Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

I&#x27;ve been working for over 20 years in tech at 10+ different companies around the Valley, and I can count on 1 hand the number of direct coworkers that were black, and on 2 hands the number of coworkers that I indirectly worked with that were black.<p>I don&#x27;t believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. Trying to solve the diversity issue at the hiring end, when the number of qualified candidates is so small, is not the right way to solve the problem. The only way you will hit higher-than-normal diversity numbers is to reduce hiring standards, which is wrong.<p>The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel, at the elementary, middle and high school levels. By getting more children of all races involved and interested in tech is the only way we truly increase diversity.<p>And that is on us, those of us that have experience in tech. My goal is to try to volunteer to teach young children in economically disadvantaged areas about technology. Of course, I have no idea how to start doing this, and would love suggestions or pointers.

The one thing that he never explains is exactly what &quot;diversity&quot; he is looking for at Twitter. It seems that the only thing that matters to him is the color of the person&#x27;s skin. In other words, an African-American MIT CS grad that grew up in Iowa is somehow going to come at problems differently than a white guy from the same town and school and with the same background. I wouldn&#x27;t really call that diversity, that&#x27;s just racism in that one man&#x27;s view on a technical matter is somehow different because of his race.<p>What they should look to do is recruit people who got to programming or designing through paths other than MIT or Stanford. Hire the guy that was a painter and then started building website UIs when he saw how those skills transferred. Hire the guy that graduated from the small state school and spent all of his free time web programming. That - at least to me - is the kind of diversity that comes at problems from various angles.<p>The VP idea with names was stupid, but if I walked away from a job every time one guy had a stupid idea i&#x27;d be locked in a closet somewhere howling at the world&#x27;s stupidity.<p>My 2 cents. I got to get back in my closet.

This guy sort of sort of undermines the standard case for diversity:<p>&quot;Twitter as a platform has empowered underserved and underrepresented people. It has fomented social movements and...&quot;<p>Sounds like twitter is killing it for people of all ethnic groups. It&#x27;s as if a bunch of White&#x2F;Asian dudes can actually design algorithms that work for everyone. So, um, why do we need a non-Asian engineer?<p>It&#x27;s also worth questioning how a black person would think differently from the (apparently highly effective) white&#x2F;Asian workforce. I&#x27;ve seen very few meaningful examples of this and I&#x27;ve never experienced it (I&#x27;m usually the only person of my race). My current job is mostly Punjabi&#x27;s, no techies of my ethnic group, and my unique perspective is &quot;lets all be Bayesian cause Frequentism is ass backwards&quot; and &quot;stop the multiple fucking comparisons!&quot;<p>A naughty question: suppose I&#x27;m wrong, and black people actually do think differently. Given that whites&#x2F;Asians seem to be doing such a great job, why do we think that &quot;different&quot; is actually better or even useful? In statistics terms, given two different functions f and g which are estimators for some truth t, it&#x27;s unlikely that |f(x)-t(x)| = |g(x)-t(x)|. One of them is probably better.

HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post.<p>I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn-images-1.medium.com&#x2F;max&#x2F;800&#x2F;1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6oNvlw.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn-images-1.medium.com&#x2F;max&#x2F;800&#x2F;1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o...</a> ) wasn&#x27;t normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter with its 1% falls far below.<p>I&#x27;m sorry for my mistake.<p>My original post below for context for the replies made to it, but which is otherwise useless.<p>------------------------------<p>It&#x27;s alway a little confusing when people bring up diversity reports that aren&#x27;t normalized to an appropiate comparison metric. (Possibly local demographics, or any number of more in-depth metrics. I also earlier suggested applicant demographics, but justizin pointed out those are not feasible.)<p>Also see: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1138&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1138&#x2F;</a><p>To bring it into contrast with the article, he says:<p>&quot;&lt;5% make up engineering and product management combined.&quot;<p>According to this census report: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bayareacensus.ca.gov&#x2F;counties&#x2F;SanFranciscoCounty.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bayareacensus.ca.gov&#x2F;counties&#x2F;SanFranciscoCounty....</a><p>Race - Black or African American 48,870 6.1%<p>The twitter numbers are thus a little below average, but not necessarily unexpected given where Twitter&#x27;s headquarter is located.<p>Edit:<p>According to this, Twitter has roughly 30% asians: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.twitter.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;building-a-twitter-we-can-be-proud-of" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.twitter.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;building-a-twitter-we-can-be-p...</a><p>Which seems to fit the census as well:<p>Race - Asian 267,915 33.3%<p>Another Edit:<p>To clarify, i am not saying that there is no problem. I&#x27;m merely saying that in order to solve a problem, one must both set appropiate goals, as well as correctly identify the root cause. Both of these can only be done usefully by applying statics correctly.

I see many people here being skeptical about the arguments for diversity, and asking what the utility is for Twitter. But part of the question is about the utility for minorities as well. This debate is really about minorities being shut out of yet another high-paying industry because they [didn&#x27;t have a computer growing up&#x2F;couldn&#x27;t get in to some brand-name college&#x2F;didn&#x27;t have a supportive childhood environment&#x2F;other systemic inequalities]. By the time the white kid and the black kid get to the bar, the game is already rigged in favor of the white kid.<p>So maybe the bar is right, in that it selects the most high-performing asset to execute the requisite keystrokes in a cost-effective manner. But maybe the world we should strive for is not one where people spend their lives in anxiety honing their resumes, getting into the right schools, the right clubs, getting the right internships, and having the right connections through daddy. God forbid there are any complications in your life along the way, or if you were born in a place which set you up for failure from the get-go.<p>I think one great thing about tech is that you can learn it, if you&#x27;re intelligent and you get shit done. Maybe all you need is somebody to give you a shot to set you off on a trajectory toward the moon.

Anyone else get the strong feeling that articles like this are a detriment to equal rights movements? If you&#x27;re misrepresenting facts and statistics people will eventually catch on and simply not trust you anymore, skewering any ability you have to raise awareness and make a difference..

&gt; in 2013, 4.5% of CS graduates from the top 25 schools were African-American, and 6.5% were Hispanic&#x2F;Latino.<p>That&#x27;s a problem. Hiring corps not only need to screen more applicants in order to find more applicants above their quality bar, but they also need to engage the community to get more kids interested in their fields and encouraged through school.<p>It&#x27;s the long view, the generation long kind. Public corp cost accounting idiotry will not support investment like that, so it&#x27;s up to the private corps.

He is offended that he wasn&#x27;t invited at various events involving African American leaders. I have black friends who would be <i>offended</i> if they were specifically invited to these events because they were African American.<p>This sums up my issue with this piece: at best, not all his wishes are necessarily shared by other people of color; at worst, some of the things he wants could actually be construed as racist(&quot;Just because I&#x27;m black doesn&#x27;t mean I&#x27;m interested in Jesse Jackson&quot; my friend often says.)

What is wrong with the statement &quot;We won&#x27;t lower the bar&quot;? Some people criticize that that statement is racist, but they aren&#x27;t thinking about the context. When people ask companies to do something about diversity, they&#x27;re normally asking to carve out more quota for certain minority group, just like how universities carve out certain portion of their student quota for people who donate large amount of money to get in. I guess it works for universities, but a company like Twitter which desperately needs focused group of talented employees, why would&#x2F;should they do this? It&#x27;s stupid that someone saying what&#x27;s right gets taken out of context and is criticized by all the idiots on the internet. Also, isn&#x27;t asking for this kind of treatment racist&#x2F;sexist&#x2F;whatever in itself? I am appalled by this idea as much as I am appalled by the idea of universities accepting students from rich families via donation.

I don&#x27;t understand. Sure, the name idea wasn&#x27;t perfect but the VP had good intentions. Is this really that upsetting?

I think this article reads a lot like &quot;we need equal rights, so give us special treatment because we&#x27;re different&quot;.<p>All that lobbying for people who did not meet the technical criteria, that getting upset at the idea of someone not noticing his differentiating blackness.<p>He might have a point in the part about how many minorities are using the service, but I don&#x27;t see how the tech department should be concerned at all with that. Community relations, marketing, sure. Not tech.

Also <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10506093" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10506093</a>.

I thought it was a fascinating argument that 1) Twitter is struggling to gain new users and 2) Twitter is staffed by male caucasians and asians so no wonder it&#x27;s struggling to gain new users.

It really strikes me that Twitter allows such a high degree of politicization in the workplace given the adverse nature and the risks it entails if left unchecked. Office politics sucks enough already, we don&#x27;t want to bring another element to the workplace to make matters worse for everyone. I don&#x27;t want to see the office turned into political front lines where parties form and people take sides especially in challenging and turbulent times when the political discussions heat up and get very nasty.<p>Also, I&#x27;d like to point that this fellow engineer comes across as bit pushy with his agenda (It&#x27;s very obvious that has one). He&#x27;s treating Twitter as a political organization where he&#x27;s using his position as a conduit to further his goals as an activist advocating for change which is in my opinion very troubling and unhealthy for any business.<p>Also, it is worrisome that he didn&#x27;t perform his duties as a diversity officer[?] efficiently as it seems to me that he was only concerned about his own people, African Americans. (What about other francophone Africans? Foreigners? People of other ethnicities and regions like MENA ..etc?) He didn&#x27;t seem impartial to me at all and all what he cared about was lobbying for his own group only and this is not really commendable. You don&#x27;t join a company and start lobbying for certain outside groups like that and expect a smooth sailing. If you&#x27;re turning the company into a political battle field, you should be ready to face the consequences of your actions.<p>This brings to another equally important point which is the apparent feud or problem with the VP of Engineering regarding recruitment decisions. This activist engineer was very ambitious and at the same time shortsighted in his plans to make political gains in the organization and not expect opponents to show resistance or experience friction throughout the process. He clearly wanted to influence the decision making process if not tow and subordinate the whole department to his department which in my opinion is very naive thing of him to do and clearly revealed his motives that what he&#x27;s after is more power in the organization and not reaching a more egalitarian system or environment.<p>It was all a power play for from the get go and he wasn&#x27;t very good at it because you don&#x27;t expect to encroach on someone&#x27;s turf and not face a backlash or pushback. Even the most level-headed and good tempered person would turn territorial in these situations of adversity and things get ugly that could lead to tensions and strenuous relations between department within the organization.<p>Finally, his quitting and cop out sealed it for me as to my assessment of his account because no activist worth his salt would bail out and leave the cause he&#x27;s fighting for like this. Change doesn&#x27;t happen overnight and you gotta invest heavily and believe truly in your cause to start seeing progress. So, maybe he&#x27;s more suited to work inside a political organization that&#x27;s aligned well with his worldview and affiliation where they favor more chip on the shoulder type but he&#x27;s certainly not a good material or asset and to have on your pro team or in your business.

I find the numbers a little weird. While &#x27;black&#x27; and &#x27;hispanic&#x27; are underrepresented in the graphs, &#x27;asian&#x27; is heavily overrepresented (in yahoo&#x27;s case, it&#x27;s triple the percentage), and &#x27;asian&#x27; isn&#x27;t a single ethnicity. Not only are south asians not east asians or west asians (culturally or physically), but Chinese aren&#x27;t Koreans, who aren&#x27;t Vietnamese, who aren&#x27;t Filipino and so forth (these are the groups in the BLS report). The author seems to be using &#x27;diversity&#x27; to mean &#x27;proportion of black faces&#x27;, rather than diversity across the board.

Removing barriers to particular ethnicities in hiring? Great. Making it clear in marketing and outreach that all ethnicities are welcomed and encouraged? Great. Establishing a quota of X % of employees should be a certain race? Uh... okay. Should asians be turned down from a job because they&#x27;ve hit the asian quota and need more blacks? I didn&#x27;t realize companies practiced affirmative action like this.

As a side note, I dislike anti-discrimination laws. For example, the statistical way of proving discrimination probably only works well for certain kinds of jobs like unskilled labor. Limiting these laws to these kinds of jobs by default would probably be a good compromise.

&gt; There were also the Hiring Committee meetings that became contentious when I advocated for diverse candidates. Candidates who were dinged for not being fast enough to solve problems, not having internships at ‘strong’ companies and who took too long to finish their degree. Only after hours of lobbying would they be hired. Needless to say, the majority of them performed well.<p>Why is it needless to say that?

&quot;As we continued the discussion, he suggested I create a tool to analyze candidates last names to classify their ethnicity.&quot;<p>Tisk. Tisk. It&#x27;s been well documented that these tools are used to weed out ethnicities.

Ok so sorry but this fing bullshit has got to stop. WTF is this BlackLives matter all about? The message was lost when the town was burned down and the entire campaign was started on a thug who robbed the local convenience store for some mini cigars to roll some blunts. Did he have to die? we don&#x27;t have any video evidence and his homeboy who saw the whole thing isn&#x27;t going to speak up for fear of being an Uncle Tom &#x2F; sell out. Black people in tech? I have worked with and even seen star employees who were black who are in tech. In fact just about the entire IT Dept. where I work is Black. They are senior level IT techs making close to 6 figures. To see the Hashtag posted at twitter #Ferguson is just pure idiocy and some guilt ridden conscience to be down with the cause, whatever that is. You have to be the change, sorry stop with the bullshit. I make 6 figures and I am a high school push out. I am that change. I changed my attitude, I changed my way of thinking and the way I interact with people and hell I even rush across the street when I have the right of way when a car needs to make a turn. yeah you know what I mean. Leadership begins when you take that opportunity to step up and I have seen and experienced plenty of examples.