[p4wnc6]

I think you are exceptionally lucky for race not to have been more of a negative factor in your experiences.

So while we can be glad that your path has been as you describe, we cannot let your anecdotal experience cause us to feel like the issue is less serious than it is.

I am not saying this as a means to endorse the linked article. I'm saying it so that we remember to never, ever let anecdotal stories that go "I'm in marginalized group X and I've never experienced significant negative consequences of discrimination in tech" affect our opinions about the issue's prevalence, severity, or significance.

When there's hard data showing improvement, then we can relax about it. Until then, hearing stories about the lucky few who weren't disadvantaged can be inspirational, but is not a valid way to form an opinion of the larger issue and larger community.

[carlosnunez]

You're right. I'm not saying that the issue in serious. Minorities in tech is a HUGE issue at the moment, as it should be. The more smart and driven people that pursue this crazy field, the better.

I'm just saying that having a full understanding the context at hand helps more. The OP of these tweets didn't provide any hard evidence either, FYI.

[matt_wulfeck]

> When there's hard data showing improvement, then we can relax about it.

What hard data are you proposing?

[p4wnc6]

What do you mean? I'm not saying such hard data exists, but data showing that race/gender/orientation/etc are not related to being under-represented as founders (after accounting for base rates) or as funding winners, and that race/gender/orientation/etc are not related to being underpaid, being given less favorable funding terms, being passed over for promotions, or enduring unfair discriminative working conditions.

I'm not aware of much convincing data on this. Most of the data about it relating to start-ups fails to adequately account for base rates, which is a double problem: it sensationalizes superficial discrepancies that are symptoms of the social processes that generate tech workers and founders (which causes knee-jerk contrarian reactions from tech people who rightly feel the sensationalized issue misrepresents things), while failing to give enough attention to real issues that persist after accounting for base rates.