
Silicon Valley and Black Coders: Howard University fights to join the tech boom - ml_hpc
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-howard-university-coders/
======
alistproducer2
I'm a black guy working in IT at a company in the top 5 of the Fortune 500.
This is complicated issue. There have been experiment that show having a
"black" name lowers your job prospects [1]. Other studies that show:

"...race actually turned out to be more significant than a criminal
background. Notice that employers were more likely to call Whites with a
criminal record (17% were offered an interview) than Blacks without a criminal
record (14%). [2]"

So all the people acting as though our society is some meritocratic, utopia
can keep that bullsh*t to themselves.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that blacks under-perform relative to
whites when it comes to academics. There are obvious reason for this, but
those reasons don't change the truth. Companies that are heavy on the
engineering are going to use academic markers to try and select the best of
the best. There aren't enough blacks >= white peers in the top percentiles of
CS to give us proportional representation.

[1]
[http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html)
[2] [http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/04/03/race-
crimina...](http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/04/03/race-criminal-
background-and-employment/)

~~~
toomanybeersies
Sounds like a good solution is to strip names from CVs when reviewing them.

People are fallible, and often racist/sexist/discriminatory in general, even
subconsciously.

I wonder if this effect is the same with black recruiters, or if it goes the
opposite way. It's very much normal for people to favour people similar to
them, by race, gender, religion, etc.

~~~
wkimeria
I don't think the effect goes the other way (a lot of people habor anti-black
unconscious bias, even black people).

Re anonymizing the names, I think there are a bunch of startup companies that
provide such a service (i.e.
[https://www.gapjumpers.me/](https://www.gapjumpers.me/) ). It has been shown
to make a difference but it is not always practical

------
tom_b
I am a non-minority, CS graduate of a HBCU. There were amazing hackers in my
program. I believe there were around 200-300 declared CS majors across all
levels when I graduated. Numbers are down from those peaks now.

My institution was _heavily_ recruited by big corps, government labs, and east
coast companies.

The "best" students, by GPA, were in high-demand for all of the above. Many
were heavily recruited into management tracks for non-IT companies. A large
number of government institutions and defense contractors were also eager to
land new grads from our school. The "best" students, by hacking skills were
(maybe stereo-typically for hackers) less interested in classes that didn't
involve slinging code, but also all landed programming gigs. Less committed
students, from either metric, seemed to still be getting jobs but I can't
generalize as to the job type.

I think it is fair to say that my undergrad course-work was not as demanding
as (guessing a bit here) Stanford, MIT, or CMU. But my GPA and GRE scores
landed me multiple job and graduate school offers.

One aspect of hiring from (or at least my) HBCUs is that there is _very strong
network effect_ \- alumni come back to the school and recruit interns and
fulltime positions for their companies, help prep students for the process,
and students looked to those alumni as trusted sources.

If Silicon Valley _really_ wants to hire from HBCUs, that is the path I would
recommend. Hire a few alums from the HBCUs and make recruiting and grooming
candidates a priority for those alums.

------
pingou
"as the only African American on her team, she didn’t feel she had much in
common with her colleagues. “When I went out to lunch or something with my
team, it was sort of like, ‘Soooo, what are you guys talking about?’ ” she
says"

I find this sentence really shocking, perhaps because I'm french and in France
we try to assimilate people more (I don't really know), but I would definitely
think that as a white software engineer I have a lot more in common with the
black software engineer working with me than with whatever random white dude.

~~~
joslin01
What do you mean by the French try to assimilate people more? I'm confused
because France is notoriously horrendous to tourists. I've seen polls rate it
as the worst place for customer service with tourists and my own brother's
experience got him nearly in a fight with some French guys bullying him.

Furthermore, this is just a cultural thing. I'm white and was in a team with a
bunch of white engineers that loved cars and _things_. Our discussions at
lunch bored me to tears and I came to realize I had to leave the mega corp to
pursue my dreams in the start-up world.

When I arrived at the start-up world, I found people like myself -- people who
didn't care so much about _things_ but about _ideas_ and imaginations. I was a
lot happier because I found people who thought alike.

It never had anything to do with color and presenting this problem as purely
color-based is just being intentionally provocative.

~~~
pingou
Well I'm not an expert but it seems to me that in France we expect minorities
to leave a good part of their culture and become "real french", eat cheese,
wear beret and never walk without a baguette under their arms, whereas in the
US I was under the impression that there's a lot more effort from minorities
to differentiate themselves. I don't think we can really talk of a "black
culture" in France (at least not in the same degree as in the US, but I may be
mistaken).

I wasn't talking about tourists, we are well known for behaving badly with
them, sorry about that.

What shocks me is not that she doesn't feel she has a lot in common with her
colleagues, but that she thinks that it's because she's black and they're not.

~~~
rhino369
America is undisputedly the best country at assimililating immigrants. It
comes from doing it for centuries. We are one of the only countries with
complete mixed ethnicities and a strong nationality.

But that doesn't really work for blacks because they aren't a different
culture, they are a subculture. Their culture has been a part of American
culture from the beginning. For almost all of American history they were
essentially banned from mainstream culture.

So nobody can make them assimililate. They didn't come here as an immigrant.
Their ancestors were kidnapped and enslaved here.

FYI the world thinks France is particularly bad at assimilation. I don't know
if that is just a stereotype but that's how it's viewed.

~~~
fortes
> America is undisputedly the best country at assimililating immigrants. > It
> comes from doing it for centuries. We are one of the only countries with
> complete mixed ethnicities > and a strong nationality.

I'll dispute that. In my experience, Brazil is a better melting pot.

Anecdotal example: In Brazil, you don't see people claiming they are Irish
when their families have lived in the US for generations.

~~~
rhino369
>Anecdotal example: In Brazil, you don't see people claiming they are Irish
when their families have lived in the US for generations.

That is actually the key to Americas success. The total separation of
ethnicity and national identity. It allows an immigrant to keep their ethnic
identity and merely add an American one.

It's also helps when a white 5th generation american thinks they are Irish and
American. They'll be less likely to believe that a newly arrived Mexican isn't
really American. They intuitively know you can be both.

~~~
fortes
I disagree completely, I think that type of attitude leads to the notion of
"Real" Americans. Keeping the ethnic identity is the opposite of the melting
pot.

In Brazil, you're just Brazilian, regardless of color.

~~~
umanwizard
100% of the Brazilians I have met (I'm in the US) are middle class and above.

Also, as if by magic, 100% of them appear white (or mostly white), despite
non-whites making up a large fraction of Brazil's population.

It's absurd to act like everything is great for racial minorities in Brazil.

------
dengnan
> One senior, Sarah Jones, ... “There are not a lot of people of color in the
> Valley—and that, by itself, makes it kind of unwelcoming."

This statement may be true if "people of color" means African American.
Otherwise, it is just not the fact. I do think, through my personal
experience, the Valley is probably the most diverse place that I have been.
I've seen people all over the wrold here: Asian, Latino, European, etc.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
As soon as a minorty achieves success (and often disproportionate success)
they are no longer considered minorities.

~~~
officemonkey
If it were a game, it would be called "Whiteness unlocked."

An Indian- or Chinese-American can attain "no longer considered minority" (aka
whiteness) but African-Americans don't get that achievement.

~~~
fennecfoxen
I'm not sure how a first-generation immigrant with skin 80% as dark as a
random African-American who celebrates Diwali instead of Christmas, follows
cricket instead of (American!) football, and favors rice puddings to apple
pies is actually statistically deserving of the "no longer considered
minority" flag in America, financially successful or not.

It sounds more like some people are changing their criteria as they go along
to lend the rhetorical power of a cry against Racism to a potentially-
interesting point, an exercise in intellectual dishonesty which undermines the
point if the listener realizes it. Perhaps if we used words to _accurately_
describe the situation we could actually _communicate_.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I don't know if you intended it this way, but you seem to be portraying Indian
culture as just American culture s/Jesus/ganpati/ s/baseball/cricket/ etc.
These things, while accurate, barely scratch the surface.

It really is different here, and not just the food. E.g., asking about family
is routine (in a manner uncommon in the US), and I intuitively grasp certain
social mixing/separation that is just different from the US.

From what I've observed, these gaps are vastly larger (read: earth/jupiter vs
earth/moon) than the gap between various western subcultures.

------
igonvalue
The clickbait article headline is "Why Doesn’t Silicon Valley Hire Black
Coders?"

The answer is buried three quarters of the way into the article:

> When they started interviewing seniors, companies found — as Pratt did at
> Howard — that many were underprepared. They hadn’t been exposed to
> programming before college and had gaps in their college classes.

So why isn't the article titled, "Why Aren't Enough Black Coders Prepared for
Silicon Valley"?

~~~
michaelborromeo
Based on my experience interviewing a handful of developer candidates
graduating from Howard, not being prepared is the best way I can describe the
impression they left.

It felt like they only had a smattering of CS courses, none of which pushed
them very hard.

In other words, they should fix their curriculum.

~~~
blueatlas
Is this really a problem specifically with Howard, or more a problem with CS
curriculum in general? I ask this leaving the likes of CMU, Stanford, MIT, out
of the equation - I'm thinking more about the "non-elite" CS programs, of
which there are many, many more.

I am mentoring a CS student at another university and have had some challenges
bringing this student along because the fundamentals are just not being
taught. I took some time to compare it to Howard's curriculum, and I see some
really practical courses offered at Howard - a 1 credit intro to OO and Java,
Unix Lab, etc. Not that these make one a computer scientist, but when hiring
entry level kids out of college, I would expect these skills to be somewhat
solid, and that is not the case with really any CS programs today.

~~~
HarryHirsch
I cannot speak for CS, but for chemistry I would not hire anyone who did not
graduate from a top-20 program. At any other college, both theory and practice
are taught with insufficient depth and rigour - in essence everyone who joins
one of those programs either is a medical school aspirant or just there for
the "college". CS may be different.

~~~
Joof
I can't speak for chemistry, but this is a horrificly shitty thing. There are
many factors influencing what schools a student chooses to attend. Finances
being an important one.

~~~
HarryHirsch
College choice is a problem, especially for first-generation students and
those whose families aren't well-off. There are students who could do much
better than Tumbleweed State, but they didn't pick the nearby Ivy because they
it never crossed their minds that they could have gotten in. There might have
been a decent financial aid package. If there wasn't one, who can risk debt in
this economic climate.

But I can't fix the world. It's not my fault that at non-top-20 colleges they
fail to teach basic things.

~~~
diyorgasms
This is one of the most horribly elitist comments I think I have ever seen on
this site.

Cost is a huge consideration for prospective college student, especially since
the onset of the Great Recession.

Furthermore, quality education is available at (I would estimate) most
institutions of higher learning. It's just that the students have to do some
research to find out who the good professors are at the less prestigious
schools.

I think you are doing yourself, your company, and the graduates of less
prestigious institutions of higher learning a great disservice being so
dismissive toward "lesser" schools.

~~~
maxerickson
For people that can get into Harvard or Yale, they will be among the cheaper
options, at least as far as tuition.

Especially people that aren't coming from wealthy families, as their need
based aid programs will pay 100%.

------
mberning
Is it that they don't hire black coders? Or is it that there are very few
black coders to begin with? African Americans make up 13% of the US population
and they graduate college at a lower rate than other ethic groups.

It would also be interesting to look at selected majors across ethnic groups.
I suspect that blacks go in to CS at a lower rate than other ethnic groups.

~~~
MagnumOpus
Indeed. To put some numbers around the touchy-feely slice-of-life reporting in
the article, education statistics [1] suggest that only 4-5% of BSc CS degree
graduates are black, and only 1-2% of MSc CS graduates are black, despite most
US universities discriminating in terms of admissions in their favour.

If the applicant pool is disproportionately skewed, you cannot expect the
employee base to be any different, and minorities will stick out (which in
turn is not necessarily bad for the people if they are good at what they
do)...

[1] [http://www.exploringcs.org/resources/cs-
statistics](http://www.exploringcs.org/resources/cs-statistics)

------
carbocation
Looking at the commentary at Hacker News, I would say that the author has done
a disservice to the topic by ignoring the minority status of East Asians,
South Asians, and Latinos.

With very minor changes, they could have used the correct words to cover the
topic they really wanted to cover: that there are fewer black programmers in
SV than is desired/expected/needed. And that is a topic that deserves
discussion. But because the author minimized the experiences of a huge number
of other minority groups rather than focusing on the concerns at hand, we are
now squabbling about essentially irrelevant material.

95% of the article could remain intact. By cutting the 5% which is both fluff
and offensive to other groups, the rest of the article would be much stronger.

~~~
kenjackson
In fairness to the author, the title is "black coders". Not "minority coders".

~~~
carbocation
Typically, editors choose the headlines, not authors.

------
zanek
As a human that people in America would call black/African-American I really
dislike articles like this. I understand that some black people feel like they
cant relate to others, but I find the entire premise of such arguments about
homogeneous workplaces and cultures completely ridiculous. The culture of
'black' people in Alabama will be very different from Howard or Washington DC,
does that mean Alabama is unwelcoming ?

Secondly, who cares what schools top tier companies are targeting. If Howard
is churning out good software engineers that are so good they cant be ignored,
a) they wont need Google, et al to hire them b) their skills will speak for
themselves when they apply for a job

It seems like so many people (black, white, Asian, etc) actually buy into this
socially constructed division by culture or skin color which is completely
insane to me. To me it's like dividing people into groups by eye or hair color
and saying you feel unwelcomed by the blue eyed people.

Articles like this seem to reinforce the notion that there is this 'otherness'
of culture and skin color. If Google ,Facebook, etc are ignoring software
engineers that are top notch from Howard and other historically black
colleges, that would be a problem, but I doubt that is the case. Most
companies want people that can get the job done well and know their stuff in
my experience (I've worked in Silicon Valley and Fortune 50 companies).

The article seems to repeatedly make the point that the black people at tech
companies were feeling out of place while working at Google, etc. as if any
Indian, Asian, or White person do not experience the same thing (someone from
India will have to learn the culture of SV just like someone from Howard Univ.
or some white person from Alaska). Who cares if you dont watch the same TV
shows or read the same books. If anything , I think thats a good thing, as its
a starting point to learn more about something you havent experienced. I think
the most important thing is mindset and attitude going into situations like
this. Curiosity and open mindedness would do wonders for the people in the
article who feel like 'others' in SV.

I dont feel like the culture of SV is as homogeneous as they are trying to
project, but this 'otherness' is the real projection

I've never been openly been discriminated against, or felt like the color of
my skin had anything to do with my success in Silicon Valley or the East Coast
while working at tech companies. I've found almost all people of all 'races'
to only care about competence and efficiency (other than the occasional jerk
or misanthrope)

~~~
joeletizia
I could not agree with your comments more.

The more we realize that there are cultural divides other than skin color, I
think we as a collective species can see that the constructs that have been
used to divide us in the past are completely pointless; everyone is very
different.

Most people would call me white. But I'm from the north eastern US, I'm
catholic, I come from an italian background, and I speak shitty broken Spanish
from growing up with a lot of cubans and dominicans. I have nothing in common
with a jewish girl from LA that grew up in a family of lawyers that immigrated
from Russia other than the color of our skin. And some how she and I have more
in common than the black cuban kids I grew up with?

The barriers we as a people tend to see as the most divisive are generally the
least divisive in practice. We just like to think that they are the most
divisive because it's easy to see.

~~~
selimthegrim
You probably both speak shitty broken Spanish because she's used to talking to
the help.

------
travjones
I've only been to SF twice, but I have to agree that it is pretty white. Not
as white as Colorado, but still. I also toured Medium and was blown away by
the lack of black folks working there.

It's tough to describe the feeling, but when you're the only black person in
the room, you do feel different--a little uncomfortable. However, I don't
think this reflects a conscious effort to not hire blacks, rather there are
institutional and socioeconomic barriers that leave us underrepresented in
tech and many other fields.

~~~
hibikir
Yes, there's not a big black community in San Francisco. There's an unusually
large southeast asian community though, which is uncommon in many other parts
of the US.

Still, even smaller divides can be stark. I am white and I live in St Louis.
There are a lot of black people in St Louis. However, there's parts of the
city where it's very uncommon to see black people, while in others, black
people have asked me if I got lost or something, because I am the only white
guy around. There's the famous Delmar Line, where two blocks separate an
expensive white neighborhood from some of the poorest black areas of the city.
In the middle two blocks, there's a lot of men in blue.

I mean, I've done software in this town for 15 years. That gives me hundreds
of work acquaintances. Out of those, FOUR are black, and one is a first
generation immigrant from Kenya.

The biggest work contrast is a company that ran a call center in premises. HR,
Accounting, IT... one black guy. The call center, paying $10/hr? 75% black.

I am not sure of how much of all of this is racism vs socioeconomic barriers
(although I am sure there's some of all), but segregation is so very real.

~~~
travjones
Thanks for your thoughtful, considered response. We need more people like you
in the world and in tech.

------
pmorici
The real story here seems less about race and more about how the CS program at
Howard was mediocre (or at least didn't produce students that met Google's
expectations) and one of the professors with a background of working for
Google and attending an elite CS program realized it's deficiencies, improved
it, and was able to get a bunch of students hired by Google by filling in
their knowledge and experience gaps.

The school happens to be historically black but I'd be surprised if you found
hiring statistics from a majority white school with a similarly ranked CS
program to be substantially different.

------
gtk40
It's interesting that it describes Silicon Valley as being too white, when it
seems like there are quite a few Asians. Even working elsewhere, a high
percentage of our programmers are Asian, higher than the metro's demographics
would suggest.

~~~
MollyR
Yea. I don't like the way they use it. Asians and Indians get considered white
if they don't fit in the specific narrative, an author wants to tell.

I also don't like the idea, that liking pokemon or star wars makes you
"white". There is something wrong with this,I can't seem to put into words.

~~~
PaulHoule
Wasn't the hero of the last Star Wars movies black?

~~~
wooger
The hero is a white woman - Finn is a bumbling sidekick.

~~~
stuxnet79
Who also works in "sanitation"

I am still incensed by this. The marketing of the movie totally misrepresented
what Finn's role would be. I thought he would be the lead jedi. I doubt I will
watch any of the forthcoming Star Wars movies.

~~~
cballard
That was, like, _the point_ , though. I thought it was great when Finn turned
out to be mostly useless at Jedi-ing and Rey was actually the main character,
because I didn't see it coming after all of the trailers and ads. A bigger
twist than, you know, the other one.

~~~
sotojuan
I was going to disagree but you are right. I only watched some trailers and I
thought Finn would be the main character. He even wields a lightsaber in the
official poster, despite the fact that he received no training nor he had the
Force and only used it because he had nothing else to use and his life
depended on it. I doubt he'll use it in the rest of the series—seems like
he'll join Poe Dameron.

------
jgalt212
How about this?

Black engineers would prefer to work in IT at a big bank with high steady pay
than opt for the highly variable risk/return profile of being an engineer in
SV.

And why do they do this? If you look at poverty being an overriding theme for
blacks in America, even if they themselves are not poor, then one would
clearly prefer a lower risk med/high reward job than an a high risk low or
super-high reward job.

Now the above only explains why black Americans underparticpate in start-
culture. It says nothing for why they are underrepresented at high paying low
risk shops like FB, Google, YHOO, Salesforce, ORCL, etc. Unless, of course, if
you need to have first slugged it out at a few start ups before getting a job
at a bigger shop. I'd say that's maybe only true for parallel hires and not
kids right out of university.

~~~
alistproducer2
As a black guy working IT at a giant car maker, I can say there's truth to
this. Nice comment.

------
colmvp
“There are not a lot of people of color in the Valley—and that, by itself,
makes it kind of unwelcoming”

Oh I forgot, us Asians don't when it comes to people of color or diversity.

~~~
noobermin
They might specifically mean blacks when they say "people of color", not that
asians aren't a minority, but they person saying that might only be referring
to their own race. I am not making a judgement call on what should be a
"person of color", I'm just pointing out what they might mean.

~~~
Kalium
In usage, "people of color" tends to be malleable. Sometimes it means "black".
Other times it means "not white" or "black or hispanic" or something else
entirely.

Sometimes this is just ambiguous. Other times, it becomes a source of
liguistic slight-of-hand when people use one meaning (without specifying
which) but seek to equivocate with a very different usage with a very
different meaning.

------
bdavisx
I would say some of the students in the article probably aren't SV material -
"They’d begun studying computer science in college"? So you've been involved
with computers for 4 whole years and you think you're qualified for a top tier
job? I'm sure not all of the students only started in college - I'm also not
naive enough to think there isn't prejudice in SV, but didn't start until
college...

~~~
chipgap98
I think its kinda ridiculous to say that to be 'SV material' you need to have
started studying CS before college

~~~
lectrick
I think they're more looking for a sign that you had an early and therefore
natural curiosity to tinker with the mechanisms in the world. Not "CS" per se,
but just... computer tinkering. If your family couldn't afford a computer,
IMHO, if you at least, say, took a clock or motor apart or something, that
would be a good indicator, too.

By the way, this has been brought up as the reason for the dropoff in the
women who enter CS curricula in college. Ever since home PC's became
affordable, freshman CS classes have basically assumed prior (and thorough)
computer experience, and many women who might otherwise become good
programmers, for whatever reason (society influence, etc.) have had waaaay
less hands-on time with computers than boys, when they become freshmen.

That said, I have met some excellent programmers who started out doing
something that is superficially completely different (musicians, for example).

~~~
norea-armozel
I never had any distinct interest in computer science. My original interests
were physics and art. In fact, I would say those are still my strengths over
all. But I went into CS after I found it interesting in regards to what a
person can do with a computer with little effort (in as much as the tools
involved).

~~~
lectrick
I think physics and art are nearly the perfect potential sources of a good
programmer

------
donretag
I have a few minor issues with this article/approach at Haward. First of all,
it makes it appear that companies like Google and Facebook are the end-all-be-
all. There are more companies than the top tier. In fact, there are also
companies outside Silicon Valley. Not only are they setting up students with
potential failure, but they are painting a different view of what the industry
looks like and where it is located. They are even discounting NYC, which is
just a train ride away.

Also, the problem with Howard not being a top tier school applies to every
school that is not in the top tier. Many do not even get the same access to
recruiters that Howard does.

I also believe schools should be teaching fundamentals and theory and not be
used as job training.

That said, the assimilation problem, "cultural fit", is real, but is often
neglected. Many programs trying to fix the minority inbalance simply focus on
outreach, the recruiting pipeline.

------
mynameishere
_The slow progress reflects the knottiness of one of Silicon Valley’s most
persistent problems: It’s too white._

It's actually too Asian. And too Jewish. That is, if you're using, you know,
math, and a simpleton's understanding of demographics. If you're using
contemporary ethnic racketeering, then yeah, it's too white. Even the NFL is
too white.

I actually think it would be funny to see Bloomberg come out with an article
demanding that fewer Asians and Jews be hired wherever they excel.

------
rcavezza
What surprised me from the article is that only 8 out of 10 students at Howard
are black. Howard is a historically black university and I assumed the
percentage would be 90%+. I did some research and found out that the latest
numbers I found were 91% "Black or African American" students at Howard.
[http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/howard-
university/stu...](http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/howard-
university/student-life/diversity/#)

Offtopic - but Howard has an amazing marching band. They played Rutgers when I
was in school (football), and my favorite part of that game was the Howard
band at halftime.

~~~
cgy1
AFAIK, Howard and some other HBCUs do actively recruit non-black applicants
(and may even use affirmative action to do so).

------
numbsafari
The biggest issue I have with the article is that it presents SV as the only
place you can go to be successful with a CS degree.

It very well could be that the article misrepresents the efforts of Prof.
Burge and the Howard staff since the article is focused on SV.

But if SV is turning away energetic, engaged, intelligent and capable new
recruits, then please send them to NYC, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia,
Triangle Park, LA, or anywhere else where companies are looking to hire.

It might not give you a "direct impact" on SV itself, but it does get your
people into good paying jobs where they can further develop their skills and
experience (especially for those without a long childhood of working with
computers). It's a small industry. Soon enough these graduates will be
attending conferences and making an impact on this culture.

More importantly, they'll also be representatives in their local communities,
helping to inspire the next generation of students who don't see themselves or
their experience reflected in this industry. And perhaps that next generation
will be more likely to pick up programming in middle school.

------
wobbleblob
This is an interesting question, and probably related to "why doesn't Silicon
Valley hire female coders?" and "Why doesn't Silicon Valley hire coders over
30?"

------
maker1138
I have a dream where people are judged by the content of their character
instead of the color of their skin.

Seriously. I'm tired of these people focusing only on skin color. Why don't we
let it go, forget about skin color, and live together.

------
crapolasplatter
WTF, Being in the industry myself I see a lot of non white people in the
industry.

This could be used to reinforce the thought that the majority of people that
care and judge based on color are mostly African Americans.

"More than 20 percent of all black computer science graduates attended an
historically black school, according to federal statistics—yet the Valley
wasn’t looking for candidates at these institutions."

Ah news for you , they are also not looking at candidates from my community
schools.

Perhaps the article should be why you shouldn't attend a non racially diverse
university or a university that doesn't attract employers in your field?

------
rm_-rf_slash
This is a very simple problem and racism has almost nothing to do with it:

White founder has a business idea and they bring along their friends - most
likely white. Those friends bring in their friends and colleagues - also most
likely white - to become the executive team. The executives hire tomorrow's
managers. By that time the vast majority of employees are white, and even if
they work very very hard to hire black people, it will take a very very long
time until there is proportional representation all the way up to the
executive level. Some execs work well into their 80s, meaning that it could
take more than a century until there is population-proportional diversity at
any predominantly white-founded institution.

The longer a lack of diversity persists in a company's trajectory the harder
it becomes to fix it. The only solution I can think of is for black people to
start more companies themselves.

~~~
mafribe

       The longer a lack of diversity persists 
       in a company's trajectory the harder it 
       becomes to fix it.
    

Google and Microsoft seem to have had no problem hiring a lot of Indians or
Chinese.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Those are huge companies with tons of cash. Referrals are less important when
thousands of college graduates are stampeding for a job at a tech titan. Also,
how much of the upper management at either is Indian or Chinese?

~~~
scarmig
Well, let's see...

Google's CEO: Sundar Pichae

Microsoft CEO: Satya Nadella

Adobe CEO: Shantanu Narayen

It is true, though, that Chinese people are underrepresented in upper
management.

~~~
caskance
Is Raymond Chen management? He's certainly one of the more respected
Microsofters I know of.

------
leaveyou
My guess would be: for the same reason it does not hire white coders..
incompetence ?

------
saturdaysaint
A good article with a horrible, clickbaity headline. Howard's CS department
head and even the students seem fully aware that "the problem" doesn't lie in
evil Silicon Valley HR departments, but in the challenges of preparing kids
who haven't coded until college.

------
donatj
A surprisingly high number of the speakers I went to at AWS Re:Invent were
Indian, close to half, and they all worked for Amazon. I found it very
interesting.

------
sakopov
I'm not American but I've lived here for a quite some time and this is my
observation purely from my outsider perspective. Ask yourself how many times
you see African Americans in a group of Asian, Latino or White people? I think
the answer is very simple - Black people segregate themselves not just from
White people but people of ANY other race. The majority stay in their cliques
and never try to get out and the general consensus is "Why even bother?" I
mean, the young lady in the article says she doesn't fit in and all that goes
through my mind is how is this anyone's fault?

------
alvern
> Pratt also noticed that many advanced classes at Howard and other black
> colleges weren’t as rigorous or up-to-date as they were at Carnegie Mellon
> or Stanford. By senior year, students risked falling behind their peers from
> other institutions. “I’d ask faculty members, ‘Why are you teaching this
> course that way?’ ” he recalls. “And they’d say, ‘Well, I’ve been teaching
> the course for 25 years.’ ”

That's the core issue right there. The school hasn't adapted to the technology
and practices. What use would you be on day one if your coding knowledge was
stuck in 1991?

------
adetdot
I am a Howard University Alum of the Computer Science Department. My
experience at Howard was an eye opening experience. I went to Howard because I
got track scholarship and I wanted to get the "Different World" TV Show
experience. As a first generation Nigerian American, there was a lot of
diversity in the sense that I got to meet black people from all over the
world. I even got to get the chance to learn about my history. Also, when I
graduated a lot of my classmates went on to work at Microsoft, Goldman Sachs,
or other Fortune 500 companies. Google IPO'ed a year earlier and wasn't really
on campus. Google and Facebook would get students a couple of years after I
graduated. I know a couple of those students that are doing well because they
got in early at Facebook. There is a decent amount of Howard Alumni at some of
the tech companies. Anyways, what Dr. Burge is doing is great. His focus is to
get more students to work on projects and get more tech companies on campus.
More people in DC and the US are helping as well.

------
systems
“There are not a lot of people of color in the Valley—and that, by itself,
makes it kind of unwelcoming”

i dont like this attitude, i am not sure what is should be called, but you
should feel relaxed in your own skin, accept diversity, and dont mind it when
most of the people around you, are not the same color

why is it unwelcoming ... maybe not what you hope for, but why call it so
negatively

~~~
abricot
"There are a lot of black people, and I'm white, so that's kind of
unwelcoming".

I wouldn't have used that argument in any discussion...

~~~
thex10
Do you deny that you might feel it, though?

------
ctstover
Free Advice:

Look, the US is filled with businesses in big cities that, while are not
"software companies", do very much need to write software to conduct
operations. Take Houston, Texas for instance. It doesn't matter where you came
from, what you look like, or who your daddy is. The game is supply and demand.
If you can supply, you are in demand. If you are a native English speaker,
then you are already ahead. In this country, if you are willing to move, work
your ass off, and actually like programming - eventually you will reach
gainful employment. Especially if you can pass a drug test. The first year?
Hell no. Look for the hardest shit you can find that people with no patience
think they are "too good for", and you will be filling in your experience in
no time. Life is not easy or fair. If you are smart enough to do even some
half ass programming, you have been given a gift.

------
davidf18
I started programming at a top computing university where my father was on the
faculty while still in high school. I was working with other high school
students and college students who were very passionate about programming and
computer hardware. I remember working 80 hour work weeks during summers and
breaks learning an enormous amount from fellow students as well as faculty and
researchers.

Generally, if one wants to get into computing in a highly competitive
environment, they should attend a top computing university. Fortunately there
are top schools that are public as well as private.

I rarely see blacks (or Hispanics) at computer Meetups in NYC. For that
matter, at many computer Meetups, there aren't so many women either.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Some interesting points in the article picking up on the mono culture in a lot
of software companies and especially games companies, in my experience outside
Silicon Valley, I think it's a programming thing in general wherever you are.
After many years I'm quite tired of the endless Star Wars talk, references,
and T-shirts that I have to endure from colleagues. I even like the Star Wars
movies but there comes a point where I think we could surely shut up about it
for one day. However, I have to endure it, I've worked in numerous companies
and it's the same thing all over the place, the blah mono culture, I'd love to
work with some of the people in this article.

------
matt_morgan
One company's "culture" is another company's Old Boy Network.

------
Kinnard
Wonder why this isn't on the front page . . . a simple points/time since
posted doesn't add up to me . . . IMHO HN is too opaque.

~~~
dang
It was heavily flagged and set off the flamewar detector. We reduced those
penalties, because the article is substantive. We changed the title to make it
less misleading and linkbaity, as the HN guidelines request.

------
thegayngler
I'm a gay black guy who went to SMU via scholarship and majored in finance.
Coding is my hobby. The New York Times hired me to write code for them. I
worked there 2.5 years. We are in the tech already. Silicone Valley needs to
pick those up who are already here. Some of us are more than willing and
capable to work with Silicone Valley.

------
nickthemagicman
I think it's similar to the issue of women in comp sci. It's a recruiting and
culture problem in the whole industry. African Americans have more barriers
than women imo, because statistically they have issues of poverty and less
tech early age tech exposure on TOP of culture mismatch.

------
blisterpeanuts
What a big steaming pile of political correctness. The author interviews a
tiny handful of mediocre college students who blame their "color" for not
getting hired right out of school by big, glamorous tech companies. Are we
supposed to be sympathetic?

I remember my own struggles to break into the tech business, many years ago
now. Although white and "privileged", i.e. no cultural barriers to entry, I
found it very tough and had to jump through hoops, work my way up from semi-
tech to actual development positions. I took night school courses on a credit
card and got into debt. I bought whatever gear I could afford and stayed up
until 3am writing code, then got up and went to my menial job.

The opportunities didn't just fall in my lap; I had to earn them. No glamorous
technology titans came knocking on my door, begging me to come interview. I
had to work for everything I got, and God, it was hard. It still is.

This same work ethic applied to everyone; I was on the chatboards in the late
80s, all through the 90s, and the 2000s, and the story is always the same. You
have to have the right stuff if you want to build a career in technology -- be
smart, creative, have some initiative, humility, humor, etc.

So maybe Black Americans don't get that in their upbringing. Maybe they're not
taught to be smart, competitive, hard charging over achievers. Maybe they're
not encouraged to be creative, to think outside the box, etc. I don't know.
What I do know is, you can't compensate for that by handing people undeserved
opportunities.

Affirmative action is a failure; it's nothing but a form of welfare. If Google
reaches out and hires under qualified people from Howard or wherever, just to
say it's trying to overcome "barriers" and achieve "diversity", that's all
doublespeak that in the end means "We will hire a few token blacks because we
have extra money. It will make us feel good, and it will fool them into
thinking they made it. Whatever. We have to do it."

~~~
dang
Please don't post ideological rants and angry invective to HN. They have no
place here; we want thoughtful discussion.

Unfortunately, this is still worse:

> _mediocre college students_

You can't possibly know that.

It sounds like you overcame some significant obstacles, and that's admirable.
But please don't put other people down.

~~~
stillsut
> You can't possibly know that.

It's funny, dang. You don't seem to ask all the haters to justify their
opinions regarding the NSA. Even though by definition, no commenter could
"possibly know" the extent of a surveillance program that is top secret. And
let's not touch on 'ranting'; NSA threads are full of those.

In fact, affirmative action is the only topic where _you_ demand ideologic
lock-step. If you disagree with my assessment please shut me up: point to _1_
comment you have made critcizing a pro-AA position. Because I could go through
the threads and produce hundreds of tsk tsk's for anyone who voices anti-AA
views. If you can provide me with this one example of being a fair to both
sides (and thus worthy of being a moderator) I will officially apologize.

------
kdamken
Stopppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

------
solaris_2
Silicon Valley is not interested in hiring black programmers because _they
simply do not want to_.

The easiest way to prove this is by looking beyond the software engineering
field. Why do big SV companies like Facebook, Google or LinkedIn not have
black _non-engineering_ staff?

Are capable black accountants, project managers, lawyers, support staff non-
existent too?

------
rezistik
The issue I take with this is that American assimilation is a two way street.
Every culture puts in and takes out. Tacos, sausages, pizza, sushi, these are
American foods as much as they are Mexican, German, Japanese, or Italian. Some
of them more American than their source in ways. It's not about forcing White
Angle-Saxon culture. It's about forging American culture and identity.

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10947696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10947696)
and marked it off-topic.

------
tosseraccount
Silicon Valley would rather hire foreigners than hire black Americans.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/technology/silicon-
valley-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/technology/silicon-valley-
seeking-diversity-focuses-on-blacks.html) ...

"Google revealed that its tech work force was 1 percent black, compared with
60 percent white. Yahoo disclosed in July that African-Americans made up 1
percent of its tech workers while Hispanics were 3 percent."

Affirmative Action has worked in other industries.

Why does it fail in Silicon Valley?

~~~
pc86
Simply stating a number like that adds absolutely nothing of value. There are
a lot of questions you need the answers to in order to make any kind of
judgment:

\- What is the racial makeup of the accepted applicant pool?

\- What is the racial makeup of the interviewed applicant pool (including
those not extended offers)?

\- What is the racial makeup of the overall applicant pool (including those
not invited for interviews)?

\- What is the racial makeup of people otherwise qualified to apply?

The whole way up to the overall population of I think 12-13% African-American.
Even without seeing numbers I can guarantee that African-American _applicants_
to Google and Yahoo are much closer to 1% than they are to 13%. It's a
systemic problem (I am not referring to systemic racism) and you need to
address the root causes of each stage.

But it's much easier to say "Silicon Valley is racist" I guess.

Edit: And assuming that average foreign worker is equivalently skilled and
cheaper than average American worker, of course they're going to favor hiring
the foreign worker. It's economics.

~~~
tosseraccount
Silicon Valley _can_ recruit and train African Americans.

Why not do it?

~~~
pc86
Probably because it's totally asinine to say to someone "Hey you're black,
come work for us!"

If you're suggesting that African American Computer Science majors should all
get hired immediately out of school so that Google can increase its count from
1.0% to 1.02%, it doesn't work like that.

Two things in this discussion actually matter if you want to affect meaningful
change:

1\. The racial makeup of graduating Computer Science majors compared to the
makeup of the US population. If only 2% of graduating CS majors are from a
race that makes up 13% of the US population, you will _never_ have anything
approaching proportional representation.

2\. The racial makeup of applicants compared to the makeup of those applicants
extended offers. This is really the step where, if there are company-level
systemic issues around race, they will show up. If 10% of your applicants are
a given race but 1% are extended offers there might actually be an issue. This
is much harder to determine because not only is it very hard to get the data,
but you need a sufficient number of applications to get meaningful results. If
you only get 100 resumes a year for a dozen positions, you won't get anything
useful here.

------
devalier
Computer programming is one of the most cognitively demanding professions in
existence. Ability to program correlates pretty highly with cognitive test
scores, such as the SAT Math. If you look at the top scorers on such tests in
America, only about 1% are black. The ratio of black engineers in Silicon
Valley matches what you would expect based on the test scores.

To see it visually, this is the bell curve based on millions of test results:
[http://i.imgur.com/zB1oENS.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/zB1oENS.png?1) There are
very simply very few black people in the far-right portion. This is not even a
disputed fact (the dispute is mainly over why the curve is skewed and if it
can be fixed; the existence of the skew is incontrovertible).

 _This was at least partly because of the way companies recruited: From 2001
to 2009, more than 20 percent of all black computer science graduates attended
an historically black school, according to federal statistics—yet the Valley
wasn’t looking for candidates at these institutions._

The average SAT scores at Howard are thoroughly mediocre, on par with second
and tier state colleges, and you would not expect an elite school to
concentrate on Howard, any more than you would expect it to concentrate on
Southern Illinois University or the like. The only reason an elite company
would recruit at Howard is for diversity reasons.

 _Foreman is strong-willed, which sometimes gets him in trouble. “I just
chalked it up to soft skills, I guess,” he says, explaining that he and his
interviewer had clashed. Pratt says he’d been “furious” to learn that Foreman
had been passed over. Other companies said no, too._

So was he a good programmer or not? How do we the readers know that he good do
the job and was passed up unfairly?

 _The phenomenon, “stereotype threat,” is getting more attention in the
Valley, and companies have begun training employees to be aware of it._

The idea of stereotype threat is extremely dubious -
[http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/john-list-on-virtual-
none...](http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/john-list-on-virtual-nonexistence-
of.html)

 _“She doesn’t fit the profile of what people think of when they think of
engineers. Even though people think of Silicon Valley as a big meritocracy, I
don’t think that’s how it works.”_

There are now a number of companies that do automated programming interviews
-- Starfighter, Hacker Rank, etc. Do these manage to overcome stereotype
threat? Do these blind interviews allow through more African-Americans? Before
throwing around slanderous accusations, one should actually show that Silicon
Valley is treating people with the same programming ability differently.

The sad thing is that these tech companies cannot just admit, "We don't
recruit at Howard because the SAT scores are not there." Rather these
companies have to pretend that anyone can be a great programmer if they just
put in the work, and a lot of people end up with false hopes that only get
crushed.

~~~
ebola1717
Wow, I'm sorry, but programming is not that demanding. Theoretical CS work can
be, but the typical programmer is working on maintaining a crud app,
especially as a junior developer.

~~~
geebee
Is it just me? I find it unbelievably demanding. I think writing even
relatively simple web apps almost always turns into something mind numbingly
difficult. The amount of extremely dense material you have to read and ingest,
the number of things you have to stitch together, all of which claim to be
easy but in fact require deeper understanding because they never quite do what
you need them to, the abstraction of what you have to understand… and then, on
top of it, almost nothing is greenfield, so you have to go down a really deep
and dark rabbit hole of someone else's highly intricate logic.

What can I say? I consider it to be one of the hardest things I've done. I
have no idea how people find it easy, but clearly some do.

A lot of the horrendous complexity in our field comes from churn. But hey
whatever the vector, it is (and of course this is just my opinion)
hellaciously demanding.

Just a quick note, my post here is intended as a narrow response to the
specific claim that programming is not demanding, not the general comment
tree.

------
StripeNoGood
And my question is - why are there so few white players in NBA? This is
racist! Protest that!

------
isnullorempty
The same reason as there were no Black people nominated for Oscars.

~~~
dbg31415
You say this, and I hate to point out the obvious, but look there has to be a
cut off point for Affirmative Action somewhere... and it turns out to win an
Oscar you have to be the best. Just like companies want the best coders. The
best isn't a quota.

If you want a quota for black / female / 8-finger coders... have a quota, but
the market has yet to make a business case for this being beneficial. (The
case could be made in preventing PR gaffes like how Facebook banned all the
people with "ethnic" names a few years ago by mistake... but I think these
instances are somewhat few and far between.)

I'd guess this has more to do with:

1) black people not having the same access to computers / technology early on
(much of what we learn as technologists comes far before college starts),

2) black students often get into college through Affirmative Action, so they
may not have been as strong to start with, and

3) black students don't tend to graduate with the same rates / grades others
do -- which makes it harder to get interviews / offers.

I don't know what the solution is here, but when you find it we can also use
it to get equal white guys in the NBA.

------
isnullorempty
Look at every notable tech company ever, do you see many black people involved
in the founding? Why is that?

~~~
qaq
Totally unrelated to the issue. There is very likely to be some bias on behalf
of people making investment decisions, your level of access has significant
impact on likelihood of getting funded. On the other hand there are strong
diversity programs at universities that article mentions (MIT etc.) and SE are
generally hired based on their abilities.

------
auggierose
Let's assume there is this black guy / girl sitting in the interview room with
you. You (white) are asking interview questions and you soon realise that the
person you are interviewing is excellent. But something is off, you can't
really put your finger on it. What do you do?

~~~
ryanlol
How does the color of the person affect this situation?

~~~
auggierose
Good question, and my point is that most people don't ask themselves this
question. There is probably nothing wrong with the candidate at all, the "off"
you feel is just the different color.

