Silicon Valley Isn't Run by Straight White American-Born Men

http://readwrite.com/2015/08/14/silicon-valley-ceo-diversity

by shahryc • 11 years ago

22 28 11 years ago

coldtea4• 11 years ago

With small exceptions it very much is. And beyond the CEOs you have to take into account stats on VCs and Executive Boards...

[Added]:

And I'd take it one step further to see if there's real diversity or just the appereance of: how many of the women/blacks/asians etc are there with the exact same criteria as the others and not because somebody (always a white male) thought "hey, we have too many white men, let's put a woman/minority on this position, it will look good".

While that might still increase diversity, I see it as hypocrisy for 2 reasons:

1) If the straight white man put aside was better for the job.

2) Token diversity just hides the prejudices under the carpet.

3) Token diversity doesn't help with the underlying reasons behind the inequality (e.g. being poor with less schooling opportunities prevent many blacks to be able to get MBAs and CS education, and instead of helping change that for all, they make a mockery of diversity with random exceptions).

4) Isn't it still white males making those decisions about which token people to include?

shahryc• 11 years ago

good point, it's not representative at the top. but, I think it's a step in the right direction.

yummyfajitas• 11 years ago

So which of the aforementioned ceos do you believe is the token? Tim cook? Satya nadella?

coldtea4• 11 years ago

Obviously I DON'T believe CEOs are appointed as token minorities.

First of all because the "non white straight male" CEOs are few and far between anyway, so it wouldn't give much advantage for your company to tout one when nobody expects you to (not to mention it could hurt in some bigoted demographics).

But second, and most importantly, because those doing the appointing care very much for the actual performance of the CEO (which affects their bottom line) to just put a token person in its place. Whereas for lower positions, even managerial ones, they can appoint the token person here and there much more easily.

I also don't believe a listing of 10 companies, especially without also enumerating also their whole boards, VCs, etc, is enough to make a point.

Besides Asians/Indians are taken as non-threatening and a "safe choice" even by bigots in these days (there's a reverse stereotype associating them with IT). I'd like to see some blacks, latinos, etc into that list (which IIRC make for a huge percentage of the Californian population, but are totally missing even from the "top 10" list).

gizmo686• 11 years ago

To your token diversity point:

That depends on what your goal with diversity is. One reason to prefer diversity is simply that a diverse team would naturally have more perspectives to a problem, more insights into more markets, etc. If this is your goal that simply being an underrepresented minority in tech is itself a qualification with legitimate business value [0]. If you goal is to reduce prejudiced, that token diversity could still be a good step, under the theory that it provides role models to inspire social change to improve the underlying causes.

[0] It is worth noting that this was the original argument in favor of affirmative action in colleges: a more diverse student population increases the quality of education for all students.

coldtea4• 11 years ago

That depends on what your goal with diversity is. One reason to prefer diversity is simply that a diverse team would naturally have more perspectives to a problem, more insights into more markets, etc.

If that's your goal then you don't want to overdo it. E.g. if blacks are generally a poorer demographic so don't buy your expensive products, you shouldn't get that many blacks into the team, because you don't need their insights. And if you sell only to women then you don't want many if any men in your team.

I don't find that a satisfactory stance -- the "I'll only hire X demographic to get their perspectives and insight into the market".

timrpeterson• 11 years ago

So what should we do?

coldtea4• 11 years ago

Well:

1) If some candidates don't make it for real reasons, solve the real reasons first. For poor blacks, latinos etc for example, stop racial prejudice, invest in education and social support for their communities, etc, and help them reach middle class status. This includes lowering the towering college/university costs.

2) When hiring, don't hire because of token sensibility. That just helps a person here and there, who might not even deserve it (aside from their minority status). I guess hire blindly (based on CV, without even the name attached to it) is one way.

kelukelugames5• 11 years ago

1 out of 1 US presidents is black.

We did it!

Oh wait 96 out of 100 members of the US senate is white. But we do have 31 women senators.

allendoerfer• 11 years ago

Ironically, white straight men from SV are under-represented in the Senate - as is everybody else from California or the other big states.

kelukelugames5• 11 years ago

I cannot tell if you are being sarcastic.

HNers should understand basic statistics. Saying 0 out of 2 is an underrepresentation is inaccurate.

thelastguy3• 11 years ago

Well, if my people of color want to get to the top, they're gonna have to develop the neccessary skills require to be at the top (leadership skills, negotiation skills, management skills, acquire the required experience to run a company, and they need to lower their empathy level, down to the point where they can utterly crush their competitors with no remorse, like all those pyschopathic CEO, for example, the CEO of Tobacco, who feels no guilt in killing millions of people each year).

Most of my asians peoples prefer to be the smart math/computer programmer guys who do not want to do the boring day to day chores of running a company, and they prefer to just do amazing things with a computer instead.

Nothing wrong with that.

grardb• 11 years ago

What if I told you... that there is an entire continent out there where almost every company is run by an Asian person?

Please do not perpetuate these ridiculous stereotypes.

thelastguy3• 11 years ago

What if I told you that in those Asian companies that is run by an Asian at the top, that the other 99% of Asian is not at the top?

Not every Asian can get to the top. Just like not every White men can get to the top. The top is the top for one reason, the reason being that only the top percentage of people can get to the top.

Anyway, you're basically saying that in a country of White majority, the men most likely to get to the top of other men, is a White men, while in an country of Asian majority, the men most likely to get to the top of other men is an Asian men.

And not only that, not every men want to get to the top. Some men are perfectly happy with where they are. You can't just force those men who do not want to get to the top get to the top to take on responsbilities that they don't want to take on in the first place.

nostrademons• 11 years ago

Most good CEOs actually need to have very high empathy levels. The tricky part is that they need to understand exactly who will be hurt by a decision and then hurt them anyway. You can't do this with no empathy - you'll be blind to the consequences of your actions - and you also can't do it when you shy away from doing things that will hurt others, which is the natural reaction when you feel anothers' pain.

qmalzp• 11 years ago

Not trying to start any fires, but are non-heterosexuals really underrepresented in Silicon Valley? The culture I've seen seems to fully embrace people of various sexual orientations.

According to Gallup [1], only 3.8% of American adults identify as LGBT, so the fact that even one CEO in the top 10 (in fact #1) is in the club is actually somewhat remarkable.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/183383/americans-greatly-overesti...

lumberjack• 11 years ago

I didn't know that Tim Cook came from such humble backgrounds. That's pretty impressive.

downandout• 11 years ago

Just looking at the CEO roles doesn't exactly give an overall picture of diversity in SV or tech in general. However, many of the arguments I see on the other side - namely that all of the groups mentioned here are in fact underrepresented - neglect one fact: the overall percentages pretty closely mirror the demographics of degree holders in the fields necessary to perform many of the tech jobs in SV.

Women, for example, hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering. Therefore it is only common sense that they wouldn't be getting jobs that require these degrees at the same rate that men do. It's not because of evil white males not wanting to hire women (or any of the other groups that have claimed discrimination in SV) - it's because fewer of them choose the profession. The degree issue is also the reason that the CEO role is diverse - because it doesn't necessarily take an engineering degree to be the CEO of a tech company. Diverse qualifications will yield a diverse pool of talent.

kitsunesoba• 11 years ago

The fact that there's underrepresentation of various groups in SV is but a symptom of a much bigger problem, which is that for whatever reason, these fields and the programs they map to are unappealing to many people. I think the most productive route to take would be to figure out exactly what has gone wrong in our education system and society that makes STEM fields attractive to only a very limited set of individuals and fix it. If this root problem is neglected, making hiring more diverse for diversity's sake will end up being a bandaid on a broken limb.

I am not saying to put a stop to diversity hiring — it's necessary in the interim, because society and the education system can't change overnight — but it does not solve the actual problem and the longer the problem is left unaddressed, the harder it becomes to fix. We need to be putting serious resources into improvements in education and pushing cultural changes to how STEM careers are seen by the general public, and it needs to happen soon.

Eyas3• 11 years ago

The subtitle was cringe-worthy:

Women, gays, and immigrants form a new majority at the top.

What? Looking at the union of all women, all people of color, and all LGBT people, and saying that this group forms a "majority" (non straight-white-U.S. born-males) shows what is wrong with how some view diversity.

Its nice that some women, some LGBT people, and some people of color make it to the top. The talk about diversity has never been that they don't.

The list shows 4 underrepresented groups in the top 10, as if that is a success, forgetting that:

1. There are two women only. 2. There are no U.S. born persons of color in that list.

The only valid statement is that non-U.S. born people seem to exist in healthy amounts. But those like me who are born outside the US shouldn't be helping Silicon Valley check "non-white" boxes off, pretending like race and socio-economic problems in the US that keep persons of color from attaining positions of authority don't exist.

thelastguy3• 11 years ago

Economic problems prevent Whites from getting to the top too, not just Asians or Blacks. So how is that an unfair advantage that Whites have over minorities?

Eyas3• 11 years ago

I'm not sure I follow. Yes, absolutely, Whites are subject to economic problems too-- not just persons of color.

Are you questioning whether a racial divide exists at all in America, where non-whites are subject to unique limitations that Whites are not subject to? Or is your objection different?

Silicon Valley Isn't Run by Straight White American-Born Men

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