic at play here.

“Masculinity” does not predispose someone to working better with people. “Use your masculinity to help carry some boxes up the stairs” - is this sexist?

I don’t think sex plays into capability but more so motivation. If there wasn’t science to indicate there is a difference in what men and woman are drawn to...then you could write it off...but there are differences and those differences seem to play out.

The fact we hear more stories from women is because they are on trend of sexism. Whereas the same stories from men are just office politics. Take any office politics story, make the aggressor male and the subject female and voila - you can claim it’s sexism.

While not the entirety of the under-representation situation, the pipeline is absolutely the biggest contributing factor. Take a look at any CS class today and you'll see a sea of white and east/south asian faces, an almost no black students – I took several CS courses at the University of Washington a couple years back (staff perk) and out of ~500 students perhaps 2-3 were black.

No amount of corporate diversity training or preferential hiring is going to fix that ratio.

On the other hand, California is 37% white. The University of California freshman class for 2019 was 22% white. So why are tech companies so strikingly white? It makes no sense unless you admit there is a racial bias in the hiring process for knowledge workers.

Does culture play no role in this? Why assume race is the primary driver?

Surely it does, a culture that makes people feel unwelcome and doesn’t invest in helping them thrive in an environment where they are in the minority definitely plays a role.

How do you explain Asians making up almost half of FAANG startups?

Note that as far as I know, all the founders of FAANG were white guys. As for why many Asian people work there, I think there is a strong bias toward engineering/medicine among many immigrant communities that came from a relatively educated background in their home countries (I count myself in that cohort, though I’m not Asian). Crucially though, once they got into the community they were more likely to blend into the group at every stage.

It’s hard to be the only one in a class/company/group that looks like you. That’s a big obstacle and we should be more supportive of those who overcome it.

Also, while Asians make up a large portion of line engineer positions, they make up a smaller fraction of leadership positions. That’s troubling to me as well.

https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/25badfc6b6d1b33f...

See leadership.

30% Asian (6% us pop) 60% white (65% us pop)

Asians widely over represented.

Should we give less jobs to Asians and more to blacks and Hispanics?

This kind of points to socioeconomic and educational opportunities in early life. Blacks come from poorer backgrounds etc. But why bring race into it? Why not lift up people from poorer backgrounds of all races, instead of racist affirmative action policies.

These diversity reports are basically saying: we need to make our employees less racist and sexist when hiring.

That leaves the critical question: "lift up how and when?"

Lift up by better primary education? Lift up by more outreach to get more poorer people into computing as young adults? Or lift up by having hiring quotas for people whose family income was provably bottom quartile for at least 5 years in their childhood?

The goal should be to have the same academic achievement as their peers at the company they are working for. It’s unfair for smart blacks to be thought of us diversity hires. I can think of nothing worse than having your intelligence questioned your entire career.

Surely someone has studied this though. “Why did you not choose comp sci major?”

All the answers are there. The fact we don’t hear about it is probably because it doesn’t fit the narrative that intersectionalism wants to tell.

Last time I went to research the history of why women were dominant in tech and then then minority, it was nothing to do with sexism surprise, surprise.

Exposure to computers at a young age is everything.

I will do some more research though and come back <- the best part about HN conversations for me.

Because they make up a high percentage of the graduating classes in CS programs (1). However, note how whites only make up 16% of the graduating class at UC berkely, yet many FANG companies are ~50% white (2). Whites are overrepresented at the expense of other groups.

1. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...

2. https://www.wired.com/story/five-years-tech-diversity-report...

"Strikingly white"? Tech industry in California is probably the least white white collar industry in this country.

You have to frame it relative to the pipeline to see how overt this bias is. In the CompSci major at UC berkely, for example, only 16% were white (1). Yet when you look at the makeup of some of the FANGs in the bay area, most are ~50% white or more (2). That is striking to me.

1. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...

2. https://www.wired.com/story/five-years-tech-diversity-report...

How many programmers graduate from Berkeley each year and how many are employed in the FANGs in the Bay Area? How many Berkeley graduates are in the top 0.01% of available talent, given all the other people who want to work for FANG’s in the Bay Area?

> 37%...22%

Metrics for particular degrees would be more helpful. Some of those 22% are in accounting.

> So why are tech companies so strikingly white

Um, what? Maybe for early-stage startups. If you'd said "strikingly white, Indian, and East Asian," I'd agree.

Lets look at the compSci major at UC berkely, then, where only 16% were white (1). Yet when you look at the makeup of some of the FANGs in the bay area, most are ~50% white or more (2). That is a striking difference to me.

1. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...

2. https://www.wired.com/story/five-years-tech-diversity-report...

Far more than 3% of my white tech colleagues have been Jewish, despite making up only 3% of the US and California populations. Would you claim this implies a pro-Jewish, anti-Gentile tech hiring bias?

I would disagree with you, and suggest that your kind of logic leads to very dark places.

I would argue that Jewish people are overrepresented in higher education than other groups and generally occupy a higher class level than more recent immigrants or groups under systemic oppression by the legal system in recent decades. Most Jewish families at this point have been in this country for several generations now building roots for their families, just like the Italians and Irish at this point who also came to NYC ~a century ago. They haven't been the whipping boy at the bottom of the economic totem in a long time. These days, that unfavorable position is occupied by more recently migrated groups. I mean the rhetoric from the outgoing president alone about central American immigrants was truly abhorrent and dehumanized them in the eyes of his supporters.

However, that still doesn't explain why in the CompSci major at UC berkely, only 16% were white (1). Yet when you look at the makeup of some of the FANGs in the bay area, most are ~50% white or more (2).

1. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo...

2. https://www.wired.com/story/five-years-tech-diversity-report...

That is interesting. I didn't know that whites, who make up 73% of the US population, were so underrepresented not only in Silicon Valley but also at UC Berkeley.

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