
100 Days as a Black Man in Silicon Valley - TheSMG
http://verysmartbrothas.com/100-days-ablackman-silicon-valley/
======
collyw
Interestingly I see a lot of comments saying we need more women in tech, but
none saying we need more black people in tech. I have worked with a number of
women, and only ever seen one consultant come in who was black. Are we more
racist than sexist? (I see plenty of Indians however, maybe a disproportionate
amount compared to the general population?).

I am based in Europe, and I do think there is less of a cultural division
amongst races here. People appear to pigeonhole themselves into categories
more in the US in my opinion, be it on race, job, music tastes or whatever.

~~~
heldrida
We don't need more women, black, latino, white, red, green people in tech, we
need talented people, regardless of how they look like. We need less bullshit,
people who produce sane code and go home early to work on what matters about
us, our communities, our families, our education!

I'm full stack dev living in London, I'm black, huge afro, piercings, english
is not my first language, skateboarder, into punk music, etc.

~~~
onion2k
I think you're both right and wrong. You're right in the sense that we do need
to bring in the most talented people, but I suspect you're wrong in the
definition of what the talents we need are. When people say "we need talented
people" they usually mean that we need people who are best at doing what we do
now. And that's not the solution, that's the _problem_.

In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can
only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now.
That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're
doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities,
LGBQT+, non-tech, etc.

The thing that really must change in order to get society making the best tech
possible that really impacts lives in a positive way is that we need to break
the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same
dull ideas. That can only happen by filling the chamber with more people who
aren't privileged white males. And I say that _as a privileged white male_.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Lets be concrete. I'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical
models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior. What "different
perspectives" are offered by women, non-Asian minorities or LGBQT+? Is there a
secret prediction method that whites/asians don't know about? A special LGBQT+
streaming architecture?

On several occasions I've joined a company and been the only diversity
carrier. I can't think of a single advantage beyond PR (I make group photos
look more diverse, yay!) that my race has given the company. Any such
advantage is miniscule in comparison to the advantages gained by my knowledge
of statistical significance, multiple comparisons, regression and the like.

Realistically, if you wanted to add diversity of thought, you'd be far better
off hiring a Frequentist of the majority race than a Bayesian of a different
one. And if you wanted real (harmful) diversity of thought, you'd hire a
magical thinker rather than someone persuaded by evidence.

~~~
onion2k
_I 'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical models on the
datastream in order to manipulate user behavior._

Having a more diverse team that includes someone with a more emotionally-
driven perspective could lead to someone asking the question "Is the way we're
manipulating user behavior actually ethical?"

This isn't about finding different technical solutions to problems; it's about
finding different problems.

~~~
gone35
"Having a more diverse team that includes someone _with a more emotionally-
driven perspective_ could lead to someone asking the question "Is the way
we're manipulating user behavior actually ethical?" [Emphasis added]

Geez, I really hope that that was just an unfortunate turn of phrase. You
can't possibly mean that non-(white-males) have a quote "more emotionally-
driven perspective", do you?

~~~
kweinber
I read the post to suggest that the existing team was obviously not very
emotionally sensitive since they are explicitly working to "manipulate
behavior" which sounds sinister. Perhaps hiring more folks who are both
rational AND emotionally sensitive to their users is the diversity they need.

~~~
yummyfajitas
What's sinister about it? If you ever make a design change to increase
conversions, you are working to manipulate user behavior. Are landing pages,
a/b tests, pretty designs, and pictures of human faces now "sinister"?

~~~
kweinber
Making a nicer product that increases user engagement is manipulating the
product to match what the user likes, not manipulating the user. Changing the
order and quality of ranked news articles, bending the truth, using behavioral
science to promote addictive dependence,advertising products you don't
actually make are all manipulating the user.

There is a big difference and yes, "manipulating the user" is sinister.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I specifically discussed putting human faces on the landing page to get more
conversions and other design changes (e.g., button color, button copy). These
don't change the product, only the landing page.

That's not a lie or bending the truth. It is manipulating the user.

~~~
kweinber
I would suggest you stay away from describing your business practices as
"manipulation", though. Almost all connotations of that word in psychology,
law, and business imply deceit.

It sounds like you are decorating the showroom to boost sales... I hope it
works out well for you. I was thown by the initial desciption that sure didnt
sound like faces and buttons: "I'm streaming realtime events and then running
statistical models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior."

------
mindcrime
The comment about bias against going to school in the South really resonates.
I mean, in one sense it's hilarious to think that there are people who don't
realize that schools like UNC-CH, Georgia Tech, Clemson, NCSU, Campbell, Wake
Forest, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Virginia Tech, William & Mary, etc.
are great schools. But in another sense it's very, very sad. And I almost find
it weirder to hear that about people from the West Coast, where the stereotype
about people has them being so much more open minded and accepting, vs. people
from the Northeast who are stereotyped as being more elitist and dismissive of
Southerners.

Oh well... at the end of the day, all you can really do is, as they say, "Be
so damn good they can't ignore you".

~~~
santaclaus
Is there really a bias against schools south of the Mason-Dixon? I feel like
most of NYC went to Duke. Tim Cook also seems to be doing alright.

~~~
lsiebert
People from the west coast don't necessarily have a nuanced understanding of
the south.

~~~
lsiebert
To be clear, I say that as a west coast person who has visited the south.

------
dudul
"why pay all that money for college when you can go to coding school for a
fraction of the price, make over six figures, and get equity in a company?"

You realize that most engineers do have a college degree right? You realize
that most engineers are not dumb script kiddies who went through 10 PHP
tutorials to learn how to code?

"I definitely feel like my high school guidance counselor dropped the ball on
that one."

Yeah, cause please don't take any responsibility for not doing the work of
thinking and planning your own future.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
>You realize that most engineers do have a college degree right? You realize
that most engineers are not dumb script kiddies who went through 10 PHP
tutorials to learn how to code?

This doesn't match the dialogue I see here and other places about college
graduates and/or job candidates who can't fizzbuzz or have no other skills
required in the industry. Although I think it would be nice if we
simultaneously had a steady supply of skilled engineers, constantly increasing
salaries, and constantly increasing demand.

~~~
dudul
Not sure I see your point. Most "non-fizzbuzzers" are college graduates who
got a liberal arts degree and are trying to pivot to a more lucrative field.

Just to be clear: I don't think all developers need a degree, but I think
there is much more than just attending a 4 week codecamp required to become a
good developer. The author makes it sound so trivial and easy.

~~~
kasey_junk
> Most "non-fizzbuzzers" are college graduates who got a liberal arts degree
> and are trying to pivot to a more lucrative field.

Prove it. That has not been my experience in hiring at all.

~~~
dudul
It has been mine. I have been interviewing and hiring developers for the past
6 years, this was my empirical observation. I am glad you had a different
experience.

~~~
kasey_junk
I think the important thing to remember in any discussion about hiring
qualification is that our empirical evidence largely fails us. Even those of
us who have spent lots of time, effort and experience on the subject are
largely dealing with small sample sizes. These small sample sizes inform our
biases which is a negative feedback loop, especially in the case that the
confirm our existing biases.

So for instance, in my empirical observations, candidates from top tier
engineering schools largely perform more poorly on fizzbuzz than candidates
with no college experience what so ever. This observation was so largely
opposed to my existing bias that it caused me question fizzbuzz as a
qualification tool.

My investigations into this found lots of things that made me think that
fizzbuzz is a bad tool (even though I had very high biases towards it in the
beginning).

The lesson I took from that, was not "don't use fizzbuzz" even though I don't
anymore, or "people with no college degree are better candidates than those
from top tier universities". It was "small sample sizes make nearly all
statements about hiring trends dubious." So "prove it". Is my default answer
to that sort of statement.

------
beamatronic
I really enjoyed this article because I also came to the Bay Area from the
South. I don't know if you went into detail on this, but I feel like the
interview process on the West Coast is very different from that on the East
Coast ( far more technically rigorous ).

I feel like if you took all the positive statements out of your article, and
put them together, you'd make one hell of a first impression in a
conversation:

"I'm a Tesla-driving lawyer from an elite boutique law firm! I just moved here
to pursue my dream of working in tech! I love SF and I'm here to stay!"

If I heard that from an interview candidate I'd be really impressed.

------
ansible
I'd have thought that the easier path would have been to join a law firm in
the SF area first. Maybe just for a year or so.

That might give more perspective on the startup scene, and help to establish
credentials. A law firm would understand the quality of his education and
experience better than some small startup.

------
b6
I would be overjoyed if people would stop capitalizing "black", "white", etc.
It feels like I'm reading something from Stormfront. Do we want body
attributes and tribes to be less important in the future, or more?

~~~
spacemanmatt
Do you seriously propose that ignoring tribes will help anything?

~~~
b6
I don't think I'm proposing to ignore tribes. I'm calling tribes out as
harmful. If people promote the old idea of declaring themselves distinct from
the rest of the human family because of various body attributes, I'm going to
oppose it.

------
wink
Very good article, but I really didn't like the "if only I could quickly get
coding skills and be an engineer" part.

I'm really the last one to call for mandatory lengthy education, but there's a
reason I'd usually agree that people having studied Computer Science _and_
worked in the field for few years tend to know certain things people that
"learnt to code" don't.

But yeah, maybe the valley _is_ different and there's a huge market for people
learning stuff for a few months and rightfully making a lot more money than I
do in Europe :)

------
nsxwolf
"You know this is a tech event, right?" ... haha... that's tolerant, liberal
Silicon Valley for you!

------
stevendaniels
I recently watched American Experience's Silicon Valley. I was a bit shocked
by the lack of diversity in the those early companies (Fairchild
Seminconductor, AMD, Intel, etc.). Andy Grove, a Hungarian, seemed to be the
most diverse of the bunch.

There wasn't even a token Black, Asian, or Indian in the company photos I saw.

------
ebfe
The average IQ of African-Americans is a standard deviation below that of
whites, which in turn is a bit below that of Asians and Ashkenazi Jews [1].

Under the assumption that the tech industry has a higher average IQ than the
population as a whole, then in a world free of any sort of discrimination, one
would expect to see blacks underrepresented and Asians overrepresented.

This isn't a fun fact to discuss; I don't intend any sort of disrespect
towards people like the author who are most likely smarter than me. But it's
one that needs to be accounted for in discussions about race.

1\. [http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-
Jensen3...](http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-
Jensen30years.pdf)

~~~
Geekette
I would certainly discount info from a researcher who amongst other things:
consistently ignored evidence disproving his assertions over time, was funded
and endorsed by racist/white supremacist organization specifically to produce
literature suggesting racial hierarchy in intelligence[1][2].

More importantly, the concept of IQ is a myth: there is no single measure of
intelligence, different neural networks coordinate verbal vs reasoning vs
short-term memory abilities, etc[3][4]. That _one_ test (based on solving
certain classes of problems at most) is still being extrapolated to assessment
of overall intelligence and used to somehow differentiate people is ludicrous.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jensen#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jensen#Criticism)

[2]
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174.265&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

[3][http://www.thestar.com/life/2012/12/19/iq_a_myth_study_says....](http://www.thestar.com/life/2012/12/19/iq_a_myth_study_says.html)

[4]
[http://www.owenlab.uwo.ca/pdf/2012%20-%20Hampshire%20-%20Neu...](http://www.owenlab.uwo.ca/pdf/2012%20-%20Hampshire%20-%20Neuron.pdf)

------
rjbwork
A shame he left. We need more smart techies staying here in Atlanta.

~~~
nailer
It says that he's still in San Francisco in his bio.

Which is good because:

a) he's on the front page of HN

b) he's available for tech legal roles

c) he seems like a pretty capable guy

~~~
lsiebert
He left atlanta is I think the point.

~~~
nailer
Oh you're right! I was reading off a tiny screen and evidently misread - sorry
rjbwork!

------
rm_-rf_slash
The author is doing good work and I commend him. It's a million more times
easy to complain about a problem or prescribe a solution than it is to roll up
your sleeves and do the hard work. We need more people like him.

------
gambiting
"Blacks in Oakland frequently question why I would live in SF with people who
don’t look like me"

This is the most racist thing I read whole day.

~~~
mikekchar
I am a white guy living in the rural Japan. I can tell you lots of stories of
other expat white people accusing me of being a "Japan-o-phile" (apparently a
bad thing) because I adopted a Japanese way of life. People have often warned
me that "they [the Japanese people] will never accept you" and "you know you
will never be Japanese". I get _far_ more racism from these expats who feel
betrayed that I have happily integrated into Japanese society than I ever have
from Japanese people.

Racism exists everywhere. Living in Japan has been the first place where I've
lived as a visible minority and it has been an eye opener. Being obviously
different is hard in many ways. There are people who stare at you, or people
who wonder if/how you are different from them. There are people who are afraid
of you for no reason other than you are different. Very occasionally there are
people who are abusive and rude, but most of the time it is mostly a mixture
of ignorance and curiosity (and maybe a little bit of fear of the unknown
thrown in).

It can be quite a problem for some people. Many people take offence at
practically anything and can't let anything slide. They feel it is morally
wrong not to take a stand about being treated differently. They feel _you_ are
morally wrong if you happily agree to be treated differently.

For me, probably like a lot of people who read HN, I have always been
different. I have never fit in anywhere. Even though I was visibly the same as
everyone, my way of thinking, my religious beliefs, my values have always been
different from the norm. I suffered greatly in countries where everyone
assumed that I was the same as them. As a visible minority, I am free to be
different. It makes me happy even if sometimes it causes problems.

"Expats in Japan frequently question why I would live in rural Japan with
people who don't look [and by extension, think] like me", would be a true
statement for me. In my opinion this is likely true of any visible minority
population anywhere. It definitely hurts me and I suspect it hurts the author
as well, which is probably why he wrote about it in that way.

~~~
spacemanmatt
Thanks for one of the best expositions on fundamental xenophobia I've read in
a while.

