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Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

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Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#61

Post by Traster »

brabel wrote: post #7

Currently, the USA population is 60.4% white [1]. So, whites are under-represented in big tech (50.1% white according to this post) while over-represented significantly in tech journalism (80% white). That's difficult to understand: why is there such a bias in favour of white people in tech jornalism, but not in tech in general?? [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states-po...

Because if you look at the actual data from the big tech companies there is literally 1 very obvious reason that all groups are under-represented. Because the "Asian" group in most big tech companies is about as big as the "White" group despite being a faaar smaller part of the population.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#62

Post by throwaway192874 »

Traster wrote: post #24

Some of this looks quite.... questionable, and ironically for people that spend so much of their time attacking "the media", this authors would do well to learn something about journalism, and some of it seems downright disingenous. For example, the author talks about representation and talks about that in terms of percentage of white people hired in big tech, but if you dig in to those numbers you find out that basi…

> Why have we chosen these 13 random publications? I'm assuming that the NYT is included literally just because the people who did this study don't like the NYT?

These are some of the biggest media publications that write about tech issues, these aren't just "random" choices. This author seems to focus on "big tech media" as is mentioned in the article multiple times, these are big tech media, independent journalists are not.

Anecdotal, but I know every one of them off the top of my head, I've personally never heard of AnandTech and had to google it.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#64

Post by twofornone »

beaconstudios wrote: post #58
adwn wrote: post #13

Where's my PC Bullshit Bingo (TM) card? I need to cross off a couple of fields: 1) reducing "diversity" to "different skin colors" 2) fixating on the Third-Reich-esque concept of "human race" 3) insisting that skin colors can be neatly sorted into 4-5 discrete categories 4) lamenting the ratio between these categories, without stating what the correct ratio should be, and why

> fixating on the Third-Reich-esque concept of "human race" what does this mean? I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure the Third Reich was focused on the "German race", to the exclusion of all others. As for ratios, the ratio indicates an uneven pipeline. If idk, programmers were all white and highly rewarded, you might ask why that is. The reason can be one of two things: white people are culturally/systemically adv…

>white people are culturally/systemically advantaged in getting those jobs (for example, those jobs are only available in predominantly-white areas or the education to do the job is more accessible to white people), or white people are more fundamentally capable of programming than others. The former is a social critique, the latter is white supremacy.

Or: "white" culture emphasizes values that tend to produce people who are more interested and/or more capable programmers. The same way that, say, asian immigrants are more likely to value education than other demographics. This white supremacy argument is a disingenuous appeal to the extremely negative connotation of the term and poisons the argument with a dishonest framing, as though the only possible outcome in a perfect meritocracy is equal representation. Nothing about human nature suggests this to be the case.

Diversity of opinion also implies diversity of interests. The pipeline problem is not merely a question of unequal opportunity, unless you deny minorities the agency to pursue their own interests. Some groups of people value athletic achievement above intellectual achievement, and it would be unreasonable to expect those demographics to produce a proportional number of competent programmers.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#65

Post by dahfizz »

whimsicalism wrote: post #32
quadrifoliate wrote: post #10

Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity. I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "E…

This hits the nail on the head. All of my friends who are in the process of becoming journalists have to spend tons of time working unpaid shitty internships just to get a low paying bottom rung job. The only people I know who are even able to get jobs like this either have parents in the industry or have rich parents, often both. This is also true for the humanities in academia writ large - most of the people I know…

The cause is pretty obvious: journalists and other humanities do not pay well. People are not willing to pay for the garbage modern journalists put out, so there is not much money in the field. The only people going into the field, therefore, are those who are independently rich (rich parents) and ideologically motivated (which further reduces the quality of modern journalism).

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#66

Post by skulk »

rayiner wrote: post #60
quadrifoliate wrote: post #10

Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity. I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "E…

> Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity. This is one of my concerns about the recent antipathy toward standardized testing. My family came ov…

What do you think about the system on the subcontinent? I'm not sure how it's done in Bangladesh, but in India your higher education is basically decided by your score on a few objective measures which are orders of magnitude more difficult than the SAT.

It's actually mind-boggling how much harder IIT JEE math is compared to SAT math.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#67

Post by beaconstudios »

twofornone wrote: post #64
beaconstudios wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fixating on the Third-Reich-esque concept of "human race" what does this mean? I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure the Third Reich was focused on the "German race", to the exclusion of all others. As for ratios, the ratio indicates an uneven pipeline. If idk, programmers were all white and highly rewarded, you might ask why that is. The reason can be one of two things: white people are culturally/systemically adv…

>white people are culturally/systemically advantaged in getting those jobs (for example, those jobs are only available in predominantly-white areas or the education to do the job is more accessible to white people), or white people are more fundamentally capable of programming than others. The former is a social critique, the latter is white supremacy. Or: "white" culture emphasizes values that tend to produce people…

I agree; I'm not saying that a perfectly fair system would produce ratios identical to demographics. There's always going to be cultural aspects (though the degree to which black and white culture in America are separate is obviously a large part a consequence of racism and slavery). The point is only to use the outcome as a heuristic for what to look into.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#68

Post by mjburgess »

whimsicalism wrote: post #57
mjburgess wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better to read this as just a form of "genuine politics" in the sense that it's one group saying they want more resources than they have. Here, the message is basically: our people want more of what your people have. ("Proper ratios" arent the point). This is what most of these movements are about, a certain type of economic-political warefare most accute when high-status positions are rare and there's a lot of…

HN is such an idiosyncratic place. You could frame any number of struggles this way and feel smug about being "above it all." "our people want more of what your people have." -> What "your people have" could be freedom from slavery in 1864, ability to attend the same schools, etc. etc. Framing it in this way does not make the argument less compelling and I have no idea why you think that race-based discrimination is…

I think it's an anti-smug move: the point is we are all "within it all".

Yes, we could talk about systemic racism etc. That is why one might engage in a lot of political projects. However a highly specific demand about ratios in upper-middle-class high-status industries... these specific demands are a little harder to parse.

The #metoo movement was not about the masses in the industry, it was about the elites. The academic "fire them" movements (eg., against pinker) are likewise not about the army of PhDs and their sexism. Rather these are intra-elite warfare using somewhat valid grounds to wage an attack on resource-horders.

I agreed that these groups have justifiable reasons to make demands; that's partly my point. The issue, where it exists, it their methods.

It is very easy to become cynical and take these demands "too literally" as demands for quotas, and for reinstitutionalising racism "as a corrective".

Rather, it is better to see them as the same ordinary politics everyone both engages in, and is entitled to engage in.

As for the "theology" that refers to the particular dogmatic moralising and evangelising approach taken, and the frequently dubious premises.

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#69

Post by Jensson »

whimsicalism wrote: post #50
aspaceman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By talking about policies that uplift the poor generally. And worker friendly policies all around. If more black people are poor, then more black people will be helped by such policies. If we want to help the poor, let's help the poor. If we only help the "black poor" we have to precisely codify what being black is, and I'm sick of such race science. The argument that being black implies the need of additional help i…

> If more black people are poor, then more black people will be helped by such policies. If we want to help the poor, let's help the poor. But I don't think the causes of poverty are universal, and for lots of black people, they are racially driven. Discussing policies around the "poor generally" while banning discussion of race means abdicating any attempts at integrating schools, means that it is impossible to addr…

> It seems ridiculous to me that the solution is to stop discussing race at all in a country that had legally enshrined anti-black discrimination within living memory.

You can make it illegal to discriminate against black people without creating a race database of every single worker in the country. Requiring every employer to ask every applicant "what kind of human race are you?" is so dumb that you can't make that up, asking applicants what race they are should be illegal but instead USA requires you to do it! That is like requiring every employer to ask every woman if they are pregnant or not and then report those statistics to the government, since how else can you ensure that pregnant women aren't discriminated against? It is almost as if the policy was made to encourage discrimination and white supremacy, but it is fine since you say you do it for good!

Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

#70

Post by akavi »

xondono wrote: post #38
Fordec wrote: post #14

I would contend that, while a subset, GAMMA companies != all tech companies as the headline implies

Off topic, but I feel obligated to comment each time I see the “GAMMA” acronym. We either change according to parent company, and then we need to take the G and put an A. Or we don’t and leave the F. GAMMA makes no sense.

FAANG started as a stock ticker acronym. Facebook's stock ticker's now $mtvs, Google's is still $goog/$googl.

That's a justification at least.

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