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Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows
- sctb 9y agoAll: if you're going to comment on this thread, please make sure to post civilly and substantively, as the guidelines ask. If you have any questions or issues outside of the topic of discussion, please email us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hysterix 9y agoWhy does it have to be that this is an evil white-man conspiracy trying to hold black and laitno's down? Why can't it be something much more simpler, that perhaps there aren't as many qualified black and latinos? Take a look at typical black culture in largely black only areas. You'll find that speaking without using ebonics is, "talking white". You'll find the culture doesn't value education and shuns literacy, mathematics and sciences as "white people stuff". Why does it always have to be a white persons fault? Are liberals subtly admitting that black and latinos only live and work at the behest of white people? Are they admitting that if it wasn't for white people there wouldn't be any silicon valley jobs for blacks and latinos to even work in? If blacks and latinos are equally as capable as white people, why can't they start their own silicon valley and hire blacks/latinos only? Why is it the white mans job to nurse, baby, coddle and farm out black/latino talent? Why are they incapable of doing all these things themselves? Why does the burden of an entire race's existence fall upon white people? Why are blacks and latinos incapable of doing these things themselves without white peoples help? As a white man, why in the world should I give a shit about black/latino problems? When was the last time a black or latino person gave a shit about my problems? Why as a society has the narrative been flipped to blame all problems on white people?
- shadowbanned1 9y agoWhy does it have to be that this is an evil white-man conspiracy trying to hold black and laitno's down? Why can't it be something much more simpler, that perhaps there aren't as many qualified black and latinos? Take a look at typical black culture in largely black only areas. You'll find that speaking without using ebonics is, "talking white". You'll find the culture doesn't value education and shuns literacy, mathematics and sciences as "white people stuff". Why does it always have to be a white persons fault? Are liberals subtly admitting that black and latinos only live and work at the behest of white people? Are they admitting that if it wasn't for white people there wouldn't be any silicon valley jobs for blacks and latinos to even work in? If blacks and latinos are equally as capable as white people, why can't they start their own silicon valley and hire blacks/latinos only? Why is it the white mans job to nurse, baby, coddle and farm out black/latino talent? Why are they incapable of doing all these things themselves? Why does the burden of an entire race's existence fall upon white people? Why are blacks and latinos incapable of doing these things themselves without white peoples help? As a white man, why in the world should I give a shit about black/latino problems? When was the last time a black or latino person gave a shit about my problems? Why as a society has the narrative been flipped to blame all problems on white people?
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoTime for today's most incendiary post. (; I think feelings on this are going to depend on whether you consider a silicon valley job as more "outcome" or "opportunity." I'd say making sure that black/latino people can obtain these jobs is just as important as making sure they have equal opportunity to attend a good college or good highschool. That puts me in a bit of a predicament though because I come to the conclusion that what's in the best interests of society requires these companies to go against what's in their best interests and pass up more qualified whites/asians. Thoughts?
- minikites 9y ago>pass up more qualified whites/asians That's a pretty common line of attack against this sort of thing but I don't think it holds water. There are plenty of "unqualified" white people who get jobs just by knowing the right person. In many industries (less so in tech because there's a shortage overall) there are plenty of qualified applicants of all races, it just takes some work on a few levels (overcoming your own biases, going out of your way to recruit, etc)
- Consultant32452 9y agoI don't believe that there are plenty of qualified applicants of all races. I've been in a position to review resumes and perform interviews for over a decade and I don't recall having ever seen a black developer candidate, much less a "qualified" one. The closest I've gotten is I worked alongside a black sysadmin once. My city is nearly 30% black. My city is also about 25% Hispanic. I've worked with a hand full or so of Hispanic devs, I'd guess somewhere in the range of 3-5% of my coworkers have been Hispanic.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y agoBut... the article says Asians are the most likely to be hired and least likely to be promoted so then are they more qualified or not? You know I think this is actually a good thing. I’ve been working as a dev for 12 years but after interviewing with tech companies more recently I’m done. I’m doing my own thing. The ‘technical interviews’ made sure of that, I presumably suck at them but I can’t be sure because no constructive feedback. Start your own thing, it will be more rewarding, I’ve learned more in 9 years of side projects than I ever did at the job and recently it’s really paying off. Oh yeah, there is no engineer shortage and there never has been, pay people decent and don’t be raise the bar to the point it’s in the clouds and you’ll see there are earnest, keen hardworking people eager and ready. Oh and I don’t know, may be invest in people a little instead too, people are life long learners, they have potential.
- minikites 9y agoThis isn't new, limited to technology, or all that surprising if you've been paying attention to your peers. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 >The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20161011-00/?p=94486 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20161011-00/?p=... >One of my friends is a woman of color, and not that long ago, she arrived with three male colleagues in the lobby of a building for a scheduled meeting. The administrative assistant came out, walked right past my friend, shook the hands of the three men, and welcomed them. My friend extended her hand to introduce herself, and the assistant asked, "Oh, you're with them?"
- misterbowfinger 9y agoCouldn't find a link to the study in the article, so I looked it up: http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/ascendleadership.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/Research/HiddenInPlainSight_Paper_042.pdf http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/ascendleadership.site-ym.com/resour...
- tlb 9y agoEvery underrepresented group represents an opportunity to start a company, hire some great people from that group, and succeed together. A single company, perhaps one you start this year, can make a huge impact. YC funding applications are due today. https://www.ycombinator.com/apply https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
- marindez 9y agoWhat this means is that someone should start a company and become completely racist about who they hire.
- outand_up 9y agoThank you! What are these people smoking? Fight (assumed) racism! With (actual) racism!
- hypersoar 9y agoIf by "racism", you mean making decisions based on race only in a literal, overt sense, then sure. If by "racism" you mean structural, large-scale, societal oppression of disadvantaged groups, then no, that's not something a lone startup, or even a bunch of startups, can replicate. The latter is typically what people actually mean. The over-arching problem is that structural racism is subtle. It doesn't come from managers saying that don't want any [insert racial slur]s on their team. It comes from people making connections through their kids' schools in mostly-white neighborhoods, or getting along because they like the same music or share the same hobby. People like people who seem familiar, and it's harder from someone with a different cultural background to break through. And this is before we factor in the fact disadvantaged groups tend to grow up with fewer opportunities. Being "neutral" isn't a solution. If you don't try to actively correct for these things, you just end up favoring the status quo. It's not avoiding a choice. It's just choosing the path of least resistance.
- zghst 9y agoIt is getting tough these days to decipher intentions of those who wish to combat racism with racism, however was definitely not the intention of OP. One could start a business with their family, friends (who are likely to be the same race), or even other interested people in their community. Finding good founders is quite hard, to narrow it by race is even harder, but that shouldn't discourage underrepresented people who share similar values to organize.
- tabeth 9y agoUnsurprising. I tell all of my minorities friends to remove their pictures from LinkedIn and use American sounding names. The increase in callbacks always shocks me. You can do this experiment in reverse yourself if you already have an American sounding name. Unfortunately the real solution, anonymity, will probably never be adopted because there are groups who benefit from being identified. There's way too much many in tech to for the incumbents to leave it to merit.
- dominotw 9y ago> inorities friends to remove their pictures from LinkedIn and use American sounding names. i assume minorities here doesn't include Indians.
- tabeth 9y agoWhen I say minority I mean anyone who doesn't have a European or American sounding name. Even white people with "strange names" benefit.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ashark 9y agoThis is one reason why I advocate giving your kids (if in America, at least) really boring names. Just scratch anything remotely strange off the list, and forget about it. If you can't imagine a Kennedy or a character on 1950s US TV having the name, don't use it. Having a "special" name is unlikely to bring any benefit, and may well have significant social costs (plus having always to repeat yourself and spell your name, correcting misspellings on forms, et c.) With my three young kids I already regret the very, very slightly unusual name we used for the first one (ordinary spelling for the name, name has a long history but it's almost homophonic with a 20x more common name, which we should have just used instead). Just don't do it.
- klodolph 9y ago
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoSometimes I wonder if the tech industry should adopt the orchestral model of auditions: prevent the interviewers from seeing the candidate, knowing their name, or hearing their voice. Judge them entirely on their code and text responses. Sure something like this would probably result in complaints about "hiring for culture fit," but isn't someone who provides the correct answers and code a culture fit in the first place?
- dominotw 9y agoi did one of these interviews at a bank. I was asked to sit behind curtain and answer questions . It felt totally weird. you are right they should have masked out my voice too.
- tlb 9y agoThere exist people who are good at providing correct answers and code, but are incredibly toxic to a human organization. They're fairly rare, and if you work in a healthy well-run company, you may never have met one. But if you interview a lot, you surely have (they get a lot of interviews, because they look good on paper.) The risk is that you'd end up with a lot of these types. I'm not saying a pure audition model can't work, just that you should know what the pitfalls are.
- Jach 9y ago> isn't someone who provides the correct answers and code a culture fit in the first place? No, they're merely a technical fit, maybe, depending on what you ask. (Your blinding process would also mean preventing interviewers from seeing any open source contributions which may be far more indicative of technical fit than anything you'd ask in an interview.) Technical fit might be enough for most roles, more blinding at least at the initial filtering stages might be a good idea, but culture fit is important for a lot of firms. At the very least people will want person-to-person interviews to maximize their odds at detecting a permanent asshole (and other toxic types), since typically no one wants to work with one even if they're skilled.
- emodendroket 9y agoIt seems like a good idea, but how do you make sure you don't hire someone with a complete lack of social skills?
- outand_up 9y ago"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." We're tired of obsessing about race. We're tired of having accusations of racism, sexism, whatever-the-next-trendy-ism crammed down our throats at every opportunity. The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not value education. Until that changes, do not expect to see highly educated and skilled blacks and latinos bounding through the hiring process. Just ask the asians about minority discrimination - they outperform everyone and are openly penalized for it. CONTENT OF CHARACTER. NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT SKIN COLOR. Go ahead and delete this comment, it's not going to change reality.
- tabeth 9y agoThere's plenty of evidence that people care about skin color, irregardless of race. Are you serious? Talking about Asians is a red herring. Asians actually suffer similarly to blacks once you look at Asians other than eastern ones (e.g. Japanese, Korean). The idea that Asians are a model minority is simply propaganda used to victim blame Hispanics and Blacks as well as create a division between them. This also happened between low income whites and blacks. I encourage you to do some research. TLDR: comparing Asians with blacks is literally like comparing apples with oranges.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- outand_up 9y agoI think you're a racist. Am I changing hearts and minds yet?
- sctb 9y agoYour other comment is not deleted, so please don't keep posting duplicates like this.
- outand_up 9y ago"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." We're tired of obsessing about race. We're tired of having accusations of racism, sexism, whatever-the-next-trendy-ism crammed down our throats at every opportunity. The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not value education. Until that changes, do not expect to see highly educated and skilled blacks and latinos bounding through the hiring process. Just ask the asians about minority discrimination - they outperform everyone and are openly penalized for it. CONTENT OF CHARACTER. NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT SKIN COLOR. Go ahead and delete this comment, it's not going to change reality.
- infiniteseeker 9y agoExactly. I have tons of Indian , other south Asian and east Asian heritage colleagues. Weird how theres no racism in this case.
- Karrot_Kream 9y ago'“There have been no changes for Asians or any other minority over time – men or women,” said Buck Gee, the study’s co-author and an executive adviser to Ascend, a US-based research group that advocates for Asian representation in businesses.' The claim is that, despite increasingly visible/vocal attempts at diversity, the industry does not reflect this. We've noticed a regression in black/Latino hiring and stagnancy for Asians. This implies that there is racism at work.
- outand_up 9y agoNo I don't believe it does. Causation != correlation. Just because a company goes on a PR campaign to openly discriminate based on race and attempt to hire minorities, does not mean more minorities will present themselves in the application pools. Again, until urban minority cultures begin to value education - nothing will change.
- talad 9y ago
- shadowbanned2 9y agoAny opinions, thoughts and ideas that are expressed on ycombinator that are not left-wing and don't tow the liberal line are being deleted. It's not that there aren't people who disagree with these bullshit articles, it's that ycombinator mods are literally deleting and banning users who express opinions that aren't "correct".
- outand_up 9y ago100%
- indubitably 9y agoGuess you're both wrong. (And you're also wrong.)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- outand_up 9y agonot wrong, top comment deleted twice - and now i magically can't make root level posts
- sctb 9y agoWhat we've done in this thread so far is ban throwaway accounts created by already-banned users and collapsed threads that violate the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shadowbanned2 9y agoIf blacks and latinos are as capable as whites, why are they incapable of achievement without white peoples help? Why is it considered racist to postulate that perhaps blacks and latinos ARENT as capable as whites so therefore they require more assistance?
- outand_up 9y agoThat actually does sound racist.. Unless you're being sarcastic. It has nothing to do with race. It's all about culture and socioeconomics.
- shadowbanned2 9y agoNonsense. If the majority of a race gravitates to having such a shitty "culture" that values ignorance, then calling it a "culture and socioeconomic issue" is simply tap dancing around the actual issue.
- sctb 9y agoPlease stop creating accounts to violate the guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- assholeconny 9y agoi'm sure the representation of indians is growing and growing. so is it really racism?
- jahewson 9y agoStudies, data, conversation, and thoughtfulness around these issues are welcome and needed but this news article is, frankly, junk. I always like to look at data from the source, so I downloaded the original report, which The Guadian couldn't be bothered to link to. Let's start with the title of the article: > Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows However the report is about Asian representation, and although it includes some data on other groups it states: > Although we include the figures for black and Hispanic men and women, we do not use them for comparative purposes because EPI figures for those cohorts are highly sensitive to small changes. This is right in the executive summary. The next problem is that the article represents the study as being of "Silicon Valley" and the "tech industry", but the study is of just five companies: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. These are all large corporations and there is no evidence given to suggest that this is a "Silicon Valley" problem and not a "Corporate America" problem. That's not to say that you can't draw conclusions from studying these companies, but you can't make sweeping statements about the tech industry based on them. Especially when so much of Silicon Valley is made up of startups. The valley is a dynamic place: two of those corporations no longer exist. Obviously problems exist, but I see no reason here to single out the tech industry for special blame, especially when no attempt is made to compare tech with other industries and "tech" is taken to mean a handful of large corporations. Worse still, by misrepresenting the nature and origins of these problems, we set ourselves up to fail when we try to address them. Uber's appalling culture, for example is firmly rooted in that of finance, why don't we talk about that? What do the finance industry's diversity statistics look like?
- minikites 9y ago>Studies, data, conversation, and thoughtfulness around these issues are welcome and needed I posted a top level comment that links to a study and another link to an article which links to several studies and got downvoted to oblivion. I don't think this sort of thing is _actually_ welcome here.
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- commenter1 9y agoI started a sports betting company that turned into an analytics company. We had zero women or minority (other than asian) employees or even applicants. One new employee became vocal about it, so he was made our "diversity officer". He was made part of our recruiting division and was present in every interview. We got one (white) woman employee. She quit soon after joining. Now there is an opening for a "diversity officer" inside the company. No takers yet.