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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

#221

Post by wpietri »

mazerackham wrote: post #220
wpietri wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes, let's turn this around. No matter that you haven't addressed any of the criticisms of your comments. No matter that when you get replies you don't like, you just delete what you wrote rather than owning your words and working through your mistakes. (Let me know if you'd like a copy; I saved it for you.) No matter that I encouraged your one actual idea, which was to maybe start volunteering. No matter that yo…

Hey wpietri, thanks for writing this comment. Sometimes, I read through threads like these, and see a lot of vocal white people saying shit that makes me lose hope for the future. White people are in charge in this country, and any change will require them to back it. Reading this helps undo some of that despair, and gives me some hope for the future. Thank you, and keep being exactly what minorities need right now.

Thanks. I was an ignorant fool on these issues for a long time. Now that I have slightly more clue, I figure one of the best things I can do with my privilege is just to visibly object, to get white dudes to listen to, well, anybody else. So much of what I got wrong happened not because I heard both sides and picked the wrong one, but because I didn't even know there was a choice.

And for what it's worth, I'm as impressed as hell by people in their 20s today. As an old, I think I'm supposed to grumble about kids these days. But I see so many young-ish voices that are so much smarter about these topics than my cohort was. I have enormous hope for the future.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#222

Post by steven2012 »

wpietri wrote: post #217
steven2012 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually what is even more remarkable is your ability to smugly pooh pooh everyone's ideas and point out how everyone is a closet racist, despite their good intentions. What, pray tell, is your idea to increase diversity, and what have you personally done to increase diversity?

Ah, yes, let's turn this around. No matter that you haven't addressed any of the criticisms of your comments. No matter that when you get replies you don't like, you just delete what you wrote rather than owning your words and working through your mistakes. (Let me know if you'd like a copy; I saved it for you.) No matter that I encouraged your one actual idea, which was to maybe start volunteering. No matter that yo…

I guess the tldr to your response is: "I'm actually doing nothing."

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#223

Post by wpietri »

steven2012 wrote: post #222
wpietri wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes, let's turn this around. No matter that you haven't addressed any of the criticisms of your comments. No matter that when you get replies you don't like, you just delete what you wrote rather than owning your words and working through your mistakes. (Let me know if you'd like a copy; I saved it for you.) No matter that I encouraged your one actual idea, which was to maybe start volunteering. No matter that yo…

I guess the tldr to your response is: "I'm actually doing nothing."

If that's what you take from it, then it looks like we're done here.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#224

Post by jldugger »

theorique wrote: post #193
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"? It is the legacy of the famous Griggs vs Duke Power case. Requiring IQ tests to filter employees was found to have "disparate impact" with respect to different identifiable groups. Silicon Valley does a lot of different IQ test proxies in order to filter their prospective employees in a hopefully-not-racist way: programming tests, seeking college degrees, etc…

The consequences of Griggs v. Duke more complicated than that: the problem with IQ tests is that they are slippery. An employer can say "we want the best and brightest." And they can decide that a degree from Stanford meets that criteria, even if the impact is disparate.

But if they use an IQ test, suddenly there's a slippery slope: Why is the cutoff 130? The error range on IQ tests is non-zero, so what if a black candidate with 129 comes in? How do you defend that disparate impact in court? You can't.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#225

Post by sokoloff »

nzoschke wrote: post #218
sokoloff wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Qualified" will always mean "can make a computer do things we need done" and that's not negotiable. We do hire at all experience levels and several of our successful squad leads are original college hires (having only worked with us), so we have some demonstrated track record of mentoring and retention. Even in college recruiting (where I'd expect the greatest diversity of candidates), I can't recall any recent blac…

Be careful with the term "Cinderella program". My direct experience here is working with Hackbright Academy to meet more women than I was getting through the standard job application channels. Hackbright works attracts women from all backgrounds, science but no computer science, college drop outs, and junior CS. It teaches practical programming skills in the 3 months class, then helps connect the women to companies.…

I was using Cinderella with the Bill Murrary Caddyshack scene in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQTXFJL8lo (implying a non-traditional background experiencing uncommon success, as in the fairy tale).

Until you pointed it out, I hadn't even considered the gender-specificity of Cinderella herself. Thanks and upvoted for pointing that out; it's obvious in retrospect, but wasn't intended.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#226

Post by moby »

steven2012 wrote: post #171
rrrx3 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There are numerous HBCUs that have very well structured CS programs. I'd be willing to put money on the fact that those graduates don't even get a second look. Valley people are too preoccupied with the optics of having a BIG SCHOOL NAME to actually care if an employee without the school name can do the job just as well or better.

This is generally false in Silicon Valley, both currently and in the past. The only company that made having a big school name important was Google, and even then it's only a factor. The vast majority of Silicon Valley companies don't care where you come from, or even if you graduated from college. All they care about is if you're smart and if you can contribute quickly. Half my current team at a well-known company d…

"All they care about is if you're smart and if you can contribute quickly."

You do realize that both of those descriptors are immensely subjective, right? How you assess "smart" is different from how I do, and there's no guarantee that the environment you create will allow me to contribute quickly compared to another one.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#227

Post by rrrx3 »

steven2012 wrote: post #171
rrrx3 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There are numerous HBCUs that have very well structured CS programs. I'd be willing to put money on the fact that those graduates don't even get a second look. Valley people are too preoccupied with the optics of having a BIG SCHOOL NAME to actually care if an employee without the school name can do the job just as well or better.

This is generally false in Silicon Valley, both currently and in the past. The only company that made having a big school name important was Google, and even then it's only a factor. The vast majority of Silicon Valley companies don't care where you come from, or even if you graduated from college. All they care about is if you're smart and if you can contribute quickly. Half my current team at a well-known company d…

Sure. Except that the OP of this on Medium went on to detail a very different scenario, outlining behavior that mirrors exactly what I said. You assert that the companies you've worked for do it differently? Ok, that may be so. But you're also not the bellwether for the entire industry, no matter how you may characterize your 20 years of work. I've been in it half as long, and as a person of color I can tell you unequivocally that you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to exposure, opportunity or lack thereof, or general desire to be involved in technology as a profession from that community.
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