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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

#81

Post by larrys »

dang wrote: post #6
justizin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to normalize the number fucking zero, but since a substantial amount of new hires at tech companies are imported, local demographics are impacted by hiring practices more than the inverse. Applicant demographics was, if you would fucking READ THE ARTICLE before saying some ignorant shit, exactly what the conflict was over. The VP Eng wanted to identify demographics based on last name, ignoring complete…

This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Everyone posting here needs to be civil, regardless of how wrong or unfair someone else's comment may be. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Noting he was flagged 36 days ago. At what threshold does someone gets banned?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10297957

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#82

Post by serge2k »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #52
mazerackham wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly think it's "worth questioning how a black person would think differently"? Different experiences yield different points of view yield different ideas

Ok, so what's the black perspective on eliminating the fail whale? What's the black idea about how to filter my feed? Lets be concrete here, rather than appealing to vague platitudes.

What's the black perspective on how to better serve people who are in ferguson?

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#83

Post by spacehome »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #31

Removing barriers to particular ethnicities in hiring? Great. Making it clear in marketing and outreach that all ethnicities are welcomed and encouraged? Great. Establishing a quota of X % of employees should be a certain race? Uh... okay. Should asians be turned down from a job because they've hit the asian quota and need more blacks? I didn't realize companies practiced affirmative action like this.

> I didn't realize companies practiced affirmative action like this.

I'm surprised that you're surprised.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#84

Post by mazerackham »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #55
mazerackham wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, trying to redefine racial diversity as racism. Having a different skin color makes a HUGE impact on the way you experience life, especially in America. Holding all other things equal, that alone will give you a different outlook on life, and likely different ideas too.

> Wow, trying to redefine racial diversity as racism. If a diversity quota decides about you gettnig a job or not getting a job, then it is indistinguishable from a race quota, i.e. racism.

literally never discussed the idea of a quota in this particular thread, so you're jumping to conclusions here.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#85

Post by yummyfajitas »

mazerackham wrote: post #46
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…

Huge upvote here. As much as we would like to forget about race in America, the fact is: Race Matters. The way people look at you, talk to you (or ignore you), talk about you, extend invites, etc..that ALL changes with your race.

Yes - I'm treated very differently from most of my coworkers on account of race. I could give lots of mildly interesting examples - it certainly means my dating life is very different.

But how does it affect me on the job? I write quantitative software, and spend lots of time thinking about bayesian hierarchical models and multiple comparisons. You are suggesting I have some unique power. I'd really like to know how I can use this power.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#86

Post by yuhong »

As a side note, I dislike anti-discrimination laws. For example, the statistical way of proving discrimination probably only works well for certain kinds of jobs like unskilled labor. Limiting these laws to these kinds of jobs by default would probably be a good compromise.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#87

Post by spacehome »

mazerackham wrote: post #68
dreamdu5t wrote: post #31

Removing barriers to particular ethnicities in hiring? Great. Making it clear in marketing and outreach that all ethnicities are welcomed and encouraged? Great. Establishing a quota of X % of employees should be a certain race? Uh... okay. Should asians be turned down from a job because they've hit the asian quota and need more blacks? I didn't realize companies practiced affirmative action like this.

I'm Chinese, and I don't appreciate your attempt at pitting Asians against Blacks.

I'm pretty sure it's a reductio ad absurdum argument.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#88

Post by zaidf »

He is offended that he wasn't invited at various events involving African American leaders. I have black friends who would be offended if they were specifically invited to these events because they were African American.

This sums up my issue with this piece: at best, not all his wishes are necessarily shared by other people of color; at worst, some of the things he wants could actually be construed as racist("Just because I'm black doesn't mean I'm interested in Jesse Jackson" my friend often says.)

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#89

Post by civilian »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #31

Removing barriers to particular ethnicities in hiring? Great. Making it clear in marketing and outreach that all ethnicities are welcomed and encouraged? Great. Establishing a quota of X % of employees should be a certain race? Uh... okay. Should asians be turned down from a job because they've hit the asian quota and need more blacks? I didn't realize companies practiced affirmative action like this.

I'm pretty sure they don't. There are PRs campaigns saying they would like to get closer to those quotas, but I don't think any engineering management is actually going to let their interview process be changed.

At companies I've worked at I've seen the leadership cheerleading race & gender diversity, but not interfering with engineering management's hiring practices. I assume that the leadership is just playing the Public Relations game, because being seen as a proponent for diversity is good press, but not letting it actually change anything. If I'm being even more cynical, then leadership is just clueless, and is also clueless that they shouldn't be averaging engineering with marketing in order to say that we have a good gender ratio.

Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

#90

Post by vacri »

I find the numbers a little weird. While 'black' and 'hispanic' are underrepresented in the graphs, 'asian' is heavily overrepresented (in yahoo's case, it's triple the percentage), and 'asian' isn't a single ethnicity. Not only are south asians not east asians or west asians (culturally or physically), but Chinese aren't Koreans, who aren't Vietnamese, who aren't Filipino and so forth (these are the groups in the BLS report). The author seems to be using 'diversity' to mean 'proportion of black faces', rather than diversity across the board.
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