

The 3 Percent – Why Tech Has a Diversity Problem - trustfundbaby
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/16/the-3-percent-why-tech-has-a-diversity-problem/

======
t0mbstone
Finally, an article that actually talks about the real reasons, instead of
blaming it on the hiring process.

There are numerous companies that would LOVE to hire black and latino
programmers. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you are black or
latino (and are even halfway competent at programming), you actually have an
ADVANTAGE in the hiring process because your race is so under-represented, and
the companies want to satisfy their anti-discrimination policies.

The problem in these companies isn't that the candidates are being
discriminated against (although there are, of course, plenty of challenges
that still need to be overcome in that area). The problem is that the
candidates just aren't there!

For every 50-75 white programmers that applied to work at my company, there
was probably only 1 black person who applied, and that's not even taking skill
level into account.

If we want to solve the racial equality and representation issues in tech, we
have to start at the bottom of the funnel. We have to solve the problem at the
education, support, and motivation level. We need to get younger black and
latino kids and teenagers interested in programming, and we need to make sure
that they have the right environment and support to pursue that dream.

------
brador
The problem is good people getting dragged into the pit with/by the bad. Every
poverty stricken area has a few good kids just wanting to do the right thing
and get out of poverty.

What if we could separate them out, shield them from the negative influence of
shittyness and let them flourish?

The only solution is to move them away from the bad because the negative
influencers and influences are everywhere, they're in the environment, the
school, the home, even the media they relate to.

A boarding school style program would work perfectly. Or a housing project
with verified "good" kids and their families. The area could save money on
policing and push that straight to education.

As those kids grow, they feed back into the program, becoming tutors,
educators, and investors themselves. Giving others in poverty area positive
role models to relate to. In other words, removing the downward spiral and
replacing it with a positive feedback loop.

~~~
rrss1122
I think this could be part of the problem. When I was growing up and my dad
was getting good work and saving up money, my mom demanded that he move us out
of our bad neighborhood. None of my cousins who stayed behind graduated high
school, but my siblings and I all went to college.

I'm Hispanic and I never felt like that hindered my job prospects in tech.

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cowpig
In my personal experience, charter schools in the nyc area are working
wonders. I think that we could learn some things from that program.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_States)

While I admit that there's a self-selection bias with these schools--kids with
parents who care about their education will apply for them to attend these
schools, and those kids are much more likely to do better in school
regardless, which has a self-compounding effect of better classroom
environments--the quality of education I see in charter schools tends to be
higher than that of standard public schools. At least from what I've seen.

Of course, the author also raises a lot of other points that aren't specific
to schools: parents who are incarcerated, safety in the neighborhood, etc...

------
NumberSix
This is the "pipeline excuse" for why various groups are underrepresented in
so-called technology jobs.

There is certainly some truth to this. On average some groups receive poorer
education than other groups and one would expect them to be underrepresented
to this extent given hypothetical fair hiring relative to their proportion of
the general population.

But the question is whether some groups such as Blacks and Hispanics are
underrepresented relative to their percentage of CS or other engineering
degrees for example. USA Today published an article on this:

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/12/silicon-
valley...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/12/silicon-valley-
diversity-tech-hiring-computer-science-graduates-african-american-
hispanic/14684211/)

It may furthe be added that in many contexts technology employers claim to be
desperate for "qualified" technology workers, though they are vague about what
"qualified" means. They often seem to imply that a CS degree means qualified.

In fact, technology companies appear extremely picky about who they hire,
often informally citing "cultural fit" which is clearly not about technical
qualifications despite the high profile statements that the problem is
strictly technical qualifications.

In some respects, the technology industry is very diverse with many people
from all over the world and many ethnic groups. It is certainly not lily white
or even close. It is not NASA mission control in the 1960's with white male
engineers with buzz cuts as far as the eye can see. Even the official
diversity numbers from the companies, taken at face value, claim about thirty
to thirty five percent are "Asian," most of whom would not be classified as
white by most people. However, there are various groups, ethnic and otherwise
that are rare.

The pipeline is only a partial explanation, one the company's promote because
it absolves them of any responsibility.

------
s73v3r
Because too many people believe in "meritocracy", but forget that there are no
real objective measures to decide who is better than the other. So it all too
often falls to people to decide, and people have biases.

------
MCRed
Full disclosure: I was at Startup Chile at the same time as the Regalli team.
During pitch day they blew us away and I've been happy to watch their
continuing success.

Last year I spent nearly the full year (along with others on my team) working
to build a team, constantly attempting to hire for a variety of positions. For
business positions we had a lot of female and minority applicants. For design
positions there were female and minority applicants. For software there were
very few (though we did over-represent in our hiring ultimately, because we
lucked into some great candidates who happened to be ethnic minorities.)

Why is it that the %3 he refers to apparently more likely to seek business
degrees, or art degrees than programming degrees? We certainly did have a
diverse flow of candidates for those positions, but we did not for
engineering. I don't think that metal detectors in schools are making people
less likely to be a programmer.

I think its because programming has become a non-glamourous, non-respected
profession. (Look at the wide use of the diminutive "coding" or "coder" and
the patronizing words in the job applications "ninja rockstar"\-- these are
words you use with people you don't respect who you think are gullible. "You
just might be the ninja rockstar coder we're looking for! And just because
you're so special we'll be paying you 45 whole thousand dollars! Isn't that
neat?"

We're pouring money like crazy into education- I read recently of a New Jersey
school system which was spending 20,000 a student, and producing bad results.
We've spent trillions on the war on poverty-- in fact, I read recently that
something like $87,000 a year is spent per poor person. Hell, if you just gave
them that money they wouldn't be poor anymore! Years ago I read that of the
money that goes into the welfare system only %25 of it actually goes out in
checks to welfare recipients, with %75 going into overhead.

The problem isn't a lack of money- we're spending it. The problem is a lack of
incentivizes to spend that money wisely. Can you imagine a private school
getting 20k per head and not producing well educated kids? Sure, it could
happen, but it wouldn't stay in business for generations like public schools
do.

We recognize that government is inefficient at a lot of things- basically
everything. So why, if this is the most important thing, do we leave it in the
hands of government? Sure if you want government to fund education, that's a
different issue... but government is not good at delivering it.

I say this as a graduate of public schools, with the unique advantage of
having changed schools more than once a year on average from first grade to
graduation from high school. All of them were terrible. I even went to a state
wide magnet school for my final two years-- it was not terrible, (my physics
teacher taught at stanford, for instance, and would come teach us while
working on the results of his experiments) .... but even it was nowhere near
what it could have been.

The schools in the middle class neighborhoods are terrible. Why would we
expect the poor neigborhoods not to be worse?

~~~
geebee
"I think its because programming has become a non-glamourous, non-respected
profession. (Look at the wide use of the diminutive "coding" or "coder" and
the patronizing words in the job applications "ninja rockstar"\-- these are
words you use with people you don't respect who you think are gullible. "You
just might be the ninja rockstar coder we're looking for! And just because
you're so special we'll be paying you 45 whole thousand dollars! Isn't that
neat?""

While this leans a bit cynical, I do agree that it does accurately describe a
considerable about of tech employment, and I really do think that this goes
just as far toward explaining the lack of interest in software development
positions as a failure of the educational system.

So there are really two things going on - to get more people into software
development: first, we need to massively improve access to a good educational
system, second, we need to convince the people who can access this educational
system to become programmers instead of dental hygienists, mortgage brokers,
lawyers, nurses, structural engineers, or physicians. Keep in mind that in San
Francisco, dental hygienists earn roughly the same salary as software
developers at the median, and nurses earn considerably more [1]. There are
still good reasons to want to be one rather than the other, but age
discrimination, job stability, and work-life balance are not areas where
software development shines.

As it stands, I think it is critical to expand good educational opportunities,
but I think that this will simply expand the number of people who decide that
other career options are better. In short, we will go from having a lot of
people who can't choose to become software developers because they don't have
that educational opportunity to having a lot of people who choose not to
become software engineers because they now have better opportunities.

[1] check regional salary information at us news best jobs, which is a roundup
of BLS data.

------
fweespeech
> If we could ultimately shift the conversation away from why there are so few
> Blacks and Latinos in tech and instead talk about why there are only 3%
> graduating from some high schools, then I think we stand a real chance of
> addressing this issue head on.

I don't think "shifting" the entirety of the conversation to that is a good
idea simply because focusing on the first 13 years of education [Kinder-12th]
is going to take 15-17 years to show significant impacts. It simply is too
long of a period for a political solution to be practical in the near term
[which, lets be honest, no politician is willing to commit to a 15+ year
program to fix the education system and actually champion it for that long].

Raising the enrollment numbers in college is a 2-4 year issue that neatly fits
in a politician's term where they can show results on their next campaign
"LOOK WHAT I DID FOR YOUR KIDS?! DO YOU SEE THESE NUMBERS?!".

Anything longer than the 2-4 year window is simply too long for anyone to care
in politics.

~~~
MCRed
You're presuming-- and you're right-- that politicians don't actually care
about fixing things, but about improving their election results. They are self
interested. This is a classic example of the Principle Agent problem.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem)

And it exists not just at the level of politicians, I've seen school
administrators and teachers-- both of whome I genuinely believe want nothing
more than to help the kids under their charge, compromise that principle
because it benefits themselves. They're not even aware they are doing it.

So, fundamentally ,the incentives are not aligned with the outcome that
benefits society.

Look at fruit at your grocery store. The incentives there are aligned, to a
point. Your store gets a very healthy supply of clean, generally safe bananas,
apples, oranges and the like. They are shipped across the globe to get you the
best, biggest, perfect looking versions of those fruit. The main incentive
needed was to deliver food that would not kill you that was safe to eat, and
that incentive was met.

When it comes to schools, even the good ones are not delivering a good
education. For instance, almost no high schools deliver the tools and skills
one needs to be in the workforce. This is totally possible, but the
administration of these schools is not focused on education but state
requirements.

Now the fruit delivered to your grocer is also more sweet and sugary than
these same fruits were centuries ago because they've bred them to please the
customer, and that has some society issues that need to be addressed (being
"healthy" and eating apples and bananas is too much like eating sugary snacks
these days)... but at least we have a choice. If we all only shopped at
organic or old style fruit stands the market would shift.

With education we have no choice. You can't chose where to send your kid and
you can't even really make an impact on the system because there are so many
entrenched interests.

I remember reading about one scandinavian school system (I think?) that had
much better outcomes for less money by simply attaching the money to the
students. The schools and the money were state run, but the parents decided
which school their kids went to. Just that change, caused the schools to
compete for students because they wanted the money to grow, and to do that
they had to convince their parents that they were delivering a good education.

The incentives were aligned.

