
How I Ended Up in Tech by Chance - runesoerensen
http://thewell.jopwell.com/posts/how-jopwell-cto-randy-brown-ended-up-in-tech-by-chance-paul-graham/
======
Meegul
What's stopping someone from signing up for Jopwell when you don't fit their
racial criteria? Surely once they find out that you're not the race they're
looking for, they can't deny you services because of your race.

Regardless, diversity is an issue that the tech industry certainly does needs
to tackle, and things like this are one way of going about it; I just feel
like it's the wrong way. Denying opportunities to people based on race might
achieve the goal, but it does it in a way that's only going to breed contempt.
It also ignores that poverty, while vastly more common among the specified
races, still does exist for some whites and asians.

I believe the metric we should be using for programs like these should be
total family income, not the color of your parents skin. Is systematic racism
a problem? Probably in some industries. But these days, recruiters at tech
companies are not turning people down due to their opinions about their race.

~~~
jshevek
"But these days, recruiters at tech companies are not turning people down due
to their opinions about their race."

Not even github? They seemed to want to aggressively reduce the percentage of
white males at their company, and bragged about their success in doing so.

~~~
laughinghan
That doesn't contradict grandparent. They could be doing so by increasing
recruitment and hiring of non-whites and non-males. I expect that most people
in this thread believe that's exactly what they're doing.

~~~
jshevek
Yes, they _could_ be doing so in this way, and I believe that companies like
Microsoft, Apple, Google, and such are doing so.

But as long as github retains staff members like Danilo Campos, I have
absolutely no faith that github isn't taking a more draconian and explicitly
racist approach.

------
giltleaf
Frustrated by the people who are claiming that this piece or the company is
racist/unexceptional, or that this man's success is due to exclusively hard
work. They are missing a greater point that hard work and circumstance are
both needed and one is significantly less useful without the other, and that
there are structural social challenges that should be addressed.

It's also very possible to praise this, and everyone else's, achievement
without: comparing starting circumstance in an attempt to one-up each other on
the tragedy train, discounting luck, or discounting other struggles.

Discussions like this remind me of this poignant comic on income inequality
that is pretty much impossible to argue around:
[http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-
plate](http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate)

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's pretty easy to argue against that comic. Most of it is made-up anecdote.
2 of the 3 testable claims it makes are completely and nonsensically wrong,
almost to the point of complete fabrication. The third testable claim I don't
know how to google.

Poor Americans don't live in overcrowded homes. Only 3.3% of those homes have
"severe physical problems" (what I'm interpreting the comic to mean), and they
typically have 2 rooms/person.

[http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf)

60% of poor children have parents who didn't work at all during the year. In
contrast, 51% of Americans 18-64 whole did work full time year round.

[http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...](http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf)

I don't have stats on classes sizes - do you? I suspect the author of that
comic didn't bother to google before writing it.

I'm not even going to try and refute the made-up anecdotes, e.g. dying father,
parents who don't care about academics, and a boss who looks like a dog.

~~~
giltleaf
You seem like just the type of person I wanted to read that comic when I
decided to put that in. You're fully missing the point (forest through the
trees type of thing) with those stats; the unarguable part is that life
circumstances often allow some people to snowball minor successes/advantages
and prevent the same from happening to others.

Basically, that comic represents a very realistic, though maybe not
statistically significant if it were to be taken literally, situation. It
illustrates that results are not dictated by hard work and there is not equal
opportunity. It is an attempt to help people empathize.

It's not saying that the guy on the left is a shit (though maybe unaware of
his blessings), but rather that the woman on the right (anecdotally
representing marginalized society) may be trapped no matter how hard she
works. Sure she can beat it, but look at everything else she has to overcome
to do so.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The point is that while circumstances like what are described in the comic are
super rare. If we want to take into account ridiculously rare circumstances
and call it "very realistic", why stop there?

Richard's parents sent him to personal trainer who taught him to be a track
star. Paula had her legs chopped off by Islamic terrorists.

Richard's parents taught him to ground his electronics projects. Paula got
struck by lightning 3 times.

Richard didn't like to go to the beach. Paula had her right hand eaten by a
shark.

etc.

You can prove anything if you pretend wildly improbable freak situations are
somehow representative of reality.

If you want to claim we don't have equal opportunity, I don't disagree. Some
folks have advantages - e.g. the author of this blog post was born into the
right race to get major bonus points in the educational system, had a mother
who knew how to game that system, had US citizenship, etc. In contrast, all I
had was US citizenship. Most folks don't even have the citizenship, and a
large number of them are members of a race that's treated even worse than
mine.

But if you want to talk about the practical significance of this - whether
she's _actually trapped_ or whether she just needs to work 10% harder - then
you need to think about the details, which the comic gets wildly wrong.

~~~
giltleaf
"You can prove anything if you pretend wildly improbable freak situations are
somehow representative of reality."

That's true, but what is represented in the comic is far from "wildly
improbable" and in fact comes across as pretty realistic. That's why many
people like it.

It can't be that hard to believe that there are many situations where a person
has several small things, often not worth studying, wrong in their lives that
compound over time. That's the point.

At the end of the day, I think that we both agree more than not and that
you're more taking issue with the fact that I said "impossible to argue" than
the larger point, which is totally fine because it was a melodramatic thing to
say.

Details the comic got right (btw, comic depicts Australia I believe, but it's
equally applicable to US so we'll go with that, it's also hard to attribute
the later panels to one given, testable factor, as what's depicted is the
result of all the small things in life):

Houses with extended family: "57 million Americans now live in some sort of
multigenerational configuration. That number has doubled since 1980,"
including 36% of young adults [1]

Frequent illness: "The Connecticut Commission on Children reports that
children who live in poverty experience more illness than children in more
affluent homes." [2]

Parents working 2 jobs: "more than 7 million people in this country were
holding 2 or more jobs. That’s 5% of the total workforce" [3] The Bureau of
Labor Statistics number doesn't count jobs for cash etc.

low income=shitty schools. not even going to bother to search that one.

working while in school (less time to network, study etc.): "over 78% of
undergraduate students work" DOE [4]

Anyways, I'm glad you read the comic.

A lot of that stuff seems really self evident to me, but here are just some
sources from random googling. [1]: [http://www.newsweek.com/why-multiple-
generations-families-ch...](http://www.newsweek.com/why-multiple-generations-
families-choosing-live-together-324614) [2]
[http://www.livestrong.com/article/229181-effects-of-low-
fami...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/229181-effects-of-low-family-
income-on-children/) [3] [https://toughnickel.com/finding-job/Working-2-or-
More-Jobs](https://toughnickel.com/finding-job/Working-2-or-More-Jobs) (from
Bureau of Labor Statistics) [4]
[http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77](http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Citing a bunch of statistics about non-poor people who work multiple jobs, and
irrelevancies like multigenerational configuration, are not really supporting
the comic.

It's quite true that people with lots of money (like Richard's parents) tend
to work long hours. And 5% of the workforce - most of them non-poor - might
work 2 jobs. That's almost exactly the _opposite_ of what the comic portrays.

Similarly, attributing things like poor people getting sick more on things
like a damp house (or otherwise lacking money) is simply wrong. We now have an
actual randomized trial to demonstrate this.
[http://m.qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/2/687](http://m.qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/2/687)

Most likely some third hidden factor (for example low conscientiousness
resulting in poor work habits and poor health habits) causes both poverty and
poor health.

I'm not disputing the idea that some folks have a leg up on life. I'm simply
disputing a comic that wildly misleads about the actual nature of that leg up.

Also, on the thing you are "not even going to bother to search", the question
is not whether poor schools have bad outcomes. The question is whether those
schools are significantly worse themselves - i.e., if we were to reduce class
sizes, would outcomes improve? (Most studies suggest that small class sizes -
like virtually every educational intervention - would barely change outcomes.)

------
qq66
The title is wrong. The title should be "How I ended up successful in tech
through the hard work and perseverance of my mother and myself, with a side
dish of good fortune."

------
asimuvPR
OT - The jopwell page seems to not be rendering properly on Mac / Firefox.
Here is a screenshot: [http://imgur.com/8m01gRN](http://imgur.com/8m01gRN)

~~~
aphextron
My money is on a javascript error from one of a thousand ad network or user
tracking scripts they're loading. Try using an ad blocker.

~~~
asimuvPR
Could probably be Ublock origin blocking it. Either way, it should work. :)

------
intrasight
Everybody ended up in tech by chance. Everyone ended up alive by chance.

~~~
occam65
That's a great negative viewpoint. Thanks for sharing it.

I think you missed the larger point - that we can be doing a better job as
evangelists of the industry, and broadening it's reach.

~~~
aianus
> I think you missed the larger point - that we can be doing a better job as
> evangelists of the industry, and broadening it's reach.

Humour me, why do we care to do this? The more people that think programming
is magic and stay away, the more money we make.

~~~
dionidium
Because a lot of outreach is really about saying, "you know, people who are
just like me are pretty great."

------
yummyfajitas
He was privileged to be a black man since this drastically improved his odds
of getting into Princeton. It's not anywhere near as much of an achievement as
you are making it out to be.

As of 2006, between 2/3 and 5/6 of black students in the top 25 schools are
there only due to race.

[http://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html](http://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html)

So with high probability, it wasn't that much of an achievement to get into
Princeton.

It's certainly far less of an achievement than it would have been if he were
Asian.

(If anyone has more current numbers I'd love to see them. I've seen more
recent numbers on state schools, which suggest 23% of blacks are only there
due to race. [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-happens-
when...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-happens-when-you-ban-
affirmative-action-in-college-admissions/) But nothing at the ivy level.)

~~~
nemothekid
> _As of 2006, between 2 /3 and 5/6 of black students in the top 25 schools
> are there only due to race._

Thats a pretty bold claim that assumes

1\. Any minority at Princeton falls neatly into that trend, and isn't simply
an outlier.

2\. Princeton & Ivies weigh SAT scores significantly as part of the admissions
process.

3\. Princeton & Ivies use raw objective performance as the primary basis for
acceptance.

If 2 & 3 were true, you wouldn't see as much pressure for students to play 3
sports, 9 instruments, and have 300 other extra-currics to remain competitive
for those spots. Anyone who believes that they just rank applicants by SAT
scores and take the top N is a little bit delusional.

~~~
yummyfajitas
So 2/3-5/6 of black students at the top 25 schools are outliers? Or black
students are wildly disproportionately likely to play 3 sports, 9 instruments
and have 300 extra-currics?

I'd love to see data supporting this claim.

That sure goes against stereotypes, which suggest it's mainly Asian students
who do that.

~~~
nemothekid
> _So 2 /3-5/6 of black students at the top 25 schools are outliers?_

Princeton's total undergrad class size is about 2000 of which 7% identified as
African-America (2000 * 7% * 25=3500). BLS says that was from a pool of 2.2MM
students. (Assuming even population distribution of 13% African-
American=286000).

So of the potential 286000 African American students every year, 3500 are
going to top 25 schools - which is 1.2%. Is it far fetched to assume that the
top 1% of Black students are outliers (to your "study")?

Keep in mind Asians are 5% of the American population, but make up 22% of
Princeton's undergrad class. To me - it just looks like you are grasping at
straws to make this conclusion. Basic statistics overwhelmingly backs up your
"stereotype". To imply the admissions officers are giving minorities a
whopping 80% preference to minorities, based of the data, shows that
admissions officers are either incredibly incompetent at giving preferential
treatment to minorities, or you are just talking out of your ass.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Lets go with your 3500 number. In 2006, 976 blacks scored above 700 in SAT
math, and 1117 scored above 700 in SAT verbal.

1117 is a lot smaller than 3500. (Or the 3000 number the study uses.)

(Note: 1400 SAT, or whatever that translates to on the current 2400 pt test,
is table stakes for getting into a top 25 school.)

I don't know why you put "study" in quotes - do you consider the Journal of
Blacks in Higher Education to somehow be an "illegitimate" source?

 _To imply the admissions officers are giving minorities a whopping 80%
preference to minorities, based of the data, shows that admissions officers
are either incredibly incompetent at giving preferential treatment to
minorities, or you are just talking out of your ass._

I don't understand. If you take 1200 qualified black students and turn them
into 3000 enrollees, how is that not a highly successful preferential
treatment program?

Similarly, the relevant comparison when looking at Asians is not what
percentage of the American population they make up. A more relevant comparison
would be what percentage of the top students are Asian. I can't find top
scores, but a quick google search suggests Asians do in fact outperform
everyone else on average.

[https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171)

