jameane

IoT is moving from buzzword to business driver. Can’t wait to see how this space progresses.

I feel like age hurt him for sure. You see Donald Trump in Home Alone and he looks like an average white dude. But now he looks like a troll.

Sort of, but generally speaking, in the work world, men are rewarded for having families and women's careers are penalized on multiple levels.

Dad's are paid more, more sympathetic and even cheered on when they leave early for the talent show. Women on the other hand are considered less committed, less capable and less flexible.

So true! Now you are lucky is an IC on a team can be groomed to even be a manager.

It is a real thing. On the other side, I am a black female who grew up in middle class suburbia and has a typical Bay Area accent. This affords me a level of privilege because I can easily "class pass" as someone more affluent - even though it is generally assumed black people are lower class. This means I have the "right" mannerisms and speaking patterns for corporate jobs and other things and it is easier for me to be perceived as a good culture fit because I have the right class markers. It also meant, particularly earlier in my career before social media, I would get some interviews and then the interviewer was shocked I was black when I showed up.

I think we really underestimate the entrepreneurship required to be an indie rapper and break-through. Marc Benioff freely admits he stole marketing ideas from MC Hammer and his street teams when launching Salesforce.

E-40 is a marketing super genius. He's been rapping and producing since 1990. And has had so many brand extensions since the mid-90s from energy drinks to wine to tequila.

You never know where you will find inspiration!

It's entirely possible she didn't think that way. But prior to and after that experience I did have people (outside of an interview context) that explicitly told me I should not have my level of confidence due to their perceived racial expectations. So I could be overly sensitive to the whole thing.

I had an interview experience not too long after I finished college. I don't remember the specifics, but it was for an entry level administrative assistant role. I had plenty of experience in retail, customer service, event planning and working at the front desk of my college - so totally relevant stuff.

The interviewer asked me why I was so confident. And why I had the nerve to want to dig into the terms of the job (salary, growth opportunities and the like - I was a late stage candidate).

Full disclosure - I can't think of a time where I have been perceived as arrogant at all. I am generally well-liked and personable.

The interviewer seemed to have some sort of implicit bias - I think she really didn't think that black people should be confident in a professional environment. I can't imagine that she would have taken similar offense to a white guy asking those sorts of questions.

No shocker that this couldn't be monetized. It is really hard to make money in the film business - even doing full length movies. Distribution is hard. And short films aren't super popular with audiences.

Someone in my building does. I see the return envelope in the mailroom!

I haven't been to Baltimore, but this book, Ghettoside, tells a story about how the police in Watts and South Central LA, with their hands tied, tried to balance policing, justice and community engagement. So much similarity to what is happening in B'more. Good read. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11434259/Ghettosid...

I still have a reaction to the Proclaimers 500 Miles, because my boss at my bookstore job played that virtually every shift. Or Garth Brooks. I go to the bathroom or excuse myself from the room when either comes on.

Had a very similar experience at a previous company as well. At the end of the renewal meeting, we left with no indication our issues would get solved and a quote for a 4X price increase. We churned.

No one is saying Bill Gates didn't earn his success. But we can't deny that having access to certain levels of privlege makes success much more probably than for those without those advantages.

With Bill Gates' upbringing, it is quite unlikely he would have struggled with housing insecurity.

I haven't seen it where I live, but I am now inspired to pay more attention to that portion of the menu. :D

This makes me super curious about trying this Indian sodas.

"Thums Up was the most distinct, being fizzier, spicier, and less sweet than the others"

Their facts are based the experiences of trying to place their program graduates and the experiences of those people. Code2040 had a very extensive program pairing young people with tech worker mentors, getting them the right education and helping to place them in tech jobs. And after doing that for 10 years they found without companies that were very very committed to retention, even with all of that preparation, it still didn't work. Hence the pivot by that organization.

They started trying to solve the "pipeline problem" and it turned out that wasn't really the problem.

You realize the "diversity" problem is also impacted by the funding problems. It is really hard for people of color and women to get funding - from any source. Banks, VCs, Angel investors and so on. Combine that with the wealth gap and it makes it a lot harder to get started.

I think even more helpful would be framing how this actually translates into the real world - what does this sort of thing enable in the real world.

I loved the show Numbers because it was a show about how math helped detectives solve crimes. Way more interesting than just doing algebra about speeding trains.

I think sometimes there is an idea that everyone has the same problem and your problem is universal.

For example I heard about a hackathon for black and latino kids. And the ideas that came out of it were really different. One app was a social networking platform for private school kids to connect with other black private school kids to talk about their experiences and vent. Another idea was a payment app to send money to Mexico without having to go to Western Union or whatever.

There is a startup in Oakland that has an app to help people who are caught up in the criminal justice system to keep track of court appearances and hearings and stuff so they don't need to go to jail for bogus stuff like missing a court appearance.

Technology has the opportunity to enable and transform - if we make sure everyone has access.

Maybe have a little empathy here. In a low-income school, kids are walking in the door with way more problems than your upper middle class school where most kids have their basic needs met.

Also, it is time to retire this stereotype that every non-white kid who is academically inclined is being bullied for acting white at school all the time. I get the most grief from white kids about "acting white" growing up. From fellow black kids it was pretty rare - 1-2 times. Mostly other kids were more inclined to help uplift me.

We need to stop trying to attribute that to gender. I loved math as a kid, I thought it was fun. I was on the math team for middle school and high school. I had a computer at home from a young age, and played the math games my parents forced on me. In addition to the game, games. (I am 40 - so things were pretty different as I was coming up. But my family was an early adopter of technology - we had a computer when I was 5. And if I would have had different upbringing the outcome could have been quite different.)

Being a programmer wasn't something that was on my radar at all. I didn't know any. I didn't know it was a job that existed. As I got older it seemed like "computer people" only liked video games, magic cards, scifi books and didn't like to hang out with people. It seemed boring and antisocial - and not like my sort of people.

I probably would have been a great engineer. And while I work in tech, I am a marketer and have worked in more technical roles around software implementation, operations, pre-sales in addition to all of the marketing jobs.

So let's ask ourselves something else - how many people do we lose along the way because of exposure or the way we have socialized what an engineer is, does and likes.

This also plays a role. It would be important to note that the Bay Area also has a very different dynamic than let's say the south or the easy coast where there is also a much longer history of middle and upper middle class black families.

For example DC has a huge college educated black population because the government was one of the few places you could get a well paying as a black person with less discrimination. So lots of people decided to settle there. Atlanta has a lot of historically black colleges - creating a pool of educated workers.

In CA, most of the black population came over as blue collar workers in the military, shipyards, and manufacturing. Whereas most of the Asian population is made up of professional worker or affluent educated immigrants.

Yes I am generalizing here. We don't do a good job of carving out the differences for Asian groups. East Asians tend to be super educated, southeast asians tend to not be, and the outcomes are also widely different.

There are a few things at work - Silicon Valley companies do not necessarily match the local demographics either. And even if you look at county wide stats, it doesn't account for displacement to neighboring counties. And these neighboring counties also represent the "silicon valley" workforce.

There are roughly half as many black people in the "Bay Area" compared to 20 years ago. But the black population increased in neighboring counties significantly.

While Asians are "over-represented" in tech, they are under represented in leadership and senior roles - compared to their representation in the lower ranks.

While there are a lot of technical roles at tech companies, the results aren't any different for those non-technical roles either.

And let's not even discuss how hiring and recruiting practices lead to a very limited pool. If most black engineers come from HBCUs and tech companies never recruit at HBCUs - well they are missing out on a large pool. If most hires come from internal referrals and the average person doesn't have a diverse friend pool - it keeps the status quo.

So diversity is broken on multiple levels, and it is easy to hide.

1. tech workers don't match the percentages in the larger regional job force 2. non-white people are not represented in leadership, not even commiserate to their ratios in the larger tech workforce 3. There are a lot of non-engineering jobs that should have more diverse pools (sales, marketing, administration, etc) and these roles still have the race problem. 4. Recruiting and hiring processes reinforce the status quo on "diversity"

Something is broken, but we spend a lot of time trying to obscure that fact.

I wonder who will be watching this. Instagram Live isn't catching on with users and LinkedIn engagement seems even lower. Maybe they need to combine it with some exclusive content like Office Cribs or something.

Our class markers are a little different, but it works basically the same way. We may not use accents and clothing to designate poshness as often.

But we use stuff like hobbies and interests. Think about the nerd culture markers. We spent a really long time saying good programmers had to like certain video games, board games, books and movies.

Exactly. My sister is type 1 because she doesn't have a pancreas. So no diet is going to change that.

100% accurate - it is hard to see the head start you have if it is never acknowledged.

Let's use that old adage about if you want to be a successful tech founder, drop out of Harvard.

Let's unpack this a little:

1. Think about what you need to even get to Harvard (access to good schools, with well prepared teachers and the right curriculum)

2. You have to actually know this "tech founder" job exists, is a career and how it is structured and the path to get there (assumes you know some other tech people or at least access to information about tech people)

3. You need to have enough money or access to money to seed your idea and pay your expenses while you are building this idea (rich friends, rich family, inheritance, access to food and shelter - without a paycheck to fund it)

4. Some connections or something to get in the door of an incubator, an angel investor or other person who help you get you the infrastructure you need to build your idea

And that is not even the part of having a good idea.

But most importantly you need enough support so if you fail, whether it is fast or slow, you can get back on your feet again. Less privileged folks don't have the opportunity to fail more than once typically. And that is really what holds you back - no access to be able to take a risk. If you need a paycheck to cover basic necessities, no way you will forgo that for something that may not work out at all.

apply the same logic when thinking about politics, museum curators and a host of other influential roles in our society

Streaming services have to create content these days to lock in users. Users won't switch if the stuff the watch (or listen to) is only available with a specific player.

Just like TV/movies Podcasts won't remain 100% channel agnostic.

It's sad building a sustainable "lifestyle" business isn't good enough in go go go Silicon alley culture. At the end of the day, our communities do not need dozens of Amazons who grow too big to actually participate in a meaningful way in the local community and motivated by stock price and not impact.

The country would work a lot better if everyone who wanted to could build a lifestyle business. And sustain themselves, their families and maybe a couple of employees.

There are 3 for me: I agree about Freakanomics - it definitely got me thinking about how economics rules the world in one way or another.

The New Jim Crow - this gave me a way to frame structural racism and its impact now, in today's society.

The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football - I read this in high school. And it really gave me an understanding on how sports reflects our society's structure and values in the narrow sense. And got me thinking about how, more broadly, pop culture is a really good lens to use to understand our culture whether it is sports, tv, music or mass media.