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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

#481

Post by wkimeria »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #437
alistproducer2 wrote: post #187

I'm a black guy working in IT at a company in the top 5 of the Fortune 500. This is complicated issue. There have been experiment that show having a "black" name lowers your job prospects [1]. Other studies that show: "...race actually turned out to be more significant than a criminal background. Notice that employers were more likely to call Whites with a criminal record (17% were offered an interview) than Blacks w…

Sounds like a good solution is to strip names from CVs when reviewing them. People are fallible, and often racist/sexist/discriminatory in general, even subconsciously. I wonder if this effect is the same with black recruiters, or if it goes the opposite way. It's very much normal for people to favour people similar to them, by race, gender, religion, etc.

I don't think the effect goes the other way (a lot of people habor anti-black unconscious bias, even black people).

Re anonymizing the names, I think there are a bunch of startup companies that provide such a service (i.e. https://www.gapjumpers.me/ ). It has been shown to make a difference but it is not always practical

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

#482

Post by dang »

solaris_2 wrote: post #480
dang wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, I always walk around with my head in the sand too. That crosses into personal attack, and you can't comment like that here. On HN, please post civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

I'm not attacking him/her and I hope it wasn't interpreted that way but that is a ridiculous statement by any POC in the United States to make. See dcole2929's response regarding the incredulity of that statement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949198

I'm sure you didn't mean to attack anyone, but on HN it's important to remain civil in comments, particularly when someone else's statement seems ridiculous.

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

#483

Post by stillsut »

dang wrote: post #248
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…

Please don't post ideological rants and angry invective to HN. They have no place here; we want thoughtful discussion. Unfortunately, this is still worse: > mediocre college students You can't possibly know that. It sounds like you overcame some significant obstacles, and that's admirable. But please don't put other people down.

> You can't possibly know that.

It's funny, dang. You don't seem to ask all the haters to justify their opinions regarding the NSA. Even though by definition, no commenter could "possibly know" the extent of a surveillance program that is top secret. And let's not touch on 'ranting'; NSA threads are full of those.

In fact, affirmative action is the only topic where you demand ideologic lock-step. If you disagree with my assessment please shut me up: point to 1 comment you have made critcizing a pro-AA position. Because I could go through the threads and produce hundreds of tsk tsk's for anyone who voices anti-AA views. If you can provide me with this one example of being a fair to both sides (and thus worthy of being a moderator) I will officially apologize.

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

#484

Post by Grishnakh »

gohrt wrote: post #399
kenjackson wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is a "high-end" black name?

The richest black Americans are named: Oprah, Michael, Tiger, Sean, Robert, Mariah, Earvin, Jay, Bill, Sheila, Tyler, Shaquille, Dr, Master, Berry, Russell, Quintin, Beyonce, Prince. The richest Americans are named: Bill, Warren, Larry, Jeff, Charles, David, Mark, Michael, Jim, Larry, Sergey (immigrant, didn't change name), Alice (inherited), S. Robson (inherited) Christy (inherited), Sheldon, George, Phil, Forrest,…

Don't forget also that for many of those black names, those people are celebrities and sports stars: they don't have to worry about getting a job interview at some soulless corporation. Beyonce, Oprah, Shaquille, etc. made their millions in the entertainment business and likely never had to deal with that. However, someone sending in a resume with the name "Shaquille" for a programming job isn't going to get a pass just because he shares a name with a basketball legend; he'll be subject to whatever bias about black people the resume screener has.

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

#485

Post by Grishnakh »

dlreeves wrote: post #456
PhearTheCeal wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems quite prejudiced of her to simply look at her colleagues skin color and assume that she doesn't have much in common with them. Unless by "much" she means "her skin color", but that seems even more racist. I'll give the article the benefit of the doubt.

What makes you feel that she is making this judgement based on skin color? From my reading it sounds like she tried going to lunch with her coworkers and the conversations that naturally came up were not of interest to her.

Cry me a river. Honestly, you're not going to share interests with everyone.

I'm a white guy. If I go to lunch with a bunch of manager or sales guys, and they start talking about sports, I'm going to have exact same problem. I don't give two shits about sports, and I think spectator sports are incredibly stupid. So if I find myself in a group of sports fans, then I'm also going to feel that I don't have much in common with these people. Does that mean they're a bunch of racists? Obviously not; we simply don't share the same culture. If the conversation shifts to technology, or sci-fi, or Game of Thrones (a lot of people are into that these days), etc., then I'll be able to join in, but if the sports fans aren't into talking about that stuff over lunch, then I'm out of luck. I'm not going to whine much about it, except maybe for making some snide remarks about how stupid sports fans are, but I'm certainly not going to go on a crusade about it.

Luckily, I usually get along pretty well with coworkers this way, but I guess engineers tend not to be sports fanatics as much as the general population. But I certainly have found myself in situations with groups of people with very different interests than myself. I didn't make a big deal out of it; I know that my interests are a little more narrow and that I eschew many things that regular people like (sports, popular TV shows aside from GoT), so I try to find people I do share interests with.

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

#486

Post by Grishnakh »

hosh wrote: post #362
numbsafari wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's stretching it. What she said is she doesn't feel like she has much in common with these particular people , not people of other races in general. Most "engineering-types" would probably feel the exact same way if they were asked to join the sales team at their company. Talk about culture shock...

Maybe the point then is that if we are aiming for diversity, then we aim for diversity: come out of your own comfort zone and get to know something or someone that feels uncomfortably foreign, try to appreciate this for what it is. It applies as much for "engineering-types" getting to know "sales-types" as it is for people of different racial heritages. Why should we expect "diversity" to have an appended, "as long a…

How about no? If I'm in a group of sports fans, then no, I really don't give a shit about getting to know about how these stupid teams are doing this season. If you have an interest in something, great, but don't expect me to give two shits about it. If I have an interest, I'll let you know, if not, I'll just politely decline.

This doesn't mean that the minority person can't ask, "hey, does anyone follow XYZ?". He might be surprised. But if not, don't expect everyone to have or feign an interest.

And surely, in a team of technologists, they can find something that they're all interested in and can talk about. Maybe something to do with, oh, I don't know, maybe technology? I have conversations at work all the time like that (luckily I work with some really smart people at my current job), about future trends in tech, etc. But I've worked with some dullards in the past, and I didn't get butt-hurt that they didn't want to talk about sci-fi or whatever.

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

#487

Post by hosh »

Grishnakh wrote: post #486
hosh wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the point then is that if we are aiming for diversity, then we aim for diversity: come out of your own comfort zone and get to know something or someone that feels uncomfortably foreign, try to appreciate this for what it is. It applies as much for "engineering-types" getting to know "sales-types" as it is for people of different racial heritages. Why should we expect "diversity" to have an appended, "as long a…

How about no? If I'm in a group of sports fans, then no, I really don't give a shit about getting to know about how these stupid teams are doing this season. If you have an interest in something, great, but don't expect me to give two shits about it. If I have an interest, I'll let you know, if not, I'll just politely decline. This doesn't mean that the minority person can't ask, "hey, does anyone follow XYZ?". He mi…

In my experience in scaling applications, I've noticed there is a very big difference between measuring actual performance in production and taking a look with an open mind, and making wild-ass guesses.

You don't have enough data on other people around you, or even how they view the world, or feel about the world. It's like taking a wild-ass guess, and being proud of it.

I don't really care much for following sports teams either. I used to turn my nose at it, as if I am somehow a superior person for not giving two shits about who is winning. One day, I read Michael Lewis's Moneyball and flipped through Blindside and realized I had been an idiot. I still might not care about which team is winning, yet there are a lot of hidden depths to sports. How many other things have I missed by not looking with an open mind?

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

#488

Post by Grishnakh »

dopamean wrote: post #338
School-Cotton wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

African-Americans are a distinct ethnocultural group with their own cultural references, dialect, religious traditions, and so on (of course this doesn't apply to all black people; I'm talking about averages here.) "Black" in France is just a phenotype. Progressive-leaning people in the US would typically be uncomfortable with the idea of "assimilating" Blacks because it implies that White Anglo-Saxon culture is (or…

As a black man who went to almost entirely white schools my whole life and grew up in a very white place in New York I can sort of confirm what you're saying. When I went to college and met other black students who grew up around more black people I found that I had very little in common with them and it was hard to communicate. I was then, and always have been, more comfortable around white people. On a side note, I…

I've definitely heard this before from African immigrants: they feel completely separate from "African-Americans", and frequently don't even like to be associated with them. Jamaica would be no different; you didn't grow up in the neighborhoods and with the same experiences that a black native-born American would have.

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

#489

Post by Grishnakh »

scarmig wrote: post #94
taconacho wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that surprising. Howard University is 95% black (source: http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1024 " rel="nofollow">http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl... ) and is one of the lowest ranked colleges in terms of diversity. Coming from such a culturally closed-off environment to a different one comprised mostly of whites and Asians of different eth…

It'd be an irony if part of the reason students at HBCUs don't "mesh" with Silicon Valley is that they're not comfortable with diverse environments. Looking at a list of the "whitest" universities, their graduates seem similarly unrepresented in the places I've worked. A flawed but interesting test: do black CS graduates from Stanford and MIT fit better into SV than black CS graduates from Howard?

>It'd be an irony if part of the reason students at HBCUs don't "mesh" with Silicon Valley is that they're not comfortable with diverse environments.

This wouldn't surprise me. I graduated college 18 years ago, and even back then there was a huge amount of diversity in my graduating class. I had friends from India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Turkey, Ghana, etc. However, there were very, very few African-Americans (the guy from Ghana doesn't count). Nor were there any Hispanics that I recall. So someone from my university would have fit in pretty well in SV in a diverse work team (and they did, lots of my classmates went there).

So I think your test isn't flawed at all, but a very worthwhile question.

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

#490

Post by Grishnakh »

hosh wrote: post #487
Grishnakh wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about no? If I'm in a group of sports fans, then no, I really don't give a shit about getting to know about how these stupid teams are doing this season. If you have an interest in something, great, but don't expect me to give two shits about it. If I have an interest, I'll let you know, if not, I'll just politely decline. This doesn't mean that the minority person can't ask, "hey, does anyone follow XYZ?". He mi…

In my experience in scaling applications, I've noticed there is a very big difference between measuring actual performance in production and taking a look with an open mind, and making wild-ass guesses. You don't have enough data on other people around you, or even how they view the world, or feel about the world. It's like taking a wild-ass guess, and being proud of it. I don't really care much for following sports…

Everyone prefers their favorite things over things they don't like. Anyone who doesn't is insane. The sports fans probably think they're superior people because they spend all their time and energy following sports, instead of being like me and following sci-fi or programming or whatever.

It really doesn't matter. My whole point, which you seem to have missed, is that people have preferences. I don't give a shit about sports. I don't care about its hidden depths. I have the right to my opinion, and to turn my nose up at sports, just like the sports fan has the right to turn his nose up at sci-fi. Are you going to chastise him for not being open-minded and spending a bunch of time watching sci-fi movies he has no interest in and then being able to discuss them intelligently with coworkers?

The simple fact is that different people have different tastes and interests. If someone wants to be curious and try learning about something different, then great. If they've already given that thing a chance, or taken a quick look and decided it's not for them, there is nothing wrong with that. If that means that they feel "left out" when talking to coworkers, too bad. That's a natural byproduct of people having different interests. It doesn't need to be "fixed".

Basically, what you're doing is telling minorities that they need to take an active interest in things that the majority (meaning white people here) are interested in so that they can fit in better. That sounds rather condescending to me honestly. I used sports here as an analogy to point out that this isn't a racial issue, we only see it here because different demographics tend to have different interests because of their different upbringings and environments. No one makes an issue out of white northeasterners not being interested in gun shooting and muddin'.

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