
Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits - ondrae
https://medium.com/@shaft/thought-on-diversity-part-2-why-diversity-is-difficult-3dfd552fa1f7
======
steven2012
I've been working for over 20 years in tech at 10+ different companies around
the Valley, and I can count on 1 hand the number of direct coworkers that were
black, and on 2 hands the number of coworkers that I indirectly worked with
that were black.

I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the
education system in general. Trying to solve the diversity issue at the hiring
end, when the number of qualified candidates is so small, is not the right way
to solve the problem. The only way you will hit higher-than-normal diversity
numbers is to reduce hiring standards, which is wrong.

The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel, at the elementary,
middle and high school levels. By getting more children of all races involved
and interested in tech is the only way we truly increase diversity.

And that is on us, those of us that have experience in tech. My goal is to try
to volunteer to teach young children in economically disadvantaged areas about
technology. Of course, I have no idea how to start doing this, and would love
suggestions or pointers.

~~~
beat
Role models matter tremendously too, and that's something that we don't see
much, something that's a real problem.

Now, I'm biased toward capability. I think progress is made almost entirely by
people who possess both talent and will to power. But that's innate, and
evenly distributed across racial and gender lines. So differences in outcomes
are, broadly, due to privilege (specifically, resources). If someone has
access to education and support, they'll do better than someone who does not,
all other things being equal. Racist and sexist results are because of our
failure as a society, not racial or gender inadequacy.

But anyway, about role models. For an ambitious child, the limits of "success"
are the limits of what they see. That's what they see in their parents and
their parents' friends, their neighborhood, etc. Their role models. If the
most successful people you see growing up are doctors and lawyers and
engineers, you imagine your own success as being a doctor or lawyer or
engineer. If the most successful people you see are drug dealers and
slumlords... well.

There are very few black engineers in this country. They're underrepresented.
Because of this, smart and ambitious young black kids don't get "engineer" as
a role model. They may have never met an adult who makes software or hardware
for a living. So they have no frame of reference, no concept that this is
"success". It's a big problem.

~~~
MBCook
> For an ambitious child, the limits of "success" are the limits of what they
> see. That's what they see in their parents and their parents' friends, their
> neighborhood, etc.

I've once saw of glimpse of this first hand and it was really depressing. Knew
a waiter at a restaurant my family frequented. One day he was making chit-chat
with us and talking about his son (who would have been rather young, 4-8) and
that his dream for his son was to be a restaurant manager or a supervisor at a
lawn care business or something like that. That was how high that family was
dreaming, I guess that was as high as they could see being reasonable (unless
they kid was a genius/pro-athlete).

From hearing stories of women in the industry seeing that one person that
looks like them that shows the 'you can be this too' seems like it's often a
huge help or an important moment.

~~~
beat
I grew up poor, what they call "white trash" in the south. I saw this
firsthand. I knew I wanted _out_ , so I went to college at an excellent
private liberal arts school. One of the most amazing eye-openers there was
meeting the parents of other students, and meeting alumni, people who had done
amazing things with their lives. A few years earlier, success to me meant
owning your own motorcycle dealership.

Today, I've shook the hands of multiple billionaires. I could not have even
imagined that as a child. But I'm lucky. I'm very intelligent, talented, lack
major health issues, and I'm white, male, and American. The combination of
innate talent and privilege opened a lot of doors for me.

------
theuttick
The one thing that he never explains is exactly what "diversity" he is looking
for at Twitter. It seems that the only thing that matters to him is the color
of the person's skin. In other words, an African-American MIT CS grad that
grew up in Iowa is somehow going to come at problems differently than a white
guy from the same town and school and with the same background. I wouldn't
really call that diversity, that's just racism in that one man's view on a
technical matter is somehow different because of his race.

What they should look to do is recruit people who got to programming or
designing through paths other than MIT or Stanford. Hire the guy that was a
painter and then started building website UIs when he saw how those skills
transferred. Hire the guy that graduated from the small state school and spent
all of his free time web programming. That - at least to me - is the kind of
diversity that comes at problems from various angles.

The VP idea with names was stupid, but if I walked away from a job every time
one guy had a stupid idea i'd be locked in a closet somewhere howling at the
world's stupidity.

My 2 cents. I got to get back in my closet.

~~~
ksenzee
In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same
neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. For
example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering
down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews,
if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have
shaped the two men differently.

That doesn't mean they'll give different answers to a question on how to
traverse a linked list. But they'll give different answers on how to build a
content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of
expression on the platform.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same
neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up.

The differences between their experiences is smaller than the differences
between that black individual (sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy
that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) and
someone of the same race who grew up in a significantly different
socioeconomic class. If we want to increase diversity, the best would be to do
so by class first, gender second, and race third.

~~~
Nadya
How is someone who was more likely to be harassed by LEO's going to have a
different outlook on the engineering/programming of an internet-based social
media service? Not buying it. Is it more diverse? Sure. Does it matter at all
for the task they are performing? I don't see how it does.

 _> (sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is
worse than black when used as an identifier)_

For some - it's putting the `African` before the `American`. For others, it is
putting `African` at all (not all blacks identify or hail from Africa).
Ultimately, offense is taken and not given. You'll also find people who take
offense at being called `black` over `African American`.

Either way - I don't think you need to justify your use of calling them
`black`, at least in this context.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>How is someone who was more likely to be harassed by LEO's going to have a
different outlook on the engineering/programming of an internet-based social
media service?

One potential example would be that someone who has unfairly been targeted by
the police may have higher privacy concerns and also be more aware of
possibilities for the government to abuse information and even violate rights;
things that can happen with regards to social media profiles.

For a more concrete example, a gay individual who grew up somewhere where
being gay was punished (either codified in law or where the law turns a blind
eye to the discrimination) is likely to be far more concerned about systems
that can leak sexual orientation, for example an eye tracker/pupil measurer
that makes an attempt to determine who a subject finds attractive or not. The
average heterosexual may understand that leaking this information could be
embarrassing for some, but they may not be as aware it could be life
threatening.

Yes, an aware individual not of that background could develop the same
concerns after thinking long enough, but they will not have the same immediate
concern about any system that interrupts a person's ability to 'pass'.

~~~
Nadya
I'd like to take the time to thank you for answering in good faith - rather
than assuming I had asked in bad faith. So, thank you.

Unfortunately I'm not able, in good faith, to take a stand for or against your
argument. Consider this conceding the argument, but not being entirely
convinced (allow me to explain).

Initially, I would like to reject it. Because as a libertarian-leaning trans,
I fall under both examples you cited. Concern over potential abuse of PII,
government overreach, and sexual identity (the concern over gender identity is
similar in that regards). But I also fall under the "white, male" label.

However, I do understand the argument that a more targeted individual may be
more capable of identifying potential issues. I feel this is contextual and
often results in too many "maybes", "potentials", and "possibilities" to be
entirely convincing.

"They maybe might have the potential to maybe see a possibility for something
that might have the potential to maybe have the possibility of being abused."
is not something I find _convincing_. Though it is technically _correct_ and I
have to concede that.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
The key thing is that I'm on neither side of the debate. I see merits to both
sides and look for a way to work out both. Also, I like to work on arguments
for any side even if I don't agree with that side (I have sometimes devil
advocated for positions just because no one else would touch them).

Personally, at the current time, I see too many problems with quotas for them
to be useful. Namely is the perception problem, where people (including the
one hired) will think that their race/gender/etc. had more to do with them
getting hired than their skill, causing all sorts of problems. At the same
time, I do see merit in fighting against known biases and issues that push out
minorities.

I dislike both the over PC nature that leads to Donglegate and the bro-culture
that leads to common inappropriate comments and behavior.

~~~
Nadya
So you're essentially where I stand then. :P

I consider myself the "Milo" of transexuals and have a large disconnect with
most people who consider themselves part of the "LGBT Movement". Many of which
are right up there with PC culture (e.g telling me I can't use the word
"tranny", even when referring to myself? Fuck off.)

While I do see the problem and in many places agree - I do not agree with the
proposed methods of solving it. That especially includes "quotas" \-
unofficial or official. Nobody wants to be the "token black guy" (even if
there are "40 token black guys") just to improve a diversity number. Which
unfortunately is how many tech companies seem to be trying to resolve the "wow
that company isn't diverse" criticisms being flung at them.

 _" If I weren't homosexual, I'd be the largest homophobe."_ \- Milo
Yiannopoulos

~~~
incrediblebob
Please keep in mind, Milo's writing is tongue in cheek. It's generally agreed
upon that Milo's writing is parody (ref:
[https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=twosc...](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=twoscooters%20%28parody%20OR%20satire%29%20-from%3Atwoscooters&src=typd)
) . He's parodying Men's rights activists. He is like the Onion but harder to
distinguish.

~~~
Nadya
That was him during an interview, not writing. Furthermore it's important to
distinguish his satire from his viewpoints.

Of course the comment is a tad tongue-in-cheek. It is speaking more that he is
against much of the LGBT movement in which he _should_ be a part of. Falling
under the "G" and by _not conforming_ to the widely held beliefs he is
_homophobic_. I fall under the "T" but I'm disgusted with half of what the
LGBT movement pushes for and have on many occasions been called a transphobe.
Especially in regards to my usage of "tranny", as I stated.

A bit tongue-in-cheek myself: If I weren't a transexual I'd be one of the
largest transphobes I know. Largely because I refuse to let people police my
speech.

------
yummyfajitas
This guy sort of sort of undermines the standard case for diversity:

"Twitter as a platform has empowered underserved and underrepresented people.
It has fomented social movements and..."

Sounds like twitter is killing it for people of all ethnic groups. It's as if
a bunch of White/Asian dudes can actually design algorithms that work for
everyone. So, um, why do we need a non-Asian engineer?

It's also worth questioning how a black person would think differently from
the (apparently highly effective) white/Asian workforce. I've seen very few
meaningful examples of this and I've never experienced it (I'm usually the
only person of my race). My current job is mostly Punjabi's, no techies of my
ethnic group, and my unique perspective is "lets all be Bayesian cause
Frequentism is ass backwards" and "stop the multiple fucking comparisons!"

A naughty question: suppose I'm wrong, and black people actually do think
differently. Given that whites/Asians seem to be doing such a great job, why
do we think that "different" is actually better or even useful? In statistics
terms, given two different functions f and g which are estimators for some
truth t, it's unlikely that |f(x)-t(x)| = |g(x)-t(x)|. One of them is probably
better.

~~~
new_corp_dev
The implication is that diversity of experience/background/culture leads to
diversity of thought and diversity of ideas. That's fairly logical and noble
goal, but it ignores the idea that that same diversity of interests
contributes to a different average career path. It simultaneously argues for
"the same, but different".

If we're going to blame the employers, can someone show me that there's a
disproportionately large number of unemployed minority engineers that are
seeking work but not getting it?

~~~
theorique
_If we 're going to blame the employers, can someone show me that there's a
disproportionately large number of unemployed minority engineers that are
seeking work but not getting it?_

Makes sense, but I'd say it should be a disproportionately large per-capita
fraction of minority engineers with similar degrees, experience, geographic
location, etc, relative to white engineers with the same characteristics.

For example, if minority engineers with Stanford degrees with 7-10 years
experience and living in zip codes [A, B, C, ...] are 10% unemployed and their
white classmates have a 5% unemployment rate, that could be evidence of
deliberate discrimination. It's important to compare like to like, otherwise
you can wind up with all sorts of weird conclusions.

------
Mithaldu
HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post.

I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the
chart under ( [https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o...](https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6oNvlw.png) ) wasn't normalized
to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row
and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech
industry, which Twitter with its 1% falls far below.

I'm sorry for my mistake.

My original post below for context for the replies made to it, but which is
otherwise useless.

\------------------------------

It's alway a little confusing when people bring up diversity reports that
aren't normalized to an appropiate comparison metric. (Possibly local
demographics, or any number of more in-depth metrics. I also earlier suggested
applicant demographics, but justizin pointed out those are not feasible.)

Also see: [https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

To bring it into contrast with the article, he says:

"<5% make up engineering and product management combined."

According to this census report:
[http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty....](http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.htm)

Race - Black or African American 48,870 6.1%

The twitter numbers are thus a little below average, but not necessarily
unexpected given where Twitter's headquarter is located.

Edit:

According to this, Twitter has roughly 30% asians:
[https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-can-
be-p...](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-can-be-proud-of)

Which seems to fit the census as well:

Race - Asian 267,915 33.3%

Another Edit:

To clarify, i am not saying that there is no problem. I'm merely saying that
in order to solve a problem, one must both set appropiate goals, as well as
correctly identify the root cause. Both of these can only be done usefully by
applying statics correctly.

~~~
dalke
Based on my own cursory observations of the population flux in the Bay Area, I
believe your analysis and thus conclusion is based on a false premise.

That analysis assumes that the hiring base is predominately drawn from local
people. Speaking anecdotally, I know many people who graduated from college
and headed to the Bay Area to look for a job. I myself moved to Mountain View
for a job, then later moved away.

A more complete analysis along the lines you took would look at where people
in engineering and product management were, say, 1 or 5 years previous. That
are would likely better characterize the relevant population statistics.

As an obviously contrived example, suppose people in engineering and product
management are only in the Bay Area for 4 years, burn out, and leave, and
suppose the companies offer free relocation from anywhere in the US. Then it
doesn't make sense to look at the local demographics.

As a more real-world case, consider a place like Los Alamos National Labs,
which has a large number of people from around the world working there, with a
relatively high turnover rate partially due to interns, post-docs, and
visiting professors. Los Alamos county was carved out for the lab, so the
demographics of the county reflect the lab, but most of the people working at
the lab are not from Los Alamos.

I do not have access to these sorts of numbers, merely pointing out how it's
not easy to interpret the numbers you gave, or the certainty of your
conclusion that it's a "not unexpected" result. I suspect the uncertainty is
actually very high, and a shot-in-the-dark/back-of-the-envelope estimate isn't
likely to be useful.

~~~
Mithaldu
I did express the thought of "normalized to an appropiate" metric badly. I
don't know what that metric is, and don't presume to know. Local demographics
were just one example to me. I'll correct the post.

~~~
dalke
I quoted your use of "not unexpected" because it suggests that you have some
expectation. I would call the the basis for that expectation part of a
presumption that you know.

~~~
Mithaldu
Yeah, i can see how it could be interpreted like that. I didn't have any
strong expectation of how it should be. Merely a number of guesses as where
that number could end up. To me it seems reasonable that the number would end
up somewhere between half of the local percentage and 1.5x of the us
percentage (assuming foreigners are not statistically significant), which
would put it somewhere between 2.5% and 25%. To me numbers outside of that
would be unexpected and surprising.

Interestingly, the 30% number seems to indicate that twitter actually does
pretty good user-wise.

~~~
dalke
Your own statistics reference indicates that 36% of the Bay Area population is
foreign born, and 16% do not have US citizenship, so you cannot assume that
"foreigners are not statistically significant."

------
msvan
I see many people here being skeptical about the arguments for diversity, and
asking what the utility is for Twitter. But part of the question is about the
utility for minorities as well. This debate is really about minorities being
shut out of yet another high-paying industry because they [didn't have a
computer growing up/couldn't get in to some brand-name college/didn't have a
supportive childhood environment/other systemic inequalities]. By the time the
white kid and the black kid get to the bar, the game is already rigged in
favor of the white kid.

So maybe the bar is right, in that it selects the most high-performing asset
to execute the requisite keystrokes in a cost-effective manner. But maybe the
world we should strive for is not one where people spend their lives in
anxiety honing their resumes, getting into the right schools, the right clubs,
getting the right internships, and having the right connections through daddy.
God forbid there are any complications in your life along the way, or if you
were born in a place which set you up for failure from the get-go.

I think one great thing about tech is that you can learn it, if you're
intelligent and you get shit done. Maybe all you need is somebody to give you
a shot to set you off on a trajectory toward the moon.

~~~
sktrdie
The free-market shapes it to be this way. A company as big as Twitter is
simply a result of such system. In fact the free market is the opposite of
racist/sexist/whatever... it strives entirely on performing the best it can -
ironically, even at the cost of the worker's mental health - thereby not
giving a shit about who it hires as long as they can perform at the maximum
capacity.

~~~
gotchange
I share the same perspective too.

Capital should be blind to all these qualitative descriptors like race,
biological gender, age etc. Successful capitalists are always looking to
maximize the return on their investment and they don't subscribe to these
inconsequential notions, all what they care for is making money for them. If
you're a Martian and are capable of doubling their profits every two years or
so, they would be all over you and discard any prejudices toward you.

Money $$$ talks after all esp with the capitalists.

------
jonesb6
Anyone else get the strong feeling that articles like this are a detriment to
equal rights movements? If you're misrepresenting facts and statistics people
will eventually catch on and simply not trust you anymore, skewering any
ability you have to raise awareness and make a difference..

~~~
peterwwillis
Please provide examples of misrepresented facts and statistics in this
article.

~~~
serge2k
Amazon not bothering to separate out engineering from their fulfillment
centers (it's in the chart).

Granted, that isn't by the author, but it shows a company trying to dodge the
diversity issue.

------
imglorp
> in 2013, 4.5% of CS graduates from the top 25 schools were African-American,
> and 6.5% were Hispanic/Latino.

That's a problem. Hiring corps not only need to screen more applicants in
order to find more applicants above their quality bar, but they also need to
engage the community to get more kids interested in their fields and
encouraged through school.

It's the long view, the generation long kind. Public corp cost accounting
idiotry will not support investment like that, so it's up to the private
corps.

~~~
protomyth
Fix the demographics and STEM interest in elementary and pre-K, then we might
get a more diverse tech field. Until people start looking at the start of the
problem, fixes at the end are limited.

~~~
MBCook
You're right there are problems earlier, but things can still be improved now
while the rest of the pipe is fixed.

~~~
protomyth
Improved, maybe, but the fundamental problem is at the beginning. If we had a
need for concert violinists, encouraging college students to take up violin is
pretty late in the game. We need a technical prodigies and the people who can
start late are few and far between.

~~~
josegonzalez
Why is that? Just a personal observation, but I only actually started to
understand programming my junior year of college and would find myself to be
pretty technically proficient, and I know plenty of terrific developers who
started of programming after a career in something completely unrelated
(selling phones, painting, vet school).

Yeah it's hard to start learning how to program and become efficient at it,
but there is no reason that we can't attack the issue at later stages in the
pipeline.

~~~
protomyth
Because by the late stages, people's loves and hates have already been
defined. Things are cool or "I don't like X" has set in. If you don't love
STEM early, you won't want to do it late. Attacking the issue later in the
educational pipeline is like adding a cron job to restart the web servers
because of crappy programming. The correct answer is to actually fix the
problem. We've tried enough patches by now and it disgusts me that we are
talking about diversity in tech when we are not talking about diversity in
pre-K and K-8.

------
zaidf
He is offended that he wasn't invited at various events involving African
American leaders. I have black friends who would be _offended_ if they were
specifically invited to these events because they were African American.

This sums up my issue with this piece: at best, not all his wishes are
necessarily shared by other people of color; at worst, some of the things he
wants could actually be construed as racist("Just because I'm black doesn't
mean I'm interested in Jesse Jackson" my friend often says.)

~~~
vacri
The complaint wasn't that black employees weren't individually invited, but
that the _resource group_ for black employees wasn't notified.

------
volaski
What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"? Some people
criticize that that statement is racist, but they aren't thinking about the
context. When people ask companies to do something about diversity, they're
normally asking to carve out more quota for certain minority group, just like
how universities carve out certain portion of their student quota for people
who donate large amount of money to get in. I guess it works for universities,
but a company like Twitter which desperately needs focused group of talented
employees, why would/should they do this? It's stupid that someone saying
what's right gets taken out of context and is criticized by all the idiots on
the internet. Also, isn't asking for this kind of treatment
racist/sexist/whatever in itself? I am appalled by this idea as much as I am
appalled by the idea of universities accepting students from rich families via
donation.

~~~
groby_b
It's factually wrong.

If you (try to) eliminate race from hiring, you don't lower the bar. You raise
it, because suddenly there's a group of so-so engineers who now can't get a
job just because they're white.

If that feels uncomfortable, replace "white" with "MIT student". Or any other
in-group.

If you almost exclusively hire from a single group, at some point just being
part of that group makes it easier for you to get a job.

As far as I can tell, nobody is asking for hiring quotas based on profile.
What people are asking for is an equal chance.

For pretty much any group that's not white/asian male, tech has an issue. The
percentage of the minority group in the general demographic is higher than the
percentage of people in that group graduating. The percentage of graduates is
higher than the percentage of people hired. The percentage of people hired is
higher than the percentage of people promoted.

All this diversity thing is asking for is that we take a look _why_ the
percentages are decreasing.

E.g. for black people: They're 12% of the general work force. 4.5% of CS
bachelors are black. 2% of SV tech employees are black. 1% of Fortune-500 CEOs
are black.

There's constant attrition going on, while the number of the main demographic
increases as you go up the ladder. (This general relationships hold for other
minorities as well, but I don't have numbers handy right now)

That's what diversity asks for - stop the steady attrition of anybody who's
not in the majority group.

~~~
Kalium
That's an interesting perspective. I say this because I have personally
encountered people who argue that the value of a presumed-novel viewpoint
should be expected to outweigh a sufficiently small difference of technical
skill or similar in hiring decisions.

Anyway. Are you sure it's a good idea to compare numbers like recent grad
percentages and Fortune-500 CEOs? These two in particular strike me as
separated by several decades in which society has changed. Perhaps not the
most useful comment on current society.

------
Kiro
I don't understand. Sure, the name idea wasn't perfect but the VP had good
intentions. Is this really that upsetting?

~~~
unit91
Agreed. It seems like this particular idea could have been abandoned, without
aborting the entire endeavor (or quitting the company). The words "feasibility
study" come to mind...

As an aside, I ran the names Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Morgan Freeman, Ben
Carson, and Charlie Rangel against one the tools the author mentioned [1] and
also got no correct answers.

1\. [http://www.textmap.com/ethnicity/](http://www.textmap.com/ethnicity/)

~~~
Lerc
I ran a few. I wouldn't rate it highly.

    
    
        George Washington	GreaterEuropean, British
        John Smith	GreaterEuropean, British
        Barack Obama	GreaterAfrican, Africans
        Mike Brown	GreaterEuropean, British
        Tamir Rice	GreaterEuropean, Jewish
        Eric Garner	GreaterEuropean, British
        John Crawford	GreaterEuropean, British
        Akai Gurley	GreaterEuropean, British
        Ezell Ford	GreaterEuropean, British
        Cynical Oogaboogoo	Asian, IndianSubContinent

------
jarfil
I think this article reads a lot like "we need equal rights, so give us
special treatment because we're different".

All that lobbying for people who did not meet the technical criteria, that
getting upset at the idea of someone not noticing his differentiating
blackness.

He might have a point in the part about how many minorities are using the
service, but I don't see how the tech department should be concerned at all
with that. Community relations, marketing, sure. Not tech.

~~~
giaour
The author mentioned unfair, non-technical criteria being applied to
candidates, with the effect being that talented minority engineers were being
filtered out of the hiring pipeline.

~~~
jarfil
How is that a reason for lobbying that only minority candidates be treated
fairly. Fix it for all, or don't expect my sympathy.

~~~
giaour
Umm... it isn't. Removing a barrier with a discriminatory effect would remove
it for all.

------
dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10506093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10506093).

------
jusben1369
I thought it was a fascinating argument that 1) Twitter is struggling to gain
new users and 2) Twitter is staffed by male caucasians and asians so no wonder
it's struggling to gain new users.

------
gotchange
It really strikes me that Twitter allows such a high degree of politicization
in the workplace given the adverse nature and the risks it entails if left
unchecked. Office politics sucks enough already, we don't want to bring
another element to the workplace to make matters worse for everyone. I don't
want to see the office turned into political front lines where parties form
and people take sides especially in challenging and turbulent times when the
political discussions heat up and get very nasty.

Also, I'd like to point that this fellow engineer comes across as bit pushy
with his agenda (It's very obvious that has one). He's treating Twitter as a
political organization where he's using his position as a conduit to further
his goals as an activist advocating for change which is in my opinion very
troubling and unhealthy for any business.

Also, it is worrisome that he didn't perform his duties as a diversity
officer[?] efficiently as it seems to me that he was only concerned about his
own people, African Americans. (What about other francophone Africans?
Foreigners? People of other ethnicities and regions like MENA ..etc?) He
didn't seem impartial to me at all and all what he cared about was lobbying
for his own group only and this is not really commendable. You don't join a
company and start lobbying for certain outside groups like that and expect a
smooth sailing. If you're turning the company into a political battle field,
you should be ready to face the consequences of your actions.

This brings to another equally important point which is the apparent feud or
problem with the VP of Engineering regarding recruitment decisions. This
activist engineer was very ambitious and at the same time shortsighted in his
plans to make political gains in the organization and not expect opponents to
show resistance or experience friction throughout the process. He clearly
wanted to influence the decision making process if not tow and subordinate the
whole department to his department which in my opinion is very naive thing of
him to do and clearly revealed his motives that what he's after is more power
in the organization and not reaching a more egalitarian system or environment.

It was all a power play for from the get go and he wasn't very good at it
because you don't expect to encroach on someone's turf and not face a backlash
or pushback. Even the most level-headed and good tempered person would turn
territorial in these situations of adversity and things get ugly that could
lead to tensions and strenuous relations between department within the
organization.

Finally, his quitting and cop out sealed it for me as to my assessment of his
account because no activist worth his salt would bail out and leave the cause
he's fighting for like this. Change doesn't happen overnight and you gotta
invest heavily and believe truly in your cause to start seeing progress. So,
maybe he's more suited to work inside a political organization that's aligned
well with his worldview and affiliation where they favor more chip on the
shoulder type but he's certainly not a good material or asset and to have on
your pro team or in your business.

------
vacri
I find the numbers a little weird. While 'black' and 'hispanic' are
underrepresented in the graphs, 'asian' is heavily overrepresented (in yahoo's
case, it's triple the percentage), and 'asian' isn't a single ethnicity. Not
only are south asians not east asians or west asians (culturally or
physically), but Chinese aren't Koreans, who aren't Vietnamese, who aren't
Filipino and so forth (these are the groups in the BLS report). The author
seems to be using 'diversity' to mean 'proportion of black faces', rather than
diversity across the board.

------
dreamdu5t
Removing barriers to particular ethnicities in hiring? Great. Making it clear
in marketing and outreach that all ethnicities are welcomed and encouraged?
Great. Establishing a quota of X % of employees should be a certain race?
Uh... okay. Should asians be turned down from a job because they've hit the
asian quota and need more blacks? I didn't realize companies practiced
affirmative action like this.

~~~
mazerackham
I'm Chinese, and I don't appreciate your attempt at pitting Asians against
Blacks.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
It isn't pitting any race at another. It is a real concern with quotas. One
only needs to look at what an Asian needs to score on the SAT compared to what
a Caucasian (no need to bring up other races) to see how it can become a
problem.

~~~
theorique
A good reference on this phenomenon:
[http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-
race...](http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-
tutoring-20150222-story.html)

------
yuhong
As a side note, I dislike anti-discrimination laws. For example, the
statistical way of proving discrimination probably only works well for certain
kinds of jobs like unskilled labor. Limiting these laws to these kinds of jobs
by default would probably be a good compromise.

------
serge2k
> There were also the Hiring Committee meetings that became contentious when I
> advocated for diverse candidates. Candidates who were dinged for not being
> fast enough to solve problems, not having internships at ‘strong’ companies
> and who took too long to finish their degree. Only after hours of lobbying
> would they be hired. Needless to say, the majority of them performed well.

Why is it needless to say that?

~~~
dcole2929
Because they have been proven time and time again to have very little affect
on the quality of an engineer. Simply put these are often poor indicators of
success even among like candidates. When you're specifically talking minority
or low income candidates, which unfortunately often go hand in hand it doesn't
make sense to think that any of these factors speak to a candidates
suitability for a given role.

------
such_a_casual
"As we continued the discussion, he suggested I create a tool to analyze
candidates last names to classify their ethnicity."

Tisk. Tisk. It's been well documented that these tools are used to weed out
ethnicities.

------
NetWarNinja
Ok so sorry but this fing bullshit has got to stop. WTF is this BlackLives
matter all about? The message was lost when the town was burned down and the
entire campaign was started on a thug who robbed the local convenience store
for some mini cigars to roll some blunts. Did he have to die? we don't have
any video evidence and his homeboy who saw the whole thing isn't going to
speak up for fear of being an Uncle Tom / sell out. Black people in tech? I
have worked with and even seen star employees who were black who are in tech.
In fact just about the entire IT Dept. where I work is Black. They are senior
level IT techs making close to 6 figures. To see the Hashtag posted at twitter
#Ferguson is just pure idiocy and some guilt ridden conscience to be down with
the cause, whatever that is. You have to be the change, sorry stop with the
bullshit. I make 6 figures and I am a high school push out. I am that change.
I changed my attitude, I changed my way of thinking and the way I interact
with people and hell I even rush across the street when I have the right of
way when a car needs to make a turn. yeah you know what I mean. Leadership
begins when you take that opportunity to step up and I have seen and
experienced plenty of examples.

