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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)

#161

Post by kodah »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #159
kodah wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Apologies, I was not tr…

> so being better (or even drastically better) than other fields means very little. I think this where we differ. I think this view is a bit disheartening to me because it feels like making the perfect the enemy of a good. I don't think completely removing prestige is a viable option for most companies without some replacement that no one has yet figured out, so I'm ok with applauding whatever steps can be made to ma…

The push and pull of how you and I view these is intrinsic (in my view) to preventing the attitude of, "this is good enough".

Put in a metaphor: someone has to make the industry feel like it's making progress and someone has to drag the industry kicking and screaming forward. Both are necessary for improvement.

> Thanks for so clearly sharing your perspective.

Always.

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

#162

Post by gonehome »

morelisp wrote: post #134
gonehome wrote: post #5

Somewhat related tweet thread from today: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1461633512344326146?s=21 Don’t talk to journalists (at least if you work in tech, but probably outside of it) - they’re not your friends and your incentives are not aligned with theirs (and they’re not looking to tell the objective truth). You’re better off writing your own articles about what you’re doing. They historically owned distribution…

Haha, you're all so fucking angry you don't have breathless useful idiots like Wu, Scoble, Kelly, Swisher, or Shirky dominating the tech press anymore. It's precious!

Swisher was hardly positive tech press.

I'm just glad there's people like Ben Thompson where the quality is so much higher. It's nice to have real competition now with people that can own their own distribution and aren't writing everything as some dumb narrative hit piece.

The only ones left at the large orgs when the dust settles will be the mediocre writers targeting engagement via controversy. There's no reason to give them access.

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

#163

Post by whimsicalism »

jackling wrote: post #157
whimsicalism wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/12/11/that-was-typo-t... sourcing: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-o...

Interesting read, one thing to point out, seems that the median wealth is $8 and not the average as stated before. Don't think it makes a difference to your point though. What's surprising is that when looking at the sample breakdown, even thought the # of observations and median age was approximately the same for White and U.S. Black, the U.S Black sample group where significantly less likely to be married (and thus…

> median wealth is $8 and not the average as stated before.

Median is an average. [0] If anything the fact that it is a median makes it only more compelling, at least to me.

> thus not able to account for any spouse's income/wealth in the calculations for household net worth

Yes, maybe if more were married they would have double the net worth up to $16.

> This looks like the most critical reason for such a disparity.

It seems like a reflection of disparities in wealth, not the reason for it. My guess is there is a sizable historical component to the disparity, given that 60% of private wealth in the US is inherited [1], that would make large portions of that wealth inherited from either times where black people were actively enslaved or excluded from wealth acquisition mechanisms by law or custom. Such exclusion by custom is ongoing today, there is clear evidence for it in hiring and real estate markets.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/06/people-l...

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

#164

Post by whimsicalism »

Zababa wrote: post #132
beaconstudios wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 would still be overrepresented (relative to their proportion in the total population). I intentionally chose programming as an example because it's an intellectu…

> I intentionally chose programming as an example because it's an intellectual pursuit. Yes, people of different ethnicities can have different physical characteristics; that much is observable. But the idea that intellectual capacity is an essential difference between racial groups is /the/ white supremacist argument. Ie, the idea that white people are inherently smarter than black people. It's their justification f…

tl;dr In France, we don't consider that people have a different race, we only actively consider white people to be intellectually superior (or no: only intellectually superior at programming. european brains are more suited for coding than african ones).

But don't worry, this widespread belief certainly doesn't impact any of our hiring decisions or our society whatsoever. In fact, it impacts our society so little, we've made it illegal to gather any statistics about how it might impact our society.

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

#165

Post by gruez »

beaconstudios wrote: post #147
adwn wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>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.

1. what counts as "statistically significant difference"? A 0.01% increase can be statistically significant if your sample size is high enough.

2. Going back to a few comments ago, why do you think that differences can materialize between ethnicities, but the differences stop at the brain?

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

#166

Post by dang »

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

You started a hellish race flamewar with this comment. Not cool.

Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. That's just what we don't want here, because it's extremely repetitive. It also almost always turns nasty. Those properties hold true regardless of which ideologies people are battling for or against. All of this is therefore off topic here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you badly perpetuated this flamewar downthread. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do it again.

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

#167

Post by jackling »

whimsicalism wrote: post #163
jackling wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting read, one thing to point out, seems that the median wealth is $8 and not the average as stated before. Don't think it makes a difference to your point though. What's surprising is that when looking at the sample breakdown, even thought the # of observations and median age was approximately the same for White and U.S. Black, the U.S Black sample group where significantly less likely to be married (and thus…

> median wealth is $8 and not the average as stated before. Median is an average. [0] If anything the fact that it is a median makes it only more compelling, at least to me. > thus not able to account for any spouse's income/wealth in the calculations for household net worth Yes, maybe if more were married they would have double the net worth up to $16. > This looks like the most critical reason for such a disparity.…

I always took average == mean, and median to be another measure, but I could just be mistaken on that.

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

#168

Post by chrisseaton »

Iefthandrule wrote: post #144
ASinclair wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Getting into tech and getting a great-paying job is achievable and realistic for anyone from any background, right now. It's completely unregulated, there's no gatekeeping outside of factual knowledge, and people are actively encouraging diverse applicants with non-traditional educational backgrounds. Even if the experience for these people is not always as good as it could be, the community is trying.

Getting into finance is not even remotely like this. It's a brutal old-boys' club.

That's why they recommend the former. You'd have to be insane to recommend that most people try to break into finance.

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

#169

Post by Zababa »

beaconstudios wrote: post #154
Zababa wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I intentionally chose programming as an example because it's an intellectual pursuit. Yes, people of different ethnicities can have different physical characteristics; that much is observable. But the idea that intellectual capacity is an essential difference between racial groups is /the/ white supremacist argument. Ie, the idea that white people are inherently smarter than black people. It's their justification f…

> How are intellectual pursuits different from sports pursuits, especially when it's one specific intellectual pursuit? And again, you make the jump from "white people are better at programming than black people" to "white people are more intelligent than black people". Can you name a reason that two populations that only differ in racial category would differ on average in programming capability that isn't rooted in…

> Correct me if I'm wrong but you appear to be taking the position that white people /are/ innately more intelligent than black people but we should ignore that. My position is that they aren't, and even if they were we still shouldn't dominate others.

No, I'm not taking that position at all. My position is the same as yours I think: I don't think white people are more intelligent than black people, and even if they were, that wouldn't give white people any rights over black people.

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

#170

Post by dang »

orangepurple wrote: post #4

"Anti" racists are professional victims. Don't engage with them. They will always find a way to twist a disagreement going against their favor into an oppression narrative.

Please do not take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It's just what we don't want here; it's extremely repetitive and almost always turns nasty—probably as a way of compensating for the lack of any interesting new information.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29277764.

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