5 ms·

This is an important topic, but as often happens, the article just treads the same old themes. It's looking for answers in the usual places, when it's not clear

This is an important topic, but as often happens, the article just treads the same old themes. It's looking for answers in the usual places, when it's not clear the answers are there. First of all, Asian Americans are still overrepresented in tech leadership positions. Just less than they are overrepresented in tech positions in general. So looking for a negative (discriminatory) effect may be the wrong thing - we may need to look for less of a positive effect instead. That's harder to do, of course. Second, while the stereotypes described in the article may well play a role here, there are other explanations that are overlooked but may matter as much or more. We know that height is a significant factor in earning and in particular in getting to leadership positions. It's of comparable effect to the gender gap, but not as studied, because it's not "interesting" - US culture is focused on looking for discrimination on the familiar axes of race, gender and sexuality. But just like height might explain women's relatively low leadership rates, it might explain Asian American's, as they tend to be shorter.

rubber_duck 10y ago
>But just like height might explain women's relatively low leadership rates, it might explain Asian American's, as they tend to be shorter. If anything it would be more probable that the causation goes the other way arround.
n00b101 10y ago
> "Asian Americans are still overrepresented in tech leadership positions." No, the article clearly states that they are under-represented. It cites 2015 report on diversity looking at 5 Silicon Valley companies: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. The report finds that, "Asians and Asian Americans are well represented in lower-level positions but underrepresented at management and executive levels. Asian Americans (including Indians) are 27% of the workers in these companies, but only 19% of managers and 14% of executives. In contrast, whites represented 62% of professionals and 80% of executives in these firms." > "We know that height is a significant factor in earning and in particular in getting to leadership positions. It's of comparable effect to the gender gap..." Height being a "confounding variable" in discrimination against both Asians and women seems like an interesting theory, but it doesn't fit the facts from the article :"This is worse than the glass ceiling effect that’s been identified for women; in these five firms, men are 42% more likely to have an executive role than women, and white men and women are 154% more likely than Asians to hold an executive role. And Asians represent only 1.5% of corporate officer positions in the Fortune 500" I am also reluctant to accept your stereotype of "short Asian men" (South and East Asian) without seeing any data specifically on the distribution of heights of American Asian males versus American white males. I suspect that the difference is not as large as you make it out be.
- russellsprouts 10y ago
  I think the point the gp was making is that 14% is over-representation given the demographics of the country at large. That doesn't discount that they are relatively under-represented given the demographics of the company.
- brighteyes 10y ago
  > No, the article clearly states that they are under-represented. It cites 2015 report on diversity looking at 5 Silicon Valley companies: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. The report finds that, "Asians and Asian Americans are well represented in lower-level positions but underrepresented at management and executive levels. Asian Americans (including Indians) are 27% of the workers in these companies, but only 19% of managers and 14% of executives. Yes, but Asian Americans are just 4.7% of the US population [1]. So even 14% of executives is 3x their expected representation. That's a very high amount of overrepresentation! Just it's smaller than their overrepresentation elsewhere. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State... > Height being a "confounding variable" in discrimination against both Asians and women seems like an interesting theory, but it doesn't fit the facts from the article :"This is worse than the glass ceiling effect that’s been identified for women Oh, definitely I don't think we have anywhere near the data to claim it is 100% of the explanation here - which would mean it could be disproved using the method you used. All I am saying is that we know height has a major effect on income and leadership position attainment. This is true in business, politics, everywhere basically. So for shorter than average populations, it is plausible it explains part of their lower income or leadership attainment. (Does it explain all of it? No reason to think that.) And I am saying that this is an often-ignored factor, which shows that we aren't actually looking at this topic objectively. We have cultural blinders.

rubber_duck 10y ago

>But just like height might explain women's relatively low leadership rates, it might explain Asian American's, as they tend to be shorter. If anything it would be more probable that the causation goes the other way arround.

n00b101 10y ago

> "Asian Americans are still overrepresented in tech leadership positions." No, the article clearly states that they are under-represented. It cites 2015 report on diversity looking at 5 Silicon Valley companies: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. The report finds that, "Asians and Asian Americans are well represented in lower-level positions but underrepresented at management and executive levels. Asian Americans (including Indians) are 27% of the workers in these companies, but only 19% of managers and 14% of executives. In contrast, whites represented 62% of professionals and 80% of executives in these firms." > "We know that height is a significant factor in earning and in particular in getting to leadership positions. It's of comparable effect to the gender gap..." Height being a "confounding variable" in discrimination against both Asians and women seems like an interesting theory, but it doesn't fit the facts from the article :"This is worse than the glass ceiling effect that’s been identified for women; in these five firms, men are 42% more likely to have an executive role than women, and white men and women are 154% more likely than Asians to hold an executive role. And Asians represent only 1.5% of corporate officer positions in the Fortune 500" I am also reluctant to accept your stereotype of "short Asian men" (South and East Asian) without seeing any data specifically on the distribution of heights of American Asian males versus American white males. I suspect that the difference is not as large as you make it out be.

russellsprouts 10y ago
I think the point the gp was making is that 14% is over-representation given the demographics of the country at large. That doesn't discount that they are relatively under-represented given the demographics of the company.
brighteyes 10y ago
> No, the article clearly states that they are under-represented. It cites 2015 report on diversity looking at 5 Silicon Valley companies: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. The report finds that, "Asians and Asian Americans are well represented in lower-level positions but underrepresented at management and executive levels. Asian Americans (including Indians) are 27% of the workers in these companies, but only 19% of managers and 14% of executives. Yes, but Asian Americans are just 4.7% of the US population [1]. So even 14% of executives is 3x their expected representation. That's a very high amount of overrepresentation! Just it's smaller than their overrepresentation elsewhere. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State... > Height being a "confounding variable" in discrimination against both Asians and women seems like an interesting theory, but it doesn't fit the facts from the article :"This is worse than the glass ceiling effect that’s been identified for women Oh, definitely I don't think we have anywhere near the data to claim it is 100% of the explanation here - which would mean it could be disproved using the method you used. All I am saying is that we know height has a major effect on income and leadership position attainment. This is true in business, politics, everywhere basically. So for shorter than average populations, it is plausible it explains part of their lower income or leadership attainment. (Does it explain all of it? No reason to think that.) And I am saying that this is an often-ignored factor, which shows that we aren't actually looking at this topic objectively. We have cultural blinders.