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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

#121

Post by longerthoughts »

ralusek wrote: post #103
longerthoughts wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians As indicated in the article, there's evidence [0] that there is profound underrepresentation at the leadership level relative to junior representation. [0] https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.ascendleadership.org/resource/...

Yes, but again, the assumption is racial discrimination. That is the de facto assumption for every possible case. What about language, or culture, confidence, etc? If you are a foreigner to a country, of which many Asians are either first or second generation, you might be comfortable performing culturally agnostic technical feats, but not at all confident taking a leadership role. Or if we want to entertain that the…

You're dismissing my point and deflecting with something that I neither referenced nor disputed.

You made this claim:

>the "anti-brown people" narrative absolutely dissolves in the face of the massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians.

Nothing you have said constitutes absolute dissolution of this narrative. The one measurable claim you made was overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians, which holds no water in light of drastic underrepresentation at the senior level. After I pointed that out, you responded with why you believe that discrepancy could be justified. How does that constitute irrefutable evidence that the narrative is misguided?

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

#122

Post by dontreact »

ralusek wrote: post #116
dontreact wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone who believes in Claim 1 as you've presented it. There is an alternate version that I do believe "All populations of people are inherently valuable and therefore should not be left behind by advancements in technology" The examples I gave were both cases where it was not obvious at all to predict that the skills would be needed. For example, while the low level circuit designer probably won't benef…

All populations are inherently valuable, to whom? Every business values every population intrinsically? How do you decide how valuable they are? Do you need to hire as many Maori from New Zealand and as many Inuit from Alaska as their world populations would dictate, or are their intrinsic values allowed to differ in any capacity?

Let me rephrase

Individuals are valuable regardless of group memberships. Therefore it makes sense to avoid leaving large groups of people behind, regardless of which group it is.

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

#123

Post by sjg007 »

siruncledrew wrote: post #70
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.

Except when looking at the EEOC report, the numbers they are comparing are percentages of black, hispanic, and women working in tech in Silicon Valley vs. the percentages of those same groups working in all industries (not just tech) in the US. In reality, the tech-tech participation comparison between SV and the US is closer than the article makes it seem. Look at the chart "INDUSTRY PARTICIPATION BY GENDER SEX AND…

The Bloomberg article is either intentionally misleading on where they pulled their stats from OR they used a different table. Regardless the stats don't match the chart you referenced so I am guessing it is a different source. I don't find a straight map for your numbers either.. can you clarify how you got those numbers?

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

#124

Post by dontreact »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #107
dontreact wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Lati…

> Cancer presents differently for different races for example. Ok, but ... you've been talking about Latino as if it is a race. Does the word Latino describe a race or a culture?

That’s a complicated question I don’t have a good answer for. There is definitely a racial component to it though.

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

#125

Post by sylphiae »

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…

I’m a current CS student. When I walked into my school’s CS computer lab, there were about an equal number of female and male students.

I’m also a transfer student. At my previous university, at which I was also a CS major, there were maybe like 5 women to every 15 men in a class.

This isn’t reflected at the tech companies I’ve worked at. There are far fewer women. This article, and articles like these: https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engin..., point out that the number of women graduating do not match the number of women who choose to go into the tech sector, or who remain there.

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

#126

Post by siruncledrew »

sjg007 wrote: post #123
siruncledrew wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when looking at the EEOC report, the numbers they are comparing are percentages of black, hispanic, and women working in tech in Silicon Valley vs. the percentages of those same groups working in all industries (not just tech) in the US. In reality, the tech-tech participation comparison between SV and the US is closer than the article makes it seem. Look at the chart "INDUSTRY PARTICIPATION BY GENDER SEX AND…

The Bloomberg article is either intentionally misleading on where they pulled their stats from OR they used a different table. Regardless the stats don't match the chart you referenced so I am guessing it is a different source. I don't find a straight map for your numbers either.. can you clarify how you got those numbers?

The US numbers I pulled directly from a table in the EEOC report. The EEOC report says the data is from 2014, and the article's charts cite "Latest comparable data as of 2014", so I am not sure why there are minor discrepancies in the article's US numbers unless they didn't use 2014 data.

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

#127

Post by bluedevil2k »

axaxs wrote: post #54
bluedevil2k wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

"overt racism"? I didn't mention race at all in my statement, please calm down SJW. I never said that ALL the top talent is in SV, I said it attracts that kind of talent. Big difference.

If you want to discuss race, let's look at perhaps the best coding college in the United State, MIT. We can probably all agree MIT produces some top talent programmers, right? I know HN is typically anti-college, but I think we can agree on that. 30% Asian, 9% black, and 15% Hispanic. That's 5x higher Asian percentage than the general US population and slightly lower for both black and Hispanic. If that's the pool that companies in SV are pulling from, then of course their diversity numbers won't match the US population as a whole. Look at the colleges near SV too - Caltech (43% Asian), Stanford (22% Asian), Berkley (42%).

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

#128

Post by axaxs »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #127
axaxs wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

"overt racism"? I didn't mention race at all in my statement, please calm down SJW. I never said that ALL the top talent is in SV, I said it attracts that kind of talent. Big difference. If you want to discuss race, let's look at perhaps the best coding college in the United State, MIT. We can probably all agree MIT produces some top talent programmers, right? I know HN is typically anti-college, but I think we can a…

Dude, this statement -

No you probably wouldn't, as Silicon Valley attracts the top X% of the tech population

Could literally be summarized/rephrased as -

Silicon valley doesn't have a lot of black people, because it attracts top talent only.

I do presume you didn't mean it that way, which is why I didn't expand on it. But I want to point out that is the impression given.

One could argue that for a myriad of reasons, probably mostly money(again, for its own reasons), some minorities are underrepresented in the best tech schools and/or do not have the funds to up and move to the coast. That's an absolutely fair assessment. But I wouldn't assume that they are automatically not 'top talent' for those reasons. In my experience, the bay has a pretty low signal to noise ratio. Cheers.

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

#129

Post by philwelch »

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…

Your more general point is argued a little more strongly than I would argue it, but there is a stronger and more limited point against demographic comparisons between tech industry workers and the US population as a whole. That argument is that tech industry workers are hired from a global pool, not a national pool. If the Bay Area tech sector hires 200 Czech engineers in a given month, they increase the number of Czech engineers in the Bay Area tech industry by 200, and they also increase the population of Czech people in the United States by 200. Same numerator, but a different denominator. Purely by mathematical necessity, this directly causes demographic disparities.

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

#130

Post by refurb »

dontreact wrote: post #101
refurb wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my point is that it's diversity of experience/knowledge, not racial diversity that solves those problems.

My point is not that the best way to solve these problems is through racial diversity. My point is that they inevitably crop up due a lack of awareness when you do not have diversity.

Then we disagree. I'd much rather filter based on diversity of thought/experience/knowledge if I'm looking to cover all my gaps, then base it on race where there is a chance you'll end up with group think because they all have similar thoughts/experience/knowledge.
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