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No the point of the article is they didn't hold them in the same esteem as Harvard and Stanford. Which seems...fine?
That's not what the article said: It said they considered them "long-tail" institutions (below even state schools) that they basically wouldn't hire from.
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> The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up. I don't disagree with the substance of your comment, but it's worth pointing out that Alphabet is a company with a $1,416,000,000,000 market cap. If any non-governmental entity could be said to have the resources to address "systemic issues" at the root, it…
Do you really want a giant multinationals addressing issues normally handled by the state? Do you really want google to be so involved in education and housing? Is that's whats wrong with our politics, not enough corporate influence? I just want google to provide me reasonable search results, respect my privacy and follow all applicable laws.
> whats wrong with our politics
Lobbyists, the need for fundraising by officials putting them in the pockets and interests of corporations and entities... do we really want to go there? Corporations and entities have incredible influence in politics; to not acknowledge this would be disingenuous. Politics is driven by money, idealism be damned, and Alphabet has a lot of this. Why shouldn't one expect them (well, their subsidiary, Google) to back up what they said?
To be fair, I also understand where you're coming from. I'm from a privileged socioeconomic class, from a tech industry perspective. So it's easy for me to say "I don't want to get into the politics because it doesn't affect me; all I want is reasonable search results and for them to leave me alone". We have (or were able to earn because we had the resources) the baseline privileges and advantages in life that enable us to have this attitude. But some groups still don't, and it's my belief (and hopefully, society's someday) that we should effectively (not just rhetorically or trivially) give them the pathways to level the playing field.
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That's not what the article said: It said they considered them "long-tail" institutions (below even state schools) that they basically wouldn't hire from.
"Basically wouldn't hire from" isn't a characterization consistent with the remainder of the article. A Howard spokeswoman said that Google's hired 119 interns and 30 graduates since 2017
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> In lieu of a tier, Google’s University Programs recruiting division, responsible for forging partnerships with universities, labeled [HBCUs] “long tail” schools, in reference to the fact that it could take a long time before they would produce a large number of graduates qualified to work at Google, according to the Google employees.
...
> At the time, the 16-year-old company had not hired a single HBCU computer science graduate into an entry-level software engineer role, according to a 2013 document.
I think "basically wouldn't hire from" is a fair characterization of hiring zero for 16 years, and only a handful since then. (And no, interns are not hires).
Why are we expecting these companies (or anyone) to fix all problems. The fix is simple. Focus on your own home and yourself first. Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise. Sure there is systemic stuff out there - but it’s 2021 and you have a choice…
Wow, I'm glad you have the program down for all the low income people. Why don't they pick themselves up by their bootstraps (which, incidentally, is physically impossible).
> Teach kids at home
Assumes your parents are educated and have time. Neither of my parents passed the 10th grade. What were they supposed to teach me precisely?
> Be more involved with them
Hard to do when my parents worked jobs and had to rely on public transportation and/or bicycles to get to work. Hard to be really involved with your kid when you continually face 12+ days just to make slightly-above minimum wage
> Teach them to take responsibility
What does this even mean? "Sure little Johnny. That company says you weren't a 'culture add.' Now take responsibility, internalize that and... do whatever it is that would make you a culture add. Who knows?"
> "Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans."
Hi there. I get paid 6 figures at a FAANG and I triple majored in liberal arts. It's not that degrees are 'silly.' It's that business has a narrow view of what's important.
My team is full of people with Master's degrees. Other than the military vets, I'm the only person without a master's degree. They all ask me how I quickly diagnose problems.
Pro tip: It's because my silly bachelor's taught me how to critically think and synthesize disparate pieces of information into a coherent whole. Their 'prestigious' degrees taught them how to write C++ and Java. Neither of those skills are useful on my team.
> "Do more STEM"
Not everyone does well in STEM, nor does tech require a heavy STEM background. Also, it's a little difficult to get help on trigonometry when your parents are under educated.
> "Start a small business."
Creating small businesses take time and money. So does your 'Teach your kids more' and 'be more involved with them'. Where are you going to find all this extra time?
Not to mention you have to have some cushion failures in business. If you don't have generational wealth (which people who go to HBCU's typically don't), creating a small business is a perilous enterprise that can ruin you easier than it can pull you out of poverty.
> "Eat better food"
Takes more money (non-processed food is by in large more expensive) and time (non-processed food has to be cooked). So that's 4 things that take more time.
> "Exercise"
The fifth thing that takes more time.
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Where are low income families supposed to get all this extra time when they're spending most of their time simply trying to make it to the next paycheck?
This advise may make a good self-help book. You might even make a bit of money (see how successful Dale Carnegie got with his tripe!). But simple fix ignores the realities of growing up in a generationaly poor family with under-educated parents.
[1] How to pretend systemic racism does not exist? (with eng subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg
[2] Let's talk about what it's like to be a black person in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8mWq0Hdcw
[3] Let's talk about being armed and black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_IX8yX_JU
[4] How cops are trained to shoot you in your home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuzQrbio2Qw
Other resources include James Baldwin's books and documentaries. His 'The Fire Next Time' is just 120 pages [5].
'The Price of the Ticket' and 'I Am Not Your Negro' are good documentaries [6][7].
[5] https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/06797...
[6] https://www.amazon.com/James-Baldwin-Price-Ticket/dp/B01M25W...
[7] https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T
[8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc
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"Basically wouldn't hire from" isn't a characterization consistent with the remainder of the article. A Howard spokeswoman said that Google's hired 119 interns and 30 graduates since 2017
> Some schools such as Stanford University and MIT were predictably in the “elite” category, while state schools or institutions that churn out thousands of engineering grads annually, such as Georgia Tech, were assigned to “tier 1” or “tier 2.” ... > In lieu of a tier, Google’s University Programs recruiting division, responsible for forging partnerships with universities, labeled [HBCUs] “long tail” schools, in ref…
it just goes to show when you make your bed with an alligator, it eventually eats you too.
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I would probably be hesitant to hire someone from an HBCU because I would think that being immersed in an environment of only certain kind of persons makes you ill adapted to deal with the variety you'll find in the wider world. Also, when an institution defines itself by some characteristic like color, to me it signals that academics is not its primary concern. HBCUs had an important purpose at one time, but today b…
I assume you would also be hesitant to hire someone who went to a school like Wellesley then, as well?
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I quite disagree, but it’s fair to say that the issue of how to close gaps between Black and white people is a complicated one with no clear answers. What’s more important here is that lots of affluent Black people disagree with you—and therefore attend and send their kids to HBCUs. If Google, etc., want to recruit more Black people, the answer can’t be to overlook HBCUs based on conclusions about whether “they remai…
Companies like Google can afford to hire the best. They do that by getting people from top end CS schools like Stanford, CMU, Berkeley and other relevant schools for non CS work. HBCUs are simply not in the top tier and don't produce developers that will be worth $200,000 a year. It's not because they're black colleges but because they're not in the top 1 percent.
In fact, I’d say it’s the only saving grace of Leetcode, that it doesn’t discriminate on any level. The great equalizer.
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The article says that the kid was absent or late for 272 days in 3 years. That's over 50% of school days. Regardless of whether the school had made the mandated phone call about absence issues to the kid's mother, "the school failed him" would not be the first phrase I would use to describe the situation. It's possible that the school did fail him; maybe he was bullied and going to school was unbearable! But if that…
An important reason it's a school failure story is that the 0.13 GPA all those absences earned him was 50th percentile (!!) at the school. In some sense the guy should have gone to class, but he's an impressionable high schooler, and it seems clear the school was setting an expectation that you don't really have to.