7 ms·

We don't need more women, black, latino, white, red, green people in tech, we need talented people, regardless of how they look like. We need less bullshit, peo

We don't need more women, black, latino, white, red, green people in tech, we need talented people, regardless of how they look like. We need less bullshit, people who produce sane code and go home early to work on what matters about us, our communities, our families, our education! I'm full stack dev living in London, I'm black, huge afro, piercings, english is not my first language, skateboarder, into punk music, etc.

tormeh 11y ago
What is your first language?
- heldrida 11y ago
  My first language is Portuguese.
collyw 11y ago
Actually I completely agree. It was a subtle way of saying that without getting the usual down votes when you mention that sort of thing on here.
yardie 11y ago
Yes, we do need more black people in tech. And you get more black people in tech by having black people in tech. Going out to recruit, mentor, and support black tech candidates and workers. Seriously, the latest black YC candidate was a prison messaging service. More power to them but for a lot of blacks in the US the 2 paths that earn the most publicity are sports and criminal activity. Even when I was a teenager and had a mentor it took me 2 hours by bus in the Miami heat to meet him just 1x per week. Some of my fellow, richer, friends had cars of their own and would drive to meet their mentors or join them for lunch. And it's those small barriers that create the giant hurdle. At the moment, I'm mentoring my younger siblings, nieces, and nephews who are on their way to college. Being the first in my family to attend university I'm hoping to help them avoid the pitfalls that I encountered when going to university.
- heldrida 11y ago
  What about letting kids choose what they want to do with their lives ? I used to be a music producer and learned everything by myself. I grown up in a white neighbourhood. I was the only emcee around, producing Hip-hop music, influenced by the Beastie Boys. I started coding really young. When I got the internet, I learned a lot about Hip-Hop, I was passionate. My first website was related about my passions, sharing my passion about football, skateboarding, drawing, etc. I wouldn't code if I didn't had a passion. What's the point of coding if it's not useful, if doesn't solve a problem ? You need a point! Let's do fun stuff, stop forcing kids with your mentoring bullshit and who cares if the kid is white and his mentor is Persian, or if he's idol is Bob Marley! There's better ways to work on our communities, families, etc. Your `you get more black ppl in tech by having black people in tech` sounded exactly like one of those Xzibit memes: a joke!
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - smtddr 11y ago
    First, I downvoted your comment for the excessive negativity/abuse in it. You could have made your point just as clear without them. Second, I'm going to take your comment to point out something I've noticed when talking about sexism/racism. I'm going to call this theory of mine "Calibration". When I hear people say stuff like "What about letting [underrepresented group] choose what they want to do with their lives?", I've come to believe that most are not trolls and they're probably not actually actively racist[1]. It's a difference in calibration. Perhaps you believe by default these kids are at a neutral(zero) level and have the full power of choice right now. But, what I see is that society actually puts them at like a negative 5. You see these efforts as forcing them to go into tech, a +5 if you will. I see it as just bring them up to 0 from the -5 society put them at so they have the same sense of free choice you & I do. This vid I think is also based on the calibration idea when it comes to "Reverse racism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M . Basically, it talks about the underlying assumption that the current state of things is neutral for everyone so any effort to improve standings for a group is unfair to the groups not getting help. It's like how every year on Google+, when the LifeAtGoogle account posts something like Black Appreciation day during Black history month, someone always asks "When is White appreciation day?". Or when people talk about BlackGirlsCode.com, someone says "I bet everyone would exploded if we had a WhiteMenCode.com event". And of course, from there said comment turns into a multipage thread of madness. I think part of this is because schools(or parents of students) don't teach enough about the negative parts of American history and its lasting effects. So we have a bunch of people saying "Slavery ended years ago, everything is fine now. Stop complaining." Or similar, "Women can vote now and be CEOs of companies. Stop complaining". The assumption being that everything is equal now and the only thing between anyone and their goals is hardwork & discipline. While that is mostly true, some people have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition and reach those goals. _____ 1. One exception though, I have no idea what is going on with the HN user yummyfajitas. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711 He doesn't fit any model of any logical position I'm familiar with. I'm pretty sure he's __not__ racist/sexist, but he just blows my mind.
seivan 11y ago
Basically what you're saying is that you're against identity politics. I am happy to see other people with these values. I live in Ground Zero of identity politics, so I don't get to see people with your opinions often. Thank you!
- kaybe 11y ago
  Ideally we'd be able to distinguish between identity and ability. However, we're mostly not. A keywords off the top of my head is the halo effect, but there are a lot more. The question is, how do we deal with this imperfection?
onion2k 11y ago
I think you're both right and wrong. You're right in the sense that we do need to bring in the most talented people, but I suspect you're wrong in the definition of what the talents we need are. When people say "we need talented people" they usually mean that we need people who are best at doing what we do now. And that's not the solution, that's the problem. In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now. That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc. The thing that really must change in order to get society making the best tech possible that really impacts lives in a positive way is that we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas. That can only happen by filling the chamber with more people who aren't privileged white males. And I say that as a privileged white male.
- Sir_Substance 11y ago
  >And that's not the solution, that's the problem. That depends on whether what we are doing now works or not. Change for its own sake rarely does good in the IT industry.
- smanuel 11y ago
  > we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas Can you elaborate on the definition of "privileged white male"?
  - onion2k 11y ago
    I'm going to assume you understand the 'white male' aspect. 'Privileged' in the sense that they came from a middle-income home where they had access to things like a computer and books, were fortunate to attend schools that were reasonably well funded, had the opportunity to attend college and university, didn't live in fear of crime throughout their childhood, had outdoor space to play in, had good access to healthcare, etc. That isn't that sort of background that everyone has, but it is the sort of background that 90% of people in the IT industry had. Consequently IT professionals tend to have somewhat skewed notions of what the world is like. Changing that would make it more likely that people build things that make a positive impact on society because you can't fix a problem if you don't know that it's a problem.
megablast 11y ago
Yes, and if we would all just be nice to each other we wouldn't have wars anymore. But in the real world, we need to try different things to get talented people, it is not only white men who have important stuff to offer.
makeitsuckless 11y ago
Diversity is no about what color your skin happens to be. (Color is mostly an American obsession anyway.) And you've just confirmed in your own self-description that you're not adding all that much diversity regardless of what you look like. Remove the "I'm black" bit (and ok, the afro), and the description matches countless devs. Diversity is not "bullshit", neither from a social-economic perspective, nor from the perspective of the strength of the teams we are a part of.
Loque 11y ago
I couldn't agree more - fixing gender/racial stereotypes in our society is a separate issue from who needs to be hired in a specific industry - as soon as you combine the issue you end up with some pretty daft solutions.
skillsfirst 11y ago
Here here. Let people find the things they want to learn, support and employ them when they do. Don't patronise people, or worse, discriminate, especially not that horrible pc "positive discrimination" crap, and treat people equally. A lot of the comment-tards on HN take a terribly patronising view that they should go on outreach knocking of doors of every gender race and religion and try to coerce them into working in tech. How horrible for a person to realise they were targeted and hired specifically because they meet an arbitrary tick box minority category.

tormeh 11y ago

What is your first language?

heldrida 11y ago
My first language is Portuguese.

collyw 11y ago

Actually I completely agree. It was a subtle way of saying that without getting the usual down votes when you mention that sort of thing on here.

yardie 11y ago

Yes, we do need more black people in tech. And you get more black people in tech by having black people in tech. Going out to recruit, mentor, and support black tech candidates and workers. Seriously, the latest black YC candidate was a prison messaging service. More power to them but for a lot of blacks in the US the 2 paths that earn the most publicity are sports and criminal activity. Even when I was a teenager and had a mentor it took me 2 hours by bus in the Miami heat to meet him just 1x per week. Some of my fellow, richer, friends had cars of their own and would drive to meet their mentors or join them for lunch. And it's those small barriers that create the giant hurdle. At the moment, I'm mentoring my younger siblings, nieces, and nephews who are on their way to college. Being the first in my family to attend university I'm hoping to help them avoid the pitfalls that I encountered when going to university.

heldrida 11y ago
What about letting kids choose what they want to do with their lives ? I used to be a music producer and learned everything by myself. I grown up in a white neighbourhood. I was the only emcee around, producing Hip-hop music, influenced by the Beastie Boys. I started coding really young. When I got the internet, I learned a lot about Hip-Hop, I was passionate. My first website was related about my passions, sharing my passion about football, skateboarding, drawing, etc. I wouldn't code if I didn't had a passion. What's the point of coding if it's not useful, if doesn't solve a problem ? You need a point! Let's do fun stuff, stop forcing kids with your mentoring bullshit and who cares if the kid is white and his mentor is Persian, or if he's idol is Bob Marley! There's better ways to work on our communities, families, etc. Your `you get more black ppl in tech by having black people in tech` sounded exactly like one of those Xzibit memes: a joke!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- smtddr 11y ago
  First, I downvoted your comment for the excessive negativity/abuse in it. You could have made your point just as clear without them. Second, I'm going to take your comment to point out something I've noticed when talking about sexism/racism. I'm going to call this theory of mine "Calibration". When I hear people say stuff like "What about letting [underrepresented group] choose what they want to do with their lives?", I've come to believe that most are not trolls and they're probably not actually actively racist[1]. It's a difference in calibration. Perhaps you believe by default these kids are at a neutral(zero) level and have the full power of choice right now. But, what I see is that society actually puts them at like a negative 5. You see these efforts as forcing them to go into tech, a +5 if you will. I see it as just bring them up to 0 from the -5 society put them at so they have the same sense of free choice you & I do. This vid I think is also based on the calibration idea when it comes to "Reverse racism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M . Basically, it talks about the underlying assumption that the current state of things is neutral for everyone so any effort to improve standings for a group is unfair to the groups not getting help. It's like how every year on Google+, when the LifeAtGoogle account posts something like Black Appreciation day during Black history month, someone always asks "When is White appreciation day?". Or when people talk about BlackGirlsCode.com, someone says "I bet everyone would exploded if we had a WhiteMenCode.com event". And of course, from there said comment turns into a multipage thread of madness. I think part of this is because schools(or parents of students) don't teach enough about the negative parts of American history and its lasting effects. So we have a bunch of people saying "Slavery ended years ago, everything is fine now. Stop complaining." Or similar, "Women can vote now and be CEOs of companies. Stop complaining". The assumption being that everything is equal now and the only thing between anyone and their goals is hardwork & discipline. While that is mostly true, some people have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition and reach those goals. _____ 1. One exception though, I have no idea what is going on with the HN user yummyfajitas. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711 He doesn't fit any model of any logical position I'm familiar with. I'm pretty sure he's __not__ racist/sexist, but he just blows my mind.

seivan 11y ago

Basically what you're saying is that you're against identity politics. I am happy to see other people with these values. I live in Ground Zero of identity politics, so I don't get to see people with your opinions often. Thank you!

kaybe 11y ago
Ideally we'd be able to distinguish between identity and ability. However, we're mostly not. A keywords off the top of my head is the halo effect, but there are a lot more. The question is, how do we deal with this imperfection?

onion2k 11y ago

I think you're both right and wrong. You're right in the sense that we do need to bring in the most talented people, but I suspect you're wrong in the definition of what the talents we need are. When people say "we need talented people" they usually mean that we need people who are best at doing what we do now. And that's not the solution, that's the problem. In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now. That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc. The thing that really must change in order to get society making the best tech possible that really impacts lives in a positive way is that we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas. That can only happen by filling the chamber with more people who aren't privileged white males. And I say that as a privileged white male.

Sir_Substance 11y ago
>And that's not the solution, that's the problem. That depends on whether what we are doing now works or not. Change for its own sake rarely does good in the IT industry.
smanuel 11y ago
> we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas Can you elaborate on the definition of "privileged white male"?
- onion2k 11y ago
  I'm going to assume you understand the 'white male' aspect. 'Privileged' in the sense that they came from a middle-income home where they had access to things like a computer and books, were fortunate to attend schools that were reasonably well funded, had the opportunity to attend college and university, didn't live in fear of crime throughout their childhood, had outdoor space to play in, had good access to healthcare, etc. That isn't that sort of background that everyone has, but it is the sort of background that 90% of people in the IT industry had. Consequently IT professionals tend to have somewhat skewed notions of what the world is like. Changing that would make it more likely that people build things that make a positive impact on society because you can't fix a problem if you don't know that it's a problem.

megablast 11y ago

Yes, and if we would all just be nice to each other we wouldn't have wars anymore. But in the real world, we need to try different things to get talented people, it is not only white men who have important stuff to offer.

makeitsuckless 11y ago

Diversity is no about what color your skin happens to be. (Color is mostly an American obsession anyway.) And you've just confirmed in your own self-description that you're not adding all that much diversity regardless of what you look like. Remove the "I'm black" bit (and ok, the afro), and the description matches countless devs. Diversity is not "bullshit", neither from a social-economic perspective, nor from the perspective of the strength of the teams we are a part of.

Loque 11y ago

I couldn't agree more - fixing gender/racial stereotypes in our society is a separate issue from who needs to be hired in a specific industry - as soon as you combine the issue you end up with some pretty daft solutions.

skillsfirst 11y ago

Here here. Let people find the things they want to learn, support and employ them when they do. Don't patronise people, or worse, discriminate, especially not that horrible pc "positive discrimination" crap, and treat people equally. A lot of the comment-tards on HN take a terribly patronising view that they should go on outreach knocking of doors of every gender race and religion and try to coerce them into working in tech. How horrible for a person to realise they were targeted and hired specifically because they meet an arbitrary tick box minority category.