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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

#141

Post by Balgair »

ralusek wrote: post #135
Balgair wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My beliefs aside [0], you do bring up a good point. I can't find the HN thread, but there was a good TEDx presentation on it as well: Given two curves on the same graph, you are not guaranteed to be able to min/max them simultaneously. For example: say you are a mortgage broker at a bank and you have to give out mortgages to people in your community. Obviously, the people in your community are diverse. There are men,…

If the bank does not take race or gender into its decision-making process, it is not subject to race/gender discrimination. Period. If the outcome produced is that people of a certain race or gender receive more or less loans, that does not mean that there is anything wrong with that system. The banks isolated system is not at all discriminatory, it just receives different inputs that happen to differ, on average, be…

I mean, this is kinda the point.

No matter what you do, you'll be discriminatory (to a very high likelihood). Even if you don't look at the break-downs of your data, you will be discriminating against some group or another. It is incredibly unlikely that you can max/min two curves at once, let alone for all the classes, races, sexes, castes, genders, etc. that exist.

I agree that root causes should be addressed first and is the best use of time and resources. However, that's not how journalists see it. They see a red-meat story and they go with it.

Federal investigators, journalists, community organizers, etc don't really care what metrics the banks are using/not-using, they care about the results. And I'm saying that there will very nearly always be discrimination if you use nearly any metric. And that's not a bad thing. Being in a Catch-22 is part of life. Trying to get out of one is the thing that matters.

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

#142

Post by haberman »

dontreact wrote: post #93
haberman wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that we all have blind spots and that diversity in decision-makers can help correct these. If this principle was applied consistently across any dimension where such blind spots are likely to exist, I would be on board. However when some axes of diversity are elevated over others, based not on likeliness of blind spots but rather on unrelated grievances ("historically marginalized subgroups"), the whole exerc…

I think gender, race, class, and sexual orientation are probably the most important dimensions. I gave very specific reasons why race is important in my field of medicine, and I don't know why you think I am highlighting it as an important dimension because of historical marginalization. What are other ones that should be as elevated?

I think I drew that conclusion because you mentioned marginalization four times.

I think political orientation leads to lots of blind spots. If it is important that businesses have representation of their user-base, I think diversity of political opinion is a natural axis to consider.

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

#143

Post by deogeo »

philwelch wrote: post #132
deogeo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Approximately 1/3 of the world population is either Chinese or Indian. Probably even more if you consider only countries with a certain minimum level of economic development.

Do you mean to imply we should be using world population statistics to judge if US companies are sufficiently diverse? Because by that standard, we could judge the US itself, by not reflecting global demographics in its population, to not be doing enough to advance minorities.

Minorities by US standards, since otherwise white people would also be a minority, and not even the largest one, depending on how you define 'white'.

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

#144

Post by jonathankoren »

ralusek wrote: post #108
jonathankoren wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suggestions to anonymize the interview process typically produce results that are even less representative of their desired distribution, because almost every company is actively discriminating in favor of women and "marginalized communities." Two citations needed. I've been on hiring committees for years, at both very large, and very small companies. I've hired and rejected both men and women. I've never seen a "d…

If we're doing anecdotal, I have been in many hiring processes and have been told to favor diversity. If you want the most recent one from memory: https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positio... https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wi... http://fortune.com/2018/09/25/brainstorm-reinvent-mellody-ho... Blind/anonymized hiring (which I am in favor of and would love to see advocated)…

All you need for a political controversy is for a group to perceive themselves as losers. The merits, are completely immaterial to whether a controversy exists or not. Some guy gets passed over for promotion, and he looks for a scapegoat, suddenly there's a controversy.

As far as a lawsuit being filed, I'll reserve judgement until the case plays out, thanks.

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

#145

Post by philwelch »

deogeo wrote: post #143
philwelch wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately 1/3 of the world population is either Chinese or Indian. Probably even more if you consider only countries with a certain minimum level of economic development.

Do you mean to imply we should be using world population statistics to judge if US companies are sufficiently diverse? Because by that standard, we could judge the US itself, by not reflecting global demographics in its population, to not be doing enough to advance minorities . Minorities by US standards, since otherwise white people would also be a minority, and not even the largest one, depending on how you define…

> Do you mean to imply we should be using world population statistics to judge if US companies are sufficiently diverse?

Nah, I'm just saying that the tech industry hires from a global pool of candidates, and it's not entirely surprising that a bunch of them are from China and India. If a bunch of them were from Malta and Andorra, that might be weird, but it isn't so.

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

#146

Post by andrewmcwatters »

sctb wrote: post #137
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing is a bullshit joke to begin with; it's always a complaint about diversity in jobs perceived to have status, but never jobs that are not. No complaints about diversity in fast food. No complaints about diversity in landscaping or construction.

We've asked you countless times to stop breaking the guidelines, so we've banned the account. > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No, you've just asked me to not have differing opinions. Of course, when it's convenient for others to express theirs in similar language, as long as it's not the wrong opinion, it's quite fine.

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

#147

Post by dontreact »

haberman wrote: post #142
dontreact wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think gender, race, class, and sexual orientation are probably the most important dimensions. I gave very specific reasons why race is important in my field of medicine, and I don't know why you think I am highlighting it as an important dimension because of historical marginalization. What are other ones that should be as elevated?

I think I drew that conclusion because you mentioned marginalization four times. I think political orientation leads to lots of blind spots. If it is important that businesses have representation of their user-base, I think diversity of political opinion is a natural axis to consider.

I think I agree with this. But I don’t think you need proportional representation, only representation. I think the percentage of people who vote republican is probably well north of 10% for most of GAFA, and if it’s not it’s worth looking into why.

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

#148

Post by sjg007 »

siruncledrew wrote: post #126
sjg007 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't find your numbers in the link you provided. Can you point me to the table you referenced?

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

#149

Post by belorn »

dontreact wrote: post #51
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 Lati…

Diversity in medical training data is important, through it is much more complex than getting "US, Europe, Asia and Latin America". A EU citizen in the south will have complete different set of environment to a citizen of the far north. Using climate zone classification, EU has both Temperate (mesothermal) climate and on the opposite end Polar and alpine (montane) climates. One place where the sun never goes up for part of the year, and an other where people go to beaches for vacations in the sun. Medicine that involve D-vitamin, sleep, cancer risks and a lot more is greatly effected by the latitude, which is part of the combination that is genes and environment. In the end you need a multidimensional matrix with everything from environment to genes, such as ethnic groups, gender, climate, culture and so on. If you are doing something which is similar to scientific studies then there is also an error margin in the data collection, such as in ancestry, and the error rate differ from country to country. Treating EU as a single group is plain terrible from a representation perspective.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/K%C3%B6p...

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

#150

Post by felinista »

xamuel wrote: post #104
felinista wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this what I said? Some straw man. What I said was we should we work towards removing any obstacles underrepresented groups may face when trying to enter STEM careers. Plenty of research that supports the existence of such obstacles and the higher drop out rates of these groups even after having a go at pursuing a career in a STEM field (particularly in tech - https://hbr.org/2016/09/what-it-will-take-to-keep-women…

You said: "If certain groups shy away from STEM careers, why not try to do something about it?" You didn't say "If certain groups are blocked by obstacles...", you said "If certain groups shy away from". We should respect all peoples' rights to choose their own destinies. As someone who enjoys sitting behind a computer monitor more than half my waking life, I'm solidly in the minority. No amount of derogatory school…

You do you.
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