Silicon Valley Isn't Run by Straight White American-Born Men

Just looking at the CEO roles doesn&#x27;t exactly give an overall picture of diversity in SV or tech in general. However, many of the arguments I see on the other side - namely that all of the groups mentioned here are in fact underrepresented - neglect one fact: the overall percentages pretty closely mirror the demographics of degree holders in the fields necessary to perform many of the tech jobs in SV.<p>Women, for example, hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering. Therefore it is only common sense that they wouldn&#x27;t be getting jobs that require these degrees at the same rate that men do. It&#x27;s not because of evil white males not wanting to hire women (or any of the other groups that have claimed discrimination in SV) - it&#x27;s because fewer of them <i>choose the profession</i>. The degree issue is also the reason that the CEO role <i>is</i> diverse - because it doesn&#x27;t necessarily take an engineering degree to be the CEO of a tech company. Diverse qualifications will yield a diverse pool of talent.

The subtitle was cringe-worthy:<p>&gt; Women, gays, and immigrants form a new majority at the top.<p>What? Looking at the union of all women, all people of color, and all LGBT people, and saying that this group forms a &quot;majority&quot; (non straight-white-U.S. born-males) shows what is wrong with how some view diversity.<p>Its nice that <i>some</i> women, <i>some</i> LGBT people, and <i>some</i> people of color make it to the top. The talk about diversity has never been that they don&#x27;t.<p>The list shows 4 underrepresented groups in the top 10, as if that is a success, forgetting that:<p>1. There are two women only. 2. There are no U.S. born persons of color in that list.<p>The only valid statement is that non-U.S. born people seem to exist in healthy amounts. But those like me who are born outside the US shouldn&#x27;t be helping Silicon Valley check &quot;non-white&quot; boxes off, pretending like race and socio-economic problems in the US that keep persons of color from attaining positions of authority don&#x27;t exist.

Well, if my people of color want to get to the top, they&#x27;re gonna have to develop the neccessary skills require to be at the top (leadership skills, negotiation skills, management skills, acquire the required experience to run a company, and they need to lower their empathy level, down to the point where they can utterly crush their competitors with no remorse, like all those pyschopathic CEO, for example, the CEO of Tobacco, who feels no guilt in killing millions of people each year).<p>Most of my asians peoples prefer to be the smart math&#x2F;computer programmer guys who do not want to do the boring day to day chores of running a company, and they prefer to just do amazing things with a computer instead.<p>Nothing wrong with that.

Not trying to start any fires, but are non-heterosexuals really underrepresented in Silicon Valley? The culture I&#x27;ve seen seems to fully embrace people of various sexual orientations.<p>According to Gallup [1], only 3.8% of American adults identify as LGBT, so the fact that even one CEO in the top 10 (in fact #1) is in the club is actually somewhat remarkable.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gallup.com&#x2F;poll&#x2F;183383&#x2F;americans-greatly-overestimate-percent-gay-lesbian.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gallup.com&#x2F;poll&#x2F;183383&#x2F;americans-greatly-overesti...</a>

I didn&#x27;t know that Tim Cook came from such humble backgrounds. That&#x27;s pretty impressive.

1 out of 1 US presidents is black.<p>We did it!<p>Oh wait 96 out of 100 members of the US senate is white. But we do have 31 women senators.

With small exceptions it very much is. And beyond the CEOs you have to take into account stats on VCs and Executive Boards...<p>[Added]:<p>And I&#x27;d take it one step further to see if there&#x27;s real diversity or just the appereance of: how many of the women&#x2F;blacks&#x2F;asians etc are there with the exact same criteria as the others and not because somebody (always a white male) thought &quot;hey, we have too many white men, let&#x27;s put a woman&#x2F;minority on this position, it will look good&quot;.<p>While that might still increase diversity, I see it as hypocrisy for 2 reasons:<p>1) If the straight white man put aside was better for the job.<p>2) Token diversity just hides the prejudices under the carpet.<p>3) Token diversity doesn&#x27;t help with the underlying reasons behind the inequality (e.g. being poor with less schooling opportunities prevent many blacks to be able to get MBAs and CS education, and instead of helping change that for all, they make a mockery of diversity with random exceptions).<p>4) Isn&#x27;t it still white males making those decisions about which token people to include?