Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#141

Post by hibikir » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #116

golergka wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be because it's much harder for startups to sponsor visas, and they don't have oversea offices to transfer people from?

Yes, this is the main reason. A startup is a much larger gamble for someone on a visa.

Even working directly for a large company is a gamble for someone with a visa. It's one of the little secrets of H1Bs, Green Cards and consulting: Go though a consulting firm, and you get hit by less incidental layoffs (since you are just capex), and even if you are not renewed, the consulting firm will just keep you on the roster (although probably unpaid), while they hand you another gig. Compared to the ticking bomb caused by a layoff, it makes those places attractive from a safety perspective.

This is not really a valley thing either: Here in the midwest, we have companies that are 50+% indian consultants, and companies that are 95% white, with very little in between, and it's all about whether H1Bs work there, directly or consulting.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#142

Post by bunnymancer » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #100

What a big steaming pile of political correctness. The author interviews a tiny handful of mediocre college students who blame their "color" for not getting hired right out of school by big, glamorous tech companies. Are we supposed to be sympathetic? I remember my own struggles to break into the tech business, many years ago now. Although white and "privileged", i.e. no cultural barriers to entry, I found it very to…

White person explaining how black people are just too lazy.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#143

Post by mafribe » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #136

This is a very simple problem and racism has almost nothing to do with it: White founder has a business idea and they bring along their friends - most likely white. Those friends bring in their friends and colleagues - also most likely white - to become the executive team. The executives hire tomorrow's managers. By that time the vast majority of employees are white, and even if they work very very hard to hire black…

   The longer a lack of diversity persists 
   in a company's trajectory the harder it 
   becomes to fix it.

Google and Microsoft seem to have had no problem hiring a lot of Indians or Chinese.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#144

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

tosseraccount wrote: post #51

Silicon Valley would rather hire foreigners than hire black Americans. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/technology/silicon-valley-... ... "Google revealed that its tech work force was 1 percent black, compared with 60 percent white. Yahoo disclosed in July that African-Americans made up 1 percent of its tech workers while Hispanics were 3 percent." Affirmative Action has worked in other industries. Why does it fail…

Simply stating a number like that adds absolutely nothing of value. There are a lot of questions you need the answers to in order to make any kind of judgment:

- What is the racial makeup of the accepted applicant pool?

- What is the racial makeup of the interviewed applicant pool (including those not extended offers)?

- What is the racial makeup of the overall applicant pool (including those not invited for interviews)?

- What is the racial makeup of people otherwise qualified to apply?

The whole way up to the overall population of I think 12-13% African-American. Even without seeing numbers I can guarantee that African-American applicants to Google and Yahoo are much closer to 1% than they are to 13%. It's a systemic problem (I am not referring to systemic racism) and you need to address the root causes of each stage.

But it's much easier to say "Silicon Valley is racist" I guess.

Edit: And assuming that average foreign worker is equivalently skilled and cheaper than average American worker, of course they're going to favor hiring the foreign worker. It's economics.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#145

Post by tomp » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

mafribe wrote: post #137

golergka wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you heard that racism = power + prejudice, so black people by definition can't be racist because they don't have power? (This is not an opinion that I agree with, but a lot of people actually think that way).

I'm not sure they deep down believe it. It's a rhetorical technique of frame shifting that has been quite successful, and allows some people to avoid facing their own racism. Since it works, why not continue using it? I have found a near perfect antidote: I point out that the USA is the world's most powerful nation (I'm from a small weak nation that has historically been trashed a lot). So, I continue: are you saying…

> I have found a near perfect antidote: I point out that the USA is the world's most powerful nation (I'm from a small weak nation that has historically trashed a lot). So, I continue: are you saying that only Americans can be racist, for they are so powerful?

That's a really good point.

There's this idea in the world of "white guilt" - that white people have been exceptionally cruel, by enslaving, killing, colonizing other races/nations.

The reality is that most people/races were viciously cruel; people fought wars, killed/raped their opponents, enslaved their prisoners, ... for generations. The difference is simply that whites (Europeans) have been so much more efficient at it (as with so many other things), because they were the first to develop advanced technology.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#146

Post by mafribe » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

zajd wrote: post #135

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #100

What a big steaming pile of political correctness. The author interviews a tiny handful of mediocre college students who blame their "color" for not getting hired right out of school by big, glamorous tech companies. Are we supposed to be sympathetic? I remember my own struggles to break into the tech business, many years ago now. Although white and "privileged", i.e. no cultural barriers to entry, I found it very to…

> I remember my own struggles to break into the tech business, many years ago now. Although white and "privileged", i.e. no cultural barriers to entry, I found it very tough and had to jump through hoops, work my way up from semi-tech to actual development positions Imagine you actually had cultural barriers to entry to deal with as well.

    Imagine you actually had cultural barriers to entry to deal with as well.

Have you considered that the non-Americans that are successful in SV had much larger barriers to break, including learning new languages, and dealing with visa hassle?

For example my girl friend was deported the other day because a border guard (wrongly) though she didn't have the right visas to enter the country we are living in when we returned from holidays. No native has to deal with this kind of administrative nightmare.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#147

Post by Lawtonfogle » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #122

autoreleasepool wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like Star Wars and stuff like Pokemon What an amazingly stupid generalization. Some of my favorite Pokemon and video game youtubers are black. Tons of black Star Wars fans exists too. It's pretty offensive to associate an entire group of people with certain preferences.

And by the same token, not all white guys are into Star Wars and Pokemon and roller blading. The Bloomberg blogger is guilty of a lot of stereotyping.

Incorrect stereotyping based on race, isn't there a name for that...

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#148

Post by tosseraccount » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #144

tosseraccount wrote: post #51

Silicon Valley would rather hire foreigners than hire black Americans. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/technology/silicon-valley-... ... "Google revealed that its tech work force was 1 percent black, compared with 60 percent white. Yahoo disclosed in July that African-Americans made up 1 percent of its tech workers while Hispanics were 3 percent." Affirmative Action has worked in other industries. Why does it fail…

Simply stating a number like that adds absolutely nothing of value. There are a lot of questions you need the answers to in order to make any kind of judgment: - What is the racial makeup of the accepted applicant pool? - What is the racial makeup of the interviewed applicant pool (including those not extended offers)? - What is the racial makeup of the overall applicant pool (including those not invited for intervie…

Silicon Valley can recruit and train African Americans.

Why not do it?

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#149

Post by bunnymancer » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 3:00 PM UTC

pingou wrote: post #18

"as the only African American on her team, she didn’t feel she had much in common with her colleagues. “When I went out to lunch or something with my team, it was sort of like, ‘Soooo, what are you guys talking about?’ ” she says" I find this sentence really shocking, perhaps because I'm french and in France we try to assimilate people more (I don't really know), but I would definitely think that as a white software…

It's pretty standard in the US, due to our history, for colored people to just feel out of place in 9/10 white environment.

But it goes beyond that, and is most likely true for French blacks as well, that if you're the only one who is distinctly visually different, you feel out of place.

It's not something you can really explain to white males, but at least female devs tend to have somewhat of a similar experience. Just the sense of not belonging by virtue of being the one who clearly isn't like the others. Imagine yourself trying to work in a software studio in an arab country. Everyone is way darker than you, just, everyone, at work, on the street, and so on. They talk about different TV shows and they frown on anything bacon, and they wear these odd dresses you never feel comfy in because you like your jeans. They're louder than you, they tend to argue way more, because it's just part of the culture to do that, and it makes you uncomfortable. And also, you keep hearing about these white Christian terrorists, that look like you, that they wish would just get shot.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#150

Post by ap22213 » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 3:01 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #100

What a big steaming pile of political correctness. The author interviews a tiny handful of mediocre college students who blame their "color" for not getting hired right out of school by big, glamorous tech companies. Are we supposed to be sympathetic? I remember my own struggles to break into the tech business, many years ago now. Although white and "privileged", i.e. no cultural barriers to entry, I found it very to…

I'm not sure why you think that this is political correctness. There's a clear representation gap in employment at high-wage jobs for large portions of the population. And, that's a social issue that has been identified. As a society we can then either ignore it or address it.

I get that you have a strong opinion on why that gap exists. And, you have opinions on which things won't work to solve the problem. But, by dismissing the issue as political correctness, you seem to be saying that it's not something that we, as a society, should address.

And, that's fine if you believe that. We can all decide to do nothing. But, as an alternative approach, I'd ask that you try to role-play for a moment that one of these people are one of your family. Would you try to help them? Or, would you tell them to get lost?

I think that we have reached a point where a lot of people have started to view vast segments of population as 'others'. Our society seems to be turning into 'us' vs. 'them', and to me that's problematic. We have double standards when it comes to our family and friends vs. everyone else. Personally, I think that's an awful state of affairs and limits the advancement of Humanity.