[azima]

That applies too, but she's bringing attention to black women and directly speaking about how the tech industry is trying to fix the problem of women in tech and at the same time ignoring women of color. "solving" the problem of not a lot of women in tech by hiring white women, and completely ignoring black women doesn't solve the problem. Same thing applies to men - hiring asian men (the "model minority"), and ignoring black men doesn't solve the diversity problem.

[lucozade]

Surely that depends on what problem you're trying to solve.

If what you're trying to solve with a diversity programme is opening up the potential talent pool, it's entirely conceivable that focusing on white women and Asian men could be sufficient.

If what you're trying to solve is a greater diversity of opinions and experiences to foster ideas, say, it's entirely conceivable that hiring white women and Asian men could be sufficient.

If what you're trying to do is increase the representation of black developers then this approach is likely to fail.

Or to put it another way, diversity isn't one thing, it's a bunch of things. If one believes that there should be a higher representation of black people in tech (which seems reasonable to me) then one should look to resolve that problem. It seems completely orthogonal to the question of encouraging women to tech.

[azima]

To your last paragraph, that completely ignores intersectionalism in thag there isnt just 1 type of woman. There are many types of women and diversity efforts should be approached with that in mind.

And sure if you want to hit diversity quotas, then hiring asian men and white women does that. BUT, it limits the advantages of diverse companies and hurts society overall which is kind of the whole point of diversity. For diversity of opinions, no asian men and white women wont be sufficient. I suggest you read about intersectionality.

[lucozade]

I'm not talking about quotas. They're a political tool usually.

I'm talking about the well researched and well documented advantages of diversity for an organisation.

You appear to be assuming, somewhat ironically, that there is only one point of a diversity programme and that that is to have some kind of impact on society as a whole. A worthy goal, sure, but not the only one.

My point is that an organisation may have a diversity programme, the main aim of which is to improve the financial position of the organisation, say. My contention is that does not necessarily require them to go beyond gross corrections in their diversity profile. The fact that they may have to for legal reasons or may wish to for societal reasons is a separate matter.

Now clearly you don't hold that taking such a position meets society's needs and you may well be right. You may also feel that all organisations should use diversity programmes for societal ends and that's not an uncommon view. It just happens to not be the only reason for having a diversity programme.

Oh, and thank you for the advice regarding intersectionality. You appear to have mistaken my not considering it important for my point for ignorance of it. Easy mistake to make.

[azima]

Not considering it important is ignorance. Cheers

[ivanca]

The "diversity problem" is never going to be fixed, because the goalpost is always something more.

The population of non-hispanic black people in California is of 6.4%, if half of them are women (3.2%) it means that if a tech company has 100 employees the perfect amount of diversity would be 3 black women and 97 non-black-women, they may not even get to know about each other in a company of that size.

But I'm pretty sure in her mind the number should be a lot higher than that, otherwise white supremacy culture is to be to blame.

[azima]

Well that's one of the issues, because people like yourself have a quota/percentage mentality, instead of a inclusion/diversification/look at how much we can learn from eachother mentality. And like another person said, tech companies dont only hire from california. Isn't it a bit silly that 20% of twitter's audience is black and probably the most active group, and their number of black employees is low, black executives is 0?

It's kind of ridiculous to not want to make the effort because the goalposts are always something more. And it's ignorant of the tech industry to "fix" diversity by only putting white women in roles or only asian men in roles to hit quotas.

[rdancer]

What you need to do is hire extra 25 people, and then you can have 4 black women, which is exactly 3.2%.

But perhaps we should stop kidding ourselves and admit that being a technologist is a calling, not a career, and this shapes the talent pool somewhat.

[icebraining]

Since when are SV tech companies restricted to hiring from California?