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Tech Companies Still Aren’t Hiring Black Workers
- nomy99 8y agoI have noticed a similar trend at engineering campuses. So universities aren't recruiting black students?
- onion2k 8y agoWhy would people of color take engineering courses if there aren't any jobs for them afterwards?
- spoiledtechie 8y agoBUT there are. I read a fact recently that stated something like the USA, has 40k NEW Tech jobs per year and we are only graduating 10k... There is plenty of work for everyone.
- reknirt 8y agoI hope you're trolling.
- readingnews 8y agoAgree with nomy99. I work on a college campus. There was 1 African American in our CS graduate school. He was hired by Google before he even graduated. Out of several hundred undergrads, the number of "other" students is statistically zero. The college is actively recruiting any and all qualified students regardless of race. People like google and the mom & pop store down the street are legally to not discriminate based on race. How do we get African Americans to enter STEM fields? I honestly don't think your average African American student who wants to learn computer science is thinking "I am never going to get hired". Am I wrong?
- monochromatic 8y agoTech companies are being actively leaned on to lower their standards to hire more black workers. Saying there aren’t jobs for them is nonsense.
- nomy99 8y ago"lower their standards to hire more black workers." do you hear yourself? You have linked color with standard. Companies hire based on skill, experience and culture fit.
- romanovcode 8y agoIt is known fact that a lot of tech companies hire to fill a "quota". OP is actually right, unfortunately.
- dahdum 8y agoLet’s assume (correctly imo) that every subgroup (race, gender, origin, sexuality, etc.) is equally skilled. If you apply a technical standard equally, you end up with a market distribution of hires. Companies are being leaned on to over represent certain groups relative to their market distribution. That’s not possible industry wide unless you lower your technical standards for that subgroup.
- true_religion 8y agoIndustry wide, you are right but top companies do not have to lower their standards, just invest more in finding qualified candidates. You will end up with an industry where the top players have diverse campuses, and small shops are made up of whichever ethnic group is locally available.
- nomy99 8y agoFirst of all, in the technical field you can not lower standards by much. A person either has a degree or necessary experience or they don't. The fact that they are underrepresented is because the talent isn't there. Now, OP's statement, no matter how much justified it is logically is propagating a nasty stigma associated with black workers -- that they are here to meet a quota or are less intelligent and experienced.
- weiming 8y agoI'm not originally from America, so I seem to be missing something in articles like this. Why does no one talk about the "pipeline problem," that is, encouraging many more people from "minority" groups (black, women, and so on) to pursue coding from young age? (Edit: or encouraging these groups to enter the field at any age, such as through the community college system/Coursera/etc.) It seems like examining the end of the funnel (and placing blame squarely on tech companies) is all too easy, and is much easier than addressing a root cause (not enough people of these groups studying CS to begin with.)
- protonimitate 8y agoBecause addressing the pipeline problem means admitting that racism is still alive and embedded in the foundations of our education and work force system. You can't expect there to be more workers if there's no applicants. There are no applicants because there is a severe lack of Black people (among other groups) represented in Engineering/STEM degree programs. That stems from a lack of good public school education. But like you said, it generates more clicks-per-article to blame the Big Bad Tech Companies for not being diverse enough, when really we as a national don't honestly want to see marginalized groups succeed. Americans operate by and large on a zero-sum assumption. Many believe that if one group of people succeeds, it somehow will undermine their own success.
- weiming 8y ago> when really we as a national don't honestly want to see marginalized groups succeed This sounds like a very big statement and probably something that can be a long post in itself. Would you be able to expound on that?
- camelNotation 8y agoThere's a popular theory among the American left that classical liberalism (free speech, freedom of association, "equality of opportunity", etc) is actually an oppressive social structure devised by powerful white men to keep the poor and disenfranchised (minorities and women) from rising through the economic ranks. In the estimation of the American left, the "hands-off" approach of right-wing American politics is actually a "hold them down" approach since no one that is poor or disenfranchised can rise from poverty to wealth on their own. Instead, they favor increased spending on public institutions (like more money for public schools) that will theoretically pull the poor and disenfranchised out of poverty and into the middle or upper classes. The American right, on the other hand, contends that providing social support to the poor and disenfranchised creates a "victim mentality" and a dependency on the system for advancement. They often accuse the American left of trying to make the United States into a communist nation akin to the Soviet Union and tend to favor the maximization of non-government power as much as possible. In practice, this manifests itself as a sort of "hyper-capitalism" where the American right grants tax breaks to the rich and large corporations in the name of both economic freedom and as a reward for their success in the free market. It is very hard to reconcile the two perspectives. EDIT: And just to add my own view here for clarity - I think both the left and right make salient points. The left is correct that there is no equality of opportunity without adjusting for the complexities of other aspects of life and financial constraints of a poor individual's starting position. I think the right is correct that a victim mentality is extremely dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. I think there is a centrist position to be held that works for everyone, but both sides despise centrists, so I am hated every time I talk about politics.
- reknirt 8y agoDoes the number of black workers that have the technical knowledge/experience account for more than 2-3% of the total pool of hirable workers? Or do black workers only account for 2-3% of tech employees because that's the number that knows how to code?
- empath75 8y agoIt’s less than that in a lot of places. It’s a massive societal problem and it needs to be fixed from elementary schools up.
- zaroth 8y agoOh wow, that chart titled ‘Little Has Changed’ with the X axis pushed out to 100%. Looks like, if you squint hard enough, Facebook has at least tripled their number of black coders.
- spoiledtechie 8y agoIm gonna be the antagonist here and say, black people still aren't getting the degrees required for such work. Now, ONLY if these tech companies would drop their requirements for university and college, they might see more applicants. Tech companies should sponsor universities or even create their own. I can see some of the major companies saying "hey, we have this university, which you can attend for FREE only if you work for us for 6 years." Sign up? Until either black people start taking more classes for tech work, OR tech companies start a university theirself, I don't see this happening anytime soon. I work with 80% foreigners. 20% Americans. Its only because the Americans aren't going into Tech. Sad, but true.
- nutdip 8y agoMy manager once told me that when a position is open, majority of applicants are either Chinese or Indians.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoHeatmap? There are more of them.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago> Tech companies should sponsor universities or even create their own. I can see some of the major companies saying "hey, we have this university, which you can attend for FREE only if you work for us for 6 years." Sign up? Who do you think would the tech companies recruit for these positions? I think you just described a large scholarship with strings attached. I don't think a company would be willing to foot the bill unless they think the investment is really going to pay off for them.
- spoiledtechie 8y agoThats cool. Lets start with apprenticeships and see where it goes. OR sponsor a black kid for the coding boot camps. Hey, attend this 6-month boot camp on us and work for us for 3 years. for Free.
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- nutdip 8y agoBeing black is correlation not causation just like being a woman. This nonsense has to stop
- jacob019 8y agoMost of us here support and appreciate diversity. The lack of diversity in tech companies represents a lost opportunity. It's not just black people, but women as well. The mono-cultures can encourage some troubling attitudes and restricts creative multi-cultural ideas. Forcing companies to maintain racial/gender quotas is not the solution. I'm not sure what the solution is. The causes for the situation are multifaceted, a reflection of our country.
- Talyen42 8y agoI hired about 10 junior dev/qa/pm positions over 3 years as a manager in a SaaS tech company of 50-100. We posted on every job site and received 1,000+ resumes which I reviewed, in a city with ~30% african american population. Maybe 3 out of 1,000+ resumes were submitted by african americans, and none met most basic requirements for the position (either a relevant degree, or at least 1 year of related experience, or at least 1 relevant side project). It's hard to think that I was part of the problem, or could possibly be part of any solution, as the hiring manager.
- api 8y agoThat is better than what I have seen. Where it was possible to tell I have never seen a black applicant to a programming job. That is as a founder and in previous roles where I helped review resumes and do interviews. We also saw something like (estimating) 50 men to every 1 woman last time we advertised a job. If there is a problem it is "upstream." I'd be happy to interview black candidates if they existed.
- Talyen42 8y agoSame. I felt like I was racist and sexist while trying to hire people, based on the results (a team of 90% white males). But it was not a problem I could solve.
- ardent_uno 8y agoBut why is it a problem? Why should we impose quotas? People are people, all distinctions just exist to divide us. If you're hiring based on qualifications and ability to do the job, you should not feel bad.
- api 8y agoWe did interview several strong female candidates. One we really wanted but she ended up taking a different job closer to her home. (We're in LA/OC and she would have been forced to take the 55. There is a "one does not simply 'take' the 55" meme about the 55.) We did not seek any specific racial or gender outcome. We ended up with an all white male team by taking a small sample from a pool of ~75% white male candidates (with the remainder being largely asian males). The odds are strongly in favor of that outcome even if all else is equal. The only point of me posting to this thread was to agree that this issue is not primarily the fault of hiring managers, or at least it isn't in most cases. Like most social issues I think this one is complex and has multiple causes. For blacks we have: multi-generational impoverishment due to past red-lining and similar policies sabotaging intergenerational wealth accumulation, poor schools in many black neighborhoods, and a culture in the black community that does not prize intellectualism. Obama helped the latter a bit by virtue of his mere existence in such a position.
- devmunchies 8y agoI don’t think this applies to dark-skinned Indians, so it must be more than simply skin color.
- itchyjunk 8y agoPlease forgive me if I am missing something here. Is a company to make a chart of color distribution of their employees and base their hiring on that? There has to be a better way to figure out if a company is hiring based on skill or not than just this.
- andrewclunn 8y agoAverage IQ required to be a competent programmer > average IQ of all people. Average IQ of East Asians > average IQ of Sub-Saharan Africans. Media keeps wondering why there are so many more East Asian coders than Sub-Saharan African coders. Anyone honestly looking at the data knows the answer.
- ggregoire 8y agoUber took some initiatives to address this issue. https://www.uber.com/en-MX/diversity/uberhue https://www.uber.com/en-MX/diversity/uberhue https://eng.uber.com/uncovering-genius https://eng.uber.com/uncovering-genius
- projectramo 8y agoFor all of those who claim it might be a pipeline problem, I looked it up and it looks like 4% of engineering degrees are granted (earned? Awarded?) to African Americans https://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/aamajors.cfm https://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/aamajors.c... Ill leave the interpretation up to you
- pests 8y agoI'm not sure what point you are trying to make. I am sure those pointing out a pipeline problem are claiming it begins before college and those engineering degrees would be granted. Or were you supporting the pipeline theory by showing how few candidates there actually are?
- projectramo 8y agoWell, the question is: how much of the problem is explained by the "pipeline" theory. If a company hires x%, and there are y% graduates, then we have a pipeline problem if x=y, or is close to y. If x is much smaller than y, then the pipeline doesn't explain the whole problem. I am not taking a stance on the pipeline issue in the general case. It may or may not be a problem for particular companies on a case by case basis.
- n1231231231234 8y agobut isn't this inline with the original article? > Blacks made up 7 percent of U.S. high-tech workforce, and just 3 percent of the total Silicon Valley workforce. 4% of the degrees are granted to members of the AA community, 3% of the jobs in SV are given to them. i guess SV companies recruit from the top graduates. it would be interesting to know the percentage of AA of say the top 10% graduates in the STEM fields. as others have pointed out, this doesn't mean that things are OK. it just shifts the focus from the hiring companies to the education system
- projectramo 8y agoYes, so your line of questioning is the one I would follow. I agree the next question is what is the percentage of AA grads from top schools where they recruit before one makes a call on the prevalence of the pipeline problem.
- sb8244 8y agoI try to avoid conversations like this rather than engage directly because I'm likely to question results until things are more proven. However, I'm seeing things like this more often and want to become more informed. When looking at the percentage population of Americans with bachelor's degree (general req for software company), should we see a reflection of that pool in tech companies? I found some census information which shows that the pool of black or African American workers might only be about 5% compared to white. Should the industry reflect this or do we somehow expect to have an unnaturally high diversity? Someone else pointed out here, but putting the chart at 100% makes me feel like this is a piece for views and not information. It doesn't make sense when showing relative improvement. https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-19.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-19.pdf
- scottlamb 8y ago5% isn't great, but it's still higher than the 2-3% actually employed by these companies, suggesting improvement is possible. I think one major problem that's in the companies' power to solve is that they don't have offices where black people live (e.g. Atlanta). Coming to work for these companies means being isolated from the black community both at and outside of work.
- draw_down 8y agoIt’s a strange situation. We need measures intended to aid diversity, but the ones I’ve observed in practice seem like a CYA for the inevitable report that not much has changed. “Well we’re trying, it’s not like we’re not doing anything.” My question has always been the same: if/when these measures don’t change anything, what then? The disconnect I have noticed is that there are all sorts of metrics for measuring diversity, but there is no quantitative argument for why the programs intended to aid diversity will raise those metrics. There’s no “this number is too low, and doing xyz will increase it.” Instead it’s more like “these numbers are bad, so we’re doing some stuff.” Doing things ostensibly intended to improve diversity, but which don’t improve it, is more insidious than just not doing anything. It provides a moral alibi for the status quo but cynically does not actually want to change it. I’m not saying we’re there yet, but we will be if not much changes in a few years.
- to_bpr 8y agoHe said the party reminded him of a scene in the film, “Get Out.’’ Like the movie, the new employees looked like props that were conveniently staged to showcase a more welcoming environment than he felt actually existed. It's amazing to behold how absolutely toxic tech journalism and our industry is becoming. Divisive clickbait full of finger pointing, anecdotal evidence and a clear steerage away from causation... yet sitting pretty on the front page of Hacker News. What a shame.
- IncRnd 8y agoThe entire premise of the article is false. The article states that "tech companies aren't hiring black workers." The truth is that black workers aren't applying to tech companies. In the last decade I have never once had a black person interview with me, not a single time. Yet, the black person who is on my team (hired before I joined this team) is one of the most skilled and knowledgeable people I know. He is rewarded for his knowledge and work. Articles like this are poisonous.
- cuddlypsycho 8y agoThis problem starts from early childhood and is reflective of the utter failure of public schools in lower income districts. For too long we have used the band-aid of lowering standards and affirmative action at every stage after, in college and hiring, to kick the can down the road and the result has been quite the opposite, leading to more bias and resentment. If you are a highly skilled engineer and black, you have to constantly deal with the stigma that maybe you got to where you are not based on your outstanding abilities but only to fill some arbitrary racial quota. There is nothing worse than that for ruining someone's self-esteem.
- ManlyBread 8y agoAnd as usual with these articles it's always the fault of the evil universites and terrible companies while the people in question are always devoid of any responsibility of getting the right education, having initiative and obtaining the right skills needed for the job.
- b212 8y agoIn Poland where I happen to live there are almost no black people at all, I'd guesstimate it's much less than 0,1% of the whole population but we have similar problem with women in tech. There is only one solution in my opinion - ignore the problem at all, because there is no "problem". If you're a good candidate no one here will question your beliefs, skin colour or sex. Focusing on the issue on the other hand creates bunch of other, in my opinion more serious threats - I've been recruiting for a medium* Polish startup a few years ago and one day our CEO decided there is not enough "diversity" so HRs started recruiting women left and right. Long story short, for 8 out of 10 positions we'd have two or three resumes from very strong male candidates and tens of resumes from much less experienced females. Within 3 years we hired so many women the men became the minority, about 6 months after that the place went bankrupt and everyone ended up jobless. *medium in this world means up to 40 folks TL;DR every sane company hires the best workforce they could afford. If there are not enough people of colour it's usually problem with these people, not the employer.
- RestlessMind 8y agoIf tech companies hire globally, shouldn't their racial demographics mirror the world demographic stats? In my 15+ years of experience in SV, majority of my colleagues were from Asia, which accounts for 60% of world population. Rest were evenly divided between Europe and North America, and some very tiny fraction coming from Africa and South America. In that case, isn't it expected that blacks[1] would account for 1-3% of workforce, since USA itself accounted for 10-15% of the workforce? If Democrats are open to immigration, then a consequence of that is going to be an under representation of blacks and Latinos. [1] black is hard to define in many places. Eg. Who is "black" in Asia?
- padobson 8y agoI'm willing to accept there is racism in the tech industry, but I'm not willing to accept that it is the ONLY variable keeping black folks from tech jobs. This problem needs a real, statistical, multivariate study. Any publication casting judgement on the tech industry while remaining unwilling to pony up the dough for such a study should be properly criticized for playing the race card and inventing false narratives to gain readership. Telling me there aren't many black folks in tech is not enough. I need a data-driven explanation of WHY before I accept it's mostly racism, or it's mostly a pipeline problem, or it's mostly a primary education problem, or it's mostly a cultural problem, or it's not a problem at all because black folks don't want tech jobs in the first place.
- matthiasak 8y agowell, how dare they!?!?
- calvinbhai 8y agoSomeone recently had tweeted the concentration of Black population in the US. Tech companies are no where in those concentrated areas. Porbably a way for Tech companies to build diverse teams, is to setup research facilities and programs that encourage better pipelines, in states with higher black population (not SF, LA, NYC/Austin)