

Silicon Valley’s Diversity Problem - sinemetu11
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/opinion/sunday/silicon-valleys-diversity-problem.html

======
omonra
So apparently there are "many studies show that companies with gender and
ethnic diversity tend to be more creative and more profitable, because varied
perspectives help them design products and services that appeal to a diverse,
worldwide audience."

Yet somehow this lack of diversity hasn't prevented Google, Facebook and Apple
from being very profitable and very creative.

Let's take a stab and see what are these "studies" that show how diversity
helps. Here is one (from the article NYT links to):

"In a study conducted in 2003, Orlando Richard, a professor of management at
the University of Texas at Dallas, and his colleagues surveyed executives at
177 national banks in the U.S., then put together a database comparing
financial performance, racial diversity and the emphasis the bank presidents
put on innovation. For innovation-focused banks, increases in racial diversity
were clearly related to enhanced financial performance."

So we have exhibit A - the three most successful companies in the US that seem
to do a-OK without diversity and exhibit B - a survey of bank executives about
how they feel about diversity and innovation.

Let's be honest - diversity has nothing to do with creativity or
profitability. It's a political construct that the NYT feels needs to be
hoisted upon successful American companies. Because diversity.

[Edited typos]

~~~
skybrian
It isn't just the New York Times saying this. Google's management has made
public statements saying diversity needs to improve. It's a major initiative.
Just maintaining the status quo isn't interesting.

~~~
omonra
You have to realize that most companies can't really say what they think on
most issues. It's a lot easier to pay lip service to an idea that you consider
stupid than risk public opprobation by saying what they actually think.

They care as much about diversity as NBA owners - which is they don't give a
toss.

That said - I do think they do want to have the best people working for them.
So if the best candidate for a position happens to be a disabled black lesbian
- they'll gladly take her. But she has to be qualified in the first place -
simply having the right 'diversity' points won't help.

~~~
skybrian
You're right that being well qualified for the job still matters. The goal of
diversity initiatives isn't to change that.

Even when a company tries to do a good job (and there's lots of room for
improvement at most places), hiring is still fairly random. You can lose good
people because they happened to have a bad day or be matched up with an
unfortunate interviewer, through cultural misunderstandings, and so on.

We can't know what top management really thinks in their heart of hearts, but
it doesn't necessarily matter for most hires since they're not doing the
interviews or making the hiring decisions. They built a system for that. It's
the people who actually are making the decisions that you might have to worry
about. The point of diversity training is to reach them and avoid losing good
people through bias, screwups, and bad judgement.

------
vezzy-fnord
So I quickly looked up the employee demographics for Google, Facebook and
Apple (but particularly for the percentage balance of males and females, as
that appears to be the hottest topic), and from their official sources the
numbers are, respectively: 30% [1], 32% [2] and 30% [3].

The number of CS graduates who are women differs in how it's gauged, but it's
roughly 18% [4].

Though obviously there are non-technical positions, even accounting only for
tech jobs the numbers are still 17%, 15% and 20%, respectively. They all fit
around the same range.

There's certainly room for improvement, but I'm not sure why the onus should
be on tech companies. They seem to be doing well enough with the available
resource pool. Having profit-motivated entities be the initiators of social
change seems like a clunky band-aid solution to me that won't be of any
particular efficacy.

[1] [http://google.com/diversity/at-
google.html](http://google.com/diversity/at-google.html)

[2] [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/06/building-a-more-
diverse-...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/06/building-a-more-diverse-
facebook/)

[3] [https://www.apple.com/diversity/](https://www.apple.com/diversity/)

[4]
[http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/btn_02282...](http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/btn_02282014web.pdf)

~~~
frostmatthew
I think what's more interesting is that these companies are "less white" than
the country (~72% white, or ~63% non-Hispanic white)[1] but get criticized for
being "mostly white."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicityhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity)

~~~
DanBC
There are posts on HN from people asking why they should diversify their
workforce; stating that they would feel uncomfortable employing someone who
disclosed a history of mental illness; asking why it's acceptable to give
womenTernity leave (and blaming the lack of women in tech on those women for
becoming de-skilled during motherhood); and the "cultural fit" thing is really
strong on HN.

SF companies do well on one measure of diversity (they employ Asian males) but
pretty poorly on other scales (women; older people; people with disabilities,
etc)

------
jaysonelliot
Silicon Valley's diversity problem is a corollary to its monoculture problem.
Every startup mentor, speaker, blogger, etc. has the same advice to budding
entrepreneurs: "hire your friends."

We're told to hire people who we know, or people that are known and trusted by
those we've already hired. One of the first things that will happen if you're
hired at Facebook or Google is that HR will sit down with you and ask you to
make a list of every smart person you've ever worked with, so they can try to
recruit them.

No one sets out to create a monoculture (we hope), or to build a workforce
without diversity. Silicon Valley is filled with intelligent, well-meaning,
ambitious people who I believe are truly interested in a meritocracy.

But look around. Who's founding the companies that get funded? There's a
reason you get dozens of Snapchat wannabes, "sharing economy" startups, and
social apps. VCs are emotional creatures just like anyone else, and they
follow the herd, where it's safe. That also means they're funding founders who
live nearby, and come with a warm intro and a recommendation.

Companies in the Valley are founded by a relatively homogenous slice of the
American demographic, whether you're looking at race, age, background,
socioeconomic status, or what have you. When you then tell those founders to
minimize risk by hiring through personal networks, you create a foundation for
a culture that will continue to look homogenous as the company scales and
grows.

If you've ever been involved in hiring in the Valley, or interviewed with any
tech companies here, you've probably heard the words "culture fit." It's an
insidious phrase, one that may start with good intentions, but ends up
excluding good people, valuable hires who might have brought a much-needed
diversity of thought, insight, and perspective to a company.

Silicon Valley wants to be a meritocracy, and it's not against diversity. But
it's got a culture that's currently designed, albeit unintentionally, to
create copies of itself and the people who are already here.

------
rectang
The article exhorts the tech industry to tackle the problem of diversity
immediately rather than wait for relief from the pipeline. So what are some
things we can do as individuals, right now?

One thing that has worked for me over the years is choosing to be an "ally" of
"outsiders" \-- ensure that people get invited to meetings or other functions
who otherwise might be left out, make sure that they are consulted for their
opinions consistently, make it apparent that you, personally, value diversity
through your actions. The effect is to rebalance the ratio of outsiders to
insiders so that people don't feel surrounded and outnumbered.

Other suggestions?

Eventually, we'll all be "outsiders" thanks to age, so it's in everyone's
interest to mitigate this problem.

------
lhnz
Can anybody theorise to me on why asian men are an exception to the lack of
diversity?

~~~
skylan_q
Because it's politically incorrect to point this out.

~~~
Mangalor
Asians are clearly represented well in Tech. That doesn't change the lack of
diversity in the other categories.

------
tzs
The article they cite to support the claim that diversity promotes creativity
cites studies that looked at problem solving and communication in small
groups.

The interesting thing about those studies is that what they seem to show is
that what is important is that there be someone in the group who you perceive
as being different in some significant way. It appears that what is going on
is that when you see everyone in a group as being the same as you, you expect
everyone to think the same, and aren't as open to new ideas, and don't put as
much effort into promoting your ideas.

Most of the studies used race as the difference, putting one or two blacks in
a group of whites. One used politics, comparing two democrats or two
republicans against mixed pairs, and one used groups where the diversity was
geographic.

That raises some interesting questions. In the following let's take as a
baseline a small group of white males.

Does the degree of difference make a difference? Is adding a black female
better than adding a black male to the group, because she differs on both race
and gender?

What differences besides race, politics, and geography matter? We are all
white males in the engineering jobs at my office, but we are split evenly
between married with children people and single people. We've also got a nice
split between liberals and conservatives. Are these enough differences to max
out our creativity?

There's a lot a more research needed here.

------
golemotron
Still, nothing about age in relation to diversity.

~~~
philangist
That article came out a few months ago:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-
valleys-y...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-valleys-
youth-problem.html)

~~~
golemotron
It's still interesting to consider why age isn't considered part of diversity.
Diversity as used is usually ethnic or gender.

~~~
zo1
Or looks and height for that matter.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination)

------
1dundundun
For a long time, the popular belief in SV was that a lack of diversity
actually helps an early stage startup.

We've probably all heard the story about how Paypal rejected a candidate that
aced his engineering tests because he said he "likes to play hoops" in his
free time. They decided that a guy who likes to play basketball would not be a
good culture fit.

So, if that was the thought process that the Paypal Mafia left the nest with,
it's not hard to see how we ended up in the situation we're in regarding
diversity.

Side note: Like others, I also wonder how age gets left out of this diversity
debate. That's pretty interesting...

------
patrickg_zill
Does anyone seriously believe that this will result in lower costs or improved
products and/or services?

Sorry to say, my view is that it will just lead to a lot more paper-pushing or
other make-work jobs.

EDIT to add: if it is about money, most would rather take up law.

~~~
davidu
Perhaps your point isn't clear.

Are you actually suggesting that minorities can only do paper-pushing jobs?
Not only is that abject racism, it's obviously untrue.

The article is pointing out that because it's mostly whites and asians in
tech, and people generally hire the people they know, the problem just
perpetuates, leaving highly qualified, and sometimes better candidates,
overlooked from positions simply because they don't enter the field of view
for the candidate selection process.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The simple statistical approach doesn't hold water. Even a few minorities in
the pool would then grow until parity were reached. Hispanics would hire
Hispanics etc. That isn't happening.

We have to instead suppose there's built-in bias in the actual hiring process.
E.g. only the dominant cultural filter is allowed weight in the hiring
process, regardless of who is acting in that role.

~~~
Mangalor
One Hispanic or Black in a room full of White guys can't make the White guys
hire another minority just by force of will. It just doesn't work that easily.

------
ausjke
I noticed too many black players in NBA and it has a diversity problem, the
number/ratio of African American players in NBA league should be dramatically
limited for diversity.

Asian is the _real_ minority(or tinority) in USA, somehow it is not treated as
such when we talk about college, IT jobs etc. Maybe it's not just about the
percentage of population? IT is also a highly skilled profession, similar to
NBA players to some extent.

I'm all for diversity everywhere, but it seems the status quo is more likely
from nature force/choice instead of simple intentional discrimination. To
fully better it, we need check the diversity in those who are taking the hard
courses in STEM majors, it's difficult to hire a non-STEM students for IT
jobs.

Then we're back to round 1, I think it's the diversity on STEM major choices
from highschool/college deciding the end result in SV. For that, there is only
so much the government can help.

~~~
Mangalor
There's intentional discrimination out there. It's not just about historical
inequality.

~~~
ausjke
There are intentional discrimination in many places ,including the now famous
"Affirmative action" that is purposely designed by law to discriminate
students by race. The world is not a perfect place. I am just saying unless
more 'minorities' are taking STEM majors at very early stage, blaming HR at SV
companies is not going to help much.

