Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by 1cvmask » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

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…

When you are privileged you have no extra weight or leg up over someone else on standardized tests. That’s why it is the privileged elite who decry tests and call for “diversity.” Under the guise and mask of diversity they try to maintain and entrench their privilege while giving the occasional breadcrumbs to the truly historically disadvantaged.

I can’t for the life of me understand how the daughter of Bill Gates is the same as a poor African American from the ghetto.

Diversity initiatives are almost always a subterfuge or false flag operation.

-

Diversity apparently includes fencing and rowing at most elite colleges. Just another filter with the benefit of virtue signaling and posturing.

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

#142

Post by orangepurple » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #112

whimsicalism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems extremely premature given the massive disparities that still exist today racially. The average wealth of a black family in Boston is $8 whereas the average wealth of a white family is about $200,000. How do we talk about these disparities if we throw away the language to talk about race? Or is your argument that these disparities are innate? Or that they are not at all due to the legacy of explicitly race…

What’s the correct wealth for white and black families? If you say “I don’t know, but it needs to be closer” that’s just in group preference - which is fine, but don’t present that statistic as evidence of anything but a disparity. You need to prove (while accounting for all confounds) that this gap is a result of x.

Affirmative Action and the Black Experience in America (October 01, 2009)

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...

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

#143

Post by ghaff » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #137

ghaff wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A journalism degree is by no means a pre-requisite to working as a journalist. In fact, a fair number of people would argue it's a negative relative to real-world experience. I'm not sure any of the working tech journalists I know have a J-school degree.

How do they become journalists? Straight out of high school? Or there are non-university shorter courses they need to take? I always thought that you even had to take an oauth to be a journalist, as the impact of the profession can affect the public opinion and therefore comes with a good amount of responsibility. To think someone without any qualifications can just start writing for credible news outlets seems quite…

By journalism degree/J-school, I was referring to the (essentially) masters degree in journalism that universities like Columbia offer.

The more typical route in my experience is that people get some sort of liberal arts undergrad degree like English, communications, or journalism (not sure how common this is as an undergrad major). Though you also get journalists with various science or engineering degrees who end up gravitating to science reporting. In many cases, people going into journalism have worked on the school paper. I'm guessing straight out of high school is uncommon these days; I assume "apprenticeships" are rare though poorly paid/unpaid internships may be less so.

There is also a lot of movement in and out of journalism (though mostly out these days) to a variety of other fields that involve a lot of writing such as IT industry analysts and content teams at companies.

But in general my experience is that journalism doesn't especially gatekeep by credentials (though it does by connections to a non-trivial degree). And a lot of working tech professionals publish blogs etc. in various online tech pubs. For a number of years I had one when CNET used to have a whole external blog network.These days I write for TechTarget every now and then as well as a couple of sites my company sponsors. There are some bad examples of this but it's widespread. Papers like the NYT segregate external content more carefully.

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

#144

Post by Iefthandrule » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

ASinclair wrote: post #120

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…

> I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". Software pays significantly more. Why push people into lower paying jobs?

You don't see narratives about how everyone should get into finance. That is certainly a good ol boys club.

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

#145

Post by mactavish88 » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #78

mactavish88 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me as though people who make a big deal out of "lack of diversity" in any field are saying that it's because of some form of discrimination or bias in hiring. This is the primary hypothesis they're putting forward, often as fact, as opposed to the reality that it's a hypothesis until it's adequately substantiated with unbiased data collected from multiple sources. The hypothesis may be true, but it's hard…

I don't have the time right now to respond in a longer form, but I will say this: I make a big deal out of "lack of diversity" in the field. I, like most people I know who think this is a big deal, do not think that this is exclusively or even primarily due to bias in hiring. I attended a majority black school, so I certainly understand that there are upstream problems. All of the problems you identified with (2) are…

I think study (1) is something that companies could implement internally (hopefully in a somewhat unbiased way). That'll at least help address localized bias in the hiring process.

As for (2), I'm aware of the fact that many people around the world don't have access to opportunities to do things that they'd be really good at. I'd really just like to understand the nuances there and how to practically make a difference.

Part of the problem I see is that the conversation around "diversity" (at least in popular media) is very US-centric, when the majority of the human species lives outside of the US. Different countries, states and even cities have very different sets of problems when it comes to lack of access to opportunity.

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

#146

Post by whimsicalism » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #112

whimsicalism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems extremely premature given the massive disparities that still exist today racially. The average wealth of a black family in Boston is $8 whereas the average wealth of a white family is about $200,000. How do we talk about these disparities if we throw away the language to talk about race? Or is your argument that these disparities are innate? Or that they are not at all due to the legacy of explicitly race…

What’s the correct wealth for white and black families? If you say “I don’t know, but it needs to be closer” that’s just in group preference - which is fine, but don’t present that statistic as evidence of anything but a disparity. You need to prove (while accounting for all confounds) that this gap is a result of x.

"accounting for all confounds" is a moving standard because you can always claim an additional confounding factor. I'd love if you would be explicit about what confounding factors you are discussing? I have a guess, but I'd want to hear it.

It doesn't take a genius to recognize that intergenerational wealth will have large disparities as a result of vastly different starting points in wealth (yes, due to slavery), jim crow legal constructs, as well as the ongoing fact that there is large ongoing (and well-studied) discrimination against black people in job and real estate markets, at minimum.

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

#147

Post by beaconstudios » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

adwn wrote: post #135

beaconstudios wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, white supremacists usually do their best to ignore that part. Do you believe race to be a real thing? Like there is some unifying trait between "white" people or between "black" people, besides a vague notion of skin colour and cultural similarity? Bear in mind that Italians and Irish used to be called nonwhite, that there are numerous different ethnicities in both Europe and Africa (including many African ethn…

> Do you believe race to be a real thing? "Race" as in "the color of the skin allows statistically significant predictions about physical and mental aptitude"? No, that's a stupid categorization, because it's far too wide and imprecise. However, I do believe there are (small) genetic differences between subpopulations from different geographic origins. For example, it's hard to deny that Kenyans have an unmatched edg…

Yeah there are small genetic differences between ethnicities. Things like height, bone density, certain conditions like sickle cell anemia etc.

However, that's a different claim altogether from the idea that white and black people (again, an imaginary category) have a statistically significant difference in average intellectual capacity.

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

#148

Post by clairity » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

Zababa wrote: post #110

beaconstudios wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In France, we don't consider that people have a different race. Ah I thought the parent was saying that the Third Reich was into the "human race" in the "there is no race but the human race" colourblindness way, which threw me off. Yeah I agree, race is a social construct and ethnicity/culture are historical products. I'm British, I don't think we're quite as post-racial but the idea of black and white people being…

> True, but you have to admit that if all programmers were white that would be pretty suspect, and would hint that there may be something discriminatory as play. I don't agree with that. Black people are heavily overrepresented in sports in the USA. I personally believe that this is partially due to some physical differences that makes them better at sports, and that even if the cultures were exactly the same, they w…

> "Black people are heavily overrepresented in sports ... partially due to some physical differences that makes them better at sports.... I also don't think that means there is something discriminatory at play other than biology."

so let's just ignore 400 years of severe and oppressive unnatural selection then?

with that said, these arguments trying to tease out tiny differences between arbitrary groups of people are simply not fruitful outside of trying to assert dominance/superiority over others. the point is always to establish a halo effect where favorable group characteristics shine generously on the braggart in question. it's always an argument about supremacy, not 'intellectual curiosity', but it actually signals individual insecurity rather than group superiority.

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

#149

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

teebs wrote: post #103

kodah wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be an unpopular opinion: > 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. Is tech really that different? * When evaluating senior candidates one of the criteria that candidates are selected on is the prestige of their previou…

I agree with you that it's definitely about who you know - if you go to Stanford, you can get better jobs out of college compared to someone with similar skills who didn't. But I worked at a FAANG (or whatever it's called now) company and many of the senior engineers we hired were from small/less prestigious companies. These were people with ~10 years of experience who had become great software engineers but had neve…

[deleted]

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

#150

Post by Hermitian909 » Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #133

Hermitian909 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is tech really that different? Every profession has problems around social social proof. There are limited resources for recruiting and so heuristics that work get used. But I really can't think of any field that does better than tech in terms of keeping those barriers low relative to possible income and prestige. I know people who dropped out of high school making >300k/yr as software engineers, and god only knows…

Our experiences are fairly rare from what I've seen. Undoubtedly the door is open , but the weight of that door is still far too high and I would not give tech points in the category of meritocracy for that. Also worth mentioning that 300k is FAANG level compensation, and those salaries are fairly rare and not indicative of where most people with less-than-prestigious backgrounds end up (another commenter posted what…

> I would not give tech points in the category of meritocracy for that

Why? I'm not trying to argue here that tech is a meritocracy but so far as I've been able to discern it is more meritocratic than any other field offering middle class or above wages. If you disagree, I'd be super interested to hear which fields are doing a better job. If you agree, why not give credit to the industry for doing a better job at solving this very hard problem than anyone else?

> and not indicative of where most people with less-than-prestigious backgrounds end up

It's hard to tell how much this is an indictment of tech's process versus society at large. Anecdotally, I find a higher proportion of people from more prestigious backgrounds are more skilled at work. This should be unsurprising because people from those backgrounds have generally been given many advantages in life. In a former life I was an educator and was paid a lot of money to impart valuable skills to the children of rich families.

If we view meritocracy as judging workers as they are, and not accounting for what they might have been in a more equitable society, that's the outcome I'd expect from a meritorious interview process.

Again, I don't want to argue tech is some perfect meritocracy, just that I'm not aware that anyone's done better.