[peterwwillis]

This is exactly the same as saying that the reason women had little power in America before 1920 was because they couldn't vote. Which is true, but completely overlooks why women didn't have the right to vote.

Women didn't have power because they were oppressed by men for centuries. Black people don't have "as good an education" because they've been systematically abandoned by the most powerful parts of society for centuries.

You could spend 100 million on a program just in my city alone to try to give disadvantaged kids tech lessons. You know what would happen?

Nothing, because you haven't addressed the fact that they have to sell dope, hustle or work multiple jobs just to put food on their family's table; that they're watching their baby sibling while mom and dad go out to score junk; that their friends need them to join the local gang to protect their neighborhood; that they don't have access to transportation to get to the classes; that the rest of the city needs money and will steal from the education fund as it always does, because why try to teach the kids when they're not going to learn anyway; and of course, because their parents gave up on their future a long time ago and give zero shit about trying to help them make something of themselves.

[x3n0ph3n3]

So the fix is to lower hiring standards? What exactly are you promoting as a fix here?

[cmsj]

"Lower hiring standards" is a myopic fallacy. You don't hire Jeff the amazing coder who likes to punch people in the face.

Discounting the value of culture is a huge mistake. Humans work best when they are not treated as replaceable units of quantified productivity.

Diverse cultures can attack problems with a broader perspective than homogenous cultures.

[sokoloff]

It's still not clear what you would have a hiring manager do today. I usually have several positions open at any given time; I don't even recall the last black applicant we've seen.

I have talented co-workers of many different races (specifically including black), but even without visiting our office, you could guess the percentage breakdown and you wouldn't be far off.

I can't hire applicants that don't exist and I can't hire applicants that aren't qualified.

[nzoschke]

You can shift your notions of "qualified".

You can hire junior engineers and mentor and train them to be successful.

Then you can proactively advertise your positions to programs and organizations that have more minority participation.

Of course this takes more work for you, the hiring manager, in sourcing and on boarding. But there should be a burden on every hiring manager to correct the systemic diversity problems.

A success will be extremely impactful for the individuals you hire and for the overall health of the team.

[sokoloff]

"Qualified" will always mean "can make a computer do things we need done" and that's not negotiable.

We do hire at all experience levels and several of our successful squad leads are original college hires (having only worked with us), so we have some demonstrated track record of mentoring and retention.

Even in college recruiting (where I'd expect the greatest diversity of candidates), I can't recall any recent black applicants, and except for a somewhat higher ratio of women to men than the industry average, the ratios of college grads seem to track the industry ratios reasonably closely.

I concede that there is a bias towards college grads in industry and stated above, and that nothing is legally barring me from crafting some kind of Cinderella program to seek out possibly qualified candidates who avoided college or who failed to graduate. There would no doubt be some successful candidates that emerged from such a program.

The practical bar to that is my belief that any such single-company program would be utterly uncompetitive versus other efforts I could make in staffing. Opening an out of country office, while hard, is probably much less work per successful candidate, has a higher success rate, and often presents much more compelling economics.

If the above is remotely true, the shortest path to better prospects for minorities is to increase their college attendance, STEM majors, and graduation rates. It also has the practical advantage of having a high level of self-determination and influence; rather than waiting for me to fix their problem (where I necessarily have many competing priorities), they can take initiative to address their problem (where they naturally have more focus and vested interest in the specific outcome).

There is unlikely to emerge a single-company Cinderella type program that will markedly change the industry. The overhead costs are too much and the successes too few. A regional (or even national) charitable or educational institution may be able to move the needle (but even there, the shorter path might well be "encourage college and STEM participation rates")

[nzoschke]

Be careful with the term "Cinderella program".

My direct experience here is working with Hackbright Academy to meet more women than I was getting through the standard job application channels.

Hackbright works attracts women from all backgrounds, science but no computer science, college drop outs, and junior CS. It teaches practical programming skills in the 3 months class, then helps connect the women to companies.

The program works. Smart women can learn programming and be successful at any subsequent job in the industry with adequate time, mentorship and training.

This is of course true for people of all genders, race and college background.

There are many similar programs that cater to diverse hiring pipelines. Dev Bootcamp for first time web developers, Jopwell for black, latino, hispanic and native american candidates.

But all these still depend on a hiring manager valuing mentorship over "pre-qualified".

Of all the things in my career, I am most proud of helping engineers be successful at tasks that they weren't "qualified" to do. This has been hiring junior candidates for roles beyond their current experience (with clear discussions on both sides about how it will be challenging), and rotating and promoting engineers into new roles and responsibilities.

[peterwwillis]

Did I just read that your company doesn't try harder to hire black people because it would make your company less competitive?

I could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure I just read that your company intentionally avoids hiring disadvantaged black people in your own country because hiring minorities overseas is cheaper and easier.

[meric]

We hired some remote engineers from South Africa through stack overflow. Now we have a permanent office in Cape Town. Give that a go maybe. A lot more bang for the buck comparatively than hiring remote engineers from the U.S., and the programmers there (shouldn't even be surprise) are as good as from any country including the U.S.

[nzoschke]

Awesome.

I can think of a ton of reasons a hiring manager would say "I can't do that." Not about race, but about remote and time zones.

So kudos to you for trying something that opened you up to far more candidates, finding them, making them successful, and sharing this example for others to learn from.

[peterwwillis]

The reason why you're not getting black applicants may include:

- It's hard to get hired by white companies, so a lot of black people stay within black-owned companies and communities.

- There are a lot of ways to search for and hire applicants; waiting for people to come to you will not necessarily result in the best candidate.

- Transportation is not as easy or available for poor or rural communities. It may be necessary to hire remote, or pay for relocation, or in the extreme cases open remote offices.

- The 'qualifications' may need to be revisited. What are you requiring as a qualification? Is it something a poor black person would have significantly more difficulty in achieving compared to a white person, due to socioeconomic disparities? Is it possible you could find other qualities that work as similar qualifications that black people might be more likely to have?

In order for there to be more black applicants, we need to help there to be more black applicants. This can mean many things, such as contacting local black communities and asking them what your company can do to help adults achieve a job at your company, or helping to improve the roadblocks for young kids to get a good education.

I know, I know; actually trying to help people can be a burden. But it will help people who continue to be oppressed by a society that does not care about them. You could continue to just wait for black people to work around the huge pitfalls society has set up for them, or you could help work to remove those pitfalls. It's up to you. Unfortunately.

[steven2012]

You sound like someone who hasn't ever tried to hire people in Silicon Valley.

[x3n0ph3n3]

I think you are being purposefully obtuse. Of course Jeff the amazing coder who punches people in the face does not meet hiring standards. No one is discounting the value of multiculturalism, but you have to acknowledge the cultural diversity of tech companies mirrors the cultural diversity of tech workers. The cultural diversity of tech workers mirrors the cultural diversity of tech students in college, which mirrors the cultural diversity of high-achieving high school students.

The problem exists in parts of the society that technology can't fix, but law and education might. It doesn't help that the criminal justice system is statistically racist and that lack of cohesive families due to the consequences of povertous conditions causes children from those families to perform less well in school.

If you want better diversity in better-paying fields, the most impactful change would be to end the war on drugs, which contributes the most to poverty and incarceration. I don't see how the tech community can do that by themselves and the full effect won't even be measurable in the tech community until a generation later.

[peterwwillis]

A "fix"? This isn't a compile-time error. This is the total disenfranchisement of entire classes or groups of people. There is no patch. The "fix" involves lots of difficult work.

First, we have to get people like you to understand what the problem is, which apparently is difficult to do. Then, we have to build empathy for the problems facing black people so you want to actually help them. Then we have to invest in developing social and economic equality within disadvantaged communities.

And hiring more diversely will not lower hiring standards. Please try to understand that.

[x3n0ph3n3]

I understand the problem to be way beyond hiring in tech, so I'm trying to understand why lack of diversity in tech is being blamed on the tech community.

[peterwwillis]

Because the tech industry is dragging its feet.

The explanation tech companies have for not having a more diverse workforce is that the applicants are just not out there to hire. Of course, any good tech worker could take an additional five minutes to think about the problem and discover that there are ways to create the applicants, by improving the communities that will grow the applicants.

But that takes time, and money, it's hands-on and it's not easy. And overseas workers are cheap.

[JoeAltmaier]

Because, when we see a flower growing in the desolation, we should try not to step on it.