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I'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, encouragin

I'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 ago
Because 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 ago
    There'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.
    - ardent_uno 8y ago
      "since no one that is poor or disenfranchised can rise from poverty to wealth on their own." That's where the liberal view collapses. The experience of history shows that many once disenfranchised groups can rise up.
    - weiming 8y ago
      > so I am hated every time I talk about politics. For what it's worth, I think the U.S. (and the world) could use more centrists!
    - padobson 8y ago
      I think the right is correct that a victim mentality is extremely dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. This can't go understated. Life is hard and often tragic. Everyone will be a victim of injustice, often grave injustice, at one point in their lives or another. The worst thing a culture can do is demotivate folks to face their tragedies because something about their personal identity (race, gender, geography, religion, etc) made it impossible to overcome.
- noetic_techy 8y ago
  > when really we as a national don't honestly want to see marginalized groups succeed How does that explain the success of Asian Americans?
  - protonimitate 8y ago
    I think that depends on how you measure success. Strictly in business terms, sure they have more success than other groups, but I don't think (assuming here, no facts) they have over taken White people as the predominant group in leadership roles, high paying positions, or otherwise 'stakeholders'. If that's not true, feel free to correct.
    - ardent_uno 8y ago
      On average they do better than whites financially. So basically on average their quality of life is better.
    - todd8 8y ago
      See [1] and [2]. For example, 2015 median household income for Indian Asians is $100K while the same statistic for white non-hispanics appears to be $63K. [1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fact-sheet/asian-americans-indians-in-the-u-s/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fact-sheet/asian-americans-in... [2] https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/visualizations/p60/256/figure1.pdf https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/visualizations...
      - dahdum 8y ago
        They also have much lower crime rates, much higher entrepreneurship, and higher educational attainment. Skilled immigration is awesome for the US.
        alphabettsy 8y ago
        This tends to be true for all recent immigrants, 1st and 2nd generation immigrants have much higher acheivement.
- ardent_uno 8y ago
  Many once marginalized groups do exceedingly well in American society today. Quality public and private education is available to black students, but one major problem is that inner-city schools tend to have very high dropout rates which is not the fault of the schools but rather the broader culture of the communities. The American people are not to blame for the pipeline problem. Instead, blame broken families. Blame a culture which does not offer to young black children professional role models. Blaming racism for all of our problems is a dead end. For more reading about this, consider the brilliant Coleman Hughes: The High Price of Stale Grievances https://quillette.com/2018/06/05/high-price-stale-grievances/ https://quillette.com/2018/06/05/high-price-stale-grievances...
dominotw 8y ago
> 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? This is talked about endlessly. Its a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Merely encouraging is not good enough when people don't have role models who are from the same background as you. Never seeing any black engineers cannot be replaced by 'encouragement' , neither can encouragement replace social inertia.
- ardent_uno 8y ago
  There was a time when there were no people of Italian descent in positions of success in America. How is it that largely impoverished Italian migrants where able to achieve parity in American society on a level with other groups? What about people of Asian descent? How have they been able to succeed when at one point in American history they were scorned and shunned? It's all about culture.
empath75 8y ago
My experience is that most tech companies are falling all over themselves to hire minorities of all kind and the problem is more with high schools steering black students away from stem and just generally segregating black students in general. I don’t know how much has changed but when I went to a high school that was at least 30% black and I had 1(!) black student in any of my classes in 4 years. Honors and so-called ‘gifted’ programs have often been used as a way to resegregate supposedly integrated schools. That kind of bullshit has repercussions for generations. You can’t just say ‘oh my bad’ and expect things to turn around on a dime.
dep_b 8y ago
> 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.) If you wouldn't blame companies then the problem wouldn't be fixable by the market. Which would go against the religion that true capitalism solves all problems.
BitterAmethyst 8y ago
The meme that you need to start programming from a young age to be successful is dangerous and needs to die.
- weiming 8y ago
  I agree and I edited post for clarity.
paulddraper 8y ago
> Why does no one talk about the "pipeline problem," If you go too far, it gets uncomfortable. You have to start asking about genetic, parenting, and culture differences. It's way easier to just implement affirmative action or something similar.
pmichaud 8y ago
I think the key factor you're missing is that this issue is deeply political and historical. This isn't just a question about what's on the label, ie. black people being hired proportionally, but also about whose fault/responsibility it is to fix. If you say "should we look at other parts of the pipeline?" you're aligning yourself with the political faction of "it's black peoples' problem, not society's." If you advocate for hiring quotas or similar, then you're aligning yourself with the "it's society's problem, not black peoples'" Of course real solutions to the problem are somewhere in between, and you can argue until you're blue in the face that suggesting looking at other parts of the pipeline is NOT actually saying it's black peoples' problem, but it won't matter. You're in a space where there are powerful political divisions with the entire socioracial history of a large population at sake, and you're going to ruthlessly rounded to either US or THEM. That's a big part of the reason it's so hard to talk about, and harder still to solve, even before you get to the fact that even without the deep psychological and political baggage it's already a super hard problem.
wmil 8y ago
The short answer is that Google has money and articles like this are about activists trying to get money from Google to fund various programs.
Ivoirians 8y ago
That's certainly a good point--and tech companies are pumping money into teaching minorities to code (check the partners of YesWeCode, WomenWhoCode, BlackGirlsCode, AnitaB, etc.). But you don't have to exclusively treat problems at the root. I think one of the oft-overlooked ideas behind hiring diversity initiatives and affirmative action policies in general is that creating more role models, leaders, and advocates for minorities does have an impact on making the field more welcome for young minorities.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
Everybody talks about the pipeline problem, it's just whatever specific stage of the pipeline you're at it's much easier to shunt responsibility down to an earlier stage. Having problems hiring black tech workers? It's the college's fault. Having problems graduating black students with BSs in STEM? It's the high school's fault. Having problems graduating black students from high school? Really it's the fault of the community/family that raised them. Having problems fixing the community's culture? Really it's the fault of poverty. Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will hire us. The answer is that everyone plays a role and that includes google. We all like to envision that we're not a part of the 'pipeline', we're exactly where it ends. It never ends, the pipe is your whole life and you never leave it. Seen that way, one pipe connecting to another and another and no one outside ever feeling that it's really their place to intervene is how we get oppression handed down through the generations. There is no 'root' cause because it's a circle, wherever you exist in this pipeline is where you have the power to help solve the problem so let's stop shunting blame down the line.
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  Black-white education gap is trivially explained by black-white IQ gap. (If you don't believe in IQ, standardized test score gap, or whatever.) It's not school's fault. The most probable reason is genetics.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    >The most probable reason is genetics. This isn't true.
  - Const-me 8y ago
    The most probable reason is income inequality + public education system mostly paid by local real estate taxes. This creates the chicken & egg problem where poor neighborhood causes bad education which causes poverty.
    - sanxiyn 8y ago
Nasrudith 8y ago
Cynically Maxine Waters seemed to be engaged in sociopathic manipulation tactics instead of actually trying to solve anything. It looks like a shakedown. Either they give contributions to shut her up or she gets to try to score points by beating on a boogeyman. Last I heard the AAAs in the tech were leading the pack in minority hiring of all stripes by sector. If it was mostly company culture to blame one would expect most black workers to be concentrated in small businesses or self owned and operated. Not saying that is a solution for discrimination by any means; self starting isn't easy especially when lacking opportunities but that it is a hint as probably pipeline sourced.

protonimitate 8y ago

Because 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 ago
  There'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.
  - ardent_uno 8y ago
    "since no one that is poor or disenfranchised can rise from poverty to wealth on their own." That's where the liberal view collapses. The experience of history shows that many once disenfranchised groups can rise up.
  - weiming 8y ago
    > so I am hated every time I talk about politics. For what it's worth, I think the U.S. (and the world) could use more centrists!
  - padobson 8y ago
    I think the right is correct that a victim mentality is extremely dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. This can't go understated. Life is hard and often tragic. Everyone will be a victim of injustice, often grave injustice, at one point in their lives or another. The worst thing a culture can do is demotivate folks to face their tragedies because something about their personal identity (race, gender, geography, religion, etc) made it impossible to overcome.
noetic_techy 8y ago
> when really we as a national don't honestly want to see marginalized groups succeed How does that explain the success of Asian Americans?
- protonimitate 8y ago
  I think that depends on how you measure success. Strictly in business terms, sure they have more success than other groups, but I don't think (assuming here, no facts) they have over taken White people as the predominant group in leadership roles, high paying positions, or otherwise 'stakeholders'. If that's not true, feel free to correct.
  - ardent_uno 8y ago
    On average they do better than whites financially. So basically on average their quality of life is better.
  - todd8 8y ago
    See [1] and [2]. For example, 2015 median household income for Indian Asians is $100K while the same statistic for white non-hispanics appears to be $63K. [1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fact-sheet/asian-americans-indians-in-the-u-s/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fact-sheet/asian-americans-in... [2] https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/visualizations/p60/256/figure1.pdf https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/visualizations...
    - dahdum 8y ago
      They also have much lower crime rates, much higher entrepreneurship, and higher educational attainment. Skilled immigration is awesome for the US.
      - alphabettsy 8y ago
        This tends to be true for all recent immigrants, 1st and 2nd generation immigrants have much higher acheivement.
ardent_uno 8y ago
Many once marginalized groups do exceedingly well in American society today. Quality public and private education is available to black students, but one major problem is that inner-city schools tend to have very high dropout rates which is not the fault of the schools but rather the broader culture of the communities. The American people are not to blame for the pipeline problem. Instead, blame broken families. Blame a culture which does not offer to young black children professional role models. Blaming racism for all of our problems is a dead end. For more reading about this, consider the brilliant Coleman Hughes: The High Price of Stale Grievances https://quillette.com/2018/06/05/high-price-stale-grievances/ https://quillette.com/2018/06/05/high-price-stale-grievances...

dominotw 8y ago

> 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? This is talked about endlessly. Its a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Merely encouraging is not good enough when people don't have role models who are from the same background as you. Never seeing any black engineers cannot be replaced by 'encouragement' , neither can encouragement replace social inertia.

ardent_uno 8y ago
There was a time when there were no people of Italian descent in positions of success in America. How is it that largely impoverished Italian migrants where able to achieve parity in American society on a level with other groups? What about people of Asian descent? How have they been able to succeed when at one point in American history they were scorned and shunned? It's all about culture.

empath75 8y ago

My experience is that most tech companies are falling all over themselves to hire minorities of all kind and the problem is more with high schools steering black students away from stem and just generally segregating black students in general. I don’t know how much has changed but when I went to a high school that was at least 30% black and I had 1(!) black student in any of my classes in 4 years. Honors and so-called ‘gifted’ programs have often been used as a way to resegregate supposedly integrated schools. That kind of bullshit has repercussions for generations. You can’t just say ‘oh my bad’ and expect things to turn around on a dime.

dep_b 8y ago

> 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.) If you wouldn't blame companies then the problem wouldn't be fixable by the market. Which would go against the religion that true capitalism solves all problems.

BitterAmethyst 8y ago

The meme that you need to start programming from a young age to be successful is dangerous and needs to die.

weiming 8y ago
I agree and I edited post for clarity.

paulddraper 8y ago

> Why does no one talk about the "pipeline problem," If you go too far, it gets uncomfortable. You have to start asking about genetic, parenting, and culture differences. It's way easier to just implement affirmative action or something similar.

pmichaud 8y ago

I think the key factor you're missing is that this issue is deeply political and historical. This isn't just a question about what's on the label, ie. black people being hired proportionally, but also about whose fault/responsibility it is to fix. If you say "should we look at other parts of the pipeline?" you're aligning yourself with the political faction of "it's black peoples' problem, not society's." If you advocate for hiring quotas or similar, then you're aligning yourself with the "it's society's problem, not black peoples'" Of course real solutions to the problem are somewhere in between, and you can argue until you're blue in the face that suggesting looking at other parts of the pipeline is NOT actually saying it's black peoples' problem, but it won't matter. You're in a space where there are powerful political divisions with the entire socioracial history of a large population at sake, and you're going to ruthlessly rounded to either US or THEM. That's a big part of the reason it's so hard to talk about, and harder still to solve, even before you get to the fact that even without the deep psychological and political baggage it's already a super hard problem.

wmil 8y ago

The short answer is that Google has money and articles like this are about activists trying to get money from Google to fund various programs.

Ivoirians 8y ago

That's certainly a good point--and tech companies are pumping money into teaching minorities to code (check the partners of YesWeCode, WomenWhoCode, BlackGirlsCode, AnitaB, etc.). But you don't have to exclusively treat problems at the root. I think one of the oft-overlooked ideas behind hiring diversity initiatives and affirmative action policies in general is that creating more role models, leaders, and advocates for minorities does have an impact on making the field more welcome for young minorities.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

Everybody talks about the pipeline problem, it's just whatever specific stage of the pipeline you're at it's much easier to shunt responsibility down to an earlier stage. Having problems hiring black tech workers? It's the college's fault. Having problems graduating black students with BSs in STEM? It's the high school's fault. Having problems graduating black students from high school? Really it's the fault of the community/family that raised them. Having problems fixing the community's culture? Really it's the fault of poverty. Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will hire us. The answer is that everyone plays a role and that includes google. We all like to envision that we're not a part of the 'pipeline', we're exactly where it ends. It never ends, the pipe is your whole life and you never leave it. Seen that way, one pipe connecting to another and another and no one outside ever feeling that it's really their place to intervene is how we get oppression handed down through the generations. There is no 'root' cause because it's a circle, wherever you exist in this pipeline is where you have the power to help solve the problem so let's stop shunting blame down the line.

sanxiyn 8y ago
Black-white education gap is trivially explained by black-white IQ gap. (If you don't believe in IQ, standardized test score gap, or whatever.) It's not school's fault. The most probable reason is genetics.
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  >The most probable reason is genetics. This isn't true.
- Const-me 8y ago
  The most probable reason is income inequality + public education system mostly paid by local real estate taxes. This creates the chicken & egg problem where poor neighborhood causes bad education which causes poverty.
  - sanxiyn 8y ago

Nasrudith 8y ago

Cynically Maxine Waters seemed to be engaged in sociopathic manipulation tactics instead of actually trying to solve anything. It looks like a shakedown. Either they give contributions to shut her up or she gets to try to score points by beating on a boogeyman. Last I heard the AAAs in the tech were leading the pack in minority hiring of all stripes by sector. If it was mostly company culture to blame one would expect most black workers to be concentrated in small businesses or self owned and operated. Not saying that is a solution for discrimination by any means; self starting isn't easy especially when lacking opportunities but that it is a hint as probably pipeline sourced.