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The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. It seems reasonable that a subset o

by badRNG 5y ago

The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. It seems reasonable that a subset of the culture that produced the work environment at Blizzard [1] or has historically rallied behind alt-right thought leaders would also be here on HN. Talk to any woman software engineer, I 100% guarantee they have multiple stories about dealing with a...specific type of guy. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22823991/activision-blizzard-sexual-harassment-victim-press-conference https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22823991/activision-blizz...

CoastalCoder 5y ago
> The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc. But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and I just started working with tech/SV companies as that happened.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  D&I is definitely commonplace across the corporate world, and similar opposition is too. My brother and sister once worked at the same company for a while - my brother complained that everyone wanted to promote women and he was disadvantaged, while my sister got groped in a taxi by a colleague and was told by her male manager that if she wanted to get promoted she should make sure senior managers knew that she didn't want to have kids (not actually the case).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- VictorPath 5y ago
  > My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies. Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc. It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies. Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc. It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc. Is it? Keep in mind that the target hires for these companies are grads from serious CS programs. Are CS programs 12% blacks? Were they 15 years ago (when a now L5 graduated)? It's like setting shop in Puerto Rico and favoring whites because, since Puerto Rico is part of the US and the US is ~55% white you should have that same proportion in your business. The real question is, and that's an uncomfortable one, is why aren't we seeing enough minorities in serious CS programs.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Puerto Rico identified at 70% white in the 2010 census, which might add some unnecessary complexity to your example.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    I think saying that "diversity is not prevalent at all" at these companies is being simplistic. Google's technical workforce is 50% white and 50% racial minority [1]. Facebook is similar. Granted, most of the latter is Asian and not Black or Latin. On my team we have one Anglo American, one Cuban (me, and I consider myself white as my family is mostly Spanish, and I'm typically regarded as such by society), one Vietnamese, and one Indian. Are you really going to say that there's no diversity in this group because we lack representation from two specific continents? The fact that everyone is from different countries, thousands of miles apart isn't diversity enough? Unless "diversity" entirely a function the presence of people of African and South American descent, I fail to see how Google, Facebook, and my team are not diverse. https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/#methodology-note https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/#metho...
- dogleash 5y ago
  >I'm surprised to hear that. It's just an artifact of hacks trying to take a culture's temperature without going outside. Tech adjacent is only notable for being full of people who will talk about it in professional areas online. If someones circles weren't internet-heavy before Eternal iPhone September, their politics don't get associated with their circles. They're just nameless or might as well be nameless wrongthinkers on $social_media_platform and/or not posting their views to social media in the first place.
hcurtiss 5y ago
This is totally wrong. At private law firms it's the tech clients more than any other hammering diversity quotas (literal quotas) in the racial composition of their outside counsel.
- badRNG 5y ago
  I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences. I know many women software engineers who've felt deeply, uniquely uncomfortable in tech spaces. I have yet to have a woman software engineer friend who hasn't had one of these experiences, and the idea that the tech industry is uniquely hostile to diversity efforts doesn't seem to be all that uncommon or controversial.
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    > I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences. Actually, to me this shows that these discussions are really productive. Because through them we realize that perhaps we're working from different assumptions / data. That's a great stepping stone to understanding each others' views. (Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your point.)
Dig1t 5y ago
I don't think anyone on this site will argue that the culture at Blizzard was good or normal, in fact most engineers working in the Bay will tell you that the culture at their company is extreme in the opposite direction. I've worked in FAANG for the last 5 years in the Bay and can tell you that in my experience I could not even fathom how a culture like Blizzard was allowed to exist, my everyday experience has just been so extremely different. For example _all_ (and I mean literally every single one) corporate communication from the company to employees has to do with diversity/inclusion issues for at least 50% of its content.That's every newsletter, every speech, all the internal organizations communications, even things that are supposed to be technical in nature. Women and minority candidates are already given a more lenient interview experience as well as an abundance of communication that they are valued and welcome. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's just that most peoples' lived experience working in this industry is nothing like Blizzard's. I think what you see on this site mostly is more of a moderate "hey can we chill out a little?" sort of response rather than an extremist alt right type of thing, though it may come across differently depending on how frustrated that person is. And yeah it can be frustrating to always feel like you are being lumped in with the group of oppressors and or bigots no matter what you do. TL;DR I don't think most people are racist or evil.
onphonenow 5y ago
It's so weird (being in the bay area) to hear that tech companies are not pushing diversity stuff but perhaps chicken farms in the south are? Can you even do the types of strikes / walkouts that the tech workers do on these issues in the south and keep your jobs? Ie, the associates of an energy law firm in texas do a walkout over the lack of action by their firm on climate change?

by badRNG 5y ago

CoastalCoder 5y ago

> The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc. But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and I just started working with tech/SV companies as that happened.

lazyasciiart 5y ago
D&I is definitely commonplace across the corporate world, and similar opposition is too. My brother and sister once worked at the same company for a while - my brother complained that everyone wanted to promote women and he was disadvantaged, while my sister got groped in a taxi by a colleague and was told by her male manager that if she wanted to get promoted she should make sure senior managers knew that she didn't want to have kids (not actually the case).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
VictorPath 5y ago
> My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies. Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc. It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies. Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc. It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc. Is it? Keep in mind that the target hires for these companies are grads from serious CS programs. Are CS programs 12% blacks? Were they 15 years ago (when a now L5 graduated)? It's like setting shop in Puerto Rico and favoring whites because, since Puerto Rico is part of the US and the US is ~55% white you should have that same proportion in your business. The real question is, and that's an uncomfortable one, is why aren't we seeing enough minorities in serious CS programs.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Puerto Rico identified at 70% white in the 2010 census, which might add some unnecessary complexity to your example.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  I think saying that "diversity is not prevalent at all" at these companies is being simplistic. Google's technical workforce is 50% white and 50% racial minority [1]. Facebook is similar. Granted, most of the latter is Asian and not Black or Latin. On my team we have one Anglo American, one Cuban (me, and I consider myself white as my family is mostly Spanish, and I'm typically regarded as such by society), one Vietnamese, and one Indian. Are you really going to say that there's no diversity in this group because we lack representation from two specific continents? The fact that everyone is from different countries, thousands of miles apart isn't diversity enough? Unless "diversity" entirely a function the presence of people of African and South American descent, I fail to see how Google, Facebook, and my team are not diverse. https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/#methodology-note https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/#metho...
dogleash 5y ago
>I'm surprised to hear that. It's just an artifact of hacks trying to take a culture's temperature without going outside. Tech adjacent is only notable for being full of people who will talk about it in professional areas online. If someones circles weren't internet-heavy before Eternal iPhone September, their politics don't get associated with their circles. They're just nameless or might as well be nameless wrongthinkers on $social_media_platform and/or not posting their views to social media in the first place.

hcurtiss 5y ago

This is totally wrong. At private law firms it's the tech clients more than any other hammering diversity quotas (literal quotas) in the racial composition of their outside counsel.

badRNG 5y ago
I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences. I know many women software engineers who've felt deeply, uniquely uncomfortable in tech spaces. I have yet to have a woman software engineer friend who hasn't had one of these experiences, and the idea that the tech industry is uniquely hostile to diversity efforts doesn't seem to be all that uncommon or controversial.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  > I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences. Actually, to me this shows that these discussions are really productive. Because through them we realize that perhaps we're working from different assumptions / data. That's a great stepping stone to understanding each others' views. (Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your point.)

Dig1t 5y ago

I don't think anyone on this site will argue that the culture at Blizzard was good or normal, in fact most engineers working in the Bay will tell you that the culture at their company is extreme in the opposite direction. I've worked in FAANG for the last 5 years in the Bay and can tell you that in my experience I could not even fathom how a culture like Blizzard was allowed to exist, my everyday experience has just been so extremely different. For example _all_ (and I mean literally every single one) corporate communication from the company to employees has to do with diversity/inclusion issues for at least 50% of its content.That's every newsletter, every speech, all the internal organizations communications, even things that are supposed to be technical in nature. Women and minority candidates are already given a more lenient interview experience as well as an abundance of communication that they are valued and welcome. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's just that most peoples' lived experience working in this industry is nothing like Blizzard's. I think what you see on this site mostly is more of a moderate "hey can we chill out a little?" sort of response rather than an extremist alt right type of thing, though it may come across differently depending on how frustrated that person is. And yeah it can be frustrating to always feel like you are being lumped in with the group of oppressors and or bigots no matter what you do. TL;DR I don't think most people are racist or evil.

onphonenow 5y ago

It's so weird (being in the bay area) to hear that tech companies are not pushing diversity stuff but perhaps chicken farms in the south are? Can you even do the types of strikes / walkouts that the tech workers do on these issues in the south and keep your jobs? Ie, the associates of an energy law firm in texas do a walkout over the lack of action by their firm on climate change?