100 Days as a Black Man in Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

100 Days as a Black Man in Silicon Valley

verysmartbrothas.com

106 pointsTheSMG129 comments

Interestingly I see a lot of comments saying we need more women in tech, but none saying we need more black people in tech. I have worked with a number of women, and only ever seen one consultant come in who was black. Are we more racist than sexist? (I see plenty of Indians however, maybe a disproportionate amount compared to the general population?).

I am based in Europe, and I do think there is less of a cultural division amongst races here. People appear to pigeonhole themselves into categories more in the US in my opinion, be it on race, job, music tastes or whatever.

We don't need more women, black, latino, white, red, green people in tech, we need talented people, regardless of how they look like. We need less bullshit, people who produce sane code and go home early to work on what matters about us, our communities, our families, our education!

I'm full stack dev living in London, I'm black, huge afro, piercings, english is not my first language, skateboarder, into punk music, etc.

I think you're both right and wrong. You're right in the sense that we do need to bring in the most talented people, but I suspect you're wrong in the definition of what the talents we need are. When people say "we need talented people" they usually mean that we need people who are best at doing what we do now. And that's not the solution, that's the problem.

In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now. That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc.

The thing that really must change in order to get society making the best tech possible that really impacts lives in a positive way is that we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas. That can only happen by filling the chamber with more people who aren't privileged white males. And I say that as a privileged white male.

Lets be concrete. I'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior. What "different perspectives" are offered by women, non-Asian minorities or LGBQT+? Is there a secret prediction method that whites/asians don't know about? A special LGBQT+ streaming architecture?

On several occasions I've joined a company and been the only diversity carrier. I can't think of a single advantage beyond PR (I make group photos look more diverse, yay!) that my race has given the company. Any such advantage is miniscule in comparison to the advantages gained by my knowledge of statistical significance, multiple comparisons, regression and the like.

Realistically, if you wanted to add diversity of thought, you'd be far better off hiring a Frequentist of the majority race than a Bayesian of a different one. And if you wanted real (harmful) diversity of thought, you'd hire a magical thinker rather than someone persuaded by evidence.

It's pretty trivial to find examples where societal biases create negative results for companies that do not move beyond them.

For instance, in some places (you may be aware of ;) there is a societal bias that heterosexual anglo men are hyper sexual. That they are literally untrustworthy due to it is not an uncommon bias. It is an easy jump from that bias to an implicit (or even explicit) belief that it is better NOT to hire engineers to build streaming event architectures who are constantly thinking about sex and therefore to build a pipeline that biases against heterosexual white men. A company that did this, intentionally or not, is at a disadvantage when hiring because they have removed from the applicant pool people for the wrong reasons.

A company that instead was blind to that bias (or actively worked against it) would therefore have a wider pool to select from.

Even 1 counter example is often enough to change the biases for everyone who encounters them. So the company that hired 'yummyfajitas' and realized either A) he is not hyper sexual or B) he is but it doesn't impact his ability to perform the task is more likely to detach the wrong biases from their hiring pipeline and this has a multiplying effect.

Substitute "women aren't as good at math", "older people learn technologies slower", "black guys don't research as well" or whatever other bias you want.

Also, you know, sometimes we should do things because they are the right thing to do.

I'm not sure how your post relates to mine.

I'm hiring a data team. Based on the applicant pool it'll probably be me and 3 Punjabi males assuming I hire purely based on ability [1]. My claim is that I'll get no marginal value out of hiring a Maharashtrian, an African or a westerner over an equally qualified Punjabi. I provide no special western perspective on Kafka.

I also don't know why it would be the "right thing to do" to hire a Maharashtrian relative over a Punjabi - but that might be because I don't believe in group rights. If you do, I'd love to know how you choose which groups are relevant - there are, after all, 2^{6 billion} subgroups of humanity.

[1] I take pains to do exactly that - I skip resumes and look at github, follow scripted interviews with objective criteria, etc.

I think there are secondary effects. While technical expertise is probably not going to be affected, team dynamics will be affected through diversity in critical thinking and expression. That's not the same as race/gender/etc. Too much conformity within a team causes the team to embrace that common ground rather than embrace differences.

I'm a fairly loud, direct person. I work with other loud and direct people. We added someone to our team who is a bit quieter and quite frankly thoughtful onto the team. The effect wasn't so much that (s)he changed our technical decisions, but that we as a team started to give people apace for less confrontational disagreement. It improved our individual abilities to communicate and approach a problem from multiple angles.

That is why diversity in personality is important. The hypothesis is then that race/gender/etc is correlated with intellectual diversity.

Anecdotal evidence yes, but something I've found valuable.

That's not the same as race/gender/etc.

No, it's not. Which is my point.

If you want to make the argument that racial/gender/etc groups think differently, be my guest - but that also implies that an unbiased hiring process might have disparate impact. E.g., if onion2k's hypothesis that women are more emotional than men is correct, then a hiring process aiming for rationalism might hire fewer women.

You asked for how a diversity of thinking improves a company. A specific example of that is a more diverse workforce will be more inclusive at the funnel end of the hiring pipeline, making your applicant pool better. It doesn't matter that you provide no western perspective on Kafka. What matters is that your western perspective provides no negative impact to your ability to work on Kafka problems.

If there were a systematic bias against westerners that meant they were unlikely to apply for, get callbacks for, or be able to work in your environment with Kafka, actively removing those impediments is an opportunity. The larger the population being biased against and the more acute the need for applicants is, the larger the opportunity.

Framing this as a "hire one person over another" or as a "rights" issue is incorrect. Many of the systematic biases can be corrected for in ways that either don't cost the unbiased set anything, or provide advantages to that set as well. Further, this is an issue of courtesy and empathy, not rights. No one has the right to my courtesy or empathy, but providing it broadly is the right thing to do.

Actually I said "I can't think of a single advantage beyond PR". You don't seem to disagree.

A better work environment for more of the employees and a wider applicant pool with more qualified applicants making it through the pipeline doesn't seem to be PR by my definition, but maybe if it is by yours, then I suppose we don't disagree.

By "PR" I mean "affects external perception of the company". Encouraging people to apply falls into that category.

I don't see how the work environment is made better by my presence. I'm not going to be any nicer to minorities than my majority coworkers. And quite honestly, if someone of my race considers the environment better because they have a firangi to talk to, I'm unlikely to get along well with them.

There are all manner of work place environmental factors that are very big deals to some people that are not obvious big deals to others.

For instance, sick child care disproportionally falls on women. So more women (of course not all women) view flexible hours, flexible sick time and flexible work from home options as major benefits. In many instances providing those things is a net improvement for everyone (including the business productivity) but it isn't as obvious in cases that don't experience the problem (like places that don't have as many parents generally or women specifically).

I suppose improving this environmental factor can be viewed as a PR move (which frequently has a pejorative tone, but I assume you are not applying that) but it also can have intrinsic benefits even if it never causes someone to think differently about the company.

In-kind benefits of this nature only improve the workplace for people who strongly desire them - people who don't want them are forced to pay for them anyway.

In fact, heterogeneous preferences w.r.t in-kind benefits are an argument for workplace homogeneity (and heterogeneity across workplaces). Women who want flexible hours can go work for a company providing flexible hours. Dudebro neckbeards can work for a company providing unlimited redbull, videogames and vodka even after normal working hours. If they work at the same company someone's pay is reduced to cover benefits they don't use.

I suspect your statements around this are at the heart of our disagreement.

Your position on this implies that a) we all know our preference around in-kind benefits b) our use of in-kind benefits is static, predetermined, or correlated job moves c) the provision of in kind benefits is zero sum and/or d) in-kind benefit decisions can be optimally designed.

My position is the opposite on all of these cases. There are many in-kind benefits that I didn't realize were great until I received them because someone else wanted them, the utility of these benefits varies over time and is not correlated from employee to employee (and the homogenity required to correlate them would be hugely detrimental in other resource allocation ways), and that the optimal benefit strategy is often emergent rather than designed, and that the more inputs into the system we have the better the emergent behavior is.

Finally, being polite and showing empathy would also follow your rules about zero sum behavior and workplace homogeneity. I'm curious what that implies about your position on general civility and empathetic behavior in the workplace.

Are you saying that PR is not a valid business concern? Investor's and Consumer's perception of a company is as relevant as the products quality. Don't you think that people would be more hesitant to do business with a company labeled as "racist" in the public's opinion?

You've lost the thread. I'm originally responding to this:

...bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now...In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc.

I wasn't responding to this:

...bringing in people who are superficially different but think the same way in order to manipulate the media...

Obviously PR matters and I'm happy to let my company exploit my race for that purpose (though I probably wouldn't have taken the job if I thought that was a significant factor). But that's completely tangential to the original point.

And quite honestly, if someone of my race considers the environment better because they have a firangi to talk to, I'm unlikely to get along well with them.

This sort of stereotype probably has the predictive value of a D20 roll.

Phil's an 11, I spit in his lunch. Nancy is a 19, no problems expected.

I'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior.

Having a more diverse team that includes someone with a more emotionally-driven perspective could lead to someone asking the question "Is the way we're manipulating user behavior actually ethical?"

This isn't about finding different technical solutions to problems; it's about finding different problems.

The idea of an emotionally driven person making ethical decisions scares the crap out of me. For example, empathy (a popular mode of emotional decisionmaking in ethics) is known to be racist:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

And most emotionally driven ethical discussions on HN lean towards popularity contests - compare the outcry against online harassment of that gamergate girl to the online harassment of Charles Carreon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carreon), for example.

But even if you are right, what does diversity in the traditional sense of your post above have to do with it? Are you suggesting that women/LGBTQ+ people are more emotional and less rational?

"Having a more diverse team that includes someone with a more emotionally-driven perspective could lead to someone asking the question "Is the way we're manipulating user behavior actually ethical?" [Emphasis added]

Geez, I really hope that that was just an unfortunate turn of phrase. You can't possibly mean that non-(white-males) have a quote "more emotionally-driven perspective", do you?

I read the post to suggest that the existing team was obviously not very emotionally sensitive since they are explicitly working to "manipulate behavior" which sounds sinister. Perhaps hiring more folks who are both rational AND emotionally sensitive to their users is the diversity they need.

What's sinister about it? If you ever make a design change to increase conversions, you are working to manipulate user behavior. Are landing pages, a/b tests, pretty designs, and pictures of human faces now "sinister"?

Making a nicer product that increases user engagement is manipulating the product to match what the user likes, not manipulating the user. Changing the order and quality of ranked news articles, bending the truth, using behavioral science to promote addictive dependence,advertising products you don't actually make are all manipulating the user.

There is a big difference and yes, "manipulating the user" is sinister.

I specifically discussed putting human faces on the landing page to get more conversions and other design changes (e.g., button color, button copy). These don't change the product, only the landing page.

That's not a lie or bending the truth. It is manipulating the user.

I would suggest you stay away from describing your business practices as "manipulation", though. Almost all connotations of that word in psychology, law, and business imply deceit.

It sounds like you are decorating the showroom to boost sales... I hope it works out well for you. I was thown by the initial desciption that sure didnt sound like faces and buttons: "I'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior."

that's very minor (albeit quite vocal) part of the job market. Most of developers worldwide work on specific projects, with specific goals, budgeting etc. Those who pay want stuff delivered and routinely frown upon too-creative approaches. Having women/minorities on the team? Of course! If they bring expected skillset on the table, good. If they bring anything else on top of it, it's a nice little addition.

But hiring just for the sake of filling some imaginary quota some confused people have in their heads is a bit ridiculous. Want to change it? Start at the point when young people decide which school to pursue, rest will follow

That's true, but if we change industry as well as changing education then we can get better quicker. It's absolutely not one or the other. It's both.

"The thing that really must change in order to get society making the best tech possible that really impacts lives in a positive way is that we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas."

My problem with your post is that you stereotype white males and claim to want to get rid of stereotypes. You, yourself are concentrating on skin color, gender, and sexual preference when we need to be concentrating on the best person for the job regardless of any of these.

"That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc"

Why do we need to single out all of these people and claim they are offering something "different"? Shouldn't we be fighting for equality and not special treatment for individual groups of people?

This isn't the first time I've seen this sort of thinking. I feel like many people are not fighting for equality, but for power and special laws/treatments for their specific group.

"In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now. That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc."

I disagree with most of this. Yes, to improve there needs to be changes, but these can come from anyone. Even though I'm not gay, I can still support gay rights.

We shouldn't require companies to hire anyone that is not qualified for a position. If there aren't enough qualified people of X group applying, then we need to figure out why and improve it (education, culture, etc).

> we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas

Can you elaborate on the definition of "privileged white male"?

I'm going to assume you understand the 'white male' aspect. 'Privileged' in the sense that they came from a middle-income home where they had access to things like a computer and books, were fortunate to attend schools that were reasonably well funded, had the opportunity to attend college and university, didn't live in fear of crime throughout their childhood, had outdoor space to play in, had good access to healthcare, etc.

That isn't that sort of background that everyone has, but it is the sort of background that 90% of people in the IT industry had. Consequently IT professionals tend to have somewhat skewed notions of what the world is like. Changing that would make it more likely that people build things that make a positive impact on society because you can't fix a problem if you don't know that it's a problem.

Thanks. I just wanted to make sure you don't put all white people in one basket, labeled privileged.

So, by your definition there should be "white non-privileged people" as well, right? This means we shouldn't talk about black, white, etc. people but we should talk about having more non-privileged people in tech?

I like this thinking but I don't understand what should be the mechanisms for making it happen. The only universal (both for privileged and non-privileged) unit of measurement I can think of is talent. Which brings us back to square one - we need more talented people in tech. Which means that people who are responsible for hiring other people should not only look at prior experience, education, etc. but should also be able to discover talent. Which is hard but I think that's the right direction.

Am I right?

+1. We need to be giving a leg up to the poor Ukrainian kid whose mother is a cleaner rather than giving it to a middle class kid just because the latter is black.

Many SF authoritarians would rather support the latter, even if they don't need help, simply based on skin colour, and a limited life experience that equates 'white' to 'middle class American'.

Talent isn't a universal unit of measurement. Talent we attribute to results, even when there is glaring evidence that many of those results are as dependent on factors outside of a persons control than on any abilities of that person.

Thats what the discussion about privilege is really useful for. Keeping it in the forefront of your mind (especially if you are successful) that many people have similar capability/potential as you, but they experience different circumstances that can radically alter the outcomes.

My favorite saying to remember is "He thinks he hit a home run in life, when he was born on third base."

Yes, you are right, but (as I said in my first reply) we need to look at talents that aren't just the technical skills that industry demands right now. We need to populate tech with people who are good at things that we don't necessarily look for right now - having good philosophers, ethicists, sociologists, teachers, artists, etc would improve our industry immeasurably.

Looking beyond experience and education is vital (but very hard).

Where I work, we have the concept of a "subject matter expert". This is someone that the technical people can work with, to sove problems outside the technical person's expertise. Using technology outside the SME's expertise.

Why can't this idea of collaborating with outsiders work for the industry as a whole? Why must everyone be able to do everything?

So is that 90% figure from some poll or study? I'm curious where it comes from because not even 90% of the IT industry is white. There are a lot of Asians.

>And that's not the solution, that's the problem.

That depends on whether what we are doing now works or not. Change for its own sake rarely does good in the IT industry.

That confuses skin colour and culture though. The idea that skin colour makes you think differently is essence of racism. We may (or may not) need to break the privileged male echo chamber, but whether you're black or white is completely irrelevant. You want the diversity of social status, sure. To assume someone is of a different social status based on their skin colour is racism.

It also very common, because there is a positive correlation. Its an unfortunate fact that racial profiling is so popular, because it works. You have to address that head-on to make any progress.

I agree. I just don't like when people dress it up as promoting racial equality when they're doing the exact opposite.

I suspect you're wrong in the definition of what the talents we need are. When people say "we need talented people" they usually mean that we need people who are best at doing what we do now. And that's not the solution, that's the problem.

What is the difference in required skill sets, between what we do now and what we should be doing?

I think this can reasonably be split into two basic tasks: find (and sufficiently define) a problem to solve; and given a problem / set of constraints, find a good solution.

Which task is different between "now" and your ideal, and how does that difference require different skills?

In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now.

This assumes that we're not already changing it. Also needing different ideas on what things to do, is different from needing different skills on doing those things.

That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment.

Or, by asking or watching those people (all the million-and-one ways that for-profit companies do market research and user research and such).

In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc.

No. It's whoever has problems that need solving. Which has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the fact that "improve society" above seems to mean "moral progress".

Probably the best thing that happening in this regard right now, is the push for police to wear cameras. (So shouldn't that mean that the tech for this has been developed with higher-than-normal participation by non-rich-white-techie-dude people?)

No. The echo chamber has nothing to do with who's in it, and everything to do with who has enough money to be the target demographic.

Either raise awareness that other people have money too (or can have money if they buy (on credit) what you're trying to sell), or convince people to work for social good instead of a paycheck.

Yes, we do need more black people in tech. And you get more black people in tech by having black people in tech. Going out to recruit, mentor, and support black tech candidates and workers. Seriously, the latest black YC candidate was a prison messaging service. More power to them but for a lot of blacks in the US the 2 paths that earn the most publicity are sports and criminal activity.

Even when I was a teenager and had a mentor it took me 2 hours by bus in the Miami heat to meet him just 1x per week. Some of my fellow, richer, friends had cars of their own and would drive to meet their mentors or join them for lunch. And it's those small barriers that create the giant hurdle.

At the moment, I'm mentoring my younger siblings, nieces, and nephews who are on their way to college. Being the first in my family to attend university I'm hoping to help them avoid the pitfalls that I encountered when going to university.

What about letting kids choose what they want to do with their lives ? I used to be a music producer and learned everything by myself. I grown up in a white neighbourhood. I was the only emcee around, producing Hip-hop music, influenced by the Beastie Boys. I started coding really young. When I got the internet, I learned a lot about Hip-Hop, I was passionate. My first website was related about my passions, sharing my passion about football, skateboarding, drawing, etc. I wouldn't code if I didn't had a passion. What's the point of coding if it's not useful, if doesn't solve a problem ? You need a point! Let's do fun stuff, stop forcing kids with your mentoring bullshit and who cares if the kid is white and his mentor is Persian, or if he's idol is Bob Marley! There's better ways to work on our communities, families, etc.

Your `you get more black ppl in tech by having black people in tech` sounded exactly like one of those Xzibit memes: a joke!

Firstly, I upvoted your account because you use logic and don't try to shut down discussion by whining that somebody is being to mean in a comment.

Secondly, this comment hit the nail on the head. Let kids pursue fields they are interested in, regardless of their race or sex. Don't hijack a person's career to serve your moral crusade.

First, I downvoted your comment for the excessive negativity/abuse in it. You could have made your point just as clear without them.

Second, I'm going to take your comment to point out something I've noticed when talking about sexism/racism. I'm going to call this theory of mine "Calibration". When I hear people say stuff like "What about letting [underrepresented group] choose what they want to do with their lives?", I've come to believe that most are not trolls and they're probably not actually actively racist[1]. It's a difference in calibration. Perhaps you believe by default these kids are at a neutral(zero) level and have the full power of choice right now. But, what I see is that society actually puts them at like a negative 5. You see these efforts as forcing them to go into tech, a +5 if you will. I see it as just bring them up to 0 from the -5 society put them at so they have the same sense of free choice you & I do.

This vid I think is also based on the calibration idea when it comes to "Reverse racism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M . Basically, it talks about the underlying assumption that the current state of things is neutral for everyone so any effort to improve standings for a group is unfair to the groups not getting help. It's like how every year on Google+, when the LifeAtGoogle account posts something like Black Appreciation day during Black history month, someone always asks "When is White appreciation day?". Or when people talk about BlackGirlsCode.com, someone says "I bet everyone would exploded if we had a WhiteMenCode.com event". And of course, from there said comment turns into a multipage thread of madness. I think part of this is because schools(or parents of students) don't teach enough about the negative parts of American history and its lasting effects. So we have a bunch of people saying "Slavery ended years ago, everything is fine now. Stop complaining." Or similar, "Women can vote now and be CEOs of companies. Stop complaining". The assumption being that everything is equal now and the only thing between anyone and their goals is hardwork & discipline. While that is mostly true, some people have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition and reach those goals.

_____

1. One exception though, I have no idea what is going on with the HN user yummyfajitas. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711

He doesn't fit any model of any logical position I'm familiar with. I'm pretty sure he's __not__ racist/sexist, but he just blows my mind.

To add to your "calibration" framework: I sometimes explain the ethics of affirmative action in control theory terms as a kind of 'bang-bang' response[1]. So yes, things will be inequitable for the other side for a while, but you can't expect to efficiently correct longstanding historical inequities otherwise... Too bad it's this generation's "tag, you are it" moment to pay up for our forefathers' privilege, but that's just the way it is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang–bang_control

Re your footnote, I don't see how you can hold that belief.

Oh, I could be very wrong.

My own calibration settings for this is reading a bunch of comments on stormfront.org forums. While I dislike yummyfajitas's comments, they don't give me the same feeling I get from stormfront. I don't know what to think of him. Closest thing is perhaps super-insensitive, but I don't think he's oblivious to how people perceive his comments.... I dunno.

I'm am assuming that you are black, right? I am also black and your post causes me to frown. How does being less wealthy get tangled up in your race?

What your anecdote appears to describe is economic inequality, not race inequality.

I'm transparent

Basically what you're saying is that you're against identity politics. I am happy to see other people with these values.

I live in Ground Zero of identity politics, so I don't get to see people with your opinions often.

Thank you!

Ideally we'd be able to distinguish between identity and ability. However, we're mostly not. A keywords off the top of my head is the halo effect, but there are a lot more. The question is, how do we deal with this imperfection?

I couldn't agree more - fixing gender/racial stereotypes in our society is a separate issue from who needs to be hired in a specific industry - as soon as you combine the issue you end up with some pretty daft solutions.

Diversity is no about what color your skin happens to be. (Color is mostly an American obsession anyway.)

And you've just confirmed in your own self-description that you're not adding all that much diversity regardless of what you look like. Remove the "I'm black" bit (and ok, the afro), and the description matches countless devs.

Diversity is not "bullshit", neither from a social-economic perspective, nor from the perspective of the strength of the teams we are a part of.

Actually I completely agree. It was a subtle way of saying that without getting the usual down votes when you mention that sort of thing on here.

Yes, and if we would all just be nice to each other we wouldn't have wars anymore.

But in the real world, we need to try different things to get talented people, it is not only white men who have important stuff to offer.

What is your first language?

My first language is Portuguese.

There's no proof that women are systematically targeted to be ousted from the tech field. I haven't seen any research papers with any clear evidence of this other than that there are more boys than girls in a particular field.

I'm sure there are other occupation with the same thing. There are too many Fillipino in Nurse career I don't see any body saying to diversify it. There are tons of Vietnamese in nails, my uncle and mother included. I don't see people saying that there should be other race within such jobs. You can argue that it's not a great jobs but what about nursing?

We can encourage more women and minority within a field which is fine. But to make it seems like a problem is a problem. Because of this people such as women will use this as an excuse. Look at the CEO of Reddit, she used this and sexism as an excuse.

So before we jump the gun and say such thing such as racist and sexist, we should carefully find the cause and not jump the gun. We do not know if this is intentional or an unintentional the consequences of culture.

I mean hell there's a lot of Asian going to university and a lot of less other color such as Black. Is it because Asian are racist against other races? No, it's culture and the Pew report for Asian Americans have backed this up. That Asian American parent believe an education is important.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

Have a paper from 1997. It's about how after they changed to blind auditions, the number of women hired as orchestra musicians rose severalfold. I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions.

Most diversity activists in tech oppose bringing such approaches into tech on the grounds that it would reduce diversity. Ashe Dryden is the canonical cite:

http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an...

In contrast, I think most of those who oppose the diversity activists (e.g. myself) strongly favor such approaches ("death by standardized brainteaser", hire by github, work sample tests).

I wanted to avoid replying to you. Our perspective is dramatically different and I am tired of arguing with people like you who 'oppose diversity activists'.

However, did you even read the article that you linked to?? Someone posted a link showing that if you blindfold people (so they just listen to how people play), you end up with more women in orchestras. The Ashe Dryden article is about how using open source contributions as a sole barometer of 'merit' leaves an awful lot of talented people out in the cold.

The only point where she mentions anything close to your point is when she says that many female developers use androgynous sounding names and won't put pictures of themselves online.

I'm familiar with orchestral blind auditions and the effect they had (though not from the article, my mom is a classical musician). I favor using blind auditions to eliminate bias. I favor the same in tech.

My claim is that most activists in tech don't really believe that bias is the cause of underrepresentation here. As evidence for that, observe how few such activists actually favor purely meritocratic hiring.

Once again, have you even read the article that you pointed to? If so, what do you think about her plan to remove open source contributions from the hiring mix? She suggests that when hiring, employers should:

a) Ask for code samples.

b) Pair as an interview.

c) Hire as a contractor before you make an offer of employment.

She does not dispute the existence of bias, rather she makes the point that valuing open source so heavily makes technology less of a meritocracy.

(a) is an unbiased method analogous to blind orchestral auditions. (b) and (c) are not. (a) is also basically identical to hiring by github unless the candidate illegaly uses proprietary code as their sample. (From her article: "...not all programmers own the rights to their code..." in which case I can't look at it when hiring.)

The entire article is about how using github (i.e. evaluating code with the human absent, i.e. the closest thing [1] we currently have to blind auditions) is "biased" against women.

[1] Maybe we'll have something closer when starfighter comes out. I look forward to it.

Read 'Unlocking the Clubhouse' (in regard to women.) It's dated but more recent research has similar conclusions.

I can't speak personally about race issues in tech. What I do know is that the industry thrives on ideas, and as people themselves have diverse ideas, missing an entire group's is missing a lot. Why isn't the field more racially diverse? Are black people 'naturally not interested in tech'? Or do they face social barriers others don't? What I know leads me to believe the latter.

why even bother with someone who claims they've never seen research that proves discrimination in tech? That there's no discrimination against blacks who want to open up small businesses? Or claims that no one wants to diversify nursing? Less than a minute on google and I've found research that concludes there is discrimination in tech, that blacks face discrimination from banks when starting small businesses, and a handful of articles about diversity in nursing just on the first page of google results for that topic.

Because of this people such as women will use this as an excuse

'people such as women'? Poe's Law has bested me on this one.

Sorry ESL, I was setting this up to talk about how the CEO of Reddit was using this as an excuse in her law suit.

"such as some women like CEO of Reddit" would be better. The original does make it seems like all women.

Any group tends to recruit like members. Its human nature. Even the much-applauded hiring criterion of "they have to be a team fit" just means "they have to be like us" which probably means male, upper-middle-class white college kid.

So there's the whole problem right there. Never mind right or wrong. Its just statistics and bias in group dynamics, nothing more.

Consider, the wealth gap for white women to white men largely begins with them. Whereas a median White household has 50 times the wealth of the median black household [1], and income and wealth are a great predictor of attending and graduating college[2].

So it's a lot more convenient to get more white and asian women into tech without having to deal with the greater systemic wealth and income disparities that effect black candidates.

That's definitely not all of it, but even if you believe, as a number of people on HN seem to believe, that there is no more racism in hiring for qualified candidates, this is something you can't really deny, that systemic disadvantages in income and wealth mean that black people are going to be under represented among qualified candidates. In fact, I recall hearing that the wealth gap between whites and blacks is bigger than in south africa during apartheid [3].

[1] http://www.epi.org/publication/trends-median-wealth-race/ [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/05/02/poor-stu... [3] http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/worse-apartheid-bla...

> Interestingly I see a lot of comments saying we need more women in tech, but none saying we need more black people in tech.

Let's assume California needs more black people in tech. Does China need more white people in tech?

Even better, in the US why don't we see more native Americans in Tech ? In Australia why don't we see more aboriginal in Tech ? Why in America, police shoot black people all the time ? Why is there so many poor black people, homeless black people ? The same for aboriginal people in Australia. It's not hard to figure out where all this is coming from.

White people in China accounts for 0.8%, black people accounts for 13% of the US, meaning statistically one in every 10 techies should be black but they are not and financial opportunities are also statistically low in that racial group (probably not for white people in China)

I also believe segregating help is not the best idea in the world but lets face that is not so clear cut.

The better analogy would be saying that China needs more Manchus, or Hakkas, or Uyghurs in tech.

Poor analogy. 10-15% of CA's population is black. Something like 1% of Silicon Valley tech employees are black. The percentage of white people in China is vanishingly small. And AFAIK China doesn't claim to be a land of equal opportunity.

Yes, but only in an alternate world where China smuggled white slaves, repressed them for 400 years, and who then went on to become naturalised citizens.

The stupidity!

You should perhaps look a little bit into the history of slavery. It was not white against black or Europeans against Africans. It was everybody against everybody else.

The Muslim history of slavery is quite interesting, for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_(colonist)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China

I don't think the "racism" faced by Indians is any less than Blacks.

That said, I think given the task they're faced with, they tend to form very expansive support networks, which are useful for career-wise.

See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3rqnUg_Myo

Can we stop using words with demonic connotations like "sexism", "racism" ? People tend to naturally discriminate against people who are unlike them. The usual propaganda makes this all the worse.

What we need is meta-education, which teaches people the limitations of their own biological selves, not Marxist "revolutions".

I work in the education system and the primary reason there's been a lot of push for women in tech is due to the negativity around technology / computers. Girl enjoy the use of technology, but they would never pursue it as a career since it's not the "cool" thing to do. You get labeled as a geek, a nerd, etc. You basically become an outsider. When you're young, it's all about reputation. This is why people are trying to get girls interested in technology at an early age and change their mindset.

Does this mean that tech is inherently the "cool" thing to do? Or that men are less likely to be labeled as a geek, a nerd etc? Or less susceptible for this? The way you put it, it seems to me like somehow these effects are less strong for men. Why would that be the case?

From a shallow headline perspective, women seem to bring in different angles of thought, creativity, and productivity than men, which is beneficial when blended together. There doesn't seem to be that sort of distinction between men across different races, as there is across gender.

Now, that's probably not the actual drive for the strong push for women in tech (equality, fairness, etc), but a case could be made for it.

The comment about bias against going to school in the South really resonates. I mean, in one sense it's hilarious to think that there are people who don't realize that schools like UNC-CH, Georgia Tech, Clemson, NCSU, Campbell, Wake Forest, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Virginia Tech, William & Mary, etc. are great schools. But in another sense it's very, very sad. And I almost find it weirder to hear that about people from the West Coast, where the stereotype about people has them being so much more open minded and accepting, vs. people from the Northeast who are stereotyped as being more elitist and dismissive of Southerners.

Oh well... at the end of the day, all you can really do is, as they say, "Be so damn good they can't ignore you".

The sad part of this is that the only time most people hear about any school is related to sports. Almost all schools get judged by the wider population first based on their sports records. In most cases, it's often about the only thing most people know about most schools. Even with most schools that are "good" or "great", most people couldn't tell you why, but they can tell you about some football pass person X made in 2002 which saved the game!

he says people ARE aware that UNC-CH is a good college. but that "few realize the University of Georgia is a Top 30 law school and Top 5 for my master’s program."

That sounds pretty understandable to me. I don't feel like there's anything wrong with that.

Right, he mentioned UNC-CH in particular, but otherwise, there seems to be a trend of people on the West Coast / Silicon Valley, being painfully unaware of how good many Southern schools are. And no, I don't expect any random person in CA to know specifically that "UGA is a Top 30 law school", but I'd expect pretty much anybody to realize that it's a pretty damn good school in general. Same for the other schools I mentioned.

But, maybe I'm just putting too much stock into things I read here on HN and in startup related blog posts and articles. I haven't spent that much time in SF/SV and surrounding areas, so maybe this is just a filter bubble thing in effect.

Is there really a bias against schools south of the Mason-Dixon? I feel like most of NYC went to Duke. Tim Cook also seems to be doing alright.

People from the west coast don't necessarily have a nuanced understanding of the south.

To be clear, I say that as a west coast person who has visited the south.

I graduated from Florida State University on the cheap a decade ago and now live in New York City. I don't think it's a bias as much as it's NYC is really up its own ass. If you didn't go to an expensive private college they're aware of they don't care and assume that since they haven't heard of it, it sucks. Which seems true about any subject and New Yorkers.

Apart from William & Mary I have never heard anything about any of those schools. As for William & Mary I think that I have heard that it is an above average liberal arts college. I could google it and the rest of the list, but that is honestly my level of knowledge of them.

Are they considered to be something special in the Southern states ?

> Are they considered to be something special in the Southern states ?

Special? No, why would they be "special"? The point is that they're fine schools; on par with good schools anywhere else in the country - but not necessarily "elite" schools like Yale or Harvard. But some people seem to have this "thing" of acting like having gone to school in the South singles you out as some barely-literate, uneducated hillbilly. This is far, far from the truth. That's all I'm getting at.

That said, there are several Southern schools that help make up the original group of "Public Ivies"[1], including three of the schools named above (W&M, UNC-CH and UVA).

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy#The_original_Public_...

I've lived and worked all over the country and do a lot of engagement with the academic literature and academics in general, and I've never even heard of Campbell.

They're probably best known for the law school, not their undergraduate stuff. Anyway, that was just one example.

I checked, their math department appears to be five professors and an instructor, and only three of them have phds.

"why pay all that money for college when you can go to coding school for a fraction of the price, make over six figures, and get equity in a company?"

You realize that most engineers do have a college degree right? You realize that most engineers are not dumb script kiddies who went through 10 PHP tutorials to learn how to code?

"I definitely feel like my high school guidance counselor dropped the ball on that one."

Yeah, cause please don't take any responsibility for not doing the work of thinking and planning your own future.

>You realize that most engineers do have a college degree right? You realize that most engineers are not dumb script kiddies who went through 10 PHP tutorials to learn how to code?

This doesn't match the dialogue I see here and other places about college graduates and/or job candidates who can't fizzbuzz or have no other skills required in the industry. Although I think it would be nice if we simultaneously had a steady supply of skilled engineers, constantly increasing salaries, and constantly increasing demand.

Not sure I see your point. Most "non-fizzbuzzers" are college graduates who got a liberal arts degree and are trying to pivot to a more lucrative field.

Just to be clear: I don't think all developers need a degree, but I think there is much more than just attending a 4 week codecamp required to become a good developer. The author makes it sound so trivial and easy.

> Most "non-fizzbuzzers" are college graduates who got a liberal arts degree and are trying to pivot to a more lucrative field.

Prove it. That has not been my experience in hiring at all.

It has been mine. I have been interviewing and hiring developers for the past 6 years, this was my empirical observation. I am glad you had a different experience.

I think the important thing to remember in any discussion about hiring qualification is that our empirical evidence largely fails us. Even those of us who have spent lots of time, effort and experience on the subject are largely dealing with small sample sizes. These small sample sizes inform our biases which is a negative feedback loop, especially in the case that the confirm our existing biases.

So for instance, in my empirical observations, candidates from top tier engineering schools largely perform more poorly on fizzbuzz than candidates with no college experience what so ever. This observation was so largely opposed to my existing bias that it caused me question fizzbuzz as a qualification tool.

My investigations into this found lots of things that made me think that fizzbuzz is a bad tool (even though I had very high biases towards it in the beginning).

The lesson I took from that, was not "don't use fizzbuzz" even though I don't anymore, or "people with no college degree are better candidates than those from top tier universities". It was "small sample sizes make nearly all statements about hiring trends dubious." So "prove it". Is my default answer to that sort of statement.

There was probably a bit of exaggeration about the pay but I don't think the author talked about engineer quality. He is not wrong that you can get some sort of position from attending a coding school though (maybe not just any coding school), but it probably won't be 100k and equity. Someone is willing to pay for what a coding school produces though and in my experience, not all jobs require good engineers. When weighed against the time and money spent on college with today's dubious outlooks on ROI, code camps are understandably worth a look even if you won't be a good engineer or making 100k at the end of it.

(as an aside, still waiting on Zed Shaw's boot camp destruction)

The salary was an exaggeration, and really doesn't mean anything. What is $100k in SF? At the end of the day, aren't you better off making half that in a less expensive area?

What bothers me most is the idea that coding is just a random skill that anyone can pick up over a weekend just by reading an O'reilly book. There is a push to make coding look easy, "anyone can do it, why not you?" "Let's teach it at school, even a 4th grader can pick up python". The goal is clearly to increase the supply and help tech companies drag wages down. But coding is not easy.

I may be foolish but to me developer is a creative work, akin to writing a book, or a song, or painting. Not everyone is gonna be good at it. Would we say "yeah writing poetry is easy, just go to a poetry camp for 4 weeks"?

I really enjoyed this article because I also came to the Bay Area from the South. I don't know if you went into detail on this, but I feel like the interview process on the West Coast is very different from that on the East Coast ( far more technically rigorous ).

I feel like if you took all the positive statements out of your article, and put them together, you'd make one hell of a first impression in a conversation:

"I'm a Tesla-driving lawyer from an elite boutique law firm! I just moved here to pursue my dream of working in tech! I love SF and I'm here to stay!"

If I heard that from an interview candidate I'd be really impressed.

I'd have thought that the easier path would have been to join a law firm in the SF area first. Maybe just for a year or so.

That might give more perspective on the startup scene, and help to establish credentials. A law firm would understand the quality of his education and experience better than some small startup.

I would be overjoyed if people would stop capitalizing "black", "white", etc. It feels like I'm reading something from Stormfront. Do we want body attributes and tribes to be less important in the future, or more?

You know, my iPhone has taken to auto-capitalizing the word 'white'. As a white man, this scares the hell out of me, as it strikes me as being racist as hell. I don't have the same reaction when I see the word 'black' capitalized. We are an odd species...

Do you seriously propose that ignoring tribes will help anything?

I don't think I'm proposing to ignore tribes. I'm calling tribes out as harmful. If people promote the old idea of declaring themselves distinct from the rest of the human family because of various body attributes, I'm going to oppose it.

Very good article, but I really didn't like the "if only I could quickly get coding skills and be an engineer" part.

I'm really the last one to call for mandatory lengthy education, but there's a reason I'd usually agree that people having studied Computer Science and worked in the field for few years tend to know certain things people that "learnt to code" don't.

But yeah, maybe the valley is different and there's a huge market for people learning stuff for a few months and rightfully making a lot more money than I do in Europe :)

"You know this is a tech event, right?" ... haha... that's tolerant, liberal Silicon Valley for you!

I recently watched American Experience's Silicon Valley. I was a bit shocked by the lack of diversity in the those early companies (Fairchild Seminconductor, AMD, Intel, etc.). Andy Grove, a Hungarian, seemed to be the most diverse of the bunch.

There wasn't even a token Black, Asian, or Indian in the company photos I saw.

The average IQ of African-Americans is a standard deviation below that of whites, which in turn is a bit below that of Asians and Ashkenazi Jews [1].

Under the assumption that the tech industry has a higher average IQ than the population as a whole, then in a world free of any sort of discrimination, one would expect to see blacks underrepresented and Asians overrepresented.

This isn't a fun fact to discuss; I don't intend any sort of disrespect towards people like the author who are most likely smarter than me. But it's one that needs to be accounted for in discussions about race.

1. http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen3...

I would certainly discount info from a researcher who amongst other things: consistently ignored evidence disproving his assertions over time, was funded and endorsed by racist/white supremacist organization specifically to produce literature suggesting racial hierarchy in intelligence[1][2].

More importantly, the concept of IQ is a myth: there is no single measure of intelligence, different neural networks coordinate verbal vs reasoning vs short-term memory abilities, etc[3][4]. That one test (based on solving certain classes of problems at most) is still being extrapolated to assessment of overall intelligence and used to somehow differentiate people is ludicrous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jensen#Criticism

[2] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174...

[3]http://www.thestar.com/life/2012/12/19/iq_a_myth_study_says....

[4] http://www.owenlab.uwo.ca/pdf/2012%20-%20Hampshire%20-%20Neu...

Yeah that's widely disputed. Maybe because its just the PC line; maybe its actually nonsense. That article spends an uncomfortable amount of time tooting its own horn about being the underdog and what national newspapers its been featured in.

The obvious criticism is, the classes measured in so-called 'Jensenism' are defined by cultures as well as race. What attempt has been made to disambiguate that?

A shame he left. We need more smart techies staying here in Atlanta.

It says that he's still in San Francisco in his bio.

Which is good because:

a) he's on the front page of HN

b) he's available for tech legal roles

c) he seems like a pretty capable guy

He left atlanta is I think the point.

Oh you're right! I was reading off a tiny screen and evidently misread - sorry rjbwork!

The author is doing good work and I commend him. It's a million more times easy to complain about a problem or prescribe a solution than it is to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work. We need more people like him.

"Blacks in Oakland frequently question why I would live in SF with people who don’t look like me"

This is the most racist thing I read whole day.

I am a white guy living in the rural Japan. I can tell you lots of stories of other expat white people accusing me of being a "Japan-o-phile" (apparently a bad thing) because I adopted a Japanese way of life. People have often warned me that "they [the Japanese people] will never accept you" and "you know you will never be Japanese". I get far more racism from these expats who feel betrayed that I have happily integrated into Japanese society than I ever have from Japanese people.

Racism exists everywhere. Living in Japan has been the first place where I've lived as a visible minority and it has been an eye opener. Being obviously different is hard in many ways. There are people who stare at you, or people who wonder if/how you are different from them. There are people who are afraid of you for no reason other than you are different. Very occasionally there are people who are abusive and rude, but most of the time it is mostly a mixture of ignorance and curiosity (and maybe a little bit of fear of the unknown thrown in).

It can be quite a problem for some people. Many people take offence at practically anything and can't let anything slide. They feel it is morally wrong not to take a stand about being treated differently. They feel you are morally wrong if you happily agree to be treated differently.

For me, probably like a lot of people who read HN, I have always been different. I have never fit in anywhere. Even though I was visibly the same as everyone, my way of thinking, my religious beliefs, my values have always been different from the norm. I suffered greatly in countries where everyone assumed that I was the same as them. As a visible minority, I am free to be different. It makes me happy even if sometimes it causes problems.

"Expats in Japan frequently question why I would live in rural Japan with people who don't look [and by extension, think] like me", would be a true statement for me. In my opinion this is likely true of any visible minority population anywhere. It definitely hurts me and I suspect it hurts the author as well, which is probably why he wrote about it in that way.

Thanks for one of the best expositions on fundamental xenophobia I've read in a while.

Do you really think that is more racist than “You know this is a tech event, right?”? If your answer is yes, I would advise a bit of self-reflection.

I really wouldn't classify this as racist. It sounds to me more like an honest share about his community or extended community's view on where he is living.

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