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#FFFFFF Diversity

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Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#31

Post by rdancer »

ohhimark wrote: post #19
azima wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're speaking from your experience which is fine and YMMV, but it's useful to listen to hers about how she feels. Discounting others' experiences doesn't help. She's talking about feeling excluded from tech as a woman of color because tech has made a priority to include more women speakers, but has completely ignored that there are women of color who are ignored. The industry thinking that they're"solving" diversit…

You know, I find it strange how I can't remember a single person complaining about lack of diversity who wasn't complaining only about their specific type of diversity. Case in point: the author is, by her own admission, a black woman and complains about the part of her identity that is not well represented: her (black) skin. There's something almost funny in asking people to care for one's situation when the speaker…

Because in America, your opinions are only valid as far as your credentials. For example, if you have dark skin, your opinions on black Americans are valid, if you're autistic, your opinions on mentally ill Americans are valid, if you're a computer, your opinions on American computers are valid, etc. It may be a flawed system, but it's better than slavery and feudalism, and it somewhat works to keep people's minds off the real issues, so it's all good.

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#32

Post by richmarr »

tone wrote: post #29

"I can’t support a conference that doesn’t seem to understand the value and importance of intersectionality and representation." Doesn't this just promote the idea that people of different ethnicities really are that different? Why on earth is skin colour "representation" an important factor anywhere? I mean don't discriminate but how is this an argument? This just promotes the wrong idea that people of different eth…

> Doesn't this just promote the idea that people of different ethnicities really are that different?

This is pretty much the "but we're a meritocracy" argument, and it's unfortunately wrong.

Having worked extensively with the behavioural science behind things like hiring processes, performance reviews, etc. I can conclusively tell you that we do not live in a meritocracy.

People get discriminated against, constantly. That's the reality they live in. They don't need a conference to tell them that.

I'll go further. Believing that you yourself are unbiased and meritocratic is shown to be correlated with an increase in unconscious bias in your actions through effects such as moral licencing. (See the work by Daniel Effron)

(Edit: you can downvote me if you don't like what I'm saying, but you're downvoting science, not opinion)

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#33

Post by lucozade »

azima wrote: post #12
ivanca wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Intersectionality" in this case means excluding black males right? That seems a bit wrong.

That applies too, but she's bringing attention to black women and directly speaking about how the tech industry is trying to fix the problem of women in tech and at the same time ignoring women of color. "solving" the problem of not a lot of women in tech by hiring white women, and completely ignoring black women doesn't solve the problem. Same thing applies to men - hiring asian men (the "model minority"), and ignor…

Surely that depends on what problem you're trying to solve.

If what you're trying to solve with a diversity programme is opening up the potential talent pool, it's entirely conceivable that focusing on white women and Asian men could be sufficient.

If what you're trying to solve is a greater diversity of opinions and experiences to foster ideas, say, it's entirely conceivable that hiring white women and Asian men could be sufficient.

If what you're trying to do is increase the representation of black developers then this approach is likely to fail.

Or to put it another way, diversity isn't one thing, it's a bunch of things. If one believes that there should be a higher representation of black people in tech (which seems reasonable to me) then one should look to resolve that problem. It seems completely orthogonal to the question of encouraging women to tech.

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#34

Post by icebraining »

tone wrote: post #29

"I can’t support a conference that doesn’t seem to understand the value and importance of intersectionality and representation." Doesn't this just promote the idea that people of different ethnicities really are that different? Why on earth is skin colour "representation" an important factor anywhere? I mean don't discriminate but how is this an argument? This just promotes the wrong idea that people of different eth…

I've downvoted you for the needless bile.

Maybe you should try to get the answers to your questions and understand where the author is coming from before discounting them as insane - even if you still end up disagreeing with their position.

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#35

Post by tajen »

Kiro wrote: post #15

Am I the only one who think it's perfectly logical that the speaker ratio is the same as the ratio of the tech population? Of course we should try hard to find minority speakers just to be proactive since we do have a diversty problem. However, when you go to a conference you want to see the best speakers and then it's only logical that a minority is less represented since, you know, there are less good speakers to c…

In other words, women are overrepresented in conferences compared to their presence on the field, and it's going to be the same with ethnicities. In my business experience, women are already overrepresented in management positions compared to developer positions. Who wants to remain a developer anyway?

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#36

Post by dijit »

onion2k wrote: post #28
paulojreis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if we forcibly try to overrepresent every minority where do we end up? "50% black trans women speakers"? I wouldn't go to such a conference since the probability of bad talks would be too hig\ You end up with hiring quotas in companies, where a less-than-competent candidate can be hired instead of a competent one because he/she belongs to a minority. Will the bet on minority over competence will yield greater g…

That point you've apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. There are hiring managers out there who won't hire a female developer because they're just outright sexist. Quotas get introduced because there are brilliant minority developers who get passed over because they're in the minority. All that said though, I don't believe there's any actual evidence that peopl…

the hiring process is completely opaque, so this can never be proven or disproven.

ideally, we'd have a system where we have a balance sheet that gets tallied up- but interviewing is an important part in gauging competence and culture fit (yes, this is a real thing, I know some developers who don't wash and I would not call them culturally fitting), so it's not something that can be solved easily.

We all, inherently have a bias- we can't divorce ourselves from that bias, so how do we hire? by tribunal?

I certainly believe quotas to be a shitty solution.

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#37

Post by mpweiher »

onion2k wrote: post #28
paulojreis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if we forcibly try to overrepresent every minority where do we end up? "50% black trans women speakers"? I wouldn't go to such a conference since the probability of bad talks would be too hig\ You end up with hiring quotas in companies, where a less-than-competent candidate can be hired instead of a competent one because he/she belongs to a minority. Will the bet on minority over competence will yield greater g…

That point you've apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. There are hiring managers out there who won't hire a female developer because they're just outright sexist. Quotas get introduced because there are brilliant minority developers who get passed over because they're in the minority. All that said though, I don't believe there's any actual evidence that peopl…

>Quotas get introduced because there are brilliant minority developers who get passed over because they're in the minority.

Any evidence (other than anecdotal) for this claim? The only reason I have ever seen for quotas is that the overall distribution is skewed, and therefore it must be discrimination.

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#38

Post by Manishearth »

CamatHN wrote: post #30

There are more Indians in tech from me observing on face value than black people. Any Indian heritage people here think there needs to be greater representation of indians in conferences? Thoughts?

Mostly meh on that. I haven't heard of major discrimination against Indians in hiring practices (modulo visa, of course, I'm talking about Indian origin people with citizenship or equivalent). There's always casual racism (insensitive jokes, etc), but those are small potatoes compared to systemic issues which almost every woman/PoC in tech is aware of and has had tussles with personally.

I've also seen tons of Indians giving talks at confs.

I think the word "model minority" applies here.

YMMV though. There might be lots of discrimination going on that my circle of acquaintances hasn't come across.

(Indian origin, born & spent most of my life in the States, currently living in India)

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#39

Post by rdancer »

ivanca wrote: post #21
azima wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That applies too, but she's bringing attention to black women and directly speaking about how the tech industry is trying to fix the problem of women in tech and at the same time ignoring women of color. "solving" the problem of not a lot of women in tech by hiring white women, and completely ignoring black women doesn't solve the problem. Same thing applies to men - hiring asian men (the "model minority"), and ignor…

The "diversity problem" is never going to be fixed, because the goalpost is always something more. The population of non-hispanic black people in California is of 6.4%, if half of them are women (3.2%) it means that if a tech company has 100 employees the perfect amount of diversity would be 3 black women and 97 non-black-women, they may not even get to know about each other in a company of that size. But I'm pretty…

What you need to do is hire extra 25 people, and then you can have 4 black women, which is exactly 3.2%.

But perhaps we should stop kidding ourselves and admit that being a technologist is a calling, not a career, and this shapes the talent pool somewhat.

Re: #FFFFFF Diversity

#40

Post by azima »

ohhimark wrote: post #19
azima wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're speaking from your experience which is fine and YMMV, but it's useful to listen to hers about how she feels. Discounting others' experiences doesn't help. She's talking about feeling excluded from tech as a woman of color because tech has made a priority to include more women speakers, but has completely ignored that there are women of color who are ignored. The industry thinking that they're"solving" diversit…

You know, I find it strange how I can't remember a single person complaining about lack of diversity who wasn't complaining only about their specific type of diversity. Case in point: the author is, by her own admission, a black woman and complains about the part of her identity that is not well represented: her (black) skin. There's something almost funny in asking people to care for one's situation when the speaker…

Well yeah, she's obviously speaking from her position about something she sees and feels. Like most people, you're most aware of obstacles you face and less of others. She's fighting her fight. And obviously anyone reading that can apply that to other races/groups.
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