Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#71

Post by serge2k » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:42 PM UTC

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…

Their bar factors in things like going to a top school, which (according to the article) means you now have a much less diverse recruiting pool.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#72

Post by jusben1369 » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:42 PM UTC

Floegipoky wrote: post #27

Kiro wrote: post #8

I don't understand. Sure, the name idea wasn't perfect but the VP had good intentions. Is this really that upsetting?

I think it was really because of frustration that this VP was so willfully ignorant about the issue; the author talks about how they kept focusing on the hiring pipeline even after the data clearly showed that the problem is that diverse candidates are never even entering the pipeline.

Yes I think this is heading in the right direction. "Willfully ignorant" Let's assume this person (the SVP) is very bright if only based on the fact he is an SVP at Twitter. So you know from experience that if he puts his mind to it he is capable of solving complex problems. Here's a problem you care about deeply and your super bright problem solving SVP comes back with such a flawed approach to tackle it. It would be disheartening.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#73

Post by bduerst » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:43 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #57

ksenzee wrote: post #36

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. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. Tha…

>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.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#74

Post by serge2k » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #64

jonesb6 wrote: post #12

Anyone else get the strong feeling that articles like this are a detriment to equal rights movements? If you're misrepresenting facts and statistics people will eventually catch on and simply not trust you anymore, skewering any ability you have to raise awareness and make a difference..

Please provide examples of misrepresented facts and statistics in this article.

Amazon not bothering to separate out engineering from their fulfillment centers (it's in the chart).

Granted, that isn't by the author, but it shows a company trying to dodge the diversity issue.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#75

Post by Nadya » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #57

ksenzee wrote: post #36

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. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. Tha…

>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…

How is someone who was more likely to be harassed by LEO's going to have a different outlook on the engineering/programming of an internet-based social media service? Not buying it. Is it more diverse? Sure. Does it matter at all for the task they are performing? I don't see how it does.

>(sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier)

For some - it's putting the `African` before the `American`. For others, it is putting `African` at all (not all blacks identify or hail from Africa). Ultimately, offense is taken and not given. You'll also find people who take offense at being called `black` over `African American`.

Either way - I don't think you need to justify your use of calling them `black`, at least in this context.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#76

Post by such_a_casual » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

"As we continued the discussion, he suggested I create a tool to analyze candidates last names to classify their ethnicity."

Tisk. Tisk. It's been well documented that these tools are used to weed out ethnicities.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#77

Post by mazerackham » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

muuh-gnu wrote: post #51

ksenzee wrote: post #36

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. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. Tha…

> These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. You are implying that those negative experiences are a product of racism and not of simple statistics. Maybe, only maybe, people _dont have_ as many problems with white guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie as they have with black guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie, so they dont call the cops on the former and call the cops on…

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?

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#78

Post by spacehome » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #37

jonesb6 wrote: post #12

Anyone else get the strong feeling that articles like this are a detriment to equal rights movements? If you're misrepresenting facts and statistics people will eventually catch on and simply not trust you anymore, skewering any ability you have to raise awareness and make a difference..

Yeah. A lot of white men get that sense.

That's an ad hominem attack of the exact kind that (I'm guessing) jonesb6 would argue against. If you have some concrete non-racist criticism of jonesb6's post let's hear it. Ideas should be judged on their own merits not the skin color of the originator ... much like Twitter VPs.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#79

Post by dalke » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #28

dalke wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my own cursory observations of the population flux in the Bay Area, I believe your analysis and thus conclusion is based on a false premise. That analysis assumes that the hiring base is predominately drawn from local people. Speaking anecdotally, I know many people who graduated from college and headed to the Bay Area to look for a job. I myself moved to Mountain View for a job, then later moved away. A mor…

I did express the thought of "normalized to an appropiate" metric badly. I don't know what that metric is, and don't presume to know. Local demographics were just one example to me. I'll correct the post.

I quoted your use of "not unexpected" because it suggests that you have some expectation. I would call the the basis for that expectation part of a presumption that you know.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#80

Post by jarfil » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 8:45 PM UTC

ksenzee wrote: post #36

theuttick wrote: post #24

The one thing that he never explains is exactly what "diversity" he is looking for at Twitter. It seems that the only thing that matters to him is the color of the person's skin. In other words, an African-American MIT CS grad that grew up in Iowa is somehow going to come at problems differently than a white guy from the same town and school and with the same background. I wouldn't really call that diversity, that's…

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. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. Tha…

> But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform.

I don't think it's the tech department's job to define those.