
How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley - dguido
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/04/greed-trumps-race-how-to-be-a-successful-african-american-in-silicon-valley/
======
guylhem
Excellent article, full of excellent thoughts and ideas. I hope it'll remain
frontpage material to clear some misrepresentations.

 _"Heard Yeezy was racist, well, I guess that’s on one basis, I only like
green faces."_

I guess I'm like Kanye then: I'm green-biased, because in the end, that's the
only thing that matter - profits :-)

"Underrepresentation does not equal racism" is also a great idea to cite - who
cares about one's representation?

Profits are what matters. Is there a white resentment about having too few
white players in the NBA? As long as they are good and get well paid, who
cares?

~~~
majormajor
So the last line made me think: why do I hate the idea of the All-American
Basketball Alliance[1], but support programs to increase diversity in
software?

But it's not a contradiction: I have seen nothing to lead me to believe that a
talented player of any race will not get a fair chance in the NBA. It's all
about winning, but the opportunity is there for everyone.

So isn't SV all about winning too? Yes, it is—but we know a _lot_ less about
what leads to winning. There are no draft combines where everyone gets show
what they can do. Nobody writes code competitively directly against other
programmers on TV to prove they can produce at a high level. Companies play it
by ear. The NBA knows how to evaluate talent. We don't.

Here's a fun example: "PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the
engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops.
That single sentence lost him the job. No PayPal people would ever have used
the world “hoops.” Probably no one even knew how to play “hoops.” Basketball
would be bad enough. But “hoops?” That guy clearly wouldn’t have fit in. He’d
have had to explain to the team why he was going to go play hoops on a
Thursday night. And no one would have understood him."[2]

Welp, guess I wouldn't have been able to get hired at PayPal. Not only do I
like to play basketball, I've said "shooting hoops" a lot. You're going to
turn down someone who aced your tests because of a hobby and the phrase he
used to describe it? You really think that's the secret to success? You're
flying by the seat of your pants in a world without good metrics and you don't
know which things you did contributed to your success and which things didn't.
You're _actively discouraging_ diversity of culture (which is not directly the
same thing as diversity of gender/race, but it makes it a lot harder to have
the latter).

And it's that still-sometimes-present active discouragement of diversity that
I find frustrating about many parts of the programmer community.

[1] a basketball league venture in the southern US that required players be
white, that I believe folded quickly a couple of years ago

[2] [http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21437840885/peter-
thiels...](http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay)

~~~
guylhem
IMHO, it may be a contradiction - there is no need for any specific program to
encourage some specific group (even if one is a member of a given group, and
could take advantage of the program for profit in the short run, because one
don't get better in the long run by having it easier it the short run)

I can't say anything about paypal - I wasn't there, and I don't like to pass
judgements.

But if they indeed were _that_ dumb not to hire a good candidate only for the
sports he plays, it's no wonder their product sucks more an more. Personally,
I'm eagerly waiting for a competitor until bitcoin gets more momentum.

BTW one thing I'd like to say - the opportunity in coding is there for
everyone - it's even more open than the NBA because the judge is the market,
and with the current technology everyone can easily start a tech company and
compete globally.

It's a pure and perfect competition.

There's no need to be hired be a company - you create your company and show
your product to the market. If it works, if it does what people need, you will
get money.

~~~
Anechoic
_it's even more open than the NBA because the judge is the market_

Interesting, I have the exact opposite viewpoint - I can see the _result_ of a
software project, but I have very little insight into the contributions behind
the scenes. In sports, I (and the rest of the world) can see the contributions
of the atheltes and judge merit for ourselves.

For example, I know the new iOS maps have problems, but (aside from press
leaks) I don't have a lot of insight into who did what. On the other hand, I
know from watching Knicks games last season that Jeremy Lin was the real deal.
I know the result of the 2012 Super Bowl (Giants beat Patriots) and I also saw
the contribution of the team members (for example, Tom Brady throwing a
perfect pass to Wes Welker at he end of the game that Welker dropped).

I've always see athletics as the closest ideal to a meritocracy that we have
in our society.

~~~
guylhem
We _do_ have opposite viewpoints because I see the one man company or
consultant as the closest ideal to a meritocracy.

But still +1'ing for this very interesting opinion - because you're right, in
a company which more than 1 employee it's hard to judge the individual
performance.

------
colmvp
I find it odd that HN loves to upvote 'more women in tech' articles but never
promotes any article related to increasing African American or the Latin
American population in the tech community.

~~~
coor
I for one only actually care about women in tech to improve my dating pool.
Not sure what more minorities would do for me.

~~~
rdl
I care about the "people in tech" pool containing as high a percentage of the
"qualified people who could be in tech" as possible, as both a hirer and a
buyer/user of tech. If there are qualified women or minorities who aren't
working in tech for artificial reasons (their early-childhood education
deterring them, racism or sexism in the workplace, etc.), that affects me as a
white man.

I don't have as much self-interest in whether people from Ohio, Eskimos, or
women are proportionally represented. (I sort of care in an abstract way,
because tech jobs are great and a good way to live a happy life, but if there
were some innate reason why gingers were comparatively far better at medicine
than at tech, I wouldn't cry that there were few gingers in tech.)

The nice thing about capitalism is that even with my own self-interested
motivation, it tends to solve problems like this.

~~~
rayiner
> The nice thing about capitalism is that even with my own self-interested
> motivation, it tends to solve problems like this.

It really doesn't, for two reasons. 1) the rational actor model is a bad
abstraction, and irrational prejudice can be an important factor; 2) there are
various "bootstrap" problems in any given field that can keep unbalanced
equillibria even in situations where discriminatory forces aren't actively
pushing things towards those equillibria.

Women in tech is actually a striking example of this phenomenon. If you look
at "qualified" in terms of something measurable like Math SAT scores above 600
(typical for a decent engineering program), women are dramatically
underrepresented relative to their qualifications.

You would think there would be strong pressures to get more women into the
field, given the ostensible shortage of engineers, but companies make no such
attempts (partly because the self-selection happens long before they can
really influence things, and partly because of "boostrap" issues).

~~~
rdl
My experience (MIT, late 1990s) was that there were about 45% females to 55%
males (+/- 5%), and in some programs (Biology, Earth Science) there were more
females than males. CS undergrad was maybe 65:35, and Physics/Math were more
skewed. I'm assuming everyone was approximately the same level of qualified
coming in.

I think "med school leads to a great career" was a major factor.

Among people hiring, it's pretty common to actively search out new sources of
candidates -- "Australia", x new education program, prior military service
hires, etc.

I agree the early stage problems need to be solved by someone other than those
hiring in the short term, but it's absolutely the case that a qualified
(female, black, whatever) candidate will get a fair shot at many (most?)
companies today. In large organizations, there is still some pressure to hire
those candidates preferentially, and even in a small startup, hiring female
technical employees early is preferred because it makes it a lot easier to
hire even 20-30% female employees later, vs. an all-male 20 person company
trying to hire its first female technical employee. (Sorry, but I don't count
employees as a single class -- if 100% of your engineers are male and you have
a female office manager, that's not really the same thing as a company like
Quora where the first hire was a great designer and front-end developer who
happened to be both from Facebook and female.)

So, hopefully solving the "demand side" also helps people solve the "supply
side".

~~~
rayiner
There was an MIT study in the 1980s and 1990s that found that females were
outperforming their SAT Math relative to males when it game to college GPA. So
they adjusted the admissions process. As a result, females come in with
roughly a 30-point lower SAT Math, but ultimately end up having similar GPAs
once in school. So to get that 45/55 mix, the school did have to take
affirmative measures.

That said, MIT is way ahead of the industry on this. Only 18% of engineering
graduates last year were women. This is despite the fact that about 45% of all
high school seniors who score 600+ on the SAT Math, and 40% of all high school
seniors who score 700+ on the SAT Math, are girls. Even at the perfect 800
level, it's 33% girls.

And this isn't directed at you, but whenever I see "aptitude" in these
discussions I get skeptical. A lot of people don't agree with the findings in
the "Bell Curve", but even if we take those results to be completely true, the
fact of the matter is that the differences don't really matter that much in
the range we're talking about. It's an explanation for why there are so many
fewer female Einsteins, not why there are so many fewer female Cisco
engineers.

And it's not even the math and tedium. I was pretty shocked to find that half
of Big-4 accountants are women. About 30% of one major Big-4 firm's partners
are women. These numbers blow away anything you see in engineering, in a field
that is arguably much more numerically-intensive and boring.

The fact is that the other professions are leaving engineering in the dust
when it comes to making representation in the field equal to aptitude.
Accounting firms and law firms are dealing with the next issue--which is how
to have a strong representation of female partners while dealing with the fact
that the partnership push coincides with women's prime reproductive years. And
they're making progress on that issue. Engineering is in the rearview mirror,
hanging with the neanderthals in banking.

~~~
rdl
Ah -- I think the line from MIT Admissions at the time was that everyone was
equally qualified, but they recruited more heavily in underrepresented groups.
I didn't put much thought into exactly what measures they would take.

If you did take Bell Curve as completely true (which is a very lively debate),
a shifted normal distribution would substantially change the makeup of a
career field (otherwise equally distributed) picked from those with IQ>130 or
something. It probably is fair to say Cisco engineers are smarter than the US
average, although probably less so than top startup founders. In real life
hiring is not on a single metric, of course, particularly later in one's
career. But, a one+ SD shift would lead to really different populations at
115, 130, 160 IQ, in addition to absurd outliers like Einstein. (Plus, there's
plenty to call into question IQ and specific measures of IQ, like Feynmann's
relatively average score. I personally think it's far more predictive in the
~50-115 range than anywhere else.)

(The reproductive-years issue does seem like a fundamental one, especially in
a career where your first 10 years are just the start. Are there any good URLs
or books on how accounting and law handle this?)

~~~
rayiner
First, note I'm not endorsing the Bell Curve, but exploring the implications.

There isn't a consensus on sex-linked differences in IQ, but none of the
realistic studies show anything close to a 1+ SD shift. You see results like a
0.33 SD shift or a 1 point narrower standard deviation. What you see on the
SAT Math is a 0.3 shift in mean and a slightly narrower SD.

Also, as a practical matter, engineering is not a profession of people 2SD+
above the mean. It ranges from Texas Tech to MIT. Typical IQ's for engineers
are estimated around 110-120. If we look at SAT Math scores, 600+ would be a
reasonable estimate. At the ~600 level, there are about the same number of
males and females, with the gap growing to about 30% females in the
perfect-800 pool (3SD above the mean). In other words the observed disparities
far outstrip what would be expected from standardized test scores. Even taking
the studies more favorable to the aptitude argument, you'd have to have
engineers at 150+ before the observed male-female ratio was consistent with
what would be expected based on IQ scores alone (5:1).

And of course, this assumes the only relevant measure of engineering aptitude
is SAT Math performance or IQ. In that sense it's probably an upper bound for
the measure of engineering aptitude.

~~~
rdl
Yes, the whole discussion is predicated on if Bell Curve were accurate.

I'd gone back to race, not gender. I think I've seen studies which say
African-Americans are as much as a sigma below general population of the US,
and certain Jewish or Asian populations are a sigma above, which is 2 sigma
net, which is HUGE. I don't know if I buy these studies, but to the extent
that IQ measures scholastic aptitude and culture vs. innate genetic
intelligence, it's possible.

Engineers at large companies are maybe 1SD above the mean; founders or "10x
engineers" at startups are 2SD+.

So, a 2 sigma difference at the 1 and 2 sigma above mean levels would be huge,
which is observed in the population of startup founders and famous startup
engineers. But there are plenty of other explanations which would account for
exactly the same observation even if there were zero difference on population
"aptitude" -- it's just one plausible explanation.

(There's also the argument that Asian immigrants to the US are potentially the
top of a 3 billion person set, and the total number of African-Americans is
something like 30mm. But the Ashkenazi Jewish population and African-American
populations are on the same order of magnitude in the US.)

~~~
rayiner
The race issue... well it's just not my little pet issue, LOL. My point is
that I see these arguments being brought up in the context of women in
engineering, not just minorities, and the underlying math doesn't support the
conclusions even if we use the studies that are more favorable to the point.
The numbers I've seen Richard Flynn throw around are a 1:5.5 ratio of women to
men at 155+ (almost 4SD). While 1:5.5 is just a little under the
representation of women in engineering, the 155+ figure is far beyond what
you'd find for a practicing engineer. It might characterize the set of
engineering professors at top schools.

------
daybowbow
Really appreciate this article - very thoughtful. Re: the "Increase the
pipeline" section, I agree this is a great place to start. But while "the
reasoning behind such skewed ambitions begins at home," I think it's also more
of a media problem. We can name rap artists and basketball players because for
the media, sports & entertainment are king. Thankfully, we can point our kids
to Barack Obama - my daughter already knows "Pesident Obama" she's not even
two yet, and our kids will aspire towards a broader set of ambitions. But we
could also use a little help from the media highlighting achievers in other
realms.

------
azarias
As an aside, I am amazed how much conversation CNN's story has fueled and
continues to fuel...and it has been so many years! Whether it was a good
representation or not, it was one of the first to really discuss the topic,
and there is a lot of value in that.

~~~
flexxaeon
Yep. That and I'm sure that it sparked more people of color to move upon tech.

------
ari_elle
Great article indeed!

During all of the arguments he made i couldn't help but think about the "lack
of successful women in tech/business"-discussion that is - i guess - currently
going on not only in my country.

1) Underrepresentation does not equal racism

or bias against women

2) News reports are focusing on the wrong part of the story and there are many
women very successful already

3) Greed trumps gender

And also when he mentions possible solutions:

-) Increase the pipeline

Exactly. Often many women in my classes were very good at maths/science, yet
only very few went on to really study something like maths/science or
something strongly business-related.

------
thisrandomguy
This article is great.

------
anewguy
"Underrepresentation does not equal racism" contradicts the academic party
line ("systemic racism"). If a white person said something like that, they
would get a lecture in "denying privilege". If an asian person said it, he
would be ignored.

But I agree that the author's way of thinking is far healthier for any given
individual. Which is why the author is so successful.

~~~
slurgfest
What do you mean by "academic party line"? The university system is not a
party (let alone a communist party). Phrases like "denying privilege" are not
general to all of academia, they are specific to certain people. What is your
interest in portraying all academics as people who deliver lectures in denying
privilege (or whatever)?

Leave the people who develop knowledge and disseminate it for the rest of
society alone with your political agenda.

~~~
anewguy
I have never heard an academic in a race-studies, Sociology, or Communications
department seriously grapple with criticisms of the "systemic racism"
hypothesis for the white/black performance gap, and nor have I heard any other
hypothesis offered. Students and professors outside those departments
dutifully recite the same theories. As far as I can see, academia is a den of
groupthink and cultural Marxism when it comes to such issues.

~~~
azakai
Steven Pinker is a highly influential academic who criticizes positions like
"underrepresentation implies discrimination". See for example his best-seller
The Blank Slate (2002).

