Silicon Valley, Seeking Diversity, Focuses on Blacks
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
You will find that there are many blacks in undergrad, MBA, law, medical schools but not so many in engineering/science schools. I believe it is simply that blacks are not interested in engineering/computer science and choose these other fields instead.
That's basically an argument for "the Valley" not having any problems at all. It's said in the context of a wider talent shortage, so does it mean that there is a huge glut of engineers (black or otherwise) currently being ignored/underemployed?
Or it could mean that throwing money at the problem would fix it in short order, which I generally doubt, though I have no issue with the notion that companies complaining about a talent shortage should consider paying to get what they want.
Or it could mean that companies should throw money at the problem in the form of training up engineers, but that is not a speedy-scaley proposition, unfortunately. Hard problems still exist in the time of Uber.
When it's expedient to engage different groups it does happen though. Apple didn't buy Beats because their headphones are the best designed things in the world. Apple saw a company that managed to manipulate an entire (racially motivated) youth subculture and wanted to steal some of that power for themselves. Apple also wanted that elderly executive guy who dresses as if he's a teenager from the south and rambles incessantly, unprepared and unrehearsed, at keynotes.
The future of America is clearly not-white (over 50% of children born in the US are now "non-majority") so the problem will self correct within the next 15 years. Be prepared for 15 years of news reports about how everything isn't diverse enough until, one day, things just end up being diverse by the force of history.
The proof for that is all around: black people are 15% of the population, but a fraction of that in major tech companies. The same holds true for latinos. There's a reverse example that makes the point as well: asians as a percentage of the national population, versus representation in tech companies in Silicon Valley. That more than makes it clear it's about skills and education, not demographic percentages.
Baltimore is ~65% black. Do you think 65% of the programmers in Baltimore are black?
If your theory were correct, we'd have seen a lot more black people working for Twitter, Apple, Google, etc. a long time ago.
It doesn't matter if the future is 80% non-white, if people that are non-white don't develop the education and skills required for the jobs in Silicon Valley. That's the issue, and it won't change just because the percentages on demographics do - ie it is not self-correcting. If it were self-correcting, you'd see proof of that in US cities that have had very large black populations for a long time.
This won't all be fixed in 15 years, but it will start to be fixed just by numbers. Yes, the current numbers are awful, but they must get better in the future. If they don't get better, the US will end up as 90% poor and 10% CEOs. Many racial-cultural ghettos throughout the country do exist and drive down the future potential of millions of children, but everybody won't stay there forever. Maybe it only takes a few breakthrough tech successes to set the stage—people to look up to, not "smart is bad" culture.
(Also, with current numbers, there are isolated pockets. Sure baltimore is 65% black, but that doesn't put pressure on employee availability (employers can relocate people from elsewhere). But when the entire country is 80% mixed hispanic-white-black-chinese in 100 years, employees must come from society as a whole somewhere.)
It is a generational problem and it will take another one to three generations to fully be considered a non-issue anymore. (Assuming, at some point, the US decides to invest in education and children and growth again instead of choking off all avenues of social mobility as have been routine for the past dozen years.)
I'd venture a bet that my silicon valley co-workers are much more diverse than the NY Times writers who love to preach about diversity.
Quick check:
- NYT Executive Leadership: 90% white
- NYT Board of Directors: 92% white
- NYT Opinion Writers: 91% white
Twitter had a neat turn of phrase in their recent diversity document: "these new goals focus on increasing the overall representation of women and underrepresented minorities"
underrepresented. You don't count as a minority if there's already too many of you being successful.
> underrepresented. You don't count as a minority if there's already too many of you being successful.
why would you focus on minorities that are overrepresented?
God forbid reporters do some reporting.
> I'd venture a bet that my silicon valley co-workers are much more diverse
You're welcome to publish that research. If you look at the tech workforce at Facebook, where they use extremely generous 1% rounding, the sum of black and hispanic employees is 4%. [0] In one sense, comparing the least generous 8% nonwhite figure with NYT Board of Directors, their board has twice (200%) the proportion of minority members than Facebook has across their tech workforce.
Venture that bet. You'll lose the bet.
> Media has a diversity problem!!
Media may be the only place where an African American like Oprah, Beyonce or Kanye West can run multi-faceted business empires. You're ignoring what a huge cultural, intellectual and business presence African Americans have in a lot of media, certainly far more than their influence in Silicon Valley.
Everything with these people is Identity Politics so they can deflect attention form there own Economic status.
If New York Times Urinalism wants to look for "diversity problems" they should look out the window and in the mirror.
NYC has country's most segregated public:
http://nypost.com/2014/03/26/nyc-has-countrys-most-segregate...