I'm not originally from America, so I seem to be missing something in articles like this. Why does no one talk about the "pipeline problem," that is, encouraging many more people from "minority" groups (black, women, and so on) to pursue coding from young age? (Edit: or encouraging these groups to enter the field at any age, such as through the community college system/Coursera/etc.)<p>It seems like examining the end of the funnel (and placing blame squarely on tech companies) is all too easy, and is much easier than addressing a root cause (not enough people of these groups studying CS to begin with.)
I hired about 10 junior dev/qa/pm positions over 3 years as a manager in a SaaS tech company of 50-100.<p>We posted on every job site and received 1,000+ resumes which I reviewed, in a city with ~30% african american population.<p>Maybe 3 out of 1,000+ resumes were submitted by african americans, and none met most basic requirements for the position (either a relevant degree, or at least 1 year of related experience, or at least 1 relevant side project).<p>It's hard to think that I was part of the problem, or could possibly be part of any solution, as the hiring manager.
Im gonna be the antagonist here and say, black people still aren't getting the degrees required for such work.<p>Now, ONLY if these tech companies would drop their requirements for university and college, they might see more applicants.<p>Tech companies should sponsor universities or even create their own. I can see some of the major companies saying "hey, we have this university, which you can attend for FREE only if you work for us for 6 years." Sign up?<p>Until either black people start taking more classes for tech work, OR tech companies start a university theirself, I don't see this happening anytime soon.<p>I work with 80% foreigners. 20% Americans. Its only because the Americans aren't going into Tech. Sad, but true.
Does the number of black workers that have the technical knowledge/experience account for more than 2-3% of the total pool of hirable workers? Or do black workers only account for 2-3% of tech employees because that's the number that knows how to code?
Oh wow,
that chart titled ‘Little Has Changed’ with the X axis pushed out to 100%.<p>Looks like, if you squint hard enough, Facebook has at least tripled their number of black coders.
The entire premise of the article is false. The article states that "tech companies aren't hiring black workers."<p>The truth is that black workers aren't applying to tech companies. In the last decade I have never once had a black person interview with me, not a single time. Yet, the black person who is on my team (hired before I joined this team) is one of the most skilled and knowledgeable people I know. He is rewarded for his knowledge and work.<p>Articles like this are poisonous.
<i>He said the party reminded him of a scene in the film, “Get Out.’’ Like the movie, the new employees looked like props that were conveniently staged to showcase a more welcoming environment than he felt actually existed.</i><p>It's amazing to behold how absolutely toxic tech journalism and our industry is becoming.
Divisive clickbait full of finger pointing, anecdotal evidence and a clear steerage away from causation... yet sitting pretty on the front page of Hacker News. What a shame.
I try to avoid conversations like this rather than engage directly because I'm likely to question results until things are more proven. However, I'm seeing things like this more often and want to become more informed.<p>When looking at the percentage population of Americans with bachelor's degree (general req for software company), should we see a reflection of that pool in tech companies? I found some census information which shows that the pool of black or African American workers might only be about 5% compared to white. Should the industry reflect this or do we somehow expect to have an unnaturally high diversity?<p>Someone else pointed out here, but putting the chart at 100% makes me feel like this is a piece for views and not information. It doesn't make sense when showing relative improvement.<p><a href="https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-19.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-19.pdf</a>
And as usual with these articles it's always the fault of the evil universites and terrible companies while the people in question are always devoid of any responsibility of getting the right education, having initiative and obtaining the right skills needed for the job.
If tech companies hire globally, shouldn't their racial demographics mirror the world demographic stats?<p>In my 15+ years of experience in SV, majority of my colleagues were from Asia, which accounts for 60% of world population. Rest were evenly divided between Europe and North America, and some very tiny fraction coming from Africa and South America.
In that case, isn't it expected that blacks[1] would account for 1-3% of workforce, since USA itself accounted for 10-15% of the workforce? If Democrats are open to immigration, then a consequence of that is going to be an under representation of blacks and Latinos.<p>[1] black is hard to define in many places. Eg. Who is "black" in Asia?
This problem starts from early childhood and is reflective of the utter failure of public schools in lower income districts.<p>For too long we have used the band-aid of lowering standards and affirmative action at every stage after, in college and hiring, to kick the can down the road and the result has been quite the opposite, leading to more bias and resentment.<p>If you are a highly skilled engineer and black, you have to constantly deal with the stigma that maybe you got to where you are not based on your outstanding abilities but only to fill some arbitrary racial quota.<p>There is nothing worse than that for ruining someone's self-esteem.
Most of us here support and appreciate diversity. The lack of diversity in tech companies represents a lost opportunity. It's not just black people, but women as well. The mono-cultures can encourage some troubling attitudes and restricts creative multi-cultural ideas.<p>Forcing companies to maintain racial/gender quotas is not the solution. I'm not sure what the solution is. The causes for the situation are multifaceted, a reflection of our country.
For all of those who claim it might be a pipeline problem, I looked it up and it looks like 4% of engineering degrees are granted (earned? Awarded?) to African Americans<p><a href="https://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/aamajors.cfm" rel="nofollow">https://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/aamajors.c...</a><p>Ill leave the interpretation up to you
Uber took some initiatives to address this issue.<p><a href="https://www.uber.com/en-MX/diversity/uberhue" rel="nofollow">https://www.uber.com/en-MX/diversity/uberhue</a><p><a href="https://eng.uber.com/uncovering-genius" rel="nofollow">https://eng.uber.com/uncovering-genius</a>
I'm willing to accept there is racism in the tech industry, but I'm not willing to accept that it is the ONLY variable keeping black folks from tech jobs.<p>This problem needs a real, statistical, multivariate study. Any publication casting judgement on the tech industry while remaining unwilling to pony up the dough for such a study should be properly criticized for playing the race card and inventing false narratives to gain readership.<p>Telling me there aren't many black folks in tech is not enough. I need a data-driven explanation of WHY before I accept it's mostly racism, or it's mostly a pipeline problem, or it's mostly a primary education problem, or it's mostly a cultural problem, or it's not a problem at all because black folks don't want tech jobs in the first place.
Please forgive me if I am missing something here. Is a company to make a chart of color distribution of their employees and base their hiring on that? There has to be a better way to figure out if a company is hiring based on skill or not than just this.
In Poland where I happen to live there are almost no black people at all, I'd guesstimate it's much less than 0,1% of the whole population but we have similar problem with women in tech.<p>There is only one solution in my opinion - ignore the problem at all, because there is no "problem".<p>If you're a good candidate no one here will question your beliefs, skin colour or sex.<p>Focusing on the issue on the other hand creates bunch of other, in my opinion more serious threats - I've been recruiting for a medium* Polish startup a few years ago and one day our CEO decided there is not enough "diversity" so HRs started recruiting women left and right.<p>Long story short, for 8 out of 10 positions we'd have two or three resumes from very strong male candidates and tens of resumes from much less experienced females. Within 3 years we hired so many women the men became the minority, about 6 months after that the place went bankrupt and everyone ended up jobless.<p>*medium in this world means up to 40 folks<p>TL;DR every sane company hires the best workforce they could afford. If there are not enough people of colour it's usually problem with these people, not the employer.
Someone recently had tweeted the concentration of Black population in the US. Tech companies are no where in those concentrated areas.<p>Porbably a way for Tech companies to build diverse teams, is to setup research facilities and programs that encourage better pipelines, in states with higher black population (not SF, LA, NYC/Austin)