71–80 of 158 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it a crazy idea the reason is that the figures themselves are irrelevant?
Why are they irrelevant? Why can't the data be used to address this disparity? If certain groups shy away from STEM careers, why not try to do something about it?
It's from an organisation (Code2040) that spent 10 years working to build a pipeline of qualified Black and Latinx candidates, only to find many companies had hiring processes that wouldn't hire their candidates anyway.
For the millionth time. The distribution of populations not lining up with the general population distributions is not indicative of discrimination. Not to mention that the "anti-brown people" narrative absolutely dissolves in the face of the massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians. To say that Silicon Valley has a "race problem" and only include the employment statistics as they relate to the populati…
There are roughly half as many black people in the "Bay Area" compared to 20 years ago. But the black population increased in neighboring counties significantly.
While Asians are "over-represented" in tech, they are under represented in leadership and senior roles - compared to their representation in the lower ranks.
While there are a lot of technical roles at tech companies, the results aren't any different for those non-technical roles either.
And let's not even discuss how hiring and recruiting practices lead to a very limited pool. If most black engineers come from HBCUs and tech companies never recruit at HBCUs - well they are missing out on a large pool. If most hires come from internal referrals and the average person doesn't have a diverse friend pool - it keeps the status quo.
So diversity is broken on multiple levels, and it is easy to hide.
1. tech workers don't match the percentages in the larger regional job force 2. non-white people are not represented in leadership, not even commiserate to their ratios in the larger tech workforce 3. There are a lot of non-engineering jobs that should have more diverse pools (sales, marketing, administration, etc) and these roles still have the race problem. 4. Recruiting and hiring processes reinforce the status quo on "diversity"
Something is broken, but we spend a lot of time trying to obscure that fact.
This is such fake news. I've been surrounded by H1B employees my entire career.
More like journalism is using race to hide its jealousy problem. Tech now has the power, influence, and compensation that journalist used to have, and they're mad about it. Most of these companies go way out of their way to recruit minorities and women. If you believe that not having enough of them in tech companies is a problem, you're going to have to look further down the funnel, to college major choices and hones…
What if there isn't a pipeline problem? What if there is an actual difference in preference? For example, looking at gender and STEM it seems that [0]: a. Countries that push for more gender equality see less women in STEM. b. Girls in school perform just as well as boys in STEM. Also, men are also highly over-represented in low-end jobs such as drivers, construction, mechanics etc [1]. Is that also a sign to a bias/…
To be clear, i'm including 'preference' as a sub-component of 'pipeline problem'. I think it's a cultural open question whether or not we consider this a 'problem'. I think the argument for preference is much stronger on the gender question though, than on the minority question. There's strong psych research indicating preferences against programming for women, but i'm not aware of any for say, African Americans. In the minority case, I suspect it's more of an access/opportunity issue early on, but i'm open to many views of these issues.
For the millionth time. The distribution of populations not lining up with the general population distributions is not indicative of discrimination. Not to mention that the "anti-brown people" narrative absolutely dissolves in the face of the massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians. To say that Silicon Valley has a "race problem" and only include the employment statistics as they relate to the populati…
Two citations needed.
I've been on hiring committees for years, at both very large, and very small companies. I've hired and rejected both men and women. I've never seen a "diversity hire" done.
Also, you are the first person I've seen say that blind interviews decrease diversity. In fact, the study that gets cited the most involving orchestras showed the exact opposite. [0] I would love to read where you got your information.
Thanks.
[0] http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact...
For the millionth time. The distribution of populations not lining up with the general population distributions is not indicative of discrimination. Not to mention that the "anti-brown people" narrative absolutely dissolves in the face of the massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians. To say that Silicon Valley has a "race problem" and only include the employment statistics as they relate to the populati…
As indicated in the article, there's evidence [0] that there is profound underrepresentation at the leadership level relative to junior representation.
[0] https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.ascendleadership.org/resource/...
For the millionth time. The distribution of populations not lining up with the general population distributions is not indicative of discrimination. Not to mention that the "anti-brown people" narrative absolutely dissolves in the face of the massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians. To say that Silicon Valley has a "race problem" and only include the employment statistics as they relate to the populati…
To me the issue is not discrimination but rather representation. I will give you a concrete example. Our team (working in medicine) had very few Latinos for a long time. As a result of this we completely avoided gathering training data from Latin America because no one was well versed in how to conduct business there, yet we had data/deals with US, Europe and Asia. As a result our algorithms will likely not help Lati…
This also brings up an interesting point of contention. The diversity dance has 2 arguments at odds with themselves.
Claim 1: All populations of people are inherently equivalent and should therefore have proportional representations in all things.
Claim 2: Diversity is a boon because populations are inherently unique and provide a unique set of characteristics to the table.
Pick one. You cannot make both of those claims simultaneously.
You are advocating in favor of Claim 2, which is fine, but what if the position in question doesn't actually benefit from a diverse set of skills? What if it's a low level circuit designer that tends to favor a particular skillset and personality type? Is it not possible that attributes more commonly represented in a certain population might be overrepresented in sectors that require those characteristics?
In contrast, if you advocate instead for Claim 1, then there should be no discernible advantage to diverse hiring, it's just that a failure to do so would be indicative of bias.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying the top X% is racially skewed? Because all things being equal, if the only difference between the two groups is color of their skin, I'd say that was a textbook definition of racial bias.
All things are not equal. Black Americans as a group are poorer than other racial groups save perhaps native Americans, and have worse educational outcomes on average. Is this the result of institutional racism? I’d say so, but it also can be a cause or underrepresentation in higher skilled employment, even if the employers are not biased in their selection processes.
What he said was "the top x% of the tech population". The tech distribution as a whole is already skewed. If talent was independent of race, you'd expect an equally skewed distribution at whatever talent threshold you set. That's how conditional independence works. His statement is implying that is not true, and that if you set the talent threshold high, you get a different racial distribution. That's a very important distinction, if that is indeed what he's saying.
I really think this is what he's saying, because he's explicitly stating that large companies that recruit nationwide should be have a population equal to the skewed nationwide tech population, because they higher only "the top x% of the tech population". Not confounding geographic reasons (i.e. someone doesn't want to move away from their family), but specifically talent reasons.
Lately, as American-born Indian-background person, I have been feeling discriminated during job interviews. My friends and I are not really looking to changes jobs but are always interviewing passively.
My black friends have recruiters hounding them on LinkedIn. They get more job offers, have easier interview questions, and even higher salarier.
While my experience is usually average. But when we compare type of questions we answered at the same company for same role, it is pretty obvious that I was asked harder questions.
On other hand, I can tell when my interviewers are mostly Indian, they discriminate in my favor.