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Studies, data, conversation, and thoughtfulness around these issues are welcome and needed but this news article is, frankly, junk.
I always like to look at data from the source, so I downloaded the original report, which The Guadian couldn't be bothered to link to.
Let's start with the title of the article:
> Black and Latino representation in Silicon Valley has declined, study shows
However the report is about Asian representation, and although it includes some data on other groups it states:
> Although we include the figures for black and Hispanic men and women, we do not use them for comparative purposes because EPI figures for those cohorts are highly sensitive to small changes.
This is right in the executive summary.
The next problem is that the article represents the study as being of "Silicon Valley" and the "tech industry", but the study is of just five companies: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. These are all large corporations and there is no evidence given to suggest that this is a "Silicon Valley" problem and not a "Corporate America" problem. That's not to say that you can't draw conclusions from studying these companies, but you can't make sweeping statements about the tech industry based on them. Especially when so much of Silicon Valley is made up of startups. The valley is a dynamic place: two of those corporations no longer exist.
Obviously problems exist, but I see no reason here to single out the tech industry for special blame, especially when no attempt is made to compare tech with other industries and "tech" is taken to mean a handful of large corporations. Worse still, by misrepresenting the nature and origins of these problems, we set ourselves up to fail when we try to address them. Uber's appalling culture, for example is firmly rooted in that of finance, why don't we talk about that? What do the finance industry's diversity statistics look like?
>Studies, data, conversation, and thoughtfulness around these issues are welcome and needed
I posted a top level comment that links to a study and another link to an article which links to several studies and got downvoted to oblivion. I don't think this sort of thing is _actually_ welcome here.
Unsurprising. I tell all of my minorities friends to remove their pictures from LinkedIn and use American sounding names. The increase in callbacks always shocks me. You can do this experiment in reverse yourself if you already have an American sounding name.
Unfortunately the real solution, anonymity, will probably never be adopted because there are groups who benefit from being identified. There's way too much many in tech to for the incumbents to leave it to merit.
It's not really as clear-cut as that, Australia for instance had some study results* led by a Hardvard Grad show the opposite, that blind recruitment generally favored the white male majority as it precluded affirmative action hires.
If a truly anonymous (which I'm skeptical that study was, but I'll give them the benefit of doubt) hiring method yields more white people, then that's 100% OK. The goal IMO should be to prevent bias with respect to gender, race, etc; not to implement a quota resulting in a certain percentage of people from backgrounds being hired.
"The goal IMO should be to prevent bias with respect to gender, race, etc"
One would think, no?
But there's a considerable number of people who don't feel that way - they think that 50/50 gender balance is a 'moral imperative' for example.
Surely, it's their right to think that, even promote it. But I'm weary of that kind of ideology being used to shut down other voices - which I think happens frequently.
I believe that the Guardian article (and the Graun as a whole, I read it every day and see the pattern) speaks to this: that specific minorities are underrepresented in certain roles 'must be due to racism' I think is unfair. Surely it plays a part, but there are so many other factors.
Anonymity as a solution assumes that the problem ends at hiring. It's unlikely that whatever forces cause people to racially discriminate during hiring are going to go stop causing problems once somebody gets the job. And some decisions, like promotions and pay-raises, can't feasibly be done anonymously.
Why would this be the case if they stated Asians and other minorities have not been affected? Black and Latino names are way more common in the US than Asians / Indians. Are you saying that silicon valley will hire every other minority besides black and latinos?
This is one reason why I advocate giving your kids (if in America, at least) really boring names. Just scratch anything remotely strange off the list, and forget about it.
If you can't imagine a Kennedy or a character on 1950s US TV having the name, don't use it. Having a "special" name is unlikely to bring any benefit, and may well have significant social costs (plus having always to repeat yourself and spell your name, correcting misspellings on forms, et c.)
With my three young kids I already regret the very, very slightly unusual name we used for the first one (ordinary spelling for the name, name has a long history but it's almost homophonic with a 20x more common name, which we should have just used instead). Just don't do it.
There are plenty of people who regret having the common name, too. Hard to find them online, sometimes you get a mixup with someone else's arrest warrant or credit report, etc.
Male with the most common American male name from 1950-2000 here (and top 5 for the last 100 years or more). I don't even hear my name when spoken in public, I only hear familiar voices or my last name (I usually give a fake name when ordering food or waiting for tires, etc). I went to a large high school and a small college. There were 3-4 persons with my same name in every class. Eventually everyone refers to you by your last name or a nickname. This has not stopped even into adulthood.
Even as a professional working for a small business, I get re-introduced over and over again to the same people. I'm sure that my words and appearance play a role in that as well, but surely my name is not helping.
Every underrepresented group represents an opportunity to start a company, hire some great people from that group, and succeed together. A single company, perhaps one you start this year, can make a huge impact.
That's such a big, intimidating risk. I don't mean that to be snarky; starting a business for means of primary income is prohibitively scary to me.
I have a few ideas that I could probably implement to make some passive income. It wouldn't be crazy initially, but it also wouldn't be an amount to scoff at. I think they all have the potential to grow or be bought. The thought of taking that giant risk and failing...
Aside from the ramifications of selectively hiring from my minority group, starting a business makes me shudder.
Underrepresented groups tend to have less financial security. (That's part of why they're underrepresented in the first place; the term means that there's less of them in some particular space than their fraction in society as a whole, not that they are a minority in terms of underrepresented numbers.)
Venture capital is great for taking someone who has some amount of financial security, but not quite enough to entirely bootstrap their venture, and giving them enough more. But it's not particularly effective at helping someone who really needs a low-risk (even if low-reward) option because they have no fallback if their company fails. (To be absolutely clear, this isn't the fault of any venture capitalist, nor is it a thing I think a venture capitalist can reasonably solve in the short term, so this is not a complaint about venture capitalists, just a statement about how the world is. Perhaps in the long term, YC's experiments with UBI might help, but that's an experiment and it won't become a reliable source of financial security for anyone for many many years.)
Race doesn't line up perfectly with financial security, and it certainly does not determine financial security. But in the US, today, it's pretty strongly correlated.
Not only that, it's much more legal to be racially biased in who you choose as your customers. The laws in the US that require nondiscrimination in hiring, regardless of how effective they may or may not be, don't apply at all to choosing a NoSQL vendor or whatever.
Which part isn't plausible? There's plenty of evidence that competitors are biased in various ways. For tech startups, customers and investors are rarely aware of the racial mix of employees, unless maybe they're in the news for not being diverse enough.
Sometimes I wonder if the tech industry should adopt the orchestral model of auditions: prevent the interviewers from seeing the candidate, knowing their name, or hearing their voice. Judge them entirely on their code and text responses.
Sure something like this would probably result in complaints about "hiring for culture fit," but isn't someone who provides the correct answers and code a culture fit in the first place?
There exist people who are good at providing correct answers and code, but are incredibly toxic to a human organization. They're fairly rare, and if you work in a healthy well-run company, you may never have met one. But if you interview a lot, you surely have (they get a lot of interviews, because they look good on paper.) The risk is that you'd end up with a lot of these types.
I'm not saying a pure audition model can't work, just that you should know what the pitfalls are.
> isn't someone who provides the correct answers and code a culture fit in the first place?
No, they're merely a technical fit, maybe, depending on what you ask. (Your blinding process would also mean preventing interviewers from seeing any open source contributions which may be far more indicative of technical fit than anything you'd ask in an interview.) Technical fit might be enough for most roles, more blinding at least at the initial filtering stages might be a good idea, but culture fit is important for a lot of firms. At the very least people will want person-to-person interviews to maximize their odds at detecting a permanent asshole (and other toxic types), since typically no one wants to work with one even if they're skilled.
"prevent the interviewers from seeing the candidate, knowing their name, or hearing their voice"
And what happens representation becomes even more skewed?
The fact is the Valley employs gender/ethnicity almost perfectly commensurate with those graduating with CS degrees.
It's borderline bigoted to imply that 'it's all due to racism'.
Yes, surely there are gender/ethnic issues, but the funnel is 90% of the problem.
There's no fair way to hire 50% females if only 15% of applicants are female.
I get there's 'dynamic feedback' (i.e. more women in tech encourages more younger women in tech) but again, it's the responsibility of people to make choices in life.
I have enough East/South Asian friends to roughly grasp the soft-racism they faced growing up, and they've done very well both as individuals and as a group.
This issue needs nuance and few people are willing to speak in those terms.
i did one of these interviews at a bank. I was asked to sit behind curtain and answer questions . It felt totally weird. you are right they should have masked out my voice too.
I think feelings on this are going to depend on whether you consider a silicon valley job as more "outcome" or "opportunity." I'd say making sure that black/latino people can obtain these jobs is just as important as making sure they have equal opportunity to attend a good college or good highschool. That puts me in a bit of a predicament though because I come to the conclusion that what's in the best interests of society requires these companies to go against what's in their best interests and pass up more qualified whites/asians. Thoughts?
But... the article says Asians are the most likely to be hired and least likely to be promoted so then are they more qualified or not?
You know I think this is actually a good thing. I’ve been working as a dev for 12 years but after interviewing with tech companies more recently I’m done. I’m doing my own thing. The ‘technical interviews’ made sure of that, I presumably suck at them but I can’t be sure because no constructive feedback. Start your own thing, it will be more rewarding, I’ve learned more in 9 years of side projects than I ever did at the job and recently it’s really paying off. Oh yeah, there is no engineer shortage and there never has been, pay people decent and don’t be raise the bar to the point it’s in the clouds and you’ll see there are earnest, keen hardworking people eager and ready. Oh and I don’t know, may be invest in people a little instead too, people are life long learners, they have potential.
> The ‘technical interviews’ made sure of that, I presumably suck at them but I can’t be sure because no constructive feedback ...
such a good point. i've heard that companies have rules expressly forbidding offering constructive feedback to candidates, because liability (or something). but it's a wasteful/destructive system. many companies seem to think working for them is the summation of earthly existence. but they still have churn.
That's a pretty common line of attack against this sort of thing but I don't think it holds water. There are plenty of "unqualified" white people who get jobs just by knowing the right person. In many industries (less so in tech because there's a shortage overall) there are plenty of qualified applicants of all races, it just takes some work on a few levels (overcoming your own biases, going out of your way to recruit, etc)
I don't believe that there are plenty of qualified applicants of all races. I've been in a position to review resumes and perform interviews for over a decade and I don't recall having ever seen a black developer candidate, much less a "qualified" one. The closest I've gotten is I worked alongside a black sysadmin once. My city is nearly 30% black. My city is also about 25% Hispanic. I've worked with a hand full or so of Hispanic devs, I'd guess somewhere in the range of 3-5% of my coworkers have been Hispanic.
I started a sports betting company that turned into an analytics company. We had zero women or minority (other than asian) employees or even applicants. One new employee became vocal about it, so he was made our "diversity officer". He was made part of our recruiting division and was present in every interview. We got one (white) woman employee. She quit soon after joining. Now there is an opening for a "diversity officer" inside the company. No takers yet.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
We're tired of obsessing about race.
We're tired of having accusations of racism, sexism, whatever-the-next-trendy-ism crammed down our throats at every opportunity.
The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not value education. Until that changes, do not expect to see highly educated and skilled blacks and latinos bounding through the hiring process. Just ask the asians about minority discrimination - they outperform everyone and are openly penalized for it.
CONTENT OF CHARACTER. NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT SKIN COLOR.
Go ahead and delete this comment, it's not going to change reality.
This comment violates the guidelines. You've made highly provocative and controversial claims without support, which is also called flamebait. This doesn't bring us any closer to actual learning or insight. That's what this site is for.
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
'“There have been no changes for Asians or any other minority over time – men or women,” said Buck Gee, the study’s co-author and an executive adviser to Ascend, a US-based research group that advocates for Asian representation in businesses.'
The claim is that, despite increasingly visible/vocal attempts at diversity, the industry does not reflect this. We've noticed a regression in black/Latino hiring and stagnancy for Asians. This implies that there is racism at work.
Or it means any number of things such as the visible/vocal attempts at diversity failing to achieve their stated goals, the difficulty in attracting appropriately skilled developers from what is already a much smaller subset of the population etc.
The angle of the study, if not the actual result, is already a foregone conclusion considering it's from an Affirmative Action-lobbying organization but even then some of the complaints are a bit nonsensical (hard to know if it should be chalked down to the Guardian or the actual report though), for instance that it's twice as likely to find white men and women as CEOs than asian ones, when the amount of whites are fourteen times the one of the asian population in the US.
Does it though? Or does it suggest that the problem is not (just) racism, and that all the noise is making it harder to identify and solve the root problems?
No I don't believe it does. Causation != correlation.
Just because a company goes on a PR campaign to openly discriminate based on race and attempt to hire minorities, does not mean more minorities will present themselves in the application pools.
Again, until urban minority cultures begin to value education - nothing will change.
> The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not value education.
I have no interest in deleting your comment, but I am interested in rational debate.
1. What is your evidence for this?
2. Why would this explain a decline in representation? Do you believe that "urban black" culture has started devaluing education?
3. If, indeed, you're tired of thinking about race, why is your analysis based on "urban black" culture? Why not urban culture in general? There are plenty of inner-city whites and Asians, no?
You're asking for quite a lot. Black America doesn't value education because the culture was designed to devalue education. I know no one on this site wants to talk about it, but a culture was created for Black America during slavery.
Think about what was valuable in slaves. Physical Prowess (Stronger slaves means more work can be completed in the fields), and talent (slaves that can keep other slaves entertained mean they're not planning a revolt).
Keeping the slave master entertained by singing and dancing also brought perks for the slaves that are able to do so. Being able to produce more value in the field also brought perks.
Now think about the industries Black Americans dominate today... Athletics and Entertainment.
Being caught reading would get you killed, being caught writing would get you killed. Being white and teaching a black person to read or write could also get you killed.
The problem is the culture. Simply saying fix the culture when it's the result of a process that took hundreds of years to create will not solve the issue.
I certainly don't believe it's asking for a lot. It's racist to assert that minorities don't have any self control.
Every race in the world has been enslaved at some point. We are just animals, transcend this.
Let's start here: is it too much of a stretch to say that I think it's ridiculous that the most commonly understood career path for black youth is drug dealer -> gangster rapper, or athlete? These kids deserve better role models, for one. This is an obvious truth and should not require citation.
Any opinions, thoughts and ideas that are expressed on ycombinator that are not left-wing and don't tow the liberal line are being deleted.
It's not that there aren't people who disagree with these bullshit articles, it's that ycombinator mods are literally deleting and banning users who express opinions that aren't "correct".
>The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries.
>One of my friends is a woman of color, and not that long ago, she arrived with three male colleagues in the lobby of a building for a scheduled meeting. The administrative assistant came out, walked right past my friend, shook the hands of the three men, and welcomed them. My friend extended her hand to introduce herself, and the assistant asked, "Oh, you're with them?"
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