Is There Still Any Blacks Left In San Francisco Despite What Census Report States ? (Oakland: middle school, to live)

[LeftyTrav]

I saw one here the other day. He attempted to clean my windshield for a buck.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Nineties Flava

Yes, they do. A college degree means less in the tech industry... Generally speaking they're looking for those with the most skill. They definitely look at high school students, and particularly those who they can scout for internships.

Most affluent high schools in SV have tech programs. Here's a couple...

Engineering Tech.
Home - Gunn Engineering

This Cupertino high school is noted for being influential in the development of SV:



Homestead High School (Cupertino, California) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Students at these kind of schools have much more exposure to the industry and the people in it than students in the more urban schools in the South Bay/Peninsula.




It is only lacking in some schools... namely those that have more black and latino students. Whites and Asians overwhelmingly do not go to the same schools as Blacks and Latinos in the SV area.

Yup, in fact quite a few of my black engineering friends actually were involved in programs when they were in high school (and early years of college) interning at local tech companies. Apple, Silicon Graphics, NASA, Livermore Labs, Berkeley Labs. They made a ton of connections then and find it easy to find a job. They got lucky, at that time those big companies had an operational role to increase diversity, and they prioritized finding promising minority students to do the summer internship. Other people I know who didn't have that opportunity are having a much rougher time. And this is about 15-18 years after the fact. (These people are in their mid 30s, and still networking with the people they met then).

[jade408]

Originally Posted by SunDevil1212

Look, I've googled it enough, everything I've seen makes the same baseless accusation: SV is racist because there is a lack of black employees and black entrepreneurs. No mention of course about the data that suggests blacks tend to stray away from the field when it comes to choosing careers. Also no mention of the community engagement many SV firms do with inner city schools or with black/hispanic engineering organizations.

If you have a counterpoint, just say it. You claim to have experience, why don't you just tell us why the system is so racist? Rather than simply "google it"

Check out this thread from a couple of months ago:
//www.city-data.com/forum/san-f...ised-land.html

A lot of people shared their experiences.

[CA-DC-CHI]

Originally Posted by SunDevil1212

Look, I've googled it enough, everything I've seen makes the same baseless accusation: SV is racist because there is a lack of black employees and black entrepreneurs. No mention of course about the data that suggests blacks tend to stray away from the field when it comes to choosing careers. Also no mention of the community engagement many SV firms do with inner city schools or with black/hispanic engineering organizations.

If you have a counterpoint, just say it. You claim to have experience, why don't you just tell us why the system is so racist? Rather than simply "google it"

You're simply looking at the technical side, there are TONS of product, marketing, finance, and operations roles, many of which college educated AA's/Latinos are fit for, but if you're not in the network and/or don't have the benefit of going to schools in CA (UCLA, Cal, Cal Tech, Stanford, USC) you can easily be locked out of this industry. Face it, Tech/SV is in the same place high finance/banking and consulting were in the 80's, although those industries are still very white/Asian, they have gone to great lengths to develop diversity outreach, they attend diversity expos, they actively recruit at top HBCU's. Even looking at the National Black MBA Conference, other than the corporate "tech" giants like Microsoft, HP, Intel, you don't see many other tech companies reaching out for minority talent. And these hot start-ups/late stage start-ups? Forget it, if you didn't happen to be BFF's with someone in the company or have previously worked or gone to school with them, it's 1000 x harder to get in - and guess what, the people already in these companies tend to have homogeneous networks that many times don't include AA/Latino colleagues (not their fault, but a fault of how socially segregated as a society we still are)

While I won't say the industry is racist, it definitely has a major in-group/out-group bias which tends to adversely affect AA's and Latinos.

Furthermore, high school exposure does matter, at those top schools, kids are learning to program, they're learning about VC's, they have engineering academies, thus when they get to college they're already 5 steps ahead of equally bright AA/Latino students who didn't have the exposure to those fields in HS. Thus even being at a top school, you still find yourself unable to break into tech (I had this experience myself while attending Stanford, consulting firms were beating down my door versus tech companies - I had marketing internships, yet they still acted like I didn't have the right type of marketing for their ENTRY level marketing roles )

And lastly, even amongst the talented black engineers, programmers, IT professionals etc. the biases shown by these companies, in addition to what this thread is about - a weak black [upper] middle class presence throughout the Bay - has pushed this talent to other companies in more AA friendly markets (Dell in Dallas, start ups in NYC and North Carolina, govt work in DC).

[jade408]

Originally Posted by CA-DC-CHI

You're simply looking at the technical side, there are TONS of product, marketing, finance, and operations roles, many of which college educated AA's/Latinos are fit for, but if you're not in the network and/or don't have the benefit of going to schools in CA (UCLA, Cal, Cal Tech, Stanford, USC) you can easily be locked out of this industry.

First job after college was in tech PR. In reality, I didn't fit in. I didn't like drinking enough. And sure enough, in the company I worked at, all of the people who didn't want to socialize all the time and didn't fit the "sorority girl" stereo type all got let go after 3-6 months. And when I ran into those former co-workers, they were all in the same sort of environment with the same type of co-workers. Very limited amounts of diversity in tech PR. And advertising. Marketing too.

Silicon Valley is very clique-y and if you don't find your way into the clique it is hard to get hired. The job before this one? Every single person who worked there came as a referral from someone else. Obviously referrals are a great way to recruit, but at the consulting company I worked at, everyone fit the same profile. I was definitely the odd one out there (at least on paper).

[Nineties Flava]

Originally Posted by jade408

Yup, in fact quite a few of my black engineering friends actually were involved in programs when they were in high school (and early years of college) interning at local tech companies. Apple, Silicon Graphics, NASA, Livermore Labs, Berkeley Labs. They made a ton of connections then and find it easy to find a job. They got lucky, at that time those big companies had an operational role to increase diversity, and they prioritized finding promising minority students to do the summer internship. Other people I know who didn't have that opportunity are having a much rougher time. And this is about 15-18 years after the fact. (These people are in their mid 30s, and still networking with the people they met then).

Exactly. My point is that the reason that such industry-sponsored programs exist at schools like Paly and Homestead as opposed to schools like Independence is because the industry is interested in recruiting at those schools. It isn't because there isn't talent in the latter schools... in fact, one of the SJ schools least expected to produce computer science talent - a continuation high school full of "at-risk" youth - won the national robotics competition twice in a row back in 2000 and 2001.

NASA - News Release

Instead of asking why black students (and latino students for that matter) aren't moving towards the tech industry, the better question is why the tech industry isn't reaching out to them. In SV the answer is very simple... the assumption is made that black and latino students are not as good as their white and asian counterparts. SV is not going to recruit those kids at inner-city schools when they could be recruiting the smart kids at schools like Los Gatos high where half of the kids are snorting cocaine and totaling their parents' Bentleys and Benzes. Of course, by the smart kids I mean their kids.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Nineties Flava

Exactly. My point is that the reason that such industry-sponsored programs exist at schools like Paly and Homestead as opposed to schools like Independence is because the industry is interested in recruiting at those schools. It isn't because there isn't talent in the latter schools... in fact, one of the SJ schools least expected to produce computer science talent - a continuation high school full of "at-risk" youth - won the national robotics competition twice in a row back in 2000 and 2001.

NASA - News Release

Instead of asking why black students (and latino students for that matter) aren't moving towards the tech industry, the better question is why the tech industry isn't reaching out to them. In SV the answer is very simple... the assumption is made that black and latino students are not as good as their white and asian counterparts. SV is not going to recruit those kids at inner-city schools when they could be recruiting the smart kids at schools like Los Gatos high where half of the kids are snorting cocaine and totaling their parents' Bentleys and Benzes. Of course, by the smart kids I mean their kids.

And unfortunately if you don't get in the path to sciences in college by about middle school, it is pretty much to late. (speaking as someone who was in all of the science and math clubs from middle school in. Most of my peers from those clubs were white, and became engineers).

[baybook]

and as someone else said, there are many industries that do make an effect to reach out to minorities (AA specific) via HBCUs, groups like NSBE, etc...
Folks in Calif sometimes forget there are many other places here R&D and tech developments are taking place. TX, NC, NY, etc...

Companies that reach out to Black talent have few issues finding it.

Originally Posted by jade408

And unfortunately if you don't get in the path to sciences in college by about middle school, it is pretty much to late. (speaking as someone who was in all of the science and math clubs from middle school in. Most of my peers from those clubs were white, and became engineers).

[jade408]

Originally Posted by baybook

and as someone else said, there are many industries that do make an effect to reach out to minorities (AA specific) via HBCUs, groups like NSBE, etc...
Folks in Calif sometimes forget there are many other places here R&D and tech developments are taking place. TX, NC, NY, etc...

Companies that reach out to Black talent have few issues finding it.

Sure, but unfortunately most of the "power" is here, so presence here is important too.

[Casher O'Neill]

I am black and I visited San Francisco because my daughter was working on an internship there, in East Palo Alto with lower-income kids. I really HATED San Francisco. I found it to be full of stuck-up yuppies who are quite unfriendly. And yes, I got the impression that the black community was marginalized there. We went there in July and it was cold. Prices were also quite high.

I would never dream of moving there and I don't even want to visit it again.