Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
1–10 of 227 posts
Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#2HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post.
I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o... ) wasn't normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter with its 1% falls far below.
I'm sorry for my mistake.
My original post below for context for the replies made to it, but which is otherwise useless.
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It's alway a little confusing when people bring up diversity reports that aren't normalized to an appropiate comparison metric. (Possibly local demographics, or any number of more in-depth metrics. I also earlier suggested applicant demographics, but justizin pointed out those are not feasible.)
Also see: https://xkcd.com/1138/
To bring it into contrast with the article, he says:
"According to this census report: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty....
Race - Black or African American 48,870 6.1%
The twitter numbers are thus a little below average, but not necessarily unexpected given where Twitter's headquarter is located.
Edit:
According to this, Twitter has roughly 30% asians: https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-can-be-p...
Which seems to fit the census as well:
Race - Asian 267,915 33.3%
Another Edit:
To clarify, i am not saying that there is no problem. I'm merely saying that in order to solve a problem, one must both set appropiate goals, as well as correctly identify the root cause. Both of these can only be done usefully by applying statics correctly.
Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#3HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post. I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o... ) wasn't normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter wi…
That's a solid point. I don't know that that data is so accessible to anyone outside of a given companies HR department.
Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#4HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post. I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o... ) wasn't normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter wi…
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 completely that the name of the person he was actually talking to failed that test, and that this individual ran demographic name recognition software against the engineering team at twitter with a successful recognition rate of 0%.
Don't be a fuckhead. Be willing to accept this is a major fucking problem. IT IS.
Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#5Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#6HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post. I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o... ) wasn't normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter wi…
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.
Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#7> in 2013, 4.5% of CS graduates from the top 25 schools were African-American, and 6.5% were Hispanic/Latino.
That's a problem. Hiring corps not only need to screen more applicants in order to find more applicants above their quality bar, but they also need to engage the community to get more kids interested in their fields and encouraged through school.
It's the long view, the generation long kind. Public corp cost accounting idiotry will not support investment like that, so it's up to the private corps.
Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#8I don't understand. Sure, the name idea wasn't perfect but the VP had good intentions. Is this really that upsetting?
Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#9I don't understand. Sure, the name idea wasn't perfect but the VP had good intentions. Is this really that upsetting?
I imagine it was upsetting because it showed the depth and breadth of the VP's ignorance. How many times have you wanted to leave a job because you just couldn't deal with the stupidity any longer? It's no fun to be a domain expert who's constantly surrounded by people who know nothing about your area of expertise.
Re: Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits
#10HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post. I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o... ) wasn't normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter wi…
Does Twitter hire only from the local area? If they have a relocation program, the local demographics are a lot less relevant.