Why Tech Degrees Are Not Putting More Blacks and Hispanics into Tech Jobs

Interesting how many people here think that the problem rests solely with Black&#x2F;Hispanic students. I am a black software engineer. As I see it, there are systemic problems, as you can imagine. But one reason that may be missed here is that sometimes people get weary of being the &quot;only black person in the room&quot;. So some of the students may be opting out simply because they want a more diverse workplace, and tech is very very white. Just take a look at this thread, in which we have jimmywagner asserting that Black and Latino people are liabilities, and michaelbuddy asserting that systemic issues are &quot;ghosts&quot;. They are of course entitled to their opinions (however much I may disagree with them), but honestly that type of hostility masked as objectivity gets old really quick.<p>I can expand later if anyone is interested in a real conversation.

It is vaguely mentioned in the article but I think controlling for the type of schools that students are exiting from is an important factor in determining if there is a &quot;pipeline&quot; problem. For example it was mentioned that Black and Hispanic Tech graduates are more likely to end up in office support roles. Out of the top 20 engineering&#x2F;computer science programs in the country I doubt almost any students are ending up in those type of roles. So likely Black and Hispanic &quot;Tech&quot; graduates are much less likely to be of top engineering programs. There is an enrollment issue. There is a corporate bias and culture issue. There is a primary school issue... the list goes on. From working in management consulting I can tell you that even when name-blind resume reads are incorporated and diversity programs are really emphasized (Which they are), the issue comes to when candidates from Black and Hispanic backgrounds show up to an interview they are relatively VERY poorly prepared. This is usually because the student groups at elite colleges that prepare you for tech&#x2F;consulting&#x2F;banking jobs are pretty bad at reaching out to minority (Black and Hispanic) students.<p>The problem is systemic from pre-school to the career fair. I believe it will change. But no one lever will do the full trick.

It pains me greatly that the tech industry lacks diversity from minorities like blacks, hispanics, and women. However, I strongly believe that looking at the tech companies and asking why they don&#x27;t hire more minorities is totally missing the real problem.<p>This is of course one datapoint, but the university I went to (top engineering school in the Northeast US) hosts a big panel for computer-field majors at the annual admissions event. Any students remotely interested in technical majors are invited to attend - you don&#x27;t even need to be accepted to the university. The marketing for the event makes it as clear as possible that no prior programming experience is required, they just want to get people excited about computing. When I served on the panel as a CS student, I looked out the audience and saw a fully packed room (300+ people) of almost entirely white&#x2F;Asian male prospective students and their parents. At that point, how do you recover and get diverse people? How do you get people interested when everyone showing up fits the same description?<p>In my view, the problem starts way before college&#x2F;job seeking. I was lucky, as a white male, that my parents noticed and encouraged my technical interests at an early age. By the time I was entering college, I had years of programming experience, not even at any company, but just working on my laptop in my bedroom. It kills me that so many minorities and women <i>never even get that opportunity</i>. Parents of young girls don&#x27;t seem to see&#x2F;nurture those interests, and sometimes actively encourage them <i>not</i> to go into technology. It makes perfect sense that later they&#x27;re not interested in pursuing college&#x2F;careers in computers.<p>I have worked at companies where the people doing hiring have literally whispered (since it is illegal to say so) that they are <i>desperate</i> to hire minorities and women. I once heard someone say, &quot;Man, I would love to hire this person, but I have to be fair, and if they were male I would have rejected them immediately&quot;.<p>Yes, tech companies need to be as accepting as possible towards minorities and women. Yes, minorities and women need role models in the industry. But we&#x27;ve got to start at the source at the problem and get parents to allow their children to be interested in computers in the first place!

I think the article mixes non-tech hiring problems with tech problems. I think tech is one of the only fields where your skin color really does not matter. We hire people from far-flung countries who can barely communicate in english; we hire 17-year-olds who have not even finished highschool; we hire total misfits; etc., based solely on their technical expertise. So it bothers me to read crap like this:<p><i>Research has found that during hiring, managers are biased against black-sounding names on résumés, for instance, and interviewers weigh too heavily whether they’d want to hang out with someone.</i><p>This may happen in other jobs, but in my 20 years in tech, I have never seen this. Go to any good tech company, and see the odd folks walking about. And yet they&#x27;ll have an issue with black or hispanic folks? I doubt it.<p>Network does play a role, I will agree. But what plays a bigger role is your technical chops; and it is very easy today to demonstrate your skills via SO or Github.

Why is it the responsibility of the companies to fix this? In the same way that it seems perverse that Apple is the one standing up to the USG on privacy, why do companies bear the moral responsibility for fixing social ills?<p>The only way a company should be responsible for hiring underrepresented minorities is if there was a market inefficiency to be exploited. And even then, that&#x27;s a responsibility to their shareholders, not to society. And &quot;we hire black people because we don&#x27;t have to pay them as much&quot; probably wouldn&#x27;t go over too well, anyway.

It&#x27;s times like these when I think to myself why I&#x27;m bothering to enter this field? I mean, I really wanna go into the tech feel to make awesome stuff, but hearing how hard it is for people who look like me (black African college student in the mid west) just gets me down.<p>Then again, software engineering has only been a thing for about 40-50 odd years and is young as compared to other professions, so I guess things will change.

Is working as a computer programmer economically rational for high performing black and hispanic students in the United States?<p>Black and hispanic students benefit from preferential admissions standards to medical, law, business and other graduate schools that can lead to higher salaries and higher social standing than computer programming.<p>Consider the extreme case of black students and medical school:<p>Black students who are competitive candidates for software engineering at top tech companies could (probably all) choose to study medicine and, very possibly, be admitted to specialist residency programs.<p>Average specialist pay is $284,000. Average primary care pay is $195,000.

&quot;Reverse racism&quot; is not a real thing. I swear people invent ways to feel persecuted

Don&#x27;t care.<p>Various groups had faced real discrimination in the job market - jews, italians, irish, etc. Here&#x27;s one piece of historical trivia - Warren Buffett could not get his first Wall Street job because the company he really wanted to work for had a policy of <i>only</i> hiring Jews - because all other Wall Street banks would not.<p>Ie industries had real &#x27;no X allowed&#x27; policies in place - not this &#x27;Oh, I don&#x27;t feel like being the only black guy in the room&#x27;. Well too bad for you - the job will pay money to someone else who doesn&#x27;t necessarily have to be around people like them.<p>Today whites, Asians and Indians are supposed to feel bad because other ethnicities don&#x27;t make sufficient effort to join the industry? I&#x27;m sorry, I don&#x27;t.

It amazes me that <i>&quot;..they discovered that many black and Hispanic students, unlike white and Asian ones, had never heard of this type of interview and were unprepared for it...&quot;</i><p>How could any programmer worth his&#x2F;her salt would not know about a whiteboard interview? I think that statement encapsulates it. No only are the schools they are graduating from are woefully inadequate, and they are entering a highly competitive field that with a fast changing landscape that is overwhelming for such grossly underprepared grads.<p>Ask yourself how come Asians &amp; Jews do so well? They just work harder and push themselves more. I am as bleeding heart a liberal as they come and it pains me to see the lack of diversity, but culture has a huge part to play in it.