10 ms·

What the Kapors Have Learned from Years of Working on Diversity in Tech

23 points by jimsojim 11y ago

millermp12 11y ago
Question: What was the percentage of blacks and/or women at Lotus notes when Mitch sold? How many low-income/minority households is Mitch within walking distance of from his Berkeley compound? Diversity for thee, but not for me. Also, while we're discussing Things You Should Not Notice: what are the numbers as far as litigiousness of "protected" groups? If I'm looking to hire someone, non-protected status (whether it's race, unionization, etc.) means I'm more likely to hire them (all else being equal). Like the blowback from affirmative action, I don't see an objective discussion about litigation risk (whether or not it's substantiated). It's human nature to asymmetrically attribute failure to others and success to oneself. Add racial/gender rent-seeking to the equation and you get an especially potent, counterproductive miasma. Just look at Buddy and Pao - they've made entire careers out of entrepreneurial race/gender grievance litigation. Why can't all this under-utilized talent create a tech company dominated by blacks and women? Why not create a Meyerhoff like program to prove your hypothesis rather than ask me to subscribe to the latest social engineering fad?
- KirinDave 11y ago
  > What was the percentage of blacks and/or women at Lotus notes when Mitch sold? > How many low-income/minority households is Mitch within walking distance of from his Berkeley compound? > Diversity for thee, but not for me. Can I ask you a quick question here? What does any of this matter? Diversity isn't about protecting yourself from character assassination. It's about promoting fairness, equality, and opportunity for everyone in society. If you look in the past of anyone, you will find things they regret and things that may draw censure from the pro-diversity and intersectional feminist mindset. That's natural. That's to be expected. Society is, by any reasonable and several reproducible metrics, extremely biased in favor of white men. We all grew up influenced by that society. It is therefore almost inevitable that anyone with these sorts of experiences has and will continue to have both privilege and mistakes in their past. What matters is going forward, how we all take these things we've been fortunate enough to be handed (along with the misfortunes and difficulties we've endured) and use those to promote a fairer, more just world for those who come after us. We can sit here and argue if this messenger is the ideal messenger. Which is odd, because in many other fields we view past mistakes as a teaching opportunity. Ultimately, the people in power should cede and share some of that good fortune and cultural windfall to create a more equal world rather than waiting for history to repeat itself with violent uprisings. History suggests that such uprisings are not kind to even bystanders. > Why can't all this under-utilized talent create a tech company dominated by blacks and women? Why not create a Meyerhoff like program to prove your hypothesis ... Because creating an environment that mimics the societal advantages white men get in the US and most of the western world is infeasibly expensive. I mean, seriously. How would you even? You'd have to raise kids from birth in a theme park with meticulous care to shield them from the deleterious effects of racism and sexism. > rather than ask me to subscribe to the latest social engineering fad? Progressivism isn't a fad. It's the consistent direction of society since the dark ages.
  - jdp23 11y ago
    Well said.
  - striking 11y ago
    Something something just-world fallacy. http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/06/the-belief-in-a-just-world-a-fundamental-delusion.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/06/the-belief-in-a-just-world-... > expensive With the millions of dollars from diversity initiatives, I'm sure someone could pull it off. Also, I think you're missing the entire "classism" thing. I'm Polish, and just because I'm white doesn't mean I have the world handed to me. Kind of the opposite actually, everything that I've ever gotten in life was thanks to fighting the system (whether it was my work or my parents' work). I could say I deserve something, but honestly I don't really think I do. The world is not a fair place.
    - millermp12 11y ago
      That's strange. With all those polish jokes going around, I figured poles would be a belligerent and resentful underclass. Strange how that works. Same with asians. Or is yellow the new white?
    - KirinDave 11y ago
      The world IS fundamentally unfair. That doesn't mean that society should foster fundamentally unfair policies. I don't know why you would think that this would be wise, or after even a casual perusal of history you'd think it was novel or sustainable. > Also, I think you're missing the entire "classism" thing. I'm Polish, and just because I'm white doesn't mean I have the world handed to me. Kind of the opposite actually, everything that I've ever gotten in life was thanks to fighting the system (whether it was my work or my parents' work). It simply wasn't the subject of this conversation. "White privilege" is a specific set of special treatments you get in the US. It is not, "Magically you have a perfect life." It's undeniable that with white privilege you're less likely to be summarily executed by law enforcement, as an example. But economic and other social divides still exist. Polish and Irish people are excellent examples of other axis of discrimination and racism that still exist in the world today. > I could say I deserve something, but honestly I don't really think I do. We're all raised to accept racism as normal. It's not surprising that you feel this way. But remember, you're not the one who's history is getting them shot in the street in the US right now, so you're probably going to feel slightly less personal pain and be asked to express slightly more empathy at this exact moment.
jdp23 11y ago
Excellent point from Freada: "My first piece of advice is to stop thinking about yourself as a meritocracy. Because if you believe you’re a meritocracy and you have numbers like everybody who has released their data, the implicit message is that Caucasian men are better than everyone else. Because that’s who is overrepresented."
- JesperRavn 11y ago
  On the flipside, what if Caucasian [sic] men were better than everyone in this field? Many people are happy to assert that diversity is good because it means multiple different viewpoints. What if the viewpoint of the Caucasian male[0] happened to be more suited to a particular field or company? [0] Given the obfuscation around race and culture, this might not be clear on first reading, but I am only discussing the possibility that the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasian" might have some advantage, not being "Caucasian" in itself. Thus my claim is entirely analagous with "You should hire more Black people because more (cultural) diversity will add more viewpoints to your company and hence increase productivity".
  - jdp23 11y ago
    > what if Caucasian [sic] men were better than everyone in this field? That's her point: given the data, claiming it's a meritocracy implies that Caucasian men are "better" than everybody in this field. That's not a useful attitude if you're trying to improve diversity. > What if the viewpoint of the Caucasian male happened to be more suited to a particular field or company? Then the particular field or company has evolved to favor Caucasian males (or if you prefer the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasion"). In other words, it's got embedded structural discrimination. If you want to improve diversity, that needs to be acknowledged and removed.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      > That's her point: given the data, claiming it's a meritocracy implies that Caucasian men are "better" than everybody in this field. That's not a useful attitude if you're trying to improve diversity. It isn't an attitude at all. It's purely descriptive. If you're saying it's wrong to describe it as a meritocracy because it isn't one then that's one thing. If making the industry more diverse would also make it more meritocratic then that is clearly the way forward. But then what we need to do is not to stop calling it or wanting it to be a meritocracy but rather to make it live up to its name. On the other hand, if it is (more or less) a meritocracy already then what you're asking for is not that we stop calling it that, but that we stop it from being that. And if that's what you're saying then say it clearly so that more people can disagree with you. > Then the particular field or company has evolved to favor Caucasian males (or if you prefer the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasion"). In other words, it's got embedded structural discrimination. If you want to improve diversity, that needs to be acknowledged and removed. This is a really great exemplification of the failure of your entire line of reasoning. Let's suppose that, culturally, the parents of white and asian males generally encourage them to study engineering at university and the parents of females and african americans generally discourage it. In this not altogether unrealistic hypothetical this explains the main cultural difference leading to the disproportionate representation. Then companies looking to hire engineers logically require that candidates have studied engineering. You call this structural discrimination and demand that it be removed. Companies are expected to what, hire engineers who have no knowledge of engineering? Sometimes the problem is not the culture of the industry. Sometimes the problem is the culture of the people.
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> Or changing employee referral networks. When I ask if companies have employee referral networks, most say yes. But if I ask whether they’d have a structure for referrals of underrepresented groups, people often think that’s discriminatory and unfair. Because it is. You can only remove bias by removing bias, not by introducing counter-bias. Removing names from resumes works, imposing quotas doesn't. The problem with trying to counter bias with bias is that you can't make a shift on one axis without affecting five others. A bias in favor of e.g. racial minorities exacerbates the bias against everyone else of an underrepresented sex, economic status, religious minority, country of origin, disability, etc. But trying to enumerate all of the underrepresented groups is not only impossible because there are innumerably many of them, it leads to tokenism. Get yourself a couple of employees who each check multiple boxes and the numbers look good even when most of your employees are still white or asian male christian americans from middle class families. By contrast, the bias in referral networks is the status quo. Hiring the people your existing employees know doesn't make a lack of diversity worse in any direction, it only fails to improve it by making future employees look like current employees. In theory there is an argument that when the status quo is unbalanced, anything that continues the status quo is also unbalanced, but that doesn't actually point to any solution. The status quo is the continuation of the status quo. Figuring out what will make positive change takes more than objecting to things that make no change. And one way or another you still have to get 'em while they're young.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  I agree with your criticism of affirmative action. The last company I worked at had a strong Women in Tech program, but one of the women of color described it as "white feminism." The company favored one axis, which was enough for it to become self-congratulatory. But I don't think this quote is about quotas. At least not quotas for employment. The program is merely for getting resumes of underrepresented groups. If the employee referral network only produces resumes from homogenous candidates then this is a positive change.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > But I don't think this quote is about quotas. At least not quotas for employment. Quotas for resumes don't in principle work any differently than quotas for hiring. And I still don't see how that solves the pipeline problem. The problem in 1950 was that middle class jobs were unavailable to qualified women and minorities. The problem in tech in 2015 is that qualified women and minorities are unavailable to middle class jobs. You can't solve it in the same way because it isn't the same problem.
millermp12 11y ago
Freada says she's a researcher, all about the numbers, etc. If we're going to talk about who is over-represented, I've got to ask: is it early onset senile dementia or the strong contact high in Berkeley, but (and I know this is impolitic) how does she overlook, ahem, the Jews? I mean, pound for pound, they are the most over-represented group not just in elite SV circles, but every human intellectual endeavor worth writing about. So shouldn't the diversity initiative really be framed as "how do we get more gentiles in tech?" In that light, and nothing against Sam Altman who is totes awesome, but by what metric is replacing Paul with Sam at YC a move toward greater diversity? Does the tribe get a special dispensation? Do I need a graduate degree in African studies (or per another comment here "intersectional feminism") to grok it? To be clear, this is perfectly fine with me. But, by analogy to their reasoning, should this disparity be attributed to a shortcoming among gentiles? Something exogenous (bad bagels, loose circumcision sticthes)? Or is it "structural jewism" and jews have more (re)education about their "jewish privilege." I hope framing the conversation in this facetious way illuminates how utterly imbecilic this social justice boondoggle is. Remember forced busing? I'm sure the Kapors would have been big fans (out in Gross Pointe); remember Kansas City ($2B dollars spent on predominantly black schools over 10 years)? Remember the Meyerhoff foundation (of course not, Mitch will hope you forget his too in ten years time). But by all means, keep it up. Look what happened with SCA-5 and how fast Sen Lee's head spun when his asian constituency got whiff of his flacid support of a favorite social justice theme. As far as waiting for white guys at VC and tech firms to die off, do not ask for whom the bell tolls, my dewy-eyed bobos...
- dang 11y ago
  We've banned this account. Hacker News is for good-faith discussion, not race trolling.
millermp12 11y ago
Last post had a little too much mustard for the censors, but I'm persistent! Freada says she's a "researcher" yet no where do we get an operational definition of "representation" so we know who really is, and isn't over-represented. But I'll go out on a limb and say employment in tech per capita. I'll go further to say that Asians and Indians are more over-represented than Caucasians. But clearly the Kapors have some other definition in mind. How else do they frame Paul Graham's replacement by Sam Altman as an increase in diversity? Are young people under-represented? Are Jews under-represented? Maybe their definition includes a weight, say a Kapor Grievance Index. In the case of Jews, it's unbounded, so they can never be under-represented. Indians and Asians are weighted using a complex and proprietary algorithm (similar to the sausage making at top university admissions committees). So that leaves WASPs (see tribal exemption above per Altman at YC). Maybe someone else can shed more light on the matter.

23 points by jimsojim 11y ago

Question: What was the percentage of blacks and/or women at Lotus notes when Mitch sold? How many low-income/minority households is Mitch within walking distance of from his Berkeley compound? Diversity for thee, but not for me. Also, while we're discussing Things You Should Not Notice: what are the numbers as far as litigiousness of "protected" groups? If I'm looking to hire someone, non-protected status (whether it's race, unionization, etc.) means I'm more likely to hire them (all else being equal). Like the blowback from affirmative action, I don't see an objective discussion about litigation risk (whether or not it's substantiated). It's human nature to asymmetrically attribute failure to others and success to oneself. Add racial/gender rent-seeking to the equation and you get an especially potent, counterproductive miasma. Just look at Buddy and Pao - they've made entire careers out of entrepreneurial race/gender grievance litigation. Why can't all this under-utilized talent create a tech company dominated by blacks and women? Why not create a Meyerhoff like program to prove your hypothesis rather than ask me to subscribe to the latest social engineering fad?

KirinDave 11y ago
> What was the percentage of blacks and/or women at Lotus notes when Mitch sold? > How many low-income/minority households is Mitch within walking distance of from his Berkeley compound? > Diversity for thee, but not for me. Can I ask you a quick question here? What does any of this matter? Diversity isn't about protecting yourself from character assassination. It's about promoting fairness, equality, and opportunity for everyone in society. If you look in the past of anyone, you will find things they regret and things that may draw censure from the pro-diversity and intersectional feminist mindset. That's natural. That's to be expected. Society is, by any reasonable and several reproducible metrics, extremely biased in favor of white men. We all grew up influenced by that society. It is therefore almost inevitable that anyone with these sorts of experiences has and will continue to have both privilege and mistakes in their past. What matters is going forward, how we all take these things we've been fortunate enough to be handed (along with the misfortunes and difficulties we've endured) and use those to promote a fairer, more just world for those who come after us. We can sit here and argue if this messenger is the ideal messenger. Which is odd, because in many other fields we view past mistakes as a teaching opportunity. Ultimately, the people in power should cede and share some of that good fortune and cultural windfall to create a more equal world rather than waiting for history to repeat itself with violent uprisings. History suggests that such uprisings are not kind to even bystanders. > Why can't all this under-utilized talent create a tech company dominated by blacks and women? Why not create a Meyerhoff like program to prove your hypothesis ... Because creating an environment that mimics the societal advantages white men get in the US and most of the western world is infeasibly expensive. I mean, seriously. How would you even? You'd have to raise kids from birth in a theme park with meticulous care to shield them from the deleterious effects of racism and sexism. > rather than ask me to subscribe to the latest social engineering fad? Progressivism isn't a fad. It's the consistent direction of society since the dark ages.
- jdp23 11y ago
  Well said.
- striking 11y ago
  Something something just-world fallacy. http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/06/the-belief-in-a-just-world-a-fundamental-delusion.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/06/the-belief-in-a-just-world-... > expensive With the millions of dollars from diversity initiatives, I'm sure someone could pull it off. Also, I think you're missing the entire "classism" thing. I'm Polish, and just because I'm white doesn't mean I have the world handed to me. Kind of the opposite actually, everything that I've ever gotten in life was thanks to fighting the system (whether it was my work or my parents' work). I could say I deserve something, but honestly I don't really think I do. The world is not a fair place.
  - millermp12 11y ago
    That's strange. With all those polish jokes going around, I figured poles would be a belligerent and resentful underclass. Strange how that works. Same with asians. Or is yellow the new white?
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    The world IS fundamentally unfair. That doesn't mean that society should foster fundamentally unfair policies. I don't know why you would think that this would be wise, or after even a casual perusal of history you'd think it was novel or sustainable. > Also, I think you're missing the entire "classism" thing. I'm Polish, and just because I'm white doesn't mean I have the world handed to me. Kind of the opposite actually, everything that I've ever gotten in life was thanks to fighting the system (whether it was my work or my parents' work). It simply wasn't the subject of this conversation. "White privilege" is a specific set of special treatments you get in the US. It is not, "Magically you have a perfect life." It's undeniable that with white privilege you're less likely to be summarily executed by law enforcement, as an example. But economic and other social divides still exist. Polish and Irish people are excellent examples of other axis of discrimination and racism that still exist in the world today. > I could say I deserve something, but honestly I don't really think I do. We're all raised to accept racism as normal. It's not surprising that you feel this way. But remember, you're not the one who's history is getting them shot in the street in the US right now, so you're probably going to feel slightly less personal pain and be asked to express slightly more empathy at this exact moment.

jdp23 11y ago

Excellent point from Freada: "My first piece of advice is to stop thinking about yourself as a meritocracy. Because if you believe you’re a meritocracy and you have numbers like everybody who has released their data, the implicit message is that Caucasian men are better than everyone else. Because that’s who is overrepresented."

JesperRavn 11y ago
On the flipside, what if Caucasian [sic] men were better than everyone in this field? Many people are happy to assert that diversity is good because it means multiple different viewpoints. What if the viewpoint of the Caucasian male[0] happened to be more suited to a particular field or company? [0] Given the obfuscation around race and culture, this might not be clear on first reading, but I am only discussing the possibility that the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasian" might have some advantage, not being "Caucasian" in itself. Thus my claim is entirely analagous with "You should hire more Black people because more (cultural) diversity will add more viewpoints to your company and hence increase productivity".
- jdp23 11y ago
  > what if Caucasian [sic] men were better than everyone in this field? That's her point: given the data, claiming it's a meritocracy implies that Caucasian men are "better" than everybody in this field. That's not a useful attitude if you're trying to improve diversity. > What if the viewpoint of the Caucasian male happened to be more suited to a particular field or company? Then the particular field or company has evolved to favor Caucasian males (or if you prefer the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasion"). In other words, it's got embedded structural discrimination. If you want to improve diversity, that needs to be acknowledged and removed.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > That's her point: given the data, claiming it's a meritocracy implies that Caucasian men are "better" than everybody in this field. That's not a useful attitude if you're trying to improve diversity. It isn't an attitude at all. It's purely descriptive. If you're saying it's wrong to describe it as a meritocracy because it isn't one then that's one thing. If making the industry more diverse would also make it more meritocratic then that is clearly the way forward. But then what we need to do is not to stop calling it or wanting it to be a meritocracy but rather to make it live up to its name. On the other hand, if it is (more or less) a meritocracy already then what you're asking for is not that we stop calling it that, but that we stop it from being that. And if that's what you're saying then say it clearly so that more people can disagree with you. > Then the particular field or company has evolved to favor Caucasian males (or if you prefer the culture that is highly correlated with being "Caucasion"). In other words, it's got embedded structural discrimination. If you want to improve diversity, that needs to be acknowledged and removed. This is a really great exemplification of the failure of your entire line of reasoning. Let's suppose that, culturally, the parents of white and asian males generally encourage them to study engineering at university and the parents of females and african americans generally discourage it. In this not altogether unrealistic hypothetical this explains the main cultural difference leading to the disproportionate representation. Then companies looking to hire engineers logically require that candidates have studied engineering. You call this structural discrimination and demand that it be removed. Companies are expected to what, hire engineers who have no knowledge of engineering? Sometimes the problem is not the culture of the industry. Sometimes the problem is the culture of the people.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

> Or changing employee referral networks. When I ask if companies have employee referral networks, most say yes. But if I ask whether they’d have a structure for referrals of underrepresented groups, people often think that’s discriminatory and unfair. Because it is. You can only remove bias by removing bias, not by introducing counter-bias. Removing names from resumes works, imposing quotas doesn't. The problem with trying to counter bias with bias is that you can't make a shift on one axis without affecting five others. A bias in favor of e.g. racial minorities exacerbates the bias against everyone else of an underrepresented sex, economic status, religious minority, country of origin, disability, etc. But trying to enumerate all of the underrepresented groups is not only impossible because there are innumerably many of them, it leads to tokenism. Get yourself a couple of employees who each check multiple boxes and the numbers look good even when most of your employees are still white or asian male christian americans from middle class families. By contrast, the bias in referral networks is the status quo. Hiring the people your existing employees know doesn't make a lack of diversity worse in any direction, it only fails to improve it by making future employees look like current employees. In theory there is an argument that when the status quo is unbalanced, anything that continues the status quo is also unbalanced, but that doesn't actually point to any solution. The status quo is the continuation of the status quo. Figuring out what will make positive change takes more than objecting to things that make no change. And one way or another you still have to get 'em while they're young.

kelukelugames 11y ago
I agree with your criticism of affirmative action. The last company I worked at had a strong Women in Tech program, but one of the women of color described it as "white feminism." The company favored one axis, which was enough for it to become self-congratulatory. But I don't think this quote is about quotas. At least not quotas for employment. The program is merely for getting resumes of underrepresented groups. If the employee referral network only produces resumes from homogenous candidates then this is a positive change.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > But I don't think this quote is about quotas. At least not quotas for employment. Quotas for resumes don't in principle work any differently than quotas for hiring. And I still don't see how that solves the pipeline problem. The problem in 1950 was that middle class jobs were unavailable to qualified women and minorities. The problem in tech in 2015 is that qualified women and minorities are unavailable to middle class jobs. You can't solve it in the same way because it isn't the same problem.

millermp12 11y ago

Freada says she's a researcher, all about the numbers, etc. If we're going to talk about who is over-represented, I've got to ask: is it early onset senile dementia or the strong contact high in Berkeley, but (and I know this is impolitic) how does she overlook, ahem, the Jews? I mean, pound for pound, they are the most over-represented group not just in elite SV circles, but every human intellectual endeavor worth writing about. So shouldn't the diversity initiative really be framed as "how do we get more gentiles in tech?" In that light, and nothing against Sam Altman who is totes awesome, but by what metric is replacing Paul with Sam at YC a move toward greater diversity? Does the tribe get a special dispensation? Do I need a graduate degree in African studies (or per another comment here "intersectional feminism") to grok it? To be clear, this is perfectly fine with me. But, by analogy to their reasoning, should this disparity be attributed to a shortcoming among gentiles? Something exogenous (bad bagels, loose circumcision sticthes)? Or is it "structural jewism" and jews have more (re)education about their "jewish privilege." I hope framing the conversation in this facetious way illuminates how utterly imbecilic this social justice boondoggle is. Remember forced busing? I'm sure the Kapors would have been big fans (out in Gross Pointe); remember Kansas City ($2B dollars spent on predominantly black schools over 10 years)? Remember the Meyerhoff foundation (of course not, Mitch will hope you forget his too in ten years time). But by all means, keep it up. Look what happened with SCA-5 and how fast Sen Lee's head spun when his asian constituency got whiff of his flacid support of a favorite social justice theme. As far as waiting for white guys at VC and tech firms to die off, do not ask for whom the bell tolls, my dewy-eyed bobos...

dang 11y ago
We've banned this account. Hacker News is for good-faith discussion, not race trolling.

millermp12 11y ago

Last post had a little too much mustard for the censors, but I'm persistent! Freada says she's a "researcher" yet no where do we get an operational definition of "representation" so we know who really is, and isn't over-represented. But I'll go out on a limb and say employment in tech per capita. I'll go further to say that Asians and Indians are more over-represented than Caucasians. But clearly the Kapors have some other definition in mind. How else do they frame Paul Graham's replacement by Sam Altman as an increase in diversity? Are young people under-represented? Are Jews under-represented? Maybe their definition includes a weight, say a Kapor Grievance Index. In the case of Jews, it's unbounded, so they can never be under-represented. Indians and Asians are weighted using a complex and proprietary algorithm (similar to the sausage making at top university admissions committees). So that leaves WASPs (see tribal exemption above per Altman at YC). Maybe someone else can shed more light on the matter.