How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley

Leave the people who develop knowledge and disseminate it for the rest of society alone with your political agenda.

No, opportunity is what matters. "Underrepresentation does not equal racism" is true but it may (and I stress "may") be an indicator of disparate impact, and so underrepresentation shouldn't be dismissed.

Paul Judge worked his way to the top, and I'm happy for him. That doesn't mean that the only reason other folks haven't (of any race/gender/background) is because they didn't work hard enough.

But it's not a contradiction: I have seen nothing to lead me to believe that a talented player of any race will not get a fair chance in the NBA. It's all about winning, but the opportunity is there for everyone.

So isn't SV all about winning too? Yes, it is—but we know a lot less about what leads to winning. There are no draft combines where everyone gets show what they can do. Nobody writes code competitively directly against other programmers on TV to prove they can produce at a high level. Companies play it by ear. The NBA knows how to evaluate talent. We don't.

Here's a fun example: "PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job. No PayPal people would ever have used the world “hoops.” Probably no one even knew how to play “hoops.” Basketball would be bad enough. But “hoops?” That guy clearly wouldn’t have fit in. He’d have had to explain to the team why he was going to go play hoops on a Thursday night. And no one would have understood him."[2]

Welp, guess I wouldn't have been able to get hired at PayPal. Not only do I like to play basketball, I've said "shooting hoops" a lot. You're going to turn down someone who aced your tests because of a hobby and the phrase he used to describe it? You really think that's the secret to success? You're flying by the seat of your pants in a world without good metrics and you don't know which things you did contributed to your success and which things didn't. You're actively discouraging diversity of culture (which is not directly the same thing as diversity of gender/race, but it makes it a lot harder to have the latter).

And it's that still-sometimes-present active discouragement of diversity that I find frustrating about many parts of the programmer community.

[1] a basketball league venture in the southern US that required players be white, that I believe folded quickly a couple of years ago

[2] http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels...

I can't say anything about paypal - I wasn't there, and I don't like to pass judgements.

But if they indeed were that dumb not to hire a good candidate only for the sports he plays, it's no wonder their product sucks more an more. Personally, I'm eagerly waiting for a competitor until bitcoin gets more momentum.

BTW one thing I'd like to say - the opportunity in coding is there for everyone - it's even more open than the NBA because the judge is the market, and with the current technology everyone can easily start a tech company and compete globally.

It's a pure and perfect competition.

There's no need to be hired be a company - you create your company and show your product to the market. If it works, if it does what people need, you will get money.

On the flipside, it's pretty hard for Latin American, African American, and Asian Americans to be full-time actors as most American shows/movies cast Caucasian Americans. Doesn't matter how good an actor the individual is if they are excluded purely because of their race.