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Who gets invited to the party?
- BlameKaneda 6y agoThere was an article I came across where a black startup founder was frequently mistaken as a regular employee while his white co-worker was mistaken as the CEO. On multiple occasions the unaware person shook the hand of the white co-worker, ignored the true startup founder, and so on. "Adding to the insult, [Will] Hayes finds himself at a distinct disadvantage in meetings that open with a case of mistaken identity. Venture capital is based on relationships, and investors aren’t typically primed to write a check when they feel unsettled. “You see it in the body language, you see it in the lack of questions and engagement,” says Hayes, 39. “They can’t wait for this meeting to get over.” For nearly four years, Hayes would attend investor meetings alongside [longtime colleague] Messick, the former chief marketing officer at Lucidworks. VCs are trained to look for patterns in startup founders, Messick says, and there aren’t many Black Mark Zuckerbergs. 'Years and years of a Black guy and a White guy walking in the room, and the White guy is the CEO,' Messick says. 'Whether malicious, whether negligent, it was always awful.'" Here's the post: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-silicon-valley-humiliation-is-a-part-of-doing-business/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-sil...
- dang 6y agoIt had a large discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162
- dexterdog 6y ago"there aren’t many Black Mark Zuckerbergs" How many non-black Zuckerbergs are there?
- aspenmayer 6y agoI get the gist of your meaning, but many, if not most of the startups valued highest are started by a fairly homogeneous set. I think it has as much to do with social and business connections as it does with racism, which is to say it has an effect which is difficult to measure individually, but which is possible to quantify and aggregate. So to answer your question in the manner in which it was posed: Most or nearly all of the Zuckerbergs are non-Black?
- concordDance 6y ago> most of the startups valued highest are started by a fairly homogeneous set. Isn't it well studied that homogenous environments are more trusting? It may be that homogenity (and thus stronger interpersonal bonds) helps in that initial startup phase where everyone knows eachother.
- stormbeard 6y agoYou’re making a wild guess with no citation to any studies, but I’ll just go with it. I’d hazard a guess that the homogeneity you’re trying to reference is not limited to _racial_ or _gender_ homogeneity.
- concordDance 6y agoDid a quick googling for a link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-political-science-review/article/similarity-vs-homogeneity-contextual-effects-in-explaining-trust/77E9CBDCE1852C666C4D41A709037687 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-political-s...
- stormbeard 6y agoI think you’ve ignored the context of the article. He says that to mean he doesn’t look like he’s going to start the next Facebook or Twitter to VCs, because he is black. They will not entertain the idea that he COULD BE the next Mark Zuckerberg because he simply can’t “look the part”.
- notmyfriend 6y agoLook like a robot ?
- bigiain 6y agoOne too many.
- aspenmayer 6y agoIn a parallel dimension, Facebook’s CEO is Black. How would that have affected its trajectory? Would it be even better? Would be all be on Google+ still? Or would we all be on Twitter? What startups that exist now are those otherworldly challengers, or collaborators? Would Facebook’s API perhaps be more open if their CEO were of a different race? Depends on the person of course, but it is an interesting inside baseball hypothetical. If Zuckerberg ever runs for public office, he’s going to get sued if he doesn’t put the CEO hat down while in office doing official duties. I personally think he should run just so he’s forced to answer unscripted questions live on tv. Much like the upcoming Congressional inquiries. Very interesting times.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoWhat argument are you trying to make here? In an ideal world it would make no difference whatsoever. You say that about zuck running for office but you've got Trump in that exact seat right now. He's forced to answer unscripted questions on TV and it makes no difference whatsoever. None.
- aspenmayer 6y agoOP said there was one too many non-Black Zuckerbergs, which I took to mean the one we have was one too many, that is, they may prefer he were Black instead? I don’t know what they meant, I just steelmanned it. I agree that bias exists, and it would be better if it didn’t at all in any way, but markets price in bias as well as risk and other factors, likely racism too, unfortunately. Predicting investments of others via their sentiment toward individuals and other groups is an idea I just had, and I don’t even trade or own stocks. This seems elementary to me. It will matter to Zuckerberg personally because he doesn’t seem to rate well with some people, which isn’t necessary, but helps you get elected, generally. He seems to really care what people think about him in a value-neutral “we’re all just talking” kind of way, which actually isn’t a bad approach, but I want to see how he does live on stage with professional debaters. That’s essentially what Congress is these days: modern sedate mortal combat for American lives in our Colosseum, battles put on for the rich and famous while everyone else watches and cheers, watches and jeers, or scalps entry coins out front. https://depts.washington.edu/chidint/journal/2015/03/glory-horror-roman-colosseum/ https://depts.washington.edu/chidint/journal/2015/03/glory-h...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoOctober 2019: Jeff Bezos: $114 billion Bill Gates: $106 billion Warren Buffett: $80.8 billion Mark Zuckerberg: $69.6 billion Larry Ellison: $65 billion Larry Page: $55.5 billion Sergey Brin: $53.5 billion Michael Bloomberg: $53.4 billion Steve Ballmer: $51.7 billion Jim Walton: $51.6 billion
- trhrowrandom 6y agoThis happened to me in real too. I'm brown, but I was dressed rather poorly that day haha :/
- fearingreprisal 6y agoOne really great way to ensure that you're never invited to any parties by anyone, anywhere is demonstrating to everyone that you have a giant chip on your shoulder. If you riff on about how your being excluded is a symptom of everyone else's bias you'll be avoided like the plague.
- vore 6y agoDid you even read the article? Not being invited to parties is not even close to the author's point.
- akhilcacharya 6y agoThis absolutely enraging, but I'd like to also point out that the author's own alma mater is about equidistant from UNC and Duke and was not visited. Why was that? Its absolutely disgusting that they treated A&T's stop this way but what's the excuse for excluding NC State?
- tptacek 6y agoNC A&T is an HBCU. The subtext isn't that recruiting teams prioritize top-tier schools --- of course every firm does this. Rather, it's that HBCUs get included in these trips, so that HR departments can report metrics about outreach to URMs ("trips made to HBCUs" are an especially straightforward metric), but when those visits actually occur, they're performed with such disrespect that they lay bare the underlying biases.
- rahimnathwani 6y agoI had to look up what HBCU stands for: "Historically black colleges and universities"
- protomyth 6y agoYep, and TCU is the Native American term (Tribal College & University). Both had a victory this year with the Title III funding.
- crispyporkbites 6y agoAs a non American that term sounds outrageous and bizarre
- icelancer 6y agoThe term isn't, but the history of why HBCUs exist sure is.
- akhilcacharya 6y agoI'm not sure how UNC CS can be considered top-tier but NC State CS can be ignored.
- nooneknowswhy 6y agoAren't Asians people of color? There ares tons in SV. What about NBA and NHL. I can only see Black and White.
- laluser 6y agoGo browse Blind for a few hours and you'll see how people really feel about these issues. I know some of the comments are in the minority, but even then, some of the comments are straight up vile.
- darepublic 6y agoIts just too bad that certain vile opinion are perfectly acceptable to say in public. Certain leaps of logic, generalization and bigotry, like the types exhibited in this medium post / or on twitter by the left every day.
- searchableguy 6y agoChrist, it's worse than many of the default subreddits.
- mav3rick 6y agoMostly white boomers here afraid of more competition.
- mjfl 6y agoIf a high school math team has all Asian students in it besides a sprinkle of white males, does the math team have a diversity problem?
- xmprt 6y agoIn case you're genuinely asking, the answer is yes and I don't know why it wouldn't be. There are so many reasons that a high school math team would only be filled with Asians and white males and "because there's a lack of qualified minorities" is at the bottom of that list. Maybe there aren't enough minority students encouraged to engage in STEM activities or maybe toxic people like you make them uninterested.
- darepublic 6y agoI remember in high school my mom forcing me to join the math club, as she knew the teacher there. There were mostly Asians there. I don't think you could have paid most kids to be on that most unpopular of clubs. I stayed for as long as I had to in order to please Mom, then bounced. Other kids, if they were popular, were probably having a much more enjoyable high school experience -- a lot more black kids were in this 'popular' social group than in math club-- guess what -- completely by choice! And guess who I envied more and was denied entrance to -- yes the cream of the social crop. I guess you would like to find those Asians who just happened to like math for some nerdy reason, strip them of their jobs and give them to whomever you consider to be a minority/victim?
- mjfl 6y agoYou got downvoted, but it's very clear to me that the reason students avoid math club is because it is unglamorous, not that it is hostile to them.
- exolymph 6y agoSo Asians don't count as minorities anymore?
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- fermienrico 6y agoIndians, south asians - have you faced systemic racism in SV?
- arshbot 6y agoI make it a point to not be in SV, but I work for/am applying for companies based out of there. Short answer? Yes. Especially if you have an accent. Less so if you don't, however I face plenty of exactly what the author speaks of when I went to my predominantly black college next door to a powerhouse technology school
- tptacek 6y agoIn case people didn't read this story carefully before commenting (we all do that sometimes), it's worth calling the nut graf of this story out: The firm this engineer is talking about did a recruiting trip to Duke (and UNC), like every big tech firm does. An hour away from Duke is the country's largest HBCU, NC A&T, which is included on the trip, ostensibly for inclusivity's sake. The firm serves a catered dinner at the Duke/UNC session, which is held after class hours to ensure attendance. The next day, highly-ranked prospects from Duke/UNC are invited to a private dinner at a fine dining restaurant. That same day, the firm holds an abbreviated meeting during class hours at A&T, where they serve (wait for it) the leftovers from the catered dinner at the Duke/UNC session.
- eanzenberg 6y agoIt’s unfortunate the author didn’t call out the company by name but I guess I get it. If they did it may elicit some stronger push for change. Unfortunately, anonymity can breed some distrust in the content. By calling out the company by name, it may cause others who experienced the same to speak out too.
- ponker 6y agoBased on his LinkedIn, it seems like it might be Cisco.
- akhilcacharya 6y agoThis isn’t my experience being recruited by Cisco, and it also doesn’t line up with geography (and Cisco is nothing like Hooli). Cisco, at least at a time did invest in A&T and NC State, far more so than UNC which it didn’t recruit from for a period.
- monksy 6y agoOh god. Cisco. I'd rather be at IBM in RTP.
- ekianjo 6y agoSo this is based on one anecdote with one company and this ends up with a blanket statement about society at large?
- skybrian 6y agoThe story is interesting even if it doesn't prove a trend by itself. Combining it with other evidence is up to the reader.
- arshbot 6y agoHow many anecdotes do we need before we accept there's an issue?
- smnrchrds 6y agoAlways more than what we currently have, until the dam breaks, then people start saying "wow! I had no idea! Why didn't anyone say something sooner?". See police brutality, me too, etc.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago"Wir haben es nicht gewusst" is what the Germans used after WW2, but part of me can believe it because the world wasn't as connected as it is today. Today though? It does not fly. People know about it, and if they are not actively participating in stopping it, they are complicit - "not my problem, I don't care, blue/all lives matter, what about these crime statistics, muh freedom", these are all people that know about it but do not care, or they do care but they're on the wrong side.
- xenocyon 6y agoSince this is written by a Black person in tech, my guess is that his beliefs are based on a lifetime of being treated as a second-class citizen, and this anecdote was merely a particularly obvious case. However, like you, I am way of anecdotes and put more faith in empirical studies [1]. So what do the data say? Turns out they align with the lived experience of the author: widespread hiring bias by employers hurting Black people. [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
- hardwaregeek 6y agoWow, that's really fucking terrible. That should have brought up so many red flags. At this point I'm of the opinion that sensitivity training shouldn't be something done post facto as an apology. Give sensitivity training to everybody preemptively. First, sensitivity training is not and should not be a punishment. We should all be at best excited and at worst neutral about expanding our worldview and learning from others. Second, we shouldn't have this weird system where Alice calls Bob out, HR makes Bob do sensitivity training, Bob has some resentment for being embarrassed and Alice still doesn't feel comfortable around Bob. Also sensitivity training isn't the best name. It practically writes its own insults. Maybe call it something like diversity promotion or anti-racism training. It's a lot harder to opt out to anti-racism training. We all have blind spots. We need to erase them. Let's do it together.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoIt's called diversity training and is already "preemptively " required at various fortune 500 companies. I've personally experienced it.
- 0xy 6y agoI've often found diversity training is itself reductionist and racist, by teaching stereotypes.
- thomasfromcdnjs 6y agoThat is the authors's interpretation of the events. What was the real story? Who knows. Need I say it's not good to jump to conclusions.
- _michaelll 6y agohow do you "interpret" feeding people leftovers or the difference in one 30 minute session versus 2 catered dinners?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lol2143651 6y agoWell let me pull up US News & World report...
- tptacek 6y agoYou needn't have said any of this.
- thomasfromcdnjs 6y agoWhy?
- mimikatz 6y agoWhy not name names? it is likely either Cisco or Nutanix https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-allen-a2082721/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-allen-a2082721/
- aaron695 6y agoThere is no need to name the company. But you have just attacked and doxed the author as well. They chose not to name it for a reason.
- northerdome 6y agoWhile school specific recruiting trips maybe drive results for recruiting teams, there is no way to get away from inherit bias. By only recruiting at "top schools" you skip talent that couldn't afford tuition at an elite school and chose scholarships over paying 60k a year. You optimize for who could do well on the SAT in high school, which is inherently a product of privilege and who could pay to study for the test and even knew it was a road block (I didn't realize the SAT was important until friends that went to "good schools told me to study for it. In school I was always told you couldn't study for it). Systemic doesn't necessarily mean any particular individual is biased. The entire way we conduct business is.
- chrisco255 6y agoThen why do minorities such as Indian Americans and other Asian Americans do so well in tech? Is it systemically biased for Asians? Where in the world do they do this correctly, by the way? What country or nation in the world has bias figured out so well that they have perfect proportionality among all races and sexes among all career paths?
- paulryanrogers 6y agoAll good questions. The answer is probably complicated. I'd guess that India pushing tech in their education system is one factor. Indians and Asians are also a numerous and growing cohort, whose families are immigrating from higher populated regions. Their families may also encourage their children to go into tech. And the racist stereotypes these populations face are likely very different than others, such as African Americans.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoIt has nothing to do with India's education system. It's that if you are Indian, you will not be allowed into the US unless you have a bachelor's in something leading into some high paying occupation. In fact, your odds are pretty bad unless you have a master's from an American university.
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- HelixEndeavor 6y agoIt's definitely not that women and other groups simply aren't interested in tech jobs when they go to college, nope, it's some sort of vague ambiguous bigotry that's a problem that needs to be solved. Tired of this narrative that if too many white people or men or white men work in a field or business then that is by default a sign of racism, sexism, or some kind of bigotry. Different groups of people broadly show interest in different careers.
- xrd 6y agoYou said you are tired of this narrative. What's your narrative? I'm assuming you read the article, but it behooves you to state you did or didn't, since you seem to miss the point. This article points out there were two recruiting events, with very different approaches. Two sets of engineers, one treated very differently. Your comments just aren't relative to this conversation. They might be true, but don't disprove anything said in this article. They do seem to indicate you didn't read the article.
- thomasfromcdnjs 6y agoThis is spot on.
- arshbot 6y agoWow. This confirms something I saw SO often as an undergrad. I went to a predominantly black city college right next door to Georgia Tech, so we got plenty of big companies knocking on our door. Only they never took us seriously, gave rushed presentations, and never collected resumes. Tech? They got parties, dinners, entire clubs rented out. It was posh, and if you were like me - you figured out ways to get into these exclusive events, evade bouncers and find an engineer just to talk to them. There are a few people in this comment section talking about how 'minorities and women simply skew differently'. Maybe try walking a mile in our shoes
- ghufran_syed 6y agoDo you think it could possibly be that the black city college might be a lower ranked school than Georgia Tech? Or did Georgia Tech not have any women or minorities? I went to a lower ranked school that was the most diverse in the state, and I've also taken classes at Stanford and Berkeley. There is no question that the students at Stanford and Berkeley were way more motivated, worked a lot harder and were academically much stronger than the students at my school. So I would expect those schools to get a lot more recruiting attention than my school. That doesn't mean the students at my school can't be successful, but it did mean that you had to put in a lot more work than the median student at the lower-ranked school to be successful.
- tptacek 6y agoThe subtext of the story is that the HBCU was visited to check a checkbox, but the students at that school were treated with such disrespect that the underlying bias was clear. Nobody has any trouble understanding that Duke is a higher-priority recruiting target than A&T.
- thereisnospork 6y agoWhile perhaps not the most professional on the recruiters' part it's hardly racist to half-ass a 'check the checkbox' assignment. Unlike the racist tokenism and just outright disrespectful facade of visiting a school when there is little to no (apparent) interest in hiring from.
- jahbrewski 6y agoAs someone just starting to grow a development team (currently four people) in Denver CO, I’m already thinking about how to build a diverse group. Does anyone have any resources, books, or maybe just some plain common sense advice to recommend?
- aspenmayer 6y agoI’m not really one to ask about this, as I don’t hire people and am white so can’t really give any context to this recommendation, but you could ask the people involved in Juneteenth Conference for help? It was founded by a Black Microsoft engineer, so I’m sure their network has some people with the right stuff for your needs, and I’m sure they also know some good people of other backgrounds too. We all can help diversity directly by recommending our friends to each other, when appropriate. Also, diversity isn’t only about race, although it is also about that. It’s also about equal access. @AccessForAll on Twitter can probably help you much better than I can in that area. https://juneteenthconf.com https://juneteenthconf.com
- concordDance 6y agoFrom personal experience: Don't hire just to tick boxes. It will cause resentment, insecurity and reinforce stereotypes. Go out of your way to find underrepresented people (small town girls?) but raise the hiring bar slightly to accomodate for the interviee process error bars (if you're looking at a larger sample with a lower average using an error prone measuring device you'll get more people over the bar due to measurement error).
- auggierose 6y agoI don't think building a diverse group is a reasonable goal. You should try to build the BEST group you can. If you do that right, it might turn out to be diverse.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoBe prepared to train people. This goes for any job really, some jobs you'll be lucky that you're fishing in a big pool (say, Java developers), but a lot of jobs are more specialized. Have a good onboarding plan. Hire on interest and eagerness, not on current CV / skills.
- data4lyfe 6y agoSomething like this happened at UW. I remember going to a diversity career fair in 2015 and Uber had a booth there. Turns out they were there to recruit drivers to drive for Uber.
- aspenmayer 6y agoPlease try to find some kind of documentation of this. I believe you, this is simply amazing readymade satire.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI dunno, the idealized Uber driving career sounds like something a student could do as a side job. That's how IIRC Uber started off as, but it quickly became a more-than-full-time job for a lot of people.
- data4lyfe 6y agoI actually sent an email to the student newspaper but they didn't think the case was that strong. Uber did attend the career fair for the CSE department however to recruit software engineers.
- bradlys 6y agoI'm guessing this wasn't in the CSE building though... I remember going to career fairs at UW - it was a shit show. Nothing remarkable ever showed up. The line for Amazon being a mile long and a guy just pitching resumes into a shredder. As far as I know, the ones for the CSE department were better - of course.
- ghufran_syed 6y agoPretty weird that the story doesn't involve him bringing up the problem with HR or other engineering managers. The people who do the main revenue-generating work of a company (e.g. engineers in a tech company, the finance people in an investment bank) usually have a lot more power in an organization than HR / recruiting. So if he didn't do that, does that make him complicit in the racism? Or if he did try and got stonewalled, he should share that, along with the name of the company. And it doesn't smell right that an organization would risk giving a bunch of candidates food poisoning and getting a lawsuit by serving them day-old catered food. I'm certainly willing to believe it could happen, but 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' - in this case I'd settle for him giving the name of the company so that either others can confirm, or they can rebut.
- arshbot 6y agoI've spoken out against HR for dissimilar reasons and found myself out of the job not too long later. I don't blame him for not raising his head at his workplace...
- flumpcakes 6y agoI think that still makes him morally complicit.
- stale2002 6y agoI think you need to spend less time attacking people who bring issues to light, and more time recognizing and agreeing that there is a problem in the industry that needs to be solved. Attacking the person who is bringing the issue to light makes it seem like one is trying to distract from the issue being brought up, and put blame on the individual for talking about the problem.
- stale2002 6y agoIt really is not an extraordinary claim to say that companies often have systemic issues that hurt certain groups disproportionately.
- habitue 6y agoIt is entirely possible for there to be a pipeline problem, and also for behavior like the one described in the post to bias recruiting. Two things can be true.
- tptacek 6y agoOk. Sure. And?
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoHis point is that behavior can be a distraction from the other problem.
- habitue 6y agoThe post ends with: > Pipeline problem, my ass. after spending exactly no words refuting pipeline issues. I'm left to conclude that the author feels the two explanations are mutually exclusive and that by giving an anecdote about one, you can determine the other isn't real.
- stale2002 6y agoThe issue is that people tend to use "pipeline problem" to ignore and excuse real issues with bias. So it is not about rejecting the existence of a pipeline problem, it is instead to reject this as an excuse to ignore other real problems. That is likely what the author was trying to say.
- sbuccini 6y agoI grew up in Greensboro where A&T is located. Many of my high school classmates went to college there. One friend even led the top CS student org on campus. I pushed so hard for my employer, Sexy Unicorn Startup which said all the important things you expect a woke company to say, to recruit there. I told them I would set everything up and that all I needed was a budget. I got nothing but lip service. So, HN, you want to do it the right way? I can be on A&T's campus in 15 minutes. I will connect you with the student orgs and help you do it the right way. You won't regret it. Email is in profile.
- flumpcakes 6y agoI'm not a "just pull up your boot straps" guy because I grew up in poverty and I know the world is just injust. However, I really like the positive action of this comment.
- FeepingCreature 6y agoSpeculation, but: I'd bet they don't say this to get diversity hires, they say this to get left hires. Tech skews left, but not minority. (Asians, as we all know, don't count.) If you try but can't hire minorities, nothing particularly bad happens as long as you have tokens somewhere in a visible role. If you try but can't hire leftists, because your signalling is insufficiently woke, you have a problem.
- maxerickson 6y agoAn awful lot of people in tech are semi-delusional libertarians. (they present as rationalist and then do things like cherry pick evidence, is why I say semi-delusional)
- kneel 6y agoPeople are too comfortable. Your life exists in a tech bubble where your biggest annoyances are the most trivial things (my Tesla panels don't line up, ios does this annoying thing, someone said something rude on twitter) Techies are so coddled that the very idea of interacting with a person with a wildly different background and communication styles is anxiety inducing, so they find a way around it. The slights won't stop until you leave the comfort bubble, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
- atemerev 6y agoOh, it will happen, no worries. It happened before in 2001, when “tech” became a four-letter curse word. It will most definitely happen again.
- aspenmayer 6y agoAnd then blink and all tech products will be rebranded as lifestyle products overnight.
- jojobas 6y agoIf there was any commercial incentive to leave said bubble we'd see all sorts of activity to that end.
- JSavageOne 6y agoLet's not pretend like it's just the tech industry though, which is actually more meritocratic than most. For example when it comes to diversity and inclusiveness, high finance and management consulting make the tech industry look like a UN convention. They pretty much exclusively recruit at Ivy league equivalent schools, which are composed of an absurdly disproportionate amount of kids from wealthy backgrounds (any middle class kid who gets accepted to an Ivy probably got a substantial scholarship to their flagship state university).
- concordDance 6y ago> Techies are so coddled that the very idea of interacting with a person with a wildly different background and communication styles is anxiety inducing You're saying recruiting from different backgrounds (e.g. small town god fearing republican) could give my developers anxiety? Hmm... Guess I better avoid recruiting those sorts then.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y agoI'm surprised nobody's commented with the first thing that occurred to me: UNC, Duke, and NC A&T. One of these is not like the others. It's NC A&T. Why? It's not race. It's the fact that UNC and Duke are much, much better schools. The top North Carolina Black developer talent is...already at Duke, of course. Cisco or whoever may have been stopping by NC A&T to tick a box and therefore treated it perfunctorily. The author might also be exaggerating, it's certainly in his/her best interests. We all might do well to avoid drawing any conclusions from anecdote.
- tptacek 6y agoYou just restated the author's thesis.
- fastball 6y agoNo, the author claimed that NC A&T was "a damn good one [school]". The author was trying to put it on the same level as Duke/UNC in order to paint a picture that the only possible reason for the perfunctory treatment was racism. But NC A&T is not on the same level. "Hooli" is almost certainly elitist, but this anecdote is not good evidence for systemic racism.
- stormbeard 6y ago> No, the author claimed that NC A&T was "a damn good one [school]". > The author was trying to put it on the same level as Duke/UNC in order to paint a picture that the only possible reason for the perfunctory treatment was racism. But NC A&T is not on the same level. "Hooli" is almost certainly elitist, but this anecdote is not good evidence for systemic racism. Author here. I wasn’t implying that A&T is perceived to be as “prestigious” or highly ranked as Duke. I’m just trying to say that it was certainly worth visiting and worth taking seriously. If you’re looking for black engineers, for whatever reason, it’s reasonable to reach for A&T. Now, you can’t claim a pipeline problem if you’re pretty much ignoring the places where you’re most likely to find your target demographic. Let’s just drop the words “racism” and other “-isms” since they seem to trigger people and become distracting from the point. What the recruiters did by phoning it in for A&T and focus on Duke was miss out on potentially excellent engineers from A&T and reinforce the demographics found at Duke/UNC. The recruiters made an assumption based on some model they built at Hooli and other companies like it and didn’t do their job, which was to FIND good talent. I’ve worked at “elite” companies with people from “elite” schools. I’ve also worked with people from no school. There are smart people all over the place, so we don’t need to look at the same 10 schools and ignore the people who didn’t take out a $75k student loan.
- throwawayrec 6y agoI've gone on numerous recruiting trips and this story paints a very one sided narrative and it doesn't quite line with my own experiences. First off, big feeder schools, the Dukes and UNCs of the world, they have extremely sophisticated internal career programs that throw out the red carpet for us when we arrive. Yes we order the food (and its usually pizza), but they literally do all the pre-work and advertise for us, give us the floor and make sure we have the best chances to meet their students. They schedule the program and the times for us, so we just roll in, present, and then have lots of meet and greet with the students. Second, recruiters only have so much time and energy to meet with students, so they have to go to places with the least friction. The recruiters live by the rule, meet that quota or you're out! So that translates to, schools better have students who can pass the interview process, or they are out. My company has a huge list of diversity schools that we actively recruit from. This goes against the rules above and requires special recruiters who aren't being tracked against the same quota system. Why? Although these diversity schools produce highly qualified candidates, their career programs aren't sophisticated enough, nor is the coursework aligned with the goal of getting these students into silicon valley tech jobs. Remember, at a very real level, you're competing for the same jobs at the same level as someone graduating from CMU or MIT. If your CS department isn't preparing you for what's ahead, you have to make that knowledge-gap up on your own.
- tptacek 6y agoThis wasn't pizza (and, if it was, leftover pizza would be even crazier).
- dml2135 6y agoOr maybe recruiters could make bigger efforts to make up that gap, instead of throwing up their hands and accepting the institutionalized racism that they are dealt.
- adjkant 6y agoWhen everyone at every point in the pipeline throws their hands up and points the finger in front of them, no one takes action and we end up in the same place. As another reply said, change your recruiting practices to account for this difference. Change isn't free - the question is if companies are willing to spend time and resources for it. Every time a company does this, they have put a price on their acceptance of the problem. For some companies that's a needed survival choice. There are many that are choosing to not fix the problem and instead focus on Wall Street numbers or similar, even though they clearly have enough profit/funding to invest in this societal problem.
- scott31 6y agoUS College Rankings 2020 Duke University: 10th North Carolina A&T: >600th While the author tries to frame the university as "a damn good one", in reality it probably isn't.
- dan-robertson 6y agoDo you consider the treatment of NC A&T by Hooli to be disrespectful? I certainly do. The treatment looks to me like people (or the firm) felt obligated to show up but not obligated to put much effort in or to expect to recruit anyone. If they are running a recruiting event with little expectation of recruiting, does that not agree with the article’s view that the event was solely paying lip service to diversity.
- scott31 6y agoI agree entirely with you, it is disrespectful.
- Hitton 6y agoNow the question is what is better for the students? a) being visited and disrespected b) not being visited at all
- kirubakaran 6y agoWhy are those two the only options? How about: c) being visited and treated with some respect
- ajuc 6y agoThe root cause seems to be "we need a token event at this university". All the bad historically white universities wouldn't get an event at all.
- pepy 6y agoYou will get comments that rankings are skewed. Dont be surprised to hear that "Rankings must be abolished! They are discriminating!"
- tayistay 6y ago"Did Hooli recruiters think that they wouldn’t pass the hiring bar?" Most likely, yes. In the US news rankings, Duke is #10 and UNC is #20. NC A&T is #281. NC A&T has a 46% graduation rate vs Duke's 95%. Duke engineering is ranked #20, NC A&T is #134. These schools just aren't in the same league.
- aspaceman 6y agoDo you think this person is lying? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23935650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23935650 Or do you think those students are just stupid?
- tayistay 6y agoThat's quite a dichotomy. Anyway, it's not about what I think, it's about what the recruiters thought. The recruiters probably thought (perhaps wrongly, I don't know) that they would find fewer good candidates at NC A&T. Remember: they have a monetary incentive to find good candidates.
- Lammy 6y agoThere are many reasons besides ability why someone may not be able to graduate.
- ngngngng 6y agoI have no problem believing that there is bias and systemic issues in tech hiring. But you're right, looking at the school rankings shows some problems in the logic. "Hooli didn't treat a low ranked school as well as they did an extremely high ranked school, must be racism."
- ljhsiung 6y agoIt's more about false pretenses, and thereby racism (or, at best, massive negligence and lack of self awareness) I could agree that more recruiting resources should be dedicated towards higher ranking schools, but food scraps and half-hearted presentations just for PR points falls wayyy below just "lower resources". Would you rather just not have a company show up, or have a recruiter essentially treat you like a dog?
- babesh 6y agoThere is both a pipeline problem and a bias problem and they are intertwined. Historical discrimination has left black families much poorer than they would otherwise be. Poverty discriminates in myriad ways: lack of good role models and mentors, poor educational environments, lack of nutrition, lack of opportunities for enrichment, etc... Discrimination is also still present and different ethnic groups are affected differently. The negative effects of poverty and discrimination compound over time such that when you get to a tech company's hiring process, the pipeline would have shrunk massively. The students in this pipeline are competing against upper middle class kids who have been groomed their entire lives to compete in the system designed by people like them. As to the recruiting pipeline, there is class elitism/narrow mindedness in tech companies that does narrow recruiting. Some interviewers don't countenance views or attitudes other than their own just as some recruiters favor certain universities far more than others. This seems to be changing at least at the recruiting level. As to why some ethnicities still succeed or fail despite discrimination, that is at least partly cultural and partly selection bias and these in turn have also been affected by discrimination past and present. Lastly, I suspect the beef some poorer whites have is that they too have been discriminated against due to poverty and they feel that another group now has a leg up on them and that discrimination against them isn't acknowledged. I hope that we come up with a just system for everyone.
- hnarn 6y ago> Historical discrimination has left black families much poorer than they would otherwise be. Poverty discriminates in myriad ways: lack of good role models and mentors, poor educational environments, lack of nutrition, lack of opportunities for enrichment, etc... While this is true in some cases, and you do point out that "discriminiation is also still present", I can strongly recommend "Reflecting on the Color of My Skin" by Marques Brownlee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-_WXXVye3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-_WXXVye3Y Regardless of the material differences between black and white people, I think white people (including myself) tend to underestimate the effect of constantly being treated as "the first black guy who..." -- that's racism too, and while not always toxic, it holds up a lot of other discriminatory practices by being the foundation of differentiation.
- JSavageOne 6y agoIt is appalling how poorly NC A&T was treated here and I think we all need to be having this conversation, but at the same time you can't just ignore the fact that Duke and UNC are just in a totally different league in terms of university rankings, so it's not surprising that they're getting the red carpet treatment. For the record I think university rankings are stupid, and the college application process is certainly no meritocracy (an unremarkable high school classmate of mine got into Duke with a 3.4 GPA despite being rejected at our state's lower ranked state schools - she came from a family of Duke alumni). But it doesn't surprise me that companies engage in this university elitism, as sad as it might be.
- andi999 6y agoTwo things stick out for me: - leftover food. Really? This is really shitty behaviour; I am all for reuse, recycle; but this is neither the time nor the moment Independent of that: - I do not know much about US-Universities, so I checked. Duke is US Top 10, and A&T is not in the Times ranking since it is >600. So to me calling A&T "and a damn good one." is just delusional. Maybe it is a 'not so bad one', but I think things (quality of the University) can only improve if one is willing to see the truth. Please correct me if I am wrong.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoSo they deserve leftovers and lip service as opposed to help inspire the students to do better and raise the school to a higher "rank"? I don't get the ranking system either; it's education, it should be uniform, everyone should get the same opportunities and education and their diplomas should be "worth" the same, instead of it being a pissing contest where the higher ranked ones are only accessible to the rich and those in the "in" group. The US is lacking social mobility in part because of this.
- bluedevil2k 6y ago> it's education, it should be uniform, everyone should get the same opportunities and education and their diplomas should be "worth" the same But that’s delusional, right? Of course diplomas won’t be the same because colleges cluster kids of similar intelligence and motivation. As has been pointed out on this page repeatedly, the kids at Duke are smarter and more motivated than at a typical school, so as a result, the diploma is worth more. And to pretend that Duke is only accessible to rich whites and Asians is a fallacy. I had lots of friends from poor families who had lots of aid and minority friends - the Duke campus is far more diverse than the country in general.
- fastball 6y agoEducation should not be uniform because students are not uniform. Some people are just better students than others.
- mattm 6y ago
- cryptica 6y agoWhat I don't understand is how a system which is totally unethical at its foundation could even have a discussion about the diversity problem. That's like a violent thief discussing how wrong it is to discriminate. The system is built on violence, coercion and theft is my point.
- aahortwwy 6y agoI was 100% on board with the "it's just a pipeline problem" idea until I started interviewing. The more I interviewed, the more I saw how sourcing/recruiting works, the more hiring decisions I witnessed being made, the clearer it became that tech hiring is incredibly subjective. That subjectivity gives room for all kinds of bias to creep in at all the different points of the process. People get upset about the idea of unconscious bias (I suspect they resent the implication that they're secretely racist or sexist) but it's very real. It doesn't have to involve the person's identity. Bias creeps into your decision-making when you're having a bad day, or when the candidate reminds you of a person you don't get along with, or when they just rub you the wrong way for some reason. It's very easy to dress it up as objectivity. You're just grilling them on the technical details, holding them to the company's high standards, being a bar-raiser, something like that. The reverse is also true - you cut people slack because you like them without even realizing what you're doing. Recruiters devote the most time to candidates they think have the best chance of getting through the interview process. The interview process tends to be bullshit and easily gamed. Industry candidates who have proven an ability to make it through a similar hiring process will be given preference over those who haven't. Student candidates at schools who know the score will be given preference over those at schools that don't play ball. Referalls cause a slew of problems. The way hiring decisions are made cause a slew of problems. This may come off as bitter. I am bitter - not about being rejected, but rather about the people I've had a role in rejecting over the years. Industry candidates who were obviously good at their jobs but terrible at the interview dance. Student candidates who were obviously smart and ambitious but only became aware of the types of questions they would be asked a week or two before the interview. Working with and reporting to cruel and selfish people who excelled at an interview process that's so convinced it's objective and meritocratic that evaluating soft skills isn't even considered. It's so widely understood and accepted that software hiring processes are bullshit, but for some reason the minute people start talking about the impact of that bullshit on diversity... "it's a pipeline problem."
- tom_b 6y agoMy BS in CS is from NC A&T. My MS in CS in from UNC-CH. Anybody who thinks the hackers from Duke/UNC consistently outshine the hackers from NC A&T is a damn fool. I was regularly FLOORED by the skills and raw programming chops from peers at NC A&T. Some of the smartest young men and women in the CS field. I worked in a small research group at NC A&T. Maybe 10 undergrads. Last time I checked, there were something like 6 MS in CS folks from that group and a couple of PhDs. When I was an undergrad at NC A&T, we had a weekly colloquium for all CS students. We regularly had alumni from NC A&T and other HBCUs on stage who talked openly about navigating the hiring world, which companies you could expect racism in, and what the working world of programming was like for "people who look like us." If some shitty recruiter event occurred, we all knew about it. Want to score some of the best engineers from HBCUs? It's easy. Hire the best ones you can convince to take your mega-FAANG package from. Then send them back every freaking year with a corporate card and tell them to impress people. I hate these "stupid recruiter" stories. Somebody should get their ass fired.
- monksy 6y agoI think that's pretty awesome. I went to Elon, and the only time that we heard about the A&T CS program is the time that I participated in an ACM programming competition. We heard more about the Duke program than anything else. (Research related). I knew a little about the UNC Chapel Hill program because I had a connection with Fred Brooks.
- malandrew 6y agoIn terms of CS, it's NCSU that regularly produces the most accomplishments of the NC higher education universities, but it doesn't have the same national standing because the humanities departments at NCSU are a complete joke. What Duke and UNC-CH do well is that all their departments are generally considered rigorous and that increases their standing in the rankings.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago> Some of the smartest young men and women in the CS field. Can you give any names and/or accomplishments to support that claim? Personally, I haven't bumped into enough NC A&T grads to form my own opinions.
- bumby 6y agoI wonder if there’s some self-fulfilling prophesy with the recruiters. If they put forth a half-assed effort at a “lesser” school I have a feeling the best and brightest at that school would feel that and be less than receptive about working there. Meaning they only get serious inquiries from less-than-stellar recruits leading hiring managers to feel that school isn’t worth more effort. If I show up to dates in pajamas it seems odd to come to the conclusion that my dating pool doesn’t meet my standards
- lnanek2 6y ago> I’m sure that the NC A&T event was just so Hooli could check some “diversity recruitment” box. Amusingly, that's exactly what the "interactive" ADA process is at my workplace - just a check box. I submitted a request with medical diagnosis and links to several third party expert recommended accommodations for it, an HR rep booked a meeting with me, told me in the first sentence that I'm requesting an accommodation I didn't request, and that she's denying it, then the meeting ends, and she writes up an email lying saying I requested something I did't and that they rejected it. All appeals are just met with the claim that I didn't state what accommodation I want clearly, even though I sent links ahead of time to reputable sites listing them. Never realized that's what it must feel like as a minority to get brushed off and ignored due to who you are.
- aspenmayer 6y agoStop posting about this online, get a lawyer, and sue. Discrimination against medical conditions is against the FMLA. Otherwise what kind of accommodation did you need? https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla
- yardie 6y agoThat's how racism and sexism tends to get brushed over. You report it, the other party opposes, HR (trying to avoid a scandal) tries to convince you you didn't see what you saw. And then your character is compared to the other person to see ranks higher. If you don't have enough character points the blame is somehow put on you.
- kyrieeschaton 6y agoNC A&T has an average SAT score on par with any random flyover college. Yet I don't see any tech recruiters making the trip out to Bemidji State. The fact is that students at HBCUs are significantly advantaged in recruiting compared to any comparable college.
- dml2135 6y agoI don't see how SAT scores would indicate the level of engineering talent at a school in any way. There in plenty of racial bias in standardized testing. This statement is exactly the sort of attitude that needs to be thrown out the window if we want to make real progress addressing the racial gap in tech.
- kyrieeschaton 6y ago"I don't see how SAT scores would indicate the level of engineering talent at a school in any way" Inability to figure out why IQ might be correlative with engineering ability (as it is with practically any performance measure you can name, reified by over 100 years of exhaustive data) is indicative of a failing of reasoning on your part, not a problem with the argument. I do agree with you that in order to address the "racial gap" in tech we would have to ignore most metrics that would predict tech aptitude.
- logicchop 6y agoMaybe it's the style of the article but I'm not sure I get the point. Is the complaint that tech is "too white"? If so, that doesn't seem true. Look for example at Google's own internal reporting: Whites are only something like 55-60% of the workforce, with Asians at 35-40%. Once you account for population totals overall, Whites are underrepresented. And I'm sure the same is true at Microsoft. Is the point then that there just aren't many Blacks? Are Asians in the tech industry not part of the "minority" in the context of this conversation? Sorry but I'm losing track too quickly of what is even being discussed.
- drobert 6y agoPractically companies outsource the recruitment process to schools. To get in a top school you need to have passed certain filters so it is more likely that talent can be found there. It's applicable is any country not just USA and in sports as well. It's a hierarchy building system that works but of course it's not perfect. If you are presuming that untapped talent exists in lower ranking schools on a large scale, companies would shift their recruiting strategies because people from top schools require much higher starting salaries. Leading companies recruit from top schools to remain in the front. The hypothesis that some groups (black, women, lgbt, etc) are systematically marginalised is not compatible with capitalism. While it has an element of truth due to the in-group preference (which a very natural phenomenon - even trees do it) in a ruthless market companies which discriminate are at a loss - they loose star employees and eventually their leading position. If huge untapped potential exists in the marginalised groups this would create a market opportunity: companies could only hire from these groups and outperform the others. I don't see this happening.
- dsr_ 6y agoThere are a lot of people here reinventing Sabermetrics. Go on, read Moneyball, and consider that the selection criteria from top-ranked universities may be low-quality indicators of success at actually getting things done.
- cafard 6y agoRooney Rule, anyone?
- mbostleman 6y agoWhat I struggle with when it comes to claims of {whatever group} bias as a cause (the correlation is easy, but I stress "cause") for why any given industry or sector of the economy doesn't represent a desired mix of group attributes is this: There are millions or even tens of millions of actors involved in these economic models and if group attribute bias is driving these hiring or promotion or pay decisions then that means, by definition, that the motivation of bias is overriding the motivation to optimize for value (whether it be NOI for a mature business or speed of market capture for a new one). So what I don't get is, if everything else is equal between two candidates except for a) their contribution to value and b) their group attribute, how is it that so many actors choose b and leave a on the table thus knowingly performing poorer for shareholders and risking failure at the hands of competition purely because of a group attribute bias? I get that there would be some actors that would choose bias over value. But how is that no one break ranks. Wouldn't there have to be a massive amount of collusion and coordination to make sure that every founder and manager from every entity all agrees to do this? Because anyone that breaks from the mold would end up benefiting financially. I get that this perspective undermines the popular narrative, so go ahead and down vote if you think my intention is to do that. But that's not my intention. What I'm looking for is a rational description of how the economic mechanics work with a popular narrative about bias against what is also a popular narrative that humans are greedy?
- Androider 6y agoSee all of professional sport in the US before 1950, and what professional teams look like today? How come none of the pre-1950 teams simply figured they could completely dominate their respective leagues by just not ignoring all the "value left on the table". The story in the article about how the Duke university students were wined and dined, given direct recruiting contacts and wooed, and the A&T students were given the previous days leftovers and NO recruiter contacts isn't some aberration. It's happening right now, this year, literally leaving all that talent on the table.
- stormbeard 6y agoCheck out the Dan Luu blog linked in the first paragraph of the article [1]. He tackles exactly this and does a really good job at explaining it and citing sources. I might butcher this, but there’s an excellent part in there where he takes a look at the papers that showed discrimination in sports and how teams that discriminated less, actually had an advantage and performed better. For decades, teams were hiring less qualified white players and actually were leaving money on the table. Looking at sports data is nice because there’s tons of it and it’s easier to evaluate “employee performance”. The issue with ignoring those NC A&T students was that those recruiters didn’t even bother evaluating them to see if there were a few rockstar developers in the group. Had they given them a fair shot and evaluation, we might have made better hires overall. [1] https://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ https://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/
- pdutt 6y agowhen 36% of google can be asian, majority coming from a different country and most probably a much poorer per capita income then anyone in USA. I don't really think anyone was discriminating, go to any top tech school and see the percentage of people by race and you'll pretty much see the same in companies. if anything there's a supply shortage of tech talent I'm pretty sure they don't need to discriminate if someone is good enough
- alexpotato 6y agoI went to a large state school, Rutgers, and have worked both with people from Ivy League schools and other state schools. You could swap out UNC and NC A&T with "Ivy League" and "State School" and you would effectively get the same story. And yes, 100% there are tech companies who put a premium on Ivy League vs non-Ivy League based on my own personal experience with recruiting. Dan Luu (mentioned in the original article) has previously talked about this along the lines of (paraphrasing): "I went to #25 of the top 25 schools. Friends of mine, who were better potential hires, went to #26 and got substantially fewer offers and the offers were lower quality". If there are biases in how companies treat you based on solely the university you went to, I find it easy to believe that there could be other biases as well.
- DrScump 6y agoWhen I was coming out of school, non-prestige schools (and locales) were simply left out of recruiting altogether. I graduated literally first in my class year, with a BS in CS and Business Administration minor... and wasn't pursued at all. Meanwhile, I already had a software engineering career going, enjoying the setting and challenge as well, and I wasn't particularly concerned at the time. I had developed a skill set spanning both programming and computing center operations (having started there), and I was pretty invaluable in my group from the outset, and the recognition was really valuable to me. So, you'd think that management in my group (at least) might consider panning for additional nuggets in the same stream (top performers at lower-prestige schools), right? No. The hiring manager did recruiting trips where he wanted to travel. New York. Hawai'i. Etc. He'd hire one candidate from each locale, apparently to justify the trip. Attractive female candidates didn't even have to meet the official policy constraints (a Sociology degree is not CS, engineering, or even BA, sir). Eventually, I got recruited elsewhere not by any standard channel but by a personal friend. Not everyone is born into resources. I had to both support myself and put myself through school. That constrained my choices and forced me to be resilient in ways peers my age didn't need to be. Employers who hire by formula completely omit my kind.
- gandutraveler 6y agoIn India I've seen bias against different groups, regions, religions, languages etc. in hiring, promotions. The only difference is that everyone has bias against everyone to a level that one can't point out which group is more biased. It evens out I guess