4 ms·

I think you are missing the point of the article. The article is not about initiatives to get pre-set numbers of people of a certain race without regard to mer

by vivekd 9y ago

I think you are missing the point of the article. The article is not about initiatives to get pre-set numbers of people of a certain race without regard to merit and qualification (which is what your comment is about). The article is about people who met the requirements, and were qualified, and got the job on the merits. The article is about how these people choosing to leave tech in high numbers because they feel the environment is racist and sexist and it raises questions about how that can be properly dealt with by the tech community. If Black and Hispanic women feel as they are being passed over for promotion at rates higher than other women despite qualifications, I think it's time to at least look at that and investigate instead of dismissing it out of hand. And really I think that dismissive attitude is part of what these people are complaining about.

malandrew 9y ago
The problem I have with these reports is that they are based on self reports and feelings. If you constantly tell people that their group is being victimized, they will start interpreting everything that happens to them through victim-colored glasses and will interpret many actions from actual discrimination to non-descriminatory actions as descrimination. We need objective measures of discrimination not feelings and self reports. Teaching people to interpret everything as discrimination by default actively harms them because it robs them of the opportunity of attributing the cause to their own shortcomings (when that is actually the cause) and therefore being able to come to the conclusion that they need to change to overcome the circumstance. If the desired goal is success at the individual level, it is simply not productive/constructive to arrive at any conclusion where you externalize blame. FWIW, I'm an engineer from Latin America myself. Latin America will never be as well represented as people from Asia, especially from China, India, Korea and Japan, because those countries academically value (1) engineering and (2) English more highly than any country in Latin America. Until countries in Latin America start doing the same, I don't expect this to change.
- vivekd 9y ago
  >Teaching people to interpret everything as discrimination by default I don't see any evidence of anybody doing that. What I see is people complaining of discrimination and it being waived away and dismissed. In a normal, non-sexist, non-racist sector, when people say they feel they are being discriminated, it would be investigated to see if there is in fact any real discrimination. Apparently in tech it's dismissed as "ah fuck your feelings, you've just learned to see everything as discriminatory"
  - malandrew 9y ago
    I'm all for measuring discrimination. What I expressed concern with is measuring the perception of discrimination which is fraught with all sorts of biases. In fact, just today there was another front page story today that got flagged that is perfectly demonstrative of this problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14252978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14252978 The headline is inflammatory and suggests falsely that they've measured something that "objectively" proves discrimination is happening and I'm sure people shared it and upvoted it based on the title alone because it confirms their biases about discrimination being all-pervasive. However a closer examination of the study shows that once you account for differences in level of the engineer that there is in fact no difference. I see this all the time. Anecdotally, the majority of studies and articles claiming discrimination and using data fall prey to the base rate fallacy and misinterpret the results to show discrimination where none exists or where it it is small enough to not be measurable. I am not disputing that discrimination exists, but it would be prudent to stop crying wolf all the time. In 2017, I have seen remarkably few "smoking guns" relative to the amount of noise we see. What I have seen is an increase in how everything is distorted to maximum effect by people with an agenda to say discrimination is the cause of all the problems.
  - vacri 9y ago
    > In a normal, non-sexist, non-racist sector, when people say they feel they are being discriminated, it would be investigated to see if there is in fact any real discrimination Can you give an example of such a sector? Because discrimination is everywhere. Indeed, when it comes to the racism part, tech seems to be doing better than other high-paying sectors (if not perfect), which was part of my original point. There are no sectors as you describe them - minorities and women have had to fight on all fronts to gain a fair deal.

by vivekd 9y ago

malandrew 9y ago

The problem I have with these reports is that they are based on self reports and feelings. If you constantly tell people that their group is being victimized, they will start interpreting everything that happens to them through victim-colored glasses and will interpret many actions from actual discrimination to non-descriminatory actions as descrimination. We need objective measures of discrimination not feelings and self reports. Teaching people to interpret everything as discrimination by default actively harms them because it robs them of the opportunity of attributing the cause to their own shortcomings (when that is actually the cause) and therefore being able to come to the conclusion that they need to change to overcome the circumstance. If the desired goal is success at the individual level, it is simply not productive/constructive to arrive at any conclusion where you externalize blame. FWIW, I'm an engineer from Latin America myself. Latin America will never be as well represented as people from Asia, especially from China, India, Korea and Japan, because those countries academically value (1) engineering and (2) English more highly than any country in Latin America. Until countries in Latin America start doing the same, I don't expect this to change.

vivekd 9y ago
>Teaching people to interpret everything as discrimination by default I don't see any evidence of anybody doing that. What I see is people complaining of discrimination and it being waived away and dismissed. In a normal, non-sexist, non-racist sector, when people say they feel they are being discriminated, it would be investigated to see if there is in fact any real discrimination. Apparently in tech it's dismissed as "ah fuck your feelings, you've just learned to see everything as discriminatory"
- malandrew 9y ago
  I'm all for measuring discrimination. What I expressed concern with is measuring the perception of discrimination which is fraught with all sorts of biases. In fact, just today there was another front page story today that got flagged that is perfectly demonstrative of this problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14252978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14252978 The headline is inflammatory and suggests falsely that they've measured something that "objectively" proves discrimination is happening and I'm sure people shared it and upvoted it based on the title alone because it confirms their biases about discrimination being all-pervasive. However a closer examination of the study shows that once you account for differences in level of the engineer that there is in fact no difference. I see this all the time. Anecdotally, the majority of studies and articles claiming discrimination and using data fall prey to the base rate fallacy and misinterpret the results to show discrimination where none exists or where it it is small enough to not be measurable. I am not disputing that discrimination exists, but it would be prudent to stop crying wolf all the time. In 2017, I have seen remarkably few "smoking guns" relative to the amount of noise we see. What I have seen is an increase in how everything is distorted to maximum effect by people with an agenda to say discrimination is the cause of all the problems.
- vacri 9y ago
  > In a normal, non-sexist, non-racist sector, when people say they feel they are being discriminated, it would be investigated to see if there is in fact any real discrimination Can you give an example of such a sector? Because discrimination is everywhere. Indeed, when it comes to the racism part, tech seems to be doing better than other high-paying sectors (if not perfect), which was part of my original point. There are no sectors as you describe them - minorities and women have had to fight on all fronts to gain a fair deal.