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

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

#331

Post by dang »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #322
alistproducer2 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very idea that you can abstract IQ from socio-economic status has no basis in science. The idea that IQ is a measure of intrinsic intelligence is also not accepted. There's a reason race is not accepted as a biological handicap anywhere but in white supremacy circles and it's not political correctness.

I would love for the 3 asshats that downvoted me to link to studies showing no association between socio-economic status and IQ. Or studies supporting IQ tests as non-biased measures of intrinsic human intelligence. I'll probably be waiting forever because troll don't care much for evidence.

> the 3 asshats that downvoted me

Please don't do this; the HN guidelines ask you not to.

Also, on (understandably) emotional topics, it's best if you represent your view more substantively and less angrily. People often downvote the latter kind of comment even when they agree with it.

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

#332

Post by Kalium »

noobermin wrote: post #277
colmvp wrote: post #269

“There are not a lot of people of color in the Valley—and that, by itself, makes it kind of unwelcoming” Oh I forgot, us Asians don't when it comes to people of color or diversity.

They might specifically mean blacks when they say "people of color", not that asians aren't a minority, but they person saying that might only be referring to their own race. I am not making a judgement call on what should be a "person of color", I'm just pointing out what they might mean.

In usage, "people of color" tends to be malleable. Sometimes it means "black". Other times it means "not white" or "black or hispanic" or something else entirely.

Sometimes this is just ambiguous. Other times, it becomes a source of liguistic slight-of-hand when people use one meaning (without specifying which) but seek to equivocate with a very different usage with a very different meaning.

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

#333

Post by dang »

devalier wrote: post #196
alistproducer2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "sources" are dubious (at best). Why don't you link to some studies that back up your imgur you got from chimpout or some other fine upstanding white nationalist blog.

The imgur photo came from the Bell Curve by Charles Murray. There was some controversy about parts of the book, but the fact that blacks score one standard deviation lower on IQ tests was never disputed. You can also find this by just googling "race and SAT scores" "race and LSAT scores". Look at the official results put out by those organizations, and you will find that on every single test the average black score i…

HN accounts aren't supposed to be used just for ideological purposes. HN is a community, and the threads are conversations. That dynamic isn't served when someone shows up only to post lengthy, prepared screeds on tendentious topics.

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

#334

Post by devalier »

KingMob wrote: post #306
devalier wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The imgur photo came from the Bell Curve by Charles Murray. There was some controversy about parts of the book, but the fact that blacks score one standard deviation lower on IQ tests was never disputed. You can also find this by just googling "race and SAT scores" "race and LSAT scores". Look at the official results put out by those organizations, and you will find that on every single test the average black score i…

The article you linked to failed to factor in stereotype threat, which suggests the authors have no idea how accurate the IQ test really is. Just because you're not asking questions like "Does the salad fork go on the outside or the inside?" doesn't mean the test is bias-free.

I gave a link to stereotype threat earlier - http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/john-list-on-virtual-none... And keep in mind, even if the studies were replicable, the studies did not even show that stereotype threat shows up in the real world, or that it causes the one standard deviation gap. What the original study showed was that on a non-meaningful test, if the professor suggests a stereotype, the gap in test scores grows bigger than one standard deviation.

I think the whole idea of stereotype threat is ridiculous. Just because of a stereotype I'm going to get dozens of questions wrong on the SAT? That just does not make any sense. (And now that we have a black president who was from Harvard Law, wouldn't we see average LSAT scores start to converge, surely there would be less of stereotype against black people in law).

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

#335

Post by caskance »

scarmig wrote: post #228
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are huge companies with tons of cash. Referrals are less important when thousands of college graduates are stampeding for a job at a tech titan. Also, how much of the upper management at either is Indian or Chinese?

Well, let's see... Google's CEO: Sundar Pichae Microsoft CEO: Satya Nadella Adobe CEO: Shantanu Narayen It is true, though, that Chinese people are underrepresented in upper management.

Is Raymond Chen management? He's certainly one of the more respected Microsofters I know of.

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

#336

Post by brandonmenc »

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…

As a white guy who is totally not into "geek culture" at all, I'm in the same boat. And I simply do not care. I'm not going to start playing video games or watching Doctor Who, or whatever, just to fit in.

I'm sure it's infinitely easier for me not to feel like an imposter than it is for a black woman, but of all the real hurdles standing in her way this should be the least concerning of them. Get over it, or the real problems will seem insurmountable.

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

#337

Post by rntz »

igonvalue wrote: post #281

The clickbait article headline is "Why Doesn’t Silicon Valley Hire Black Coders?" The answer is buried three quarters of the way into the article: > When they started interviewing seniors, companies found — as Pratt did at Howard — that many were underprepared. They hadn’t been exposed to programming before college and had gaps in their college classes. So why isn't the article titled, "Why Aren't Enough Black Coders…

This is a misrepresentation of the article's position. The article's actual, more ambiguous, position is better summarized in another paragraph:

> People tend to discuss Silicon Valley’s diversity problem in binary terms. One camp says companies are biased against underrepresented minorities, or at least aren’t trying hard enough to attract them. The other says there aren’t enough people from these backgrounds who are qualified for positions—or at least who are good enough to beat those Stanford grads with all the programming trophies and internship experience and Mozart-like childhoods. The reality is, both are true.

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

#338

Post by dopamean »

School-Cotton wrote: post #270
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…

African-Americans are a distinct ethnocultural group with their own cultural references, dialect, religious traditions, and so on (of course this doesn't apply to all black people; I'm talking about averages here.) "Black" in France is just a phenotype. Progressive-leaning people in the US would typically be uncomfortable with the idea of "assimilating" Blacks because it implies that White Anglo-Saxon culture is (or…

As a black man who went to almost entirely white schools my whole life and grew up in a very white place in New York I can sort of confirm what you're saying. When I went to college and met other black students who grew up around more black people I found that I had very little in common with them and it was hard to communicate. I was then, and always have been, more comfortable around white people.

On a side note, I was born in Jamaica and so when people refer to me as African American I always have a quiet chuckle to myself since I've never considered myself to be African and my passport says Jamaica.

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

#339

Post by rntz »

Animats wrote: post #324
igonvalue wrote: post #281

The clickbait article headline is "Why Doesn’t Silicon Valley Hire Black Coders?" The answer is buried three quarters of the way into the article: > When they started interviewing seniors, companies found — as Pratt did at Howard — that many were underprepared. They hadn’t been exposed to programming before college and had gaps in their college classes. So why isn't the article titled, "Why Aren't Enough Black Coders…

This seems to be the same problem as women have in Silicon Valley. If you didn't spend a lot of time with computers on your own before college, you're not in the running. Up until 1985 or so, that wasn't the case, because few people had pre-college access to much CPU power. More women were going into computer science then.

Do you have anything more than anecdata for the idea that "If you didn't spend a lot of time with computers on your own before college, you're not in the running."?

I've heard that idea in a lot of places, but it's never matched up with my personal experiences. I did my undergraduate at CMU, and plenty of the better programmers there I knew hadn't done any programming before they came to CMU.

But of course, this too is anecdata.

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

#340

Post by xyzzy4 »

gknoy wrote: post #286
xyzzy4 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Finn is like the new Jar Jar

Finn is nothing like Jar Jar. Finn made me smile and root for him every time I saw him on screen. He was awkward at times (hey, not much social interaction since he was a ST from early childhood), but his heart was always in the right place. I smile when I think of his character, and look forward to seeing him in the next part of the story, EVEN if he's not a Jedi. Jar-Jar makes me cringe when I hear him or look at h…

I disagree.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-character-Finn-Star-Wars-Th...

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