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Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

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Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#151

Post by wpietri »

beat wrote: post #134
steven2012 wrote: post #65

I've been working for over 20 years in tech at 10+ different companies around the Valley, and I can count on 1 hand the number of direct coworkers that were black, and on 2 hands the number of coworkers that I indirectly worked with that were black. I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. Trying to solve the diversity issue at the hiring end, when the numb…

Role models matter tremendously too, and that's something that we don't see much, something that's a real problem. Now, I'm biased toward capability. I think progress is made almost entirely by people who possess both talent and will to power. But that's innate, and evenly distributed across racial and gender lines. So differences in outcomes are, broadly, due to privilege (specifically, resources). If someone has ac…

> Role models matter tremendously too, and that's something that we don't see much, something that's a real problem.

Definitely. I'm probably in tech because my dad was. He started programming in the late 60s. How did he get the job? His dad was an executive at an insurance company; they'd just gotten a computer and didn't really know what to do with it. Not that my dad had any experience, but he was a quick study.

I'm sure that wasn't an option open to black people at the time. Their city still had segregated pools.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#152

Post by tptacek »

tzs wrote: post #126
mazerackham wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Eric Gardner probably deserved to get choked out because he sold cigarettes illegally on a street? And Michael Brown was probably a thug, so deserved to die?

It's Eric Garner, not Eric Gardner. There was not any really good reason to try to arrest Garner at the point they tried to restrain him. Chokeholds are banned by that police department, so when they did try to arrest him they went about it in the wrong fashion. The Garner case raises lots of questions, including whether or not he would have been treated the same way had he been white. Brown, on the other hand, was w…

In fact, a white kid in Michigan was shot, in more sympathetic circumstances, months later in Michigan.

In both cases, there was misbehavior by the suspect and misconduct by the officer, but the more important unifying circumstance was the fact that officers on routine patrol in both cases were armed with lethal weapons, so that hand-to-hand conflict was almost guaranteed to escalate instantaneously to deadly force.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#153

Post by steven2012 »

wpietri wrote: post #150
steven2012 wrote: post #65

I've been working for over 20 years in tech at 10+ different companies around the Valley, and I can count on 1 hand the number of direct coworkers that were black, and on 2 hands the number of coworkers that I indirectly worked with that were black. I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. Trying to solve the diversity issue at the hiring end, when the numb…

> I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. You might consider reading the excellent paper, "Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal? A Field Experiment On Labor Market Discrimination": http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 My take is that if tech really, truly has no race or gender discrimination problems, that would be remarkably different tha…

It is remarkably different. The amount of Asians/South Asians in tech is very high. If there were material racism, then you wouldn't see this. I don't know anyone who wouldn't hire a smart person based on their race. I'm sure it exists in small quantities, just like everywhere else, but I believe it's much smaller in tech than any other industry. The reason why there aren't a lot of blacks and Hispanics in tech I believe is because there simply aren't a lot going to school for it. Again, this was my experience in college, and the experience of most of my colleagues. Which again is because the poor education system especially in poor areas, not because companies are racist against blacks and Hispanics.

I gave my opinion. This is what a discussion consists of. Nowhere did I discourage people from trying other solutions.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#154

Post by cmsj »

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #149
peterwwillis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the same as saying that the reason women had little power in America before 1920 was because they couldn't vote. Which is true, but completely overlooks why women didn't have the right to vote. Women didn't have power because they were oppressed by men for centuries. Black people don't have "as good an education" because they've been systematically abandoned by the most powerful parts of society for c…

So the fix is to lower hiring standards? What exactly are you promoting as a fix here?

"Lower hiring standards" is a myopic fallacy. You don't hire Jeff the amazing coder who likes to punch people in the face.

Discounting the value of culture is a huge mistake. Humans work best when they are not treated as replaceable units of quantified productivity.

Diverse cultures can attack problems with a broader perspective than homogenous cultures.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#155

Post by cpncrunch »

steven2012 wrote: post #153
wpietri wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. You might consider reading the excellent paper, "Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal? A Field Experiment On Labor Market Discrimination": http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 My take is that if tech really, truly has no race or gender discrimination problems, that would be remarkably different tha…

It is remarkably different. The amount of Asians/South Asians in tech is very high. If there were material racism, then you wouldn't see this. I don't know anyone who wouldn't hire a smart person based on their race. I'm sure it exists in small quantities, just like everywhere else, but I believe it's much smaller in tech than any other industry. The reason why there aren't a lot of blacks and Hispanics in tech I bel…

The article itself says that only 4.5% of CS graduates from the top universities are black, so if you're only hiring graduates of those universities then you're never going to have a diverse workforce.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#156

Post by sokoloff »

cmsj wrote: post #154
x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the fix is to lower hiring standards? What exactly are you promoting as a fix here?

"Lower hiring standards" is a myopic fallacy. You don't hire Jeff the amazing coder who likes to punch people in the face. Discounting the value of culture is a huge mistake. Humans work best when they are not treated as replaceable units of quantified productivity. Diverse cultures can attack problems with a broader perspective than homogenous cultures.

It's still not clear what you would have a hiring manager do today. I usually have several positions open at any given time; I don't even recall the last black applicant we've seen.

I have talented co-workers of many different races (specifically including black), but even without visiting our office, you could guess the percentage breakdown and you wouldn't be far off.

I can't hire applicants that don't exist and I can't hire applicants that aren't qualified.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#157

Post by ecdavis »

volaski wrote: post #54

What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"? Some people criticize that that statement is racist, but they aren't thinking about the context. When people ask companies to do something about diversity, they're normally asking to carve out more quota for certain minority group, just like how universities carve out certain portion of their student quota for people who donate large amount of money to get in…

> What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"?

The implicit assumption in that statement is that the current hiring process is not discriminatory, therefore the only way to hire more people of would be to lower hiring standards. Many people believe the hiring process is discriminatory - and, indeed, there are studies which support that claim.

Leaving aside the issue of discrimination, though, what's curious is that it's widely accepted that hiring in tech is broken. Companies complain that it's extremely difficult to identify talent. Larger companies are willing to risk turning away many qualified candidates if it reduces their risk of a poor hire. It turns out that it's very difficult to reliably identify who is above "the bar" and who is not. There are startups out there trying to solve this problem right now. It's a problem that effects everyone in the industry, too, not just individuals from .

So, if we lack a reliable way to determine if someone's above "the bar," how on Earth can we say that the reason we don't have more employees in is because there aren't enough applicants from who are above the bar? We can't.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#158

Post by sokoloff »

bduerst wrote: post #73
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. The differences between their experiences is smaller than the differences between that black individual (sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) and someone of the same race who grew up in a significa…

I agree, but socioeconomic class is already highly correlated with race (and sometimes gender), leading to race being used as a possible signal for class. I think their point was that passive racial biases lead to class differences that can't be summed up in a hypothetical comparison.

How would socioeconomic class be highly correlated with gender?

Is there some strange biologic selection mechanism at play?

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#159

Post by bduerst »

sokoloff wrote: post #158
bduerst wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but socioeconomic class is already highly correlated with race (and sometimes gender), leading to race being used as a possible signal for class. I think their point was that passive racial biases lead to class differences that can't be summed up in a hypothetical comparison.

How would socioeconomic class be highly correlated with gender? Is there some strange biologic selection mechanism at play?

Sometimes correlated with gender, such as the gender income gap. I don't know what you mean by biological selection.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#160

Post by NetWarNinja »

Ok so sorry but this fing bullshit has got to stop. WTF is this BlackLives matter all about? The message was lost when the town was burned down and the entire campaign was started on a thug who robbed the local convenience store for some mini cigars to roll some blunts. Did he have to die? we don't have any video evidence and his homeboy who saw the whole thing isn't going to speak up for fear of being an Uncle Tom / sell out. Black people in tech? I have worked with and even seen star employees who were black who are in tech. In fact just about the entire IT Dept. where I work is Black. They are senior level IT techs making close to 6 figures. To see the Hashtag posted at twitter #Ferguson is just pure idiocy and some guilt ridden conscience to be down with the cause, whatever that is. You have to be the change, sorry stop with the bullshit. I make 6 figures and I am a high school push out. I am that change. I changed my attitude, I changed my way of thinking and the way I interact with people and hell I even rush across the street when I have the right of way when a car needs to make a turn. yeah you know what I mean. Leadership begins when you take that opportunity to step up and I have seen and experienced plenty of examples.
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