[mazerackham]

Huge upvote here. As much as we would like to forget about race in America, the fact is: Race Matters.

The way people look at you, talk to you (or ignore you), talk about you, extend invites, etc..that ALL changes with your race.

[yummyfajitas]

Yes - I'm treated very differently from most of my coworkers on account of race. I could give lots of mildly interesting examples - it certainly means my dating life is very different.

But how does it affect me on the job? I write quantitative software, and spend lots of time thinking about bayesian hierarchical models and multiple comparisons. You are suggesting I have some unique power. I'd really like to know how I can use this power.

[ksenzee]

If you're in the (to me, enviable) position of never building a user-facing feature in a piece of software -- if you purely get to think algorithms all day, and you never draw on any knowledge or experience you've gained outside a classroom or a book -- then who knows. Maybe it doesn't matter what life experiences you've had. I personally have never had a job like that. My interests, personality, experience, and wisdom gained outside of work have always made a difference to what I do.

[yummyfajitas]

I think about user facing features all the time. For example, should we display midpoint estimates, or just stick to credible intervals? Can we give an empirical conversion rate %, or will customers misunderstand and make a bad decision based on it?

But ok, lets say I'm a typical software engineer, building a CRUD app used by banks to set up a new customer with an HSA. What's my unique non-Indian perspective on that?

I can understand how there might be a useful purpose for token diversity on the UX teams for some consumer products. That's an exceedingly small part of the tech world.

[theuttick]

A very, very good answer. However, in this case the diversity the man at twitter should be looking for has everything to do with a person by person case and nothing to do with race.

[deskamess]

I do not understand the latter half of your 2nd paragraph as I do not see the parent was suggesting you have unique powers. It seemed to me he was just acknowledging that race plays a part in professional America.

As far as how it affects you on the job.... well, in the subject under discussion, they candidates are not even considered for the job because of their race. We have not got to the point where they are even 'on the job'. Per the article, when a diverse candidate was bought in, they performed well.

Perhaps I misread and misunderstood your response and my reply just builds on the confusion.

[yummyfajitas]

I'm replying to: "That doesn't mean they'll give different answers to a question on how to traverse a linked list. But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform."

The article and the comments here don't even begin to support the claim "candidates are not even considered for the job because of their race".