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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)

#191

Post by chrisseaton »

Iefthandrule wrote: post #189
chrisseaton wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

The point being made is that finance is far more exclusionary and racist/sexist than tech, but tech gets all the articles written about it. The onus would be on those with power to change hiring in finance, much like the big tech companies are tasked with making tech more inclusive.

Tech gets all the articles written about trying to change it, because it's easier and more impactful to change so that's what people are trying right now.

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

#192

Post by Nasrudith »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #130
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…

> 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…

As a technicality the music industry might win out given the successes from the lows and highs of society (even if genre clustered). There are some who got into it by industry connections, some with a background of education, and others through a whole lot of practice to nurture their talent. A good seed alone does not make a bumper crop. The industry is also far more of a crapshoot however as luck, image, and zeitgeist play a role. You might recommend somebody very good at music to give it a try but not an across the board career recommendation.

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

#193

Post by brendoelfrendo »

commandlinefan wrote: post #171
skulk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What do you think about ... how much harder IIT JEE math is Seems to me that there are only a couple of different ways somebody could feel about that. The first is to be opposed to the "the smarter you are, the more money you make/better you do in life" meritocratic egalitarianism that these tests support. The second is to support that ideal (whether you agree we're there or not), but insist that tests don't accura…

I guess it depends on what you want out of the test; if you want something meritocratic, what we find is that testing ends up reinforcing existing social strata more often than not, because wealth often correlates to factors like quality of education, which in turn correlate to test scores. A stupid rich person will always be stupid, but a smart rich person will probably have access to better schools, private tutoring, and test preparation resources.

So there's the challenge that the anti-testing/testing reform crowd wants to solve: how do you call testing meritocratic when the equality of opportunity isn't there? And are we ok with that?

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

#194

Post by Zababa »

whimsicalism wrote: post #164
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…

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…

No, that's not what I meant at all.

> 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).

I don't think that's true at all. My point is that even if it was, that wouldn't make "europeans brains" "superior" to "african brains".

> 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.

For people that don't know, racial statistics are forbidden by law in France. And you're right, that means that we don't have precise data like in the USA on which people are represented where. These statistics could help affirmative action, or help arguments in favor of anti discrimination law.

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

#195

Post by notaniitian »

skulk wrote: post #66
rayiner wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's not meritocratic. Almost 70% seats are reserved in IITs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_policy_in_Indian...

Relative ranking is something no one should adopt unless they have a population problem. Unlike SAT, your rank relative to your peers in the exam decides your fate. The problem with such system is it encourages people to participate in the race earlier. Parents are sending their kids earlier to JEE prep every year and increasing the difficulty. It will continue to go up unless it's humanely impossible.

Coaching industry built around it has bigger market value and revenues than government spends on IIT (the test that JEE is supposed to get you in).

Our most valuable startup is byjus, an edtech focused on helping students pass JEE. More and more foreign companies like Amazon are also opening JEE prep centres here.

https://academy.amazon.in/

Please don't adopt it.

Despite above, our educational outcomes in higher education are worse than most developed countries including US. (We are good at employment at tier 1 colleges though)

These students get burned by the time they get into college of their choice. There isn't much focus on actual academics and coursework unlike developed countries where universities get more difficult. Further, most students are encouraged to practice leetcode from year 1 instead of focusing on academics.

Everyone is slacking off after getting in so curving keeps their grade good despite a huge drop in effort.

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

#196

Post by MisterPea »

chrisseaton wrote: post #191
Iefthandrule wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being made is that finance is far more exclusionary and racist/sexist than tech, but tech gets all the articles written about it. The onus would be on those with power to change hiring in finance, much like the big tech companies are tasked with making tech more inclusive.

Tech gets all the articles written about trying to change it, because it's easier and more impactful to change so that's what people are trying right now.

I think the point is the articles are often extremely derisive and therefore hypocritical when finance or companies don't receive the same attention if at all

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

#197

Post by 8note »

1cvmask wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You still have advantages in how the tests are written. The questions still privilege people who grow up speaking a specific version of English

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

#199

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#200

Post by philwelch »

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.

The term for this is "classism".

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