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Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

theguardian.com

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Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#61

Post by outand_up »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #43
infiniteseeker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I have tons of Indian , other south Asian and east Asian heritage colleagues. Weird how theres no racism in this case.

'“There have been no changes for Asians or any other minority over time – men or women,” said Buck Gee, the study’s co-author and an executive adviser to Ascend, a US-based research group that advocates for Asian representation in businesses.' The claim is that, despite increasingly visible/vocal attempts at diversity, the industry does not reflect this. We've noticed a regression in black/Latino hiring and stagnancy…

No I don't believe it does. Causation != correlation.

Just because a company goes on a PR campaign to openly discriminate based on race and attempt to hire minorities, does not mean more minorities will present themselves in the application pools.

Again, until urban minority cultures begin to value education - nothing will change.

Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#62

Post by BoorishBears »

outand_up wrote: post #54
BoorishBears wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""

That's exactly what I meant, you can see me explain in other comments. Assume good intent in people, come on guys. Since we're talking about minorities, I felt the need to specify "urban black" culture, but I agree. "Urban " culture is suffering from anti-intellectualism.

What good intent is there in saying something so crass?

Saying "Urban " turns what's a non-race specific issue into a racial comment, good intent or not.

Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#63

Post by talad »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #43
infiniteseeker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I have tons of Indian , other south Asian and east Asian heritage colleagues. Weird how theres no racism in this case.

'“There have been no changes for Asians or any other minority over time – men or women,” said Buck Gee, the study’s co-author and an executive adviser to Ascend, a US-based research group that advocates for Asian representation in businesses.' The claim is that, despite increasingly visible/vocal attempts at diversity, the industry does not reflect this. We've noticed a regression in black/Latino hiring and stagnancy…

Or it means any number of things such as the visible/vocal attempts at diversity failing to achieve their stated goals, the difficulty in attracting appropriately skilled developers from what is already a much smaller subset of the population etc.

The angle of the study, if not the actual result, is already a foregone conclusion considering it's from an Affirmative Action-lobbying organization but even then some of the complaints are a bit nonsensical (hard to know if it should be chalked down to the Guardian or the actual report though), for instance that it's twice as likely to find white men and women as CEOs than asian ones, when the amount of whites are fourteen times the one of the asian population in the US.

Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#64

Post by geofft »

outand_up wrote: post #51
geofft wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not value education. I have no interest in deleting your comment, but I am interested in rational debate. 1. What is your evidence for this? 2. Why would this explain a decline in representation? Do you believe that "urban black" culture has started devaluing education? 3. If, indeed, you're tired of thinking about race, why is your analysis…

Sure, glad to have this conversation. 1. I don't think I need to provide evidence that black culture does not value education. Call me racist, whatever you want - but this is an obvious truth. 2. This is difficult to quantify, maybe it's gotten worse - the underlying issue remains. 3. I specify "urban" culture because I believe the issue of representation is due almost entirely to culture and socioeconomics. You will…

> 1. I don't think I need to provide evidence that black culture does not value education. Call me racist, whatever you want - but this is an obvious truth.

I don't think calling you racist will be productive. But I am perfectly happy to call you uninterested in reasoned debate if you cannot produce even the slightest shred at evidence here.

> 2. This is difficult to quantify, maybe it's gotten worse - the underlying issue remains.

So you have no reason why representation would worsen other than "maybe."

> You will not see black kids from double-educated-parent households from the suburbs struggling in academia or the workforce.

Again, can you provide evidence here? One form of evidence is looking at the number of students from such households who go to college for CS, and what the proportions are by race of people who get hired and promoted in tech. If those proportions are on par with the number who graduate college, then you'll have demonstrated your claim.

Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#65

Post by root_axis »

outand_up wrote: post #27

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." We're tired of obsessing about race. We're tired of having accusations of racism, sexism, whatever-the-next-trendy-ism crammed down our throats at every opportunity. The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not valu…

Black people don't have a homogenous culture, don't be surprised by the accusations of racism when you literally castigate a culture based on race.

Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#66

Post by jahewson »

Studies, data, conversation, and thoughtfulness around these issues are welcome and needed but this news article is, frankly, junk.

I always like to look at data from the source, so I downloaded the original report, which The Guadian couldn't be bothered to link to.

Let's start with the title of the article:

> Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

However the report is about Asian representation, and although it includes some data on other groups it states:

> Although we include the figures for black and Hispanic men and women, we do not use them for comparative purposes because EPI figures for those cohorts are highly sensitive to small changes.

This is right in the executive summary.

The next problem is that the article represents the study as being of "Silicon Valley" and the "tech industry", but the study is of just five companies: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. These are all large corporations and there is no evidence given to suggest that this is a "Silicon Valley" problem and not a "Corporate America" problem. That's not to say that you can't draw conclusions from studying these companies, but you can't make sweeping statements about the tech industry based on them. Especially when so much of Silicon Valley is made up of startups. The valley is a dynamic place: two of those corporations no longer exist.

Obviously problems exist, but I see no reason here to single out the tech industry for special blame, especially when no attempt is made to compare tech with other industries and "tech" is taken to mean a handful of large corporations. Worse still, by misrepresenting the nature and origins of these problems, we set ourselves up to fail when we try to address them. Uber's appalling culture, for example is firmly rooted in that of finance, why don't we talk about that? What do the finance industry's diversity statistics look like?

Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#67

Post by HillaryBriss »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #17
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #4

Time for today's most incendiary post. (; I think feelings on this are going to depend on whether you consider a silicon valley job as more "outcome" or "opportunity." I'd say making sure that black/latino people can obtain these jobs is just as important as making sure they have equal opportunity to attend a good college or good highschool. That puts me in a bit of a predicament though because I come to the conclusi…

But... the article says Asians are the most likely to be hired and least likely to be promoted so then are they more qualified or not? You know I think this is actually a good thing. I’ve been working as a dev for 12 years but after interviewing with tech companies more recently I’m done. I’m doing my own thing. The ‘technical interviews’ made sure of that, I presumably suck at them but I can’t be sure because no con…

> The ‘technical interviews’ made sure of that, I presumably suck at them but I can’t be sure because no constructive feedback ...

such a good point. i've heard that companies have rules expressly forbidding offering constructive feedback to candidates, because liability (or something). but it's a wasteful/destructive system. many companies seem to think working for them is the summation of earthly existence. but they still have churn.

it reminds me of the fact that the two WhatsApp founders had applied to Facebook but were rejected. https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-...

i wish you extreme success in your independent venture.

Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#68

Post by outand_up »

JohnFro wrote: post #59
outand_up wrote: post #27

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." We're tired of obsessing about race. We're tired of having accusations of racism, sexism, whatever-the-next-trendy-ism crammed down our throats at every opportunity. The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not valu…

You're asking for quite a lot. Black America doesn't value education because the culture was designed to devalue education. I know no one on this site wants to talk about it, but a culture was created for Black America during slavery. Think about what was valuable in slaves. Physical Prowess (Stronger slaves means more work can be completed in the fields), and talent (slaves that can keep other slaves entertained mea…

I certainly don't believe it's asking for a lot. It's racist to assert that minorities don't have any self control.

Every race in the world has been enslaved at some point. We are just animals, transcend this.

Let's start here: is it too much of a stretch to say that I think it's ridiculous that the most commonly understood career path for black youth is drug dealer -> gangster rapper, or athlete? These kids deserve better role models, for one. This is an obvious truth and should not require citation.

Re: Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows

#70

Post by geofft »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #47
tlb wrote: post #7

Every underrepresented group represents an opportunity to start a company, hire some great people from that group, and succeed together. A single company, perhaps one you start this year, can make a huge impact. YC funding applications are due today. https://www.ycombinator.com/apply

It's not a very plausible assumption that your competitors are racially biased but your investors and customers aren't.

Not only that, it's much more legal to be racially biased in who you choose as your customers. The laws in the US that require nondiscrimination in hiring, regardless of how effective they may or may not be, don't apply at all to choosing a NoSQL vendor or whatever.
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