24 ms·

Racism in Tech

185 points by emwa 15y ago

nubela 15y ago
Well, I'm not from the valley, but I've heard that in SV, its almost as if 50% of the population is made of asians, what about that?
- jaryd 15y ago
  terrifying
- davidw 15y ago
  > I've heard that in SV, its almost as if 50% of the population is made of asians, what about that? Mostly just some spare arms and legs, but that's ok, because programmers don't take off their shirts very often, so the effect isn't that noticeable.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
kahawe 15y ago
This story is shocking and I hate to nit-pick here but > Just to remind all of us that racism is alive and well in the US and in tech. [...] The customer site is a government owned military installation. This doesn't make it any "better", actually much worse, but this is not "in tech". What I find both shocking and curious about racism is that it is a much more widespread problem throughout the world, not only limited to white racism - there is very strong racism throughout history in a lot of different cultures and is still prevalent there today. Why do humans even care about where someone was born or where they are from? Where and why did racism start at all?
- technoslut 15y ago
  >This doesn't make it any "better", actually much worse, but this is not "in tech". Technically it is because it's in their profession. If you're involved in major tech company there is a likelihood that you're going to have to deal with the gov't. >What I find both shocking and curious about racism is that it is a much more widespread problem... Many, if not most people, need to feel some sense of superiority over another individual. It starts with race but does not end there for them. Had Nazi Germany removed or killed Jews, gays, socialists, Christians, etc. they would have found some reason to hate each other.
  - kahawe 15y ago
    Nazi Germany was doing this on a whole different level and for different reasons... in their own twisted way, they were actually believing they were doing humanity a favor by cleansing it. There were even scientists there backing all their "race theories". So, that specific rabbit hole goes much, MUCH deeper than you think.
- ericd 15y ago
  I think there's probably an evolutionary origin - genes that compel their owners to look out for others with the same genes over those who are unlikely to share genes were likely to be more successful overall in our more violent past. Now selection favors those who are able to work well with others of all races, so perhaps it's fading.
  - zootar 15y ago
    Why do you think selection favors "those who are able to work well with others of all races"?
    - ericd 15y ago
      Because being a racist nowadays tends to cause one to be marginalized by others, and not be as successful. Today's business environment favors the person who can work well with anyone.
      - zootar 15y ago
        Today's business environment does not exert any evolutionary pressure on the human species.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  There's a strong correlation between genes and memes (you tend to pass your ideas on to your offspring). In absence of anything else to go on, appearance is indicative of ideas held, making rapid intellectual filtering of "us vs. them" easy using physical characteristics. Yeah, it's wrong in so many ways, yet the correlation is enough for humans to develop it as a survival mechanism early on - important and persuasive when odds are "they" are going to kill you for limited food & resources in preservation & procreation of genes & memes.
- xibernetik 15y ago
  It started when speciation occurred -- if something looks "different" enough to you, you are not going to be attracted to it or treat it like one of your own. That's been around a lot longer than higher thinking, so in a way, it's been inherent all along. Logically, we might not care, we might not want to care, but there's now research that's pointing out (the studies have been too small so far for real conclusions to be drawn) there's a strong possibility it's wired into our brain at a subconscious level. http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/24/they-all-look-the-same-how-racism-works-neurologically/ http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/24/they-all-look-the-same... https://webapps.utsc.utoronto.ca/ose/story.php?id=2135 https://webapps.utsc.utoronto.ca/ose/story.php?id=2135 Before someone accuses me of justifying racism: I don't think racism is justifiable, but I think this research is important. If we understand the physiological causes, we can consciously make an effort to avoid being biased.
d3x 15y ago
This entire issue is crap. I am a black programmer... I have no college education, came from single family home blah blah womp womp. I have launched 10+ projects for clients this year alone. I have 1 failed contract where I left because it just didn't work out. When I had success it was not because I was black and when I failed it was not because I was black. Both when I have succeeded and when I have failed was never been treated like anything but an equal by my peers. I personally thing that the NewMe accelerator is total crap and should not exit. What strategic advantage comes from going to a "black" incubator? I dont have a black startup because I dont have all black customers. The one thing this has managed to accomplish is to distract people from finding and solving huge problems and instead focus on some BS issue that has no value. My only advice to "black" and other entrepreneurs is shut up, go code and make something awesome. The rest will take care of itself. This entire issue is being exploited to get attention for Angela Benton and her new accelerator. I dont think its fair to cast a shadow over the awesome people I have had the opportunity to work with over the last 12 years in this field simply because someone wants to get some press at the expense of others. ... now back to coding ...
- watty 15y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if racism in the tech industry was more towards Indians.
  - notauser 15y ago
    There's certainly a lot of dislike for working with people who have strong accents, and the most commercially successful Indian technologists I have met have been the ones with the most westernised mode of speech. Unfortunately some people take a fairly legitimate gripe (lack of easy communication) and pre-judge an entire group rather than investigating the skills and attributes of a specific individual.
    - dholowiski 15y ago
      I worked for 13 years doing phone based technical support. I can tell you that people with a strong accent are often seen as 'stupid'. I worked with several Indian co-workers and it wasn't unusual to have calls transferred to me (no accent) because people didn't want to talk to them. As a team lead I got to listen in to those calls, and it's amazing how badly one human being can treat another. There's the passive aggressive person who just keeps saying "i don't understand you". There's the person who says things like "Where am I talking to" "are you in india?" "Can I speak to someone from Canada" (we were all in Canada, same country as the callers). Then there's the people who would just rip in to the agent, questioning their intelligence, yelling at them and much more. On the other hand, we would often have people call in who had strong accents, and the tech support agents would often judge the callers as 'dumb'. I earned a reputation of being a genius, not because I was a genius but because I'd actually listen to people and try to understand them (sometimes they were hard to understand) rather than being an asshole to them. In short - it was very common for people on both ends of the phone to rationalize racisim with a hard to understand accent.
vegai 15y ago
Cheap more probably equals unskilled. That's all it boils down to.
watty 15y ago
So one of their customers is racist and now racism is "alive and well". Seems like they were living in a bubble if they thought racism no longer existed.
k33n 15y ago
I think racism is about as far from a relevant issue as you can get. Honestly, the people who get bent out of shape about it are just as backwards as the few people who are still actually racist. Edit: Since davidw is claiming that I think victims of racism are backwards, I'd like to clarify. I think that all victims of crimes and discrimination should be treated with respect and dignity by polite society (which far outnumber racists). It's my opinion that getting upset about a rude military contractor (like the one in this article) is backwards and is giving his point of view way more attention than it deserves. He should be disregarded entirely because his worldview is irrelevant. This issue clearly touched some nerves.
- davidw 15y ago
  > I think racism is about as far from a relevant issue as you can get. Honestly, the people who get bent out of shape about it are just as backwards as the few people who are still actually racist. Downvoted for trolling. Equating the victims of, and/or people upset about racism, which is indeed an ever present factor in the US and elsewhere, to those who actively perpetrate such backwards ideas, can be nothing less than either the fruit of a sick mind, or someone playing a troll in the internet.
  - k33n 15y ago
    Where I chose to clearly express my opinion, you chose to be extremely rude and dismissive. Who's really trolling?
    - davidw 15y ago
      My opinion is that a white guy (you: https://twitter.com/#!/mikekeen https://twitter.com/#!/mikekeen ) saying that people getting upset about racism are 'backwards' is either mind-boggling insensitive or out and out trolling. Nothing rude about it - that's how I see it. I can accept people saying "luckily, in this day and age, I think it's not so much of a problem" as something up for debate, but to state that those angered by discrimination are "backwards" and "just like the racists" is one of the most vile comments I have ever read here.
ctdonath 15y ago
One anecdote does not constitute "...is alive and well".
swah 15y ago
A & B should either confront the guy or leave. Writing blog posts is not how this ends, unfortunately.
wccrawford 15y ago
Racism exists everywhere. In fact, prejudice of all kinds does. And probably always will. I worked a company where the employees felt it was okay to make racist or sexist jokes with the person in the room, so long as the person didn't appear to mind. It made me terribly uncomfortable, but short of going to management, nothing I said or did mattered. (I didn't make an ass of myself, though. If the person isn't going to stand up for themselves, with me already standing, I'm not going to risk my job for them.) Maybe those people didn't really mind. I know I don't mind when my ancestry is made fun of, so long as it's along typical stereotype lines. (Pointed attacks on my particular ancestors or family are another matter.) I think we, as a species, have a long way to go in regards to dealing with each other. We have somehow never learned to treat each other with basic respect.
- wpietri 15y ago
  Maybe they didn't mind. But I've definitely heard friends in various non-dominant groups tell stories about the racist, sexist, or anti-gay bias they've listened to politely because they liked their jobs more than they liked being honest about the fact that they thought their co-workers were irredeemable assholes. No way to tell, really. I will say, though, that the experience is very different when you're part of the dominant group. As a white male in the US, when people make jokes about some portion of my mongrel ancestry, it really doesn't matter. But when I was living in South America, jokes about Americans had a whole new edge to them. Sometimes they really were funny and welcome. But sometimes they weren't because the person really had something against gringos. That was at times really uncomfortable, and I occasionally wondered what it meant for my physical safety. I still laughed either way, though. Ha! Ha ha!
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    I found it hard to believe they didn't mind, even if I know I wouldn't. In 1 case, I was sure the person minded, but he told me repeated that he didn't. This person was an excellent coder, and ended up quitting a couple years later. The quit was probably for some of the other working conditions that didn't go well with his personality (he couldn't say 'no', they kept asking unreasonable things) but I think the whole package mattered. I also see your point about it mattering more when you aren't part of the majority, or if you felt there might be a threat to your person.
wpietri 15y ago
For those looking for a more nuanced understanding of this than the eternal American fight about whether "X is/is not racist", go take some of the tests at Harvard's Project Implicit: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ When I took them, I was pretty confident that I was, as a well-meaning nerd, beyond any sort of racial bias. I was wrong. Although I am deeply opposed to racism consciously, various bits of racial bias lurked in my wiring. It's sort of like how even a very smart person can have plenty of dumb ideas or dumb reactions, especially on topics they haven't paid attention to. Since I took those tests, I've been much more aware of those biases, which a) lets me minimize the effects, b) helps me undermine them over time, and c) has made me much better able to see the subtle effects of racial bias generally.
- thwest 15y ago
  I would ask people not to take the test immediately, but rather first spend time on the authors' distinction about implicit racial attitudes. Racial bias in this sense is entirely different than overt racism, but still as important. Admitting that you've unintentionally learned the statistical biases present in our culture is not admitting you're a racist. When you're ok with that statement (which can be difficult given the charged USian history of race!), take the test.
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
    USian Stop it.
- AllenKids 15y ago
  Funny I did swimmingly in racial test showing no bias at all when the exit questions reminded me of my strong fear for big black man in a dark alley. Then again, I'm Chinese, which means I'm a bit racist against all non-chink people.
Jun8 15y ago
I am fed up with all the bla bla around this issue. Really. Look, if you think there is racism in the tech field (let us define this narrowly as prejudices against blacks; prejudices against Indians and Chinese are, I think, a bit different), stop writing cute, angry blog posts; instead write about what the solution is and what you are doing about it. That there are too few blacks in the tech industry is a fact. The reason is actually very simple (as others have commented): African-Americans are underrepresented in CS, EE, and other tech fields. This is similar to the issue of the dearth of women in these fields. Now, the reasons for this are complex and are not easy to solve. So, instead, while waiting for the root causes and biases to go away, be pragmatic and solve the problem at hand. The solution is easy, but is not affirmative action or specialized VCs or quotas: It's as simple as increasing the demand of black (or women) programmers. How to do this? I am working as a software mentor for two FIRST Robotics Teams in Chicago South Side, these teams are almost all black and this is their first exposure to programming (unfortunately, we have to use C++ for first exposure!) So, I alone have the power to introduce 5-10 black programmers to tech community! Assume I have 20% success, which is really lousy, that means 1-2 programmers. If 1K people do this, that's 1K more black programmers on the market. Another example: Finding that the teams on the Apps for Metro Chicago challenge were all-male, my friend Pallavi quickly assembled an all-female team of college students, who won the second prize (http://www.metroplanning.org/news-events/blog-post/6262 http://www.metroplanning.org/news-events/blog-post/6262) and were featured in the local press. So, same as starting a company: you don't need anybody's permission to start helping kids to solve this problem.
- dholowiski 15y ago
  "prejudices against Indians and Chinese are, I think, a bit different" - Please explain.
  - kchodorow 15y ago
    He's saying that black people and women are under-represented in CS. I think most people would agree that Indians and Chinese people are not underrepresented, but also can face prejudice.
  - 15y ago
bdunbar 15y ago
Over the course of the three days, the customer made endless racial and ethnic slurs directed at B. Customer is a 'government owned military installation'. What branch? What site? Was the customer military or civilian contractor? The military is [1] _death_ on racisim, sexism, favoritism. Just does not happen. When it does it gets squashed. While the military one thing, the individual service members are another. It's a very masculine culture, not unheard of for best friends to insult each other with words, phrases, etc that would sound blisteringly insulting to an outsider. But which are understood by the participants to be 'funnin' around'. I conjecture: could 'B' have been hooked up with a guy who was trying to bond and it mis-fired? [1] My last direct experience was 1993, when I separated. I have several friends who are enlisted, my step-son has been in the army since 1999.
- JabavuAdams 15y ago
  > The military is [1] _death_ on racisim, sexism, favoritism Officially, yes, but that's probably BS. This reminds me of two anecdotes about the IDF (not to make this about Israel -- it's just the data that I have): 1) One friend assured me that any soldier acting improperly would be disciplined immediately, as the IDF had very high standards, etc. etc. 2) Another friend used to tell me stories about his IDF stint and how he and his friends would get high on guard duty all the time. So ... just because you were in a military, doesn't mean that you know what's going down with everyone. Also, the attitude that you evidence in your post makes it less likely that you'll know the truth, because you'll be more resistant to contrary evidence. Treat truth as stochastic/unknown. We don't know the truth. Now ask "what practices or attitudes will tend to help me discover what is true? What practices or attitudes will tend to obscure the truth?" The attitude "nope that can't be happening because organization X is so disciplined" obscures the truth. Especially in an organization that emphasizes loyalty and duty.
  - endtime 15y ago
    The IDF, which has strengths and weaknesses, is not the US military. The main relevant difference here is that the IDF is composed of every 18 year old in the country (pretty much), whereas the US military is only composed of those who want to be in the military. The kind of kids who will get high on guard duty in Israel won't ever join the military in the US.
sigzero 15y ago
Racism or just prejudice?
- j45 15y ago
  Depends if you're giving or receiving it, I guess.
sharkman 15y ago
Even inside YC. I remember at the YC NYC meetup, the guy on stage in red sweater (forgot his name) was saying "I was so lucky to be born as white male in a middle class family"; I was like, WTH, so born as non-white or female is unlucky?!
- jhamburger 15y ago
  Like Louis CK said in a stand-up routine- "I'm not saying white people are better, but being white is clearly better." i.e., you're not likely to ever have an opportunity denied to you in life due to your skin color, or gender.
- j45 15y ago
  He might have meant it's easier for him, which still might not be ok with me.
- sharkman 15y ago
  wow, i got voted down by several people because I pointed out there's a racist in YC?
j45 15y ago
Sad outcomes occur when some people get their education about the world from tv and hearsay. When anyone takes a minute to turn a stranger into a person they fight racism, or any -ism by delivering social proof of how to behave.
vrode 15y ago
I think the correct term is 'race conditions'.
kstenerud 15y ago
Yeah, some people are genuinely racist, but the fact is that most aren't. What most people incorrectly call "racism" is actually culture fit issues. When someone's culture is sufficiently different from yours, it becomes enough of an unknown to engender fear. And fear due to the unknown leads to paranoid thought, usually at the subconscious level. For example, if you get a job candidate whose demeanor screams "from the hood", you'll definitely pass him/her over. The last thing you want is for them to start a fight over "respect", or bring some "friends" over to rob the place (deliberate hyperbole, yes, but this is how the subconscious works). Similarly, anyone who has had much contact with Indian culture will know that fraud and corruption are tolerated far more readily than they are in the West. This means that you need to be on your guard lest the person of that culture starts behaving as if in that culture. I've seen it happen enough times in my own experiences, so this is not just idle speculation. This is also why second gen people have a much easier time of it. You may argue that you shouldn't "sell out" on your culture just to get ahead ("acting white", for example). I would argue that in remaining "true to your roots", you hobble yourself by deliberately refusing to make it easier for the majority to accept you. I've lived on both sides of this issue. I've seen actually racist people, but far more often I've seen people who are afraid of the cultural divide, and move to protect themselves accordingly. I've also seen people change their own culture to better match the one of the majority, and they made FAR better lives for themselves than those who refused to do so. Do racism and sexism exist? Of course they do. And in the rare cases where you DO encounter the real thing, it is your duty as a civilized person to put a stop to it. But when it's merely a culture issue, raising a stink about it will do nothing more than stir up resentment.
- kstenerud 15y ago
  It's always telling when people downvote, yet have no rebuttal.
  - JulianMiller520 15y ago
    People don't like to argue with people they deem incapable of understanding the topic at hand. I hit your hyperbole and read no further because I deemed your take unintelligent and poorly argued. Hence #downvote
zanek 15y ago
I'm black and a software engineer for 14 yrs (college degree), and although I know there are racist people out there, I've never encountered any even once in 14 years across a ton of companies (startups, fortune 500 companies, etc) If you can produce something of value, no one gives a shit about your race. The hundreds of people I've met in tech have been race blind as far as i could tell. I think the tech industry in general is a meritocracy from my experience. I would never join a race based startup, as that seems quite lame to me. Then again, perhaps I'm an outlier as I think race based anything is stupid (BET, etc). We're like 99.9% the same yet people think a chemical within their skin alters something intrinsically about us. Absurd It really comes down to poor role models in the black community, poor education & not enough resources. Why would anyone care about your race if you are producing. I think racist people in tech would be the exception, not the rule.
powertower 15y ago
> Especially at a government facility. In the United States. In 2011. In the tech business. Humans have accumulated (recorded) vast sums of knowledge, and have become more efficient at building things using that knowledge, but human nature has not "evolved". The human brain has remained about the same for the last 20,000 years (give or take a few thousand years). There have been no quantum leaps here. We are exactly what we were 10 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, etc. That's the real problem... That people think that somehow they are "evolved" because the year is 2011. And hence the segmentation begins again... Always seeing your-group as different from other-group, segmenting everything. A person that pretends that they are not racist, is one that pretend that they are better than the racist... The problem is they are doing the exact same thing as the racist, just on a higher level.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  Our DNA is the same. We are better fed and generally healthier (at least since the agricultural revolution), most of us are raised better than your average peasant 1000 years ago, mothers know not to drink during pregnancy (this is a big one, by the way), etc.
maxklein 15y ago
I really don't see how racism in tech is relevant, because a) Nobody knows or cares who wrote a piece of software, because 99.9% of the time, the customer never sees the photo of the author b) If your software is super-hot and gaining a lot of traction and people are smelling the money, they will not care what colour you are c) For those tiny number of people who don't have traction and want other peoples money, the colour of your skin may give you a disadvantage with some particular money givers, but it will give you an advantage with other money givers In general, for the success of your product to be affected by peoples prejudices against you or the colour of your skin, you would have to belong to a very unlucky 99.99%. If that happens, well, bad luck, try again. That's what entrepreneurship is all about, isn't it?
- drhayes9 15y ago
  He's not talking about products, he's talking about work environments.
scarmig 15y ago
Just to get it out of the way: no one who has ever posted on Hacker News or has ever been even slightly associated with the Bay Area tech scene is the least bit racist. We are all 100.0000% meritocratic, and when we popped out of the womb we were instantly the most color-blind people in history. This is a given, and anyone who would say otherwise is a whiner who's just too lazy and stupid to code. (This, by the way, is also how we know that people here are not at all sexist or homophobic and have highly progressive views on gender. We're just that good.) Now that that's out of the way, we can talk about the role of race in tech. I think it'd be useful to divide it into four categories. 1) Race as felt through through social structure. Minorities (defined as AA, Native American, and Latinos) have less access to educational resources than other ethnicities. This is a broader social injustice, and tech can't be held responsible for it. Tech is also hard at work to help mitigate this problem, though with varying levels of success. 2) Race as felt through choice of majors. Minorities disproportionately choose not to major in techy fields. This is in large part due to a combination of 1) and 3) (to follow). Even to the extent that minorities do have access to high quality education, it tends to be more liberal arts and non-techy. Minorities may also perceive that the tech scene tends to be less friendly toward them. 3) Race as felt through network effects. This, I think, is probably the biggest cause of the recent complaints. Everyone knows here how valuable having their social community overlap at least somewhat with the tech community is. Knowing someone who knows someone is how you get jobs and get involved in new projects. And you learn a whole lot through these informal interactions (having no CS background, I only learned about Lisp on a date). People whom we know are usually of similar racial and class backgrounds. Not through any conscious decisions, but because of shared interests and the fact that people make friends through other nodes in their own social networks, nodes that have the same tendency of showing race and class similarity. 4) Racist prejudice. Examples of this are the null set, because no one here is at all racist. In the end, though, 3) builds off of itself. You start out as an isolated island, and if you don't break out of it you'll never achieve your full potential. Once you do get pulled into it, though, the sky's the limit. The question we should be asking is how to deal with 3).
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  Great comment. I love a good, nuanced look at racial issues. Generally smart people seem unable to use their analytical skills when it comes to race or other social issues. It's disappointing.
drieddust 15y ago
I know hacker news crowd is different and most you have not worked in traditional companies so to those who will say racism is practiced by minority, here is my one of the favorite anecdote. I understand anecdote is not data but I have a personal collection of self-experienced anecdotes ,spanning multiple years and client. I work as an outsourced contracted consultant on a client which outsources to 2 outsourcing firms A(Indian) and B(Native). I work for firm A. Client had a seemingly untraceable problem which was not solved for more than a year.CTO personally used to come to my manager’s desk and express his frustration of not able to resolve the issues. End users were constantly complaining to him. So task force was prepared to which used to meet every day for hours and talk in circles with no resolution. They were not even able to devise an attack plan. I have some reputation for tackling this kind of stuff so they persuaded my managers and started inviting me to their meetings. After couple of days of investigation I was able to devise a plan and find out the root cause and resolution to the problem. Actual was hilarious and sad at the same time. It was a bigger issue with overall design of the datacentres which was originally designed by vendor B. Millions were wasted because someone failed to understand how TCP/IP layers interact with each other. I know communication is important so I kept everyone updated and prepared a detailed analysis in doc and ppt format. The moment my analysis was out, guess what Vendor B tried to blame internet for not behaving to make his solution work and client rallied behind him. When I shot down his bullshit argument , me and my firm were taken out of loop and separate meetings with vendor B started to propose potentials solutions. After couple of months of proposing bullshit they again came to us and we provided the solution. Guess what ? We were out of the loop again and solution implementation started by hiring a third vendor C(Native again!!) along with vendor B.
suivix 15y ago
One of my coworkers is black and I don't see any racism here.
Aloisius 15y ago
Frankly, I expect that there is far more discrimination against foreign born Indians and Chinese in Silicon Valley than there are against black Americans. I've seen it. I don't believe it to be racism since it is rarely directed towards anyone who was born in the US regardless of their descent. I think there is a very real sense of lack of shared cultural values and overlapping social circles. During my stint at a certain mid-sized company in Mountain View that happened to hire quite a few H1Bs, I noticed that engineering teams were split. You had a tight knit group of people who were American/Western European and sometimes Japanese and then you had foreign-born Indians and Chinese who socialized with other foreign-born Indians and Chinese in other parts of the company rather than with their own team. It was a bit dysfunctional and depressing.
ataggart 15y ago
It's not clear to me how one distinguishes being treated differently because they are a minority, from being treated differently because they are an incompetent ass. And nothing stops the latter from being used as an anecdote in support of claimed racism.
rohern 15y ago
The gist of this whole story is that CNN is a lousy source of information about anything. Most of us have known this for at least five years. Cable journalism is an industry in which a group of people with no specialized knowledge at all, reporters, get to go on TV and pontificate as if things were otherwise. Move on.
Macshot 15y ago
As a Black developer, from an under privileged urban area, without a degree (but went to college for CS) I can can say that I agree with Arrington. The reason there aren't more minorities heading to the valley is because they aren't exposed to the possibilities. I know out of all the black developers I know I'm one of the few with aspersions of doing my own thing (NoBadGift.com) let alone know that that's an option. This is not to say that I haven't experienced racism in my career in technology. Shoot I have people turn me away because I went to college at an HBCU (Historically Black College & University). Yet, I don't think that was because I in this industry just those individuals bias and I know if there were more minorities exposed to the idea of being entrepreneurs then there would be far more in the valley. Don't worry though I hope to be one of those that help with this problem SN: for anyone who has never experience racism consider yourself lucky. True story: (mind you I am a well established ,for my age, government contractor.) After exceeding all of a clients expectations on a project I later had a co-worker come and tell me how shocked that a black person could code let alone do it well and that he thought I was only on the team as a ploy by the company to diversify. Then expected me to take that as a compliment lol. Now that's only one of many stories i can tell. Just my 2 cent
jeffio 15y ago
If you look at fortune 500 companies, most are run by tall, old white men over 50. The reality in today's world is that if you're a short black woman (for example), you're up against huge discrimination that runs deep in mainstream society. I found this article the other day that Female Fortune 500 CEOs were at an "all time high". Female CEOs represent just about 3.6% of Fortune 500 company heads. That's 18, a new record. And it's not a very multicultural bunch: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/female-fortune-500-ceos_n_1034081.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/female-fortune-500-... The issue is not "crap", it's a very real issue that a lot of people experience every day. Thank-you to Brad Feld for putting the spotlight on this issue into the tech world, at least for a few hours.
- virmundi 15y ago
  Not to exclude racism from the picture, but look at the requirements profferred for CEO: experience in the field, wisdom and experience in a management position. Given this it makes sense that many CEOs would be white males in their 50s. They have experience in the field. They should have gotten wise (though, that's anybody's guess). They would have had management experience during their 30s and 40s. So the question is how many, as you said, short black women were looking to be CEOs of a F500 company 30 years ago when they were in their 20s? Probably not that many. Given that there are only a tiny number of F500 CEO positions (500 or so), that small initial population is competing with a large pool of white men, men in general and taller, non black women. It will be interesting to look at CEO ratios in 20-30 years. That's about the time you'll start seeing women (more in the work force now then every, especially better educated) start to have the paper credentials to fill those roles.
jaequery 15y ago
I am asian and when I try to play basketball ... black people make fun of me. What do I do? I accept the fact that I am asian and so it's okay for blacks to make fun of me when I play basketball. This is how society works. Sometimes, you just live with it. Stop the whining and the bitching.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  The issue is your being denied a spot in a pickup game doesn't hinder your ability to thrive financially. Potential racism in tech absolutely will. This isn't something to "live with".
- zanek 15y ago
  This was a really stupid comment. Seems like youre implying playing basketball is innate ability attributed to being black, and that blacks being discriminated in tech is similar so they should stop complaining. In reality, this is a really immature perspective, as most people could probably work in the tech industry regardless of race. Poor parenting, poor education, socio-economics etc are the real factors. Being Asian has nothing to do with playing basketball poorly. Blacks can excel in tech with the proper upbringing and environment.
nazgulnarsil 15y ago
racism is a frictional cost. efficient tend to reduce these.
jwatte 15y ago
Never. Ever. Talk to the press! Unless you get all the questions in advance.

185 points by emwa 15y ago

Well, I'm not from the valley, but I've heard that in SV, its almost as if 50% of the population is made of asians, what about that?

jaryd 15y ago
terrifying
davidw 15y ago
> I've heard that in SV, its almost as if 50% of the population is made of asians, what about that? Mostly just some spare arms and legs, but that's ok, because programmers don't take off their shirts very often, so the effect isn't that noticeable.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

kahawe 15y ago

This story is shocking and I hate to nit-pick here but > Just to remind all of us that racism is alive and well in the US and in tech. [...] The customer site is a government owned military installation. This doesn't make it any "better", actually much worse, but this is not "in tech". What I find both shocking and curious about racism is that it is a much more widespread problem throughout the world, not only limited to white racism - there is very strong racism throughout history in a lot of different cultures and is still prevalent there today. Why do humans even care about where someone was born or where they are from? Where and why did racism start at all?

technoslut 15y ago
>This doesn't make it any "better", actually much worse, but this is not "in tech". Technically it is because it's in their profession. If you're involved in major tech company there is a likelihood that you're going to have to deal with the gov't. >What I find both shocking and curious about racism is that it is a much more widespread problem... Many, if not most people, need to feel some sense of superiority over another individual. It starts with race but does not end there for them. Had Nazi Germany removed or killed Jews, gays, socialists, Christians, etc. they would have found some reason to hate each other.
- kahawe 15y ago
  Nazi Germany was doing this on a whole different level and for different reasons... in their own twisted way, they were actually believing they were doing humanity a favor by cleansing it. There were even scientists there backing all their "race theories". So, that specific rabbit hole goes much, MUCH deeper than you think.
ericd 15y ago
I think there's probably an evolutionary origin - genes that compel their owners to look out for others with the same genes over those who are unlikely to share genes were likely to be more successful overall in our more violent past. Now selection favors those who are able to work well with others of all races, so perhaps it's fading.
- zootar 15y ago
  Why do you think selection favors "those who are able to work well with others of all races"?
  - ericd 15y ago
    Because being a racist nowadays tends to cause one to be marginalized by others, and not be as successful. Today's business environment favors the person who can work well with anyone.
    - zootar 15y ago
      Today's business environment does not exert any evolutionary pressure on the human species.
ctdonath 15y ago
There's a strong correlation between genes and memes (you tend to pass your ideas on to your offspring). In absence of anything else to go on, appearance is indicative of ideas held, making rapid intellectual filtering of "us vs. them" easy using physical characteristics. Yeah, it's wrong in so many ways, yet the correlation is enough for humans to develop it as a survival mechanism early on - important and persuasive when odds are "they" are going to kill you for limited food & resources in preservation & procreation of genes & memes.
xibernetik 15y ago
It started when speciation occurred -- if something looks "different" enough to you, you are not going to be attracted to it or treat it like one of your own. That's been around a lot longer than higher thinking, so in a way, it's been inherent all along. Logically, we might not care, we might not want to care, but there's now research that's pointing out (the studies have been too small so far for real conclusions to be drawn) there's a strong possibility it's wired into our brain at a subconscious level. http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/24/they-all-look-the-same-how-racism-works-neurologically/ http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/24/they-all-look-the-same... https://webapps.utsc.utoronto.ca/ose/story.php?id=2135 https://webapps.utsc.utoronto.ca/ose/story.php?id=2135 Before someone accuses me of justifying racism: I don't think racism is justifiable, but I think this research is important. If we understand the physiological causes, we can consciously make an effort to avoid being biased.

d3x 15y ago

This entire issue is crap. I am a black programmer... I have no college education, came from single family home blah blah womp womp. I have launched 10+ projects for clients this year alone. I have 1 failed contract where I left because it just didn't work out. When I had success it was not because I was black and when I failed it was not because I was black. Both when I have succeeded and when I have failed was never been treated like anything but an equal by my peers. I personally thing that the NewMe accelerator is total crap and should not exit. What strategic advantage comes from going to a "black" incubator? I dont have a black startup because I dont have all black customers. The one thing this has managed to accomplish is to distract people from finding and solving huge problems and instead focus on some BS issue that has no value. My only advice to "black" and other entrepreneurs is shut up, go code and make something awesome. The rest will take care of itself. This entire issue is being exploited to get attention for Angela Benton and her new accelerator. I dont think its fair to cast a shadow over the awesome people I have had the opportunity to work with over the last 12 years in this field simply because someone wants to get some press at the expense of others. ... now back to coding ...

watty 15y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if racism in the tech industry was more towards Indians.
- notauser 15y ago
  There's certainly a lot of dislike for working with people who have strong accents, and the most commercially successful Indian technologists I have met have been the ones with the most westernised mode of speech. Unfortunately some people take a fairly legitimate gripe (lack of easy communication) and pre-judge an entire group rather than investigating the skills and attributes of a specific individual.
  - dholowiski 15y ago
    I worked for 13 years doing phone based technical support. I can tell you that people with a strong accent are often seen as 'stupid'. I worked with several Indian co-workers and it wasn't unusual to have calls transferred to me (no accent) because people didn't want to talk to them. As a team lead I got to listen in to those calls, and it's amazing how badly one human being can treat another. There's the passive aggressive person who just keeps saying "i don't understand you". There's the person who says things like "Where am I talking to" "are you in india?" "Can I speak to someone from Canada" (we were all in Canada, same country as the callers). Then there's the people who would just rip in to the agent, questioning their intelligence, yelling at them and much more. On the other hand, we would often have people call in who had strong accents, and the tech support agents would often judge the callers as 'dumb'. I earned a reputation of being a genius, not because I was a genius but because I'd actually listen to people and try to understand them (sometimes they were hard to understand) rather than being an asshole to them. In short - it was very common for people on both ends of the phone to rationalize racisim with a hard to understand accent.

vegai 15y ago

Cheap more probably equals unskilled. That's all it boils down to.

watty 15y ago

So one of their customers is racist and now racism is "alive and well". Seems like they were living in a bubble if they thought racism no longer existed.

k33n 15y ago

I think racism is about as far from a relevant issue as you can get. Honestly, the people who get bent out of shape about it are just as backwards as the few people who are still actually racist. Edit: Since davidw is claiming that I think victims of racism are backwards, I'd like to clarify. I think that all victims of crimes and discrimination should be treated with respect and dignity by polite society (which far outnumber racists). It's my opinion that getting upset about a rude military contractor (like the one in this article) is backwards and is giving his point of view way more attention than it deserves. He should be disregarded entirely because his worldview is irrelevant. This issue clearly touched some nerves.

davidw 15y ago
> I think racism is about as far from a relevant issue as you can get. Honestly, the people who get bent out of shape about it are just as backwards as the few people who are still actually racist. Downvoted for trolling. Equating the victims of, and/or people upset about racism, which is indeed an ever present factor in the US and elsewhere, to those who actively perpetrate such backwards ideas, can be nothing less than either the fruit of a sick mind, or someone playing a troll in the internet.
- k33n 15y ago
  Where I chose to clearly express my opinion, you chose to be extremely rude and dismissive. Who's really trolling?
  - davidw 15y ago
    My opinion is that a white guy (you: https://twitter.com/#!/mikekeen https://twitter.com/#!/mikekeen ) saying that people getting upset about racism are 'backwards' is either mind-boggling insensitive or out and out trolling. Nothing rude about it - that's how I see it. I can accept people saying "luckily, in this day and age, I think it's not so much of a problem" as something up for debate, but to state that those angered by discrimination are "backwards" and "just like the racists" is one of the most vile comments I have ever read here.

ctdonath 15y ago

One anecdote does not constitute "...is alive and well".

swah 15y ago

A & B should either confront the guy or leave. Writing blog posts is not how this ends, unfortunately.

wccrawford 15y ago

Racism exists everywhere. In fact, prejudice of all kinds does. And probably always will. I worked a company where the employees felt it was okay to make racist or sexist jokes with the person in the room, so long as the person didn't appear to mind. It made me terribly uncomfortable, but short of going to management, nothing I said or did mattered. (I didn't make an ass of myself, though. If the person isn't going to stand up for themselves, with me already standing, I'm not going to risk my job for them.) Maybe those people didn't really mind. I know I don't mind when my ancestry is made fun of, so long as it's along typical stereotype lines. (Pointed attacks on my particular ancestors or family are another matter.) I think we, as a species, have a long way to go in regards to dealing with each other. We have somehow never learned to treat each other with basic respect.

wpietri 15y ago
Maybe they didn't mind. But I've definitely heard friends in various non-dominant groups tell stories about the racist, sexist, or anti-gay bias they've listened to politely because they liked their jobs more than they liked being honest about the fact that they thought their co-workers were irredeemable assholes. No way to tell, really. I will say, though, that the experience is very different when you're part of the dominant group. As a white male in the US, when people make jokes about some portion of my mongrel ancestry, it really doesn't matter. But when I was living in South America, jokes about Americans had a whole new edge to them. Sometimes they really were funny and welcome. But sometimes they weren't because the person really had something against gringos. That was at times really uncomfortable, and I occasionally wondered what it meant for my physical safety. I still laughed either way, though. Ha! Ha ha!
- wccrawford 15y ago
  I found it hard to believe they didn't mind, even if I know I wouldn't. In 1 case, I was sure the person minded, but he told me repeated that he didn't. This person was an excellent coder, and ended up quitting a couple years later. The quit was probably for some of the other working conditions that didn't go well with his personality (he couldn't say 'no', they kept asking unreasonable things) but I think the whole package mattered. I also see your point about it mattering more when you aren't part of the majority, or if you felt there might be a threat to your person.

wpietri 15y ago

For those looking for a more nuanced understanding of this than the eternal American fight about whether "X is/is not racist", go take some of the tests at Harvard's Project Implicit: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ When I took them, I was pretty confident that I was, as a well-meaning nerd, beyond any sort of racial bias. I was wrong. Although I am deeply opposed to racism consciously, various bits of racial bias lurked in my wiring. It's sort of like how even a very smart person can have plenty of dumb ideas or dumb reactions, especially on topics they haven't paid attention to. Since I took those tests, I've been much more aware of those biases, which a) lets me minimize the effects, b) helps me undermine them over time, and c) has made me much better able to see the subtle effects of racial bias generally.

thwest 15y ago
I would ask people not to take the test immediately, but rather first spend time on the authors' distinction about implicit racial attitudes. Racial bias in this sense is entirely different than overt racism, but still as important. Admitting that you've unintentionally learned the statistical biases present in our culture is not admitting you're a racist. When you're ok with that statement (which can be difficult given the charged USian history of race!), take the test.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  USian Stop it.
AllenKids 15y ago
Funny I did swimmingly in racial test showing no bias at all when the exit questions reminded me of my strong fear for big black man in a dark alley. Then again, I'm Chinese, which means I'm a bit racist against all non-chink people.

Jun8 15y ago

I am fed up with all the bla bla around this issue. Really. Look, if you think there is racism in the tech field (let us define this narrowly as prejudices against blacks; prejudices against Indians and Chinese are, I think, a bit different), stop writing cute, angry blog posts; instead write about what the solution is and what you are doing about it. That there are too few blacks in the tech industry is a fact. The reason is actually very simple (as others have commented): African-Americans are underrepresented in CS, EE, and other tech fields. This is similar to the issue of the dearth of women in these fields. Now, the reasons for this are complex and are not easy to solve. So, instead, while waiting for the root causes and biases to go away, be pragmatic and solve the problem at hand. The solution is easy, but is not affirmative action or specialized VCs or quotas: It's as simple as increasing the demand of black (or women) programmers. How to do this? I am working as a software mentor for two FIRST Robotics Teams in Chicago South Side, these teams are almost all black and this is their first exposure to programming (unfortunately, we have to use C++ for first exposure!) So, I alone have the power to introduce 5-10 black programmers to tech community! Assume I have 20% success, which is really lousy, that means 1-2 programmers. If 1K people do this, that's 1K more black programmers on the market. Another example: Finding that the teams on the Apps for Metro Chicago challenge were all-male, my friend Pallavi quickly assembled an all-female team of college students, who won the second prize (http://www.metroplanning.org/news-events/blog-post/6262 http://www.metroplanning.org/news-events/blog-post/6262) and were featured in the local press. So, same as starting a company: you don't need anybody's permission to start helping kids to solve this problem.

dholowiski 15y ago
"prejudices against Indians and Chinese are, I think, a bit different" - Please explain.
- kchodorow 15y ago
  He's saying that black people and women are under-represented in CS. I think most people would agree that Indians and Chinese people are not underrepresented, but also can face prejudice.
- 15y ago

bdunbar 15y ago

Over the course of the three days, the customer made endless racial and ethnic slurs directed at B. Customer is a 'government owned military installation'. What branch? What site? Was the customer military or civilian contractor? The military is [1] _death_ on racisim, sexism, favoritism. Just does not happen. When it does it gets squashed. While the military one thing, the individual service members are another. It's a very masculine culture, not unheard of for best friends to insult each other with words, phrases, etc that would sound blisteringly insulting to an outsider. But which are understood by the participants to be 'funnin' around'. I conjecture: could 'B' have been hooked up with a guy who was trying to bond and it mis-fired? [1] My last direct experience was 1993, when I separated. I have several friends who are enlisted, my step-son has been in the army since 1999.

JabavuAdams 15y ago
> The military is [1] _death_ on racisim, sexism, favoritism Officially, yes, but that's probably BS. This reminds me of two anecdotes about the IDF (not to make this about Israel -- it's just the data that I have): 1) One friend assured me that any soldier acting improperly would be disciplined immediately, as the IDF had very high standards, etc. etc. 2) Another friend used to tell me stories about his IDF stint and how he and his friends would get high on guard duty all the time. So ... just because you were in a military, doesn't mean that you know what's going down with everyone. Also, the attitude that you evidence in your post makes it less likely that you'll know the truth, because you'll be more resistant to contrary evidence. Treat truth as stochastic/unknown. We don't know the truth. Now ask "what practices or attitudes will tend to help me discover what is true? What practices or attitudes will tend to obscure the truth?" The attitude "nope that can't be happening because organization X is so disciplined" obscures the truth. Especially in an organization that emphasizes loyalty and duty.
- endtime 15y ago
  The IDF, which has strengths and weaknesses, is not the US military. The main relevant difference here is that the IDF is composed of every 18 year old in the country (pretty much), whereas the US military is only composed of those who want to be in the military. The kind of kids who will get high on guard duty in Israel won't ever join the military in the US.

sigzero 15y ago

Racism or just prejudice?

j45 15y ago
Depends if you're giving or receiving it, I guess.

sharkman 15y ago

Even inside YC. I remember at the YC NYC meetup, the guy on stage in red sweater (forgot his name) was saying "I was so lucky to be born as white male in a middle class family"; I was like, WTH, so born as non-white or female is unlucky?!

jhamburger 15y ago
Like Louis CK said in a stand-up routine- "I'm not saying white people are better, but being white is clearly better." i.e., you're not likely to ever have an opportunity denied to you in life due to your skin color, or gender.
j45 15y ago
He might have meant it's easier for him, which still might not be ok with me.
sharkman 15y ago
wow, i got voted down by several people because I pointed out there's a racist in YC?

j45 15y ago

Sad outcomes occur when some people get their education about the world from tv and hearsay. When anyone takes a minute to turn a stranger into a person they fight racism, or any -ism by delivering social proof of how to behave.

vrode 15y ago

I think the correct term is 'race conditions'.

kstenerud 15y ago

Yeah, some people are genuinely racist, but the fact is that most aren't. What most people incorrectly call "racism" is actually culture fit issues. When someone's culture is sufficiently different from yours, it becomes enough of an unknown to engender fear. And fear due to the unknown leads to paranoid thought, usually at the subconscious level. For example, if you get a job candidate whose demeanor screams "from the hood", you'll definitely pass him/her over. The last thing you want is for them to start a fight over "respect", or bring some "friends" over to rob the place (deliberate hyperbole, yes, but this is how the subconscious works). Similarly, anyone who has had much contact with Indian culture will know that fraud and corruption are tolerated far more readily than they are in the West. This means that you need to be on your guard lest the person of that culture starts behaving as if in that culture. I've seen it happen enough times in my own experiences, so this is not just idle speculation. This is also why second gen people have a much easier time of it. You may argue that you shouldn't "sell out" on your culture just to get ahead ("acting white", for example). I would argue that in remaining "true to your roots", you hobble yourself by deliberately refusing to make it easier for the majority to accept you. I've lived on both sides of this issue. I've seen actually racist people, but far more often I've seen people who are afraid of the cultural divide, and move to protect themselves accordingly. I've also seen people change their own culture to better match the one of the majority, and they made FAR better lives for themselves than those who refused to do so. Do racism and sexism exist? Of course they do. And in the rare cases where you DO encounter the real thing, it is your duty as a civilized person to put a stop to it. But when it's merely a culture issue, raising a stink about it will do nothing more than stir up resentment.

kstenerud 15y ago
It's always telling when people downvote, yet have no rebuttal.
- JulianMiller520 15y ago
  People don't like to argue with people they deem incapable of understanding the topic at hand. I hit your hyperbole and read no further because I deemed your take unintelligent and poorly argued. Hence #downvote

zanek 15y ago

I'm black and a software engineer for 14 yrs (college degree), and although I know there are racist people out there, I've never encountered any even once in 14 years across a ton of companies (startups, fortune 500 companies, etc) If you can produce something of value, no one gives a shit about your race. The hundreds of people I've met in tech have been race blind as far as i could tell. I think the tech industry in general is a meritocracy from my experience. I would never join a race based startup, as that seems quite lame to me. Then again, perhaps I'm an outlier as I think race based anything is stupid (BET, etc). We're like 99.9% the same yet people think a chemical within their skin alters something intrinsically about us. Absurd It really comes down to poor role models in the black community, poor education & not enough resources. Why would anyone care about your race if you are producing. I think racist people in tech would be the exception, not the rule.

powertower 15y ago

> Especially at a government facility. In the United States. In 2011. In the tech business. Humans have accumulated (recorded) vast sums of knowledge, and have become more efficient at building things using that knowledge, but human nature has not "evolved". The human brain has remained about the same for the last 20,000 years (give or take a few thousand years). There have been no quantum leaps here. We are exactly what we were 10 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, etc. That's the real problem... That people think that somehow they are "evolved" because the year is 2011. And hence the segmentation begins again... Always seeing your-group as different from other-group, segmenting everything. A person that pretends that they are not racist, is one that pretend that they are better than the racist... The problem is they are doing the exact same thing as the racist, just on a higher level.

bluedanieru 15y ago
Our DNA is the same. We are better fed and generally healthier (at least since the agricultural revolution), most of us are raised better than your average peasant 1000 years ago, mothers know not to drink during pregnancy (this is a big one, by the way), etc.

maxklein 15y ago

I really don't see how racism in tech is relevant, because a) Nobody knows or cares who wrote a piece of software, because 99.9% of the time, the customer never sees the photo of the author b) If your software is super-hot and gaining a lot of traction and people are smelling the money, they will not care what colour you are c) For those tiny number of people who don't have traction and want other peoples money, the colour of your skin may give you a disadvantage with some particular money givers, but it will give you an advantage with other money givers In general, for the success of your product to be affected by peoples prejudices against you or the colour of your skin, you would have to belong to a very unlucky 99.99%. If that happens, well, bad luck, try again. That's what entrepreneurship is all about, isn't it?

drhayes9 15y ago
He's not talking about products, he's talking about work environments.

scarmig 15y ago

Just to get it out of the way: no one who has ever posted on Hacker News or has ever been even slightly associated with the Bay Area tech scene is the least bit racist. We are all 100.0000% meritocratic, and when we popped out of the womb we were instantly the most color-blind people in history. This is a given, and anyone who would say otherwise is a whiner who's just too lazy and stupid to code. (This, by the way, is also how we know that people here are not at all sexist or homophobic and have highly progressive views on gender. We're just that good.) Now that that's out of the way, we can talk about the role of race in tech. I think it'd be useful to divide it into four categories. 1) Race as felt through through social structure. Minorities (defined as AA, Native American, and Latinos) have less access to educational resources than other ethnicities. This is a broader social injustice, and tech can't be held responsible for it. Tech is also hard at work to help mitigate this problem, though with varying levels of success. 2) Race as felt through choice of majors. Minorities disproportionately choose not to major in techy fields. This is in large part due to a combination of 1) and 3) (to follow). Even to the extent that minorities do have access to high quality education, it tends to be more liberal arts and non-techy. Minorities may also perceive that the tech scene tends to be less friendly toward them. 3) Race as felt through network effects. This, I think, is probably the biggest cause of the recent complaints. Everyone knows here how valuable having their social community overlap at least somewhat with the tech community is. Knowing someone who knows someone is how you get jobs and get involved in new projects. And you learn a whole lot through these informal interactions (having no CS background, I only learned about Lisp on a date). People whom we know are usually of similar racial and class backgrounds. Not through any conscious decisions, but because of shared interests and the fact that people make friends through other nodes in their own social networks, nodes that have the same tendency of showing race and class similarity. 4) Racist prejudice. Examples of this are the null set, because no one here is at all racist. In the end, though, 3) builds off of itself. You start out as an isolated island, and if you don't break out of it you'll never achieve your full potential. Once you do get pulled into it, though, the sky's the limit. The question we should be asking is how to deal with 3).

hackinthebochs 15y ago
Great comment. I love a good, nuanced look at racial issues. Generally smart people seem unable to use their analytical skills when it comes to race or other social issues. It's disappointing.

drieddust 15y ago

I know hacker news crowd is different and most you have not worked in traditional companies so to those who will say racism is practiced by minority, here is my one of the favorite anecdote. I understand anecdote is not data but I have a personal collection of self-experienced anecdotes ,spanning multiple years and client. I work as an outsourced contracted consultant on a client which outsources to 2 outsourcing firms A(Indian) and B(Native). I work for firm A. Client had a seemingly untraceable problem which was not solved for more than a year.CTO personally used to come to my manager’s desk and express his frustration of not able to resolve the issues. End users were constantly complaining to him. So task force was prepared to which used to meet every day for hours and talk in circles with no resolution. They were not even able to devise an attack plan. I have some reputation for tackling this kind of stuff so they persuaded my managers and started inviting me to their meetings. After couple of days of investigation I was able to devise a plan and find out the root cause and resolution to the problem. Actual was hilarious and sad at the same time. It was a bigger issue with overall design of the datacentres which was originally designed by vendor B. Millions were wasted because someone failed to understand how TCP/IP layers interact with each other. I know communication is important so I kept everyone updated and prepared a detailed analysis in doc and ppt format. The moment my analysis was out, guess what Vendor B tried to blame internet for not behaving to make his solution work and client rallied behind him. When I shot down his bullshit argument , me and my firm were taken out of loop and separate meetings with vendor B started to propose potentials solutions. After couple of months of proposing bullshit they again came to us and we provided the solution. Guess what ? We were out of the loop again and solution implementation started by hiring a third vendor C(Native again!!) along with vendor B.

suivix 15y ago

One of my coworkers is black and I don't see any racism here.

Aloisius 15y ago

Frankly, I expect that there is far more discrimination against foreign born Indians and Chinese in Silicon Valley than there are against black Americans. I've seen it. I don't believe it to be racism since it is rarely directed towards anyone who was born in the US regardless of their descent. I think there is a very real sense of lack of shared cultural values and overlapping social circles. During my stint at a certain mid-sized company in Mountain View that happened to hire quite a few H1Bs, I noticed that engineering teams were split. You had a tight knit group of people who were American/Western European and sometimes Japanese and then you had foreign-born Indians and Chinese who socialized with other foreign-born Indians and Chinese in other parts of the company rather than with their own team. It was a bit dysfunctional and depressing.

ataggart 15y ago

It's not clear to me how one distinguishes being treated differently because they are a minority, from being treated differently because they are an incompetent ass. And nothing stops the latter from being used as an anecdote in support of claimed racism.

rohern 15y ago

The gist of this whole story is that CNN is a lousy source of information about anything. Most of us have known this for at least five years. Cable journalism is an industry in which a group of people with no specialized knowledge at all, reporters, get to go on TV and pontificate as if things were otherwise. Move on.

Macshot 15y ago

As a Black developer, from an under privileged urban area, without a degree (but went to college for CS) I can can say that I agree with Arrington. The reason there aren't more minorities heading to the valley is because they aren't exposed to the possibilities. I know out of all the black developers I know I'm one of the few with aspersions of doing my own thing (NoBadGift.com) let alone know that that's an option. This is not to say that I haven't experienced racism in my career in technology. Shoot I have people turn me away because I went to college at an HBCU (Historically Black College & University). Yet, I don't think that was because I in this industry just those individuals bias and I know if there were more minorities exposed to the idea of being entrepreneurs then there would be far more in the valley. Don't worry though I hope to be one of those that help with this problem SN: for anyone who has never experience racism consider yourself lucky. True story: (mind you I am a well established ,for my age, government contractor.) After exceeding all of a clients expectations on a project I later had a co-worker come and tell me how shocked that a black person could code let alone do it well and that he thought I was only on the team as a ploy by the company to diversify. Then expected me to take that as a compliment lol. Now that's only one of many stories i can tell. Just my 2 cent

jeffio 15y ago

If you look at fortune 500 companies, most are run by tall, old white men over 50. The reality in today's world is that if you're a short black woman (for example), you're up against huge discrimination that runs deep in mainstream society. I found this article the other day that Female Fortune 500 CEOs were at an "all time high". Female CEOs represent just about 3.6% of Fortune 500 company heads. That's 18, a new record. And it's not a very multicultural bunch: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/female-fortune-500-ceos_n_1034081.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/female-fortune-500-... The issue is not "crap", it's a very real issue that a lot of people experience every day. Thank-you to Brad Feld for putting the spotlight on this issue into the tech world, at least for a few hours.

virmundi 15y ago
Not to exclude racism from the picture, but look at the requirements profferred for CEO: experience in the field, wisdom and experience in a management position. Given this it makes sense that many CEOs would be white males in their 50s. They have experience in the field. They should have gotten wise (though, that's anybody's guess). They would have had management experience during their 30s and 40s. So the question is how many, as you said, short black women were looking to be CEOs of a F500 company 30 years ago when they were in their 20s? Probably not that many. Given that there are only a tiny number of F500 CEO positions (500 or so), that small initial population is competing with a large pool of white men, men in general and taller, non black women. It will be interesting to look at CEO ratios in 20-30 years. That's about the time you'll start seeing women (more in the work force now then every, especially better educated) start to have the paper credentials to fill those roles.

jaequery 15y ago

I am asian and when I try to play basketball ... black people make fun of me. What do I do? I accept the fact that I am asian and so it's okay for blacks to make fun of me when I play basketball. This is how society works. Sometimes, you just live with it. Stop the whining and the bitching.

hackinthebochs 15y ago
The issue is your being denied a spot in a pickup game doesn't hinder your ability to thrive financially. Potential racism in tech absolutely will. This isn't something to "live with".
zanek 15y ago
This was a really stupid comment. Seems like youre implying playing basketball is innate ability attributed to being black, and that blacks being discriminated in tech is similar so they should stop complaining. In reality, this is a really immature perspective, as most people could probably work in the tech industry regardless of race. Poor parenting, poor education, socio-economics etc are the real factors. Being Asian has nothing to do with playing basketball poorly. Blacks can excel in tech with the proper upbringing and environment.

nazgulnarsil 15y ago

racism is a frictional cost. efficient tend to reduce these.

jwatte 15y ago

Never. Ever. Talk to the press! Unless you get all the questions in advance.