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> We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. We should be a bit more exact. We do not have a underrepresentation problem in tech, but a misrepresentatio

by tomp 5y ago

> We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. We should be a bit more exact. We do not have a underrepresentation problem in tech, but a misrepresentation problem. There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries! But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out.

vmception 5y ago
> autists exhibit a? underrepresentation is clearly a context, and the context is clear, you missed it and chose to assume everyone else is wrong
vmception 5y ago
underrepresentation is clearly a context, and the context is clear, you missed it and chose to assume everyone else is wrong
brayhite 5y ago
The problem being described is an identifiable group feels like they are unwelcome or an otherwise hindered group within the industry. They use the population ratio as a mere point of evidence to argue it’s not just anecdotal. Pointing out what groups _aren’t_ underrepresented is like saying “Yeah, we’ll, all lives matter” in response to “Black lives matter”.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Communication is hard, and having to dance around the topic to be PC makes communication much harder. Your parent was responding to this statement: > We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. And their response - that tech is, in fact, diverse and meritocratic - is a fair response to that statement. I think what OP meant by their statement is that there is a diversity problem _pertaining specifically to people of color_ in tech. Which is true. I think we would all benefit by being a little generous with each other when trying to discuss these sensitive issues.
  - danaris 5y ago
    Saying "We do have plenty of representation of some minorities" is not a refutation of "we have a diversity problem in tech". In fact, it is exactly these kinds of attitudes that directly contribute to perpetuating the diversity problem in tech. And if you think you "have to dance around [a] topic to be PC", then chances are, what you're struggling with is either internalized bias (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc)—or the fact that you're just a bigot yourself who's upset that their bigotry is no longer socially acceptable.
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      I think you are not participating in good faith. > Saying "We do have plenty of representation of some minorities" is not a refutation of "we have a diversity problem in tech". Nobody is trying to refute anything. Your knee jerk reaction is to attack anyone who doesn't 100% agree with you. _You_ are turning a nuanced discussion into an argument. > And if you think you "have to dance around [a] topic to be PC", then chances are, what you're struggling with is either internalized bias (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc)—or the fact that you're just a bigot yourself who's upset that their bigotry is no longer socially acceptable. Again, there is no reason for you to go full offence here. You are deliberately choosing the least charitable interpretation in order to make me the enemy. I was referring to OP's own statement: > This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps I was giving a reason why OP's comment was a little generalized.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    If someone wants to express a complex and nuanced opinion, they should actually explicitly state the nuanced bit. Being generous and giving people the benefit of the doubt at best perpetuates a bad habit which people who are not acting in good faith take advantage of. If you wouldn't feel comfortable expressing an opinion clearly and unambiguously, you probably shouldn't express the opinion at all.
    - bluefirebrand 5y ago
      > Being generous and giving people the benefit of the doubt at best perpetuates a bad habit It's actually a great habit that helps facilitate polite discussions. It's called the principle of charity and unless I'm mistaken it's actually one of the rules of this site.
- andyxor 5y ago
  Well, all lives matter
enumjorge 5y ago
> I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries! And I’m guessing you’re not one of the affected minorities. Otherwise you might see that “the system works for this subset of people so it must be working for everyone” is a flawed and untrue argument, at least in tech. People pushing for more equal treatment of certain minorities didn’t happen out of the blue. There’s a long history of certain subgroups getting passed up during interviews, underpaid, getting passed up for promotions, etc. As an example an ex-colleague had a really hard time landing his first job in the industry. No one would call him back. He wondered whether his Hispanic sounding name was hurting his chances, so he anglicized it and tried again. He said it was like night and day. He found a job soon after. Perhaps you haven’t witnessed something like this first or second hand. I think many companies are butchering their diversity recruiting efforts. They try to “fix” the issue with superficial and inefficient policies. But the problem they’re attempting to address is very real.
- sterlind 5y ago
  a good example of this is the disabled. any of those same brilliant tech workers could acquire a disability at any time - they come from the same group of people, but we seem quite under-represented. and the developer tools themselves tend not to be accessible (I can find literally nothing online, or even internally, about using Visual Studio with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.) it's curious, right?
  - evilpotatoes 5y ago
    It is, but honestly I don't think I could comprehend code that was read out to me. It's very much something I do with the visual parts of my brain in terms of following the logic, etc. I'm not saying that it's impossible, and I don't know what kind of difference something like braille would make. Idk, are there any blind programmers that you know of ? Surely there must be some programmers who have gone blind, I wonder if they just decide to switch careers idk.
    - sterlind 5y ago
      I know of blind programmers but don't know any personally. But I was actually talking about the reverse: dictation. I'm losing use of my arms, and even ergonomic keyboards aren't cutting it. Rehab set me up with a copy of Dragon so I can dictate, but even Microsoft Teams isn't really accessible with it, much less Visual Studio or any kind of terminal. I can see the code just fine, I just can't dictate it.
kenjackson 5y ago
> There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries! How do you get to your conclusion from your statement? Simply having some minority groups overrepresented doesn't mean that the industry is welcoming. It may mean its welcoming to those groups. And people w/o formal education isn't really a minority group. Any more than PhDs in computer science is a minority group that is overrepresented in the tech industry. > But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out. This isn't about political expedience, but its about understanding the context of the discussion. Either you're new to the US or simply are ignorant to the issues of the post.
- tomp 5y ago
  > And people w/o formal education isn't really a minority group. They’re a minority / highly underrepresented in other highly paid professions (law, medicine, finance). That’s something that IMO makes tech a truly exceptional industry! (Technically, women aren’t a “minority” either.)
  - wreath 5y ago
    Rightfully so, at least for law and medicine. What happened to merit? We are all minority and majority at the same time for different groups. And that's ok.
an_opabinia 5y ago
> people without formal education That's an odd way to write, "modern educations for gifted people so fancy that their brand comes from their status at the world's biggest corporations instead of universities, but have nothing in common with the experiences of a typical person who did not receive a formal education.
Zababa 5y ago
That's a good point. I think part of it (at least in tech) is due to the fact that big tech companies focused on hiring the best people from all over the world, which reduces even more the chances of local unfavored minorities. I'm from France and stories of people going to the USA to work at companies like that are common. I don't think I would feel underrepresented as a French if I worked at Google or Facebook or an equivalent. This allows the USA to do a brain drain of global talent, which helps a lot at being the best in the world. On the other hand, that means that the local people are compared against a global market, which makes things harder from them.
AlexandrB 5y ago
> There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries! I don't know if there's a name for this, but as a Russian immigrant this sentence reminds me of how in Russia, because everyone is generally white, people are stereotyped by region. E.g. there are specific stereotypes for Muscovites, people from Siberia, Ukrainians (it was the USSR at the time), etc. The point being that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a fractal process. You can zoom in on a demographic and then subdivide it again and again on various criteria until you come up with a small group of people you can call a minority. But doing so says nothing about why a sizeable demographic like PoC (30% of US population or so) is underrepresented in tech. There are certainly PoC immigrants, "autists", and people without formal education. Why aren't more of them in our "meritocratic" industry?
- tomp 5y ago
  > There are certainly PoC immigrants, "autists", and people without formal education. Why aren't more of them in our "meritocratic" industry? There are, they’re called “Nigerians”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Americans > In 2018, Nigerian-Americans had a median household income of $68,658 - higher than $61,937 for all overall U.S. households. https://www.ft.com/content/ca39b445-442a-4845-a07c-0f5dae5f3460 https://www.ft.com/content/ca39b445-442a-4845-a07c-0f5dae5f3... > Similar Nigerian success is reflected in the UK, where many in a highly-educated diaspora work in financial services, IT, and the legal and medical professions. Admittedly I couldn’t find information about their representation specifically in the US tech industry, so if you do, that would be a strong indicator that the tech industry is racist (which would go against my priors and therefore change my mind), but they’re overrepresented e.g. in medicine, so ... well... for the time being, I’ll keep my prior.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  > The point being that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a fractal process. You can zoom in on a demographic and then subdivide it again and again Or, zooming out, "me against my brothers. Me and my brothers against my cousins. Me and my brothers and my cousins against the stranger".

by tomp 5y ago

vmception 5y ago

> autists exhibit a? underrepresentation is clearly a context, and the context is clear, you missed it and chose to assume everyone else is wrong

vmception 5y ago

underrepresentation is clearly a context, and the context is clear, you missed it and chose to assume everyone else is wrong

brayhite 5y ago

The problem being described is an identifiable group feels like they are unwelcome or an otherwise hindered group within the industry. They use the population ratio as a mere point of evidence to argue it’s not just anecdotal. Pointing out what groups _aren’t_ underrepresented is like saying “Yeah, we’ll, all lives matter” in response to “Black lives matter”.

dahfizz 5y ago
Communication is hard, and having to dance around the topic to be PC makes communication much harder. Your parent was responding to this statement: > We do have a diversity problem in tech, no doubt. And their response - that tech is, in fact, diverse and meritocratic - is a fair response to that statement. I think what OP meant by their statement is that there is a diversity problem _pertaining specifically to people of color_ in tech. Which is true. I think we would all benefit by being a little generous with each other when trying to discuss these sensitive issues.
- danaris 5y ago
  Saying "We do have plenty of representation of some minorities" is not a refutation of "we have a diversity problem in tech". In fact, it is exactly these kinds of attitudes that directly contribute to perpetuating the diversity problem in tech. And if you think you "have to dance around [a] topic to be PC", then chances are, what you're struggling with is either internalized bias (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc)—or the fact that you're just a bigot yourself who's upset that their bigotry is no longer socially acceptable.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    I think you are not participating in good faith. > Saying "We do have plenty of representation of some minorities" is not a refutation of "we have a diversity problem in tech". Nobody is trying to refute anything. Your knee jerk reaction is to attack anyone who doesn't 100% agree with you. _You_ are turning a nuanced discussion into an argument. > And if you think you "have to dance around [a] topic to be PC", then chances are, what you're struggling with is either internalized bias (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc)—or the fact that you're just a bigot yourself who's upset that their bigotry is no longer socially acceptable. Again, there is no reason for you to go full offence here. You are deliberately choosing the least charitable interpretation in order to make me the enemy. I was referring to OP's own statement: > This is dangerous territory to comment on perhaps I was giving a reason why OP's comment was a little generalized.
- jjk166 5y ago
  If someone wants to express a complex and nuanced opinion, they should actually explicitly state the nuanced bit. Being generous and giving people the benefit of the doubt at best perpetuates a bad habit which people who are not acting in good faith take advantage of. If you wouldn't feel comfortable expressing an opinion clearly and unambiguously, you probably shouldn't express the opinion at all.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    > Being generous and giving people the benefit of the doubt at best perpetuates a bad habit It's actually a great habit that helps facilitate polite discussions. It's called the principle of charity and unless I'm mistaken it's actually one of the rules of this site.
andyxor 5y ago
Well, all lives matter

enumjorge 5y ago

> I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries! And I’m guessing you’re not one of the affected minorities. Otherwise you might see that “the system works for this subset of people so it must be working for everyone” is a flawed and untrue argument, at least in tech. People pushing for more equal treatment of certain minorities didn’t happen out of the blue. There’s a long history of certain subgroups getting passed up during interviews, underpaid, getting passed up for promotions, etc. As an example an ex-colleague had a really hard time landing his first job in the industry. No one would call him back. He wondered whether his Hispanic sounding name was hurting his chances, so he anglicized it and tried again. He said it was like night and day. He found a job soon after. Perhaps you haven’t witnessed something like this first or second hand. I think many companies are butchering their diversity recruiting efforts. They try to “fix” the issue with superficial and inefficient policies. But the problem they’re attempting to address is very real.

sterlind 5y ago
a good example of this is the disabled. any of those same brilliant tech workers could acquire a disability at any time - they come from the same group of people, but we seem quite under-represented. and the developer tools themselves tend not to be accessible (I can find literally nothing online, or even internally, about using Visual Studio with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.) it's curious, right?
- evilpotatoes 5y ago
  It is, but honestly I don't think I could comprehend code that was read out to me. It's very much something I do with the visual parts of my brain in terms of following the logic, etc. I'm not saying that it's impossible, and I don't know what kind of difference something like braille would make. Idk, are there any blind programmers that you know of ? Surely there must be some programmers who have gone blind, I wonder if they just decide to switch careers idk.
  - sterlind 5y ago
    I know of blind programmers but don't know any personally. But I was actually talking about the reverse: dictation. I'm losing use of my arms, and even ergonomic keyboards aren't cutting it. Rehab set me up with a copy of Dragon so I can dictate, but even Microsoft Teams isn't really accessible with it, much less Visual Studio or any kind of terminal. I can see the code just fine, I just can't dictate it.

kenjackson 5y ago

> There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries! How do you get to your conclusion from your statement? Simply having some minority groups overrepresented doesn't mean that the industry is welcoming. It may mean its welcoming to those groups. And people w/o formal education isn't really a minority group. Any more than PhDs in computer science is a minority group that is overrepresented in the tech industry. > But those aren’t the “right” minorities, and it’s not politically expedient to point them out. This isn't about political expedience, but its about understanding the context of the discussion. Either you're new to the US or simply are ignorant to the issues of the post.

tomp 5y ago
> And people w/o formal education isn't really a minority group. They’re a minority / highly underrepresented in other highly paid professions (law, medicine, finance). That’s something that IMO makes tech a truly exceptional industry! (Technically, women aren’t a “minority” either.)
- wreath 5y ago
  Rightfully so, at least for law and medicine. What happened to merit? We are all minority and majority at the same time for different groups. And that's ok.

an_opabinia 5y ago

> people without formal education That's an odd way to write, "modern educations for gifted people so fancy that their brand comes from their status at the world's biggest corporations instead of universities, but have nothing in common with the experiences of a typical person who did not receive a formal education.

Zababa 5y ago

That's a good point. I think part of it (at least in tech) is due to the fact that big tech companies focused on hiring the best people from all over the world, which reduces even more the chances of local unfavored minorities. I'm from France and stories of people going to the USA to work at companies like that are common. I don't think I would feel underrepresented as a French if I worked at Google or Facebook or an equivalent. This allows the USA to do a brain drain of global talent, which helps a lot at being the best in the world. On the other hand, that means that the local people are compared against a global market, which makes things harder from them.

AlexandrB 5y ago

> There’s a lot of minorities that are well-, even over-represented - e.g. Asians, Russian immigrants, autists, people without formal education, … I’m guessing it’s one of the most welcoming and meritocratic industries! I don't know if there's a name for this, but as a Russian immigrant this sentence reminds me of how in Russia, because everyone is generally white, people are stereotyped by region. E.g. there are specific stereotypes for Muscovites, people from Siberia, Ukrainians (it was the USSR at the time), etc. The point being that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a fractal process. You can zoom in on a demographic and then subdivide it again and again on various criteria until you come up with a small group of people you can call a minority. But doing so says nothing about why a sizeable demographic like PoC (30% of US population or so) is underrepresented in tech. There are certainly PoC immigrants, "autists", and people without formal education. Why aren't more of them in our "meritocratic" industry?

tomp 5y ago
> There are certainly PoC immigrants, "autists", and people without formal education. Why aren't more of them in our "meritocratic" industry? There are, they’re called “Nigerians”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Americans > In 2018, Nigerian-Americans had a median household income of $68,658 - higher than $61,937 for all overall U.S. households. https://www.ft.com/content/ca39b445-442a-4845-a07c-0f5dae5f3460 https://www.ft.com/content/ca39b445-442a-4845-a07c-0f5dae5f3... > Similar Nigerian success is reflected in the UK, where many in a highly-educated diaspora work in financial services, IT, and the legal and medical professions. Admittedly I couldn’t find information about their representation specifically in the US tech industry, so if you do, that would be a strong indicator that the tech industry is racist (which would go against my priors and therefore change my mind), but they’re overrepresented e.g. in medicine, so ... well... for the time being, I’ll keep my prior.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
> The point being that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a fractal process. You can zoom in on a demographic and then subdivide it again and again Or, zooming out, "me against my brothers. Me and my brothers against my cousins. Me and my brothers and my cousins against the stranger".