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Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

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Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#191

Post by panglott »

yoz-y wrote: post #159
joslin01 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by the French try to assimilate people more? I'm confused because France is notoriously horrendous to tourists. I've seen polls rate it as the worst place for customer service with tourists and my own brother's experience got him nearly in a fight with some French guys bullying him. Furthermore, this is just a cultural thing. I'm white and was in a team with a bunch of white engineers that loved cars…

I would say the main problem with French is that they really do not like to speak any other language than French. It is quite common that, for example, during the lunch with international participation and a French majority the conversation will start in English but then very quickly slip into French and then foreigners are lost. It has also happened to me, when speaking English or being in non-french speaking groups…

I would say the main problem with Americans is that they really do not like to speak any language other than English ;)

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#192

Post by pc86 »

bunnymancer wrote: post #149
pingou wrote: post #18

"as the only African American on her team, she didn’t feel she had much in common with her colleagues. “When I went out to lunch or something with my team, it was sort of like, ‘Soooo, what are you guys talking about?’ ” she says" I find this sentence really shocking, perhaps because I'm french and in France we try to assimilate people more (I don't really know), but I would definitely think that as a white software…

It's pretty standard in the US, due to our history, for colored people to just feel out of place in 9/10 white environment. But it goes beyond that, and is most likely true for French blacks as well, that if you're the only one who is distinctly visually different, you feel out of place. It's not something you can really explain to white males, but at least female devs tend to have somewhat of a similar experience. J…

> It's pretty standard in the US, due to our history, for colored people to just feel out of place in 9/10 white environment.

Calling them "colored people" certainly doesn't help.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#193

Post by alistproducer2 »

jgalt212 wrote: post #174

How about this? Black engineers would prefer to work in IT at a big bank with high steady pay than opt for the highly variable risk/return profile of being an engineer in SV. And why do they do this? If you look at poverty being an overriding theme for blacks in America, even if they themselves are not poor, then one would clearly prefer a lower risk med/high reward job than an a high risk low or super-high reward jo…

As a black guy working IT at a giant car maker, I can say there's truth to this. Nice comment.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#194

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

_yosefk wrote: post #151
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as a minorty achieves success (and often disproportionate success) they are no longer considered minorities.

As someone who isn't a native English speaker, I've long noticed that, as you mention, "minority" doesn't mean "the opposite of majority" (I'm not sure since when, or exactly what it does mean; you say success is key, but success in what field - chess, boxing, beer-making? Listing just a dozen fields is probably enough to demonstrate that no minorities exist according to the "success" definition.) However, to return…

Success means general economic success and low crime rate. "Minority" outside the context of politics means what you describe above - let's call this "minority_1". "Minority" as used by progressives (lets call it "minority_2") seems to mean a group of people that share uncommon visible characteristics who are also less successful (in the sense defined above) on average than the majority. Racism certainly exists - though progressives use a non-standard definition of racism, such that any member of a minority_2 can not be racist against a successful minority_1 or the majority. In fact, even discrimination against a successful minority_1 by the majority is seen as unworthy of note - an example of this is how no one seems to care about the obviously racist (by any common sense definition) discrimination against Asian students by Ivy-League universities. Asians need much higher SAT scores than white or black students to get a place in same.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#195

Post by pc86 »

bsmoke wrote: post #157
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #100

What a big steaming pile of political correctness. The author interviews a tiny handful of mediocre college students who blame their "color" for not getting hired right out of school by big, glamorous tech companies. Are we supposed to be sympathetic? I remember my own struggles to break into the tech business, many years ago now. Although white and "privileged", i.e. no cultural barriers to entry, I found it very to…

How do you know they're mediocre coders? The article makes zero mention of any coding ability, aside from the fact that some of them were having a hard time locking down offers from places like Google and Facebook. Your biases are applying traits to these kids, all of whom you've never met or had any kind of conversation with. This entire post is the biggest affirmation of "twice the work" if I've ever seen it.

> This entire post is the biggest affirmation of "twice the work" if I've ever seen it.

I don't get the reference, could someone explain?

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#196

Post by devalier »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #177
devalier wrote: post #128

Computer programming is one of the most cognitively demanding professions in existence. Ability to program correlates pretty highly with cognitive test scores, such as the SAT Math. If you look at the top scorers on such tests in America, only about 1% are black. The ratio of black engineers in Silicon Valley matches what you would expect based on the test scores. To see it visually, this is the bell curve based on m…

Your "sources" are dubious (at best). Why don't you link to some studies that back up your imgur you got from chimpout or some other fine upstanding white nationalist blog.

The imgur photo came from the Bell Curve by Charles Murray. There was some controversy about parts of the book, but the fact that blacks score one standard deviation lower on IQ tests was never disputed. You can also find this by just googling "race and SAT scores" "race and LSAT scores". Look at the official results put out by those organizations, and you will find that on every single test the average black score is about one standard deviation lower than the average white score.

After the Bell Curve was published a 52 professors from around the country, representing a majority of those responding, signed a statement on the mainstream science on intelligence, saying:

> "The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes. Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of race and social class. Source: https://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstrea...

Again, the difference in average cognitive test scores is simply not in dispute.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#197

Post by lagadu »

ryanlol wrote: post #70
skywhopper wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find it surprising. I'm white, and I've been on all-white teams where everyone else watched the same TV shows or went to the same movies or played the same video games, and I didn't. Those common interests would feel like the only thing they ever talked about, and it would feel very unwelcoming. Part of the problem is just luck of the draw in terms of the team you get placed on. If that team is all into the…

But that's not what she says, her problem isn't that she doesn't like Marvel Cinematic Universe but that she feels that she doesn't have much in common with people of other races.

She said she didn't have much in common with those particular people, not non-black people in general. Had she thought that she didn't have enough in common with multiple races to work with them, she wouldn't have tried to work in a place where only 1% of the population would have the slightest chance of having something in common with her (and very reasonably so, if I may add).

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#198

Post by pc86 »

pacala wrote: post #103
scarmig wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, that homogeneous Asian culture, comprising 4 billion people who all speak the same language and eat the same food and watch the same TV shows. They're all the same!

To be fair, that homogenous white European culture, with about 50 countries, 23 official languages in EU, 225 indigenous languages in whole of Europe, and every valley with its own, sometimes quite distinct, dialect and traditions. Here are some European dialect maps: http://i.imgur.com/9btMHIT.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Continen... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects https://u…

I get your point but I do think that "European culture" (that sounds strange to my American ears as I typically think of the individual nations, not Europe as a whole) is more homogeneous than Asian culture. Not that it is homogeneous, just closer on the spectrum.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#199

Post by gotchange »

auggierose wrote: post #60

Let's assume there is this black guy / girl sitting in the interview room with you. You (white) are asking interview questions and you soon realise that the person you are interviewing is excellent. But something is off, you can't really put your finger on it. What do you do?

> What do you do?

Seek psychiatric help and you'll be OK, hopefully.

Re: Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom

#200

Post by joeletizia »

zanek wrote: post #133

As a human that people in America would call black/African-American I really dislike articles like this. I understand that some black people feel like they cant relate to others, but I find the entire premise of such arguments about homogeneous workplaces and cultures completely ridiculous. The culture of 'black' people in Alabama will be very different from Howard or Washington DC, does that mean Alabama is unwelcom…

I could not agree with your comments more.

The more we realize that there are cultural divides other than skin color, I think we as a collective species can see that the constructs that have been used to divide us in the past are completely pointless; everyone is very different.

Most people would call me white. But I'm from the north eastern US, I'm catholic, I come from an italian background, and I speak shitty broken Spanish from growing up with a lot of cubans and dominicans. I have nothing in common with a jewish girl from LA that grew up in a family of lawyers that immigrated from Russia other than the color of our skin. And some how she and I have more in common than the black cuban kids I grew up with?

The barriers we as a people tend to see as the most divisive are generally the least divisive in practice. We just like to think that they are the most divisive because it's easy to see.

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