7 ms·

Congratulations and thanks for writing this. It is easy as an American male to overlook how much harder others might have to work to achieve what I think of as

Congratulations and thanks for writing this. It is easy as an American male to overlook how much harder others might have to work to achieve what I think of as very approachable goals. You've not only put in all the work but also had to rely on the good graces of these programs to support you! That work ethic you've cultivated is what you now must rely on to succeed and by far your most valuable asset. You will still face difficulties because of your gender and ethnicity. It's horrible and wrong, and I hope it changes. But your tenacity and drive will show everybody your real value in the end, and I think you'll do well! I believe you are and can continue to be part of the change.

sitevas35 6y ago
> You will still face difficulties because of your gender and ethnicity. She is going to Europe, not USA. Unless she picks a really bad place (but most Google HQs there are in a good place), she won't have any such issues. Europe doesn't talk as much about gender and race, but they actually do things as well, while in the USA everyone kinda pats their back for "walking out for Black Lifes Matter" and calls it a day.
- headmelted 6y ago
  Errr I’d want to see hard evidence this is the case before I’d take it as a given. There’s no part of me that finds it easy to believe that a female, minority worker in tech is going to get the same opportunities as a white male anywhere in Europe. I’d think the more sinister patting of one’s own back is assuming that “at least we’re not like that here” without hard evidence to back up that assumption.
  - Xevi 6y ago
    The (billion dollar) company I work for in Europe has a policy that they hire twice as many women as men. Women also get twice as long contracts and better career paths. They are also trying to hire a lot more people of color. Statistically you have an extremely higher chance of getting hired as a black female than a white male.
    - TulliusCicero 6y ago
      Oof, that certainly doesn't sound good.
  - clarifier123 6y ago
    >There’s no part of me that finds it easy to believe that a female, minority worker in tech is going to get the same opportunities as a white male anywhere in Europe. I agree, she's a woman, she will definitely get much more opportunities than a man. The potential employers will bend over backwards to fill their diversity quotas.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- selectodude 6y ago
  Excellent point. Europe has solved racism and sexism, especially in football.
- skadamou 6y ago
  I suppose everybody's impression of inequity is mostly shaped by their experience and perhaps the anecdotal experience of a few close friends. The US is by no means a model for how to handle inequities but my experience has been that the US actually does a better job handling and talking about it, at least in the sciences, than do lots of places in Europe. IDK, everything is subjective and depends. Bearing that in mind I would encourage you to approach commenting on topics like this without drawing such a hard line in the sand. Whether or not you meant it, your comment comes off as pretty aggressive and somewhat flame-war-y.
- Ansil849 6y ago
  Having worked in both Europe and the US, and being from neither of those places, I can absolutely say that the amount of _open_ racism in Europe was significantly greater than in the US. One example out of many: while walking on the street in Denmark, there were two instances of passersby on bicycles yelling racial slurs at me as they drove by.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is simply ignorant. While it's true that racial oppression is often less in Europe due to better government regulations and social safety nets and whatnot, on a personal level there's still plenty of bigotry and xenophobia, sometimes moreso than the US. I'm an American living in Munich (working for Google actually), go ahead and try telling foreigners here that landlords they're talking to while applying for an apartment treat them the same way as native Germans. The idea is laughable. But you don't have to take my word for it. Here's a poll on whether people in different countries feel that increasing diversity is a positive change. Note that the US comes out ahead of most of the European countries listed, as well as substantially ahead of the European median: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/22/how-people-around-the-world-view-diversity-in-their-countries/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/22/how-people-aro...
- djpr 6y ago
  Perhaps Europe is better at gender (due to strong social policies), but Europe is't immune to racism. It's not talked about so loudly like in the US, but I've experienced so much low-key, out in the open racism in Europe towards Arabs, Moroccans, Chinese, Africans and so on. I'm not white and while I don't feel like my life is in danger, I know from looks and behavior that I'm not on equal footing with a white European.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    The US has been grappling with these issues for a long time, so it's normal to discuss it there. In Germany, I get more of the feeling of, "oh, we don't have those kinds of problems here". It's basically denialism, like when the Dutch defend Zwarte Piet. Not that you don't see that in the US for some people too, but it seems to be more widespread in many European countries, where the very fact that it hasn't been as widely discussed before leads people to believe that it must not exist.
- phroobster 6y ago
  Considering America’s obsession with diversity, I find it hard to believe that she would have an easier time in Europe or anywhere else in the world. In America she would receive countless offers purely as a diversity hire. That’s not to say she wouldn’t deserve the offers based on merit, but Silicon Valley has decided that pure ability is less important to hiring than race and gender. That gives her an enormous advantage over white and asian males.
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  I'm not sure this is true, having worked in both the US and Europe. The US definitely talks about it more, often to an absurd excess. But I've seen far more real-life examples of casual racism in Europe, stuff that no one would even dream of saying or doing in the US. I'm not hanging out in terrible neighborhoods in either place.
- Ansil849 6y ago
  > Europe doesn't talk as much about gender and race, but they actually do things as well, while in the USA everyone kinda pats their back for "walking out for Black Lifes Matter" and calls it a day. Please explain how things like 'Zwarte Piet' fit into your narrative? I remember the first time I walked around a town center around the holidays and was accosted by multiple white Europeans in blackface asking for donations.
  - Udik 6y ago
    I think Zwarte Piet is racist only when seen through American lenses. Which unfortunately today is the norm, but that doesn't make it more sensible. Zwarte Piet is basically Santa's little helper, as they exist in many traditions. He's black so he's represented by people with their face painted black. The fact that blackface has a connotation of racism in a country where racial laws where abolished only in 1964 has nothing to do with the substance and meaning of a Dutch Christmas tradition.
    - imbnwa 6y ago
      > Zwarte Piet is basically Santa's little helper, as they exist in many traditions. Why is a Moor from pre-Reconquista Spain Santa's little helper?
      - Udik 6y ago
        For the same reason Santa has a beard, lives at the North Pole and passes through the chimneys.
    - Ansil849 6y ago
      And you feel that the fact that the "helper" is black is only racist because it is seen through an American lens?
- ljm 6y ago
  I don't think this is the right place to make a EU vs. USA point, to be honest. And a Google HQ itself isn't a safe-haven either. I'm not as confident as you are about the author of this post getting an easier life in the EU vs. the US. People escaping the wars the EU/US coalition (in whatever form) have started in the middle east are going to find their way to greener pastures through Turkey, Greece, Italy and be shunned every fucking step of the way, no matter where they settle. But you don't have to be coming from Turkey or be somehow Arabic, or Muslim in appearance, you only have to turn to the UK to see the sheer derision towards Polish people and immigrants further east despite the immense proximity between the countries. Or the attitude to the Romani people across the whole continent. The author is from Palestine. She will suffer from prejudice purely for having a name that ignorant people will connect to Islam or terrorism, and ignorant people who will take Israel's side on the matter without thought. If Dalia Awad has an easier time and avoids issues wherever she is, it's because of what she's had to do for it, not because she chose the EU over the US.
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    -and ignorant people who will take Israel's side on the matter without thought. i don't think Israels' side of the matter means persecuting people just because they happen to be Palestinian. That just isn't true.
    - ljm 6y ago
      I took it too far in that respect, and since I can't do a faithful edit on HN to correct that (without erasing the evidence of me being wrong), it doesn't mean the rest of the post is wrong. The EU isn't the paradise the parent poster thinks it is.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into ideological and nationalistic flamewar, let alone, god help us, both at the same time. Also, would you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
decentrality 6y ago
Not the time for "Remember the Asymptote" here actually. The world is being taken over by new generations free to break the framework. This type of post is about that. It might also be about spread of corporations into every culture, but here I remember the "Other Conquest" in Central America where it didn't ultimately matter who came into the culture, because the culture held up under force. Both sides changed. I am as excited for Google as for the OP. These moments make the past unreal, and the future becomes about this kind of dream coming true and surpassed.
Udik 6y ago
> You will still face difficulties because of your gender and ethnicity. It's horrible and wrong I find it pretty strange that you can't see the irony of mentioning the issues that she will face because of her gender and ethnicity when she comes from a country where people are shot at by Israeli snipers (183 dead and 6000 shot in the legs, often with permanent disabilities, in 2018-2019 [1]). All with the open, enthusiastic and substantially unchallenged support of your country (no "Palestinian lives matter" protests in the newspapers). Protesting against Israel is even penalized by US state laws [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in...
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Obviously any mention of Gaza is one step away from major politics, but I don't think it's fair to impose that on the OP.
complexmango 6y ago
Unreal how competitive the virtue signaling is on HN, when the reality is that every major tech company is falling over itself to hire anyone who isn’t A) Male and B) either white or Asian/Indian. What planet do you live on?
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 6y ago
This comment started a flamewar. Please don't do that on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  I think the comment was very reasonable. Yes, it mentions gender/ethnicity/nationality in a way that is likely to incite some people to attack, but in this case gender and ethnicity/nationality was mentioned in the article as a relevant detail, so I think it's reasonable to include it in a comment. I just feel that it's not reasonable to hold GP responsible for a touchy subject, when the touchy subject is part of the article they're commenting on in the first place. If it came out of nowhere, then obviously that'd be a different story.
  - dang 6y ago
    > Yes, it mentions gender/ethnicity/nationality in a way that is likely to incite some people to attack That's the point. From a moderation perspective, comments are at least partly responsible for the subthreads they spawn: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22expected%20value%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... The GP was well-intentioned but unfortunately that's only a necessary condition for not starting a flamewar. It isn't a sufficient one: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=disambiguate%20burden%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... Btw, I don't think it's quite true to say that the touchy subject was part of the article. Even if it were, though, the burden is on commenters not to take an HN thread further into flamewar. This is in the site guidelines: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - TulliusCicero 6y ago

sitevas35 6y ago

> You will still face difficulties because of your gender and ethnicity. She is going to Europe, not USA. Unless she picks a really bad place (but most Google HQs there are in a good place), she won't have any such issues. Europe doesn't talk as much about gender and race, but they actually do things as well, while in the USA everyone kinda pats their back for "walking out for Black Lifes Matter" and calls it a day.

headmelted 6y ago
Errr I’d want to see hard evidence this is the case before I’d take it as a given. There’s no part of me that finds it easy to believe that a female, minority worker in tech is going to get the same opportunities as a white male anywhere in Europe. I’d think the more sinister patting of one’s own back is assuming that “at least we’re not like that here” without hard evidence to back up that assumption.
- Xevi 6y ago
  The (billion dollar) company I work for in Europe has a policy that they hire twice as many women as men. Women also get twice as long contracts and better career paths. They are also trying to hire a lot more people of color. Statistically you have an extremely higher chance of getting hired as a black female than a white male.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Oof, that certainly doesn't sound good.
- clarifier123 6y ago
  >There’s no part of me that finds it easy to believe that a female, minority worker in tech is going to get the same opportunities as a white male anywhere in Europe. I agree, she's a woman, she will definitely get much more opportunities than a man. The potential employers will bend over backwards to fill their diversity quotas.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
selectodude 6y ago
Excellent point. Europe has solved racism and sexism, especially in football.
skadamou 6y ago
I suppose everybody's impression of inequity is mostly shaped by their experience and perhaps the anecdotal experience of a few close friends. The US is by no means a model for how to handle inequities but my experience has been that the US actually does a better job handling and talking about it, at least in the sciences, than do lots of places in Europe. IDK, everything is subjective and depends. Bearing that in mind I would encourage you to approach commenting on topics like this without drawing such a hard line in the sand. Whether or not you meant it, your comment comes off as pretty aggressive and somewhat flame-war-y.
Ansil849 6y ago
Having worked in both Europe and the US, and being from neither of those places, I can absolutely say that the amount of _open_ racism in Europe was significantly greater than in the US. One example out of many: while walking on the street in Denmark, there were two instances of passersby on bicycles yelling racial slurs at me as they drove by.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
I'm sorry, but this is simply ignorant. While it's true that racial oppression is often less in Europe due to better government regulations and social safety nets and whatnot, on a personal level there's still plenty of bigotry and xenophobia, sometimes moreso than the US. I'm an American living in Munich (working for Google actually), go ahead and try telling foreigners here that landlords they're talking to while applying for an apartment treat them the same way as native Germans. The idea is laughable. But you don't have to take my word for it. Here's a poll on whether people in different countries feel that increasing diversity is a positive change. Note that the US comes out ahead of most of the European countries listed, as well as substantially ahead of the European median: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/22/how-people-around-the-world-view-diversity-in-their-countries/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/22/how-people-aro...
djpr 6y ago
Perhaps Europe is better at gender (due to strong social policies), but Europe is't immune to racism. It's not talked about so loudly like in the US, but I've experienced so much low-key, out in the open racism in Europe towards Arabs, Moroccans, Chinese, Africans and so on. I'm not white and while I don't feel like my life is in danger, I know from looks and behavior that I'm not on equal footing with a white European.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  The US has been grappling with these issues for a long time, so it's normal to discuss it there. In Germany, I get more of the feeling of, "oh, we don't have those kinds of problems here". It's basically denialism, like when the Dutch defend Zwarte Piet. Not that you don't see that in the US for some people too, but it seems to be more widespread in many European countries, where the very fact that it hasn't been as widely discussed before leads people to believe that it must not exist.
phroobster 6y ago
Considering America’s obsession with diversity, I find it hard to believe that she would have an easier time in Europe or anywhere else in the world. In America she would receive countless offers purely as a diversity hire. That’s not to say she wouldn’t deserve the offers based on merit, but Silicon Valley has decided that pure ability is less important to hiring than race and gender. That gives her an enormous advantage over white and asian males.
jandrewrogers 6y ago
I'm not sure this is true, having worked in both the US and Europe. The US definitely talks about it more, often to an absurd excess. But I've seen far more real-life examples of casual racism in Europe, stuff that no one would even dream of saying or doing in the US. I'm not hanging out in terrible neighborhoods in either place.
Ansil849 6y ago
> Europe doesn't talk as much about gender and race, but they actually do things as well, while in the USA everyone kinda pats their back for "walking out for Black Lifes Matter" and calls it a day. Please explain how things like 'Zwarte Piet' fit into your narrative? I remember the first time I walked around a town center around the holidays and was accosted by multiple white Europeans in blackface asking for donations.
- Udik 6y ago
  I think Zwarte Piet is racist only when seen through American lenses. Which unfortunately today is the norm, but that doesn't make it more sensible. Zwarte Piet is basically Santa's little helper, as they exist in many traditions. He's black so he's represented by people with their face painted black. The fact that blackface has a connotation of racism in a country where racial laws where abolished only in 1964 has nothing to do with the substance and meaning of a Dutch Christmas tradition.
  - imbnwa 6y ago
    > Zwarte Piet is basically Santa's little helper, as they exist in many traditions. Why is a Moor from pre-Reconquista Spain Santa's little helper?
    - Udik 6y ago
      For the same reason Santa has a beard, lives at the North Pole and passes through the chimneys.
  - Ansil849 6y ago
    And you feel that the fact that the "helper" is black is only racist because it is seen through an American lens?
ljm 6y ago
I don't think this is the right place to make a EU vs. USA point, to be honest. And a Google HQ itself isn't a safe-haven either. I'm not as confident as you are about the author of this post getting an easier life in the EU vs. the US. People escaping the wars the EU/US coalition (in whatever form) have started in the middle east are going to find their way to greener pastures through Turkey, Greece, Italy and be shunned every fucking step of the way, no matter where they settle. But you don't have to be coming from Turkey or be somehow Arabic, or Muslim in appearance, you only have to turn to the UK to see the sheer derision towards Polish people and immigrants further east despite the immense proximity between the countries. Or the attitude to the Romani people across the whole continent. The author is from Palestine. She will suffer from prejudice purely for having a name that ignorant people will connect to Islam or terrorism, and ignorant people who will take Israel's side on the matter without thought. If Dalia Awad has an easier time and avoids issues wherever she is, it's because of what she's had to do for it, not because she chose the EU over the US.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  -and ignorant people who will take Israel's side on the matter without thought. i don't think Israels' side of the matter means persecuting people just because they happen to be Palestinian. That just isn't true.
  - ljm 6y ago
    I took it too far in that respect, and since I can't do a faithful edit on HN to correct that (without erasing the evidence of me being wrong), it doesn't mean the rest of the post is wrong. The EU isn't the paradise the parent poster thinks it is.
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological and nationalistic flamewar, let alone, god help us, both at the same time. Also, would you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...

decentrality 6y ago

Not the time for "Remember the Asymptote" here actually. The world is being taken over by new generations free to break the framework. This type of post is about that. It might also be about spread of corporations into every culture, but here I remember the "Other Conquest" in Central America where it didn't ultimately matter who came into the culture, because the culture held up under force. Both sides changed. I am as excited for Google as for the OP. These moments make the past unreal, and the future becomes about this kind of dream coming true and surpassed.

Udik 6y ago

> You will still face difficulties because of your gender and ethnicity. It's horrible and wrong I find it pretty strange that you can't see the irony of mentioning the issues that she will face because of her gender and ethnicity when she comes from a country where people are shot at by Israeli snipers (183 dead and 6000 shot in the legs, often with permanent disabilities, in 2018-2019 [1]). All with the open, enthusiastic and substantially unchallenged support of your country (no "Palestinian lives matter" protests in the newspapers). Protesting against Israel is even penalized by US state laws [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in...

dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Obviously any mention of Gaza is one step away from major politics, but I don't think it's fair to impose that on the OP.

complexmango 6y ago

Unreal how competitive the virtue signaling is on HN, when the reality is that every major tech company is falling over itself to hire anyone who isn’t A) Male and B) either white or Asian/Indian. What planet do you live on?

dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dang 6y ago

This comment started a flamewar. Please don't do that on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

TulliusCicero 6y ago
I think the comment was very reasonable. Yes, it mentions gender/ethnicity/nationality in a way that is likely to incite some people to attack, but in this case gender and ethnicity/nationality was mentioned in the article as a relevant detail, so I think it's reasonable to include it in a comment. I just feel that it's not reasonable to hold GP responsible for a touchy subject, when the touchy subject is part of the article they're commenting on in the first place. If it came out of nowhere, then obviously that'd be a different story.
- dang 6y ago
  > Yes, it mentions gender/ethnicity/nationality in a way that is likely to incite some people to attack That's the point. From a moderation perspective, comments are at least partly responsible for the subthreads they spawn: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22expected%20value%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... The GP was well-intentioned but unfortunately that's only a necessary condition for not starting a flamewar. It isn't a sufficient one: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=disambiguate%20burden%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... Btw, I don't think it's quite true to say that the touchy subject was part of the article. Even if it were, though, the burden is on commenters not to take an HN thread further into flamewar. This is in the site guidelines: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago