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For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

bloomberg.com

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Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#11

Post by commandlinefan »

api wrote: post #3
blueadept111 wrote: post #2

wow, it sure is fashionable these days to point your finger and call people racist. Had a rough day? Been confused with someone else? racism.

> Guest after guest walked past the pair of executives to greet their White employee, offer their congratulations and ask how he got the idea for the product. This sort of thing has never, ever happened to me. Nobody has ever suggested that I hire a wingman of a different ethnicity or gender or anything similarly asinine either.

> This sort of thing has never, ever happened to me

Hm - I have had people look past me to talk to my Indian co-workers when asking technical questions: they just assume the Indian guy is the technical one and the white guy is the business manager.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#12

Post by dang »

luckylion wrote: post #7
dang wrote: post #5

This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've turned off the flags. I understand the impulse to flag follow-up stories [1], especially on the hottest controversies of the moment, which always produce a flood of articles, most of which aren't very good. Curiosity and repetition don't go together [2]. But it's important to recognize the articles that are higher than median quality a…

> This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do. It…

I don't think any of these arguments works in this case.

(a) HN has had many good submissions from bloomberg.com (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We go by article quality, not site quality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). There's nothing hard to believe about this article. If there were, the solution would be to provide correct information or specific counterarguments. Obviously we're not going to ban bloomberg.com.

(b) I addressed this point thoroughly in the comment you're replying to.

(c) You probably shouldn't complain about the comment section's interestingness while contributing to lowering it. It remains to be seen how interesting this thread will end up being. One reason we try to focus on the most substantive articles is that they usually lead to better comments.

(d) Plenty of users, to judge by upvotes, find this article interesting. Those who flagged it presumably didn't. The tug of war between upvotes and flags is one of the axes around which HN turns. It works surprisingly well, but it's not perfect. It has failure modes, and human intervention is the only way to address them.

(e) HN is a moderated/curated/however you want to call it kind of site. It always has been. HN's system is built out of three subsystems: the community, the software, and moderation. They interact in complex feedback loops. All three are necessary and all three have their limits.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#13

Post by AlexandrB »

luckylion wrote: post #7
dang wrote: post #5

This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've turned off the flags. I understand the impulse to flag follow-up stories [1], especially on the hottest controversies of the moment, which always produce a flood of articles, most of which aren't very good. Curiosity and repetition don't go together [2]. But it's important to recognize the articles that are higher than median quality a…

> This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do. It…

> they don't find it as interesting as you do

I thought the remedy for this was not upvoting rather than flagging.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#14

Post by kgraves »

luckylion wrote: post #7
dang wrote: post #5

This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've turned off the flags. I understand the impulse to flag follow-up stories [1], especially on the hottest controversies of the moment, which always produce a flood of articles, most of which aren't very good. Curiosity and repetition don't go together [2]. But it's important to recognize the articles that are higher than median quality a…

> This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do. It…

s/hackernews/dangnews/

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#15

Post by anewdirection »

dang wrote: post #5

This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've turned off the flags. I understand the impulse to flag follow-up stories [1], especially on the hottest controversies of the moment, which always produce a flood of articles, most of which aren't very good. Curiosity and repetition don't go together [2]. But it's important to recognize the articles that are higher than median quality a…

I flagged it because it is an article written to promote further bias, while under the guise of 'exposing racism'. If you think promoting race politics is the goal of HN, I will find a different forum. My time in SV could not have been more different than what this boased article proports. Fuck identity politics and fuck bloomberg, and fuck you for promoting this drivel.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#16

Post by wbronitsky »

luckylion wrote: post #7
dang wrote: post #5

This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've turned off the flags. I understand the impulse to flag follow-up stories [1], especially on the hottest controversies of the moment, which always produce a flood of articles, most of which aren't very good. Curiosity and repetition don't go together [2]. But it's important to recognize the articles that are higher than median quality a…

> This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do. It…

> b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month

I would urge people to stop and question that if they are tired of the "billion"s of stories about BIPOC, what must BIPOC be feeling about their systemic erasure from many facets of our society, including journalism and entrepreneurship. This article allows us to think about and discuss those issues.

The article is not hard to believe, is one of substance that I find interesting, and the content of the comment section is not the only arbiter of what should go on Hacker News.

I would suggest that Occam's Razor is a better tool here; a small number of people who want to silence the idea the article presents are trying to silence it.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#17

Post by luckylion »

dang wrote: post #12
luckylion wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do. It…

I don't think any of these arguments works in this case. (a) HN has had many good submissions from bloomberg.com ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). We go by article quality, not site quality ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... ). There's nothing hard to believe about this article. If there were, the solution would be to provide correct information or spe…

You'll probably see that the Bloomberg articles you reference are news reports, not original research/opinion.

Don't forget that Bloomberg regularly and knowingly spreads literal fake news, for example the whole "Huawei bugged Vodafone's equipment" debacle.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#18

Post by dang »

luckylion wrote: post #17
dang wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of these arguments works in this case. (a) HN has had many good submissions from bloomberg.com ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). We go by article quality, not site quality ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... ). There's nothing hard to believe about this article. If there were, the solution would be to provide correct information or spe…

You'll probably see that the Bloomberg articles you reference are news reports, not original research/opinion. Don't forget that Bloomberg regularly and knowingly spreads literal fake news, for example the whole "Huawei bugged Vodafone's equipment" debacle.

This article is original reporting. They interviewed 20 black tech leaders. The people they're quoting could hardly be more credible.

There are just as many reasons to dismiss every other large media outlet. You may have a bee in your bloomberg bonnet, but there are just as many bees in NYT bonnets and all the other bonnets. Obviously we're not going to ban all those sites; what we're going to do instead, hopefully, is pick the best articles and discuss them thoughtfully. Shallow/generic site dismissals aren't that, so please stop.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#19

Post by duxup »

luckylion wrote: post #7
dang wrote: post #5

This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've turned off the flags. I understand the impulse to flag follow-up stories [1], especially on the hottest controversies of the moment, which always produce a flood of articles, most of which aren't very good. Curiosity and repetition don't go together [2]. But it's important to recognize the articles that are higher than median quality a…

> This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do. It…

> because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe

I don't buy into this theory that all Bloomberg content must be difficult to believe by default. There have been bad articles but I don't see a reason to automatically discount all articles.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#20

Post by luckylion »

wbronitsky wrote: post #16
luckylion wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an interesting and in-depth article that was inappropriately flagged. I've switched off the flags. Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do. It…

> b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month I would urge people to stop and question that if they are tired of the "billion"s of stories about BIPOC, what must BIPOC be feeling about their systemic erasure from many facets of our society, including journalism and entrepreneurship. This article allows us to think about and discuss those issues. The article is not hard to believe, is one…

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