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I've worked in SV for years and also in the East Bay and San Francisco. I've had the pleasure to work with some very talented Hispanic and African-American team members. Technology firms have such a quick market and product cycle, that most companies want the best, from the best schools, that can do the job and fit in the culture. I don't believe there's overt racism against these races at all.
I've worked for an AA Sales Director (Stanford alum), who was a great, all around guy. He helped us overachieve on our sales numbers, so he's well respected.
At the engineer level, there's much more diversity than at the management level, in most companies.
I work in field sales, and as long as you can produce the required revenue numbers, they don't care.
I've worked as a tech writer for several of these companies, including Adobe and Google, always as a long-term contractor, not an employee.
Never crossed paths with a Black person anywhere. Worked for a couple of Mexican-Americans, one of whom was stellar and a pleasure to work for.
I know this sounds sacrilegious, but Google and Adobe were horrible places to work, for me anyway. I didn't see any meritocracies. I saw bureaucracies. And Google especially is entirely without a sense of humor.
Yes, the tech people are well-educated, but culturally they are illiterate. Here's a story to illustrate:
We were in a meeting discussing the company badge policy (the badge you need to get in the building). My supervisor, the Mexican guy I liked so well, said, "Badges, badges, we don't need no stinking badges."
I cracked up but no one else at the table got the joke or the reference. As I said, culturally they are illiterate. They are no fun to work with. Nerd drones is what they are.
Of course, I'm speaking as a tech writer, someone who is ancillary to a software business like Google. Probably programmers love the creative aspect of the work.
One reason Hispanics and Blacks have trouble fitting in to Google and Apple and the others is that the culture of those places is international, not American. They don't know who Humphrey Bogart is.
There's a lot of media attention on the ethnic breakdown of big tech firms, and most of the criticism is just a glorified witch hunt IMO. These firms will hire anybody that impresses them in the interview loops. they don't care where you were born or what color skin you have. Mediocre anything is pretty much a no-hire. These companies will keep a position open for years rather than fill it with someone who is mediocre, because mediocrity starts to erode the high bar these companies built up. They all want "A" players, so they're instructed to reject any candidate that isn't demonstrative of an "A" player. I work at one of these tech firms, and I'm white, and I feel like it's 33% white, 33% Indian, and 33% Asian. And I'm counting European/Russian in with the white demographic. If you're talking about U.S. born caucasians, it's a much smaller slice of the overall pie. I've interviewed some Hispanic and Black candidates. They were generally average and probably could have used more practice and prep work.
The employee stats are simply a symptom of a different problem. This is a problem that is complicated and that's intertwined with our failing education system, social expectations, income inequality, soaring cost of higher education, and immigration employment policies which is clearly out of scope of this thread.
"One reason Hispanics and Blacks have trouble fitting in to Google and Apple and the others is that the culture of those places is international, not American. They don't know who Humphrey Bogart is."
This made me LOL!
While my hubby works in tech, I'm at the other end of the spectrum being a "lowly" food server in a restaurant in So. Cal.
I work with lots of Hispanics and one older waiter who's been living here for 30 years never heard of Mary Poppins! (I was talking to a customer about Julie Andrews)
Quite a while back shortly after 911, I picked up a paycheck wearing my Chewbacca T-shirt which was a cool drawing of just his hairy face. One of the busboys I worked with at the time looked at my shirt and said, "Bin Laden??"
In my profession where I work it's hard being a Trekkie.
There's a lot of media attention on the ethnic breakdown of big tech firms, and most of the criticism is just a glorified witch hunt IMO. These firms will hire anybody that impresses them in the interview loops. they don't care where you were born or what color skin you have. Mediocre anything is pretty much a no-hire. These companies will keep a position open for years rather than fill it with someone who is mediocre, because mediocrity starts to erode the high bar these companies built up. They all want "A" players, so they're instructed to reject any candidate that isn't demonstrative of an "A" player. I work at one of these tech firms, and I'm white, and I feel like it's 33% white, 33% Indian, and 33% Asian. And I'm counting European/Russian in with the white demographic. If you're talking about U.S. born caucasians, it's a much smaller slice of the overall pie. I've interviewed some Hispanic and Black candidates. They were generally average and probably could have used more practice and prep work.
The employee stats are simply a symptom of a different problem. This is a problem that is complicated and that's intertwined with our failing education system, social expectations, income inequality, soaring cost of higher education, and immigration employment policies which is clearly out of scope of this thread.
It's not surprising, I guess, that people don't know what they don't know.
My experience is that the average developer at Google, Apple and Facebook is a "B" player, definitely a cut above average but still not an "A" player. And, yes, of course, they have the full range: a good number of "A" players, a huge number of "B" players and some amount of "C"s, "D"s and even "F"s. It also varies from group to group: some products have a cluster of "A" players and other products in the same company have a cluster of "C" players.
Yet lots of seemingly intelligent people run around singing about how the company only employs "A" players. I wondered about that for a long time despite seeing direct contrary evidence but finally concluded that (A) some people are just uncritical, they want to believe something so they ignore evidence to the contrary; (B) some people know it's hype but they know that hype can keep morale up and see no benefit to de-hyping the hype; (C) some people are young and simply don't have any point of comparison so they swallow it whole. (The meritocracy argument tends to fall apart in same way: it's obvious to keen observers that many poorly-engineered products succeed and many well-engineered products fail, even in the long term, so engineering merit != business success. Large companies, like Google, Apple and Facebook, carry a lot of technical debt, too, but still succeed despite many products not using state-of-the-art technology and not exclusively employing "A" players.)
I'd say that the racism (and ageism and misogyny) works the same way. If it's subtle, it's hard to say objectively if it is there or not. Like (A) above, some won't see it because they are uncritical. Like (B) above, some won't see it because they benefit in denying it. Like (C) above, some just are young and don't have the experience to know. And, if you do see it, it's very insubstantial and scattered because companies are made of large groups of individuals who beliefs and thoughts processes aren't uniform. Not every denial of a black programmer is racist but that doesn't mean that they all aren't.
Most of my belief hinges on the idea that, if Google wanted to find 200 black rock star programmers, I'm sure that they could. The world has billions of people and, for a company with billions of dollars, I'm sure that they could find a handful that fit whatever profile that they wanted. Why don't they? It's beyond their abilities? They aren't up to the task? Or, maybe, they just don't care enough to do it.
When a 25-year-old white bro-grammer says "no hire" to a black candidate, why did he say that? Is there any reason to think that a 25-year-old bro-grammer knows anything about interviewing or anything about merit or anything about discrimination (or, to be honest, really anything about programming)? There are no guarantees, especially when we are talking about a particular employee and a particular candidate.
The media has found a definite non-merit based pattern in the hiring practices of these big companies. The companies are embarrassed; otherwise they wouldn't have dragged their feet and would have trumpeted their conclusions when they finally did reveal the conclusions. But, in the end, most people just want to ignore things that they don't like so these companies will always have armies of apologists, rationalizers, employees and fans who will rush to their defense.
I've been a software engineer for 12 years. You and I are talking about 2 different things. When I say "A" players, I'm referring to how people perform on the interview loop. That's it. There's a very high bar that is set and interviewers have to go through training to make sure they understand what they're looking for and what weaknesses they want to avoid. Every company keeps reiterating how they need to keep their bar high.
How a candidate ends up in real life is crap shoot. I would agree with you that most engineers ends up being more like "B" players after being hired and you start seeing the spectrum of stack ranking take effect. I worked with a PhD in Physics and he acted brilliant as hell, but he was a royal pain to work with and overcomplicated and over-designed everything. He didn't last a year before being fired, and that was because he didn't check in a single line of code in 9 months and fought with everybody. I've recommended several brilliant candidates and they all failed the interview loop. I asked why, and they always said they got stumped on a question or two. You literally have have an epic interview loop to get hired at Apple, Netflix, Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Microsoft. It's all about preparation, interviewing for the right group, and a bit of luck. But mostly it's about preparation.
What gets a no-hire? It depends. It's based on 2 metrics: Their technical depth and their interpersonal skills. Interview questions are designed to be challenging and stressful. Many candidates end up with mediocre interviews because they jump into coding too fast and don't ask questions. They make mistakes that are caught later in the interview and the session falls apart as they try and rewind and fix their mistake. A good interviewer tries to help guide them to avoid this, but it's different with each candidate. When they screw up the technical interview, it's a no-hire regardless of how impressive their resume is or how charming they are in person. I've only seen one person get hired despite failing the technical loop, and it's because the hiring manager knows the guy and he used to work on the team, and he just had a "bad day."
The other metric is interpersonal skills. You can be a solid at the technical interview, but if you come off as argumentative or difficult, the interviewer probably won't want want to work with you. I'm always thinking if I actually want to work with this candidate on my team. That's a function of their personality and not their skin color or resume status.
Because these companies are rich, they can afford to keep a job req open for a year. They can afford to blow 10s of thousands of dollars interviewing dozens of people for a position until they find what they're looking for. That's why they can decry that they can't find enough talent. Sure, Google can run out and selectively hire 200 A+ Black engineers in a black-only targeted interview efforts. But we don't have affirmative action in the tech business, and as far as I'm concerned it doesn't belong there.
Last point....interviewing is an art form. It's about preparation. Some people are simply better at it than others. It has little do to with your overall effectiveness as an engineer. But those that can better communicate their ideas and spot problems and make the fewest mistakes possible are the ones that land in the big firms. Most interviews I think I did great. But when I got home and start replaying the interview questions and trying the questions again, I realize how many mistakes I made. And in the interviews I failed at, I know the reason why I didn't get it. But at the time, I thought I was awesome. I've failed my share at interviews, and I've won my fair share as well. The interview process at these companies are not perfect at all. But it is what it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nagleepark
It's not surprising, I guess, that people don't know what they don't know.
My experience is that the average developer at Google, Apple and Facebook is a "B" player, definitely a cut above average but still not an "A" player. And, yes, of course, they have the full range: a good number of "A" players, a huge number of "B" players and some amount of "C"s, "D"s and even "F"s. It also varies from group to group: some products have a cluster of "A" players and other products in the same company have a cluster of "C" players.
Yet lots of seemingly intelligent people run around singing about how the company only employs "A" players. I wondered about that for a long time despite seeing direct contrary evidence but finally concluded that (A) some people are just uncritical, they want to believe something so they ignore evidence to the contrary; (B) some people know it's hype but they know that hype can keep morale up and see no benefit to de-hyping the hype; (C) some people are young and simply don't have any point of comparison so they swallow it whole. (The meritocracy argument tends to fall apart in same way: it's obvious to keen observers that many poorly-engineered products succeed and many well-engineered products fail, even in the long term, so engineering merit != business success. Large companies, like Google, Apple and Facebook, carry a lot of technical debt, too, but still succeed despite many products not using state-of-the-art technology and not exclusively employing "A" players.)
I'd say that the racism (and ageism and misogyny) works the same way. If it's subtle, it's hard to say objectively if it is there or not. Like (A) above, some won't see it because they are uncritical. Like (B) above, some won't see it because they benefit in denying it. Like (C) above, some just are young and don't have the experience to know. And, if you do see it, it's very insubstantial and scattered because companies are made of large groups of individuals who beliefs and thoughts processes aren't uniform. Not every denial of a black programmer is racist but that doesn't mean that they all aren't.
Most of my belief hinges on the idea that, if Google wanted to find 200 black rock star programmers, I'm sure that they could. The world has billions of people and, for a company with billions of dollars, I'm sure that they could find a handful that fit whatever profile that they wanted. Why don't they? It's beyond their abilities? They aren't up to the task? Or, maybe, they just don't care enough to do it.
When a 25-year-old white bro-grammer says "no hire" to a black candidate, why did he say that? Is there any reason to think that a 25-year-old bro-grammer knows anything about interviewing or anything about merit or anything about discrimination (or, to be honest, really anything about programming)? There are no guarantees, especially when we are talking about a particular employee and a particular candidate.
The media has found a definite non-merit based pattern in the hiring practices of these big companies. The companies are embarrassed; otherwise they wouldn't have dragged their feet and would have trumpeted their conclusions when they finally did reveal the conclusions. But, in the end, most people just want to ignore things that they don't like so these companies will always have armies of apologists, rationalizers, employees and fans who will rush to their defense.
I've been a software engineer for 12 years ... What gets a no-hire? ... The other metric is interpersonal skills ... Because these companies are rich ... interviewing is an art form ... But it is what it is.
Yes, I can accept all that but still see merit in the media's questioning of the racial makeup of these companies.
There are many non-discriminatory aspects in the hiring process at these companies but, ultimately, the system lends itself to and allows a discriminatory result that then reproduces itself. It's analogous to Fortune 500 CEOs: there are many non-discriminatory aspects in that process and a huge incentive to select based on merit and, yet, white males make up far more than their fair share statistically. The explanation is subtle form of discrimination that occurs in the minds of individuals and as a sort of subconscious groupthink. When faced with a white "A" player and a black "A" player, the white "A" player usually (but not always) gets the job, be it CEO or Google. But, yes, the black "A" player will get the job against the white "B" player.
But what to do? I'm not sure if anything can be done except what usually happens which is to beat these companies up over diversity. The media is doing an important job.
Yes, I can accept all that but still see merit in the media's questioning of the racial makeup of these companies.
Okay, it's fair to question this and keep the dialog going. But I draw the line with Jessie Jackson all but Calling Google and Apple white supremacists. I'd love for there to be more diversity. Engineering used to be just a white male profession. It's now predominantly Asian/Indian in software. But we can look at other fields as well and question why there aren't many white males in the NBA or NFL? The answer lies in the demographics of every Computer Science department. Do the tally, and you don't see a lot of Hispanic or African American's representing. I don't know what the solution is either....
It all comes down to qualifications. I personally know two black guys and one Black female there in that dealing with Silicon Valley. One friend of mine is starting with google in two weeks, and my younger brother is currently in the interview process with them right now. They both have very technical software engineering backgrounds.
As for the women I was referring to, she has been working in Silicon Valley for a different company in a Software Q/A position.
But in general there just aren't that many blacks who have qualification that they are looking for from what I've know experienced. ***Im Black myself, with a computer science degree***
If there are few African Americans in the greater San Jose area with skills and talents in IT, then how does Jessie Jackson expect to fill the Silicon Valley Companies with Black Programmers/Software Developers?
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