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Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

bloomberg.com

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Re: Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

#51

Post by dontreact »

ralusek wrote: post #8

For the millionth time. The distribution of populations not lining up with the general population distributions is not indicative of discrimination. Not to mention that the "anti-brown people" narrative absolutely dissolves in the face of the massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians. To say that Silicon Valley has a "race problem" and only include the employment statistics as they relate to the populati…

To me the issue is not discrimination but rather representation. I will give you a concrete example. Our team (working in medicine) had very few Latinos for a long time. As a result of this we completely avoided gathering training data from Latin America because no one was well versed in how to conduct business there, yet we had data/deals with US, Europe and Asia. As a result our algorithms will likely not help Latin America and Latino Americans as much. This then perpetuates marginalization because it could lead to worse health outcomes for Latinos.

Why the dimension of race and not other dimensions? It is a real dimension with cultural and medical significance. Cancer presents differently for different races for example.

When you have large pseudo monopolies it is important to have diverse groups of people running them to avoid effects like this that can make marginalization worse.

Another classic example is voice recognition and accents. By not having more Spanish speakers at a company, if your company makes a voice recognition product it is easy to have blind spots. Your product may fail for those with an accent, and you won’t notice or think to measure along those dimensions.

I agree, however, that strictly proportional representation is not important. However promoting diversity is important and when you have numbers like 3 or 7 percent it’s easy to end up with large, important sub teams with no representation for historically marginalized subgroups. And this can lead to worse products, especially when looked at from the point of view of marginalized subgroups.

The main point of the article is that it is pretty sketchy to be hiding these numbers

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

#53

Post by rndgermandude »

felinista wrote: post #9

If lack of diversity isn't a problem, why aren't these companies open with their figures? Why go to such extents? There's also research to suggest women and minorities are underpaid relative to their male, white counterparts, shouldn't companies fix that?

You're lumping in two different issues: (perceived) lack of diversity on the gender and/or minority axis (or black/Hispanics really, as Asian minorities are well represented it seems), and companies underpaying certain groups.

Actually, if you can pay women and minorities less for the same job and get away with it so far, and the abusive companies do just that, I'd guess those abusive companies would hire more, not less, people of those groups to "save" even more money.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

#54

Post by axaxs »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #33
sjg007 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article cites data from the government on percentages of black, hispanic, and women in tech in Silicon Valley vs those same populations in tech nationwide. You would expect the percentages to be statistically equal.

No you probably wouldn't, as Silicon Valley attracts the top X% of the tech population due to the pay, the status of the companies hiring, VC money floating around, etc.

Ignoring the overt racism in this statement, it's just not true. I'll agree that a decent percentage of the top X percent are in the bay area due to pay, but nothing close to all of them. Saying so is an insult to developers not only nationwide, but worldwide...

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

#55

Post by deogeo »

vinceiiikensin wrote: post #42
ralusek wrote: post #8

For the millionth time. The distribution of populations not lining up with the general population distributions is not indicative of discrimination. Not to mention that the "anti-brown people" narrative absolutely dissolves in the face of the massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians. To say that Silicon Valley has a "race problem" and only include the employment statistics as they relate to the populati…

I once went on an interview to Uber in Palo Alto. At lunchtime, when we went to the cafeteria, I saw most of the 200+ workers were either Chinese or Indian, sitting in their prospective table. Same with LinkedIn and workday in Santa Clara. I don’t see any racisms in Silicon Valley

If most were either Chinese or Indian, then they were greatly over-represented compared to US demographics. If you replace Chinese with white, it'd be taken as a sign of racism and privilege. So why isn't it racism in this case?

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

#56

Post by jonathankoren »

crististm wrote: post #12
hmate9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. Look at the diversity of CS courses at top universities. If minorities and females are not represented there then how can you expect companies who hire top talent to have them?

Male and female representation is also a function of domain interest. Last time I checked there were not that many women applications in brick layering.

So what changed in 1984?

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

#57

Post by air7 »

darawk wrote: post #7

More like journalism is using race to hide its jealousy problem. Tech now has the power, influence, and compensation that journalist used to have, and they're mad about it. Most of these companies go way out of their way to recruit minorities and women. If you believe that not having enough of them in tech companies is a problem, you're going to have to look further down the funnel, to college major choices and hones…

What if there isn't a pipeline problem? What if there is an actual difference in preference? For example, looking at gender and STEM it seems that [0]:

a. Countries that push for more gender equality see less women in STEM.

b. Girls in school perform just as well as boys in STEM.

Also, men are also highly over-represented in low-end jobs such as drivers, construction, mechanics etc [1]. Is that also a sign to a bias/pipeline problem? Should we attempt to strive for diversity in those fields too?

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

#59

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

darawk wrote: post #7

More like journalism is using race to hide its jealousy problem. Tech now has the power, influence, and compensation that journalist used to have, and they're mad about it. Most of these companies go way out of their way to recruit minorities and women. If you believe that not having enough of them in tech companies is a problem, you're going to have to look further down the funnel, to college major choices and hones…

At a company I worked at they hired an young female intern in her late high school years, who made it obvious she didn't really want to be there. Our project manager made sure to tell us to "make programming seem as interesting as possible to her". When I was 17, I would have killed for an opportunity to work at a software company, and so would many other young kids.

It's time for the world to admit, there's reasons why some people are naturally pulled towards one discipline or another.

I have a 3 year old daughter, and I'd love to teach her math and programming. I sat her in front of the computer with me to get her interested and devised lots of fun math based games to play with her. But, no matter how fun I make the material, she's just not into counting things. "daddy, I don't want to count anymore" (after just a few tries) Stories about princesses and reading/writing however, this she can listen to all day long. I'm certainly not giving up on teaching her programming but you have to admit it when certain types make it clear their not into it.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem

#60

Post by whyaduck »

ingsoc79 wrote: post #43
darawk wrote: post #7

More like journalism is using race to hide its jealousy problem. Tech now has the power, influence, and compensation that journalist used to have, and they're mad about it. Most of these companies go way out of their way to recruit minorities and women. If you believe that not having enough of them in tech companies is a problem, you're going to have to look further down the funnel, to college major choices and hones…

One look at the website of Seattle's Garfield High School (34% black/latino) CS Club website pretty much sums it up: http://www.garfieldcs.com/ The makeup is similar at the college level: sitting in on CS courses at UW you see a sea of white, east asian, and south asian faces. I can count the number of black or latino students (out of the several hundred enrolled students I saw) on two hands. It's a pipeline problem,…

And corporate diversity goals are based on the pipeline, not the general population. Lots of folks in this conversation seem to be making utterly incorrect assumptions about programs that they seem to have deep contempt for. Unsurprising.
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