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Comment by rambos | Hacker News Reader

Some thoughts and questions here.

Should we in the tech industry feel obligated to spend energy on these social movements? Are we wrong and selfish to not?

Honestly, I'd rather not. I'd rather get technical things done, and let policy makers and influencers focus on those issues. If you're in on something with me, great AWESOME, I honestly don't care who you are. Things like race and gender don't matter to me as long as you can get work done. However, I do understand that being able to get work done in this industry is stemmed from a privileged advantage. -- Yes that sucks and is unfair, but how do we as a technical industry even change that when we need to focus on getting work done?

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I think this is more important than just diversity in tech (and that is important) - and I'm a relatively recent convert to caring.

We all, even founders, benefit from diversity of founders. If start-ups predominantly get started by similar types of people you're missing out on competition and innovative ideas. I think this applies not only to general business concepts but especially to domain areas. One of the things that infrequently crops up on here is how much money there is to be made in Spanish language Christian apps, as a WASP I'm less likely to have the domain knowledge to break into that market. So it does seem rather odd that VCs might be missing out on being able to profit from a market of ~23m.

Then there are more social good focused start-ups that might emerge. Given all the problems the US has with racism and sexism I'd posit that a black female founder might be a good bet if they had an idea to try and improve things.

I was interviewing a white university student the other day who had managed to get through 2.5 years of a Computing degree before realising she was capable of being just a good developer as a man. Not that she was as good, just that she actually could be a developer, rather than being assumed to be the management / documentation type. I'm nowhere near Jon Skeet on the feminist scale but it really made me think about how under represented groups can be put off.

And that is the point of the article. The top thread on here can be arguing about whether 0.1% is "statistically zero" because what matters is perception. If a potential black female founder perceives an industry as being unwelcoming they're less likely to enter it. There is a massive opportunity cost to get to the point where you look for VC funding, it isn't an experiment you can just run on a whim. It is quite possible that the calibre of black women who could be founders are looking at the startup world and heading in another direction where there are much stronger social signals that they are likely to be accepted.

One of the communities I'm in has gone to war over its Code of Conduct, I'm largely uninterested, I think a CoC is probably required but the proposed one is terrible (cynical me thinks it looks like a power grab).

It's a tricky balance to get right.

It's your choice to ignore it. More precisely, it's your privilege to ignore it.

"...how do we as a technical industry even change that when we need to focus..."

The point of startups is not blindly attacking the biggest pile of work at hand. It's to find blindspots and exploit them. If every single one of your competitors is systematically undervaluing entire classes of potential workers, dontcha think that just maybe there's an opportunity to be had there?

But no. For all the talk of merit, getting shit done, hustle, etc, it's mostly about connections. You can't hold onto the meritocratic myth and ignore completely obvious evidence to the contrary forever. But damn, so many rich white guys around here love to try.

> If every single one of your competitors is systematically undervaluing entire classes of potential workers, dontcha think that just maybe there's an opportunity to be had there?

This is a common line of thought that I find myself having. I suspect it's a common fallacy, although I've never heard a name for it.

I call it "being too clever again by half". The idea that when others zig, I should zag. Or that any status quo structure has inefficiencies.

My reality is that zig/zag concept only works in certain situations. It'd be interesting to think more about the conditions for those situations, because then I could readily identify them.

In this situation, it's possible that your competitors are undervaluing an entire class of workers simply because that class of workers does not have value to them. If there are no technical, talented, black female engineers in the Valley, maybe the market isn't intentionally ignoring them -- it's just unable to find them.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but sometimes the status quo is an efficiency shortcut as well as being efficient.

Actually, a company called Andela is going to make hundreds of millions off of this inefficiency. It's focused on finding Nigerians who have top 2% IQ globally and teaching them to code. Labor arbitrage. Check them out.

So true. Tech things can't impact social issues, just like Facebook never did.

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