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> Diversity. We really, really suck at diversity. We’re getting better, but we have a long way to go. Most of the industry chases the same candidates and assess

> Diversity. We really, really suck at diversity. We’re getting better, but we have a long way to go. Most of the industry chases the same candidates and assesses them in the same way. I would pass this buck way, way earlier. Many diverse future candidates (non-white) are educated at awful public schools. When you begin your education at a miserable daycare-school then you are far less likely to make it all the way through the life-pipeline and get in front of a high tech recruiter. I have hired diverse candidates and they are great just like all candidates I hire. There simply aren't that many that apply, and the pool of diverse candidates is sucked up by way better-funded FAANGs and similar. I would argue we need to completely reinvent our primary education system from the ground up to offer more choice and make them way less depressing for lower-income students. You can't expect a tech recruiter to fix 2 decades of mistakes through their hiring system.

dheera 6y ago
While that does explain part of the issue for racial discrimination, gender discrimination is much less well explained by gaps in public school systems. The medium- and higher-income districts are all still close to a 1:1 gender ratio but tech companies are really, really far from that.
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  It doesn't have to start early in the pipeline. https://educationdata.org/number-of-college-graduates https://educationdata.org/number-of-college-graduates It's only relatively recently that female graduates even reached parity with (and now outnumber) male graduates. It will take even longer for the male:female divide to be closed in STEM.
Swizec 6y ago
I have some insight into this. My schooling was in eastern-ish europe growing up in a low middle class environment. My girlfriend grew up in SFBA and went to high school in Palo Alto. The difference in perspective is astounding. Even simple things like what you consider normal. Like, I grew up knowing that The Boss is someone you hate and despise who makes your life miserable. Becoming the boss is villified. Rich people are bad. Everyone is out to screw you. That includes rich people, poor people, the government, the police. Everyone. It’s you against the world. The forgotten class everyone exploits and nobody helps. High taxes, no help. Oh and teachers are all dumb. Otherwise they wouldn’t be teachers. By comparison the normal for my girlfriend is “You invent google street view or cofound the next ebay, obviously. That’s just basics”. At the least you do well in school, get great grades, and climb a corporate hiwrarchy to near top. That’s the failure mode if nothing else works. Learning the US corporate/business culture has been imo my biggest challenge moving here.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  While attending a poor school and growing up in a poor environment gives you a completely different life perspective than growing up in a rich one, it's worth noting that this isn't what people mean when they talk about "diversity".
  - TameAntelope 6y ago
    It's what I mean. It's not only what I mean, but that diversity of viewpoint is incredibly valuable when trying to solve problems as a group.
  - Swizec 6y ago
    I know it isn’t and that makes it even harder to talk about. Classism is understood and recognized in Europe and people are working on it. USA is still stuck pretending it doesn’t exist. Similar to how 50 years ago it was pretendint sexism isn’t a problem. Imo it’s important to talk about all types of systemic issues, not just the popular ones. And to quote one of my well meaning friends: ”Oh pfft your issues don’t count because you can pass (look white and male)”
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I grew up in the Bay Area and went to school in Cupertino; the number of people who are of the perspective you described your girlfriend having are in the minority even here. There are a handful of schools across Palo Alto and San Francisco that enable that kind of thing.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    Minority of the overall population in SV that went to schools here? Yeah, probably. Minority of the people who end up in tech in SV and grew up here? No. I've met too many people in SV that are in tech and who grew up here to come to that conclusion.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
azernik 6y ago
Generally there is a disproportionate dropoff among minority and female candidates at every stage of the career pipeline, not just in the pre-interview parts.
Kalium 6y ago
There's a reflexive tendency for people to assume that a problem manifests at whatever point it is measured. It's an easy assumption to make. However, estimating malnutrition by measuring the heights of adults is not a great way to get a read on current food supplies.
- seibelj 6y ago
  You make a fair point, but it is very hard to snap my fingers and make more competent programmers of all races that perfectly align with society's representation of them.
User23 6y ago
As far as I can tell White Americans are a super-minority in Silicon Valley hiring pipelines. Of the 100 or so interviews I've done in the past few years I'd say about 2% were White American, 5% were of East Asian origin, and the rest of South Asian origin. Fact is if Silicon Valley firms actually want to be diverse, that is to say accurately represent the demographics of the USA, they need to hire more White Americans, not fewer.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  You're saying that you interviewed 100 people and 93 of them where South Asian? That seems insane unless you're actively hiring talent from India.
  - commandlinefan 6y ago
    I've observed similar demographics in North Texas, consistently over a 20-year period.
    - mcguire 6y ago
      For meat processing plants?
  - actuator 6y ago
    Yeah, this doesn't seem believable at all. East and South Asians are definitely overrepresented (compared to US population) in tech but not by these numbers. Luckily some big companies do publish diversity reports which will easily give information about the actual stats. FB's diversity report. https://diversity.fb.com/read-report/ https://diversity.fb.com/read-report/ White Americans make up 37% in tech, 63% in leadership positions in Facebook. GitHub is 70% White and 15% Asian. https://github.com/about/diversity/report https://github.com/about/diversity/report Apple is 50% White and 23% Asian. https://www.apple.com/diversity/ https://www.apple.com/diversity/
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
Ozzie_osman 6y ago
(Author here) This is the "pipeline problem" debate. You're right, it does start much earlier than tech companies, but also, it's too easy for hiring managers at tech companies to just throw up their hands and say "we can't do much, it's just the pipeline that isn't giving us enough diversity." There is plenty of evidence that it's not just a pipeline problem. One of my co-authors wrote a really solid piece on this: https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/sections/its-not-just-a-pipeline-problem https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/secti...
- seibelj 6y ago
  I agree with you that tech companies can do better and have done better. But this is like, they are doing 1.5x better. To do 10x better the educational system needs to be totally reworked.
  - forbiddenvoid 6y ago
    I think it's far more likely that there are numerous 1.5x improvements to be made along the entire funnel than that there exists a 10x solution at any one point. Making each person who 'owns' a piece of the process accountable for optimizing their portion is going to yield far better results than passing the buck.
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  Why is that "solid piece" acting like stereotype threat is an actual thing, and not the totally debunked replication study failing pseudoscience that it is?
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > Overreliance on requirements like four-year degrees from the same few top schools, and on referrals from current employees, limits the number and kind of people considered “qualified” for technical roles. It's a simple signal to noise ratio issue. Sure you might be leaving out "diamonds in the rough" candidates, but how many mediocre interview will it take to find one?[0] [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
monksy 6y ago
I'm convinced that the best way is to have a beer with someone and to get them to start ranting about the bugs they've had to catch and resolve. The more swearing about the technical stuff, the more confident I am about that they solved it. I'm more interested in hearing about the problem solving in the contexts that they've worked through, what they learned, and their experience over all. Experience is universal. Telling someone to get 3 values of a list that create the high product isn't going to solve your production issue on a saturday night.
fastball 6y ago
Non-white is an interesting definition of diverse.
SamReidHughes 6y ago
Explaining things as problems of lower-income students doesn't really work, and "solutions" built around this assumption will fail, because even if you consider higher-income subsets of the racial demographics, or otherwise control for parental income, you still get huge disparities in the numbers of high-performance students.

dheera 6y ago

While that does explain part of the issue for racial discrimination, gender discrimination is much less well explained by gaps in public school systems. The medium- and higher-income districts are all still close to a 1:1 gender ratio but tech companies are really, really far from that.

ethanwillis 6y ago
It doesn't have to start early in the pipeline. https://educationdata.org/number-of-college-graduates https://educationdata.org/number-of-college-graduates It's only relatively recently that female graduates even reached parity with (and now outnumber) male graduates. It will take even longer for the male:female divide to be closed in STEM.

Swizec 6y ago

I have some insight into this. My schooling was in eastern-ish europe growing up in a low middle class environment. My girlfriend grew up in SFBA and went to high school in Palo Alto. The difference in perspective is astounding. Even simple things like what you consider normal. Like, I grew up knowing that The Boss is someone you hate and despise who makes your life miserable. Becoming the boss is villified. Rich people are bad. Everyone is out to screw you. That includes rich people, poor people, the government, the police. Everyone. It’s you against the world. The forgotten class everyone exploits and nobody helps. High taxes, no help. Oh and teachers are all dumb. Otherwise they wouldn’t be teachers. By comparison the normal for my girlfriend is “You invent google street view or cofound the next ebay, obviously. That’s just basics”. At the least you do well in school, get great grades, and climb a corporate hiwrarchy to near top. That’s the failure mode if nothing else works. Learning the US corporate/business culture has been imo my biggest challenge moving here.

commandlinefan 6y ago
While attending a poor school and growing up in a poor environment gives you a completely different life perspective than growing up in a rich one, it's worth noting that this isn't what people mean when they talk about "diversity".
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  It's what I mean. It's not only what I mean, but that diversity of viewpoint is incredibly valuable when trying to solve problems as a group.
- Swizec 6y ago
  I know it isn’t and that makes it even harder to talk about. Classism is understood and recognized in Europe and people are working on it. USA is still stuck pretending it doesn’t exist. Similar to how 50 years ago it was pretendint sexism isn’t a problem. Imo it’s important to talk about all types of systemic issues, not just the popular ones. And to quote one of my well meaning friends: ”Oh pfft your issues don’t count because you can pass (look white and male)”
saagarjha 6y ago
I grew up in the Bay Area and went to school in Cupertino; the number of people who are of the perspective you described your girlfriend having are in the minority even here. There are a handful of schools across Palo Alto and San Francisco that enable that kind of thing.
- bradlys 6y ago
  Minority of the overall population in SV that went to schools here? Yeah, probably. Minority of the people who end up in tech in SV and grew up here? No. I've met too many people in SV that are in tech and who grew up here to come to that conclusion.
  - saagarjha 6y ago

azernik 6y ago

Generally there is a disproportionate dropoff among minority and female candidates at every stage of the career pipeline, not just in the pre-interview parts.

Kalium 6y ago

There's a reflexive tendency for people to assume that a problem manifests at whatever point it is measured. It's an easy assumption to make. However, estimating malnutrition by measuring the heights of adults is not a great way to get a read on current food supplies.

seibelj 6y ago
You make a fair point, but it is very hard to snap my fingers and make more competent programmers of all races that perfectly align with society's representation of them.

User23 6y ago

As far as I can tell White Americans are a super-minority in Silicon Valley hiring pipelines. Of the 100 or so interviews I've done in the past few years I'd say about 2% were White American, 5% were of East Asian origin, and the rest of South Asian origin. Fact is if Silicon Valley firms actually want to be diverse, that is to say accurately represent the demographics of the USA, they need to hire more White Americans, not fewer.

saagarjha 6y ago
You're saying that you interviewed 100 people and 93 of them where South Asian? That seems insane unless you're actively hiring talent from India.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  I've observed similar demographics in North Texas, consistently over a 20-year period.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    For meat processing plants?
- actuator 6y ago
  Yeah, this doesn't seem believable at all. East and South Asians are definitely overrepresented (compared to US population) in tech but not by these numbers. Luckily some big companies do publish diversity reports which will easily give information about the actual stats. FB's diversity report. https://diversity.fb.com/read-report/ https://diversity.fb.com/read-report/ White Americans make up 37% in tech, 63% in leadership positions in Facebook. GitHub is 70% White and 15% Asian. https://github.com/about/diversity/report https://github.com/about/diversity/report Apple is 50% White and 23% Asian. https://www.apple.com/diversity/ https://www.apple.com/diversity/
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

Ozzie_osman 6y ago

(Author here) This is the "pipeline problem" debate. You're right, it does start much earlier than tech companies, but also, it's too easy for hiring managers at tech companies to just throw up their hands and say "we can't do much, it's just the pipeline that isn't giving us enough diversity." There is plenty of evidence that it's not just a pipeline problem. One of my co-authors wrote a really solid piece on this: https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/sections/its-not-just-a-pipeline-problem https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/secti...

seibelj 6y ago
I agree with you that tech companies can do better and have done better. But this is like, they are doing 1.5x better. To do 10x better the educational system needs to be totally reworked.
- forbiddenvoid 6y ago
  I think it's far more likely that there are numerous 1.5x improvements to be made along the entire funnel than that there exists a 10x solution at any one point. Making each person who 'owns' a piece of the process accountable for optimizing their portion is going to yield far better results than passing the buck.
SamReidHughes 6y ago
Why is that "solid piece" acting like stereotype threat is an actual thing, and not the totally debunked replication study failing pseudoscience that it is?
908B64B197 6y ago
> Overreliance on requirements like four-year degrees from the same few top schools, and on referrals from current employees, limits the number and kind of people considered “qualified” for technical roles. It's a simple signal to noise ratio issue. Sure you might be leaving out "diamonds in the rough" candidates, but how many mediocre interview will it take to find one?[0] [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

monksy 6y ago

I'm convinced that the best way is to have a beer with someone and to get them to start ranting about the bugs they've had to catch and resolve. The more swearing about the technical stuff, the more confident I am about that they solved it. I'm more interested in hearing about the problem solving in the contexts that they've worked through, what they learned, and their experience over all. Experience is universal. Telling someone to get 3 values of a list that create the high product isn't going to solve your production issue on a saturday night.

fastball 6y ago

Non-white is an interesting definition of diverse.

SamReidHughes 6y ago

Explaining things as problems of lower-income students doesn't really work, and "solutions" built around this assumption will fail, because even if you consider higher-income subsets of the racial demographics, or otherwise control for parental income, you still get huge disparities in the numbers of high-performance students.