How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
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Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#2I find it odd that HN loves to upvote 'more women in tech' articles but never promotes any article related to increasing African American or the Latin American population in the tech community.
Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#3I find it odd that HN loves to upvote 'more women in tech' articles but never promotes any article related to increasing African American or the Latin American population in the tech community.
I for one only actually care about women in tech to improve my dating pool. Not sure what more minorities would do for me.
Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#4"Underrepresentation does not equal racism" contradicts the academic party line ("systemic racism"). If a white person said something like that, they would get a lecture in "denying privilege". If an asian person said it, he would be ignored.
But I agree that the author's way of thinking is far healthier for any given individual. Which is why the author is so successful.
Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#5I find it odd that HN loves to upvote 'more women in tech' articles but never promotes any article related to increasing African American or the Latin American population in the tech community.
I'm pretty sure this post was marked [Dead] few hours ago.
Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#6I find it odd that HN loves to upvote 'more women in tech' articles but never promotes any article related to increasing African American or the Latin American population in the tech community.
I for one only actually care about women in tech to improve my dating pool. Not sure what more minorities would do for me.
I care about the "people in tech" pool containing as high a percentage of the "qualified people who could be in tech" as possible, as both a hirer and a buyer/user of tech. If there are qualified women or minorities who aren't working in tech for artificial reasons (their early-childhood education deterring them, racism or sexism in the workplace, etc.), that affects me as a white man.
I don't have as much self-interest in whether people from Ohio, Eskimos, or women are proportionally represented. (I sort of care in an abstract way, because tech jobs are great and a good way to live a happy life, but if there were some innate reason why gingers were comparatively far better at medicine than at tech, I wouldn't cry that there were few gingers in tech.)
The nice thing about capitalism is that even with my own self-interested motivation, it tends to solve problems like this.
Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#7I find it odd that HN loves to upvote 'more women in tech' articles but never promotes any article related to increasing African American or the Latin American population in the tech community.
I for one only actually care about women in tech to improve my dating pool. Not sure what more minorities would do for me.
What about minority women? that's a two for one.
Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one only actually care about women in tech to improve my dating pool. Not sure what more minorities would do for me.
What about minority women? that's a two for one.
Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#9I find it odd that HN loves to upvote 'more women in tech' articles but never promotes any article related to increasing African American or the Latin American population in the tech community.
Are blacks underrepresented among engineers, relative to their representation among college graduates?
There's also the issue that male-female disparities are generally more tractable problems. One of the saving graces of gender inequality is that it's not deeply tied in with socioeconomic class.
Re: How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one only actually care about women in tech to improve my dating pool. Not sure what more minorities would do for me.
I care about the "people in tech" pool containing as high a percentage of the "qualified people who could be in tech" as possible, as both a hirer and a buyer/user of tech. If there are qualified women or minorities who aren't working in tech for artificial reasons (their early-childhood education deterring them, racism or sexism in the workplace, etc.), that affects me as a white man. I don't have as much self-inter…
> The nice thing about capitalism is that even with my own self-interested motivation, it tends to solve problems like this.
It really doesn't, for two reasons. 1) the rational actor model is a bad abstraction, and irrational prejudice can be an important factor; 2) there are various "bootstrap" problems in any given field that can keep unbalanced equillibria even in situations where discriminatory forces aren't actively pushing things towards those equillibria.
Women in tech is actually a striking example of this phenomenon. If you look at "qualified" in terms of something measurable like Math SAT scores above 600 (typical for a decent engineering program), women are dramatically underrepresented relative to their qualifications.
You would think there would be strong pressures to get more women into the field, given the ostensible shortage of engineers, but companies make no such attempts (partly because the self-selection happens long before they can really influence things, and partly because of "boostrap" issues).