7 ms·
All of these comments and I’m left wondering if I’m the only black person commenting in this thread. I’ve been passed up for promotions, fired, and hired based
by o-__-o 6y ago
All of these comments and I’m left wondering if I’m the only black person commenting in this thread.
I’ve been passed up for promotions, fired, and hired based solely on my color. I keep moving on but y’all it’s been 20 years of this. And it just started getting a little better in the past 3 years but is a total gamble based on where you work.
In my current Fortune 500 job, I was hired for my expertise then was moved to a new team where my expertise didn’t even matter. Every issue that came up that I had qualifications for I was passed over for a lesser skilled White man. I’m used to this but this was my shot at moving up with a big company name behind me and it was ruined for what I can only wonder if it was an unconscious bias. Now I don’t care and I’m doing just enough and it seems as though I’m not going to get fired because it will look bad on paper. Yes I’m projecting, one could say don’t give up and you could have another chance.. and that exact situation presented itself but really..... I don’t care anymore. I’ve made my 20 years of industry money why am I still fighting against a system that is obviously unfair to me. I’ll let the next generation try and when they fail I will welcome them into my business with open arms.
So here is my advice to all minorities, poc, women, etc disenfranchised groups: focus on yourself, stay with a good team/company when you do find one, stay connected to the community, and above all help help help your fellow struggling humans. We are all in this together and one day you will be helming your own company (this is hacker news right?) that matters with the people you met and mentored along the way.
Edit: Just in case it’s not obvious I’m a millennial and I had a wonderful early childhood start to my career that other black men and women don’t get the luxury to have. So it’s not like I’m an old man in my 50s, I’m the same age as a lot of folks here and have worked on the same systems that a lot of older folks have built... but my resume is probably littered with lower roles than those that you’ve held. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to burn this throwaway to continue hiding my skin color on the internet
- oa335 6y agoThanks for your comment. I'm not blakc, but I agree that reading some of these comments is quite depressing and proves that we have a long way to go on race issues in tech.
- komali2 6y agoI'm frustrated that my comments promoting allyship are being downvoted to oblivion elsewhere in the thread. How can people be reading these experiences and not grasp the truth of this reality? I have people claiming that POC is a non-existent concept. It's madness.
- oa335 6y agoIt's a manifestation of cognitive dissonance. High intelligence leads to the ability to rationalize almost anything. Ideas posited in this thread threaten some people's conception of themselves and the world ("I am not racist, I treat everyone fairly, the world is a just place"). When people's identity and worldview is threatened, they try to annihilate that threat (usually not violently, but that occurs also e.g. violence against trans people). That's what is happening in the comments here - arguments about semantics without addressing the whole point of the testimony.
- neonate 6y agoIt might simply be that "comments promoting allyship" are off-putting. They very easily become preachy, and if it feels like a third party inserting themselves and telling me what to think, I get irritated. The comments by the black programmers in this thread are a million times more interesting. Sometimes I feel like all the loudest voices in this debate are white and that just has to be wrong. I don't mean this to make an argument, I just heard you about feeling frustrated and wanted to offer a possible explanation.
- komali2 6y agoAccusations of virtue signalling (becoming preachy) are a pretty common way to dismiss people arguing that systemic racism is a problem. What's further frustrating is that last I checked, the debates are raging far more in threads like this one, while the black programmers telling their experiences were comparatively empty of comments.
- bt4u2 6y agoVery reasonable take, and good for you in finding some sort of inner peace is this chaotic world. We just need to make sure we don't attribute everything to racism, white people get passed over for a lesser skilled white man constantly too
- scarface74 6y agoI’m Black. I’m 46 years old. I won’t discount your experience, but let me tell you mine. I started programming in assembly in middle school in the mid 80s. I graduated from an unknown state school - an HBCU with a degree in CS in the mid 90s. I muddled my way between two jobs until 2008 when I started taking my career seriously. Over the last 12 years, I’ve had plenty of interviews and I am on my 6th job since 2008. I have had very few rejections. I think maybe three. I always use local recruiters so my resume has never disappeared down a black hole. I have had the Dev lead position at $1 Billion revenue (non software) company, then a back end “cloud architect”, and now I work as a consultant at AWS. I have never once gone into a job interview with a doubt that I was qualified or that I would get the job. I don’t hide my color on the Internet. In the appropriate threads, I always say that I am Black.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- iateanapple 6y ago> In my current Fortune 500 job, I was hired for my expertise then was moved to a new team where my expertise didn’t even matter. Every issue that came up that I had qualifications for I was passed over for a lesser skilled White man How many times do you think this happens to white people? It’s incredibly common. I keep a “to poach” list of developers who aren’t being given the respect, challenge, title, pay etc that they deserve and at this point it’s close to 20% of the developers Ive worked with.
- neonate 6y agoOk, but what's your point in bringing that up here? Both statements can easily be true.
- iateanapple 6y ago> Ok, but what's your point in bringing that up here? To foster solidarity amongst the working class.
- forgot_user1234 6y ago> I’ve been passed up for promotions, fired, and hired based solely on my color "solely". It's easy to pin point a problem on others. This might come in handy - https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1276956836856393728?s=20 https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1276956836856393728?s=20
- o-__-o 6y agoI would like to respond to you directly. Another comment that was downvoted said something very similar. I do not blame race on everything. Numerous jobs I have been hired solely because of my skills. I have been fired because I slacked off too hard. I have missed promotions because I could only see my positives and not my negatives. I have the experience I do from working at many different IT shops. Part of what happened recently has to do with the fact that the company makes diversity a key deciding factor. My previous roles show a clear footpath in the direction they desired. To have someone of lesser skill promoted in front of me and then not spend any time to groom me to move up as well is a huge slap to my face. I gave up my revenue generating business to take this opportunity, so please forgive me if I’m a bit jaded at this point. I know what I can do, and I never look a gift horse in the mouth. I am blessed to be employed right now.. but bet your ass as soon as this virus passes I’m out and will be back to schmoozing investors. Probably with better results than my last 3 years combined (EDIT: and very likely because of company XYZ being on my resume. But change needs to start from the top and I’m not gonna hang around forever to wait. I’m rambling now so it’s probably time to get off the internet)
- dang 6y agoIt's also easy to be dismissive on the internet. Please don't do that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- forgot_user1234 6y agoDisclaimer - english is not my first language Hey dang, I am curious. what could I have done better? if OP said he is suffering "solely" because of his colour and I think, its borderline impossible to pin point a result of large complex system on any one thing? P.S. - do people flag my comments or did you just see it on your own.
- heldrida 6y agoI haven't read the comments but... I'm black and a developer (not just a dev, I'm a full stack, audiovisual generalist, animation, motion graphics, ui/ux, illustrator), started in the end 90s and professionally since 2008?! Got no idea if I ever been put aside because of my skin colour, but my photo and stuff is public for anybody prior to any interview and stuff - so if that happened, great, fuck them, I don't want to have to deal with them. I also don't wear suits and stuff like that, and for a lot of years I used to take my skateboard to interviews and always spoke my mind. My afro is also huge, I also wear whatever I want, but managed to work in a fintech where people wear suits and stuff. I do know that may pay is usually lower then other people but don't think that's related to my skin colour but because I don't do any ass licking! Or maybe because I'm shit :) My biggest problem nowadays is that there are a lot of people in the scene for money and this obsession for long recruitment processes, literally putting people in risk of being homeless. I also find that this same people expect you to behave in a certain way and have a "certain culture" - there are countless youtube videos of people offering what seems to be tutorials on what to say in interviews, etc - I find that absolutely ridiculous and inhuman! Sick and sad people! So that's who I relate with, good people, people who work hard and still struggle even though! But yes, of course I'd like to see other people like me once in awhile too.
- badrabbit 6y agoFriend, I truly appreciate your candor. About the whole "culture" thing, it's b.s. you find anywhere from a small time stret gang to the board room of a multinational. It's easier if you b.s. and act fake like everyone else,but also if you don't and you are original and strategically "real" enough,it can play to your advantage. Worker bees that don't behave like other worker bees either don't get the big picture or get the big picture better than everyone else.
- solzhenitsyn 6y agoHere's Google's latest diversity report: https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/25badfc6b6d1b33f3b87372ff7545d79261520d821e6ee9a82c4ab2de42a01216be2156bc5a60ae3337ffe7176d90b8b2b3000891ac6e516a650ecebf0e3f866 https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/25badfc6b6d1b33f... Whites are underrepresented at similar rates as blacks. Asians are overrepresented by 900%.
- chemeng 6y agoIt would be helpful to understand what numbers you're using to make these claims. For e.g., White non-hispanics make up ~62% of the US population. At Google they make up 65.9% of leadership representation. Black non-hispanics make up ~12% of US population and only 2.6% of Google leadership representation.
- solzhenitsyn 6y agoTo clarify, this is hires (as per the thread "Viewpoint: 'I feel like I was accidentally hired'").
- rorykoehler 6y agoDid you always work in large corporates or have you experienced the same biases in smaller companies too?
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago> I’ve been passed up for promotions, fired, and hired based solely on my color. But... But how do you know that's the color thing? It could be nepotism, management incompetence or any other reason.
- jamisteven 6y agoMany of the things you mention to have experienced, I too have experienced. Only I am white, working in a largely caucasian environment.