9 ms·

Why Tech Degrees Are Not Putting More Blacks and Hispanics into Tech Jobs

36 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

zenplatypus 11y ago
It is vaguely mentioned in the article but I think controlling for the type of schools that students are exiting from is an important factor in determining if there is a "pipeline" problem. For example it was mentioned that Black and Hispanic Tech graduates are more likely to end up in office support roles. Out of the top 20 engineering/computer science programs in the country I doubt almost any students are ending up in those type of roles. So likely Black and Hispanic "Tech" graduates are much less likely to be of top engineering programs. There is an enrollment issue. There is a corporate bias and culture issue. There is a primary school issue... the list goes on. From working in management consulting I can tell you that even when name-blind resume reads are incorporated and diversity programs are really emphasized (Which they are), the issue comes to when candidates from Black and Hispanic backgrounds show up to an interview they are relatively VERY poorly prepared. This is usually because the student groups at elite colleges that prepare you for tech/consulting/banking jobs are pretty bad at reaching out to minority (Black and Hispanic) students. The problem is systemic from pre-school to the career fair. I believe it will change. But no one lever will do the full trick.
- michaelbuddy 11y ago
  what systemic problem though? I'm hearing systemic a lot and it's more often looking suspiciously like a way to create a ghost that can't be fought so let's throw more money at any and every program to make a show of it.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    You know, the kind of systemic that kept them legally segregated until the sixties -- that is, their parents time, and de facto segregated until today. Or the kind of systemic that ensures their school districts are poorer and underfunded. Or the kind of systemic that ensures you take the middle of the road when a black guy in a hoodie walks towards you in the same sidewalk.
    - mlkjr 11y ago
      Having grown up in the Birmingham, Alabama public education system I can tell you segregation never really ended. Sure there aren't signs designating black and white water fountains but just because something is not written on a sign or on the law books doesn't mean its not written in the consciousness of the people. The biggest reason for this in my opinion is the historical obfuscation. Sure, we kind of studied the Civil Rights movement but we never really learned about Dr. King's deeper message, only that he "had a dream", and then segregation ended and everything was "normal" after that. It wasn't until years after graduating that I began reading Dr. King's speeches that and the underlying causes of the racial divisions finally made sense, allowing me to let go of the anger I had held from bad experiences related to the racial animosity. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_address_at_the_conclusion_of_selma_march.1.html http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...
    - michaelbuddy 11y ago
      So you're blaming the 60s, 70s and 80s for kids who grew up in the 2000s and don't code now? Because I don't know a single person who is in the field of IT whose parents were in IT. Positions barely existed until the 90s. No one has yet explained why even segregation today in some part of the country is affecting ethnic groups NOT interested or apt in coding to the level of getting the jobs.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        >So you're blaming the 60s, 70s and 80s for kids who grew up in the 2000s and don't code now? Those kids didn't develop in vitro in some abstract new environment. They had parents, grandparents, neighborhoods, school districts, schools, family fortune (or lack thereof) potential employers (themselves born in the 60' 60's and 80s) etc. Anybody who thinks those things don't affect the nurture, career and prospects of a young person, or that those things change in a few decades, are deluded. Usually the same people also fail to understand the notion of statistics, and think that outliers that beat the odds and rose to become successful entrepreneurs or whatever from such upbringings translate to "it's equally easy for whites and blacks to become successful, here, this kid proved it, but most blacks are just lazy". In other words people who don't understand that most white people play life in easy mode, where most blacks do not -- and point to some "hard mode" winners as if that means everything is equally easy for everybody. http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
  - mlkjr 11y ago
    How would you know if it is a ghost or not? Would statistics help? I don't think there any tangible statistics on ghosts, are there?
    - michaelbuddy 11y ago
      There's no reliable examples. That's what I'm saying, people say "Systemic" when really it means nothing when you drill down to the meat of how things are. In fact when you look closer you find the more forces and initiatives towards inclusion within the system. For example for years we've had minority and female only STEM initiatives. Both on their own, and included within other organizations as part of greater educational pushes.
- jimmywanger 11y ago
  Occam's razor. Is there a problem in our entire society and schooling system, or are Black and Hispanic backgrounds a liability because of the views and attitudes they have/teach?
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Occam's razor. Is there likely to be numerous smaller problems that are easy to ignore in all different areas of life, or few large easy to spot problems in one area of life?
  - whitegrape 11y ago
    There's an even simpler explanation you get when you control for upbringing. But instead we prefer Occam's Butterknife to the razor. (https://polymathblogger.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/occams-butterknife/ https://polymathblogger.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/occams-butt...)
  - abrahamepton 11y ago
    Having lived in our society and been educated by our schools: Yeah, there are societal problems and educational problems. Big, big, big problems. Having gotten my ass kicked intellectually repeatedly by black and hispanic students: no, those backgrounds are not a liability.
    - whitegrape 11y ago
      An average IQ one std dev below other groups does not preclude the existence of individuals who have an IQ two std devs above an average member of the other group. https://antidem.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/glantons-law/ https://antidem.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/glantons-law/
  - zephharben 11y ago
    You nailed it - there is a problem in our entire society and schooling system.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Is there a problem in our entire society and schooling system, or are Black and Hispanic backgrounds a liability because of the views and attitudes they have/teach? The two are not mutually exclusive. I would argue that a very significant part of the problem that Blacks and Hispanics face (besides simple discrimination on the part of people in positions of power -- which is very real, as studies of responses to applications in various context from people with stereotypically Black or Hispanic names vs. otherwise identical applications without that feature) is attitudes toward societal institutions and mainstream culture in their respective subcultures that are a direct product of problems in the broader society (including the schooling system), both currently and over the past several centuries (the longer time especially for black subculture) including, over much of that time, overt de jure subjugation and exclusion (which while it didn't directly impact young people today, is recent enough that lots of them have living relatives who did directly experience it) followed by covert (but still present, see earlier comment about applications) discrimination and neglect. Arguing over whether A or B is the problem is pointless when A causes B which then contributes back to A.
falsestprophet 11y ago
Is working as a computer programmer economically rational for high performing black and hispanic students in the United States? Black and hispanic students benefit from preferential admissions standards to medical, law, business and other graduate schools that can lead to higher salaries and higher social standing than computer programming. Consider the extreme case of black students and medical school: Black students who are competitive candidates for software engineering at top tech companies could (probably all) choose to study medicine and, very possibly, be admitted to specialist residency programs. Average specialist pay is $284,000. Average primary care pay is $195,000.
- some-guy 11y ago
  Medicine has many more barriers to entry: schooling, debt, etc. I'm a white high school dropout, but I got a developer position at age 27 after rushing through a CS degree later in live which took about ~3 years. I work 40 hours a week and get a very livable $100k+ salary plus stock and benefits with negligible student debt all things considered (~$30k). My point being, in a vacuum, getting on track to making a good wage as a developer has a lot fewer barriers with the lack of medical school and debt. Not to mention the free time I have outside of work and regular hours. Salary isn't everything. I cannot speak for people of color and their experience who want to go through the same process as me. There are all kinds of barriers they experience that I don't. Neil DeGrasse Tyson (I know, I know...) had a good answer to the silly question "What's with chicks in science?", and the cultural / systemic barriers he had to go through to reach that point in life [1]. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM
  - naveen99 11y ago
    You can do medical school with minimal to no debt from many state medical schools. No way any one rational should chose programming over medicine in terms of dollars per calorie spent working, given they can get admission to medical school. Chose it because you like programming and can't stand the sights and smells of medicine. Not for the money. An average doctor makes more than an average programmer, with better job security, and more prestige, more choice of where to live, less politics at work, less selling your soul for money. Even free time is improving. Many medical sub specialties now offer shift work, part time work etc. Edit: there are literally medical gigs available where you can sleep all night and get paid $100 / hour while sleeping (specialty surgical hospitals, where many nights there may not be a patient overnight, but they require an md on site). Many emergency rooms in rural areas may not see 2 patients at night, but need an er doctor on site.
bobosha 11y ago
It amazes me that "..they discovered that many black and Hispanic students, unlike white and Asian ones, had never heard of this type of interview and were unprepared for it..." How could any programmer worth his/her salt would not know about a whiteboard interview? I think that statement encapsulates it. No only are the schools they are graduating from are woefully inadequate, and they are entering a highly competitive field that with a fast changing landscape that is overwhelming for such grossly underprepared grads. Ask yourself how come Asians & Jews do so well? They just work harder and push themselves more. I am as bleeding heart a liberal as they come and it pains me to see the lack of diversity, but culture has a huge part to play in it.
- MollyR 11y ago
  Yea the whiteboard comment surprised me a lot. I've never had an interview without it, and/or some kind of take home coding test.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Fwiw, in the past 10 years, I've had 2 whiteboard interviews and the rest I was hired without.
- ugh123 11y ago
  >Ask yourself how come Asians & Jews do so well? They just work harder and push themselves more. Wait, is it that or are the schools "woefully inadequate"?? >No only are the schools they are graduating from are woefully inadequate,
- protomyth 11y ago
  > How could any programmer worth his/her salt would not know about a whiteboard interview? A lot of schools don't teach anything about interviewing. Its not academic. In fact, a lot of the training videos used in schools that do teach "job skills" to prepare students make no mention of white board interviews. They talk about being polite, wearing a suit, grooming, etc. Judging an academic program on if they have ever been exposed to a whiteboard interview is fairly silly. I never saw on in 20 years. As to your last paragraph, I'm not sure what role culture would play in introducing people to whiteboard interviews. I guess I grew up in a different environment, but I don't remember any of my urban white friends extolling the annual whiteboard festival. I can see it being a economic function of better schooling though.
is_it_worth_it_ 11y ago
Is nobody willing to acknowledge the reality of genetically inherited IQ? It's like all of our political system is designed around subverting this reality. I suppose society that openly accepts this reality would lead to instability? Is that why we hide the truth, that in fact, yes your genetics do matter? Why do we know about how evolution works, but turn a blind eye to the fact that different pools of genetics have different inherent abilities? EDIT: As a general statement (Please argue logically I am interested in the counterarguement): Some how over thousands of years of almost complete separation, people managed to genetically grow different facial structures but stayed completely the same on the inside? So only physical characteristics are heritable? That's how evolution works? The whole tenant of evolution is that great effective genes are passed on and reflected in offspring. By arguing that there is no genetic difference you are arguing that IQ cannot be passed on and that different environments did not select for and need different levels of IQ. If you are arguing that, then you are denying evolution as a theory.
- SalmoShalazar 11y ago
  You're being downvoted because you're being a racist buffoon. Yes, there is genetic variation across traits, this is a fact. That said, we are all heavily influenced by our environments and to discount this incredibly formative factor of all human life is ridiculous. Culture, poverty, exposure to crime, and endless cycle of poor parenting, whatever it may be - there are a million things that can and DO get in the way of someone succeeding far, far before their genetics.
  - homogeneous 11y ago
    It's also telling that "genetically inherited IQ" always happens to appear in discussions about "race", as if our crude racial classifications represent semantically meaningful genetic variations as it relates to general intelligence. Whatever role genetics play in IQ are most certainly not manifested in the concentration of melanin in one's skin or the coarseness of one's hair or the color of one's eyes or the size of one's nose or any of the other crude heuristics we use to group people up as "races". Still, even with a racial component to genetic IQ, we know that "tech" is not some enlightened trade where only high IQ employees are considered, outside of the elite firms like Google, Apple etc you're going to find a glut of pretty average programmers and plenty of idiots to boot.
Archio 11y ago
It pains me greatly that the tech industry lacks diversity from minorities like blacks, hispanics, and women. However, I strongly believe that looking at the tech companies and asking why they don't hire more minorities is totally missing the real problem. This is of course one datapoint, but the university I went to (top engineering school in the Northeast US) hosts a big panel for computer-field majors at the annual admissions event. Any students remotely interested in technical majors are invited to attend - you don't even need to be accepted to the university. The marketing for the event makes it as clear as possible that no prior programming experience is required, they just want to get people excited about computing. When I served on the panel as a CS student, I looked out the audience and saw a fully packed room (300+ people) of almost entirely white/Asian male prospective students and their parents. At that point, how do you recover and get diverse people? How do you get people interested when everyone showing up fits the same description? In my view, the problem starts way before college/job seeking. I was lucky, as a white male, that my parents noticed and encouraged my technical interests at an early age. By the time I was entering college, I had years of programming experience, not even at any company, but just working on my laptop in my bedroom. It kills me that so many minorities and women never even get that opportunity. Parents of young girls don't seem to see/nurture those interests, and sometimes actively encourage them not to go into technology. It makes perfect sense that later they're not interested in pursuing college/careers in computers. I have worked at companies where the people doing hiring have literally whispered (since it is illegal to say so) that they are desperate to hire minorities and women. I once heard someone say, "Man, I would love to hire this person, but I have to be fair, and if they were male I would have rejected them immediately". Yes, tech companies need to be as accepting as possible towards minorities and women. Yes, minorities and women need role models in the industry. But we've got to start at the source at the problem and get parents to allow their children to be interested in computers in the first place!
- stephaniepier 11y ago
  I agree. Speaking from my own experience, I didn't even really understand what computer science was until I was in college (I'm female and from a small town). I had taken a "make your own website" summer class in grade school where we did some super basic HTML but that was it. Why would I choose computer science as a major when I was never really exposed to it and didn't even know what it entailed? I'm now starting to learn python on my own and I think computer science could have been a really good fit for me. I think encouraging kids is a great first step.
1024core 11y ago
I think the article mixes non-tech hiring problems with tech problems. I think tech is one of the only fields where your skin color really does not matter. We hire people from far-flung countries who can barely communicate in english; we hire 17-year-olds who have not even finished highschool; we hire total misfits; etc., based solely on their technical expertise. So it bothers me to read crap like this: Research has found that during hiring, managers are biased against black-sounding names on résumés, for instance, and interviewers weigh too heavily whether they’d want to hang out with someone. This may happen in other jobs, but in my 20 years in tech, I have never seen this. Go to any good tech company, and see the odd folks walking about. And yet they'll have an issue with black or hispanic folks? I doubt it. Network does play a role, I will agree. But what plays a bigger role is your technical chops; and it is very easy today to demonstrate your skills via SO or Github.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- duaneb 11y ago
  > This may happen in other jobs, but in my 20 years in tech, I have never seen this. It's typically called "culture fit". EDIT: Not all culture fit is bad, I think it's important that people can work together. But it can easily disguise any number of subjective biases, many of which you may not be aware.
  - staunch 11y ago
    Where "culture" really means class. Lower class culture vs upper class culture. Poor people make non-poor people very uncomfortable. The bar scene in Good Will Hunting is such a good example.
    - duaneb 11y ago
      I don't necessarily agree with this. There are a number of polarizing factors—ethnicity, religion, politics, age, having a family. Class is only one way to get filtered out.
kamau 11y ago
Interesting how many people here think that the problem rests solely with Black/Hispanic students. I am a black software engineer. As I see it, there are systemic problems, as you can imagine. But one reason that may be missed here is that sometimes people get weary of being the "only black person in the room". So some of the students may be opting out simply because they want a more diverse workplace, and tech is very very white. Just take a look at this thread, in which we have jimmywagner asserting that Black and Latino people are liabilities, and michaelbuddy asserting that systemic issues are "ghosts". They are of course entitled to their opinions (however much I may disagree with them), but honestly that type of hostility masked as objectivity gets old really quick. I can expand later if anyone is interested in a real conversation.
- falsestprophet 11y ago
  "tech is very very white" Sure tech is generally non-black, but there are load of East Asians and South Asians. It's not exactly the Augusta National Golf Club. There are a lot of places in corporate information technology in the US where tech is "very very" Indian and a white or black or hispanic person may very well be the only non-Indian (or even US citizen or permanent resident) in the room or on the team.
  - lumpypua 11y ago
    Very very east Asian is also common.
  - gtk40 11y ago
    Agreed. Even in a metro with very low Asian population, we have a lot of Asian workers in my I.T. department and it seems to be the case for other companies nearby. Probably we are about 65% non-Hispanic white (including eastern europeans and foreign workers in that number), 30% Asian (about half Asian and half east Asian, with a few southeast Asians), 5% black and Hispanic.
  - kamau 11y ago
    You are correct. My current place of employment is very Indian. In many ways, however, there is less tension in those situations. Often times whites tend to treat non whites in a certain manner that is less than... Now, I am not trying to paint all whites in tech with a broad brush (even if I sounds very much like I am). White people are cool with me, and if I'm to be honest, I have more white friends right now than I do black. So please, understand I am not trying to say "All white people...". I'm not angry. I am instead giving an honest assessment of my experience in tech for the last 15 years, and how it may relate to this story.
redthrowaway 11y ago
Why is it the responsibility of the companies to fix this? In the same way that it seems perverse that Apple is the one standing up to the USG on privacy, why do companies bear the moral responsibility for fixing social ills? The only way a company should be responsible for hiring underrepresented minorities is if there was a market inefficiency to be exploited. And even then, that's a responsibility to their shareholders, not to society. And "we hire black people because we don't have to pay them as much" probably wouldn't go over too well, anyway.
- zephharben 11y ago
  Companies don't bear any moral responsibilities - people do Hiring managers and executives should use all of the tools at their disposal in the context of recruitment and hiring - including moral and ethical judgement. Setting moral responsibilities aside - if you want to hire talented, passionate engineers like me, you will get serious about building teams with people from diverse backgrounds.
  - redthrowaway 11y ago
    >if you want to hire talented, passionate engineers like me, you will get serious about building teams with people from diverse backgrounds. There's a pretty major leap in logic, there. What does diversity have to do with talented, passionate engineering teams? Companies like Honda and Toyota have some of the least diverse engineering teams on the planet, and yet they have a well-earned reputation for engineering excellence. You may want a company to take diversity seriously, and there are many others who feel the same way. But it doesn't follow that maximizing diversity is therefor an imperative for companies that want to have world-class teams. In fact diversity seems to be orthogonal to competence.
    - zephharben 11y ago
      I'll rephrase that - if you want to hire ME, you need to take this stuff seriously. I wasn't delving into the merits of diversity - I believe in it; I'm seeing it put to the test every day at my company, and I like what I see. > it doesn't follow that maximizing diversity is therefor an imperative for companies that want to have world-class teams. Diversity isn't about addition/subtraction, nor is it calculus; it's not even sociology, macroeconomics, or socioeconomics. Diversity is about adaptive systems. > In fact diversity seems to be orthogonal to competence. I'll concede this point, but only with the substitution of "productivity" for "competence". Homogenous teams can outperform diverse teams, IN THE SHORT TERM. Diversity may lead directly to inefficiency and conflict. In the short term, these are painful inhibitors to productivity. In the long term, diversity of backgrounds, capabilities and perspectives - properly aligned - can be a huge asset. If you are building a new company, and you want to beat the world, you'd be foolish to hire a bunch of people who think about things the same way that you do.
fgandiya 11y ago
It's times like these when I think to myself why I'm bothering to enter this field? I mean, I really wanna go into the tech feel to make awesome stuff, but hearing how hard it is for people who look like me (black African college student in the mid west) just gets me down. Then again, software engineering has only been a thing for about 40-50 odd years and is young as compared to other professions, so I guess things will change.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Serious question: Do you want to go to Africa, where there are a lot more people who look like you? Or do you want to stay in the States, where there are (unfortunately) a number of people who are overtly racist, and a larger number who are more unconsciously assuming that it's a white person's world? I can't speak for you, but I suspect your answer is that there's enough good in the States that it's worth staying, problems and all. Tech is like that. There are jerks, and there are racists, and there are abusive personalities. There are real, definite problems. It's still closer to a meritocracy than almost anywhere else. It's good enough that (to me) it's worth going into, problems and all. (Any individual situation may become toxic enough that you need to leave. But overall, I don't think it's bad enough to avoid, especially if that's where you would like to be.)
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  You will be fine. People are much more collaborative and supportive in real life than they are on online forums.
omonra 11y ago
Don't care. Various groups had faced real discrimination in the job market - jews, italians, irish, etc. Here's one piece of historical trivia - Warren Buffett could not get his first Wall Street job because the company he really wanted to work for had a policy of only hiring Jews - because all other Wall Street banks would not. Ie industries had real 'no X allowed' policies in place - not this 'Oh, I don't feel like being the only black guy in the room'. Well too bad for you - the job will pay money to someone else who doesn't necessarily have to be around people like them. Today whites, Asians and Indians are supposed to feel bad because other ethnicities don't make sufficient effort to join the industry? I'm sorry, I don't.
kelukelugames 11y ago
"Reverse racism" is not a real thing. I swear people invent ways to feel persecuted
- dang 11y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11184780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11184780 and marked it off-topic.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    Is there a different way I could voice disagreement with the use of the phrase reverse racism?
    - dang 11y ago
      Comments about pet peeve phrases tend to be low quality and off topic, but if you had offered an insight instead of a snarky dismissal, that would have been better. Also, ideological buzz-language like "are white people such special snowflakes" never does any good, regardless of what position you favor.
      - kelukelugames 11y ago
        Thanks.
- aikah 11y ago
  > "Reverse racism" is not a real thing. I swear people invent ways to feel persecuted Reverse racism is certainly a real thing. Bigotry against white people is certainly a real thing. Go spend 5 minutes on salon.com, come back and tell me with a straight face that these people don't flirt with racism against white people. As a black person, this kind of ideology isn't helping me. It's only helping pundits selling outrage.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago

36 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

It is vaguely mentioned in the article but I think controlling for the type of schools that students are exiting from is an important factor in determining if there is a "pipeline" problem. For example it was mentioned that Black and Hispanic Tech graduates are more likely to end up in office support roles. Out of the top 20 engineering/computer science programs in the country I doubt almost any students are ending up in those type of roles. So likely Black and Hispanic "Tech" graduates are much less likely to be of top engineering programs. There is an enrollment issue. There is a corporate bias and culture issue. There is a primary school issue... the list goes on. From working in management consulting I can tell you that even when name-blind resume reads are incorporated and diversity programs are really emphasized (Which they are), the issue comes to when candidates from Black and Hispanic backgrounds show up to an interview they are relatively VERY poorly prepared. This is usually because the student groups at elite colleges that prepare you for tech/consulting/banking jobs are pretty bad at reaching out to minority (Black and Hispanic) students. The problem is systemic from pre-school to the career fair. I believe it will change. But no one lever will do the full trick.

michaelbuddy 11y ago
what systemic problem though? I'm hearing systemic a lot and it's more often looking suspiciously like a way to create a ghost that can't be fought so let's throw more money at any and every program to make a show of it.
- coldtea 11y ago
  You know, the kind of systemic that kept them legally segregated until the sixties -- that is, their parents time, and de facto segregated until today. Or the kind of systemic that ensures their school districts are poorer and underfunded. Or the kind of systemic that ensures you take the middle of the road when a black guy in a hoodie walks towards you in the same sidewalk.
  - mlkjr 11y ago
    Having grown up in the Birmingham, Alabama public education system I can tell you segregation never really ended. Sure there aren't signs designating black and white water fountains but just because something is not written on a sign or on the law books doesn't mean its not written in the consciousness of the people. The biggest reason for this in my opinion is the historical obfuscation. Sure, we kind of studied the Civil Rights movement but we never really learned about Dr. King's deeper message, only that he "had a dream", and then segregation ended and everything was "normal" after that. It wasn't until years after graduating that I began reading Dr. King's speeches that and the underlying causes of the racial divisions finally made sense, allowing me to let go of the anger I had held from bad experiences related to the racial animosity. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_address_at_the_conclusion_of_selma_march.1.html http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    So you're blaming the 60s, 70s and 80s for kids who grew up in the 2000s and don't code now? Because I don't know a single person who is in the field of IT whose parents were in IT. Positions barely existed until the 90s. No one has yet explained why even segregation today in some part of the country is affecting ethnic groups NOT interested or apt in coding to the level of getting the jobs.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >So you're blaming the 60s, 70s and 80s for kids who grew up in the 2000s and don't code now? Those kids didn't develop in vitro in some abstract new environment. They had parents, grandparents, neighborhoods, school districts, schools, family fortune (or lack thereof) potential employers (themselves born in the 60' 60's and 80s) etc. Anybody who thinks those things don't affect the nurture, career and prospects of a young person, or that those things change in a few decades, are deluded. Usually the same people also fail to understand the notion of statistics, and think that outliers that beat the odds and rose to become successful entrepreneurs or whatever from such upbringings translate to "it's equally easy for whites and blacks to become successful, here, this kid proved it, but most blacks are just lazy". In other words people who don't understand that most white people play life in easy mode, where most blacks do not -- and point to some "hard mode" winners as if that means everything is equally easy for everybody. http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
- mlkjr 11y ago
  How would you know if it is a ghost or not? Would statistics help? I don't think there any tangible statistics on ghosts, are there?
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    There's no reliable examples. That's what I'm saying, people say "Systemic" when really it means nothing when you drill down to the meat of how things are. In fact when you look closer you find the more forces and initiatives towards inclusion within the system. For example for years we've had minority and female only STEM initiatives. Both on their own, and included within other organizations as part of greater educational pushes.
jimmywanger 11y ago
Occam's razor. Is there a problem in our entire society and schooling system, or are Black and Hispanic backgrounds a liability because of the views and attitudes they have/teach?
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Occam's razor. Is there likely to be numerous smaller problems that are easy to ignore in all different areas of life, or few large easy to spot problems in one area of life?
- whitegrape 11y ago
  There's an even simpler explanation you get when you control for upbringing. But instead we prefer Occam's Butterknife to the razor. (https://polymathblogger.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/occams-butterknife/ https://polymathblogger.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/occams-butt...)
- abrahamepton 11y ago
  Having lived in our society and been educated by our schools: Yeah, there are societal problems and educational problems. Big, big, big problems. Having gotten my ass kicked intellectually repeatedly by black and hispanic students: no, those backgrounds are not a liability.
  - whitegrape 11y ago
    An average IQ one std dev below other groups does not preclude the existence of individuals who have an IQ two std devs above an average member of the other group. https://antidem.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/glantons-law/ https://antidem.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/glantons-law/
- zephharben 11y ago
  You nailed it - there is a problem in our entire society and schooling system.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Is there a problem in our entire society and schooling system, or are Black and Hispanic backgrounds a liability because of the views and attitudes they have/teach? The two are not mutually exclusive. I would argue that a very significant part of the problem that Blacks and Hispanics face (besides simple discrimination on the part of people in positions of power -- which is very real, as studies of responses to applications in various context from people with stereotypically Black or Hispanic names vs. otherwise identical applications without that feature) is attitudes toward societal institutions and mainstream culture in their respective subcultures that are a direct product of problems in the broader society (including the schooling system), both currently and over the past several centuries (the longer time especially for black subculture) including, over much of that time, overt de jure subjugation and exclusion (which while it didn't directly impact young people today, is recent enough that lots of them have living relatives who did directly experience it) followed by covert (but still present, see earlier comment about applications) discrimination and neglect. Arguing over whether A or B is the problem is pointless when A causes B which then contributes back to A.

falsestprophet 11y ago

Is working as a computer programmer economically rational for high performing black and hispanic students in the United States? Black and hispanic students benefit from preferential admissions standards to medical, law, business and other graduate schools that can lead to higher salaries and higher social standing than computer programming. Consider the extreme case of black students and medical school: Black students who are competitive candidates for software engineering at top tech companies could (probably all) choose to study medicine and, very possibly, be admitted to specialist residency programs. Average specialist pay is $284,000. Average primary care pay is $195,000.

some-guy 11y ago
Medicine has many more barriers to entry: schooling, debt, etc. I'm a white high school dropout, but I got a developer position at age 27 after rushing through a CS degree later in live which took about ~3 years. I work 40 hours a week and get a very livable $100k+ salary plus stock and benefits with negligible student debt all things considered (~$30k). My point being, in a vacuum, getting on track to making a good wage as a developer has a lot fewer barriers with the lack of medical school and debt. Not to mention the free time I have outside of work and regular hours. Salary isn't everything. I cannot speak for people of color and their experience who want to go through the same process as me. There are all kinds of barriers they experience that I don't. Neil DeGrasse Tyson (I know, I know...) had a good answer to the silly question "What's with chicks in science?", and the cultural / systemic barriers he had to go through to reach that point in life [1]. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM
- naveen99 11y ago
  You can do medical school with minimal to no debt from many state medical schools. No way any one rational should chose programming over medicine in terms of dollars per calorie spent working, given they can get admission to medical school. Chose it because you like programming and can't stand the sights and smells of medicine. Not for the money. An average doctor makes more than an average programmer, with better job security, and more prestige, more choice of where to live, less politics at work, less selling your soul for money. Even free time is improving. Many medical sub specialties now offer shift work, part time work etc. Edit: there are literally medical gigs available where you can sleep all night and get paid $100 / hour while sleeping (specialty surgical hospitals, where many nights there may not be a patient overnight, but they require an md on site). Many emergency rooms in rural areas may not see 2 patients at night, but need an er doctor on site.

bobosha 11y ago

It amazes me that "..they discovered that many black and Hispanic students, unlike white and Asian ones, had never heard of this type of interview and were unprepared for it..." How could any programmer worth his/her salt would not know about a whiteboard interview? I think that statement encapsulates it. No only are the schools they are graduating from are woefully inadequate, and they are entering a highly competitive field that with a fast changing landscape that is overwhelming for such grossly underprepared grads. Ask yourself how come Asians & Jews do so well? They just work harder and push themselves more. I am as bleeding heart a liberal as they come and it pains me to see the lack of diversity, but culture has a huge part to play in it.

MollyR 11y ago
Yea the whiteboard comment surprised me a lot. I've never had an interview without it, and/or some kind of take home coding test.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Fwiw, in the past 10 years, I've had 2 whiteboard interviews and the rest I was hired without.
ugh123 11y ago
>Ask yourself how come Asians & Jews do so well? They just work harder and push themselves more. Wait, is it that or are the schools "woefully inadequate"?? >No only are the schools they are graduating from are woefully inadequate,
protomyth 11y ago
> How could any programmer worth his/her salt would not know about a whiteboard interview? A lot of schools don't teach anything about interviewing. Its not academic. In fact, a lot of the training videos used in schools that do teach "job skills" to prepare students make no mention of white board interviews. They talk about being polite, wearing a suit, grooming, etc. Judging an academic program on if they have ever been exposed to a whiteboard interview is fairly silly. I never saw on in 20 years. As to your last paragraph, I'm not sure what role culture would play in introducing people to whiteboard interviews. I guess I grew up in a different environment, but I don't remember any of my urban white friends extolling the annual whiteboard festival. I can see it being a economic function of better schooling though.

is_it_worth_it_ 11y ago

Is nobody willing to acknowledge the reality of genetically inherited IQ? It's like all of our political system is designed around subverting this reality. I suppose society that openly accepts this reality would lead to instability? Is that why we hide the truth, that in fact, yes your genetics do matter? Why do we know about how evolution works, but turn a blind eye to the fact that different pools of genetics have different inherent abilities? EDIT: As a general statement (Please argue logically I am interested in the counterarguement): Some how over thousands of years of almost complete separation, people managed to genetically grow different facial structures but stayed completely the same on the inside? So only physical characteristics are heritable? That's how evolution works? The whole tenant of evolution is that great effective genes are passed on and reflected in offspring. By arguing that there is no genetic difference you are arguing that IQ cannot be passed on and that different environments did not select for and need different levels of IQ. If you are arguing that, then you are denying evolution as a theory.

SalmoShalazar 11y ago
You're being downvoted because you're being a racist buffoon. Yes, there is genetic variation across traits, this is a fact. That said, we are all heavily influenced by our environments and to discount this incredibly formative factor of all human life is ridiculous. Culture, poverty, exposure to crime, and endless cycle of poor parenting, whatever it may be - there are a million things that can and DO get in the way of someone succeeding far, far before their genetics.
- homogeneous 11y ago
  It's also telling that "genetically inherited IQ" always happens to appear in discussions about "race", as if our crude racial classifications represent semantically meaningful genetic variations as it relates to general intelligence. Whatever role genetics play in IQ are most certainly not manifested in the concentration of melanin in one's skin or the coarseness of one's hair or the color of one's eyes or the size of one's nose or any of the other crude heuristics we use to group people up as "races". Still, even with a racial component to genetic IQ, we know that "tech" is not some enlightened trade where only high IQ employees are considered, outside of the elite firms like Google, Apple etc you're going to find a glut of pretty average programmers and plenty of idiots to boot.

Archio 11y ago

It pains me greatly that the tech industry lacks diversity from minorities like blacks, hispanics, and women. However, I strongly believe that looking at the tech companies and asking why they don't hire more minorities is totally missing the real problem. This is of course one datapoint, but the university I went to (top engineering school in the Northeast US) hosts a big panel for computer-field majors at the annual admissions event. Any students remotely interested in technical majors are invited to attend - you don't even need to be accepted to the university. The marketing for the event makes it as clear as possible that no prior programming experience is required, they just want to get people excited about computing. When I served on the panel as a CS student, I looked out the audience and saw a fully packed room (300+ people) of almost entirely white/Asian male prospective students and their parents. At that point, how do you recover and get diverse people? How do you get people interested when everyone showing up fits the same description? In my view, the problem starts way before college/job seeking. I was lucky, as a white male, that my parents noticed and encouraged my technical interests at an early age. By the time I was entering college, I had years of programming experience, not even at any company, but just working on my laptop in my bedroom. It kills me that so many minorities and women never even get that opportunity. Parents of young girls don't seem to see/nurture those interests, and sometimes actively encourage them not to go into technology. It makes perfect sense that later they're not interested in pursuing college/careers in computers. I have worked at companies where the people doing hiring have literally whispered (since it is illegal to say so) that they are desperate to hire minorities and women. I once heard someone say, "Man, I would love to hire this person, but I have to be fair, and if they were male I would have rejected them immediately". Yes, tech companies need to be as accepting as possible towards minorities and women. Yes, minorities and women need role models in the industry. But we've got to start at the source at the problem and get parents to allow their children to be interested in computers in the first place!

stephaniepier 11y ago
I agree. Speaking from my own experience, I didn't even really understand what computer science was until I was in college (I'm female and from a small town). I had taken a "make your own website" summer class in grade school where we did some super basic HTML but that was it. Why would I choose computer science as a major when I was never really exposed to it and didn't even know what it entailed? I'm now starting to learn python on my own and I think computer science could have been a really good fit for me. I think encouraging kids is a great first step.

1024core 11y ago

I think the article mixes non-tech hiring problems with tech problems. I think tech is one of the only fields where your skin color really does not matter. We hire people from far-flung countries who can barely communicate in english; we hire 17-year-olds who have not even finished highschool; we hire total misfits; etc., based solely on their technical expertise. So it bothers me to read crap like this: Research has found that during hiring, managers are biased against black-sounding names on résumés, for instance, and interviewers weigh too heavily whether they’d want to hang out with someone. This may happen in other jobs, but in my 20 years in tech, I have never seen this. Go to any good tech company, and see the odd folks walking about. And yet they'll have an issue with black or hispanic folks? I doubt it. Network does play a role, I will agree. But what plays a bigger role is your technical chops; and it is very easy today to demonstrate your skills via SO or Github.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
duaneb 11y ago
> This may happen in other jobs, but in my 20 years in tech, I have never seen this. It's typically called "culture fit". EDIT: Not all culture fit is bad, I think it's important that people can work together. But it can easily disguise any number of subjective biases, many of which you may not be aware.
- staunch 11y ago
  Where "culture" really means class. Lower class culture vs upper class culture. Poor people make non-poor people very uncomfortable. The bar scene in Good Will Hunting is such a good example.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    I don't necessarily agree with this. There are a number of polarizing factors—ethnicity, religion, politics, age, having a family. Class is only one way to get filtered out.

kamau 11y ago

Interesting how many people here think that the problem rests solely with Black/Hispanic students. I am a black software engineer. As I see it, there are systemic problems, as you can imagine. But one reason that may be missed here is that sometimes people get weary of being the "only black person in the room". So some of the students may be opting out simply because they want a more diverse workplace, and tech is very very white. Just take a look at this thread, in which we have jimmywagner asserting that Black and Latino people are liabilities, and michaelbuddy asserting that systemic issues are "ghosts". They are of course entitled to their opinions (however much I may disagree with them), but honestly that type of hostility masked as objectivity gets old really quick. I can expand later if anyone is interested in a real conversation.

falsestprophet 11y ago
"tech is very very white" Sure tech is generally non-black, but there are load of East Asians and South Asians. It's not exactly the Augusta National Golf Club. There are a lot of places in corporate information technology in the US where tech is "very very" Indian and a white or black or hispanic person may very well be the only non-Indian (or even US citizen or permanent resident) in the room or on the team.
- lumpypua 11y ago
  Very very east Asian is also common.
- gtk40 11y ago
  Agreed. Even in a metro with very low Asian population, we have a lot of Asian workers in my I.T. department and it seems to be the case for other companies nearby. Probably we are about 65% non-Hispanic white (including eastern europeans and foreign workers in that number), 30% Asian (about half Asian and half east Asian, with a few southeast Asians), 5% black and Hispanic.
- kamau 11y ago
  You are correct. My current place of employment is very Indian. In many ways, however, there is less tension in those situations. Often times whites tend to treat non whites in a certain manner that is less than... Now, I am not trying to paint all whites in tech with a broad brush (even if I sounds very much like I am). White people are cool with me, and if I'm to be honest, I have more white friends right now than I do black. So please, understand I am not trying to say "All white people...". I'm not angry. I am instead giving an honest assessment of my experience in tech for the last 15 years, and how it may relate to this story.

redthrowaway 11y ago

Why is it the responsibility of the companies to fix this? In the same way that it seems perverse that Apple is the one standing up to the USG on privacy, why do companies bear the moral responsibility for fixing social ills? The only way a company should be responsible for hiring underrepresented minorities is if there was a market inefficiency to be exploited. And even then, that's a responsibility to their shareholders, not to society. And "we hire black people because we don't have to pay them as much" probably wouldn't go over too well, anyway.

zephharben 11y ago
Companies don't bear any moral responsibilities - people do Hiring managers and executives should use all of the tools at their disposal in the context of recruitment and hiring - including moral and ethical judgement. Setting moral responsibilities aside - if you want to hire talented, passionate engineers like me, you will get serious about building teams with people from diverse backgrounds.
- redthrowaway 11y ago
  >if you want to hire talented, passionate engineers like me, you will get serious about building teams with people from diverse backgrounds. There's a pretty major leap in logic, there. What does diversity have to do with talented, passionate engineering teams? Companies like Honda and Toyota have some of the least diverse engineering teams on the planet, and yet they have a well-earned reputation for engineering excellence. You may want a company to take diversity seriously, and there are many others who feel the same way. But it doesn't follow that maximizing diversity is therefor an imperative for companies that want to have world-class teams. In fact diversity seems to be orthogonal to competence.
  - zephharben 11y ago
    I'll rephrase that - if you want to hire ME, you need to take this stuff seriously. I wasn't delving into the merits of diversity - I believe in it; I'm seeing it put to the test every day at my company, and I like what I see. > it doesn't follow that maximizing diversity is therefor an imperative for companies that want to have world-class teams. Diversity isn't about addition/subtraction, nor is it calculus; it's not even sociology, macroeconomics, or socioeconomics. Diversity is about adaptive systems. > In fact diversity seems to be orthogonal to competence. I'll concede this point, but only with the substitution of "productivity" for "competence". Homogenous teams can outperform diverse teams, IN THE SHORT TERM. Diversity may lead directly to inefficiency and conflict. In the short term, these are painful inhibitors to productivity. In the long term, diversity of backgrounds, capabilities and perspectives - properly aligned - can be a huge asset. If you are building a new company, and you want to beat the world, you'd be foolish to hire a bunch of people who think about things the same way that you do.

fgandiya 11y ago

It's times like these when I think to myself why I'm bothering to enter this field? I mean, I really wanna go into the tech feel to make awesome stuff, but hearing how hard it is for people who look like me (black African college student in the mid west) just gets me down. Then again, software engineering has only been a thing for about 40-50 odd years and is young as compared to other professions, so I guess things will change.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Serious question: Do you want to go to Africa, where there are a lot more people who look like you? Or do you want to stay in the States, where there are (unfortunately) a number of people who are overtly racist, and a larger number who are more unconsciously assuming that it's a white person's world? I can't speak for you, but I suspect your answer is that there's enough good in the States that it's worth staying, problems and all. Tech is like that. There are jerks, and there are racists, and there are abusive personalities. There are real, definite problems. It's still closer to a meritocracy than almost anywhere else. It's good enough that (to me) it's worth going into, problems and all. (Any individual situation may become toxic enough that you need to leave. But overall, I don't think it's bad enough to avoid, especially if that's where you would like to be.)
kelukelugames 11y ago
You will be fine. People are much more collaborative and supportive in real life than they are on online forums.

omonra 11y ago

Don't care. Various groups had faced real discrimination in the job market - jews, italians, irish, etc. Here's one piece of historical trivia - Warren Buffett could not get his first Wall Street job because the company he really wanted to work for had a policy of only hiring Jews - because all other Wall Street banks would not. Ie industries had real 'no X allowed' policies in place - not this 'Oh, I don't feel like being the only black guy in the room'. Well too bad for you - the job will pay money to someone else who doesn't necessarily have to be around people like them. Today whites, Asians and Indians are supposed to feel bad because other ethnicities don't make sufficient effort to join the industry? I'm sorry, I don't.

kelukelugames 11y ago

"Reverse racism" is not a real thing. I swear people invent ways to feel persecuted

dang 11y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11184780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11184780 and marked it off-topic.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  Is there a different way I could voice disagreement with the use of the phrase reverse racism?
  - dang 11y ago
    Comments about pet peeve phrases tend to be low quality and off topic, but if you had offered an insight instead of a snarky dismissal, that would have been better. Also, ideological buzz-language like "are white people such special snowflakes" never does any good, regardless of what position you favor.
    - kelukelugames 11y ago
      Thanks.
aikah 11y ago
> "Reverse racism" is not a real thing. I swear people invent ways to feel persecuted Reverse racism is certainly a real thing. Bigotry against white people is certainly a real thing. Go spend 5 minutes on salon.com, come back and tell me with a straight face that these people don't flirt with racism against white people. As a black person, this kind of ideology isn't helping me. It's only helping pundits selling outrage.
- kelukelugames 11y ago