
Being black in tech can cost you $10k a year - fmihaila
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/02/09/being-black-tech-can-cost-you-10k-year/97695196/
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hipsterelitist
Just thought I'd add a bit of "color" to this submission since it seems to be
dropping:

Honestly, for most of my career, I can say that it was far more than 10k a
year. In the last few years, as more people have posted salary information,
did I realize my salary was way below market and below most of my peers. I was
just happy to be in tech... Only now, with over 10 years of experience, am I
drawing a median salary and that took going through a recruiter.

~~~
quizotic
Just so disturbing. We pride ourselves in tech on being a meritocracy. But
it's not really true, even now. I'm a starchy-assed white guy, who was born in
Asia and married a dark-skinned woman, so you'd think maybe I was different.
But when I ran engineering organizations 25 years ago, I interviewed and hired
precisely 0 African Americans and 0 Hispanics. I promoted two white women, and
two white men, and nobody I recall of Asian, Indian or Middle-Eastern
background.

But articles like this help. Keep pounding in the message, and eventually
people will change ... or die off.

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minimaxir
Dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13609633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13609633)
with a surprisingly fallacious clickbait headline.

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asher_
This headline is really bad. No evidence whatsoever was provided to suggest
that being black causes you to get a lower salary.

What it does tell us is that black people ask for less salary on average,
which might mean that either they are applying for lower paid jobs, or that
their negotiating skills on the whole are poorer in this sample.

> The average African-American candidate is nearly 50% more likely to get
> hired in tech but gets paid about $10,000 less in San Francisco and New
> York, putting black tech workers at a significant disadvantage, even
> compared to other minority groups.

This figure of $10k is false if you look at the data in the graph, but even if
we were to accept the artificially inflated figure, would a job seeker prefer
an 8% increase in salary IF they are hired, vs a 50% greater chance of
actually being hired?

These kinds of topics are always full of emotion, and with that comes a lot of
bullshit unfortunately. I wish reporters wrote articles that told us facts,
rather than trying simply to push an agenda or point of view. If you care
about a cause, making terrible arguments for it makes it look like there isn't
actually any issue to deal with, and that it's all overblown. I think this is
a real shame. Wouldn't it be nice to have an honest, fact-based conversation
about these topics once in a while?

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Pica_soO
I wonder, is this a factor in remote work? Like, if you apply, without a photo
and just apply your skill - and nothing hints on race, gender- does this
injustice vannish?

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rick_perez
When I see these allegations, I often wonder if we are looking at it from the
wrong side.

Yes, someone black might be getting paid $10K/less on average. The question
is, do they have the same amount of education and experience as their non-
black counterpart?

If not, then we need to figure out why there aren't as many qualified black
candidates.

Instead, the answer seems to just have a quota of black applications, which
really doesn't help anyone.

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mankash666
Clickbait headline. Please edit.

~~~
MattRix
How is it a clickbait headline? It's the headline of the source article and
(at least at first glance) seems to be true?

