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Comment by steven2012 | Hacker News Reader

steven2012

I've been working for over 20 years in tech at 10+ different companies around the Valley, and I can count on 1 hand the number of direct coworkers that were black, and on 2 hands the number of coworkers that I indirectly worked with that were black.

I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. Trying to solve the diversity issue at the hiring end, when the number of qualified candidates is so small, is not the right way to solve the problem. The only way you will hit higher-than-normal diversity numbers is to reduce hiring standards, which is wrong.

The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel, at the elementary, middle and high school levels. By getting more children of all races involved and interested in tech is the only way we truly increase diversity.

And that is on us, those of us that have experience in tech. My goal is to try to volunteer to teach young children in economically disadvantaged areas about technology. Of course, I have no idea how to start doing this, and would love suggestions or pointers.

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> I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general.

You might consider reading the excellent paper, "Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal? A Field Experiment On Labor Market Discrimination": http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

My take is that if tech really, truly has no race or gender discrimination problems, that would be remarkably different than a lot of other US industries. One quick way to check is to ask your friends in those groups whether that's case. The ones I've talked to mostly disagree with you.

> The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel [...]

I am strongly opposed to the notion that there is one real way to solve this problem. That you believe you have a plausible solution that might help is great. Definitely do it. But that's no reason to discourage people from trying other solutions.

It is remarkably different. The amount of Asians/South Asians in tech is very high. If there were material racism, then you wouldn't see this. I don't know anyone who wouldn't hire a smart person based on their race. I'm sure it exists in small quantities, just like everywhere else, but I believe it's much smaller in tech than any other industry. The reason why there aren't a lot of blacks and Hispanics in tech I believe is because there simply aren't a lot going to school for it. Again, this was my experience in college, and the experience of most of my colleagues. Which again is because the poor education system especially in poor areas, not because companies are racist against blacks and Hispanics.

I gave my opinion. This is what a discussion consists of. Nowhere did I discourage people from trying other solutions.

> If there were material racism, then you wouldn't see this.

This shows a very poor understanding of both the history of racism and modern-day racism.

> Nowhere did I discourage people from trying other solutions.

When you say "X is not the right way to solve the problem" and "The real way to solve the problem is Y" you are definitely saying other solutions are less legitimate than yours.

Given that this is a topic where you know little and admittedly aren't doing anything yet, maybe you could try listening to the people who have spent their lives studying and working on the problem?

> This is what a discussion consists of.

Not really. You making a series of bold, uninformed assertions doesn't make for much of a discussion. Indeed, your assumed mantle of superior insight harms the discussion.

The article itself says that only 4.5% of CS graduates from the top universities are black, so if you're only hiring graduates of those universities then you're never going to have a diverse workforce.

Exactly. There are numerous HBCUs that have very well structured CS programs. I'd be willing to put money on the fact that those graduates don't even get a second look. Valley people are too preoccupied with the optics of having a BIG SCHOOL NAME to actually care if an employee without the school name can do the job just as well or better.

This is generally false in Silicon Valley, both currently and in the past. The only company that made having a big school name important was Google, and even then it's only a factor. The vast majority of Silicon Valley companies don't care where you come from, or even if you graduated from college. All they care about is if you're smart and if you can contribute quickly.

Half my current team at a well-known company doesn't even have CS degrees. The youngest one never went to college, but he's one of the smartest members of our team. I was recently hired, and I'm in my 40s and there's another guy who's older than me. My boss was a high school teacher, and he was one of the instrumental programmers in the entire company for the last several years.

Over the last several years, I've been intimately involved in hiring, and I can tell you straight up that no one looks at schools, and anyone who has half a chance at passing a phone screen will get a call. People might get more excited if they have a good name on the resume, but we called everyone that seems like a decent candidate.

"All they care about is if you're smart and if you can contribute quickly."

You do realize that both of those descriptors are immensely subjective, right? How you assess "smart" is different from how I do, and there's no guarantee that the environment you create will allow me to contribute quickly compared to another one.

Sure. Except that the OP of this on Medium went on to detail a very different scenario, outlining behavior that mirrors exactly what I said. You assert that the companies you've worked for do it differently? Ok, that may be so. But you're also not the bellwether for the entire industry, no matter how you may characterize your 20 years of work. I've been in it half as long, and as a person of color I can tell you unequivocally that you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to exposure, opportunity or lack thereof, or general desire to be involved in technology as a profession from that community.

Exactly. I wasn't aware of the decree that excluded Asians from white racism in school/work.

Given the number of Asians in tech, it appears white racism is lacking.

This is a remarkably facile understanding of racism, one that ignores both the model minority phenomenon as well as the fact that Asians are significantly underrepresented in management positions in the tech industry [1].

1. http://www.npr.org/2015/05/17/407478606/often-employees-rare...

There's probably a language factor involved as well. An otherwise brilliant programmer can scrape by with spotty English, but it's a lot harder for a founder or an executive.

Well, then I should have said Indians.

You're doubling down on the "remarkably facile" thing. It's not a good look.

> I don't know anyone who wouldn't hire a smart person based on their race.

You know lots of people who won't say they base decisions on race, and who think they're not basing decisions on race, but I bet if you double blind tested them with fake resumes you'd find bias.

Role models matter tremendously too, and that's something that we don't see much, something that's a real problem.

Now, I'm biased toward capability. I think progress is made almost entirely by people who possess both talent and will to power. But that's innate, and evenly distributed across racial and gender lines. So differences in outcomes are, broadly, due to privilege (specifically, resources). If someone has access to education and support, they'll do better than someone who does not, all other things being equal. Racist and sexist results are because of our failure as a society, not racial or gender inadequacy.

But anyway, about role models. For an ambitious child, the limits of "success" are the limits of what they see. That's what they see in their parents and their parents' friends, their neighborhood, etc. Their role models. If the most successful people you see growing up are doctors and lawyers and engineers, you imagine your own success as being a doctor or lawyer or engineer. If the most successful people you see are drug dealers and slumlords... well.

There are very few black engineers in this country. They're underrepresented. Because of this, smart and ambitious young black kids don't get "engineer" as a role model. They may have never met an adult who makes software or hardware for a living. So they have no frame of reference, no concept that this is "success". It's a big problem.

> For an ambitious child, the limits of "success" are the limits of what they see. That's what they see in their parents and their parents' friends, their neighborhood, etc.

I've once saw of glimpse of this first hand and it was really depressing. Knew a waiter at a restaurant my family frequented. One day he was making chit-chat with us and talking about his son (who would have been rather young, 4-8) and that his dream for his son was to be a restaurant manager or a supervisor at a lawn care business or something like that. That was how high that family was dreaming, I guess that was as high as they could see being reasonable (unless they kid was a genius/pro-athlete).

From hearing stories of women in the industry seeing that one person that looks like them that shows the 'you can be this too' seems like it's often a huge help or an important moment.

I grew up poor, what they call "white trash" in the south. I saw this firsthand. I knew I wanted out, so I went to college at an excellent private liberal arts school. One of the most amazing eye-openers there was meeting the parents of other students, and meeting alumni, people who had done amazing things with their lives. A few years earlier, success to me meant owning your own motorcycle dealership.

Today, I've shook the hands of multiple billionaires. I could not have even imagined that as a child. But I'm lucky. I'm very intelligent, talented, lack major health issues, and I'm white, male, and American. The combination of innate talent and privilege opened a lot of doors for me.

> Role models matter tremendously too, and that's something that we don't see much, something that's a real problem.

Definitely. I'm probably in tech because my dad was. He started programming in the late 60s. How did he get the job? His dad was an executive at an insurance company; they'd just gotten a computer and didn't really know what to do with it. Not that my dad had any experience, but he was a quick study.

I'm sure that wasn't an option open to black people at the time. Their city still had segregated pools.

This is exactly the same as saying that the reason women had little power in America before 1920 was because they couldn't vote. Which is true, but completely overlooks why women didn't have the right to vote.

Women didn't have power because they were oppressed by men for centuries. Black people don't have "as good an education" because they've been systematically abandoned by the most powerful parts of society for centuries.

You could spend 100 million on a program just in my city alone to try to give disadvantaged kids tech lessons. You know what would happen?

Nothing, because you haven't addressed the fact that they have to sell dope, hustle or work multiple jobs just to put food on their family's table; that they're watching their baby sibling while mom and dad go out to score junk; that their friends need them to join the local gang to protect their neighborhood; that they don't have access to transportation to get to the classes; that the rest of the city needs money and will steal from the education fund as it always does, because why try to teach the kids when they're not going to learn anyway; and of course, because their parents gave up on their future a long time ago and give zero shit about trying to help them make something of themselves.

So the fix is to lower hiring standards? What exactly are you promoting as a fix here?

"Lower hiring standards" is a myopic fallacy. You don't hire Jeff the amazing coder who likes to punch people in the face.

Discounting the value of culture is a huge mistake. Humans work best when they are not treated as replaceable units of quantified productivity.

Diverse cultures can attack problems with a broader perspective than homogenous cultures.

It's still not clear what you would have a hiring manager do today. I usually have several positions open at any given time; I don't even recall the last black applicant we've seen.

I have talented co-workers of many different races (specifically including black), but even without visiting our office, you could guess the percentage breakdown and you wouldn't be far off.

I can't hire applicants that don't exist and I can't hire applicants that aren't qualified.

You can shift your notions of "qualified".

You can hire junior engineers and mentor and train them to be successful.

Then you can proactively advertise your positions to programs and organizations that have more minority participation.

Of course this takes more work for you, the hiring manager, in sourcing and on boarding. But there should be a burden on every hiring manager to correct the systemic diversity problems.

A success will be extremely impactful for the individuals you hire and for the overall health of the team.

"Qualified" will always mean "can make a computer do things we need done" and that's not negotiable.

We do hire at all experience levels and several of our successful squad leads are original college hires (having only worked with us), so we have some demonstrated track record of mentoring and retention.

Even in college recruiting (where I'd expect the greatest diversity of candidates), I can't recall any recent black applicants, and except for a somewhat higher ratio of women to men than the industry average, the ratios of college grads seem to track the industry ratios reasonably closely.

I concede that there is a bias towards college grads in industry and stated above, and that nothing is legally barring me from crafting some kind of Cinderella program to seek out possibly qualified candidates who avoided college or who failed to graduate. There would no doubt be some successful candidates that emerged from such a program.

The practical bar to that is my belief that any such single-company program would be utterly uncompetitive versus other efforts I could make in staffing. Opening an out of country office, while hard, is probably much less work per successful candidate, has a higher success rate, and often presents much more compelling economics.

If the above is remotely true, the shortest path to better prospects for minorities is to increase their college attendance, STEM majors, and graduation rates. It also has the practical advantage of having a high level of self-determination and influence; rather than waiting for me to fix their problem (where I necessarily have many competing priorities), they can take initiative to address their problem (where they naturally have more focus and vested interest in the specific outcome).

There is unlikely to emerge a single-company Cinderella type program that will markedly change the industry. The overhead costs are too much and the successes too few. A regional (or even national) charitable or educational institution may be able to move the needle (but even there, the shorter path might well be "encourage college and STEM participation rates")

Be careful with the term "Cinderella program".

My direct experience here is working with Hackbright Academy to meet more women than I was getting through the standard job application channels.

Hackbright works attracts women from all backgrounds, science but no computer science, college drop outs, and junior CS. It teaches practical programming skills in the 3 months class, then helps connect the women to companies.

The program works. Smart women can learn programming and be successful at any subsequent job in the industry with adequate time, mentorship and training.

This is of course true for people of all genders, race and college background.

There are many similar programs that cater to diverse hiring pipelines. Dev Bootcamp for first time web developers, Jopwell for black, latino, hispanic and native american candidates.

But all these still depend on a hiring manager valuing mentorship over "pre-qualified".

Of all the things in my career, I am most proud of helping engineers be successful at tasks that they weren't "qualified" to do. This has been hiring junior candidates for roles beyond their current experience (with clear discussions on both sides about how it will be challenging), and rotating and promoting engineers into new roles and responsibilities.

I was using Cinderella with the Bill Murrary Caddyshack scene in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQTXFJL8lo (implying a non-traditional background experiencing uncommon success, as in the fairy tale).

Until you pointed it out, I hadn't even considered the gender-specificity of Cinderella herself. Thanks and upvoted for pointing that out; it's obvious in retrospect, but wasn't intended.

Did I just read that your company doesn't try harder to hire black people because it would make your company less competitive?

I could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure I just read that your company intentionally avoids hiring disadvantaged black people in your own country because hiring minorities overseas is cheaper and easier.

I did not intend to say any such thing, do not believe that is true, and IMO, it takes a fairly tortured reading of my words to reach your conclusion.

We hired some remote engineers from South Africa through stack overflow. Now we have a permanent office in Cape Town. Give that a go maybe. A lot more bang for the buck comparatively than hiring remote engineers from the U.S., and the programmers there (shouldn't even be surprise) are as good as from any country including the U.S.

Awesome.

I can think of a ton of reasons a hiring manager would say "I can't do that." Not about race, but about remote and time zones.

So kudos to you for trying something that opened you up to far more candidates, finding them, making them successful, and sharing this example for others to learn from.

The reason why you're not getting black applicants may include:

- It's hard to get hired by white companies, so a lot of black people stay within black-owned companies and communities.

- There are a lot of ways to search for and hire applicants; waiting for people to come to you will not necessarily result in the best candidate.

- Transportation is not as easy or available for poor or rural communities. It may be necessary to hire remote, or pay for relocation, or in the extreme cases open remote offices.

- The 'qualifications' may need to be revisited. What are you requiring as a qualification? Is it something a poor black person would have significantly more difficulty in achieving compared to a white person, due to socioeconomic disparities? Is it possible you could find other qualities that work as similar qualifications that black people might be more likely to have?

In order for there to be more black applicants, we need to help there to be more black applicants. This can mean many things, such as contacting local black communities and asking them what your company can do to help adults achieve a job at your company, or helping to improve the roadblocks for young kids to get a good education.

I know, I know; actually trying to help people can be a burden. But it will help people who continue to be oppressed by a society that does not care about them. You could continue to just wait for black people to work around the huge pitfalls society has set up for them, or you could help work to remove those pitfalls. It's up to you. Unfortunately.

You sound like someone who hasn't ever tried to hire people in Silicon Valley.

I think you are being purposefully obtuse. Of course Jeff the amazing coder who punches people in the face does not meet hiring standards. No one is discounting the value of multiculturalism, but you have to acknowledge the cultural diversity of tech companies mirrors the cultural diversity of tech workers. The cultural diversity of tech workers mirrors the cultural diversity of tech students in college, which mirrors the cultural diversity of high-achieving high school students.

The problem exists in parts of the society that technology can't fix, but law and education might. It doesn't help that the criminal justice system is statistically racist and that lack of cohesive families due to the consequences of povertous conditions causes children from those families to perform less well in school.

If you want better diversity in better-paying fields, the most impactful change would be to end the war on drugs, which contributes the most to poverty and incarceration. I don't see how the tech community can do that by themselves and the full effect won't even be measurable in the tech community until a generation later.

A "fix"? This isn't a compile-time error. This is the total disenfranchisement of entire classes or groups of people. There is no patch. The "fix" involves lots of difficult work.

First, we have to get people like you to understand what the problem is, which apparently is difficult to do. Then, we have to build empathy for the problems facing black people so you want to actually help them. Then we have to invest in developing social and economic equality within disadvantaged communities.

And hiring more diversely will not lower hiring standards. Please try to understand that.

I understand the problem to be way beyond hiring in tech, so I'm trying to understand why lack of diversity in tech is being blamed on the tech community.

Because the tech industry is dragging its feet.

The explanation tech companies have for not having a more diverse workforce is that the applicants are just not out there to hire. Of course, any good tech worker could take an additional five minutes to think about the problem and discover that there are ways to create the applicants, by improving the communities that will grow the applicants.

But that takes time, and money, it's hands-on and it's not easy. And overseas workers are cheap.

Because, when we see a flower growing in the desolation, we should try not to step on it.

* "over 20 years in tech ... I can count on 1 hand the number of direct coworkers that were black ... I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. ... The only way you will hit higher-than-normal diversity numbers is to reduce hiring standards, which is wrong. *

WOW. Haven't time to unpack all that is wrong with your response but mainly: Black people in the US can be found across all strata of society, including top/good schools. The implication that they must all be poor and in inadequate schools is ludicrous.

Part of why the diversity issue is so aggravating is because the # of qualified candidates may be relatively small, but it still significantly exceeds the # of Black candidates hired.

Likewise, stating that the only way to improve diversity is by lowering of standards is wrong. It communicates your obviously flawed perspective that Black candidates in tech are inferior.

Where did I state that "they" must all be poor and in adequate schools?

I agree there is a diversity problem, and my proposed solution is to increase investment in education in disadvantaged areas. And somehow I'm vilified as a closet, biased racist. It's hilarious.

It's responses like this that make any discussion on increasing diversity completely impossible and futile.

An actual black person in tech responds to points you and others make:

https://twitter.com/polotek/status/662312638324469761

Unless I misread it, I didn't read a single thing that will help a black person today get hired.

It likely will. You revealed an unconscious bias you have. You think that focusing on diversity is lowering the hiring bar. This is a fundamentally biased position -- it assumes minorities are worse tech workers. You're the top comment on a popular HN thread, many people are rebutting you, and are getting linked from many external sources.

All it takes is one hiring manager to read this thread, realize their unconscious bias, and then realize that focusing on diversity does not compromise employee standards. Then a black person gets hired.

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Your ability to repeat your talking points is impressive. But you demonstrate zero engagement with any other views, zero understanding of the lived reality of minorities in tech, and zero understanding of the decades of research and discussion around racism and employment.

The charitable assumption is that's accidental. There's no reason white people end up knowing about this stuff automatically. I sure didn't. But at some level of repetition and entrenched defense of an apparently naive position, it gets pretty hard to say, "Oh Steven2012 just doesn't know."

It begins to look like you don't want to know. Which is also fine, really, as long as you own that and move along in spite of it. Maybe try that? It seems better than being the poster boy for statements like "I don't read HN often. But it can be instructive. You get to read unfiltered sentiment from ppl who don't realize they're misogynist/racist."

Actually what is even more remarkable is your ability to smugly pooh pooh everyone's ideas and point out how everyone is a closet racist, despite their good intentions.

What, pray tell, is your idea to increase diversity, and what have you personally done to increase diversity?

Ah, yes, let's turn this around. No matter that you haven't addressed any of the criticisms of your comments. No matter that when you get replies you don't like, you just delete what you wrote rather than owning your words and working through your mistakes. (Let me know if you'd like a copy; I saved it for you.) No matter that I encouraged your one actual idea, which was to maybe start volunteering. No matter that you don't know anything about the research on or the history of this topic, yet feel qualified to judge other people. Let's do it.

My idea? I don't need to have "my idea" to increase diversity. Other people have already had plenty of ideas. Better, they have discussed, researched, and critiqued those ideas. As a white guy, I'm unlikely to have any particularly good ideas, because I have little direct experience of the problem I'm trying to solve. I also try not to have ideas on products to create for the Chinese market, better approaches to goat herding, or the particle makeup of dark matter. I know I'm not an expert, so I'm not going to clutter the discussion talking like I am.

And what am I actually doing? A fair number of things, but the most important of them is to listen. I talk with actual people about their actual experiences. Via RSS and Twitter, I follow a lot of people who think and write about this stuff. I read studies on the topic. I read about America's incredibly fucked-up racial history, and about how we're still dealing with the effects of that today. I listen to actual minorities in tech about their actual experiences. And ones outside of tech, too.

I encourage you to try it. Because then you'd know that racial bias is widespread in the US despite "good intentions" [1]. You'd know that outbursts like this are a symptom of white fragility [2]. You'd know about the white savior complex, where a white person decides the only solution to racism is for them to go share their time and wisdom with those poor unfortunates, ignoring the structural issues that created the situation.

And then, once you get past the Racism 101 stuff, maybe you could help me and others who would like HN and the tech industry to have discussions on this that aren't somewhere on the horrific/remedial end of the spectrum. But take your time with the listening. It took me maybe 3 or 4 years of work. The hard part wasn't the learning, it was the unlearning of what I thought I knew. [3]

[1] http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/implicit-test/

[2] http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-white-people-freak-out-w...

[3] http://bengtwendel.com/your-teacup-is-full-empty-your-cup/

Hey wpietri, thanks for writing this comment. Sometimes, I read through threads like these, and see a lot of vocal white people saying shit that makes me lose hope for the future. White people are in charge in this country, and any change will require them to back it. Reading this helps undo some of that despair, and gives me some hope for the future.

Thank you, and keep being exactly what minorities need right now.

Thanks. I was an ignorant fool on these issues for a long time. Now that I have slightly more clue, I figure one of the best things I can do with my privilege is just to visibly object, to get white dudes to listen to, well, anybody else. So much of what I got wrong happened not because I heard both sides and picked the wrong one, but because I didn't even know there was a choice.

And for what it's worth, I'm as impressed as hell by people in their 20s today. As an old, I think I'm supposed to grumble about kids these days. But I see so many young-ish voices that are so much smarter about these topics than my cohort was. I have enormous hope for the future.

I guess the tldr to your response is: "I'm actually doing nothing."

If that's what you take from it, then it looks like we're done here.

I too think it begins with parents, attitudes and elementary school. Parents need to steer or at least inform their children about the workforce.

I'd like to see how minority owned or run small to mid size enterprises even large have fared in hiring minorities (their own, as well as outside their own) in the "tech" field. If they can who higher rates, then it may indicate that non minority owned and run are to some extent racist, or at least not actively seeking minorities.

If you're in NYC you can check out the Academy for Software Engineering, a cs focused high school. We do mentorship there via iMentor. There's also CSNYC.org which works to support cs education programs to get spread within the school system and to train more teachers on cs topics

It's both. The sad fact is that it doesn't take very strong forces to diminish the presence of people of color in tech, just widespread ones that exist at all layers. A slight increase in resumes being passed over for phone screens. A slight preference against hiring due to nearly indescribable "culture fit" reasons. It doesn't require explicit, objective racism at any point.

It's absolutely necessary to kill the myth of tech hiring as a perfect meritocracy. It is not, it's far from it. It's a dirty and incredibly flawed process that barely even works, let alone represents any pretense of egalitarian perfection.

> The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel, at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

The way I see it, the biggest beneficiaries of "affirmative action" aren't the people getting jobs because of diversity policies. It's younger, impressionable kids who get to benefit from role models in their likeness.

"Forced diversity" may be the best hack possible to foster persistent diversity down the line, and fix vicious cycles.

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