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My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

latimes.com

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Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#31

Post by GhettoMaestro »

anon1m0us wrote: post #30
goldcd wrote: post #8

I was happily nodding along, until I got to: "Somehow, he managed to obtain copies of the IBM entrance examination questions and answers, which he surreptitiously shared with promising young black job applicants. He coached them on passing the exam and succeeding in their interviews. Many were subsequently hired." I'm sure this helped contribute to an increase in black hires, but is a stupidly short-sighted thing to…

I honestly don't know what to think of your comment. I will say though, that from a perspective, you are basically saying you read with interest until you found a reason the "stupidly short-sighted" black man shouldn't have been hired. When compared to the reality that almost an entire race of people in North America were stolen from their homes and brought to a new land as slaves to benefit their white owners... any…

Chill out.

The reason the original commenter doesn't like it is because said behavior is cheating. Injecting race as an attribute doesn't change the fact that the behavior is cheating.

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#32

Post by ivanhoe »

darawk wrote: post #14
codingdave wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how it is any different than studying for whiteboard interviews. Especially in a time period when educational opportunities were not equal.

It's a lot different. It's easy to memorize a few answers. It's hard to memorize the entire corpus of material, in ignorance of what might be on the test. Yes, educational opportunities were unequal at the time. No, that does not make this a good way to equalize them.

I don't remember hearing that IBM suffered a huge losses (or any) as a result of this, so could it then be that it wasn't such a big deal?

There's so many variables at play when hiring it's just silly to presume that 100% perfect fairness in tests is of any huge significance to "fairness" of outcome or to maximizing the benefits for a company, especially when compared to the things like racial or other purely personal biases. The idea of "keeping the bar high" is too idealized, as tests and interviews even today just measure how prepared is that person for taking the tests, and not the real world knowledge and abilities. Ultimately what company really cares about is estimating the future performance of that employee, not just the knowledge. People who had to fight hard for a chance to work will often be much better hire and work harder and do more for the company, than someone a little more knowledgeable, but who lacks that kind of drive.

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#33

Post by Buge »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #28
cblum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I found it very dishonest that the author is trying to imply that what happened to Tay was due to developers being biased.

You don’t think developers can program defensively against their ML Twitter bot picking up racism?

Just because a developer doesn't intentionally put in code to block racism doesn't mean the developer is biased.

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#34

Post by zapita »

tasogare wrote: post #7
bluedino wrote: post #2

I was expecting stories from his father, or about his father. Instead, the author talks about IBM's "support" of Nazi Germany and ends with statistics on the low amount of African-Americans employed in the tech industry. Yet the percentage of blacks and non-Asian minorities in high-tech professions consistently remains under 2%. For minority women, the numbers are even more dismal. Recent studies conclude this is not…

> and non-Asian minorities Ah, the classical trick of excluding data points that don't fit the narrative. It's far more convenient to blame the Bad White Man for everything than to ask the real questions.

And what is the real question? Say what you mean.

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#35

Post by [deleted] »

bsanr wrote: post #24
cameronbrown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if the dental schools aren't producing enough minority dentists, those communities may not have access to quality dental care. Sorry, I must have missed the memo that citizens can only visit dentists of the same ethnicity.

You find it difficult to believe that white dentists generally serve the communities they live in, which, by income squared with demographic data, tend to be overwhelmingly white?

[deleted]

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#36

Post by ceejayoz »

tasogare wrote: post #7
bluedino wrote: post #2

I was expecting stories from his father, or about his father. Instead, the author talks about IBM's "support" of Nazi Germany and ends with statistics on the low amount of African-Americans employed in the tech industry. Yet the percentage of blacks and non-Asian minorities in high-tech professions consistently remains under 2%. For minority women, the numbers are even more dismal. Recent studies conclude this is not…

> and non-Asian minorities Ah, the classical trick of excluding data points that don't fit the narrative. It's far more convenient to blame the Bad White Man for everything than to ask the real questions.

Excluding or accounting for outliers is a pretty common thing in statistics.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#37

Post by anon1m0us »

GhettoMaestro wrote: post #31
anon1m0us wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know what to think of your comment. I will say though, that from a perspective, you are basically saying you read with interest until you found a reason the "stupidly short-sighted" black man shouldn't have been hired. When compared to the reality that almost an entire race of people in North America were stolen from their homes and brought to a new land as slaves to benefit their white owners... any…

Chill out. The reason the original commenter doesn't like it is because said behavior is cheating. Injecting race as an attribute doesn't change the fact that the behavior is cheating.

AirBnB doesn't cheat? Uber? Facebook? Cheating and breaking rules is lauded in Silicon Valley, dare I say admired in entrepreneurs.

Black employees though, not so much.

This is racism.

EDIT: Before you start nitpicking my examples: http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

"They delight in breaking rules..."

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#38

Post by dasil003 »

goldcd wrote: post #8

I was happily nodding along, until I got to: "Somehow, he managed to obtain copies of the IBM entrance examination questions and answers, which he surreptitiously shared with promising young black job applicants. He coached them on passing the exam and succeeding in their interviews. Many were subsequently hired." I'm sure this helped contribute to an increase in black hires, but is a stupidly short-sighted thing to…

Your response is confusing to me. His son telling the story 70 years later hardly qualifies as boasting. I'm not sure what is short-sighted about the first black man hired by IBM helping other blacks get hired in an era of not just systematic, but explicit and open racism. Perhaps you're saying it's short-sighted if he got caught or brought in unqualified people, but he was no doubt keenly aware of the stacked deck against him and wanted to help level the playing field for others. This strikes me as more altruistic than short-sighted.

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#39

Post by macspoofing »

povertyworld wrote: post #11
throwawayjava wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge pipeline problem. The only articles I've read claiming there isn't one have all been click bait pieces written by journos, not scientists or educators, and contain no data. Just wild ass speculation about the underlying causes of the pipeline problem. Which, yeah. The pipeline problem has lots of causes. But saying "we don't have a pipeline problem because there are reasons women don't major in CS" ma…

Part of the pipeline problem is that you're not winning over the most high achieving minority students to stem. I remember there was a Mexican American woman in one of my calc classes that was easily the best student and smoked everyone else (granted, it was at a second rate state school), but when asked what she wanted to do, she said she was going to be a dentist. People coming from underrepresented backgrounds don…

Your talented classmate chose a good high-paying profession - what's the problem with being a dentist exactly?

> People coming from underrepresented backgrounds don't want to spend 8 years doing a Phd, then a ML bootcamp, all so they can make low 6 figures at a job that could be outsourced or H1Bed at any minute when they could instead go to medical, dental, or law school and have a respected and well paid career.

OK. So what? I think it's reasonable for people to decide they don't want to spend years in a PhD program.

I'm having trouble parsing your argument. Are you saying the pipeline problem is due to minority students choosing other more lucrative professions? Good! What's wrong with that?

Re: My father was IBM’s first black software engineer

#40

Post by GhettoMaestro »

bsanr wrote: post #26

Here's hoping that HN can buck Law 619 of the Internet: the comment section of all articles which mention data that shows social, economic, or institutional disparities which negatively effect black people will largely be concerned not with the implications of that information, but with questioning the authenticity or reliability of that information; or else, simply with thinly-veiled racism. I'll keep a running list…

You must be awesome to talk with at parties.
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