
Is Silicon Valley Discriminating Against Men and Asians? - teklaperry
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/is-silicon-valley-discriminating-against-men-and-asians
======
xacaxulu
Asians have been shown repeatedly to be penalized in college admissions
([http://observer.com/2015/06/asian-americans-are-indeed-
getti...](http://observer.com/2015/06/asian-americans-are-indeed-getting-
screwed-by-harvard-but-not-how-they-think/)) and in some cases are given
handicaps in SAT/ACT scores. Asians have been shown to be the highest earnings
among minority groups in America, and perhaps there's a concerted effort by
other groups to redistribute the wealth in a way that favors them over Asians.

[http://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-
america/2015/05/08/this-u...](http://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-
america/2015/05/08/this-us-ethnic-group-makes-the-most-money/)

Men are certainly the beneficiaries of the least amount of "Learn to code"
largesse, STEM hiring initiatives, quotas for board members (especially before
going public), etc. There are numerous social, governmental and academic
programs targeted towards women so while we can't say men are discriminated
against, we can say the aid programs that are available for women are
nonexistent for men.

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ignasl
People always wants to better their lives. No one is pushing for diversity for
coal mining jobs. It's just that Silicon Valley is this hot place where you
can make a lot of money so everyone just wants a piece of that. And that
includes the most entitled, spoiled and loud peace of shits who instead of
thinking how to provide value are pushing for affirmative action. It's not
hackers' and geeks' only world anymore. Leeches are here.

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jimmywanger
FTA:

> We know Silicon Valley has a diversity problem.

That's just making an assumption. Based on undergraduate enrollment rates in
computer science and other technical degrees, the probability distribution
based on ethnicity and gender seem very plausible.

Also FTA,

> Are lawsuits like these a good thing, or are they going to stall efforts to
> move towards more diversity in Silicon Valley?

Why are we trying to move towards more diversity? Why is that inherently a
good thing?

~~~
yellowapple
> Why are we trying to move towards more diversity? Why is that inherently a
> good thing?

For the same reason why genetic bottlenecks are a bad thing.

~~~
throwow3439
> For the same reason why genetic bottlenecks are a bad thing.

What is that "genetic bottleneck" ? it's a pretty racist expression if you ask
me , it sounds like it leads to "degeneration" or something like that, it
really sounds like nazi rhetoric but reversed, instead of the "purity of the
race" that must be preserved, it is now mandatory to diversify "white people's
genes" to avoid genetic defects ?

You take a Slovenian and an Irish, they are both "white" , does that
constitute a "genetic bottleneck" because of a superficial trait ( color of
the skin ) ? I mean only racialists speak about genetics when it comes to
race. Just because now a specific racial narrative is pushed by the left
doesn't make racialism less obnoxious. And white women despite being women are
still white , does it also constitute a "genetic bottleneck" too ? people
pushing for all that should take a step back and think about what they say,
for a second. "Diversity" AKA affirmative action AKA "positive discrimination"
isn't inherently good or bad, from a productivity or a financial perspective
for businesses that engage into all these diversity policies. If they see
value in it, good for them, now let's see if they perform better on the long
run just because they replaced a good white candidate with an average non
white one.

I'm not american, but I'm puzzled by all this which mostly looks like feelgood
PR, seen from abroad, especially at a time US finds more and more difficult to
hide its racial tensions to the rest of the world.

~~~
yellowapple
The point wasn't to take genetics literally.

The point was that - much like how a homogeneous genetic population will tend
to amplify its defects compared to a heterogeneous one - so will a homogeneous
ideological population. The diversity is what brings in new ideas and
viewpoints.

The very idea of the American "melting pot" is rooted in this philosophy;
immigrants both adapt to existing customs and introduce new ones, thus making
the America as a whole (lots of us Americans seem to forget this, including at
least one of our presidential candidates, but such is life). This can be and
has been applied on smaller scales to various organizations with much success.

This isn't _only_ about race or _only_ about gender or _only_ about sexual
orientation or _only_ about political affiliation or _only_ about
socioeconomic class; it's about _all_ of these things influencing an
individual's background in a way that is different from the group as a whole.

~~~
internaut
> much like how a homogeneous genetic population will tend to amplify its
> defects compared to a heterogeneous one - so will a homogeneous ideological
> population. The diversity is what brings in new ideas and viewpoints.

Ahhhh! But we _don 't_ know that. Memetics is not genetics.

It's like assuming that a larger population has a larger number of ideas than
a smaller population.

But what if I told you my smaller population sample was from a university and
the larger one was from a prison.

I believe Dense networks is what causes a flowering of intellectual diversity.
There are heuristics we can use. It is associated with wealthy areas and
cities.

I suspect myself that intellectual diversity is orthogonal to the physical
phenotype of diversity. However this, like your statement, remains to be
shown. There is a lot of contradictory information out there, probably due to
confounding factors and gloming unrelated factors together.

In my previous post in a different thread I wrote something related to this
subject which is that Facebook (users) has a lot of genetic diversity in its
population but it's a sterile wasteland. Facebook and Twitter are tourists on
the Internet, but 4chan, reddit and HN are like natives.

~~~
yellowapple
"Ahhhh! But we don't know that. Memetics is not genetics."

No, but it's a perfectly good starting point for a hypothesis. Memetics may
not be genetics, just like how ducks might not be crows. But, like how ducks
and crows are both birds, memetics and genetics are both means of
conveying/replicating/mutating information.

"But what if I told you my smaller population sample was from a university and
the larger one was from a prison."

What _if_ you told me such a thing? Would you be implying that prisoners come
up with fewer ideas than universities? From what do you derive such an
implication?

"I suspect myself that intellectual diversity is orthogonal to the physical
phenotype of diversity."

On paper, it is.

In practice, intellectual characteristics correlate strongly to educational
background, which correlates strongly to socioeconomic class, which (at least
here in the United States) correlates strongly to - you guessed it - physical
phenotype. Some people break out of those correlations, but they're (last I
checked) the exception, not the norm.

This is by no means anything inherent in those phenotypes, of course. You
already know that. Rather, it's a systemic issue: one of social norms and
preconceived notions. We can pretend that everyone's equal, but it ignores the
core of the issue: that the segregation of viewpoints still exists, and thus
still requires conscious effort to correct that segregation.

Intellectual diversity, in short, correlates with phenotypical diversity,
since viewpoints correlate with phenotypes thanks in no small part to our
world's rich xenophobic history.

"In my previous post in a different thread I wrote something related to this
subject which is that Facebook (users) has a lot of genetic diversity in its
population but it's a sterile wasteland."

I'd argue that has far less to do with the users than it does Facebook itself.

"Facebook and Twitter are tourists on the Internet, but 4chan, reddit and HN
are like natives."

I don't blame you for believing that; it's natural to believe that we're
somehow "special" because we happen to be chatting on some forum run by some
venture capital firm. Never mind that even HN's users, let alone reddit's (and
possibly 4chan's, but I don't really venture over there all too often), have
no problem with posting links to Twitter posts for "karma", or that Medium (a
favorite among HNers, so it seems) required logins using either Facebook or
Twitter until only very recently.

The flow of thoughts between the "tourists" and the "natives" is very
bidirectional in reality, and Facebook and Twitter (and Instagram and $DEITY-
knows-what-else) might as well be natives at this point, too.

------
autognosis
IMO, the idea that anyone could know the optimal level of diversity where
human choice is concerned is full of hubris.

Also, "discrimination" is inseparable from choice. That there are laws
regulating these things is destructive and arrogant. It turns everyone into
racists/sexists/whatever.

~~~
solipsism
_the idea that anyone could know the optimal level of diversity where human
choice is concerned is full of hubris._

It's completely subjective (how you define "optimal"), so why would it require
hubris to have an opinion?

~~~
prasadjoglekar
If it's only an opinion about diversity at the dinner table, then it's not
hubris. But if the search for an optimal mix comes from a govt. or quasi-govt.
institution then it's no longer an opinion, is it?

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scarmig
As far as Palantir discriminating against Asian Americans goes, my
understanding is that most of their "engineering" positions aren't really that
technical--they tend to be customer facing. Old timers in government don't
really like Asians, and so it "makes sense" to not have them represent the
company. (Descriptive of what's happening here, not prescriptive--even if that
hypothesis is true, I'm the type to say screw it, hire on capabilities and
work ethic.)

There's also the tendency for Asians to be conveniently bucketed into the
"white" bucket, which makes them easier targets and also is a reason this
lawsuit won't go viral on social media.

~~~
vinay427
> Old timers in government don't really like Asians

Sorry, but I don't believe it's appropriate to make generalizations like this
without any evidence. We don't need more blind divisiveness in this (or any)
country.

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woah
According to the diversity reports from linkedin, Facebook, and Google, Asian-
Americans are greatly overrepresented in the tech industry. I don't remember
the exact numbers, but it's something like 30-40% vs under 10% in the general
population.

I don't really know, it may be because Asian American parents are more likely
to encourage their children to go into technical careers. Still, a purely
numerical statistic is nothing to allege discrimination over, no matter which
groups are involved.

