That's all very rant-y. I'm not sure I quite grok the author's thesis here.
But, for the sake of debate...
"The reality is that Silicon Valley is one of the most open and diverse industries in the United States."
Ok, that might be true, but the supplied graph doesn't exactly support the statement. Blacks make up 13% of the population, but <5% of Google employees in the US. Similarly, Latino/Latinas make up 18% of the population and <7% of Google employees. Drilling into the chart (leads to a Google-owned site), the workforce is 32% female vs ~51% population.
Yeah, there are a lot of Asians (from many countries and ethnic backgrounds) in STEM. That doesn't prove that there isn't a lack of opportunity for US-born minorities (or even some majorities, as we see with women).
So, yeah, tech companies might be better than others, but the author didn't provide anything to back that assertion.
I also take issue with his statement that 365 reviews are a near-universal in STEM. They aren't. I've never had one done on myself, and have only ever participated in 2-3 (all of which involved a manager, not an IC, who was failing and eventually exited). I believe most of my peers would report a similar experience. I'm also not sure what these have to do with diversity in the workplace.
What is the purpose of having a company's demographics represent the country?
What if certain ethnic groups focus more on sports, or biology, or being lawyers or doctors, or they skip the whole college ripoff and go to a trade school. Do they still need equal representation in tech?
Do we just want equally smart people, or do we want people who also are motivated to work on tech, due to their cultural values?
What about the individuals themselves? What if we ignore the color of their skin for a moment and try to find diversity in peoples' experiences, backgrounds etc. I feel these anti-racism movements do more to further cement race as an important component of identity into peoples' minds than anything else these days.
What is the purpose of having a company's demographics represent the country?
The value to society, if done well, is ensuring everybody has a roughly equal chance to succeed across careers/jobs/industries.
The company itself possibly gets value from ensuring new candidates see others like them working there. They might get value from being able to show broader society that they are being fair. Regardless, it's up to the BoD, shareholders, and C-suite to decide what value is created and act accordingly. Apparently some tech companies see value in building a diverse workforce.
What if certain ethnic groups focus more on sports, or biology, or being lawyers or doctors, or they skip the whole college ripoff and go to a trade school. Do they still need equal representation in tech?
The burden is on people who want to maintain the current, non-representative state to prove nobody from other demographics wants into the field. Failing that, we should be trying to discover why some groups are underrepresented. And I just don't buy the argument that blacks prefer to play basketball and women prefer to teach, or whatever else it is your implying.
> Apparently some tech companies see value in building a diverse workforce.
And that's great, but diversity extends beyond ethnicity. If the only people your company hires are Ivy League 3rd culture kids, it doesn't matter what race they are. You are missing out on the majority of the benefits of diversity.
> The burden is on people who want to maintain the current, non-representative state to prove nobody from other demographics wants into the field.
No it isn't, and the fact that you're asking people to prove a negative should be a giant red flag that your views are unreasonable.
> And I just don't buy the argument that blacks prefer to play basketball and women prefer to teach, or whatever else it is your implying.
Please don't put words in my mouth, the fact that these examples are what you thought of speaks volumes about the depth of understanding you have here. White people actually focus a lot on sports compared to Asian, for example. East Asians focus more on being doctors than Indians, relative to engineering, as another.
Moreover, that you are saying that all people from all backgrounds should find tech equally attractive tells me that you've fundamentally misunderstood the concept of cultural diversity. The fact that we have imbalances shows that we value diversity, because we let individuals choose as they wish, and as their cultures guide them. Having equal representation actually means a homogeneous society, not a diverse society.
No one is arguing that demographics have to match the country, at least not anyone serious. No one is forcing certain ethnic groups to apply to tech jobs - but if you have a group of people who are telling you that they would like these jobs, and there are structural disadvantages in place that make it more challenging for those people to get those jobs - why wouldn't you try to make things more equitable?
I don't see any evidence that any actual otherwise-qualified people are saying they would like these jobs but are unable to get them due to any hurdles at all - I do see advocacy groups insisting that percentages themselves are evidence that there must be such people, but aren't able to produce any examples.
> Triplebyte’s key advice for job seekers is to read the bios of founders and apply to companies where the CTO shares your background. Since only 3% of VC funding goes to women and less than 1% goes to Black founders, this advice will be hard to follow for applicants from underrepresented groups or with non-traditional backgrounds.
There's lots of stories about challenges in getting those jobs, and then getting paid less to do those jobs, and then feeling unwelcome. Why is it so hard to believe that it's simply harder to get a job if you're a qualified minority? How does it lessen you to acknowledge that there are systemic problems?
I started to write a similar reply, got distracted, and by the time I turned back I assumed someone would have written it (and you had!).
There's a ton of biases in tech, and it's possible for that to result in complex situations like the ones we see. If you largely prefer hiring people from a small number of universities, and those universities are largely white, asian, and/or male - you're going to have a very non-diverse population even if you have a lot of immigrants. If you interview people in a particular way that is optimized for a specific style of education, people who did not experience that same education are going to be at a disadvantage. Similarly, if you primarily hire people in an area that is not particularly diverse, you're going to end up with a very non-diverse employee base.
None of this is to say that everyone is a racist or that there's no way for a minority to be successful in big tech, it's just that the structural systems in place work against them. The odds are longer and the hurdles higher.
If you look at some of the things that big tech companies are doing to address that - heavily recruiting at schools with large minority student bodies, helping to build curriculums to help those students perform well on interviews, and even opening offices in places where there is greater diversity - you're trying to remove some of those structural hurdles. I remembered this article from a long time ago that I was able to track down:
It's got great details on how hard some of these challenges can be to address, and looking back on it, things have gotten better. But why is it such a problem to say that there's more to be done?
I think his point is that the problem is no longer as simple as a lack of diversity, and blanket calls for "more diversity" are not addressing the problem. The problem is a lack of women and black people and we need to stop framing it as "white men won't let in anyone but themselves."
Sure, but are any serious policy wonks actually saying tech is all white males?
That, and the most famous faces (on the evening news) of tech ARE largely white males. Gates, Jobs, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. So a casual observer might not realize there really are a lot of minorities at all levels of tech.
If the media chooses to focus on someone who died ten years ago and someone who retired fifteen years ago is that really a problem the tech industry can do anything about?
Wouldn't you need to compare it to available workforce and not entire population? I don't know how the available workforce breaks down by race (even more specifically tech) but it seems like that could change the numbers a lot.
But when the available workforce nowhere near matches general demographics, you have to dig a little deeper. Why are there so few blacks, females, or whoever else entering the industry?
The reason for all this is pretty simple, when you get down to it. Corporations want to look good with regards to quote-"diversity" much more than they actually want diversity. Pandering to the stereotypical caricatures of diversity is far more rewarding, both in the C-suite and on the modern university campus. Real diversity is a nice-to-have, sure — it's not all cynical pretense — but quote-"diversity" will mean good press, more status, and ward off certain critics.
>why are these companies spending billions of dollars on diversity consultants
Are they really spending that much? I'm out of the loop on this. Any and all such consultants I typically hear about are ones who have had some falling-out on Twitter. If consultants are resigning left and right, it can't be that much money, can it? Really billions?
I think meaning of the term diversity is often twisted into a binary outcome. If a company is 65% white and 35% Chinese is that more diverse than a company that is 70% white, 10% Chinese, 10% Indian, and 10% Vietnamese?
Often, the above two examples would be flattened to just 35% or 30% Asian. But even my example is very reductive - China, for example, has many dozens of ethnic groups.
I think 'diversity' is a very hard thing to quantify, which makes it more difficult to measure the effectiveness of initiatives to increase diversity.
Can anyone point me towards better methods of measuring diversity? If society or a particular organization wishes to increase diversity, it seems important to be able to measure it with more nuance.
What would an ideal algorithm for quantifying diversity look like?
It also ignores the most important diversity, which is diversity of thought. Having ten employees of ten different races who all think the same is hardly diversity.
EDIT: Getting downvoted by the 'diversity' crowd I see :)
In my corporate experience, I have only seen people care about diversity based on irrelevant characteristics (race, gender, etc). Nobody wants diversity of thought.
An example that I expect will get me in trouble: when a woman exhibits traditionally masculine characteristics at work - assertiveness etc, it can get looked at badly. And people say "oh well if a man did that, it would be ok", and use it as an example of sexism. I like working with women, and I reject any notion of stereotypes about how a woman should act, but a woman acting the same as the other male douchebags doesn't add any diversity, she's just another annoying person I have to manage. I'd rather have someone bring a unique and different temperament to work, which could even include being helpful and caring instead of combative with a chip on their shoulder. So maybe if people want to be valued for the diversity of their contributions, they should actually act "diverse" and not conform to the lowest common denominator of corporate behavior.
The irony of Corporate America's diversity programs is that they appreciate diversity of thought except for those that disagree with them. Then, they suddenly don't care about you and your thoughts.
Jews for a long time now have been functionally white
It's a Schrodinger's white guy situation, often even to themselves. I've seen the same person claim to be both white and not white in different times and contexts. I wonder if Irish and Italian people went through a similar period on their way to whiteness and we just don't know about it because no one was listening.
Well, i'm indian, and I was told by a college professor in a history of immigration class that I am white because I believe in things like hard-work to better my family's situation, education, etc. The book he had us read was all about how different races got 'whitened', and he was convinced Indians are being 'whitened'.
Let's just sit here and consider for a minute the inherent racism in referring to anyone being rich as having the quality of 'being white'.
> Liberalism announces ‘one person, one vote’ and ‘equality before the law’, and yet somehow the children of the wealthy have a plusher time on Christmas morning than those of the very poor (not to mention most other days of their lives).
I'm not sure I see the "and yet" conflict here; equality before the law and one person, one vote don't have anything to do with money. In fact, the big deal about these two ideas is that they completely ignore how much money you have. Maybe someone can explain to me what the author means here.
The Diversity agenda of the past 20+ years has created more racism and division than I witnessed in my entire life before then. I have come to conclude that it's one of the most misguided movements in modern history. We were making progress (seemingly too slow, I know) by applying Dr. King's prescription for Color Blindness. But, that concept has been rejected (though his name is still used in honor); and sure enough, we've slid horribly backwards.
It has just become a very combative and partisan issue. Take the statement "women make 70% of what men do". This statement has been thoroughly debunked, but if someone made that statement and you challenged it, even with something reasonable like: "There is a gap but it is not that large", you would be risking ostracization by longtime friends, loss of career, etc. Are we supposed to feel like we are making forward progress when objecting to bad statistics, or any reasonable discussion around certain issues will result in an insanely hostile response?
But consider all of the little slights of hand performed. I recall the unhappy Tweets from feminists when women were considered for the draft, mostly around the theme of "this isn't the equality I wanted." Equality is the whole package, it isn't a pick and choose. It isn't "only the good stuff."
And then the shift has been to equity now. You have probably noticed this.
Yes. And, for women the insanity is mind-blowing. Now, being a "woman" is a state of mind and simply a matter of choice -- i.e. it's a meaningless "construct". We spent decades _rightfully_ learning to recognize and respect our differences, in terms of recognizing equal rights. But now, boom that's just bullshit, I guess.
But, that's me who's amazed by this. I'd be more interested in the the opinion of women (biological females) on this recent phenomenon.
MLK was against what people today call colorblindness. Just because he said he wanted people to not judge his children by the color of their skin does not mean he didn't recognize that modern society does and will continue to do so, so we need to put in place compensating measures. Using a dead person's words in the exact opposite way they were intended is bad.
"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,"
People can be forgiven for thinking this quote by MLK Jr. advocates colorblindness because that's exactly what it seems to say. It is only when you apply a scholarly interpretation do you arrive at his words being used "in the exact opposite way they were intended".
This strikes me of "Yes, well it says 'Defund the Police' but what it actually means is.."
Appending on to what BitwiseFool said. There is "Martin Luther King Jr." the person and "Martin Luther King Jr." the public figure (or the icon, or the philosophy, or the doctrine, or the movement).
MLK could have thought any number of great or terrible things. In some contexts it can be highly appropriate to mention them.
In my opinion, when someone mentions MLK in the context of the "I have a dream" speech, its clear to me that the personhood of MLK or his beliefs are really not up for discussion. MLK is a piece of iconography, a historical reference point, for the color-blind, racially-neutral position. Any discussion of MLK's beliefs distract from the point being made and ultimately does not change minds.
And positions that are contrary to what MLK believed shouldn't be advocated by calling on his status as a public figure. Just because people are ignorant doesn't mean they get to say whatever they want. I don't see how this is even being discussed.
It's because people disagree with your assumption that you are completely correct, but I know you're already not here to discuss but to "fact-check".
There are reasons why specific pieces of history stick out and resonate. His "I have a dream" speech is what I remembered most because that is what ultimately, I believe, actually played a role in truly removing a lot of pervasive racism and discrimination that used to exist.
It certainly helped me from a young age really have a worldview that people are who they advertise themselves as, not by the visual identity I associate them with. It's never been an issue until people like you popped up out of nowhere saying I'm the most racist person alive because I don't treat people differently because of their race.
You're just arguing that only a subset of people can correctly interpret what people truly mean. I'm not sure that is consistent or valid? Taking things at face value is a valid interpretation because that is what is literally said. Excluding tone, but a quick search returns the literal interpretation backed by congresswoman AOC.
> 'I believe the path toward justice is a long arc. Safety is not just an officer with a badge and a gun,' AOC said. 'Our [police budget] is too high,' she added, citing a $6 billion figure for New York's department. [src](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/aoc-defends-defund-t...)
Did the budget drop? Then it was defunded, which is accurate. It can be defunded and reallocated and still be accurately stated by "defund the police".
You're arguing that what people say isn't what they really mean to say. Almost insinuating that it always requires an "expert" or "scholarly" opinion in order to truly interpret the true meaning of what someone says.
"The sky is blue"
"Well he meant to say the sky is clear, but it's the reflection of light from the water in the air that makes it appear blue, but it's not actually blue"
Meanwhile if you look outside observe you notice the sky is blue, validating the original statement. There wasn't any depth to the statement other than "The sky is blue"
I don't know what you are saying. Are you saying we shouldn't consider context when looking at quotes? That's a bad idea. For example, BitwiseFool said "Defund the Police." We shouldn't be saying MLK advocated a position he clearly didn't, and I should be allowed to correct someone when they do.
I would like you to personally explain why you believe that article to be convincing that colorblindness isn't a positive way to treat people. What do you actually propose with how to treat people that is an overall improvement over colorblindness?
Let's say you start to treat people based on the supposed presumption that all blacks are oppressed and poor. All. Not some, all. I'm not talking about a rough life in a rough neighborhood, I'm talking systemtic oppression at all levels everywhere that everyone does to blacks. As that's the premise of that article, you must repair the relations of the past in order to move forward? Instead why not take the individual and judge them by who they are, not the color you see through your eyes and assume them to be. You end up properly enacting how people should be treated in general, regardless of race. Unless of course you propose and truly believe a race is somehow indicative of a persons' entire identity and personal history. It's delusional and dishonest if you think seeing color is the ultimate message.
You can wish to not be judged for color and wish for reparations to repair relations _at the time_. Certainly the way you're championing this article as somehow irrefutable account of MLKs true intent behind his speech is also disingenuous to nuance.
The article isn't even conclusive as it would require you to follow the sources of:
- Standford (Univeristy)
- Brookings (Public Policy Nonprofit)
- WashingtonPost (Media)
- the74million (Media)
- The Atlantic (Media)
- Ibram X. Kendi ("How to be anti-racist" book author)
- SPLC (Law firm)
- ASCD (Educators community?)
- TNTP (Educators community?)
Not to mention all the standford links are behind a login panel which cannot be verified. This is horribly sourced to be considered _concrete_ in itself.
I feel the article takes MLK's speech as if he said it yesterday instead of taking into account improvements that occurred between then and now. Trying to say that the blacks have had a total degradation of rights and life since then is an insult to the blacks who actually suffered during that time.
I'll continue to treat everyone the same regardless of race because I feel that trying to apologize or cater to someone for the color of their skin without having spoken a word to them would be pretty presumptuous to assume they come from that background or even from a country where they were oppressed in the first place. I'm not sure what your goal is?
Holy strawmans Batman. Stop putting words into people's mouths. I don't think we should treat all black people like they are oppressed and poor. I think we should recognize our society has historically oppressed and impoverished the majority of black people. Colorblindness does not allow that. Beyond that, I owe you no explanation.
> I think we should recognize our society has historically oppressed and impoverished the majority of black people.
Okay, now that we've acknowledged it happened historically how do we make sure it doesn't continue? Treat those same people differently based on the color of their skin?
> Colorblindness does not allow that.
What are you talking about? It absolutely does, you can understand that treating people based on race is incorrect. You are blind to the color of their skin for today.
If you treat them any differently because of their skin color you're inherently believing they are different because of their skin color.
> Beyond that, I owe you no explanation.
Then don't post on a _discussion_ board? You're kidding, right? I guess I won't expect anything else, but I'm not sure why you're here in the first place then?
I am frankly tired of this as a person of color. I work in Silicon Valley and constantly being hassled by HR/PR/Marketing teams to pose as their diversity pawn. Yes, I have a picture of me taken (company owns the rights) to put me at the fore front of their marketing materials.
I don't envy you ... Funny thing is, when I was in academia, I was always annoyed by being passed over in the "token Muslim" photo shoots because I did not fit white liberals' stereotypes of Muslims :-)
Regardless of what anything thinks about it, it's here to stay as the diversity industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. The people leading this movement have amassed lots of power over corporations and government.
EDIT: Downvoted for speaking facts. Amazing this site.
No idea as well why you’re getting downvoted. I work in a big tech company where some employees’ sole role of existence is pushing diversity & inclusion and preach wokeness, with the blessings of HR of course.
I would add that it feeds nicely into the "outrage industry" that is an offshoot of the attention economy. There is a lot of money (power as well) in dividing and enraging people. As long as current ad revenue models (and yes, the associated algorithmic escalation of outrage) persist, I don't see this improving.
It's precisely why big corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon so eagerly over the past few years. They walk around constantly virtue-signal-flogging themselves these days, it's despicable.
Coca Cola is an evil company that - in my opinion - has knowingly killed hundreds of thousands of people with its product, by way of health consequences. They're every bit as vile as the tobacco companies, and they've operated in a very similar manner over time. Yet somehow they've become a poster child for woke'ism in corporate America. How is that possible? They certainly do not care about the well-being of people. They see a power angle in taking advantage of it, there is something for them to gain by acting as a parasite riding on cultural trends. Giant corporations like that don't do anything for any other reasons, power and profit.
I read an article that I cant find now about the irony of "evil" organizations - the example they gave was intelligence agencies - going out of their way to be "gay friendly" or some similar pandering to make people feel good. As if it's ok that you're illegally wiretapping and torturing or whatever, because of your commitment to diversity.
I'd also add that it seems that many of the most zealous virtue signaling orgs are monopolies / oligopolies that don't have a lot of real business needs to focus on. Check out the Canadian banks for an example. I feel like there's some animal kingdom example I'm not remembering about large antlers or something that signal fitness because only a strong, well fed reindeer could expend the energy growing them. You get the idea. And it ends up having the evolutionary advantages that it crowds out those who are struggling to make ends meet and can't grow the big antlers, and eventually we're left with some ridiculous relics that can barely lift their heads.
> The Diversity agenda of the past 20+ years has created more racism and division than I witnessed in my entire life before then
I am forced to wonder if this isn't precisely because the "diversity agenda" has simply called attention to something already lurking in the background. In other words, it's not that there is more racism and division than there used to be, only that you're more aware of it now.
I don't think the "diversity agenda" has contributed to awareness. Awareness of the problem probably comes from the internet and the democratization of media. People couldn't watch Rodney King on YouTube. Now they can and thousands of other similar incidents.
No amount of racial sensitivity trainings could ever amount to watching a single YouTube video of an unarmed black man being shot by the police.
Somehow there is little reaction when white people are being shot, though (or killed in general, like the white guy who died in the same way as Georg Floyd sometime before). I think there is more to it than just accessibility.
This. There is way less racism now than their used to be. At the same time we have more awareness of the issues. The only people I know who are really bothered by this are those who liked the old world where people knew their place.
The racism and division was being intentionally enflamed the past few years. Muslims being banned from the US (until the courts shot it down). Anti-immigrant rhetoric. "Build the wall." "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." It's easy to have a short memory nowadays, but you're taking something that's local temporally and acting like it was always this way.
"The Diversity agenda of the past 20+ years has created more racism and division than I witnessed in my entire life before then."
Are your children being taken from you, forced to speak a different language in a state-mandated school where they're underfed and not given medical treatment, leading to high death rates from preventable diseases?
Well, that's not necessarily an American thing. For a long time, the race that's currently described as "asian" was called "oriental" and specifically referred to that race. For some reason, the more specific term "oriental" fell out of favor (and is even considered offensive now, although I'm not quite sure why) and was replaced with the more generic, and somewhat confusing, "asian".
>The contrast is even sharper if you consider the equity that various social justice movements seek to achieve, whereby every sub-segment of society (at least those we fixate on) must be proportionally represented at every echelon of society.
This is a false premise. Not all social justice movements are concerned purely with representation. The overarching response of existing power to the varied material and structural asks (like police funding reallocation, decarceration, housing and healthcare access) has been to flatten them as such.
You can tell the movements co-opted by corporations and major political parties by the extent to which they ignore material conditions.
>The equality of outcome pursued by ‘wokeness’ is a whole other bar to reach from mere equality of rights or opportunity.
"Equality of outcome" is another disingenuous misrepresentation of what activists want. Activists want structural change, not superficial papering over of abuses of power that have been inflicted on their communities.
These are unfortunately elements that this author included that really take away from the reasonable critique of the ranking and hiring system that he is subjected to as a laborer working in a modern technology company. Perhaps he needed to start with that in order to get the outrage machine sharing his article.
that is the current limitation of human logical brain - whatever good looking small social/economical improvement is stretched, in real life or just as an idea, well beyond its original context it always ends up looking like communism. Situation somewhat similar to physics - great Newton mechanics taken well beyond its original context of slow velocities ends up being a completely false theory.
Wrt. the OP though - couple years ago when i checked the Google's racial make-up did very well match the racial make-up of the SAT above ~1450.
A recent anecdote - a Russian guy filling new hire paperwork in a US company checked completely different box than "Caucasian" just for fun, and when round eyed HR challenged him on it his response was "Sorry, we weren't taught how to correctly divide people by race", and the HR backed off.
> Activists want structural change, not a superficial papering over of the abuse of power that has been inflicted on their communities.
What is the reason for the structural change though? Because mostly I see it just to fit an ideology of "how things should be", with not much thought beyond that.
I agree that many of the current systems are horribly broken, but I don't think that critical race theory or other Marxist-founded systems put us in a better place. They certainly don't have a track record of success, and I'd argue that even in their limited application in the US their effects on the general population, and their effect on perception and treatment of minorities, has been largely detrimental against their own claimed goals of equality.
"Why does it always have to be a white guy with a beard".
I did take the job, but I've reflected on that moment once in a while.