
Who gets invited to the party? - stormbeard
https://medium.com/@cyril0allen/who-gets-invited-to-the-party-246a1ba6849a
======
tom_b
My BS in CS is from NC A&T.

My MS in CS in from UNC-CH.

Anybody who thinks the hackers from Duke/UNC consistently outshine the hackers
from NC A&T is a damn fool.

I was regularly _FLOORED_ by the skills and raw programming chops from peers
at NC A&T. Some of the smartest young men and women in the CS field.

I worked in a small research group at NC A&T. Maybe 10 undergrads. Last time I
checked, there were something like 6 MS in CS folks from that group and a
couple of PhDs.

When I was an undergrad at NC A&T, we had a weekly colloquium for all CS
students. We _regularly_ had alumni from NC A&T and other HBCUs on stage who
talked openly about navigating the hiring world, which companies you could
expect racism in, and what the working world of programming was like for
"people who look like us."

If some shitty recruiter event occurred, _we all knew about it._

Want to score some of the best engineers from HBCUs? It's easy. Hire the best
ones you can convince to take your mega-FAANG package from. Then send them
back every freaking year with a corporate card and tell them to impress
people.

I hate these "stupid recruiter" stories. Somebody should get their ass fired.

~~~
monksy
I think that's pretty awesome. I went to Elon, and the only time that we heard
about the A&T CS program is the time that I participated in an ACM programming
competition. We heard more about the Duke program than anything else.
(Research related). I knew a little about the UNC Chapel Hill program because
I had a connection with Fred Brooks.

~~~
malandrew
In terms of CS, it's NCSU that regularly produces the most accomplishments of
the NC higher education universities, but it doesn't have the same national
standing because the humanities departments at NCSU are a complete joke. What
Duke and UNC-CH do well is that all their departments are generally considered
rigorous and that increases their standing in the rankings.

------
tptacek
In case people didn't read this story carefully before commenting (we all do
that sometimes), it's worth calling the nut graf of this story out:

The firm this engineer is talking about did a recruiting trip to Duke (and
UNC), like every big tech firm does. An hour away from Duke is the country's
largest HBCU, NC A&T, which is included on the trip, ostensibly for
inclusivity's sake.

The firm serves a catered dinner at the Duke/UNC session, which is held after
class hours to ensure attendance. The next day, highly-ranked prospects from
Duke/UNC are invited to a private dinner at a fine dining restaurant.

That same day, the firm holds an abbreviated meeting during class hours at
A&T, where they serve (wait for it) the leftovers from the catered dinner at
the Duke/UNC session.

~~~
chrisco255
I have done University recruiting and been at recruiting events, I have never
seen leftovers ever re-used, by any company, ever. I'm not even sure of the
legality of that or the logistics of it. How were leftovers transported safely
from one campus to another? 99% of the time, it's pizza (it's always pizza),
and it's given away or thrown out at end of the event.

~~~
nogabebop23
You're catching a lot of flack but in my experience this is true. We always
leave the leftovers with the students who attended as (1) all students,
regardless of school can always use some good leftovers, (2) the logistics and
health concerns make this pretty much impossible. You 'd have to be a sick SOB
and put in extra effort to do this; not characteristics of HR drones who just
want to check a box.

~~~
HelloNurse
"HR drones" might want to reduce costs, choosing a way that aligns with
perceived student importance.

If their idea of a diversity effort is _pretending_ to recruit black students
they must be callously insensitive, and to some degree consciously racist.

------
babesh
There is both a pipeline problem and a bias problem and they are intertwined.

Historical discrimination has left black families much poorer than they would
otherwise be. Poverty discriminates in myriad ways: lack of good role models
and mentors, poor educational environments, lack of nutrition, lack of
opportunities for enrichment, etc...

Discrimination is also still present and different ethnic groups are affected
differently.

The negative effects of poverty and discrimination compound over time such
that when you get to a tech company's hiring process, the pipeline would have
shrunk massively. The students in this pipeline are competing against upper
middle class kids who have been groomed their entire lives to compete in the
system designed by people like them.

As to the recruiting pipeline, there is class elitism/narrow mindedness in
tech companies that does narrow recruiting. Some interviewers don't
countenance views or attitudes other than their own just as some recruiters
favor certain universities far more than others. This seems to be changing at
least at the recruiting level.

As to why some ethnicities still succeed or fail despite discrimination, that
is at least partly cultural and partly selection bias and these in turn have
also been affected by discrimination past and present.

Lastly, I suspect the beef some poorer whites have is that they too have been
discriminated against due to poverty and they feel that another group now has
a leg up on them and that discrimination against them isn't acknowledged.

I hope that we come up with a just system for everyone.

~~~
dgudkov
>Historical discrimination has left black families much poorer than they would
otherwise be.

What about immigrants that arrived to the US with a suitcase and $100 in
pocket?

~~~
elvongray
You really can't compare the two cases. When you're born into that type of
system, where your skin color is seen as less desirable, it's easy to develop
inferiority complex and a lot of insecurities that will hinder ones will to
reach for the top. I'm from a third world country where a lot of emigrants to
the US tend to be more successful than the average Black American. It is easy
to jump to the conclusion that they are lazy and all, but I have come to
realize that we were not born or have parents that have been demoralised by
the systemic racism common in the US

~~~
dgudkov
At least you admit that the root cause is not poverty, but the mindset.

~~~
BlackCherry
“it’s just a mindset”, takes all responsibility off of the ruling class and
places it all on the backs individual. While I’m all for taking responsibility
for oneself in a rigged system, I’m not going to pretend the system isn’t
rigged and shouldn’t be fixed. Imagine if we promoted approaching flawed and
broken software architecture like this.

~~~
djsumdog
> Imagine if we promoted approaching flawed and broken software architecture
> like this

We do. All the time. It's why half the shit we work on is covered in a thick
layer of technical debt and the other half is written in self contained
microservices.

A software stack from a company that's been around long enough is going to be
more random, redundant and glued together than the processes in our
evolutionary biology.

~~~
BlackCherry
Agreed. That’s why I put “promoted approaching” rather than “approached”. But
you’re 100% correct.

~~~
yetanta
I use the 'promote better' ideas when dealing with people in poverty. Usually
most of what happens is what I call 'bad choice' economics. Usually do one
thing or another. One is not 'fun' the other is. The 'fun' one gets you right
now but usually hurts you weeks from now. The not fun one helps you long term.
Usually the excuse of 'oh I have money coming later' with no idea of what if
'later' does not happen.

One guy I had to talk down from having his car detailed (150 bucks) vs paying
the 2 month late car payment. He literally did not think of the idea of they
will take the car away from you if he did not make the payment, until I
pointed it out to him. He was very fixated on the 'clean the car'. That is but
one small example. I have hundreds of examples like that.

That short term thinking is absolutely acidic long term on you, your family,
and friends. It can create a spiral that is very hard to get out of. Being
poor costs substantially more long term as well. I as a wealthy person can buy
things ahead of time when on sale because I know I will use them in the
future. Being poor means you buy in the 'now'. You do not buy for the future
because you do not have the means to do so. So on average simple things cost
you more. But being in the 'now' can hurt you even worse by giving you fun vs
not fun choices. But not being able to see you have been give an bit of 'luck'
to make your future better.

~~~
babesh
The short term thinking was exacerbated by historical discrimination. There
were cases where black businesses became successful but then were forced out
by whites who wanted what they had. Such a system doesn’t promote long term
thinking.

------
BlameKaneda
There was an article I came across where a black startup founder was
frequently mistaken as a regular employee while his white co-worker was
mistaken as the CEO. On multiple occasions the unaware person shook the hand
of the white co-worker, ignored the true startup founder, and so on.

"Adding to the insult, [Will] Hayes finds himself at a distinct disadvantage
in meetings that open with a case of mistaken identity. Venture capital is
based on relationships, and investors aren’t typically primed to write a check
when they feel unsettled. “You see it in the body language, you see it in the
lack of questions and engagement,” says Hayes, 39. “They can’t wait for this
meeting to get over.”

For nearly four years, Hayes would attend investor meetings alongside
[longtime colleague] Messick, the former chief marketing officer at
Lucidworks. VCs are trained to look for patterns in startup founders, Messick
says, and there aren’t many Black Mark Zuckerbergs. 'Years and years of a
Black guy and a White guy walking in the room, and the White guy is the CEO,'
Messick says. 'Whether malicious, whether negligent, it was always awful.'"

Here's the post: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-
sil...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-silicon-
valley-humiliation-is-a-part-of-doing-business/)

~~~
dexterdog
"there aren’t many Black Mark Zuckerbergs"

How many non-black Zuckerbergs are there?

~~~
stormbeard
I think you’ve ignored the context of the article. He says that to mean he
doesn’t look like he’s going to start the next Facebook or Twitter to VCs,
because he is black. They will not entertain the idea that he COULD BE the
next Mark Zuckerberg because he simply can’t “look the part”.

------
arshbot
Wow. This confirms something I saw SO often as an undergrad.

I went to a predominantly black city college right next door to Georgia Tech,
so we got plenty of big companies knocking on our door.

Only they never took us seriously, gave rushed presentations, and never
collected resumes. Tech? They got parties, dinners, entire clubs rented out.
It was posh, and if you were like me - you figured out ways to get into these
exclusive events, evade bouncers and find an engineer just to talk to them.

There are a few people in this comment section talking about how 'minorities
and women simply skew differently'. Maybe try walking a mile in our shoes

~~~
ghufran_syed
Do you think it could possibly be that the black city college might be a
_lower ranked_ school than Georgia Tech? Or did Georgia Tech not have any
women or minorities? I went to a lower ranked school that was the most diverse
in the state, and I've also taken classes at Stanford and Berkeley. There is
no question that the students at Stanford and Berkeley were _way_ more
motivated, worked a _lot_ harder and were academically much stronger than the
students at my school. So I would _expect_ those schools to get a lot more
recruiting attention than my school. That doesn't mean the students at my
school can't be successful, but it did mean that you had to put in a lot more
work than the median student at the lower-ranked school to be successful.

~~~
tptacek
The subtext of the story is that the HBCU was visited to check a checkbox, but
the students at that school were treated with such disrespect that the
underlying bias was clear.

Nobody has any trouble understanding that Duke is a higher-priority recruiting
target than A&T.

~~~
thereisnospork
While perhaps not the most professional on the recruiters' part it's hardly
racist to half-ass a 'check the checkbox' assignment. Unlike the racist
tokenism and just outright disrespectful facade of visiting a school when
there is little to no (apparent) interest in hiring from.

~~~
vore
It's definitely a little racist to half ass it so hard you're serving
leftovers from another school.

I don't think I really agree that visiting HBCUs is racist tokenism unless it
is 100% just to get diversity brownie points and nothing else: it's still
better than not visiting them entirely and to provide opportunities to
underrepresented minorities for which, while the intent is to put them into
the corporate grinder, having a high-paying tech job is still a material
benefit.

~~~
KMag
> It's definitely a little racist to half ass it so hard ...

Without seeing how they treated students at a similarly ranked non-HBCU, it's
difficult to distinguish racism from colorblind elitism. It's probably a bit
of both racism and elitism, but without a comparably ranked school for
comparison, I wouldn't be comfortable using the word "definitely".

------
sbuccini
I grew up in Greensboro where A&T is located. Many of my high school
classmates went to college there. One friend even led the top CS student org
on campus.

I pushed so hard for my employer, Sexy Unicorn Startup which said all the
important things you expect a woke company to say, to recruit there. I told
them I would set everything up and that all I needed was a budget. I got
nothing but lip service.

So, HN, you want to do it the right way? I can be on A&T's campus in 15
minutes. I will connect you with the student orgs and help you do it the right
way. You won't regret it. Email is in profile.

~~~
flumpcakes
I'm not a "just pull up your boot straps" guy because I grew up in poverty and
I know the world is just injust.

However, I really like the positive action of this comment.

------
throwawayrec
I've gone on numerous recruiting trips and this story paints a very one sided
narrative and it doesn't quite line with my own experiences.

First off, big feeder schools, the Dukes and UNCs of the world, they have
extremely sophisticated internal career programs that throw out the red carpet
for us when we arrive. Yes we order the food (and its usually pizza), but they
literally do all the pre-work and advertise for us, give us the floor and make
sure we have the best chances to meet their students. They schedule the
program and the times for us, so we just roll in, present, and then have lots
of meet and greet with the students.

Second, recruiters only have so much time and energy to meet with students, so
they have to go to places with the least friction. The recruiters live by the
rule, meet that quota or you're out! So that translates to, schools better
have students who can pass the interview process, or they are out.

My company has a huge list of diversity schools that we actively recruit from.
This goes against the rules above and requires special recruiters who aren't
being tracked against the same quota system. Why? Although these diversity
schools produce highly qualified candidates, their career programs aren't
sophisticated enough, nor is the coursework aligned with the goal of getting
these students into silicon valley tech jobs.

Remember, at a very real level, you're competing for the same jobs at the same
level as someone graduating from CMU or MIT. If your CS department isn't
preparing you for what's ahead, you have to make that knowledge-gap up on your
own.

~~~
tptacek
This wasn't pizza (and, if it was, _leftover pizza_ would be even crazier).

------
tayistay
"Did Hooli recruiters think that they wouldn’t pass the hiring bar?"

Most likely, yes. In the US news rankings, Duke is #10 and UNC is #20. NC A&T
is #281.

NC A&T has a 46% graduation rate vs Duke's 95%.

Duke engineering is ranked #20, NC A&T is #134.

These schools just aren't in the same league.

~~~
sshumaker
And just how do you think the school ratings are calculated? Graduation rates.
Job acceptance rate into industry. Oh, wait, that sounds like a self-
reinforcing cycle. Structural racism runs deep.

~~~
thinkingemote
It's safer and easier to blame structural racism than to look at multi factor
reasons.

Partly because to deny structural racism is itself racist therefore
strengthening ones case innately, but mainly because as it does really exist
so there would always be some influence and something that's in the news right
now so it's a fashionable concept to attach any blame on.

Also it gives good social credit to mention it in case people with power over
ones career or future question one. It really is a no brainer, we should use
it more often.

I'm not being sarcastic here, the benefits of blaming structural racism for
complex causes far exceeds any costs of not doing so.

~~~
UncleMeat
It’s also safe and easy to say “no racism here no sir” when confronted with
difficult problems and decisions about justice.

I’ve experienced a small example of this. In elementary school the majority
minority school in the district sent basically no kids to the gifted magnet
school. Like zero. For years, people just said what you said. My parents
actually dug into it and found that grade distributions were similar and the
problem was that administrators at the white schools knew how to write glowing
recommendations and the admin at the other school didn’t exaggerate as much. A
little bit of coordination and adjusting the recommendation letter form
structure and bam suddenly way more kids from the majority minority school.

But for years people just said “well that’s a worse school, what do you
expect”.

~~~
ghufran_syed
It sounds like you’re arguing that there _was_ racism, whereas your example
suggests there _wasn’t_ racism, just differences in application process - it
certainly doesn’t sound like there was any _resistance_ to improving the
process in a way that resulted in dramatically increased success of minority
students. Or am I misinterpreting something?

~~~
scott_s
Structural racism often means there is no one person to blame - there's not
going to be a person we can hold up and say, "Here's the racist!" This was a
racist _outcome_ because the students, staff and parents in the minority
school weren't in-the-know. Why weren't they in-the-know? Probably for racist
reasons going back decades.

------
lnanek2
> I’m sure that the NC A&T event was just so Hooli could check some “diversity
> recruitment” box.

Amusingly, that's exactly what the "interactive" ADA process is at my
workplace - just a check box. I submitted a request with medical diagnosis and
links to several third party expert recommended accommodations for it, an HR
rep booked a meeting with me, told me in the first sentence that I'm
requesting an accommodation I didn't request, and that she's denying it, then
the meeting ends, and she writes up an email lying saying I requested
something I did't and that they rejected it. All appeals are just met with the
claim that I didn't state what accommodation I want clearly, even though I
sent links ahead of time to reputable sites listing them.

Never realized that's what it must feel like as a minority to get brushed off
and ignored due to who you are.

~~~
aspenmayer
Stop posting about this online, get a lawyer, and sue. Discrimination against
medical conditions is against the FMLA. Otherwise what kind of accommodation
did you need?

[https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla)

------
andi999
Two things stick out for me:

\- leftover food. Really? This is really shitty behaviour; I am all for reuse,
recycle; but this is neither the time nor the moment

Independent of that: \- I do not know much about US-Universities, so I
checked. Duke is US Top 10, and A&T is not in the Times ranking since it is
>600\. So to me calling A&T "and a damn good one." is just delusional. Maybe
it is a 'not so bad one', but I think things (quality of the University) can
only improve if one is willing to see the truth. Please correct me if I am
wrong.

~~~
Cthulhu_
So they deserve leftovers and lip service as opposed to help inspire the
students to do better and raise the school to a higher "rank"?

I don't get the ranking system either; it's education, it should be uniform,
everyone should get the same opportunities and education and their diplomas
should be "worth" the same, instead of it being a pissing contest where the
higher ranked ones are only accessible to the rich and those in the "in"
group. The US is lacking social mobility in part because of this.

~~~
bluedevil2k
> it's education, it should be uniform, everyone should get the same
> opportunities and education and their diplomas should be "worth" the same

But that’s delusional, right? Of course diplomas won’t be the same because
colleges cluster kids of similar intelligence and motivation. As has been
pointed out on this page repeatedly, the kids at Duke are smarter and more
motivated than at a typical school, so as a result, the diploma is worth more.
And to pretend that Duke is only accessible to rich whites and Asians is a
fallacy. I had lots of friends from poor families who had lots of aid and
minority friends - the Duke campus is far more diverse than the country in
general.

------
NoImmatureAdHom
I'm surprised nobody's commented with the first thing that occurred to me:
UNC, Duke, and NC A&T. One of these is not like the others. It's NC A&T. Why?
It's not race. It's the fact that UNC and Duke are much, much better schools.
The top North Carolina Black developer talent is...already at Duke, of course.

Cisco or whoever may have been stopping by NC A&T to tick a box and therefore
treated it perfunctorily. The author might also be exaggerating, it's
certainly in his/her best interests. We all might do well to avoid drawing any
conclusions from anecdote.

~~~
tptacek
You just restated the author's thesis.

~~~
fastball
No, the author claimed that NC A&T was "a damn good one [school]".

The author was trying to put it on the same level as Duke/UNC in order to
paint a picture that the only possible reason for the perfunctory treatment
was racism. But NC A&T is not on the same level. "Hooli" is almost certainly
elitist, but this anecdote is not good evidence for systemic racism.

~~~
stormbeard
> No, the author claimed that NC A&T was "a damn good one [school]". > The
> author was trying to put it on the same level as Duke/UNC in order to paint
> a picture that the only possible reason for the perfunctory treatment was
> racism. But NC A&T is not on the same level. "Hooli" is almost certainly
> elitist, but this anecdote is not good evidence for systemic racism.

Author here. I wasn’t implying that A&T is perceived to be as “prestigious” or
highly ranked as Duke. I’m just trying to say that it was certainly worth
visiting and worth taking seriously. If you’re looking for black engineers,
for whatever reason, it’s reasonable to reach for A&T. Now, you can’t claim a
pipeline problem if you’re pretty much ignoring the places where you’re most
likely to find your target demographic.

Let’s just drop the words “racism” and other “-isms” since they seem to
trigger people and become distracting from the point. What the recruiters did
by phoning it in for A&T and focus on Duke was miss out on potentially
excellent engineers from A&T and reinforce the demographics found at Duke/UNC.
The recruiters made an assumption based on some model they built at Hooli and
other companies like it and didn’t do their job, which was to FIND good
talent.

I’ve worked at “elite” companies with people from “elite” schools. I’ve also
worked with people from no school. There are smart people all over the place,
so we don’t need to look at the same 10 schools and ignore the people who
didn’t take out a $75k student loan.

~~~
fastball
Thanks for the explanation. Yeah, I absolutely agree that as a society we
should stop placing so much emphasis on "prestigious" schools and using that
as such a strong filter.

That being said, you could say that recruiters might "miss out on excellent
engineers by not visiting _____", where the blank is any one of thousands of
schools in the US. In this particular case, it seems like an instance of
"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" – in general, a recruiter is just gonna
look better if they recruit talent from top-rated school than from lower rated
ones.

To me, the solution is to stop recruiting on college campuses in general if
the job in question doesn't actually require a degree in order to perform it.

~~~
stormbeard
Yeah, that’s not a bad idea and it’s why I’m such a fanboy of interviewing.io
and that whole platform. I don’t think it’s that hard to come up with new
interview questions and screen through an anonymous platform.

I just think there’s not enough pressure on these companies to rework how they
do interviews, since nobody believes that they’d actually get higher quality
candidates.

------
northerdome
While school specific recruiting trips maybe drive results for recruiting
teams, there is no way to get away from inherit bias. By only recruiting at
"top schools" you skip talent that couldn't afford tuition at an elite school
and chose scholarships over paying 60k a year. You optimize for who could do
well on the SAT in high school, which is inherently a product of privilege and
who could pay to study for the test and even knew it was a road block (I
didn't realize the SAT was important until friends that went to "good schools
told me to study for it. In school I was always told you couldn't study for
it). Systemic doesn't necessarily mean any particular individual is biased.
The entire way we conduct business is.

~~~
chrisco255
Then why do minorities such as Indian Americans and other Asian Americans do
so well in tech? Is it systemically biased for Asians? Where in the world do
they do this correctly, by the way? What country or nation in the world has
bias figured out so well that they have perfect proportionality among all
races and sexes among all career paths?

~~~
jmchuster
The majority of Indian and Asian Americans you see in the US are self-selected
to be the richest and most successful ones from their country. Those who don't
come from rich families, those who didn't go to the top schools in their
country, are much more likely to just stay home, instead of get sponsored by
their families to go to the other side of the world to search out the best
opportunities.

~~~
icelancer
>> The majority of Indian and Asian Americans you see in the US are self-
selected to be the richest and most successful ones from their country.

This is absolutely not true for "majority." A significant minority of them,
this is probably true about, but a cursory review of how Chinese-Americans
arrived to this country will probably dispel this rumor fairly quickly.

~~~
barry-cotter
54% of Chinese Americans have a Bachelor’s or higher, 50% for foreign born.
Things have changed in the last 30 years. Trust me when I say 50% of Chinese
in China do not have a university degree.

[https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fact-sheet/asian-
americans-c...](https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/fact-sheet/asian-americans-
chinese-in-the-u-s/)

------
aahortwwy
I was 100% on board with the "it's just a pipeline problem" idea until I
started interviewing. The more I interviewed, the more I saw how
sourcing/recruiting works, the more hiring decisions I witnessed being made,
the clearer it became that tech hiring is incredibly subjective. That
subjectivity gives room for all kinds of bias to creep in at all the different
points of the process.

People get upset about the idea of unconscious bias (I suspect they resent the
implication that they're secretely racist or sexist) but it's very real. It
doesn't have to involve the person's identity. Bias creeps into your decision-
making when you're having a bad day, or when the candidate reminds you of a
person you don't get along with, or when they just rub you the wrong way for
some reason. It's very easy to dress it up as objectivity. You're just
grilling them on the technical details, holding them to the company's high
standards, being a bar-raiser, something like that. The reverse is also true -
you cut people slack because you like them without even realizing what you're
doing.

Recruiters devote the most time to candidates they think have the best chance
of getting through the interview process. The interview process tends to be
bullshit and easily gamed. Industry candidates who have proven an ability to
make it through a similar hiring process will be given preference over those
who haven't. Student candidates at schools who know the score will be given
preference over those at schools that don't play ball.

Referalls cause a slew of problems. The way hiring decisions are made cause a
slew of problems.

This may come off as bitter. I am bitter - not about being rejected, but
rather about the people I've had a role in rejecting over the years. Industry
candidates who were obviously good at their jobs but terrible at the interview
dance. Student candidates who were obviously smart and ambitious but only
became aware of the types of questions they would be asked a week or two
before the interview. Working with and reporting to cruel and selfish people
who excelled at an interview process that's so convinced it's objective and
meritocratic that evaluating soft skills isn't even considered.

It's so widely understood and accepted that software hiring processes are
bullshit, but for some reason the minute people start talking about the impact
of that bullshit on diversity... "it's a pipeline problem."

------
JSavageOne
It is appalling how poorly NC A&T was treated here and I think we all need to
be having this conversation, but at the same time you can't just ignore the
fact that Duke and UNC are just in a totally different league in terms of
university rankings, so it's not surprising that they're getting the red
carpet treatment.

For the record I think university rankings are stupid, and the college
application process is certainly no meritocracy (an unremarkable high school
classmate of mine got into Duke with a 3.4 GPA despite being rejected at our
state's lower ranked state schools - she came from a family of Duke alumni).
But it doesn't surprise me that companies engage in this university elitism,
as sad as it might be.

------
habitue
It is entirely possible for there to be a pipeline problem, and also for
behavior like the one described in the post to bias recruiting. Two things can
be true.

~~~
tptacek
Ok. Sure. And?

~~~
habitue
The post ends with:

> Pipeline problem, my ass.

after spending exactly no words refuting pipeline issues. I'm left to conclude
that the author feels the two explanations are mutually exclusive and that by
giving an anecdote about one, you can determine the other isn't real.

~~~
stale2002
The issue is that people tend to use "pipeline problem" to ignore and excuse
real issues with bias.

So it is not about rejecting the existence of a pipeline problem, it is
instead to reject this as an excuse to ignore other real problems.

That is likely what the author was trying to say.

------
scott31
US College Rankings 2020

Duke University: 10th

North Carolina A&T: >600th

While the author tries to frame the university as "a damn good one", in
reality it probably isn't.

~~~
dan-robertson
Do you consider the treatment of NC A&T by Hooli to be disrespectful? I
certainly do.

The treatment looks to me like people (or the firm) felt obligated to show up
but not obligated to put much effort in or to expect to recruit anyone. If
they are running a recruiting event with little expectation of recruiting,
does that not agree with the article’s view that the event was solely paying
lip service to diversity.

~~~
Hitton
Now the question is what is better for the students?

a) being visited and disrespected

b) not being visited at all

~~~
kirubakaran
Why are those two the only options? How about:

c) being visited and treated with some respect

------
kneel
People are too comfortable. Your life exists in a tech bubble where your
biggest annoyances are the most trivial things (my Tesla panels don't line up,
ios does this annoying thing, someone said something rude on twitter)

Techies are so coddled that the very idea of interacting with a person with a
wildly different background and communication styles is anxiety inducing, so
they find a way around it.

The slights won't stop until you leave the comfort bubble, I don't see that
happening anytime soon.

~~~
atemerev
Oh, it will happen, no worries. It happened before in 2001, when “tech” became
a four-letter curse word. It will most definitely happen again.

~~~
aspenmayer
And then blink and all _tech_ products will be rebranded as _lifestyle_
products overnight.

------
data4lyfe
Something like this happened at UW. I remember going to a diversity career
fair in 2015 and Uber had a booth there.

Turns out they were there to recruit drivers to drive for Uber.

~~~
aspenmayer
Please try to find some kind of documentation of this. I believe you, this is
simply amazing readymade satire.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I dunno, the idealized Uber driving career sounds like something a student
could do as a side job. That's how IIRC Uber started off as, but it quickly
became a more-than-full-time job for a lot of people.

------
laluser
Go browse Blind for a few hours and you'll see how people really feel about
these issues. I know some of the comments are in the minority, but even then,
some of the comments are straight up vile.

~~~
searchableguy
Christ, it's worse than many of the default subreddits.

------
DrScump
When I was coming out of school, non-prestige schools (and locales) were
simply _left out of recruiting altogether_. I graduated literally first in my
class year, with a BS in CS and Business Administration minor... and wasn't
pursued at all. Meanwhile, I already had a software engineering career going,
enjoying the setting and challenge as well, and I wasn't particularly
concerned at the time. I had developed a skill set spanning both programming
and computing center operations (having started there), and I was pretty
invaluable in my group from the outset, and the recognition was really
valuable to me.

So, you'd think that management in my group (at least) might consider panning
for additional nuggets in the same stream (top performers at lower-prestige
schools), right?

No.

The hiring manager did recruiting trips where he wanted to travel. New York.
Hawai'i. Etc.

He'd hire one candidate from each locale, apparently to justify the trip.
Attractive female candidates didn't even have to meet the official policy
constraints (a _Sociology_ degree is not CS, engineering, or even BA, sir).

Eventually, I got recruited elsewhere not by any standard channel but by a
personal friend.

Not everyone is born into resources. I had to both support myself and put
myself through school. That constrained my choices and forced me to be
resilient in ways peers my age didn't need to be. Employers who hire by
formula completely omit my kind.

------
mbostleman
What I struggle with when it comes to claims of {whatever group} bias as a
cause (the correlation is easy, but I stress "cause") for why any given
industry or sector of the economy doesn't represent a desired mix of group
attributes is this: There are millions or even tens of millions of actors
involved in these economic models and if group attribute bias is driving these
hiring or promotion or pay decisions then that means, by definition, that the
motivation of bias is overriding the motivation to optimize for value (whether
it be NOI for a mature business or speed of market capture for a new one).

So what I don't get is, if everything else is equal between two candidates
except for a) their contribution to value and b) their group attribute, how is
it that so many actors choose b and leave a on the table thus knowingly
performing poorer for shareholders and risking failure at the hands of
competition purely because of a group attribute bias?

I get that there would be some actors that would choose bias over value. But
how is that no one break ranks. Wouldn't there have to be a massive amount of
collusion and coordination to make sure that every founder and manager from
every entity all agrees to do this? Because anyone that breaks from the mold
would end up benefiting financially.

I get that this perspective undermines the popular narrative, so go ahead and
down vote if you think my intention is to do that. But that's not my
intention. What I'm looking for is a rational description of how the economic
mechanics work with a popular narrative about bias against what is also a
popular narrative that humans are greedy?

~~~
stormbeard
Check out the Dan Luu blog linked in the first paragraph of the article [1].
He tackles exactly this and does a really good job at explaining it and citing
sources.

I might butcher this, but there’s an excellent part in there where he takes a
look at the papers that showed discrimination in sports and how teams that
discriminated less, actually had an advantage and performed better. For
decades, teams were hiring less qualified white players and actually were
leaving money on the table. Looking at sports data is nice because there’s
tons of it and it’s easier to evaluate “employee performance”.

The issue with ignoring those NC A&T students was that those recruiters didn’t
even bother evaluating them to see if there were a few rockstar developers in
the group. Had they given them a fair shot and evaluation, we might have made
better hires overall.

[1] [https://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/](https://danluu.com/tech-
discrimination/)

------
bumby
I wonder if there’s some self-fulfilling prophesy with the recruiters.

If they put forth a half-assed effort at a “lesser” school I have a feeling
the best and brightest at that school would feel that and be less than
receptive about working there. Meaning they only get serious inquiries from
less-than-stellar recruits leading hiring managers to feel that school isn’t
worth more effort.

If I show up to dates in pajamas it seems odd to come to the conclusion that
my dating pool doesn’t meet my standards

------
alexpotato
I went to a large state school, Rutgers, and have worked both with people from
Ivy League schools and other state schools.

You could swap out UNC and NC A&T with "Ivy League" and "State School" and you
would effectively get the same story. And yes, 100% there are tech companies
who put a premium on Ivy League vs non-Ivy League based on my own personal
experience with recruiting.

Dan Luu (mentioned in the original article) has previously talked about this
along the lines of (paraphrasing): "I went to #25 of the top 25 schools.
Friends of mine, who were better potential hires, went to #26 and got
substantially fewer offers and the offers were lower quality".

If there are biases in how companies treat you based on solely the university
you went to, I find it easy to believe that there could be other biases as
well.

------
kyrieeschaton
NC A&T has an average SAT score on par with any random flyover college. Yet I
don't see any tech recruiters making the trip out to Bemidji State. The fact
is that students at HBCUs are significantly advantaged in recruiting compared
to any comparable college.

~~~
dml2135
I don't see how SAT scores would indicate the level of engineering talent at a
school in any way. There in plenty of racial bias in standardized testing.

This statement is exactly the sort of attitude that needs to be thrown out the
window if we want to make real progress addressing the racial gap in tech.

~~~
kyrieeschaton
"I don't see how SAT scores would indicate the level of engineering talent at
a school in any way"

Inability to figure out why IQ might be correlative with engineering ability
(as it is with practically any performance measure you can name, reified by
over 100 years of exhaustive data) is indicative of a failing of reasoning on
your part, not a problem with the argument.

I do agree with you that in order to address the "racial gap" in tech we would
have to ignore most metrics that would predict tech aptitude.

------
dsr_
There are a lot of people here reinventing Sabermetrics.

Go on, read Moneyball, and consider that the selection criteria from top-
ranked universities may be low-quality indicators of success at actually
getting things done.

------
gandutraveler
In India I've seen bias against different groups, regions, religions,
languages etc. in hiring, promotions. The only difference is that everyone has
bias against everyone to a level that one can't point out which group is more
biased. It evens out I guess

------
logicchop
Maybe it's the style of the article but I'm not sure I get the point. Is the
complaint that tech is "too white"? If so, that doesn't seem true. Look for
example at Google's own internal reporting: Whites are only something like
55-60% of the workforce, with Asians at 35-40%. Once you account for
population totals overall, Whites are underrepresented. And I'm sure the same
is true at Microsoft.

Is the point then that there just aren't many Blacks? Are Asians in the tech
industry not part of the "minority" in the context of this conversation? Sorry
but I'm losing track too quickly of what is even being discussed.

------
pdutt
when 36% of google can be asian, majority coming from a different country and
most probably a much poorer per capita income then anyone in USA. I don't
really think anyone was discriminating, go to any top tech school and see the
percentage of people by race and you'll pretty much see the same in companies.
if anything there's a supply shortage of tech talent I'm pretty sure they
don't need to discriminate if someone is good enough

------
jahbrewski
As someone just starting to grow a development team (currently four people) in
Denver CO, I’m already thinking about how to build a diverse group. Does
anyone have any resources, books, or maybe just some plain common sense advice
to recommend?

~~~
aspenmayer
I’m not really one to ask about this, as I don’t hire people and am white so
can’t really give any context to this recommendation, but you could ask the
people involved in Juneteenth Conference for help? It was founded by a Black
Microsoft engineer, so I’m sure their network has some people with the _right
stuff_ for your needs, and I’m sure they also know some good people of other
backgrounds too. We all can help diversity _directly_ by recommending our
friends to each other, when appropriate.

Also, diversity isn’t only about race, although it is also about that. It’s
also about equal access. @AccessForAll on Twitter can probably help you much
better than I can in that area.

[https://juneteenthconf.com](https://juneteenthconf.com)

------
drobert
Practically companies outsource the recruitment process to schools. To get in
a top school you need to have passed certain filters so it is more likely that
talent can be found there. It's applicable is any country not just USA and in
sports as well.

It's a hierarchy building system that works but of course it's not perfect.

If you are presuming that untapped talent exists in lower ranking schools on a
large scale, companies would shift their recruiting strategies because people
from top schools require much higher starting salaries. Leading companies
recruit from top schools to remain in the front.

The hypothesis that some groups (black, women, lgbt, etc) are systematically
marginalised is not compatible with capitalism. While it has an element of
truth due to the in-group preference (which a very natural phenomenon - even
trees do it) in a ruthless market companies which discriminate are at a loss -
they loose star employees and eventually their leading position. If huge
untapped potential exists in the marginalised groups this would create a
market opportunity: companies could only hire from these groups and outperform
the others. I don't see this happening.

------
cafard
Rooney Rule, anyone?

------
akhilcacharya
This absolutely enraging, but I'd like to also point out that the author's own
alma mater is about equidistant from UNC and Duke and was not visited. Why was
that? Its absolutely disgusting that they treated A&T's stop this way but
what's the excuse for excluding NC State?

~~~
tptacek
NC A&T is an HBCU. The subtext isn't that recruiting teams prioritize top-tier
schools --- of course every firm does this. Rather, it's that HBCUs get
included in these trips, so that HR departments can report metrics about
outreach to URMs ("trips made to HBCUs" are an especially straightforward
metric), but when those visits actually occur, they're performed with such
disrespect that they lay bare the underlying biases.

~~~
rahimnathwani
I had to look up what HBCU stands for:

"Historically black colleges and universities"

~~~
crispyporkbites
As a non American that term sounds outrageous and bizarre

~~~
icelancer
The term isn't, but the history of why HBCUs exist sure is.

------
ekianjo
So this is based on one anecdote with one company and this ends up with a
blanket statement about society at large?

~~~
xenocyon
Since this is written by a Black person in tech, my guess is that his beliefs
are based on a lifetime of being treated as a second-class citizen, and this
anecdote was merely a particularly obvious case.

However, like you, I am way of anecdotes and put more faith in empirical
studies [1]. So what do the data say? Turns out they align with the lived
experience of the author: widespread hiring bias by employers hurting Black
people.

[1] [https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873](https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873)

~~~
NoImmatureAdHom
This is BS. The study is from 2003 and isn't about elite tech jobs. There is
evidence that, nowadays, there is a large bias in favor of women and under-
represented minorities in, for example, academia and top-tier tech when
controlling for resume.

~~~
tptacek
Present that evidence, please. The comment you're trying to rebut did you that
courtesy; repay it.

~~~
NoImmatureAdHom
This is a good point and a reasonable request! Here's one
[https://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360](https://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360)

Note, when looking at this literature: there is a huge publication bias.
Publishing a paper that fits the popular (in social sciences) narratives is
easy, publishing one that goes against them (like the one I linked) is hard
and may well be career suicide. Also, the bar for what constitutes good enough
science in these areas is very low.

~~~
jakelazaroff
_> Publishing a paper that fits the popular (in social sciences) narratives is
easy, publishing one that goes against them (like the one I linked) is hard
and may well be career suicide._

The Occam’s Razor explanation for this is that the popular narratives are
popular because most available evidence supports them.

~~~
concordDance
> The Occam’s Razor explanation for this is that the popular narratives are
> popular because most available evidence supports them.

That seems like a bit of abuse of Occam's razor. Narratives are popularized by
the general media, not scientists. Just compare how popular the idea that IQ
is meaningless and not heritable is amongst the general population and the
media compared to those who actually study the topic full time at
universities.

Universities and people in them are not immune to pressure. Wasn't Hsu fired
partly because he funded research into police shootings that ended up getting
a politically incorrect result?

Authors of unpopular results (Rind et al anyone?) often get attacked a lot,
their research subject to a disproportionate level of scrutiny and it's very
career limitting (or is at least rumoured to be, which is plenty of a chilling
effect).

~~~
pseudalopex
Steve Hsu wasn't fired. He resigned from his position overseeing other
people's research. He kept his position as a professor with tenure.

Cesario and Johnson studied fatal shootings by police. Hsu personally promoted
their study as relevant to George Floyd's killing and/or the subsequent
protests. But George Floyd wasn't shot and the protests were about more than
fatal shootings. That was only a small part of the case the graduate employee
union presented against Hsu. The letter started by faculty[1] didn't mention
it at all.

[1]
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jb7w02E5GAdrJ_QnAokp7Ier...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jb7w02E5GAdrJ_QnAokp7IerP_VBDridmQ-
rI9M2TAE/edit)

~~~
concordDance
Twas a forced resignation.

I don't want to get too down into the weeds as my point is that people and the
media have a big influence on what science gets done and what is career
limitting. That said:

Most of the "case" was nonesense, with the actual letter (which had a fraction
of the signatures of the counter-letter) being mostly guilt by association.

> Hsu personally promoted their study as relevant to George Floyd's killing
> and/or the subsequent protests. But George Floyd wasn't shot and the
> protests were about more than fatal shootings.

It was relevant because Floy was a police killing. Racial bias in police
killings (the vast majority are with guns) was the main thing the protestors
I've heard were protesting.

~~~
pseudalopex
Someone could argue Hsu was effectively demoted but he wasn't even effectively
fired. Someone can disagree with the case against him but that isn't a good
reason to misrepresent it.

Only a small fraction of the signatures supporting Hsu have any affiliation
with his university. And would you care which petition had more signatures if
it was the other way around?

The protesters' demands for equity and police accountability aren't limited to
fatal shootings or even all killings.

------
hardwaregeek
Wow, that's really fucking terrible. That should have brought up so many red
flags. At this point I'm of the opinion that sensitivity training shouldn't be
something done post facto as an apology. Give sensitivity training to
everybody preemptively. First, sensitivity training is not and should not be a
punishment. We should all be at best excited and at worst neutral about
expanding our worldview and learning from others. Second, we shouldn't have
this weird system where Alice calls Bob out, HR makes Bob do sensitivity
training, Bob has some resentment for being embarrassed and Alice still
doesn't feel comfortable around Bob.

Also sensitivity training isn't the best name. It practically writes its own
insults. Maybe call it something like diversity promotion or anti-racism
training. It's a lot harder to opt out to anti-racism training.

We all have blind spots. We need to erase them. Let's do it together.

~~~
TedDoesntTalk
It's called diversity training and is already "preemptively " required at
various fortune 500 companies. I've personally experienced it.

~~~
0xy
I've often found diversity training is itself reductionist and racist, by
teaching stereotypes.

~~~
Cthulhu_
What do you propose as an alternative?

~~~
0xy
No diversity training. Minorities already receive positive discrimination in
tech companies and hiring in general. Studies around blind hiring have
revealed that when names are concealed even less minorities get selected.

------
ghufran_syed
Pretty weird that the story doesn't involve him bringing up the problem with
HR or other engineering managers. The people who do the main revenue-
generating work of a company (e.g. engineers in a tech company, the finance
people in an investment bank) usually have a lot more power in an organization
than HR / recruiting. So if he didn't do that, does that make him complicit in
the racism? Or if he did try and got stonewalled, he should share that, along
with the name of the company.

And it doesn't smell right that an organization would risk giving a bunch of
candidates food poisoning and getting a lawsuit by serving them day-old
catered food. I'm certainly willing to believe it _could_ happen, but
'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' \- in this case I'd
settle for him giving the name of the company so that either others can
confirm, or they can rebut.

~~~
arshbot
I've spoken out against HR for dissimilar reasons and found myself out of the
job not too long later. I don't blame him for not raising his head at his
workplace...

~~~
flumpcakes
I think that still makes him morally complicit.

~~~
stale2002
I think you need to spend less time attacking people who bring issues to
light, and more time recognizing and agreeing that there is a problem in the
industry that needs to be solved.

Attacking the person who is bringing the issue to light makes it seem like one
is trying to distract from the issue being brought up, and put blame on the
individual for talking about the problem.

