What about class? Ivy League Parents -> Private School -> SAT tutoring -> Ivy League College -> Investment by Ivy League VC -> Acquired by Ivy League Tech Company vs Poor parents -> Shitty Public School -> High School Drop Out -> Programmer at Ivy League Tech Company (maybe) There's a reason most of the big tech companies are from Ivy League graduates. And you can't ignore how many successful startups only happened b…
Minor nit, which is that all the top CS (and engineering, for that matter) schools are not Ivy League schools: MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU. And I've never heard of top tech companies being referred to as Ivy League tech companies. But your point is still valid when you talk about "top schools."
Diversity and Startups
121–130 of 218 posts
Re: Diversity and Startups
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because of racist laws, policies and practices Black people have fewer opportunities from literally before they're born. Studies indicate that poor nutrition and other environmental factors explain the "IQ gap" nearly completely. The remaining points are most likely an issue of bias in the tests themselves. Most white people wouldn't do well in an AAVE based IQ test. Black people (and other minorities) are being acti…
When white people enter a black neighborhood, it is "gentrification", and it holds blacks back. When white people move out of a black neighborhood, it is "white flight" and it holds blacks back. White people! Stay exactly where you are!
The effects of gentrification and white flight demonstrate how ingrained the bias against black people and other minorities still is.
Re: Diversity and Startups
#123Re: Diversity and Startups
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's really hard to address everything in one post, and i think the issues around gender and race in tech are pretty different. (we did include a stat on international founders, many of which are not white.) i don't think we're playing this on "easy mode", but i'm sorry you feel that way.
Let me first say, as someone with two children, both girls, I really appreciate the efforts that are going into making CS careers an accessible option for them, and that includes your post and the sentiment behind it. Kudos to you! What continues to irk me is the almost a disregard for black males when discussing diversity. There isn't a single group less represented in CS than AA males and there isn't a single group…
Re: Diversity and Startups
#125Its fantastic the gender issue is being looked at. And it's nice that non-US citizens are funded. But what percentage of the founders were pg's age or older?
Re: Diversity and Startups
#126Re: Diversity and Startups
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Minor nit, which is that all the top CS (and engineering, for that matter) schools are not Ivy League schools: MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU. And I've never heard of top tech companies being referred to as Ivy League tech companies. But your point is still valid when you talk about "top schools."
Ah, the irony of making sure we're careful to make subtle distinctions about the top fraction of a percent of the population... in response to a comment about massive class imbalance.
My actual intention was to get the OP to move away from an emphasis on the "Ivy League" brand, which I think people need to stop putting up on a pedestal.
Re: Diversity and Startups
#128People who are not white males... I know it's hard to believe, but relative to their proportion in the workforce white males are slightly under represented in tech. Additionally, people of color are dramatically over represented. It's easy to march under the banner of "men in tech shouldn't act like sexist jerks"—what kind of sexist jerk could object to that?—but the more accurate slogan "we need many fewer Asian mal…
I wrote more about this here - about over-represented minorities, and self selection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8088263
Fundamentally, people disagree to WHY certain groups are over-represented - is it mostly discrimination, mostly cultural, mostly self-selection? Discrimination is bad, but how bad - or not - are cultural factors and self-selection? Asians are strongly over-represented - but no one says this is because admissions officers prefer them - there is strong evidence to the contrary - and most agree it is a combination of selective immigration policy and cultural factors on the part of frequently college-educated, first-generation parents. However efforts to take race into account in college admissions no doubt will tend to work against members of this still minority group (in fact - only 5% in the US).
Finally, the attacking white males is basically a motte-and-bailey tactic [1] in which something very obviously wrong, and not defended by a majority of any group e.g. racial discrimination, is then used, strawman-like, to strike down countervailing discussion as "derailing" (no one is saying racism is good). Do white men need to make counter-adjustments in order to correct for previous sins (or sins by others in the same group - see sexual harassment by another unrelated man in the same industry)?
Is that fair to those white men to take steps - perhaps even extending privileges to other groups at their own cost, or is it fair because the discriminated-against groups have experienced injustice? This is the fundamental disagreement in the social justice debate. What makes sense on an individual level can look wrong on a collective level, and vice versa. It just depends on your sense of fairness. The voices on the collective side of this debate are the strongest in Silicon Valley, but a greater amounts of people - and Americans overall - frequently disagree on what needs to be done to address racial disparities e.g. affirmative action or no affirmative action.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word...
Re: Diversity and Startups
#129> We’re encouraging our startups to get HR infrastructure in place earlier. If there's one thing that a fast and nimble startup DOES NOT NEED, it's HR drones trying to assert themselves into the startup. This is great news for us that compete with YC companies because it means that you're going to be handcuffing yourselves and bogging yourselves down employees who are literally a negative to the bottom line. > Specif…
I happen to think this is not enough but at a minimum I've always found it rather surprising that the money invested in these companies didn't want to protect it from the stupidity that is inherent in most young people. To be clear, I mean this as stupidity of youth, ignorance, naivete.
At bare minimum YC needs to require its founders to be trained in some basic legal 101 stuff since they haven't yet had to learn it on the job in a corporation.
(and hey, If I'm going to make a wishlist, add some leadership training to this, too. If you want to make young people into CEOs you need to teach them how to do it. Building a great product is absolutely NOT synonymous with building a great company. If experience has no value to them in hiring, they're learning that somewhere, and it needs to be corrected by the investors--if not for the morality of responsibility to young people looking to them for guidance, but to vouchsafe their own investment.)