Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

I'm legitimately interested to see how much software engineers make if they're not White or Asian. Given the lack of women and minorities I'd say minorities are better off being an MD than a SE. In addition, I'm skeptical that an average SE can get offers at places that give them this kind of compensation.

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Take Google for an example. [1]

The earning "likelihood" (whether this is cultural, sociopolitical, socioeconomic, etc. is irrelevant. This is just observable fact, given Google's data) of Blacks is 1/17s of Whites and 1/5s of Asians (Google numbers scaled for Black representation in the US).

What I am getting with this? In this model I'm describing, you either work at Google, making $100 or you're unemployed, making 0. This means Whites and Asians will continue to make much more as Software Engineers, because the average wage as White or Asian person as a software engineer is higher, because of the higher rates of them being software engineers to begin with. This results in the average reported wage for software engineering being closer to $100 (the ceiling) even though it's more like $20 if you're a woman or minority.

Therefore, for an article like this to be useful for minorities and women, it would have to illustrate companies that have high (where high is equal to US demographics) rates of employment for software engineers. Otherwise, this might as well just read: "2017 State of Global Millionaires"

[1]

- http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016/

- https://www.google.com/diversity/

I think you're skipping an important step in your model.

The probability of being black given that you work at Google is low. That doesn't imply that the probability of being hired at Google given that you're a black software engineer is low. (There may be a relatively low number of black software engineers in the industry. In fact, I believe that there are.)

(In the short term,) Google can't conjure up black software engineers if none exist.

If we steer talented minorities who might be able to choose between being an MD or an SWE into medicine because of a perception that they won't be hired as SWEs, we will perpetuate the lack of minority SWEs. (NB: The percentage of practicing doctors who are black is around 4% from a quick Google search. That doesn't mean we should discourage black college students from medicine, either!)

[1] = https://consumer.healthday.com/general-health-information-16...

Interestingly enough, 12% of Computer and Information Science degrees in the US are awarded to Blacks [1][2]. That is in contrast to 9% that are awarded to Asians. But also, 13% of the population is Black, and 5% of the population is Asian [3]. So, it would be expected that more Asians than Blacks are employed at Tech companies. However, the high ratio of Asians (vs. Whites, Blacks, and Latinos) employed at Bay Area tech companies shows some discrepancies. But, it may only be that Asians are more willing to relocate.

[1]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_301.asp

[2]: I could only find 2010 data, but I expect it's generally consistent.

[3]: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/00

Sorry, but unfortunately your conclusions are wrong. More Asian people in absolute numbers and in percentage get "computer and information science" degrees. In fact, the trend has been negative for blacks.[1]

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_322.30.a...

While I struggle generally to discern what you're trying to say, I'm particularly befuddled by what "MD" refers to here.

Medical doctor.

MD=medical doctor

My point is basically this: the average is being extremely skewed by survivorship bias, namely, White and Asians who attended elite schools. I assert that getting the salaries noted in the article is especially unlikely if you're on the other end of the spectrum: Women and minorities from non-elite schools.

MD means medical doctor. Wages among doctors are far more predictable.

Huh, okay.

Nothing is keeping women and minorities out of tech, they're just choosing different careers.

I'd love to see your evidence for this. Namely, you'd need to prove that for a given educational level, geographical location and familial history, they're more likely to choose something other than tech than white males.

Given the fact that every college in the country enacts affirmative action, it's apparent that non-whites and women would have no problem getting into the IT field. And given the fact that over 60 percent of people graduating college today are women, that tells me that it's just not a field they're interested in. I don't see why that's a problem.

You don't understand why lack of diversity in an industry is a problem? A complaint that I often hear is that SV is full of start ups focused on "Uber for catnip" and other unimaginative useless things. Wouldn't diversity address this alleged homogeny of services(think Bevel)?

I see no merit in forced diversity. If they have the opportunity and incentive to choose this field, yet go elsewhere, that's fine by me.

You've yet to prove that they've had "the opportunity and incentive to choose this field, yet go elsewhere."

Affirmative action means women and minorities get preferential treatment during hiring. Given the fact that women and minorities are underrepresented in tech, it should be obvious that they would have an incentive to join the industry because they would have very little trouble getting hired wherever they want. And given the fact that over 60 percent of graduates are women, it's clear that lack of opportunity isn't a factor for women at least.

So you basically have no evidence to back up meaningless, unsubstantiated claims. You don't even support your statement: "affirmative action means women and minorities get preferential treatment during hiring." Guess the discussion is over since you refuse to provide any evidence to back up your ridiculous claims.

> You don't even support your statement: "affirmative action means women and minorities get preferential treatment during hiring."

Are you saying this is untrue? If I am wrong, then what is affirmative action?

It's really easy to plug your ears and scream that an opponent's argument is "ridiculous" (what you are doing). It's more difficult to actually make a counterargument yourself (what you are not doing). Try harder, maybe.

Look at college freshmen, see what portion of women/minorities are studying something tech related? Or am I misunderstanding something?

The pipeline for tech oriented careers opens up around the 6th grade, and starts to become harder to enter around the 11th. I know from personal experience that kids at those ages rarely have any idea about what career they'll actually be in at age 30. So the parents that have high expectations--and push their kids to achieve academically--fill up that pipeline early.

My own high school had roughly equal numbers of black and white students (40% white, 40% black, 20% others). But all my classes were overwhelmingly whites, Jews, Chinese, and Indians, and their parents were mostly doctors, lawyers, tenured professors (or even university presidents), and business owners. Most of the boys were all in the same scout troop (50). Few played a sport; if they did, it was tennis or cross-country running. Most played a musical instrument.

I don't even know where all the black people went after elementary school. They were still there at school, they just weren't in most of my classes (except for the 2 that were in all of them--they had high-expectations parents). Then, once I went off to college, most of the ladies vanished, too. They were in my chem and psych classes. They were in the band. They were certainly there. But they didn't take the CompSci classes.

And in the workplace, well, they show up from time to time at different jobs, but most places look just like all the boys from my 6th grade accelerated math class, 30 years later.

I don't think you can entirely blame the hiring companies for this one.

I think some of the data you'd want to gather for this is

- what initial job offers look like, by demographic class, and what they get negotiated to

- offers revoked after attempted negotiation (yes, this is a thing that happens)

- long-term job prospects (negotiations for internal raises and promotions, layoffs / retention, etc.)

Hired has visibility into the first two, but I doubt they have much visibility into the last one, and I think that's the most relevant one for the effect of leaving the industry that you're interested in.

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