Asian workers now dominate Silicon Valley tech jobs (2012)

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22094415/asian-workers-now-dominate-silicon-valley-tech-jobs

by crassus • 12 years ago

27 30 12 years ago

dominotw• 12 years ago

This is from 2012. Maybe put that in the title ?

dang• 12 years ago

Thank you. Given that and the high-indignation, low-information thread it has already precipitated, I think this post can be described as a troll.

obvious_throw2• 12 years ago

That's so strange. According to Shanley Kane and Anil Dash, the Valley is dominated by racist white men who systematically exclude all outgroups.

Clearly, this article is just the white supremacists and their power structures writing puff pieces to hide the slavery lurking within the black heart of the Valley?

crassus• 12 years ago

Progressivism is a low-evidence ideology, but a high status one due to its dominance of universities. From its high ground in academia, it is also invading tech. But yeah, it's mostly wrong.

vezzy-fnord• 12 years ago

You're confusing progressivism with postmodern feminism. The purpose of the latter is not to make any sort of worthwhile progress, but to fuel its followers' various complexes.

tsax• 12 years ago

Look guize, us Asian men don't count in the diversity quota. In fact it works against us. We retain all the 'privilege' narrative-based negative points in Progressive demonology as white men, plus we gain a few systematic discrimination points from University affirmative action programs, etc. Whenever 'diversity' is mentioned, we are either invisible or to be implicitly counted among white men.

wavefunction• 12 years ago

Progressives don't demonize white people. You should investigate what a progressive actually is, rather than regurgitate whatever talking points you're getting from mass media or wherever.

beachstartup2• 12 years ago

all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits.

mikestew• 12 years ago

I seem to recall from a long, long time ago back in the day when I had to fill out some sort of team diversity form at MSFT that Asians didn't count.

Take this anecdotal datum with a huge grain of salt, and season it further with the fact that I'm dredging up memories from ten years ago. Maybe it was Indians (yes, a subset of Asians, I realize), I don't know. I just remember asking HR about $NON_WHITE_GUY, and was told he didn't count because (paraphrasing) "successful minority group in software".

matthewmacleod• 12 years ago

Oh, do fuck off and take your strawman with you.

Nobody—I repeat, nobody at all—is claiming that "the Valley is dominated by racist white men who systematically exclude all outgroups." That's not a thing. Nobody's saying it, except you.

However, people are quite correctly and accurately pointing out that there is an underrepresentation of minority groups in tech. It's great the Asian tech workers aren't suffering from this - but that's not the only problem! In other words, the target of attack is not "white men", but underrepresentation of other groups!

Ignoring for the moment that this article is out-of-date, you'll see from the numbers contained in it that while Asian-American workers proliferate, a mere 4.2% of tech jobs are taken by Hispanics - despite this being a group that forms fully 25% of the population of the area. The same vastly disproportionate numbers apply to other groups. And that's without even getting started on the social and economic issues surrounding the fact that these are H1B workers.

There's no quick and easy solution to this problem, but your gross mischaracterisations do absolutely nothing to help.

mycroft-holmes• 12 years ago

In other words, the target of attack is not "white men"

Have you read Shanley Kane?

obvious_throw2• 12 years ago

A brief and cursory glance at the twitter history of @shanley demonstrates quite clearly that people, specifically visible and influential people, are indeed saying exactly this.

yardie3• 12 years ago

as a 19-year-old junior at SJSU studying computer science, Leu said many non-Asians don't appreciate "the Asian culture, where there is a deep work ethic that America hasn't really bought into yet."

Checks GDP per Capita[1]. I believe she meant "some Americans don't appreciate the Asian culture, where some Asians have a deep worth ethic that some Americans haven't bought really bought into yet."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

beachstartup2• 12 years ago

for the most part, recent asian immigrants have an extremely flawed and incomplete view of american society and how it actually works. this manifests in all sorts of weird ideas about 'americans' (i.e. white people) and half-baked poorly-executed ideas about what it really takes to get ahead in this country.

example: college admissions.

source: my parents and their friends for the past 3 decades.

shadowfox• 12 years ago

Maybe I am confused. What does GDP have to do with this?

yardie3• 12 years ago

Since the P in GDP stands for productivity and the US has one of the highest GDPs I find it extremely ironic when someone says Americans don't have or don't understand work ethic.

afarrell• 12 years ago

""" Tech companies, Lewis said, "do not want to employ Americans. They import labor from overseas, pushing for H-1B visas. Check the job boards. They basically say, 'H-1B Visa. Americans need not apply.' """

Can anyone point to a few examples of this? I've never seen it.

FD3SA2• 12 years ago

Fwd.us?

gopher1• 12 years ago

Yeah, exactly, and even though you're technically prohibited from excluding Americans in the job ads, take it from Cohen & Grigsby, there's plenty of ways around that problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

They'll teach you how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified American applicants.

You can thank them directly here: http://www.cohenlaw.com

doughj3• 12 years ago

Here[1] is a PDF from less than two years ago that gets into detail, with a number of examples.

[1] https://brightfuturejobs.nationbuilder.com/assets/pages/15/N...

ChrisNorstrom2• 12 years ago

✓ Victim Complex: "For years, women, blacks and Latinos have been kept out of the tech job market."

✓ Blame Game: "Now white men are being forced to train their replacements."

✓ Biased Reporting.

Apparently anyone can be a "journalist" now a days. Do you guys remember all those articles about San Francisico Gentrification a few weeks back? All complaining about how the evil white male tech workers were taking up real estate? Ooops. Turns out 50% of the tech workers are Asian. Funny how that was left out. I'm having a hard time believing anything anymore.

I guess there's no such thing as a fluctuation anymore. Every change is a conspiracy.

ntiku• 12 years ago

Asian representing more than 50 percent of the tech company workforce in certain counties does not indicate their salary level, titles, or how much they allocate towards housing, which would be a be better indication of the impact on gentrification. "Funny" how that works.

ChrisNorstrom2• 12 years ago

Funny indeed. http://minus.com/i/bgqCzuSwvcAi1

crypt1d• 12 years ago

There is an interesting observation about Asian cultures made by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers [1]. He argues that one of the reasons why Asians are _statistically_ better at math than others is because of the language and cultural legacy. More precisely, it is a lot easier to remember numbers in Chinese (and other Asian languages, apparently) than in English, giving Chinese children a head start in mathematics. This turns into quite an advantage by the time they reach college. He also argues that societies that were developed on rice farming tend to be more diligent as it is a lot more labor intensive work than ,for example, wheat farming. Also Chinese feudalism had more of a "hands off" approach, where the landlords were always taking a fixed amount of their earnings. So while Europeans were making pretty much the same amount of money during all their harvests, Asians had an income which was more proportional to their efforts. There is a lot more to it for sure, and I don't know if he is right, but its certainly a nice read.

[1] http://gladwell.com/outliers/rice-paddies-and-math-tests/

yardie3• 12 years ago

By this logic Arabs and Persians must be mathematical geniuses since they invented the math system most of the world uses.

Malcolm Gladwell says (sells) a lot of shit. Literally.

FD3SA2• 12 years ago

What fascinates me the most about this and related issues is that there is a relentless drive towards reducing the rights and compensation for salaried workers, while increasing the rights and powers of entrenched, powerful, wealthy elites.

It is no secret that the tech industry is furious with the salaries it is forced to pay engineers. This drives billionaires batshit crazy, enough so that they're willing to pay lobbyists millions to constantly increase the number of impoverished foreign engineers imported on tenuous "work visas".

A cursory glance at history puts this in perspective. Oligarchs and feudal lords went to considerable lengths to ensure the average artisan received little more than a subsistence wage. Furthermore, taxes were for the little people, not the elites. "Government" has historically been a protection racket made for the elite, by the elite. Any delusions to the contrary have been put to rest quite conclusively [1].

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/opinion/capitalism-vs-demo...

argumentum2• 12 years ago

The statements made by Yolanda Lewis in this article are disturbingly racist.

Tech companies, Lewis said, "do not want to employ Americans. They import labor from overseas, pushing for H-1B visas. Check the job boards. They basically say, 'H-1B Visa. Americans need not apply.' For years, women, blacks and Latinos have been kept out of the tech job market. Now white men are being forced to train their replacements."

What does the h1-b visa have to do with Asian Americans? Apparently she believes that only women, black, latino and white people can count as "american".

Also, the idea that "Asian Culture" has a particularly "deep work ethic" or dedication to eduction is confirmation bias. Asians who immigrated to America were a self-selected group of highly educated people who aspired to a better life.

claudiowilson• 12 years ago

There was also no mention of which jobs were held by Asian Americans versus immigrant Asians. I think there's a stark difference between an increase in jobs held by Asian immigrants versus an increase in jobs held by Asian Americans. In the latter, the jobs are still held by Americans.

argumentum2• 12 years ago

That should be true for Black, White and Latino immigrants as well. The assumption that Asians are immigrants while others are not is a prejudiced one.

It's also not wise to provoke animosity against immigrants generally. Most of these people are going to become "Americans" soon enough. They are here, contributing to the economy and culture, paying taxes etc.

We are a nation of immigrants .. cliched but true. Newcomers should be welcomed and celebrated.

jinushaun• 12 years ago

Hey, we're not all piano-playing SAT preppers driving Lexuses over here. Take your confirmation bias elsewhere. A lot of us come from poor blue collar backgrounds, but we're still raised to appreciate the value of education.

Asian workers now dominate Silicon Valley tech jobs (2012)

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