Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

https://medium.com/@shaft/thought-on-diversity-part-2-why-diversity-is-difficult-3dfd552fa1f7

by ondrae • 11 years ago

106 207 11 years ago

Mithaldu6• 11 years ago

HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post.

I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o... ) wasn't normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter with its 1% falls far below.

I'm sorry for my mistake.

My original post below for context for the replies made to it, but which is otherwise useless.

------------------------------

It's alway a little confusing when people bring up diversity reports that aren't normalized to an appropiate comparison metric. (Possibly local demographics, or any number of more in-depth metrics. I also earlier suggested applicant demographics, but justizin pointed out those are not feasible.)

Also see: https://xkcd.com/1138/

To bring it into contrast with the article, he says:

"<5% make up engineering and product management combined."

According to this census report: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty....

Race - Black or African American 48,870 6.1%

The twitter numbers are thus a little below average, but not necessarily unexpected given where Twitter's headquarter is located.

Edit:

According to this, Twitter has roughly 30% asians: https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-can-be-p...

Which seems to fit the census as well:

Race - Asian 267,915 33.3%

Another Edit:

To clarify, i am not saying that there is no problem. I'm merely saying that in order to solve a problem, one must both set appropiate goals, as well as correctly identify the root cause. Both of these can only be done usefully by applying statics correctly.

Kinnard• 11 years ago

That's a solid point. I don't know that that data is so accessible to anyone outside of a given companies HR department.

ksenzee4• 11 years ago

Does Twitter hire only from the local area? If they have a relocation program, the local demographics are a lot less relevant.

Mithaldu6• 11 years ago

Very fair point, and a little hard to tackle. I have no solid answer either as to how to get fully correct statistics that actually help in evaluating just how bad the situation is, and where to start working on it. But, as you point out: One must take into account many factors in detail in order to get anything related to reality.

mazerackham10• 11 years ago

Twitter definitely has a relocation program. And in general, engineers move to the Bay Area in order to work at companies like Twitter.

guelo• 11 years ago

Most bay area tech workers have moved here after getting a job so the local census doesn't mean much.

andreasklinger• 11 years ago

It's even actually reenforcing itself based on the bias

Impossible• 11 years ago

Your numbers break down for the Hispanic\Latino population according to your own sources. The 2010 census says San Francisco has a 15.1% Hispanic population and Twitter has 3% Hispanic employees.

Mithaldu6• 11 years ago

They only break down if you assume i'm saying there is no problem. ;)

dalke3• 11 years ago

Based on my own cursory observations of the population flux in the Bay Area, I believe your analysis and thus conclusion is based on a false premise.

That analysis assumes that the hiring base is predominately drawn from local people. Speaking anecdotally, I know many people who graduated from college and headed to the Bay Area to look for a job. I myself moved to Mountain View for a job, then later moved away.

A more complete analysis along the lines you took would look at where people in engineering and product management were, say, 1 or 5 years previous. That are would likely better characterize the relevant population statistics.

As an obviously contrived example, suppose people in engineering and product management are only in the Bay Area for 4 years, burn out, and leave, and suppose the companies offer free relocation from anywhere in the US. Then it doesn't make sense to look at the local demographics.

As a more real-world case, consider a place like Los Alamos National Labs, which has a large number of people from around the world working there, with a relatively high turnover rate partially due to interns, post-docs, and visiting professors. Los Alamos county was carved out for the lab, so the demographics of the county reflect the lab, but most of the people working at the lab are not from Los Alamos.

I do not have access to these sorts of numbers, merely pointing out how it's not easy to interpret the numbers you gave, or the certainty of your conclusion that it's a "not unexpected" result. I suspect the uncertainty is actually very high, and a shot-in-the-dark/back-of-the-envelope estimate isn't likely to be useful.

Mithaldu6• 11 years ago

I did express the thought of "normalized to an appropiate" metric badly. I don't know what that metric is, and don't presume to know. Local demographics were just one example to me. I'll correct the post.

dwmtm• 11 years ago

Why not look at the areas where people in engineering and product management came from? It takes very few steps before we start expecting all metrics to resemble global metrics.

serge2k6• 11 years ago

Alameda county right across the bridge is 12.6% black or african american, and Oakland in particular is 28%. Of course I think all this bears little relevance to a company that recruits candidates from pretty much anywhere.

dang• 11 years ago

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10506093.

imglorp• 11 years ago

in 2013, 4.5% of CS graduates from the top 25 schools were African-American, and 6.5% were Hispanic/Latino.

That's a problem. Hiring corps not only need to screen more applicants in order to find more applicants above their quality bar, but they also need to engage the community to get more kids interested in their fields and encouraged through school.

It's the long view, the generation long kind. Public corp cost accounting idiotry will not support investment like that, so it's up to the private corps.

protomyth3• 11 years ago

Fix the demographics and STEM interest in elementary and pre-K, then we might get a more diverse tech field. Until people start looking at the start of the problem, fixes at the end are limited.

MBCook7• 11 years ago

You're right there are problems earlier, but things can still be improved now while the rest of the pipe is fixed.

Kiro• 11 years ago

I don't understand. Sure, the name idea wasn't perfect but the VP had good intentions. Is this really that upsetting?

ksenzee4• 11 years ago

I imagine it was upsetting because it showed the depth and breadth of the VP's ignorance. How many times have you wanted to leave a job because you just couldn't deal with the stupidity any longer? It's no fun to be a domain expert who's constantly surrounded by people who know nothing about your area of expertise.

notahacker2• 11 years ago

Yeah, I'd agree with the OP's reasoning about why the idea wasn't very good, but if that mistaken attempt to help is grounds for quitting, they're going to really struggle at a corporation that's less interested in identity politics.

mikestew• 11 years ago

As ksenzee alludes to in a parallel reply, it could be (to use an American cliche) the straw that broke the camel's back, coming on the heels of a whole host of stupid decisions. I've been there, where no single decision or behavior is enough to quit over, but enough of those add up and one starts looking for the door.

unit91• 11 years ago

Agreed. It seems like this particular idea could have been abandoned, without aborting the entire endeavor (or quitting the company). The words "feasibility study" come to mind...

As an aside, I ran the names Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Morgan Freeman, Ben Carson, and Charlie Rangel against one the tools the author mentioned [1] and also got no correct answers.

1. http://www.textmap.com/ethnicity/

Lerc• 11 years ago

I ran a few. I wouldn't rate it highly.

    George Washington	GreaterEuropean, British
    John Smith	GreaterEuropean, British
    Barack Obama	GreaterAfrican, Africans
    Mike Brown	GreaterEuropean, British
    Tamir Rice	GreaterEuropean, Jewish
    Eric Garner	GreaterEuropean, British
    John Crawford	GreaterEuropean, British
    Akai Gurley	GreaterEuropean, British
    Ezell Ford	GreaterEuropean, British
    Cynical Oogaboogoo	Asian, IndianSubContinent

mazerackham10• 11 years ago

Ya, the idea sounds terrible if you just think about it for a split second:

Most Black Americans are descended from slaves. And their slave owners forced their family name on them. Slave owners were white. So these names will register as white names.

Completely destroys any accuracy concerning Black people.

Floegipoky• 11 years ago

I think it was really because of frustration that this VP was so willfully ignorant about the issue; the author talks about how they kept focusing on the hiring pipeline even after the data clearly showed that the problem is that diverse candidates are never even entering the pipeline.

jusben13692• 11 years ago

Yes I think this is heading in the right direction. "Willfully ignorant" Let's assume this person (the SVP) is very bright if only based on the fact he is an SVP at Twitter. So you know from experience that if he puts his mind to it he is capable of solving complex problems. Here's a problem you care about deeply and your super bright problem solving SVP comes back with such a flawed approach to tackle it. It would be disheartening.

jonesb6• 11 years ago

Anyone else get the strong feeling that articles like this are a detriment to equal rights movements? If you're misrepresenting facts and statistics people will eventually catch on and simply not trust you anymore, skewering any ability you have to raise awareness and make a difference..

beat9• 11 years ago

Yeah. A lot of white men get that sense.

spacehome5• 11 years ago

That's an ad hominem attack of the exact kind that (I'm guessing) jonesb6 would argue against. If you have some concrete non-racist criticism of jonesb6's post let's hear it. Ideas should be judged on their own merits not the skin color of the originator ... much like Twitter VPs.

peterwwillis7• 11 years ago

Please provide examples of misrepresented facts and statistics in this article.

serge2k6• 11 years ago

Amazon not bothering to separate out engineering from their fulfillment centers (it's in the chart).

Granted, that isn't by the author, but it shows a company trying to dodge the diversity issue.

xlm1717• 11 years ago

I don't think that's why it's a detriment, but I think twitter took a step back in terms of diversity by losing this guy, which I think is a detriment.

theuttick3• 11 years ago

The one thing that he never explains is exactly what "diversity" he is looking for at Twitter. It seems that the only thing that matters to him is the color of the person's skin. In other words, an African-American MIT CS grad that grew up in Iowa is somehow going to come at problems differently than a white guy from the same town and school and with the same background. I wouldn't really call that diversity, that's just racism in that one man's view on a technical matter is somehow different because of his race.

What they should look to do is recruit people who got to programming or designing through paths other than MIT or Stanford. Hire the guy that was a painter and then started building website UIs when he saw how those skills transferred. Hire the guy that graduated from the small state school and spent all of his free time web programming. That - at least to me - is the kind of diversity that comes at problems from various angles.

The VP idea with names was stupid, but if I walked away from a job every time one guy had a stupid idea i'd be locked in a closet somewhere howling at the world's stupidity.

My 2 cents. I got to get back in my closet.

jbob2000• 11 years ago

Yes. This. My company makes a point to hire out-of-field engineers. I'm a self-taught developer with a philosophy degree. My coworker has a degree in astrophysics. We have a linguist, a theater major, some people with diplomas, and a "dropout". Shooting for Diversity with a capital D is misguided.

MBCook7• 11 years ago

At one point the author talks about the issue that the majority of Twitter hires come from just a handful of schools.

I assume he (or she, don't remember the name) is looking for any kind of diversity, although their experience (and the chart posted) clearly talk about ethnic diversity, which may be what they have the most direct experience with.

MBCook7• 11 years ago

Really? Less than 5% of staff are non-white and you're arguing he needs to explain what "diversity" is?

Come on. At under 5% basically ANYTHING ELSE is diversity.

Also, he does touch on this in the article. He says that Twitter relies heavily on a few schools for hiring so even if they get 'diverse' candidates from those schools they've still had a very similar experience compared to people from geographically diverse schools. That alone would add one form of diversity. He said he's seen this resulting in group think, and I can believe that.

But really? You want people to define diversity in this situation? That seems like a 'no true scotsman' setup to me.

uxp100• 11 years ago

about 5% of staff are non-white, for a definition of white that includes hispanic and asian people.

bobcostas55• 11 years ago

44% are non-white. There's a table with the numbers right in the article.

ksenzee4• 11 years ago

In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently.

That doesn't mean they'll give different answers to a question on how to traverse a linked list. But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform.

mazerackham10• 11 years ago

Huge upvote here. As much as we would like to forget about race in America, the fact is: Race Matters.

The way people look at you, talk to you (or ignore you), talk about you, extend invites, etc..that ALL changes with your race.

muuh-gnu3• 11 years ago

These experiences will have shaped the two men differently.

You are implying that those negative experiences are a product of racism and not of simple statistics.

Maybe, only maybe, people _dont have_ as many problems with white guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie as they have with black guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie, so they dont call the cops on the former and call the cops on the latter.

Youre implicitely ruling out the mere _possibility_ that there maybe, only maybe, _might_ be a problem with blacks, that isnt a problem with whites, asians, indians or hispanics.

Lawtonfogle9• 11 years ago

In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up.

The differences between their experiences is smaller than the differences between that black individual (sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) and someone of the same race who grew up in a significantly different socioeconomic class. If we want to increase diversity, the best would be to do so by class first, gender second, and race third.

jarfil4• 11 years ago

But they'll give different answers on how to build a content moderation feature, how to prevent abuse, how to protect freedom of expression on the platform.

I don't think it's the tech department's job to define those.

theuttick3• 11 years ago

Yes, white and black people will likely have different experiences growing up. Most white people that I know - including myself - were routinely attacked at school because of their race. Every white person that I know has had to look at a job interview and wonder if he didn't get called back because the job was only for certain people.

However, none of this would help the white person build a content moderation feature or prevent abuse or protect freedom of expression better than the black person.

May I ask specifically how a person's belief that their name was the cause of failing to get a job leads them to create a better content moderation feature?

mazerackham10• 11 years ago

Wow, trying to redefine racial diversity as racism.

Having a different skin color makes a HUGE impact on the way you experience life, especially in America. Holding all other things equal, that alone will give you a different outlook on life, and likely different ideas too.

muuh-gnu3• 11 years ago

Wow, trying to redefine racial diversity as racism.

If a diversity quota decides about you gettnig a job or not getting a job, then it is indistinguishable from a race quota, i.e. racism.

gotchange3• 11 years ago

that's just racism in that one man's view on a technical matter is somehow different because of his race.

It's just ethocentrism or more specifically in his case Afro-centrism. Racism as a condemnation shouldn't be bandied about this lightly. The US media already devalued it and made it a joke by their excessive and irresponsible use of the term.

yummyfajitas8• 11 years ago

This guy sort of sort of undermines the standard case for diversity:

"Twitter as a platform has empowered underserved and underrepresented people. It has fomented social movements and..."

Sounds like twitter is killing it for people of all ethnic groups. It's as if a bunch of White/Asian dudes can actually design algorithms that work for everyone. So, um, why do we need a non-Asian engineer?

It's also worth questioning how a black person would think differently from the (apparently highly effective) white/Asian workforce. I've seen very few meaningful examples of this and I've never experienced it (I'm usually the only person of my race). My current job is mostly Punjabi's, no techies of my ethnic group, and my unique perspective is "lets all be Bayesian cause Frequentism is ass backwards" and "stop the multiple fucking comparisons!"

A naughty question: suppose I'm wrong, and black people actually do think differently. Given that whites/Asians seem to be doing such a great job, why do we think that "different" is actually better or even useful? In statistics terms, given two different functions f and g which are estimators for some truth t, it's unlikely that |f(x)-t(x)| = |g(x)-t(x)|. One of them is probably better.

volaski3• 11 years ago

Because the real world doesn't revolve around newtonian physics. It's quantum physics.

ZeroFries• 11 years ago

This is a social level question, not a physical one?

mazerackham10• 11 years ago

You honestly think it's "worth questioning how a black person would think differently"?

Different experiences yield different points of view yield different ideas

yummyfajitas8• 11 years ago

Ok, so what's the black perspective on eliminating the fail whale? What's the black idea about how to filter my feed?

Lets be concrete here, rather than appealing to vague platitudes.

MBCook7• 11 years ago

(I accidentally down voted you, sorry).

The fact that Twitter enables diversity doesn't mean that they have or understand diversity. It may be that they simply haven't accidentally stepped on it.

If they don't know why what they're doing is working then they can't successfully improve it further, or avoid squashing it unintentionally and irreparably.

Honestly your comment reads very racist to me. "why do we need a non-Asian engineer?", "suppose I'm wrong, and black people actually do think differently. [if twitter is doing good] why do we think that "different" is actually better or even useful?"

So Twitter is doing great, and you've basically reduced it to either 'race/perspective never matters' or 'non white/asians are inferior'. I'm sure you'll say it's the former.

Wow.

(Now that I've re-read your comment, I'm happy with my down vote).

yummyfajitas8• 11 years ago

My personal view is that my race doesn't matter for the vast majority of job functions. It's literally never mattered for me. I have no magical non-Indian perspective on statistics or algorithms.

But yes, if different races do behave differently, it's valid question to ask whether you actually want that different behavior. As a silly hypothetical to illustrate the point, humans and leopards behave differently. Turns out one of them is a lot worse for the office environment than the other.

If you want to argue that A != B, you are explicitly allowing for the possibility that A < B. So some argument is necessary why that isn't the case.

But again - I think A == B, which I guess makes me racist.

new_corp_dev• 11 years ago

The implication is that diversity of experience/background/culture leads to diversity of thought and diversity of ideas. That's fairly logical and noble goal, but it ignores the idea that that same diversity of interests contributes to a different average career path. It simultaneously argues for "the same, but different".

If we're going to blame the employers, can someone show me that there's a disproportionately large number of unemployed minority engineers that are seeking work but not getting it?

theorique4• 11 years ago

If we're going to blame the employers, can someone show me that there's a disproportionately large number of unemployed minority engineers that are seeking work but not getting it?

Makes sense, but I'd say it should be a disproportionately large per-capita fraction of minority engineers with similar degrees, experience, geographic location, etc, relative to white engineers with the same characteristics.

For example, if minority engineers with Stanford degrees with 7-10 years experience and living in zip codes [A, B, C, ...] are 10% unemployed and their white classmates have a 5% unemployment rate, that could be evidence of deliberate discrimination. It's important to compare like to like, otherwise you can wind up with all sorts of weird conclusions.

golemotron• 11 years ago

It's also worth questioning how a black person would think differently from the (apparently highly effective) white/Asian workforce. I've seen very few meaningful examples of this and I've never experienced it (in most of my jobs I'm the only person of my race).

The arguments for diversity usually say that organizations improve when people from different backgrounds are part of them. This is the argument for increasing diversity along gender, orientation, and ethnic lines. If different points of view help then we should be trying for ideological diversity directly.

dreamdu5t2• 11 years ago

Removing barriers to particular ethnicities in hiring? Great. Making it clear in marketing and outreach that all ethnicities are welcomed and encouraged? Great. Establishing a quota of X % of employees should be a certain race? Uh... okay. Should asians be turned down from a job because they've hit the asian quota and need more blacks? I didn't realize companies practiced affirmative action like this.

mazerackham10• 11 years ago

I'm Chinese, and I don't appreciate your attempt at pitting Asians against Blacks.

spacehome5• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's a reductio ad absurdum argument.

hegemonwiggin2• 11 years ago

But seriously, in order to achieve proper racial quotas, we're gonna fire most of the asians. #getready

Lawtonfogle9• 11 years ago

It isn't pitting any race at another. It is a real concern with quotas. One only needs to look at what an Asian needs to score on the SAT compared to what a Caucasian (no need to bring up other races) to see how it can become a problem.

spacehome5• 11 years ago

I didn't realize companies practiced affirmative action like this.

I'm surprised that you're surprised.

civilian2• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure they don't. There are PRs campaigns saying they would like to get closer to those quotas, but I don't think any engineering management is actually going to let their interview process be changed.

At companies I've worked at I've seen the leadership cheerleading race & gender diversity, but not interfering with engineering management's hiring practices. I assume that the leadership is just playing the Public Relations game, because being seen as a proponent for diversity is good press, but not letting it actually change anything. If I'm being even more cynical, then leadership is just clueless, and is also clueless that they shouldn't be averaging engineering with marketing in order to say that we have a good gender ratio.

jpatokal• 11 years ago

Google actually changed their policy: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/google-hiring-non-graduate...

serge2k6• 11 years ago

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. Needless to say, the majority of them performed well.

Why is it needless to say that?

MBCook7• 11 years ago

They wouldn't be useful anecdotes if they weren't?

mentat• 11 years ago

Because the interviewing process is fundamentally broken most places and that the listed items were irrelevant to actual productivity.

dcole29292• 11 years ago

Because they have been proven time and time again to have very little affect on the quality of an engineer. Simply put these are often poor indicators of success even among like candidates. When you're specifically talking minority or low income candidates, which unfortunately often go hand in hand it doesn't make sense to think that any of these factors speak to a candidates suitability for a given role.

volaski3• 11 years ago

What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"? Some people criticize that that statement is racist, but they aren't thinking about the context. When people ask companies to do something about diversity, they're normally asking to carve out more quota for certain minority group, just like how universities carve out certain portion of their student quota for people who donate large amount of money to get in. I guess it works for universities, but a company like Twitter which desperately needs focused group of talented employees, why would/should they do this? It's stupid that someone saying what's right gets taken out of context and is criticized by all the idiots on the internet. Also, isn't asking for this kind of treatment racist/sexist/whatever in itself? I am appalled by this idea as much as I am appalled by the idea of universities accepting students from rich families via donation.

MBCook7• 11 years ago

The only problem I see with a statement like 'we won't lower the bar' is you might accidentally set the bar at a very difficult to achieve level. If it's based on the number of startups you've worked at or which ivy league school you went to etc. then candidates who are technically just a qualified (or could learn to be in very short order) may get passed.

Unintentional sampling bias, I guess.

serge2k6• 11 years ago

Their bar factors in things like going to a top school, which (according to the article) means you now have a much less diverse recruiting pool.

peterwwillis7• 11 years ago

What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"?

1. Assuming hiring a more diverse workforce would lower the bar.

The statement precludes that a more diverse workforce would implicitly lower the bar. This makes no sense. Increased diversity means increasing the many ways one can look at a problem, which improves problem solving and improves creativity. If the very first thing this guy thinks about is that hiring more women or black people would lower the bar, that's fucked up.

2. Assuming non-diverse workforce would not lower the bar.

If you hire shitty people, you lower the bar. There's plenty of white male tech workers who could lower the bar; keeping your workforce from being more diverse does not guarantee you won't hire a bar-lowering white male.

So at the very least it's inaccurate and misleading, and at the worst it is classist, racist, and sexist.

Some people criticize that that statement is racist, but they aren't thinking about the context.

People who haven't had the advantages of white males have a harder time getting the same job, so an attempt is made to 'level the playing field' for someone who probably has exactly the same job competency but not the same socioeconomic advantages. That's the actual context.

When people ask companies to do something about diversity, they're normally asking to carve out more quota for certain minority group, just like how universities carve out certain portion of their student quota for people who donate large amount of money to get in.

It is illegal in the United States for any employer, university, or other entity to have a quota for a certain race. Furthermore you're also assuming that donations preclude acceptance, which it doesn't inherently. The fact that the kid's parents could afford to pay for the best education up to that point gets them farther than the money alone.

jstnjnprr• 11 years ago

The fact that the VP's first reaction to the author's question was to assume that hiring more diverse candidates somehow directly equates to lowering their hiring standards is what's wrong with the statement.

I can't see what one has to do with the other.

groby_b• 11 years ago

It's factually wrong.

If you (try to) eliminate race from hiring, you don't lower the bar. You raise it, because suddenly there's a group of so-so engineers who now can't get a job just because they're white.

If that feels uncomfortable, replace "white" with "MIT student". Or any other in-group.

If you almost exclusively hire from a single group, at some point just being part of that group makes it easier for you to get a job.

As far as I can tell, nobody is asking for hiring quotas based on profile. What people are asking for is an equal chance.

For pretty much any group that's not white/asian male, tech has an issue. The percentage of the minority group in the general demographic is higher than the percentage of people in that group graduating. The percentage of graduates is higher than the percentage of people hired. The percentage of people hired is higher than the percentage of people promoted.

All this diversity thing is asking for is that we take a look why the percentages are decreasing.

E.g. for black people: They're 12% of the general work force. 4.5% of CS bachelors are black. 2% of SV tech employees are black. 1% of Fortune-500 CEOs are black.

There's constant attrition going on, while the number of the main demographic increases as you go up the ladder. (This general relationships hold for other minorities as well, but I don't have numbers handy right now)

That's what diversity asks for - stop the steady attrition of anybody who's not in the majority group.

Kalium• 11 years ago

That's an interesting perspective. I say this because I have personally encountered people who argue that the value of a presumed-novel viewpoint should be expected to outweigh a sufficiently small difference of technical skill or similar in hiring decisions.

Anyway. Are you sure it's a good idea to compare numbers like recent grad percentages and Fortune-500 CEOs? These two in particular strike me as separated by several decades in which society has changed. Perhaps not the most useful comment on current society.

ecdavis• 11 years ago

What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"?

The implicit assumption in that statement is that the current hiring process is not discriminatory, therefore the only way to hire more people of <group X> would be to lower hiring standards. Many people believe the hiring process is discriminatory - and, indeed, there are studies which support that claim.

Leaving aside the issue of discrimination, though, what's curious is that it's widely accepted that hiring in tech is broken. Companies complain that it's extremely difficult to identify talent. Larger companies are willing to risk turning away many qualified candidates if it reduces their risk of a poor hire. It turns out that it's very difficult to reliably identify who is above "the bar" and who is not. There are startups out there trying to solve this problem right now. It's a problem that effects everyone in the industry, too, not just individuals from <group X>.

So, if we lack a reliable way to determine if someone's above "the bar," how on Earth can we say that the reason we don't have more employees in <group X> is because there aren't enough applicants from <group X> who are above the bar? We can't.

theorique4• 11 years ago

What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"?

It is the legacy of the famous Griggs vs Duke Power case.

Requiring IQ tests to filter employees was found to have "disparate impact" with respect to different identifiable groups.

Silicon Valley does a lot of different IQ test proxies in order to filter their prospective employees in a hopefully-not-racist way: programming tests, seeking college degrees, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

jldugger• 11 years ago

The consequences of Griggs v. Duke more complicated than that: the problem with IQ tests is that they are slippery. An employer can say "we want the best and brightest." And they can decide that a degree from Stanford meets that criteria, even if the impact is disparate.

But if they use an IQ test, suddenly there's a slippery slope: Why is the cutoff 130? The error range on IQ tests is non-zero, so what if a black candidate with 129 comes in? How do you defend that disparate impact in court? You can't.

jarfil4• 11 years ago

I think this article reads a lot like "we need equal rights, so give us special treatment because we're different".

All that lobbying for people who did not meet the technical criteria, that getting upset at the idea of someone not noticing his differentiating blackness.

He might have a point in the part about how many minorities are using the service, but I don't see how the tech department should be concerned at all with that. Community relations, marketing, sure. Not tech.

giaour3• 11 years ago

The author mentioned unfair, non-technical criteria being applied to candidates, with the effect being that talented minority engineers were being filtered out of the hiring pipeline.

jarfil4• 11 years ago

How is that a reason for lobbying that only minority candidates be treated fairly. Fix it for all, or don't expect my sympathy.

mazerackham10• 11 years ago

Tech builds the product that these people use. It makes sense for a representation of those users to be building the product.

jarfil4• 11 years ago

It makes sense to have a representative oversee the guidelines for building the product, I don't see how it matters who actually gets to build it.

steven20126• 11 years ago

I've been working for over 20 years in tech at 10+ different companies around the Valley, and I can count on 1 hand the number of direct coworkers that were black, and on 2 hands the number of coworkers that I indirectly worked with that were black.

I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. Trying to solve the diversity issue at the hiring end, when the number of qualified candidates is so small, is not the right way to solve the problem. The only way you will hit higher-than-normal diversity numbers is to reduce hiring standards, which is wrong.

The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel, at the elementary, middle and high school levels. By getting more children of all races involved and interested in tech is the only way we truly increase diversity.

And that is on us, those of us that have experience in tech. My goal is to try to volunteer to teach young children in economically disadvantaged areas about technology. Of course, I have no idea how to start doing this, and would love suggestions or pointers.

peterwwillis7• 11 years ago

This is exactly the same as saying that the reason women had little power in America before 1920 was because they couldn't vote. Which is true, but completely overlooks why women didn't have the right to vote.

Women didn't have power because they were oppressed by men for centuries. Black people don't have "as good an education" because they've been systematically abandoned by the most powerful parts of society for centuries.

You could spend 100 million on a program just in my city alone to try to give disadvantaged kids tech lessons. You know what would happen?

Nothing, because you haven't addressed the fact that they have to sell dope, hustle or work multiple jobs just to put food on their family's table; that they're watching their baby sibling while mom and dad go out to score junk; that their friends need them to join the local gang to protect their neighborhood; that they don't have access to transportation to get to the classes; that the rest of the city needs money and will steal from the education fund as it always does, because why try to teach the kids when they're not going to learn anyway; and of course, because their parents gave up on their future a long time ago and give zero shit about trying to help them make something of themselves.

x3n0ph3n33• 11 years ago

So the fix is to lower hiring standards? What exactly are you promoting as a fix here?

beat9• 11 years ago

Role models matter tremendously too, and that's something that we don't see much, something that's a real problem.

Now, I'm biased toward capability. I think progress is made almost entirely by people who possess both talent and will to power. But that's innate, and evenly distributed across racial and gender lines. So differences in outcomes are, broadly, due to privilege (specifically, resources). If someone has access to education and support, they'll do better than someone who does not, all other things being equal. Racist and sexist results are because of our failure as a society, not racial or gender inadequacy.

But anyway, about role models. For an ambitious child, the limits of "success" are the limits of what they see. That's what they see in their parents and their parents' friends, their neighborhood, etc. Their role models. If the most successful people you see growing up are doctors and lawyers and engineers, you imagine your own success as being a doctor or lawyer or engineer. If the most successful people you see are drug dealers and slumlords... well.

There are very few black engineers in this country. They're underrepresented. Because of this, smart and ambitious young black kids don't get "engineer" as a role model. They may have never met an adult who makes software or hardware for a living. So they have no frame of reference, no concept that this is "success". It's a big problem.

MBCook7• 11 years ago

For an ambitious child, the limits of "success" are the limits of what they see. That's what they see in their parents and their parents' friends, their neighborhood, etc.

I've once saw of glimpse of this first hand and it was really depressing. Knew a waiter at a restaurant my family frequented. One day he was making chit-chat with us and talking about his son (who would have been rather young, 4-8) and that his dream for his son was to be a restaurant manager or a supervisor at a lawn care business or something like that. That was how high that family was dreaming, I guess that was as high as they could see being reasonable (unless they kid was a genius/pro-athlete).

From hearing stories of women in the industry seeing that one person that looks like them that shows the 'you can be this too' seems like it's often a huge help or an important moment.

wpietri5• 11 years ago

Role models matter tremendously too, and that's something that we don't see much, something that's a real problem.

Definitely. I'm probably in tech because my dad was. He started programming in the late 60s. How did he get the job? His dad was an executive at an insurance company; they'd just gotten a computer and didn't really know what to do with it. Not that my dad had any experience, but he was a quick study.

I'm sure that wasn't an option open to black people at the time. Their city still had segregated pools.

wpietri5• 11 years ago

I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general.

You might consider reading the excellent paper, "Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal? A Field Experiment On Labor Market Discrimination": http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

My take is that if tech really, truly has no race or gender discrimination problems, that would be remarkably different than a lot of other US industries. One quick way to check is to ask your friends in those groups whether that's case. The ones I've talked to mostly disagree with you.

The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel [...]

I am strongly opposed to the notion that there is one real way to solve this problem. That you believe you have a plausible solution that might help is great. Definitely do it. But that's no reason to discourage people from trying other solutions.

steven20126• 11 years ago

It is remarkably different. The amount of Asians/South Asians in tech is very high. If there were material racism, then you wouldn't see this. I don't know anyone who wouldn't hire a smart person based on their race. I'm sure it exists in small quantities, just like everywhere else, but I believe it's much smaller in tech than any other industry. The reason why there aren't a lot of blacks and Hispanics in tech I believe is because there simply aren't a lot going to school for it. Again, this was my experience in college, and the experience of most of my colleagues. Which again is because the poor education system especially in poor areas, not because companies are racist against blacks and Hispanics.

I gave my opinion. This is what a discussion consists of. Nowhere did I discourage people from trying other solutions.

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

It's both. The sad fact is that it doesn't take very strong forces to diminish the presence of people of color in tech, just widespread ones that exist at all layers. A slight increase in resumes being passed over for phone screens. A slight preference against hiring due to nearly indescribable "culture fit" reasons. It doesn't require explicit, objective racism at any point.

It's absolutely necessary to kill the myth of tech hiring as a perfect meritocracy. It is not, it's far from it. It's a dirty and incredibly flawed process that barely even works, let alone represents any pretense of egalitarian perfection.

frankdenbow• 11 years ago

If you're in NYC you can check out the Academy for Software Engineering, a cs focused high school. We do mentorship there via iMentor. There's also CSNYC.org which works to support cs education programs to get spread within the school system and to train more teachers on cs topics

RodericDay• 11 years ago

The real way to solve it is at the bottom of the funnel, at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

The way I see it, the biggest beneficiaries of "affirmative action" aren't the people getting jobs because of diversity policies. It's younger, impressionable kids who get to benefit from role models in their likeness.

"Forced diversity" may be the best hack possible to foster persistent diversity down the line, and fix vicious cycles.

wpietri5• 11 years ago

An actual black person in tech responds to points you and others make:

https://twitter.com/polotek/status/662312638324469761

steven20126• 11 years ago

Unless I misread it, I didn't read a single thing that will help a black person today get hired.

Geekette• 11 years ago

* "over 20 years in tech ... I can count on 1 hand the number of direct coworkers that were black ... I don't believe this is due to any sort of racism, but rather due to the education system in general. ... The only way you will hit higher-than-normal diversity numbers is to reduce hiring standards, which is wrong. *

WOW. Haven't time to unpack all that is wrong with your response but mainly: Black people in the US can be found across all strata of society, including top/good schools. The implication that they must all be poor and in inadequate schools is ludicrous.

Part of why the diversity issue is so aggravating is because the # of qualified candidates may be relatively small, but it still significantly exceeds the # of Black candidates hired.

Likewise, stating that the only way to improve diversity is by lowering of standards is wrong. It communicates your obviously flawed perspective that Black candidates in tech are inferior.

steven20126• 11 years ago

Where did I state that "they" must all be poor and in adequate schools?

I agree there is a diversity problem, and my proposed solution is to increase investment in education in disadvantaged areas. And somehow I'm vilified as a closet, biased racist. It's hilarious.

It's responses like this that make any discussion on increasing diversity completely impossible and futile.

mc32• 11 years ago

I too think it begins with parents, attitudes and elementary school. Parents need to steer or at least inform their children about the workforce.

I'd like to see how minority owned or run small to mid size enterprises even large have fared in hiring minorities (their own, as well as outside their own) in the "tech" field. If they can who higher rates, then it may indicate that non minority owned and run are to some extent racist, or at least not actively seeking minorities.

such_a_casual• 11 years ago

"As we continued the discussion, he suggested I create a tool to analyze candidates last names to classify their ethnicity."

Tisk. Tisk. It's been well documented that these tools are used to weed out ethnicities.

yuhong• 11 years ago

As a side note, I dislike anti-discrimination laws. For example, the statistical way of proving discrimination probably only works well for certain kinds of jobs like unskilled labor. Limiting these laws to these kinds of jobs by default would probably be a good compromise.

zaidf• 11 years ago

He is offended that he wasn't invited at various events involving African American leaders. I have black friends who would be offended if they were specifically invited to these events because they were African American.

This sums up my issue with this piece: at best, not all his wishes are necessarily shared by other people of color; at worst, some of the things he wants could actually be construed as racist("Just because I'm black doesn't mean I'm interested in Jesse Jackson" my friend often says.)

vacri2• 11 years ago

The complaint wasn't that black employees weren't individually invited, but that the resource group for black employees wasn't notified.

vacri2• 11 years ago

I find the numbers a little weird. While 'black' and 'hispanic' are underrepresented in the graphs, 'asian' is heavily overrepresented (in yahoo's case, it's triple the percentage), and 'asian' isn't a single ethnicity. Not only are south asians not east asians or west asians (culturally or physically), but Chinese aren't Koreans, who aren't Vietnamese, who aren't Filipino and so forth (these are the groups in the BLS report). The author seems to be using 'diversity' to mean 'proportion of black faces', rather than diversity across the board.

msvan• 11 years ago

I see many people here being skeptical about the arguments for diversity, and asking what the utility is for Twitter. But part of the question is about the utility for minorities as well. This debate is really about minorities being shut out of yet another high-paying industry because they [didn't have a computer growing up/couldn't get in to some brand-name college/didn't have a supportive childhood environment/other systemic inequalities]. By the time the white kid and the black kid get to the bar, the game is already rigged in favor of the white kid.

So maybe the bar is right, in that it selects the most high-performing asset to execute the requisite keystrokes in a cost-effective manner. But maybe the world we should strive for is not one where people spend their lives in anxiety honing their resumes, getting into the right schools, the right clubs, getting the right internships, and having the right connections through daddy. God forbid there are any complications in your life along the way, or if you were born in a place which set you up for failure from the get-go.

I think one great thing about tech is that you can learn it, if you're intelligent and you get shit done. Maybe all you need is somebody to give you a shot to set you off on a trajectory toward the moon.

sktrdie• 11 years ago

The free-market shapes it to be this way. A company as big as Twitter is simply a result of such system. In fact the free market is the opposite of racist/sexist/whatever... it strives entirely on performing the best it can - ironically, even at the cost of the worker's mental health - thereby not giving a shit about who it hires as long as they can perform at the maximum capacity.

gotchange3• 11 years ago

I share the same perspective too.

Capital should be blind to all these qualitative descriptors like race, biological gender, age etc. Successful capitalists are always looking to maximize the return on their investment and they don't subscribe to these inconsequential notions, all what they care for is making money for them. If you're a Martian and are capable of doubling their profits every two years or so, they would be all over you and discard any prejudices toward you.

Money $$$ talks after all esp with the capitalists.

hegemonwiggin2• 11 years ago

What I'm hearing is that we should get Ben Horowitz and Lil Wayne to make an album together.

beat9• 11 years ago

We should get that just because it'd be awesome.

gotchange3• 11 years ago

It really strikes me that Twitter allows such a high degree of politicization in the workplace given the adverse nature and the risks it entails if left unchecked. Office politics sucks enough already, we don't want to bring another element to the workplace to make matters worse for everyone. I don't want to see the office turned into political front lines where parties form and people take sides especially in challenging and turbulent times when the political discussions heat up and get very nasty.

Also, I'd like to point that this fellow engineer comes across as bit pushy with his agenda (It's very obvious that has one). He's treating Twitter as a political organization where he's using his position as a conduit to further his goals as an activist advocating for change which is in my opinion very troubling and unhealthy for any business.

Also, it is worrisome that he didn't perform his duties as a diversity officer[?] efficiently as it seems to me that he was only concerned about his own people, African Americans. (What about other francophone Africans? Foreigners? People of other ethnicities and regions like MENA ..etc?) He didn't seem impartial to me at all and all what he cared about was lobbying for his own group only and this is not really commendable. You don't join a company and start lobbying for certain outside groups like that and expect a smooth sailing. If you're turning the company into a political battle field, you should be ready to face the consequences of your actions.

This brings to another equally important point which is the apparent feud or problem with the VP of Engineering regarding recruitment decisions. This activist engineer was very ambitious and at the same time shortsighted in his plans to make political gains in the organization and not expect opponents to show resistance or experience friction throughout the process. He clearly wanted to influence the decision making process if not tow and subordinate the whole department to his department which in my opinion is very naive thing of him to do and clearly revealed his motives that what he's after is more power in the organization and not reaching a more egalitarian system or environment.

It was all a power play for from the get go and he wasn't very good at it because you don't expect to encroach on someone's turf and not face a backlash or pushback. Even the most level-headed and good tempered person would turn territorial in these situations of adversity and things get ugly that could lead to tensions and strenuous relations between department within the organization.

Finally, his quitting and cop out sealed it for me as to my assessment of his account because no activist worth his salt would bail out and leave the cause he's fighting for like this. Change doesn't happen overnight and you gotta invest heavily and believe truly in your cause to start seeing progress. So, maybe he's more suited to work inside a political organization that's aligned well with his worldview and affiliation where they favor more chip on the shoulder type but he's certainly not a good material or asset and to have on your pro team or in your business.

jusben13692• 11 years ago

I thought it was a fascinating argument that 1) Twitter is struggling to gain new users and 2) Twitter is staffed by male caucasians and asians so no wonder it's struggling to gain new users.

NetWarNinja• 11 years ago

Ok so sorry but this fing bullshit has got to stop. WTF is this BlackLives matter all about? The message was lost when the town was burned down and the entire campaign was started on a thug who robbed the local convenience store for some mini cigars to roll some blunts. Did he have to die? we don't have any video evidence and his homeboy who saw the whole thing isn't going to speak up for fear of being an Uncle Tom / sell out. Black people in tech? I have worked with and even seen star employees who were black who are in tech. In fact just about the entire IT Dept. where I work is Black. They are senior level IT techs making close to 6 figures. To see the Hashtag posted at twitter #Ferguson is just pure idiocy and some guilt ridden conscience to be down with the cause, whatever that is. You have to be the change, sorry stop with the bullshit. I make 6 figures and I am a high school push out. I am that change. I changed my attitude, I changed my way of thinking and the way I interact with people and hell I even rush across the street when I have the right of way when a car needs to make a turn. yeah you know what I mean. Leadership begins when you take that opportunity to step up and I have seen and experienced plenty of examples.

Twitter's only black engineer in leadership quits

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