
Silicon Valley Is Using Trade Secrets to Hide Its Race Problem - chollida1
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-13/silicon-valley-is-using-trade-secrets-to-hide-its-race-problem
======
ralusek
For the millionth time. The distribution of populations not lining up with the
general population distributions is _not_ indicative of discrimination. Not to
mention that the "anti-brown people" narrative absolutely dissolves in the
face of the massive overrepresentation of Indians and other Asians. To say
that Silicon Valley has a "race problem" and _only_ include the employment
statistics as they relate to the population at large is just pure insanity.
What about the racial distribution of the hiring pool? It's _less_ diverse by
their own standards than the distributions in companies. What about the racial
distribution of college graduates in engineering? Then what about mapping the
racial distribution of the college graduates onto interview success rates,
where the biased distribution of the graduates as produced by the
universities' affirmative action policies must necessarily align with a
similar policy at the company if their own filtering criteria is to produce
the same results?

The thing that I find the most interesting about all of this is that there
isn't an overt attempt to actually remove purported discrimination from the
hiring process. Suggestions to anonymize the interview process typically
produce results that are even _less_ representative of their desired
distribution, because almost every company is actively discriminating in
_favor_ of women and "marginalized communities." If their accusations were
actually on the basis of correcting bias/discrimination, this is the sort of
strategy you'd see advocated, but it's not. They want arbitrary quotas that
are, given the available pool of candidates to even consider, mathematically
impossible to attain.

~~~
dontreact
To me the issue is not discrimination but rather representation. I will give
you a concrete example. Our team (working in medicine) had very few Latinos
for a long time. As a result of this we completely avoided gathering training
data from Latin America because no one was well versed in how to conduct
business there, yet we had data/deals with US, Europe and Asia. As a result
our algorithms will likely not help Latin America and Latino Americans as
much. This then perpetuates marginalization because it could lead to worse
health outcomes for Latinos.

Why the dimension of race and not other dimensions? It is a real dimension
with cultural and medical significance. Cancer presents differently for
different races for example.

When you have large pseudo monopolies it is important to have diverse groups
of people running them to avoid effects like this that can make
marginalization worse.

Another classic example is voice recognition and accents. By not having more
Spanish speakers at a company, if your company makes a voice recognition
product it is easy to have blind spots. Your product may fail for those with
an accent, and you won’t notice or think to measure along those dimensions.

I agree, however, that strictly proportional representation is not important.
However promoting diversity is important and when you have numbers like 3 or 7
percent it’s easy to end up with large, important sub teams with no
representation for historically marginalized subgroups. And this can lead to
worse products, especially when looked at from the point of view of
marginalized subgroups.

The main point of the article is that it is pretty sketchy to be hiding these
numbers

~~~
ralusek
The example you gave is a diversity of _skills_ , _and_ that diversity of
skills was actually a requirement for your business. If the inclusion of
individuals possessing those additional skills (ability to speak Spanish,
ability to network effectively in a given foreign country/culture) happens to
map on to a racial or ethnic diversity, great, but that's not what's being
advocated for here.

This also brings up an interesting point of contention. The diversity dance
has 2 arguments at odds with themselves.

Claim 1: All populations of people are inherently equivalent and should
therefore have proportional representations in all things.

Claim 2: Diversity is a boon because populations are inherently unique and
provide a unique set of characteristics to the table.

Pick one. You cannot make both of those claims simultaneously.

 _You_ are advocating in favor of Claim 2, which is fine, but what if the
position in question doesn't actually benefit from a diverse set of skills?
What if it's a low level circuit designer that tends to favor a particular
skillset and personality type? Is it not possible that attributes more
commonly represented in a certain population might be overrepresented in
sectors that require those characteristics?

In contrast, if you advocate instead for Claim 1, then there should be no
discernible _advantage_ to diverse hiring, it's just that a failure to do so
would be indicative of bias.

~~~
dontreact
I don't know anyone who believes in Claim 1 as you've presented it. There is
an alternate version that I do believe

"All populations of people are inherently valuable and therefore should not be
left behind by advancements in technology"

The examples I gave were both cases where it was not obvious at all to predict
that the skills would be needed.

For example, while the low level circuit designer probably won't benefit from
cultural and racial awareness, he may not always be a low level circuit
designer in the company. He may rise in the company and start making decisions
about how/where/which circuits are built. And at some point having cultural
and racial awareness would be a benefit.

~~~
ralusek
All populations are inherently valuable, to whom? Every business values every
population intrinsically? How do you decide how valuable they are? Do you need
to hire as many Maori from New Zealand and as many Inuit from Alaska as their
world populations would dictate, or are their intrinsic values allowed to
differ in any capacity?

~~~
dontreact
Let me rephrase

Individuals are valuable regardless of group memberships. Therefore it makes
sense to avoid leaving large groups of people behind, regardless of which
group it is.

------
darawk
More like journalism is using race to hide its jealousy problem. Tech now has
the power, influence, and compensation that journalist used to have, and
they're mad about it. Most of these companies go way out of their way to
recruit minorities and women. If you believe that not having enough of them in
tech companies is a problem, you're going to have to look further down the
funnel, to college major choices and honestly probably much earlier. These
groups are simply not graduating with CS degrees or programming skills in the
numbers necessary to be equally represented as employees at these companies.
Whether that's because of discrimination at earlier stages or simple
preference, fixing it at the level of hiring for tech companies is _way way_
too late to improve anything. By then it's a completely zero-sum problem.
There are only so many viable candidates from these groups with the requisite
skills, if Google hires one, that's one less that Palantir can take. It's just
a silly game of musical chairs until we fix the _pipeline_ problem, which is
that there are not enough viable candidates from these groups. Once that is
fixed, _then_ if companies are still not hiring them, let's talk about that,
but I very much doubt that will be the case.

~~~
dpflan
Would you be willing to share your ideas on what can be done at the beginning
of the pipeline?

~~~
malvosenior
Step one (and really the only step) is that people have to _want_ to become
developers/scientists, sit in front of a computer all day, read and learn, all
the time.

There are a million different reasons someone may not want to do that or may
be encouraged against it, but you'd have to look at every individual and
culture to find out why. It may not even turn out to be a bad thing. What if
someone wants to become a chef or athlete instead, is that a problem?

~~~
dpflan
For choosing a major and career I think step makes sense but I think that is
near the end of the pipeline.

What about exposure to the field and introducing computational thinking into
earlier pars of the education system? Not necessary making kids program as
their first exposure, but exposing them to computational concepts (maybe start
with power of twos when learning multiplication, or control-flow-logic for
writing a story....).

~~~
malvosenior
I think that's a great idea.

Honestly I don't think any culture in the west has ever been truly supportive
of becoming a STEM person. Until very recently is was extremely derided in
even white American culture as being "for nerds".

A more positive exposure to technology at an early age can only be a good
thing. I think we'll still find very few people want to become engineers due
to the required workload and that will be ok.

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fipple
The whole “diversity industry” (and it is a huge industry) is based on a
lie... that “diversity” improves a company’s performance. The research on this
is so shaky with so much empirical evidence to the contrary, and everyone
knows it, which is why companies are trying to do nothing more than “lip
service.”

~~~
CM30
This is something I've wondered about a lot as well. Look at any large company
in the world, then look at how diverse they are. Probably isn't much of a
correlation between one and the other.

Looking at companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook and what not, you'd
suspect any effects from having a diverse workforce are massively outweighed
by other factors like selling a product/service more people want, good product
design, price, marketing efforts, etc.

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jeffreyrogers
I don't really see how diversity is tech's problem any more than it's
hospitals' problem. If you want more engineers from more underrepresented
groups you need to educate them. If there aren't enough doctors of group X
it's not the fault of hospitals. It's the fault of society for not
facilitating more of them going into medicine. It seems to me that the case
for tech workers is analogous.

~~~
hmate9
100% agree. Look at the diversity of CS courses at top universities. If
minorities and females are not represented there then how can you expect
companies who hire top talent to have them?

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grenoire
I find it a little absurd to compare the SV demographics to the US
demographics, and then claiming that the problem is with SV's hiring.

It's a US problem that its society has failed to push the minorities up with
better welfare and education; it just manifests itself as lower representation
in SV.

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cannotdoitbro
I feel like articles like this are major trend of racism towards Indians and
Chinese.

Lately, as American-born Indian-background person, I have been feeling
discriminated during job interviews. My friends and I are not really looking
to changes jobs but are always interviewing passively.

My black friends have recruiters hounding them on LinkedIn. They get more job
offers, have easier interview questions, and even higher salarier.

While my experience is usually average. But when we compare type of questions
we answered at the same company for same role, it is pretty obvious that I was
asked harder questions.

On other hand, I can tell when my interviewers are mostly Indian, they
discriminate in my favor.

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daenz
This push towards intellectual and cultural uniformity is so incredibly anti-
diversity. "All cultures must have the same interests as white people" is
essentially what is being said after you account for all the various "systemic
privileges."

EDIT>> to put it another way, white people consider something "wrong" if
different demographics aren't interested in the same subjects as they are, at
the same rate. It's the ultimate self-centered worldview.

~~~
darkpuma
That's a very interesting take, I've never considered it that way before. I
guess that goes to show I need to work on my empathy.

------
philwelch
Mathematically, not all companies can have a higher proportion of $GROUP than
the industry as a whole. So if companies advertise and compete on having a
higher-than-industry-average proportion of $GROUP, they paint a target on
their back.

------
samstokes
Since this has become yet another discussion about "the pipeline problem"
instead of a discussion about a tactic major tech companies are using to duck
accountability, this Twitter thread might be informative:
[https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19](https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19)

It's from an organisation (Code2040) that spent 10 years working to build a
pipeline of qualified Black and Latinx candidates, only to find many companies
had hiring processes that wouldn't hire their candidates anyway.

~~~
purple_ducks
It's a series of opinions in tweets. no facts. no scientific anything.

From a person who (after looking at their LinkedIn bio) is in no way qualified
to tell companies what they need _at all_

From what I see of the company & CEO, it's a self serving & self preserving
job role & company.

~~~
jameane
Their facts are based the experiences of trying to place their program
graduates and the experiences of those people. Code2040 had a very extensive
program pairing young people with tech worker mentors, getting them the right
education and helping to place them in tech jobs. And after doing that for 10
years they found without companies that were very very committed to retention,
even with all of that preparation, it still didn't work. Hence the pivot by
that organization.

They started trying to solve the "pipeline problem" and it turned out that
wasn't really the problem.

------
YayamiOmate
I am very interested what the other half of black engineers do and why. Do
they stay unemployed, or choose a different career?

I have a hard time imagining that so much educated engineers who can be
effetively underpaid are not being capitalized on. That sounds like a wasted
business opportunity.

Businesses outsource work to india or east europe, why not exploit locally?
I've read they also import workers on hb1 because they can pay less for same
talent, so this doesn't add up for me. I can't belive racism vs black people
specifically wins vs money on such large scale, since it doesn't vs other
races.

Interesting.

------
president
Who is funding these diversity studies? That should give a clue to what the
true reason is. I am doubtful companies really care about correcting
discrimination in hiring.

------
itsdrewmiller
This seems like it's using Palintir and Oracle to tar all of Silicon Valley.
Aren't Google, Apple, MS, Facebook, etc. leaders on diversity transparency
across the entire business community, tech and non-tech?

>The vast majority of companies on the list that report their full diversity
numbers are in the tech sector. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple
have released reports on the demographics of their workforce in recent years,
so it may be unsurprising that 75% of Fortune 500 firms publishing their
numbers are in the tech space.

[http://fortune.com/2017/06/07/fortune-500-diversity/](http://fortune.com/2017/06/07/fortune-500-diversity/)

------
YayamiOmate
I am very interested what the other half of black engineers do and why. Do
they stay unemployed, or choose a different career?

I have a hard time imagining that so much educated engineers who can be
effetively underpaid are not being capitalized on. That sounds like a wasted
business opportunity.

Businesses outsource work to india or east europe, why not exploit locally?
I've read they also import workers on hb1 because they can pay less for same
talent, so this doesn't add up for me. I can't belive racism vs black people
specifically wins vs cash on such large scale, since it doesn't vs other
races.

Interesting.

------
vixen99
So, are companies less profitable and successful than they might be by not
hiring on a totally meritocratic basis? In other words, do tech companies
really reject potential employees for reasons other than pure merit?

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fredgrott
maybe I am clueless but how can anonymous data turned into the government be
trade secret protectable?

~~~
sjg007
It's likely not. Even the premise that employment demographics are trade
secret at all is malarkey.

------
justtopost
More like hiding its h2b fetish.

------
porpoisely
"And as criticism grows over Silicon Valley’s bro culture and its lack of
minority representation"

Isn't 40% of the tech industry made up of east and south asians? Do they not
count as minorities? If anything, you'd think SV would be praised for being
one of the most diverse industries.

"A growing body of research shows diverse perspectives bring tangible benefits
to firms that support them"

You see this so much in these types of articles. "Diverse perspectives"
doesn't necessarily mean "diverse ethnicity". A group of 3 white men ( CEO,
factory work and homeless man ) will have greater diverse perspectives than 3
female CEOs ( black, white and asian ) who went to the same schools, hung out
with the same crowd and live in the same area. Also if her assertions were
correct, wouldn't more diverse firms naturally have beaten out less diverse
firms and we wouldn't need to legislative or force diversity in these
companies?

If what is being stated in this article is true, why doesn't YC or any VC firm
gather the most diverse set of founders to start a new Google, Facebook,
Apple, etc? "Research" has shown that the new diverse google, facebook, etc
have tangible benefits which must translate into success. Right?

Instead of complaining about it, why not start a diverse company and take
hundreds of billions from the less diverse companies like Apple, Google,
Facebook?

Also, does this apply just to tech companies only? What about another highly
successful firm in the silicon valley area - the Golden State Warriors.
Instead of having 5 african american starters, why not diversify the team
since "research" has shown that has tangible benefits.

I'm against racism of all kinds whether it benefits whites,blacks,asians,etc.
I'm against sexism as well - whether it benefits males or females. If there
are systematic obstacles, lets remove those rather than creating more racism
and racial obstacles.

~~~
jameane
You realize the "diversity" problem is also impacted by the funding problems.
It is really hard for people of color and women to get funding - from any
source. Banks, VCs, Angel investors and so on. Combine that with the wealth
gap and it makes it a lot harder to get started.

------
felinista
If lack of diversity isn't a problem, why aren't these companies open with
their figures? Why go to such extents? There's also research to suggest women
and minorities are underpaid relative to their male, white counterparts,
shouldn't companies fix that?

~~~
bluedevil2k
Because the media coverage would turn into a "problem" that would be a PR
issue.

~~~
felinista
Doubtful it can get worse than it already is, lack of diversity in tech is a
widespread issue and known all too well.

Even the general public is in a sense aware of it, when people picture
stereotypical programmers, I doubt they have a black Muslim woman in mind.

Transparency is important.

