
Tech Companies and Diversity Hiring - jameshart
https://medium.com/@dareobasanjo/the-big-lie-tech-companies-and-diversity-hiring-f52fb82abfbf
======
feral
To make a specific point, without prejudice to the main points of the blog
post:

>One of the open secrets of working in technology is that technical interviews
are completely worthless as a predictor for whether someone is a good hire or
not. [...]

>> We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the
interviews and what what they scored the candidate, and how that person
ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship.

> It’s amazing to think that Google found zero relationship between an
> interviewer saying “Hire” and whether the candidate was actually a good hire
> or not.

The fact [the scores of someone who gets hired] are not predictive of their
eventual performance, does not mean that hiring process is completely random,
or worthless.

In order to tell that, you would need to look at the cohort of people who were
'no hire' and compare them to the 'hire' cohort; it's not enough to just look
within the 'hire' cohort.

In other words, the hiring process is (1) designed to be a Classifier,
typically tuned with an emphasis on having a low false positive rate. Hoping
that (2) the scores of the small subset of candidates who are classed 'hire',
also act well as a regression to the candidate's eventual performance, is a
big additional ask.

Just because there is evidence that (2) is untrue, or particularly noisy, does
not necessarily mean that (1) is broken.

I don't see a great way of solving this, without a large company like Google
also randomly hiring 'no hires' from different stages in their hiring process
(and subsequently measuring their performance) in order to quantify the
performance of subsequent steps in the hiring process - not aware of anyone
who has done that; it would be really interesting to read how a company who
does that gets on, but an expensive experiment.

~~~
dominotw
>One of the open secrets of working in technology is that technical interviews
are completely worthless as a predictor for whether someone is a good hire or
not.

This is wrong. Apparently google has internally done much research and their
interview techniques have _strong_ collreation to success on the job.

~~~
mercutio2
I'm a big fan of Dare's writing, but on this one, I think he missed the mark
wildly, for exactly the reason you cite: Google's research says almost the
exact opposite of what he's claiming in this post.

With that said, the large variation in ratios of disadvantaged minority
employment at big tech companies does seem meaningful (and he cites that wide
variation). I think intern and HR pipeline variation is likely very relevant
to this difference.

The problem is with his implication that throwing darts to pick from a pool of
moderately qualified people would yield a reasonable result.

------
jimmywanger
One of the main problems I'm seeing these days is that a lot of companies
think they can solve problems that start from childhood or culture.

Most blacks that are recent African immigrants tend to do very well.
[http://www.atlnightspots.com/african-immigrants-have-the-
hig...](http://www.atlnightspots.com/african-immigrants-have-the-highest-
academic-achievement-in-the-us/)

That points to some aspect (not race) of African-Americans that cause them not
to excel. Is it broken families or a culture of not "acting white"? (acting
white:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white))

Those things needs to be dealt with on a community level, a band aid and a few
initiatives by tech companies won't solve anything properly.

~~~
exolymph
The effects of systemic racism should be considered as well.

~~~
jimmywanger
What do you mean? Controlling for the fact that children of African immigrants
do very well should eliminate systemic racism, as they have been exposed to
that their whole life, and would be exposed to all the "systemic racism" their
African-American cohort members would have been exposed to as well.

~~~
ubernostrum
Recent immigrants and their children will speak differently, dress
differently, act differently and probably live in different places than multi-
generation American black families. This creates a difference wherein the
immigrant is perceived as not displaying the "bad" aspects of "black culture"
(i.e., the immigrant's English is unlikely to be AAVE, which is a gigantic leg
up right off the bat in terms of how they'll be perceived by white peers, and
may even be considered pleasing; the immigrant will probably dress more
"white", etc. etc.). Which gets right back to... you guessed it, systemic
racism labeling "black culture" as an inherently bad or inferior thing.

~~~
jimmywanger
We're talking about "system racism" and "culture", which was my point in its
entirety.

Racism deals with race - the genetic identity you have.

Everything you're talking about deals with culture. Systemic culturism might
be a thing, but you have not dealt with systemic racism.

~~~
tptacek
The problem being discussed is prejudice. Whether that prejudice comes from
some nebulous idea of "race" or "culture" or something else is besides the
point.

~~~
jimmywanger
No, that's precisely the point.

The hiring data from high tech companies is not broken down by culture, but by
race.

They're saying that racial equality is the important bit, and if black people
aren't equally represented then there's prejudice.

According to that logic, it doesn't matter what culture the person has, as
long as they have African ancestry. It doesn't matter if they're part of a
high achieving immigrant community, or a low achieving black american
community.

THAT's the part that makes no sense to me.

------
williamaadams
I was one of the managers in Dare's team when he was hired at Microsoft. A
very dynamic guy.

Diversity hiring is challenging. Lots of pitfalls, minefields, and social
cruft to get through.

Here's my effort to improve things at Microsoft:
[http://www.industryexplorers.com](http://www.industryexplorers.com)

You have to hit the whole pipeline, starting from k-12, and going all the way
up through senior promotions. You have to think about which companies you do
M&A work on, where you source in the world, and how you're going to engage
with HBCUs and others.

Most importantly, you have to take action, and not just talk and write about
it.

You have to change internal cultures. You have to recognize the biases and
buzzwords such as "we don't want to lower the bar". You have to remind
yourself that not too long ago, programming was something that very smart
people, trained in many different things, engaged in as a side thing, not as a
primary thing, and that's what's built our current industry.

meh, it's a lot of work, and will take many more years of concerted effort.

------
scott00
Some statistics helpful to put the numbers in the article in context:

* Percent of San Francisco MSA that is black: 7.9%

* Percent of Atlanta MSA that is black: 32.8%

* Percent of college graduates that are black: 10.0%

* Percent of CS college graduates that are black: 11.5%

* Percent of engineering graduates that are black: 4.45%

Sources:

[http://www.directemployers.org/2012/08/16/the-college-
class-...](http://www.directemployers.org/2012/08/16/the-college-class-
of-2013-current-demographics/)

[http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/12_1YR/CP...](http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/12_1YR/CP05/310M100US12060|310M100US41860)

~~~
fwadfka
> * Percent of CS college graduates that are black: 11.5%

The number I got for 2015 was 2.5%
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101868))

One of the key sources of this difference is whether you count "Information"
degrees as CS. My number doesn't include information degrees and yours does.

~~~
scott00
That's definitely an interesting difference. Do you think excluding
Information degrees results in a more relevant number? If so, why?

~~~
fwadfka
People with CS degrees tend to be the ones building new software. Information
degrees vary a lot, but tend to have decreased math requirements and be more
focused on the application of technology. As a software engineer working in
the bay area, I have seen hundreds of engineers with CS degrees and zero
engineers with information degrees - in my experience there is a stark
difference, and I would be surprised and interested if the data showed
otherwise.

~~~
MollyR
Just to add an anecdote, Most of the companies I've worked for screen out non
CS degree's except for exceptional portfolios. Not sure how wide spread this
is.

------
protomyth
"I looked into it and it seems even after all these years the best way to get
into Microsoft’s internship program is if your school is on the list of
schools the company formally recruits from."

This isn't unusual for technology companies. It isn't even unusual for
research labs[1]. So, basically, the company has delegated its hiring
diversity to a university admissions department. Worse, many universities only
accept people into their graduate program from certain other universities.
I've never heard of a recruiter from any of these golden schools visiting
anywhere near me[4]

Add to this ageism that is prevalent in technology and you have a the makings
of lip service.

Why is ageism problematic? Many minorities, particularly enrolled members of
Native American tribes, go to school later than their white or Asian[2]
counterparts. Many go into the military or need the extra time to sort
themselves out. They typically go to a community college first (different path
from average), then go to a university[3].

The school I went to was on Microsoft's list to hire only support people from.
IBM didn't have that hangup and got one of the best developers I've ever known
and it worked out fine for them.

I would love to see these companies be a little wider with the hiring net, but
I don't believe it will happen. They'll wring their hands and talk and release
reports[5], but it won't change a thing because they don't get the basic
problems.

1) in my youth I was refused for a summer internship because my high school
and college were in the same area code....

2) seems Asian isn't considered much except in the reverse of requirements -
see the lawsuits against the California university system by Asian students

3) I'll leave the discussion on scholarships and students lying to get
scholarships directed at certain minorities for a different time

4) hell, when I was applying in 1987, I had to travel to get the applications,
pay the fees with money I really could have used, and never get a reply.
Someone told me it was because, like everyone on the reservation I was from, I
had used a post office box for my address. That seemed a bit far fetched to
me.

5) I'll believe something might change when I see "enrolled tribal members"
listed on their reports and a list of schools that includes ones that actually
care about recruiting in diverse areas.

~~~
zerohp
I don't know that ageism in technology necessarily means that older students
are less likely to be hired out of university. I would be interested in seeing
data to support that.

As an anecdote, I have observed older students that attend the "right" school
and achieve high grades are highly sought after by companies.

~~~
protomyth
> I don't know that ageism in technology necessarily means that older students
> are less likely to be hired out of university.

If a company is less likely to hire a 35 year old or 40 year old professions
that got out of college at the expected time with work experience, then a 35
year old graduate is going to have a much harder time. I cannot think of a
situation where that wouldn't be true.

I would bet it would even be worse because it deviates from the expected path
(high school -> college [w/optional graduate work] -> work) at that time
period in a person's life and that would be foreign and weird to many teams.

As to the "right" school, that's quite a bit of the problem.

~~~
zerohp
You may be right, but I would be interested in seeing a study of ageism and
non-traditional students. I am one. In my experience, and observation of other
students like me, the situation is opposite to what you are saying.

That said, none of my non-traditional student friends have sought jobs at
companies or teams staffed primarily by 20-25 year olds. My observations are
also skewed more toward hardware jobs, which seem to value older employees.

------
ReadingInBed
One critical point I feel this piece does not touch on is how diversity of
experience is great in the workplace. It's a huge benefit as a developer (and
obviously other professions too) to work on teams with people who have lived
very different lives. The Mirrortocracy[0] covers this well, but it should be
clear to us all that being exposed to different views helps refine our ideas
and process.

It's partly up to us to make diversity happen. We can prioritize offers that
have diverse teams, and when we get a chance to hire to value diversity of
experience.

[0]
[http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/06/mirrortocracy.html](http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/06/mirrortocracy.html)

~~~
Tunabrain
I absolutely agree, though I always feel like culture and nationality are very
underplayed in this discussion - I believe an American, an Eastern European
and a Chinese national would bring a lot more diverse world views to the table
than a female and a male American (or black and white).

------
prostoalex
Wouldn't "companies passing on highly qualified candidates due to a broken
process" be a self-correcting problem, where other market players with non-
broken hiring processes would be able to scoop the talent up and gain a
competitive advantage?

~~~
Larrikin
The author calls out Apple specifically and they are the most valuable company
in the world.

~~~
prostoalex
Right. So eventually companies following Apple's lead will be rewarded, while
the companies following a contrarian route will either adjust or disappear.

~~~
vec
"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." \- John
Maynard Keynes

Over the very long run, this _will_ self-correct. That fact is cold comfort to
someone trying to get hired today.

------
fweespeech
> This is where I’ll talk about the Big Lie from the title of my post. That
> lie is that there is some sort of pipeline problem preventing tech companies
> from hiring more black people. The reality is that tech companies shape the
> ethnic make up of their employees based on what schools & cities they choose
> to hire from and where they locate engineering offices.

I agree this is a substantial part of the problem, particularly in larger
corporations where they do target specific cities/schools.

However, I'm not sure I can agree with the implication you should locate
engineering offices based on the demographics as its the only way to fix the
"cities where they locate their engineering offices". Demographic/diversity
shouldn't be a criteria for office location.

You shouldn't have to move your entire organization just because the city you
happen to be in is ~5% Black and the largest minorities happen to be Asian or
Hispanic.

For instance at $Day_Job, the floor I'm on is 25% Asian, 5% Hispanic, 5%
Black, 65% White. That is pretty much +/\- 5% of the actual demographics.

I wouldn't argue we lack diversity because we just follow the local
demographics. I'd say the problem is when you are so out of whack with the
local demographics it becomes absurd. For instance, an office in Atlanta that
is 90% white.

~~~
HillaryBriss
> tech companies shape the ethnic make up of their employees based on what
> schools & cities they choose to hire from

I wonder if even that is true for California tech companies. California cities
feature a diversity which is absent from their local tech companies.

California's tech companies appear to be here for the VC money, not the local
labor pool. California's schools, by and large, do _not_ output a globally
competitive workforce. The tech workforce is mostly brought in from somewhere
else.

And California's government doesn't seem to care about the demographic
mismatch.

~~~
fweespeech
> I wonder if even that is true for California tech companies. California
> cities feature a diversity which is absent from their local tech companies.

Eh, not where I work in CA (which is not Silicon Valley). Of course we aren't
called a "tech" company since we do eCommerce and aren't a startup.

We pretty much reflect the local demographics.

~~~
HillaryBriss
That's interesting to hear. Maybe my theory is all wrong.

I guess I was thinking mostly of the small, VC funded startups, and the big,
name-brand tech companies mentioned the article.

~~~
fweespeech
Tbh, it probably has something to do with the fact we don't hire based on
school name at all or even degree. We just care if you can perform X business
function and have a couple years experience at it.

The OP pretty much only lists "Tech companies from SV" so it seems to me at
least its a cancer specific to that group.

------
Alex3917
While there is more than adequate evidence of racism in tech hiring, it would
be useful if articles like this included the expected percentage of X
engineers if there were no bias in the hiring process.

E.g. if the expected percentage of black engineers if there were no bias in
the hiring process was 2%, that seems like important information to include.

~~~
dareobasanjo
Since you're the second person who's asked on this thread. Here's a link to
stats about STEM (including computer science) graduates in the US -
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm)

Assuming everyone who graduated with a CS degree from the US was hired at an
equivalent then one would expect something closer to 7%-8%.

~~~
statics
A few very bad assumptions there: 1) not all employees have CS degrees from
the US, many are foreign 2) the graduation rate by "race" or "gender" in 2015
is not what is was in 2005, 1995, 1985 or 1975, and the any industry has many
people who graduated a long time ago. Comparing current year demographics to
the industry as a whole seems really off. 3) Due to historical economic status
which is correlated with race, more of those that started off less well off
tend to gravitate towards more stable companies.

None of these things mean that negative racial discrimination or stereotyping
don't exist, just that we shouldn't expect numbers for a particular industry
population to match the aggregate stats on who graduated last year.

------
selectron
To really understand if companies are biased or not, you also need to know the
percent of applicants to these companies who are black. If only 2% of
applicants to Google are black, I would expect only 2% of new hires at Google
to be black.

The assumption that a white applicant and a black applicant should be roughly
equal is a strong prior. I would need to see convincing data to counteract
this assumption.

~~~
jameshart
Absolutely, this is rather the point of the article: that diversity efforts
focused on eliminating bias during selection are pointless unless you also
ensure a diverse candidate pool to begin with.

------
whack
I empathize with the author's frustration but there were many parts of the
article which I found troubling:

> _" I also quickly learned that hiring managers for “good internships” don’t
> come to black colleges looking for interns regardless of how good the
> students are."_

I've never met anyone who didn't claim that their colleges is full of good
students. There seems to be a heavy bias here - everyone has a rosy opinion of
their own college, but clearly, companies can't go to every single one. If you
feel that X college, whether it's a HBU, state-college, community-college, or
code-camp, is great enough to be shortlisted over other alternatives, you
really need to make a compelling case for this, using data. Just saying that
Microsoft doesn't recruit from the college you used to attend, and therefore,
they are being unfair/stupid, doesn't sound like a great argument.

> _In one of the most reasonably-priced major cities of America, a ten-minute
> walk from one of the world’s top ten engineering schools, Google has an
> office. There were once dozens of SWEs and SREs in this office, humming
> along, cranking out GWT, nerd shit etc. Google decided to close Atlanta
> engineering_

Again, this sounds exactly like the point above about colleges. There are ~30
major cities in America, and Google can't open significant dev-centers in
every one of them. If you think that ATL would provide great value for Google
along all axes (not just diversity), you need to make a compelling case for
it. Just stating that Google doesn't have a major office in ATL, and therefore
they are being unfair/stupid, isn't a great argument.

> _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._

> _when tech companies talk about “lowering the bar” by hiring minorities they
> are actually just saying they don’t want to hire minorities since no one in
> tech actually has a bar that works very well in determining good versus bad
> hires regardless of ethnicity or gender._

This was the part I actually found most troubling. Google has an extremely
high rejection rate - a large majority of their candidates end up getting
rejected for "not being fast enough, not having strong internships" or for any
number of other reasons. When the average Joe gets rejected for the above
reasons, it's ok, but when a diversity candidate gets rejected for the same
reasons, it's suddenly a problem?

And what exactly is the author advocating when he talks about how interviews
are useless, and therefore, there's no point in having a bar at all? It just
sounds like the author is saying that there's no way of figuring out who's
going to be a great candidate, and therefore, you might as well just set some
minimum qualifications, and then hire anyone who meets those minimum
qualifications and happens to be a diversity-candidate. It's arguments like
this that make people think that diversity == lowering-the-bar. Yes, hiring is
extremely hard, but no, that doesn't mean it can be skipped or watered down.
Every successful company needs to figure out some heuristic that will allow
them to hire only the best candidates, and any diversity push needs to be made
while still respecting this stringent heuristic. If you think that Google's
heuristic in unfairly biased against diversity candidates, in a way that's
unrelated to job performance, you really need to provide evidence for this.
Simply saying that Google rejected some diversity candidates because they
didn't pass their evaluation-process, is a really weak argument.

Overall, I agree with the author's thesis that the interviewing process is
biased in many ways (race, gender, age, height, charisma, eloquence, etc etc),
and that we need to do more to fix these problems. But the arguments he
presents are so weak, and the insults he piles on MS/GOOG/FB are so unfair,
that I find myself disagreeing with most of what he says.

------
adrianN
Last I checked, the amount of black CS students in college is about the same
as the as the amount of black software engineers.

~~~
dareobasanjo
I'm honestly confused by your response. Companies like Facebook, Twitter &
Google hire 1% blacks in tech and 2% overall. Blacks as a percentage of
college graduates in engineering or non-engineering fields are way more than
2% of graduating classes.

However most Silicon Valley tech companies under-hire from this demographic
for their own reasons.

~~~
Sacho
The numbers are confusing to me.

Here's an article claiming that the amount of computer engineers is around 5%
of all black college majors -
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-09/report-
few...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-09/report-few-black-
college-students-major-in-high-paying-fields).

Now we need to make an implicit assumption that the enrollment and graduation
rate of blacks is the same as the rate for the general population(I couldn't
really find information on that, apologies). Using demographics data, blacks
are ~15% of the overall population in the US. That means that about 0.75% of
the total population are "blacks" && "engineer major". That would mean all the
listed companies are overhiring black engineers if simply based on a college-
graduate quota.

Besides that, I liked the gist of your post, but the end seemed incredibly
disingenuous. Correlating Apple's number of black engineers and its value does
not imply causation, and that statement seemed like an emotional appeal.

~~~
dareobasanjo
That's really weird math since you start with engineering college graduates
then jump to talking about the entire population. So you're comparing apples
to oranges.

Here's something simple. Go look at the metrics for demographics of college
majors by degree at
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c2/c2s2.htm)

Blacks are about 7% - 8% of college graduates with CS degrees each year. So
one would assume that if tech companies were hiring US college graduates at an
equivalent rate based on graduation rates then most tech companies would look
like Apple that has 7%-8% black employees in their workforce.

~~~
fwadfka
> Blacks are about 7% - 8% of college graduates with CS degrees each year

Your data lumps together "Computer sciences," which probably includes
Information degrees. If you look at CS degrees only it's about 2.5% in 2015
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101868)).

------
getgoingnow
Take a look at this [1]:

*SAT-Mathematics

White - 534

Black - 429

Asian - 598

Even if Blacks get CS/Engineering degrees, they can still be less competent
than Asians/Whites. Tech companies attract the most talented people (e.g.
Google gets millions of job applications per year) and they can pick those who
are the most competent/best in class. Those are usually Asians and Whites. For
example, if 10% of all CS degree holders are Black, you can't expect that
there will be 10% of Blacks at tech companies.

[1]
[https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171)

~~~
williamaadams
This is hilarious. SAT scores as indicator of competency, rather than merely a
measure of how well someone takes a test.

~~~
getgoingnow
Yes, it's an _indicator_ of competency in mathematics, which in turn makes a
good computer scientist. What else would be a better indicator of math
competency than math tests?

~~~
williamaadams
The hilarity is in how this perpetuates the reasons for excluding a class of
individuals from participating in the software creation process.

Good in math probably won't give you the empathy and insights into how
technology could help rural Kentuckians.

Additionally, software today is very much a 'poke at the frameworks, and mash
it together' sort of affair. When I joined MS 17 years ago, knowing how to use
WinDbg was probably a big skill to have. Today, it's more about knowing how to
use various JavaScript frameworks.

Math specifically comes into play perhaps when talking about data science
specifically, but there's an app for that.

If Math is a stand in for an ability to think critically, and apply the
scientific method, then biologists, physicists, and even social scientists,
might be just as qualified as any engineer.

So, yah, one more exclusionary myth about the qualifications of engineers, and
who's best at it (whites and Asians? really?).

~~~
getgoingnow

      The hilarity is in how this perpetuates the reasons for excluding a class of individuals from participating in the software creation process.
    

You are excluded from companies using computer science if you are bad at math.
Blacks are worse at math than Whites and Asians, therefore they will be hired
less - especially in companies where everyone wants to work.

    
    
      Good in math probably won't give you the empathy and insights into how technology could help rural Kentuckians.
    

Will being bad at math give you that? What does building software have to do
with rural Kentuckians and how are black software engineers going to help you
with that?

    
    
      Additionally, software today is very much a 'poke at the frameworks, and mash it together' sort of affair.
    

Are you trying to say that Blacks are as good as Whites/Asians at poking at
frameworks. If they are bad at math, maybe they are bad at this as well. BTW,
I am referring to computer science, not knowing JS frameworks. Computer
science requires mathematics.

    
    
      So, yah, one more exclusionary myth about the qualifications of engineers, and who's best at it (whites and Asians? really?)
    

What is mythical about this? I've given you the data that clearly shows that
Blacks are worse at math than Whites/Asians. They also perform worse at SAT-
Critical reading.

~~~
williamaadams
Well, I suppose this is fun at a certain level, because there are assumptions,
and conclusions, built upon assumptions.

I'll try to clarify my position.

The back of my Microsoft badge says something about helping everyone on the
planet.

Such a mission is as much about emotional intelligence and an ability to be
empathetic as it is about actual application of technology.

Let's imagine the very high IQ'd high scoring person, who grew up in a certain
environment has the task of creating software for someone in a rural community
they know nothing about, and they will not visit. They are very clever, and
they'll come up with something.

Now, let's imagine a child who grows up in that rural community. By standard
testing methods, they don't have the same level of skills as the high SAT
scoring individual, so they never get hired into tech, they're never consulted
about what might help the needs of their community. They are in fact
intelligent, just didn't go to a very good school, nor had the various
opportunities that the high scoring SAT person did, so they're out of the
loop.

So, in my mind, if I have a mission to help such people, it seems the best way
I could do that would be to incoroporate them into my dev team in some way.
That might include providing them with additional educational opportunities
they might not have otherwise had. It might be a temporary contracting or
consulting role rather than full employment.

It does not mean total exclusion from the creation process, which is what
occurs today based on things like a test score, or a college affiliation.

This is the argument of why diversity matters in tech. All the SAT scores,
college graduation rates, and the like, are just the pieces we're moving
around to justify our reasoning for remaining fairly homogenous in our hiring
practices.

At this point, you don't know me, my history, ethnicity, nor accomplishments
in tech. The full reveal might be enlightening.

------
dlss
It's quite surprising to me that Apple seems to be doing so much better at
diversity hiring. I think Google, Facebook, and Twitter are quite serious with
respect to diverse hiring / I find it hard to believe Apple's methods wouldn't
be found out and copied by _any_ of them if they worked so much better.

Has anyone looked into the possibility that rather than Apple being uniquely
good at diversity hiring, Apple is just uniquely good at gerrymandering their
diversity report?

~~~
toyg
Did we read the same post? The whole point is that they are _not_ actually
serious. There is a lot of lip service, but then diverse candidates in
practice are stonewalled at every step: by location, by academic background,
during evaluation etc.

If they _were_ serious, they could look beyond their institutionally-placed
(and fairly arbitrary, let's say it) obstacles, like Apple did for his friend;
but they won't, which means they are _not_ serious.

~~~
HillaryBriss
Yeah. Going further, another part of "being serious" is training and a
demonstration of commitment to the employees after they're hired.

Something like "Yes, this individual did not have a great education in youth
because their local school district sucked. Nevertheless, this individual has
potential. So we're committed to keeping this person on board and providing
the necessary training. We will go to great lengths to make this person a
useful and vital part of this company."

~~~
williamaadams
Amen to that. It's a whole pipeline thing that begins before they even
interview, and extends at least as far as their first few promotions.

And you do it not just because you want to tick off some numbers, but you do
it because a diverse workforce is going to create a more valuable and relevant
company.

------
dforrestwilson
I'm sorry but I get bothered by the current national focus on rewarding or
advantaging diversity based on arbitrary traits such as skin color and gender.

I'm 5'8 and male. Height tends to correlate to success and salary. Should I
receive special treatment because of my disadvantage? Perhaps a certain ratio
of company board members should be required to be under a certain height
threshold.

I've also been bald since I was 18, a trait I have no control over, but which
likely led to some lost opportunities (with the opposite sex at least). Do I
deserve something special for that?

------
davidf18
Companies should hire on the basis of merit, not skin color or sex.

I did undergrad EE/CS at Illinois/Urbana and I don't recall any blacks in any
of my classes at all.

I've worked at high tech firms and never see black programmers/engineers.

I've worked for a Wall Street bank and never saw black programmers/engineers.

I've been to many tech Meetups and conferences and other conferences where
software plays a major role but I've almost never seen black
engineers/computer scientists.

Some of the meetups / conferences I see few women, but I do see women in the
aggregate, but almost never blacks and I'm in NYC where there are many blacks.

I've been to Google Tech talks in the Google building in NYC yet never see
blacks.

Since the meetups don't require you go to "the right school" etc. and are free
to attend it shows that there just are that many blacks that seem to be
interested.

Computer software and hardware are those areas where competence is extremely
important. Hire on merit, not on other indicators.

~~~
beat
As someone who grew up poor (albeit white), I'm going to try to explain a core
problem to you - role models.

When I looked at the adults around me growing up, I didn't see educated
people. The responsible adult professionals were motorcycle mechanics, truck
drivers, stuff like that. The less responsible were day laborers or petty
criminals. The only people I encountered who were educated were teachers and
doctors, and the wealthy men my father often worked for whom he
condescendingly called "edjicated mow-rawns" in his thick Kentucky drawl. What
I knew of success was seething class resentment.

I don't think I knew a single adult who was an engineer or technical
professional. But I was clever, and read a lot of science fiction. I was
originally interested in automotive/motorcycle engineering, having grown up
around racing. But I discovered computers in high school, and that was that.

The boundaries we can imagine are limited by our childhood experiences. If you
grow up wealthy and privileged, surrounded by doctors and lawyers and
executives, you expect adulthood to look like that. If you grow up in a world
where the only adults you know are hustlers and criminals, that's what you can
imagine.

So why aren't there more black engineers? In part, because there aren't black
engineers. And what black engineers there are, are underemployed, because they
didn't necessarily go to the elite schools or have the other earmarks of
privilege.

Fixing this is going to take more than the myth of rugged individualism.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Glad to hear you made it out. But seems like your own story gives lie to the
theory that role models are necessary. You didn't have any; didn't need them.
Just needed opportunity.

~~~
beat
It's possible to escape without role models - but it's a lot harder. And quite
frankly, I'm still privileged. I'm white. I'm male. If I'd been black, I don't
think I would have escaped. The fact that I'm a white male means that, once
I've melted into the new System, no one notices me as different. One of my
best friends, who is far more professionally successful than me, is black. It
still trips him up all the time. If he drives through the wrong town, cops
don't see a doctor who shifted careers to finance. They see a big dark-skinned
black dude driving a car way too nice for him.

White male engineers, working careers surrounded by white males, socializing
mostly with successful white professionals, typically have no clue how
everyone else lives. Their advice is mostly useless. Or, as a female friend
recently put it, it's like someone whose entire experience with horses is
owning a stuffed unicorn giving advice on how to ride to people struggling
with actual horses.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's a very vivid analogy! I'll use that in future if you don't mind.

~~~
beat
Isn't it? My friend Jennifer came up with that. I'm sure she wouldn't mind if
it spreads around!

