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Comment by numakerg | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for writing this. If there's at least one thing I hope everyone can agree is a positive, it's people sharing their perspectives like this.

> look around the office, you immediately notice that black people aren't there.

You're right, there aren't. One in ten people in my city is black, but I would estimate* fewer than one in forty developers at my work are. But there were just as few in my college classes, in my tech clubs, advanced mathematics classes, and any other place that would lead a person to software development. I think we need to address the problems with diversity in those place at the same time as we deal with the workplace problems.

* All the obvious caveats apply. I'm not going to project an identity onto someone else.

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I teach at a university in STEM. Our classes are increasingly filled with international students precisely because domestic students are not interested in majoring in STEM. Schools actually hire agencies to try and increase their number of domestic applications, but they continually get worse anyway. It's a less-than-zero-sum game as the pool shrinks. In public schools there's even an explicit preference in state law for domestic students. And they put in rules like high verbal test score requirements that increase the domestic advantage yet more. Nonetheless we get more African students literally from Africa than we get African American applicants.

People are putting STEM on a pedestal (very) recently, then decrying why people weren't allowed into the FAANG/A.I./data science holy land that most in the field probably aren't profiting from anyway. But historically, jobs in STEM are not the highly-coveted prize people think it is. More of a lower-middle-class stepping stone that ranks below the more prestigious professions like medicine/law/etc. Harder work and harder classes for lower pay.

It's not exclusionary.

I have almost no say at what happens at my local University. Do you? I can at most pay taxes, write my representatives, and maybe a couple other ancillary things.

What I can control to a huge degree is who my company hires and how I treat my colleagues.

Seeking out how to help POC programmers in the workforce doesn't mean we can't also work to improve the American education gap. We have a lot of time in the day, after all.

In what part of my writing did I suggest that it was exclusionary?

> It's not a case of, OK let's hire 20 more black people and it's over. The reality is that, well first you have to find them, and then you have to see if they qualify for a job you are actually hiring for.

I was addressing this statement from the author, suggesting that if my perception of the education system is accurate then it could be difficult to find those developers if barriers at school aren't also broken. Maybe my perception is wrong, but that's why we have discussions.

> I have almost no say at what happens at my local University. Do you?

I do. I am an alumni and can contribute to scholarships that fund students in underrepresented categories. As a student, I published articles supporting my (what I would consider progressive) political positions that opened up discussions but also received significant criticism.

> Seeking out how to help POC programmers in the workforce doesn't mean we can't also work to improve the American education gap. We have a lot of time in the day, after all.

Hopefully. I'm not American, so I can't say much. Best I can do is listen and think about what I do and say.

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