I'd attribute it to two or three key factors: 1. Large Asian population. The SF companies I've worked at often had 30-45% Asian workforce. In theory this shoul

I'd attribute it to two or three key factors: 1. Large Asian population. The SF companies I've worked at often had 30-45% Asian workforce. In theory this should be a good thing as far as diversity goes (and I have had the privilege of learning from and getting to know people coming from very different societies on a personal level, most of them Asian). But for a variety of reasons I'm not going to dig into, Asians don't count as "diverse" anymore. 2. Overwhelmingly left leaning workforce means that the prevailing liberal attitudes are amplified and go largely unquestioned. This sometimes even manifests itself as the organized exclusion of those that don't harbor the same politics: https://www.fastcompany.com/3067152/lessons-in-techs-past-diversity-fails-point-the-way-forward https://www.fastcompany.com/3067152/lessons-in-techs-past-di... 3. Perhaps as a result of #2, many in the SF Bay area aren't exploring non-discriminatory explanations as to why there are few African Americans in Bay area tech companies. First off, the Black population is not very big in the Bay area. Less than 2% of mountain view's population is black. Overall the Bay area is 6.7% black, about half that of the country as a whole. Couple this with lower rates of educational attainment beyond high school (which is usually necessary for software development roles) and it's not hard to see how a lower black population in Bay area tech roles can happen even absent discrimination in hiring. But saying these things to my coworkers would probably adversely affect my career, so the prevailing narrative of discrimination in hiring is left unchallenged. This results in some interesting behavior. Tech roles with lower barrier to entry like help desk support are now nearly entirely black, Hispanic, or female. We recently recategorized physical security as a "tech" role (ostensibly because physical security is an important part of infosec) and now easily 70%+ of our physical security staff is black. This has sort of backfired in a sense, the few black developers I know report being consistently mistaken for security or help desk personnel.