Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)

oonwoye.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 267 posts

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

#201

Post by shalmanese »

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".

Because it's a shrinking industry with excess supply where the compensation and working conditions are terrible? It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

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

#202

Post by shalmanese »

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.

Finance has plenty of articles written about it but you don't see them because that's not a part of your media diet. Finance has made some pretty significant strides to diversify post 2008 due to public pressure.

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

#203

Post by sokoloff »

Nasrudith wrote: post #190
wolpoli wrote: post #178

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". Indeed, in many aspects, the latter would seem to share many aspects with learning to code (attention to detail, focus on syntax, etc.), and be more accessible.…

Coding is an accessible path to wealth which conceivably could support more. Nursing receives that in pulses and there are tons of organizations and outright unions for them. Nursing has boom and bust cycle Those which fail at scalability and wealth would fall flat before it gets off the drawing board. An initiative to promte being a X would be utterly panned for these for instance. 1. janitor 2. social worker 3. hol…

Isn’t the website you’re commenting on largely an initiative to promote #5?

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

#204

Post by johncessna »

This is a great example of fitting data to your conclusion. You're comparing the entire population of employees of major tech companies against specific journalists. Why not compare the entire companies?

Also the idea that diversity at a big tech companies is an indication of diversity in technical fields is just wrong.

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

#205

Post by sokoloff »

ghaff wrote: post #152
Hermitian909 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sol…

I read the parent/GP as simply saying that while tech doesn't have the same level of gatekeeping as white shoe law does or, for that matter, academia in general, if you have a decent GPA from Stanford things will be far easier than they will be for an equally skilled high school dropout with no connections. The challenge (which has no easy answer) is that it's far easier for companies to focus on the Stanford grads w…

Graduating from Stanford with a decent GPA is itself a useful signal and unsurprisingly things are therefore easier.

It gives evidence that not only are you equally skilled as that high-school dropout (as given in the premise of this scenario), but that you have basic life, organizational, planning, and work with others skills to graduate from Stanford.

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

#206

Post by celim307 »

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…

I generally agree but it’s definitely an advantage to have money, I got tutoring and practice tests from an early age. Someone poorer would have to work twice as hard

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

#207

Post by oh_sigh »

Jensson wrote: post #182
1cvmask wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Privileged white people who wants to preserve their privilege says that the poor white people are the problem and then kick those out in favor of black people. But the privileged white people are still there. And people wonder why poor white people don't like all of this "diversity" rethoric.

You may find that the black people they favor are also privileged. IE a Nigerian 1-percenter is just as black for affirmative action metrics as an African American from a broken family living in inner-city Baltimore, but the Nigerian is probably 1000x more likely to be accepted into an American college.

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

#208

Post by nostrademons »

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…

> "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor".

In theory, everyone already is a citizen journalist, and everyone should've learned to be a copy editor in the public school system. Much of the impetus for the "everyone should learn to code" effort is by analogy with English class, which is required every year in the public school system, but programming class is usually an exotic elective reserved for upper-middle-class districts. Illiteracy is not socially acceptable in America, but lots of people will say "Oh, I'm just not a math person", and programming is considered a profession rather than a requisite skill.

The woes of professional journalists are somewhat related to this. We're surrounded by a glut of potential writers. Because of that, we need heuristics for who we should actually pay attention to. One easy heuristic for that is pedigree: who do you know, what family were you born into, which college did you go to?

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

#209

Post by sokoloff »

mactavish88 wrote: post #145
whimsicalism wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differenc…

How would an internal study of (1) work? If I had any hint of data that we’re passing over fully competent candidates while positions go unfilled, I’m going to have already fixed it. I don’t care if the candidates improperly passed over are right or left handed, what their blood type/Rh factor is, what gender/background, or how tall they are.

If we assessed them as competent originally, we’d have made the offer. I don’t know how looking at the same data again will change anything.

(I think there probably are biases in evaluation of competence, but those likely wont show up in a review of the same data that has recorded those biases as fact.)

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

#210

Post by sokoloff »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #193
commandlinefan wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tutorin…

If we’re trying to measure something (say strength), should we measure that thing as directly as we can, or should we add a bunch of adjustments to make things more “fair”? Do we want to know how strong someone is, or how surprising it is that they’re as strong as they are given their starting point?

If someone has a home gym, a personal trainer, and time to workout 2x/day, 6 days a week, how much should we penalize their results? Zero? 25%? 50%?

I think that being strong as demonstrated on tests of strength is a valid (and the most valid I’m aware of) measure of “merit” in the context of strength. I think the same is true in other fields as well, including scholastics.

Post reply on HN