5 ms·

While there is more than adequate evidence of racism in tech hiring, it would be useful if articles like this included the expected percentage of X engineers if

While there is more than adequate evidence of racism in tech hiring, it would be useful if articles like this included the expected percentage of X engineers if there were no bias in the hiring process. E.g. if the expected percentage of black engineers if there were no bias in the hiring process was 2%, that seems like important information to include.

rando289 10y ago
I can't remember a story like this without horrible data: numbers without much context from which no good conclusions can be drawn.
woah 10y ago
Well the proportion of blacks in the US population is 13%, so even Apple should be hiring twice as many to have a proportional representation.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  But that's not the number to look at for an article like this. The whole idea of pipeline problems is that you lose proportionality a little at a time, from early education to full time careers. Ideally, you'd check the proportions starting from something like mathematical success or career intent in high school. Then you move on to college majors, graduation rates, and applicant pools. This is really important, because otherwise you end up focusing energy on non-leaky parts of the pipeline and achieving nothing. This article focuses on interviewing, but the segment on black colleges and office siting is crucial. Ensuring unbiased interviews doesn't stop you from drawing interview candidates from disproportionately white colleges. Holding local code-ins won't save you from having offices in overwhelmingly white cities. "Lowering the bar", which companies are (according to this) hugely concerned about, still wouldn't solve the problem. If you're studying the mismatch between 13% of the population and 1% of your workforce, the numbers you want are the ones that show where things went wrong.
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  I gaurantee you out of the people who can code or have cs degrees, blacks make up a much smaller percentage. You can't blame Apple for the deep societal issues we have that leads the average black person to be more likely to end up in prison than college
  - Sacho 10y ago
    According to the numbers Dare sourced in replies in the thread, blacks have significantly higher CS college graduates per capita than whites/hispanics, and about on par with Asians. The number of blacks within just those who have CS college degrees is ~10%.
    - fwadfka 10y ago
      That number is misleading, because that data uses a "Computer sciences" category which likely lumps in "Information" degrees. The number I see in 2015 is ~2.5% (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101868)
dareobasanjo 10y ago
Since you're the second person who's asked on this thread. Here's a link to stats about STEM (including computer science) graduates in the US - http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm Assuming everyone who graduated with a CS degree from the US was hired at an equivalent then one would expect something closer to 7%-8%.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  That's useful. Whether or not that's the right number is difficult to say, but it's good to have some sort of baseline assumption to frame the rest of the piece.
- statics 10y ago
  A few very bad assumptions there: 1) not all employees have CS degrees from the US, many are foreign 2) the graduation rate by "race" or "gender" in 2015 is not what is was in 2005, 1995, 1985 or 1975, and the any industry has many people who graduated a long time ago. Comparing current year demographics to the industry as a whole seems really off. 3) Due to historical economic status which is correlated with race, more of those that started off less well off tend to gravitate towards more stable companies. None of these things mean that negative racial discrimination or stereotyping don't exist, just that we shouldn't expect numbers for a particular industry population to match the aggregate stats on who graduated last year.
- Sacho 10y ago
  The numbers are specifically in appendix 2-19(http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/append/c2/at02-19.xls http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/append/c2/at02-19.xls) 2009 data: (numbers are CS/All, CS% from all CS, CS% from all graduates in category) Total graduating with a CS degree: 38,496/1,619,028(100%, ~2.37%) Total White: 23,021/1,069,016(~60%, ~2.15%) Total Black: 3,868/145,988(~10%, ~2.64%) Total Asian/Pacific Islander: 2,894/105,246(7.5%, ~2.75%) Total Hispanic: 2,999/137,746(7.80%, ~2.17%) Interestingly, both Black and Asian/PI are significantly above the number of CS graduates per capita, and White/Hispanic are below.
- fwadfka 10y ago
clifanatic 10y ago
It's also curious that everything that ever seems to be published on diversity - especially in technology - seems to focus either on the percentage of representation of black people or the percentage of representation of women. I guess this author focused on the percentage of representation of black people because he's black, and that impacts him, but just anecdotally based on the 25 years I've been doing this, I'd say that Indian people (men and women) are vastly overrepresented as a percentage of the tech workforce. Is that due to racial preferences for Indian people? Articles like this would seem to draw that conclusion - either the underrepresentation of black people is not due to racism or the overrepresentation of Indian people must be, correct? I also find it interesting that people are studying, say, the representation by gender and race but not, say, religion - how under/over represented are Jewish people or Muslim people in technology? Are there biases there?
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  There's a backstory to all this - Indian immigration is largely folks with wealthy backgrounds and high education. That's understandable without resorting to color. But Americans from similar schools and similar levels of wealth are not hired in Silicon Valley - we look for another reason. And it happens to correlate with skin color. Just looking at stats and pretending that's the whole story is disingenuous.
JPKab 10y ago
Something the author hints at is that the big discrepancy is geographic in nature, not racial. The geographic discrepancy manifests itself in not enough blacks getting hired. Let me put it bluntly: I grew up in the rural south. I NEVER meet other programmers who have a background remotely similar to mine, ever. When was the last time you worked with a coder who grew up in a place that wasn't a wealthy suburb or a nice city? How many people who grew up in trailer parks work at Google or Apple? The author is right: not enough black folks at these companies. What is sad is that this is a symptom of the real issue, which is socioeconomic and geographic in nature, and the companies trying to do something about it are only focusing on the symptoms. This means that even companies like Apple will never fully address the underrepresented groups. America doesn't have a race problem, so much as a culture problem. Obviously culture is extremely aligned with race, but think about it this way: the geographical and socieconomic layers that are excluded by these tech companies are filled with people of all colors, and nobody gives a shit about the people that look too similar to the white folks from wealthy cities that have every advantage.
- jbooth 10y ago
  Given how much of the job is based on resourcefulness and 'sticktoitiveness' which wind up being completely unmeasured by the typical big-o-whiteboard-olympics.. I wonder if it wouldn't be an edge in hiring to fast-track anybody from a disadvantaged background. They've proven that they can break the mold and overcome adversity, kids from the suburbs->stanford route haven't, necessarily.
- vec 10y ago
  > Something the author hints at is that the big discrepancy is geographic in nature, not racial. It's not an either/or proposition; it's both/and. According to the article, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all ~2% black. The population of Silicon valley is just shy of 8% black. The national number is about 18%. Silicon valley is an unusally white area, and the staff demographics are skewed even relative to that baseline. For what it's worth, I am originally from a small industrial town in rural Arkansas, and I am white. Getting hired in a tech firm was actually quite easy for me, given that I was willing to move away from where I grew up to an urban area with a thriving tech sector. I'd like to think that would still have been true even if I were black, but...

rando289 10y ago

I can't remember a story like this without horrible data: numbers without much context from which no good conclusions can be drawn.

woah 10y ago

Well the proportion of blacks in the US population is 13%, so even Apple should be hiring twice as many to have a proportional representation.

Bartweiss 10y ago
But that's not the number to look at for an article like this. The whole idea of pipeline problems is that you lose proportionality a little at a time, from early education to full time careers. Ideally, you'd check the proportions starting from something like mathematical success or career intent in high school. Then you move on to college majors, graduation rates, and applicant pools. This is really important, because otherwise you end up focusing energy on non-leaky parts of the pipeline and achieving nothing. This article focuses on interviewing, but the segment on black colleges and office siting is crucial. Ensuring unbiased interviews doesn't stop you from drawing interview candidates from disproportionately white colleges. Holding local code-ins won't save you from having offices in overwhelmingly white cities. "Lowering the bar", which companies are (according to this) hugely concerned about, still wouldn't solve the problem. If you're studying the mismatch between 13% of the population and 1% of your workforce, the numbers you want are the ones that show where things went wrong.
thesimpsons1022 10y ago
I gaurantee you out of the people who can code or have cs degrees, blacks make up a much smaller percentage. You can't blame Apple for the deep societal issues we have that leads the average black person to be more likely to end up in prison than college
- Sacho 10y ago
  According to the numbers Dare sourced in replies in the thread, blacks have significantly higher CS college graduates per capita than whites/hispanics, and about on par with Asians. The number of blacks within just those who have CS college degrees is ~10%.
  - fwadfka 10y ago
    That number is misleading, because that data uses a "Computer sciences" category which likely lumps in "Information" degrees. The number I see in 2015 is ~2.5% (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101868)

dareobasanjo 10y ago

Since you're the second person who's asked on this thread. Here's a link to stats about STEM (including computer science) graduates in the US - http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm Assuming everyone who graduated with a CS degree from the US was hired at an equivalent then one would expect something closer to 7%-8%.

Alex3917 10y ago
That's useful. Whether or not that's the right number is difficult to say, but it's good to have some sort of baseline assumption to frame the rest of the piece.
statics 10y ago
A few very bad assumptions there: 1) not all employees have CS degrees from the US, many are foreign 2) the graduation rate by "race" or "gender" in 2015 is not what is was in 2005, 1995, 1985 or 1975, and the any industry has many people who graduated a long time ago. Comparing current year demographics to the industry as a whole seems really off. 3) Due to historical economic status which is correlated with race, more of those that started off less well off tend to gravitate towards more stable companies. None of these things mean that negative racial discrimination or stereotyping don't exist, just that we shouldn't expect numbers for a particular industry population to match the aggregate stats on who graduated last year.
Sacho 10y ago
The numbers are specifically in appendix 2-19(http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/append/c2/at02-19.xls http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/append/c2/at02-19.xls) 2009 data: (numbers are CS/All, CS% from all CS, CS% from all graduates in category) Total graduating with a CS degree: 38,496/1,619,028(100%, ~2.37%) Total White: 23,021/1,069,016(~60%, ~2.15%) Total Black: 3,868/145,988(~10%, ~2.64%) Total Asian/Pacific Islander: 2,894/105,246(7.5%, ~2.75%) Total Hispanic: 2,999/137,746(7.80%, ~2.17%) Interestingly, both Black and Asian/PI are significantly above the number of CS graduates per capita, and White/Hispanic are below.
fwadfka 10y ago

clifanatic 10y ago

It's also curious that everything that ever seems to be published on diversity - especially in technology - seems to focus either on the percentage of representation of black people or the percentage of representation of women. I guess this author focused on the percentage of representation of black people because he's black, and that impacts him, but just anecdotally based on the 25 years I've been doing this, I'd say that Indian people (men and women) are vastly overrepresented as a percentage of the tech workforce. Is that due to racial preferences for Indian people? Articles like this would seem to draw that conclusion - either the underrepresentation of black people is not due to racism or the overrepresentation of Indian people must be, correct? I also find it interesting that people are studying, say, the representation by gender and race but not, say, religion - how under/over represented are Jewish people or Muslim people in technology? Are there biases there?

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
There's a backstory to all this - Indian immigration is largely folks with wealthy backgrounds and high education. That's understandable without resorting to color. But Americans from similar schools and similar levels of wealth are not hired in Silicon Valley - we look for another reason. And it happens to correlate with skin color. Just looking at stats and pretending that's the whole story is disingenuous.

JPKab 10y ago

Something the author hints at is that the big discrepancy is geographic in nature, not racial. The geographic discrepancy manifests itself in not enough blacks getting hired. Let me put it bluntly: I grew up in the rural south. I NEVER meet other programmers who have a background remotely similar to mine, ever. When was the last time you worked with a coder who grew up in a place that wasn't a wealthy suburb or a nice city? How many people who grew up in trailer parks work at Google or Apple? The author is right: not enough black folks at these companies. What is sad is that this is a symptom of the real issue, which is socioeconomic and geographic in nature, and the companies trying to do something about it are only focusing on the symptoms. This means that even companies like Apple will never fully address the underrepresented groups. America doesn't have a race problem, so much as a culture problem. Obviously culture is extremely aligned with race, but think about it this way: the geographical and socieconomic layers that are excluded by these tech companies are filled with people of all colors, and nobody gives a shit about the people that look too similar to the white folks from wealthy cities that have every advantage.

jbooth 10y ago
Given how much of the job is based on resourcefulness and 'sticktoitiveness' which wind up being completely unmeasured by the typical big-o-whiteboard-olympics.. I wonder if it wouldn't be an edge in hiring to fast-track anybody from a disadvantaged background. They've proven that they can break the mold and overcome adversity, kids from the suburbs->stanford route haven't, necessarily.
vec 10y ago
> Something the author hints at is that the big discrepancy is geographic in nature, not racial. It's not an either/or proposition; it's both/and. According to the article, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all ~2% black. The population of Silicon valley is just shy of 8% black. The national number is about 18%. Silicon valley is an unusally white area, and the staff demographics are skewed even relative to that baseline. For what it's worth, I am originally from a small industrial town in rural Arkansas, and I am white. Getting hired in a tech firm was actually quite easy for me, given that I was willing to move away from where I grew up to an urban area with a thriving tech sector. I'd like to think that would still have been true even if I were black, but...