
“Lack of diversity in tech is no accident” - sna1l
https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1185634274529009664
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molteanu
>Keep this story in mind when someone tells you that tech is a meritocracy.

I will. But there is nothing new here if you're paying attention. There is
also fair competition, an open market and equal opportunities for all. That
sentence strikes me as false when your competitors can literally bleed
millions for years all the while killing any form of competition. Examples
abound, from WeWork to Tesla and all these Uber-like startups [1].

What is a poor, hard-working, honest guy to do in this extremely out of
balance scenarios if he's not on the "have-tons-of-money-to-burn-through" side
of the equation?!

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-
cus...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cusp-next-
dot-com-bubble/600232/)

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badrabbit
How about sticking to merits? A startup needs speed? Sure,but that does not
mean unjust discrimination is the way but it also does not mean hiring should
be driven by diversity. And screw the whole "culture fit" b.s.,this is why
EEOC is needed badly,you offer services to the public so your "culture" is the
public culture,you don't get to define a "culture" and gatekeep who works
there or who you provide services to based on that criteria. Use merits for
hiring and be fair to employees and customers alike. A public business and a
private club are two different types of organizations.

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derrick_jensen
I'm the founder of a startup, and I hire people I trust and people I have
worked with in the past. It just so happens that most of these people have
made it to the CS/ECE/Math departments at my university (otherwise I wouldn't
have had the opportunity to work with them). If I measure merit by how
qualified I think they are, then I'm more inclined to hire people I already
know, and this is just knock on effects of gender/race composition by major[1]
and university enrollment in general. Any hiring/enrolling system that puts
diversity above merit has to bare the opportunity cost of not having more
qualified people, and for most companies/organizations this isn't a reasonable
compromise.

[1]: [http://waf.cs.illinois.edu/discovery/Gender-Diversity-at-
UIU...](http://waf.cs.illinois.edu/discovery/Gender-Diversity-at-UIUC/)

