3 ms·

There's nothing to "fix" here. If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success. If that's not happen

There's nothing to "fix" here. If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success. If that's not happening, then it's a supply issue. And really it's no issue at all since people have free will and certain demographics just aren't choosing to be engineers. There's nothing wrong with that, we should stop trying to force them into our line of work.

InclinedPlane 10y ago
> "If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success." BS, that's a dodge. I've seen plenty of people (regardless of their background, ethnicity, or gender) who've been screwed by the system and have spent way too long in crappy jobs where they were unable to make much of a difference. Some people get lucky and early on they find jobs where their talent can shine through and they get on a train that just keeps going up. Other folks may have things line up for them that way only much later in their career, yet others maybe not at all. And if the less lucky decide to switch careers instead of continue struggling and getting frustrated with their ambitions being constantly thwarted then you may never know the potential that was lost from that change of careers. I've also known many extremely talented developers who happened to stumble into the career by accident, and if even some small thing had been different along the way they would have been doing something else.
- exstudent2 10y ago
  That's not been my experience at all. I've generally seen good people get ahead. Sure everyone has personal setbacks but en mass it's definitely not an issue.
  - acdha 10y ago
    Do you see anything incongruous in the way you are comfortable casually rejecting InclinedPlane's experience but using your personal experience to conclude that it's not a widespread problem?
    - exstudent2 10y ago
      Why is their experience more valid than mine? I'll go with my own observations before that of an HN commenter. Yes, I know that's what I am too.
      - InclinedPlane 10y ago
        Do you not understand that these are not comparable things? Your position is that no one in tech is generally ill-served by the system, which is backed up by your own personal experience. I've shared with you the fact that I've seen many examples of people ill-served by the system. That is a direct counter-example against your position, and as such invalidates your claim. The only way it doesn't is if I'm lying. Are you calling me a liar? Or are you just too narrow-minded to imagine that there are experiences outside of the bubble you live in? Are you claiming that my experiences and observations are too narrow and un-representative of the industry whereas yours are more general and representative? By what basis do you make that claim? Edit: Evaluate it from a logical perspective. There are two hypotheses: that iniquity in hiring in tech don't exist, and that they do exist and are somewhat common. Then evaluate the "evidence". On the one hand we have your experience, where you've seen a lack of iniquity, on the other we have mine, where I've seen plenty of examples of iniquity. And we have the example I gave of other observations of iniquity, and the evidence from the article for this whole discussion, which also highlights examples of iniquity. If iniquity was common, we would still expect some situations where it was locally uncommon, especially among people of similar cultural/socio-economic backgrounds, so you would not expect a complete absence of perspectives like yours, you'd expect a mix of perspectives. If iniquity was uncommon, you'd expect that there would be very few perspectives with examples of iniquity. The only way the evidence in front of us makes sense under that hypothesis is if I'm a unicorn with utterly unusual and unique experiences, as are the examples from the article and from the sources I've brought up. That is a much less intellectually tenable position, to claim that all of the evidence against your favored hypothesis doesn't matter because it's all outliers or otherwise unreprestantive. Meanwhile, how do you explain the statistics which show that there are systematic iniquities in the system? How do you explain the countless stories with examples of people who have been ill-served by the system as it exists? Your claim seems to be incredibly weak and based on nothing more than a refusal to accept that anything outside of your own personal experience is real or important.
  - InclinedPlane 10y ago
    How diverse would you say your friend/acquaintance group is? Are they from the same background as you? Do they have similar life stories? If not, how can you possibly imagine that you're not just soaking in confirmation bias? Don't like my opinion? How about someone else's opinion? https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ There are countless examples of talented people who have been ill-served by the hiring environment and tech culture we have today. For every one of them that gets lucky and finds success through non-traditional hiring practices at a great company (for example) you have to wonder how many others (others who live where there is less opportunity, etc.) are just passed by and left behind by the system. Your attitude is very much a "let them eat cake" attitude. You look around and you say "everyone I know is successful, what are all these other people's problems?" Trust me, there are poor people out there, there are disadvantaged people out there, and partly because of unfairness built into the economy and our culture. And that extends even into the tech world. There are tons of talented people who are unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise disadvantaged simply because they don't match the traditional model of what a talented tech person looks like.
    - exstudent2 10y ago
      > Trust me, there are poor people out there, there are disadvantaged people out there, and partly because of unfairness built into the economy and our culture. What makes you think that I'm not one of those people? Did you ever think the reason I don't feel there's a problem is because I come from a disadvantage non-majority background and haven't had it used against me? Real talent excels period. Yes, I've seen it and it's been from a diverse background. If you write great code, you will do well. I see a ton of people wanting success handed to them without the hard work, but no one owes them that.

InclinedPlane 10y ago

> "If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success." BS, that's a dodge. I've seen plenty of people (regardless of their background, ethnicity, or gender) who've been screwed by the system and have spent way too long in crappy jobs where they were unable to make much of a difference. Some people get lucky and early on they find jobs where their talent can shine through and they get on a train that just keeps going up. Other folks may have things line up for them that way only much later in their career, yet others maybe not at all. And if the less lucky decide to switch careers instead of continue struggling and getting frustrated with their ambitions being constantly thwarted then you may never know the potential that was lost from that change of careers. I've also known many extremely talented developers who happened to stumble into the career by accident, and if even some small thing had been different along the way they would have been doing something else.

exstudent2 10y ago
That's not been my experience at all. I've generally seen good people get ahead. Sure everyone has personal setbacks but en mass it's definitely not an issue.
- acdha 10y ago
  Do you see anything incongruous in the way you are comfortable casually rejecting InclinedPlane's experience but using your personal experience to conclude that it's not a widespread problem?
  - exstudent2 10y ago
    Why is their experience more valid than mine? I'll go with my own observations before that of an HN commenter. Yes, I know that's what I am too.
    - InclinedPlane 10y ago
      Do you not understand that these are not comparable things? Your position is that no one in tech is generally ill-served by the system, which is backed up by your own personal experience. I've shared with you the fact that I've seen many examples of people ill-served by the system. That is a direct counter-example against your position, and as such invalidates your claim. The only way it doesn't is if I'm lying. Are you calling me a liar? Or are you just too narrow-minded to imagine that there are experiences outside of the bubble you live in? Are you claiming that my experiences and observations are too narrow and un-representative of the industry whereas yours are more general and representative? By what basis do you make that claim? Edit: Evaluate it from a logical perspective. There are two hypotheses: that iniquity in hiring in tech don't exist, and that they do exist and are somewhat common. Then evaluate the "evidence". On the one hand we have your experience, where you've seen a lack of iniquity, on the other we have mine, where I've seen plenty of examples of iniquity. And we have the example I gave of other observations of iniquity, and the evidence from the article for this whole discussion, which also highlights examples of iniquity. If iniquity was common, we would still expect some situations where it was locally uncommon, especially among people of similar cultural/socio-economic backgrounds, so you would not expect a complete absence of perspectives like yours, you'd expect a mix of perspectives. If iniquity was uncommon, you'd expect that there would be very few perspectives with examples of iniquity. The only way the evidence in front of us makes sense under that hypothesis is if I'm a unicorn with utterly unusual and unique experiences, as are the examples from the article and from the sources I've brought up. That is a much less intellectually tenable position, to claim that all of the evidence against your favored hypothesis doesn't matter because it's all outliers or otherwise unreprestantive. Meanwhile, how do you explain the statistics which show that there are systematic iniquities in the system? How do you explain the countless stories with examples of people who have been ill-served by the system as it exists? Your claim seems to be incredibly weak and based on nothing more than a refusal to accept that anything outside of your own personal experience is real or important.
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  How diverse would you say your friend/acquaintance group is? Are they from the same background as you? Do they have similar life stories? If not, how can you possibly imagine that you're not just soaking in confirmation bias? Don't like my opinion? How about someone else's opinion? https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ There are countless examples of talented people who have been ill-served by the hiring environment and tech culture we have today. For every one of them that gets lucky and finds success through non-traditional hiring practices at a great company (for example) you have to wonder how many others (others who live where there is less opportunity, etc.) are just passed by and left behind by the system. Your attitude is very much a "let them eat cake" attitude. You look around and you say "everyone I know is successful, what are all these other people's problems?" Trust me, there are poor people out there, there are disadvantaged people out there, and partly because of unfairness built into the economy and our culture. And that extends even into the tech world. There are tons of talented people who are unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise disadvantaged simply because they don't match the traditional model of what a talented tech person looks like.
  - exstudent2 10y ago
    > Trust me, there are poor people out there, there are disadvantaged people out there, and partly because of unfairness built into the economy and our culture. What makes you think that I'm not one of those people? Did you ever think the reason I don't feel there's a problem is because I come from a disadvantage non-majority background and haven't had it used against me? Real talent excels period. Yes, I've seen it and it's been from a diverse background. If you write great code, you will do well. I see a ton of people wanting success handed to them without the hard work, but no one owes them that.