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As Tech Firms Come to Oakland, So Do Hopes of Racial Diversity
- colmvp 11y ago> "There's all of the platitudes that diversity's good for business," Kapor Klein says. "But you look around tech, and you look at how hugely profitable companies like Google and Facebook — all these behemoths — and they're staggeringly undiverse, and they're doing just fine. So we need to focus on different strategies." FWIW, there are Asians (and even then, that's a simplification of the term since Asia is such a large and diverse continent) at these companies. Yet for whatever reason, we are never counted as part of tech diversity.
- AlexB138 11y agoI think everyone is perfectly aware that whites and asians dominate tech. You're not considered diverse because it's pretty commonplace to see ONLY those two groups represented. I guess if you compare it to only whites it's more diverse, but I don't think 2 groups, instead of just 1, is really the diversity that's targeted. Realistically, I think these people are hoping for something closer to a complete cross section of Americans, which would mean a lot more blacks and latinos being involved.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago> but I don't think 2 groups, instead of just 1, is really the diversity that's targeted Indians and Chinese don't have much in common except for being in the same legal census bucket.
- arebop 11y agoIt seems that Indians and Chinese cultures both (all?) celebrate education and particularly science/engineering more than other cultures.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoIndians in America aren't particularly representative of Indians in India.
- chimeracoder 11y ago> It seems that Indians and Chinese cultures both (all?) celebrate education and particularly science/engineering more than other cultures. We start to head down a dangerous path when we paint with broad strokes like this. Starting off by talking about Indian culture as if it's a single entity (as opposed to an incredibly heterogenous set of cultures that happen to exist in the same sovereign state) does not lead to an accurate or nuanced perspective for the discussion at hand.
- arebop 11y agoI'm not saying that all Indians are alike in all ways, just that in India the most popular majors are STEM [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_India], whereas in the U.S. the most popular ambition of students is to become business administrators [https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37].
- TulliusCicero 11y agoGrouping South and East Asians seems pretty silly to me.
- chimeracoder 11y ago> Grouping South and East Asians seems pretty silly to me. Agreed 100%. Honestly, even lumping all South Asians together and all East Asians together is pretty silly and obscures a lot of cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, etc. differences that are hugely important when talking about "diversity". Let's not forget that literally over half the world's population is South Asian or East Asian[0]. It'd be ridiculous not to assume that these are incredibly heterogeneous groups that can't be all bucketed under the same category, but sadly, that's what people generally do. [0] Before someone points out that "Asians" are a smaller percentage of the US population - yes, but that misses the point. These group definitions are arbitrary (and have changed greatly over the years). If we're going to talk about racial and ethnic origin as a component of diversity, we can't gerrymander the group definitions unless our actual goal is to artificially inflate metrics on diversity.
- sliverstorm 11y agoeven lumping all South Asians together and all East Asians together is pretty silly... Well, not terribly much more silly than lumping all caucasoids together at least.
- chimeracoder 11y ago> Well, not terribly much more silly than lumping all caucasoids together at least. "Caucasoid" is a term that already includes a large chunk (if not a majority) of South Asians, so yes, it is silly.
- angersock 11y agoNo no no, remember, the official story is that all whites are interchangeable members of an oppressive conspiracy. :|
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- gyc 11y agoEh, I doubt people would be saying the tech industry lacks diversity if 40% of the workers were black instead of Asian.
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- santaclaus 11y agoThe Federal government, at least, often distinguishes between minority/majority and underrepresented/overrepresented. Women, for example, are a majority in the overall the United States' population, but are underrepresented in technology. 'Asians' are a minority in the overall United States' population, but overrepresented in technology.
- TulliusCicero 11y ago"There aren't enough people from underrepresented groups here" is basically a tautology.
- jdmichal 11y agoIt is, but the existence of underrepresented groups is not a necessity. That is, there is no requirement that there be an underrepresented group. But if there is an underrepresented group, then it is a necessity that not enough people from that group are present. What I'm really trying to say is, that particular phrase is repetitious, but not useless.
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- atom-morgan 11y agoHow convenient.
- chimeracoder 11y ago> 'Asians' are a minority in the overall United States' population, but overrepresented in technology. Because 'Asians' are too broad a category to be meaningful. If a company of 10,000 people had 480 people from China and nobody from any other country east of Turkey, they would have the exact same percentage of "Asian" people as the general population in the US, but that doesn't mean that "Asian" people are not underrepresented at that company.
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- danso 11y agoMaybe we need to broaden the definition of diversity to mean something more than just percentage of non-whites to whites. The fact that tech companies have hired a disproportionate number of Asians should not be the decisive rebuttal against the accusation that they hire disproportionately few members from other minority groups. I say this as an Asian who has most likely benefited from being hired/selected by companies/institutions to be part of their overall "minority" percentage. And yes, I agree with you that people are too quick to lump all Asians into one group...I've found that my experience growing up as a child of Vietnam War refugee parents in the Midwest has been significantly different than the experience of 3+ generation Chinese/Japanese-Americans.
- mc32 11y agoFor the sake of society diversity in the workplace is desirable. We want to provide an opportunity to success to everyone. However, diversity in and of itself I don't think is a "strength" as in it will make company x better, provide more viewpoints, etc. The effect is likely neutral. There are lots of successful companies in Asia, Europe, Africa, India, etc, who are super successful and aren't diverse, racially, socioeconomically or by gender. Now, it does become more important if your company globalizes, but you'll probably hire a local and likely not locally diverse workforce to conduct operations in country. So I think the focus should be diversity for its own sake, rather than trying to couch it as something else.
- rchaud 11y agoIt's very likely that the employee roster in those companies mirror the ethnic makeup of the country quite closely. That is not to say that minority groups in many other countries don't also suffer from discrimination in the labour market due to socioeconomic marginalization, religious differences, etc. But to dismiss this issue in Silicon Valley by pointing at other countries is besides the point here. SV by and large is the most well known tech hub, and notorious for waxing poetic about its meritocratic structure. That is what is at issue here; is it a true meritocracy, or are there enough confounding factors (recruiting at specific schools for instance) that end up resulting in a workforce that doesn't reflect the racial/ethnic/demographic makeup of the country in which it exists?
- jdmichal 11y agoEducation is totally a confounding factor. There's a layer between the population of the companies and the general population, and that's the population of qualified workers. If the population of qualified workers doesn't match the general population, that's an education problem.
- mc32 11y agoI think most people understand meritocracy is more of a nebulous ideal rather than reality, in any place, whether monocultural or multicultural. One of the factors as pointed out elsewhere is the availability of bodies. Is that pool of available candidates representative of the pop at large and also do the staffs reflect the characteristics of the availability pool . Companies continually show they are willing to go thru sponsorships of visas and surely hiring a local workforce, diverse as may be, would be easier than scouring continents for talent.
- horsecaptin 11y agoIt starts with education, people. How many blacks and women start studying engineering to begin with? How many of them see it through to graduation? How many decide that they actually want to work in the field that they went to school for? I bet those that already work at Facebook and Google don't want to work with people who aren't qualified to be there, strictly in the name of diversity.
- reasonabove 11y agoyou're bang on.
- comrh 11y ago> I bet those that already work at Facebook and Google don't want to work with people who aren't qualified to be there, strictly in the name of diversity. No one is saying they should hire unqualified people.
- jdmichal 11y agoThey implicitly do when they compare diversity statistics to the entire population, rather than the population of qualified workers. And that distinction right there ties directly in to GP's entire point; it comes down to education. For instance, it's not exactly a secret in the US that women are underrepresented in STEM education. So of course they are underrepresented in STEM careers. If the pool of qualified workers does not have the same statistics as the general population, what is a workplace supposed to do about that, other than hire unqualified people?
- comrh 11y agoThe "pipeline problem" isn't nearly as cut and dry as you seem to assert and ignoring systematic biases in hiring, promoting and funding by just saying it is an education problem isn't helpful. Thinking from a top down instead of bottom up, what if the lack of STEM education in a community is due to that community seeing no representation in the leadership (or even employees) of major companies? I don't think you can get people into STEM if the people think the game is rigged against them when it comes to hiring. > The bachelor’s to Ph.D. STEM pipeline no longer leaks more women than men: a 30-year analysis http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00037/abstract http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00... > Top universities turn out black and Hispanic computer science and computer engineering graduates at twice the rate that leading technology companies hire them, a USA TODAY analysis shows. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/12/silicon-valley-diversity-tech-hiring-computer-science-graduates-african-american-hispanic/14684211/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/12/silicon-valley...
- TulliusCicero 11y ago> I'm hoping that the culture of Oakland is just an overwhelming wave against any type of invading horde of 'tech bros' coming in, I've worked at Amazon and Google, and I don't know where this idea of the "tech bro" or "brogrammer" being omnipresent in tech companies came from. I know maybe one person who might fit this description. It just seems like an insulting label that someone came up with because they hate tech companies and gentrification, and then the media decided to run with it because it made for entertaining news. Is there any actual data showing that "tech bros" constitute a substantial % of the tech industry? The way I see "brogrammer" used these days is basically like "hipster": it means 'people in [incredibly broad category] that I don't like'. For the hipsters, the category was young adults in urban areas, and for brogrammers, it's young adults at tech companies. It's just a way for people to pretend that their personal prejudices are actually the fault of the people they're prejudiced against (similar to the old "welfare queen" stereotype).
- caseysoftware 11y agoStop questioning The Official Narrative.
- savanaly 11y agoHave worked at two separate medium sized tech companies, in other words worked closely with about twenty different developers, and never met someone I would characterize as a tech bro. Perhaps I'm one of them and one of their characteristics is not being able to recognize the quality in themselves or others?
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- proksoup 11y agoI think it's a spectrum. For me the ones I consider "more bro" than myself are those that exhibit subtle sexism that they are clearly trying to be joking about but it just comes off as ... PC bro. But I'm sure I have plenty of Bro qualities myself. I've seen enough unintentional sexism in my experience to think the claims of prevalent bro'ness are not entirely unfounded.