[civilian]

:[ I'm a gun-shooting libertarian. Don't assume my Tribe.

You're right, the "tech tribe" does have improvements to make in inclusivity, but at least it's a home for some people who would otherwise be outcasts in socially conservative businesses.

As for a few things:

- I think we're just as accepting of blacks, our high school education system has just utterly failed them so much that we don't have a good pipeline for getting black people into tech.

- There are a different set of values in India that cause some clash between them and Americans/Westerns. There's the culture of following the letter of the request/task, rather than the spirit of the request/task. (Similarly but differently, mainland Chinese suck at asking questions when they don't understand something.) But my overall biggest complaints with outsourced contractors is a culture of "get shit done fast, and do any hacks to get it done". Because contractors don't stay with projects for the long-term, it's not surprising.

- The homeless and lower class are, almost by definition, not people who are achieving a ton. Tech is a meritocracy, we respect getting shit done, and we're not a jobs program.

[gitlabuser]

I agree that tech has been a haven for some who would be outcasts in other areas. Specifically the LGBT community.

To address your other points:

* I don't buy the pipeline argument. I've seen huge bias is how the tech community treats blacks. For example, I've seen a few black colleagues try to transfer into software engineering and get huge amounts of push back. Ironically I did the same thing (transfer from product management to dev) and I was supported. Why was I treated differently? Probably because I'm Indian so I am supposed to be a developer. In all the interviews I do, people assume I have a CS degree and lots of experience even though my resume says the complete opposite. I benefit a lot from the assumptions around my skin color while a black person gets the opposite experience.

* I get why people don't like offshore centers but that doesn't mean they should assume there aren't some very talented H1B developers. I have seen many. India has some of the best computer science programs in the world.

* I don't understand your comment on the homeless but the point I was trying to make was that verbally insulting poor people, the homeless, or old people is not inclusive or meritocratic. I've seen many examples of that in the tech community. I'm not asking people in tech to give free jobs to the homeless I'm asking people not to verbally insult them.

[sqeaky]

Some homelessness is due to untreated mental illness. Some homeless is due to other factors I am largely ignoring that, intentionally.

Tech is all about mental aptitude. Some mental health issues interfere with the required skills and some do not. Someone with ADD, bipolar or impostor syndrome is not strongly adversely affected, while someone with dissociative schizophrenia and cannot make decisions that keep sheltered will not succeed in tech and might not even with proper treatment.

What can tech do to better reach out to people who are homeless because they have mental issues that impact their decision making so much as to destroy their ability to maintain shelter? This problem is too big for a company to handle we need cultural and government change to address that.

I don't know what is up with your black colleagure, could you expand on that? I went from being a shitty programmer to a decent because a black programmer taught me a few key lessons about how to think, so there are at least a few mixed in with us.

I think tech is about as inclusive as it can be barring isolated exceptions.

[sqeaky]

Downvoted without rebuttal. :(

If I am wrong, then please tell me. I even asked for more information on something I was unsure of.

[Karrot_Kream]

> The homeless and lower class are, almost by definition, not people who are achieving a ton.

:(

[tptacek]

What does it even mean to respond to the criticism of how the tech industry treats black people to say "the high school system is failing them"? Aren't you describing, and excusing in yourself, the essence of prejudice? Individual black people who are being mistreated in our industry are not stand-ins for whatever phenomenon of all black life in America we happen to believe in.