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Comment by falsestprophet | Hacker News Reader

Is working as a computer programmer economically rational for high performing black and hispanic students in the United States?

Black and hispanic students benefit from preferential admissions standards to medical, law, business and other graduate schools that can lead to higher salaries and higher social standing than computer programming.

Consider the extreme case of black students and medical school:

Black students who are competitive candidates for software engineering at top tech companies could (probably all) choose to study medicine and, very possibly, be admitted to specialist residency programs.

Average specialist pay is $284,000. Average primary care pay is $195,000.

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Medicine has many more barriers to entry: schooling, debt, etc.

I'm a white high school dropout, but I got a developer position at age 27 after rushing through a CS degree later in live which took about ~3 years. I work 40 hours a week and get a very livable $100k+ salary plus stock and benefits with negligible student debt all things considered (~$30k).

My point being, in a vacuum, getting on track to making a good wage as a developer has a lot fewer barriers with the lack of medical school and debt. Not to mention the free time I have outside of work and regular hours. Salary isn't everything.

I cannot speak for people of color and their experience who want to go through the same process as me. There are all kinds of barriers they experience that I don't. Neil DeGrasse Tyson (I know, I know...) had a good answer to the silly question "What's with chicks in science?", and the cultural / systemic barriers he had to go through to reach that point in life [1].

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM

You can do medical school with minimal to no debt from many state medical schools. No way any one rational should chose programming over medicine in terms of dollars per calorie spent working, given they can get admission to medical school. Chose it because you like programming and can't stand the sights and smells of medicine. Not for the money. An average doctor makes more than an average programmer, with better job security, and more prestige, more choice of where to live, less politics at work, less selling your soul for money. Even free time is improving. Many medical sub specialties now offer shift work, part time work etc.

Edit: there are literally medical gigs available where you can sleep all night and get paid $100 / hour while sleeping (specialty surgical hospitals, where many nights there may not be a patient overnight, but they require an md on site). Many emergency rooms in rural areas may not see 2 patients at night, but need an er doctor on site.

Medicine is a bad example. But AA hiring is a (non-illusory) systematic occurrence, and it's perfectly rational for high IQ blacks (who will get snapped up by any large corp) to aim for high-status, high-visibility roles such as administration, rather than squinting at a laptop for decades.

Of course, this is against the narrative, just as is pointing out that lots of people one generation away from medieval levels of poverty in Asia seem to be doing better than USA blacks.

At any rate, if a lack of diversity is prima facie racism, then here's a scoop:

http://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/

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