I'm getting quite tired of all this grandstanding by tech companies that routinely perform highly immoral business practices.
Google does not give a fuck about black people. They only care about their public image, which is degrading day by day. The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up. No amount of proselytizing about how much a company focuses on racial diversity and hiring different backgrounds is going to have any impact on that.
But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change :)
The only people who can give a french toast about black people are black people.
It's not going to be:
Google, Facebook, etc
The Government (tm)
SJW's, BLM, etc.
And certainly not people on HN
The fact is, it's 2021 and people should care about what they do with their themselves, their family and their community first. And stop waiting for [... some other entity ...] to fix their problems.
>The fact is, it's 2021 and people should care about what they do with their themselves, their family and their community first. And stop waiting for [... some other entity ...] to fix their problems.
>"He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that."
The article says that the kid was absent or late for 272 days in 3 years. That's over 50% of school days.
Regardless of whether the school had made the mandated phone call about absence issues to the kid's mother, "the school failed him" would not be the first phrase I would use to describe the situation. It's possible that the school did fail him; maybe he was bullied and going to school was unbearable! But if that was the case, I am surprised that a sympathetic article about the kid and his mother failed to mention it.
An important reason it's a school failure story is that the 0.13 GPA all those absences earned him was 50th percentile (!!) at the school. In some sense the guy should have gone to class, but he's an impressionable high schooler, and it seems clear the school was setting an expectation that you don't really have to.
Sorry I’m trying to understand, the only people to care about black people are black people- but a political organisation formed by black people to advocate for black people.... is not going to care about black people?
Black Lives Matter has been on the national stage for almost 6(!) years and has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars, affecting zero change or influence in Black communities.
A film was recently released about Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party (strangely enough, from what I gather, glorifying the man who coordinated his assassination). I bring this up to say, millions of dollars collected by Black Lives Matter and I have not even heard about them even frying a dang omelette and handing it to a Black person, let alone a Black male (whose bodies the movement continually uses as a springboard to notoriety).
Nonetheless, funding alone will not solve the issues at hand in the Black community. But a few omelettes a day at least would be a better start than whatever else is going on.
If you’d like to learn more about what the Black Lives Matter organization worked on last year, you can see their 2020 impact report, including some impressive voter turnout results [1]
If you’re interested specifically in organizations that make breakfast, there are organizations like People’s Breakfast Oakland, which does great work. Not sure if they do omelettes though. [2]
Please don't respond by crossing into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. That only makes the thread even worse. Instead, respond to bad information with better information.
Give it a read, maybe it will change your mind. Organizations like BLM were formed to organize concerted protest and political pressure at a community-wide level. That is to say, it’s a direct result of people doing what you suggest they do: “people should care about what they do with themselves, their family, and their community first.”
> The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up.
I don't disagree with the substance of your comment, but it's worth pointing out that Alphabet is a company with a $1,416,000,000,000 market cap.
If any non-governmental entity could be said to have the resources to address "systemic issues" at the root, it would be these giant multinationals.
If Google wanted to, it could fund CS education in primary and secondary schools in black neighbourhoods, it could launch a finance wing to offer mortgages to families disadvantaged by a history of red-lining, it could endow scholarships at HBCUs, it could invest directly in infrastructure projects in majority-black cities...
Obviously there's no obligation for them to do these things, but if they cared to really make a dent in America's racial issues (instead of just making white folks feel more positively about Google) they are not lacking the capital to take a stab at it. They certainly don't mind pissing away millions on internet balloons.
Do you really want a giant multinationals addressing issues normally handled by the state? Do you really want google to be so involved in education and housing? Is that's whats wrong with our politics, not enough corporate influence?
I just want google to provide me reasonable search results, respect my privacy and follow all applicable laws.
Not necessarily. Reading this article I actually find it quite obnoxious that Google would come in and tell HBCU computer science departments to redesign their curricula to focus less on "theoretical" concerns and more on like, Python scripting that G needs from its junior engineers.
But it's also worth noting what a dishonest dodge it is for these huge companies posturing like "oh we care so deeply about this issue, but it's a pipeline problem we can't fix!" - as though they can't build whatever pipeline they want to get the candidates they want to get.
> But it's also worth noting what a dishonest dodge it is for these huge companies posturing like "oh we care so deeply about this issue,
They have to say this. The executives of these large internet companies get dragged in front of congress regularly and some politicians built their entire careers on passing punitive targeted legislation against said companies.
> as though they can't build whatever pipeline they want to get the candidates they want to get.
That's what they're doing when they're trying to influence the curriculum of computer science departments.
As an aside, I remember flipping through AP (high school level) computer science tests and got a kick out of how the state education board tested students. Here's an example
Consider the following code segment.
List<String> animals = new ArrayList<String>();
animals.add("dog");
animals.add("cat");
animals.add("snake");
animals.set(2, "lizard");
animals.set(3, "fish");
animals.remove(3);
System.out.println(animals);
What is printed as a result of executing the code segment?
(a) [dog, fish, cat]
(b) [dog, fish, lizard]
(c) [dog, lizard, fish]
(d) [fish, dog, cat]
(e) The code throws an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException exception.
The private market is exactly who should be funding higher education. Federal government funding has resulted in significant inflation of costs and poor quality of administration and instructors. Education that does not meet the market should fail and be replaced.
Lobbyists, the need for fundraising by officials putting them in the pockets and interests of corporations and entities... do we really want to go there? Corporations and entities have incredible influence in politics; to not acknowledge this would be disingenuous. Politics is driven by money, idealism be damned, and Alphabet has a lot of this. Why shouldn't one expect them (well, their subsidiary, Google) to back up what they said?
To be fair, I also understand where you're coming from. I'm from a privileged socioeconomic class, from a tech industry perspective. So it's easy for me to say "I don't want to get into the politics because it doesn't affect me; all I want is reasonable search results and for them to leave me alone". We have (or were able to earn because we had the resources) the baseline privileges and advantages in life that enable us to have this attitude. But some groups still don't, and it's my belief (and hopefully, society's someday) that we should effectively (not just rhetorically or trivially) give them the pathways to level the playing field.
I think the number one detractor to black neighborhoods from engaging in CS is more of a cultural thing. The same reason why women in tech is still pretty low is also the same reason black people in tech is low. The culture tied to their race/sex in the immediate area tends to sway their futures. If dealing drugs or just dropping out is the norm among your friends, it's gonna be very hard for one to just pick up CS at a high school or early college level for men. Even if it's free.
Or that it’s a hard major. This isn’t particularly unique to black people. Most students avoid the hard majors in college (even white people, there’s a reason why every bootcamper majored in like the Trombone or Classics in college, because, well, shockingly, they also avoided the hard majors.)
The reason Asian kids don’t avoid it is because of how seriously their parents take their education. You guys want to fix the pipeline problem, talk to Asian fucking parents and learn something.
They care about them so long as the posturing that they engage with can make them money.
In my opinion, they get away with this because the word equality, when they say that they "care" about "equality," no longer has any attachment to class consciousness.
Amazon does this right in front of our faces. Nike and Apple do it but you have to peek behind the curtain a bit. Google, as well, but now you really have to dig, hence this article.
Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN? You've unfortunately done it repeatedly. We ban such accounts, not just because it isn't what the site is for, but because it destroys what it is for. It leads to flamewars, which destroy curious conversation and bring out the worst from the internet.
Your comments based on personal experience and curiosity are of course welcome.
I don't even know what to say to that. What is ideological about what I said?
My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people. Honestly, it feels like you simply did not like what I stated and decided to instate your vague guidelines as reason to remove my comment.
I enjoy HN and the discussions that are had here, but I don't believe that curious conversation has to consist of emotionally muted statements.
I do think you were wrong to remove my comment given what the guidelines state.
You're asking me what is ideological about "tech companies that routinely perform highly immoral business practices", "Google does not give a fuck about black people", and "But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change"? The entire comment seems to consist of high-indignation, low-information name-calling on the ideological themes of corporatism and race.
No one's saying you have to be emotionally muted! (I probably have to be, but it doesn't mean anyone else does.) There's no problem with vibrant emotion—the problem is with the sort of repetition that makes up with intensity for what it lacks in new information. It seems to be a kind of mechanism—the mind turns to indignation in the absence of anything more substantial: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
When you say "My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people."—it's precisely that which your comment lacked. I believe you that it was based on your experience, but it didn't actually share any of that experience; it just angrily repeated some stale tropes. Such a comment is activating rather than interesting, which is why it evokes worse discussion from others. If you had actually shared your relevant experience the comment would probably have been more interesting than activating, and that is what evokes better discussion from others.
(I didn't remove your comment, but I did auto-collapse this low-quality flamewar subthread. That is one trick we use to try to jiggle the system out of its failure modes.)
Cool, I'll be more detailed next time. Sorry for the trouble. You could really do more yourself not to hide/remove comments with equally inflammatory responses.
It's quite irritating to have something done like that by someone who is essentially the shot-caller on a site like this on an issue which boils down to opinion. The highbrow condescension isn't necessary either... Anyways, perhaps it's moderation like this that's necessary to keep the forum quality. I do wish it were approached in a different manner however. Even just asking for more clarification or elaboration would have been a better move in this situation.
Anyways, thanks for moderating I guess. I understand that it's a thankless job.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I'm open to learning how to be less irritating or condescending—it would make life easier, and I'm sure it's possible.
Calling the shots doesn't just boil down to opinion–there are principles here. They don't determine everything precisely—different people would make different calls. But the principles aren't infinitely flexible, either, and we have a lot of practice in applying them.
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Companies, not just Google, seem to have a real blind spot here, insofar as they seem to think they can just wait for Harvard or Stanford to graduate more Black students with the degrees they want. A lot of the Black people they want to hire are at HBCUs. Many upper middle class Black people—the folks whose kids had access to technology to tinker with growing up, just like the upper middle class white and asian people who make up much of Google’s workforce—attended HBCUs. And their kids want to go to HBCUs, both to be in a supportive environment but also out of a sense of contributing their economic and social capital to a primarily Black college or university. (Obviously this doesn’t describe all Black people. But it describes a very large group of Black people, and is something that has no analog among white or Asian people. I myself was totally unaware of this dynamic until moving to an area with a lot of affluent Black people.) If companies cared about equity, they should be lining up to hire from HBCUs.
I would probably be hesitant to hire someone from an HBCU because I would think that being immersed in an environment of only certain kind of persons makes you ill adapted to deal with the variety you'll find in the wider world. Also, when an institution defines itself by some characteristic like color, to me it signals that academics is not its primary concern.
HBCUs had an important purpose at one time, but today black kids should be going to the same colleges as everyone else.
I quite disagree, but it’s fair to say that the issue of how to close gaps between Black and white people is a complicated one with no clear answers. What’s more important here is that lots of affluent Black people disagree with you—and therefore attend and send their kids to HBCUs. If Google, etc., want to recruit more Black people, the answer can’t be to overlook HBCUs based on conclusions about whether “they remain necessary in 2021.”
Companies like Google can afford to hire the best. They do that by getting people from top end CS schools like Stanford, CMU, Berkeley and other relevant schools for non CS work. HBCUs are simply not in the top tier and don't produce developers that will be worth $200,000 a year. It's not because they're black colleges but because they're not in the top 1 percent.
"HBCUs don't produce developers that will be worth $200,000 a year"? I know high school dropouts who are worth more than that. What a strange statement.
Well, obviously schools differ and that's why Google and other companies have lists of schools that are preferred over others.
Wellesley women will have to work with men on a regular basis. But during a critical development stage these women were isolated with other women, working together the way women work. When dealing with a man both sides will have to adjust and the company doesn't want to deal with that. The company just wants work done and having poor social skills with members of both sexes hinders that.
@RealAbril, a former Google diversity recruiter, tweeted that Google
“Banned interview questions and feedback, as asked through mock interviews at Howard University by Google Software Engineers. Howard CS students severely struggled with basic coding, algorithms and data structures.”
Is Google wrong about this? Google would not be successful if it were unable to evaluate technical competence.
Why are we expecting these companies (or anyone) to fix all problems.
The fix is simple.
Focus on your own home and yourself first.
Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise.
Sure there is systemic stuff out there - but it’s 2021 and you have a choice now in what you want to do with your life.
An additional 10% of the population of every race doing just the above would make a bigger difference than any company, government or organization could.
> Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise.
This is literally the ethos of HBCUs, which graduate a disproportionate share of Black STEM majors. The point of the article is that Google is ignoring HBCU candidates.
That's not what the article said: It said they considered them "long-tail" institutions (below even state schools) that they basically wouldn't hire from.
"Basically wouldn't hire from" isn't a characterization consistent with the remainder of the article. A Howard spokeswoman said that Google's hired 119 interns and 30 graduates since 2017
> Some schools such as Stanford University and MIT were predictably in the “elite” category, while state schools or institutions that churn out thousands of engineering grads annually, such as Georgia Tech, were assigned to “tier 1” or “tier 2.”
...
> In lieu of a tier, Google’s University Programs recruiting division, responsible for forging partnerships with universities, labeled [HBCUs] “long tail” schools, in reference to the fact that it could take a long time before they would produce a large number of graduates qualified to work at Google, according to the Google employees.
...
> At the time, the 16-year-old company had not hired a single HBCU computer science graduate into an entry-level software engineer role, according to a 2013 document.
I think "basically wouldn't hire from" is a fair characterization of hiring zero for 16 years, and only a handful since then. (And no, interns are not hires).
They noticed the problem in 2013, ramped up hiring since then, and are investing significant effort in helping HBCUs build their CS programs up to par. Isn't that exactly the right approach? (Of course, it's a very different story if Google's belief that "HBCU CS students struggle with the most basic of coding, algorithms and data structures" isn't true, but the source article didn't challenge this claim and I don't know a way to independently investigate it.)
> "Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise."
Wow, I'm glad you have the program down for all the low income people. Why don't they pick themselves up by their bootstraps (which, incidentally, is physically impossible).
> Teach kids at home
Assumes your parents are educated and have time. Neither of my parents passed the 10th grade. What were they supposed to teach me precisely?
> Be more involved with them
Hard to do when my parents worked jobs and had to rely on public transportation and/or bicycles to get to work. Hard to be really involved with your kid when you continually face 12+ days just to make slightly-above minimum wage
> Teach them to take responsibility
What does this even mean? "Sure little Johnny. That company says you weren't a 'culture add.' Now take responsibility, internalize that and... do whatever it is that would make you a culture add. Who knows?"
> "Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans."
Hi there. I get paid 6 figures at a FAANG and I triple majored in liberal arts. It's not that degrees are 'silly.' It's that business has a narrow view of what's important.
My team is full of people with Master's degrees. Other than the military vets, I'm the only person without a master's degree. They all ask me how I quickly diagnose problems.
Pro tip: It's because my silly bachelor's taught me how to critically think and synthesize disparate pieces of information into a coherent whole. Their 'prestigious' degrees taught them how to write C++ and Java. Neither of those skills are useful on my team.
> "Do more STEM"
Not everyone does well in STEM, nor does tech require a heavy STEM background. Also, it's a little difficult to get help on trigonometry when your parents are under educated.
> "Start a small business."
Creating small businesses take time and money. So does your 'Teach your kids more' and 'be more involved with them'. Where are you going to find all this extra time?
Not to mention you have to have some cushion failures in business. If you don't have generational wealth (which people who go to HBCU's typically don't), creating a small business is a perilous enterprise that can ruin you easier than it can pull you out of poverty.
> "Eat better food"
Takes more money (non-processed food is by in large more expensive) and time (non-processed food has to be cooked). So that's 4 things that take more time.
> "Exercise"
The fifth thing that takes more time.
---
Where are low income families supposed to get all this extra time when they're spending most of their time simply trying to make it to the next paycheck?
This advise may make a good self-help book. You might even make a bit of money (see how successful Dale Carnegie got with his tripe!). But simple fix ignores the realities of growing up in a generationaly poor family with under-educated parents.
We are talking about Black representation at Google. Why are you both acting like this conversation is about “low income people” who “ride bicycles to work to make barely above minimum wage?”
Among people in the top 20% of
income ages 40-50 (a reasonable proxy for the households where most Google employees grew up), 7% are Black compared to 12% of the overall population that is Black. It’s ignorant to turn every issue involving Black people into a discussion of inner city poverty. (And especially ignorant in the context of discussing HBCUs, as in this article, which are a pillar of the Black upper middle class.)
> "Why are you both acting like this conversation is about 'low income people' who 'ride bicycles to work to make barely above minimum wage?'"
Because HBCUs are a gateway to the middle class for many low income people who come from generational poverty? It's an outlet for many first-time college students and those scraping toward the middle class.
And the 'ride bicycles to work to make barely above minimum wage' is from both personal experience and the fact that the generationally poor are largely dependant on forms of transportation other than personal vehicles.
> "It’s ignorant to turn every issue involving Black people into a discussion of inner city poverty. (And especially ignorant in the context of discussing HBCUs, as in this article, which are a pillar of the Black upper middle class.)"
HBCUs are a pillar of the Black upper middle class, but the majority of students are still lower-income. So it's relevant to talk about low-income students.[1][2][3]
These threads often cause comments that have no clue about the reality of black people. For those who are ok with videos, here are some good but enjoyable ones. You may use 'NewPipe' from fdroid or the youtube-dl command line utility to download them:
[8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc
lol funny to hear google get this criticism when their bias is hardcore on the other direction, significantly lowering the bar far the “right” type of applicant and raising it for the “wrong” (asian / white males) types.
it just goes to show when you make your bed with an alligator, it eventually eats you too.
59 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 99.6 ms ] threadGoogle does not give a fuck about black people. They only care about their public image, which is degrading day by day. The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up. No amount of proselytizing about how much a company focuses on racial diversity and hiring different backgrounds is going to have any impact on that.
But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change :)
It's not going to be:
Google, Facebook, etc
The Government (tm)
SJW's, BLM, etc.
And certainly not people on HN
The fact is, it's 2021 and people should care about what they do with their themselves, their family and their community first. And stop waiting for [... some other entity ...] to fix their problems.
From the other day:
https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/city-student...
>"He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that."
Regardless of whether the school had made the mandated phone call about absence issues to the kid's mother, "the school failed him" would not be the first phrase I would use to describe the situation. It's possible that the school did fail him; maybe he was bullied and going to school was unbearable! But if that was the case, I am surprised that a sympathetic article about the kid and his mother failed to mention it.
Honest question: are report cards no longer a thing?
Black Lives Matter has been on the national stage for almost 6(!) years and has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars, affecting zero change or influence in Black communities.
A film was recently released about Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party (strangely enough, from what I gather, glorifying the man who coordinated his assassination). I bring this up to say, millions of dollars collected by Black Lives Matter and I have not even heard about them even frying a dang omelette and handing it to a Black person, let alone a Black male (whose bodies the movement continually uses as a springboard to notoriety).
Nonetheless, funding alone will not solve the issues at hand in the Black community. But a few omelettes a day at least would be a better start than whatever else is going on.
If you’re interested specifically in organizations that make breakfast, there are organizations like People’s Breakfast Oakland, which does great work. Not sure if they do omelettes though. [2]
[1] https://blacklivesmatter.com/2020-impact-report/
[2] https://www.hellablackpod.com/pbo
It sounds a lot like you're arguing from your own ignorance. They don't report to you.
tobobo's sibling reply is exemplary.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3767097
Give it a read, maybe it will change your mind. Organizations like BLM were formed to organize concerted protest and political pressure at a community-wide level. That is to say, it’s a direct result of people doing what you suggest they do: “people should care about what they do with themselves, their family, and their community first.”
I don't disagree with the substance of your comment, but it's worth pointing out that Alphabet is a company with a $1,416,000,000,000 market cap.
If any non-governmental entity could be said to have the resources to address "systemic issues" at the root, it would be these giant multinationals.
If Google wanted to, it could fund CS education in primary and secondary schools in black neighbourhoods, it could launch a finance wing to offer mortgages to families disadvantaged by a history of red-lining, it could endow scholarships at HBCUs, it could invest directly in infrastructure projects in majority-black cities...
Obviously there's no obligation for them to do these things, but if they cared to really make a dent in America's racial issues (instead of just making white folks feel more positively about Google) they are not lacking the capital to take a stab at it. They certainly don't mind pissing away millions on internet balloons.
I just want google to provide me reasonable search results, respect my privacy and follow all applicable laws.
But it's also worth noting what a dishonest dodge it is for these huge companies posturing like "oh we care so deeply about this issue, but it's a pipeline problem we can't fix!" - as though they can't build whatever pipeline they want to get the candidates they want to get.
They have to say this. The executives of these large internet companies get dragged in front of congress regularly and some politicians built their entire careers on passing punitive targeted legislation against said companies.
> as though they can't build whatever pipeline they want to get the candidates they want to get.
That's what they're doing when they're trying to influence the curriculum of computer science departments.
As an aside, I remember flipping through AP (high school level) computer science tests and got a kick out of how the state education board tested students. Here's an example
Consider the following code segment.
List<String> animals = new ArrayList<String>();
animals.add("dog");
animals.add("cat");
animals.add("snake");
animals.set(2, "lizard");
animals.set(3, "fish");
animals.remove(3);
System.out.println(animals);
What is printed as a result of executing the code segment?
(a) [dog, fish, cat]
(b) [dog, fish, lizard]
(c) [dog, lizard, fish]
(d) [fish, dog, cat]
(e) The code throws an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException exception.
https://www.apcsaexam.org/uploads/1/0/7/7/107712547/ap_sampl...
> whats wrong with our politics
Lobbyists, the need for fundraising by officials putting them in the pockets and interests of corporations and entities... do we really want to go there? Corporations and entities have incredible influence in politics; to not acknowledge this would be disingenuous. Politics is driven by money, idealism be damned, and Alphabet has a lot of this. Why shouldn't one expect them (well, their subsidiary, Google) to back up what they said?
To be fair, I also understand where you're coming from. I'm from a privileged socioeconomic class, from a tech industry perspective. So it's easy for me to say "I don't want to get into the politics because it doesn't affect me; all I want is reasonable search results and for them to leave me alone". We have (or were able to earn because we had the resources) the baseline privileges and advantages in life that enable us to have this attitude. But some groups still don't, and it's my belief (and hopefully, society's someday) that we should effectively (not just rhetorically or trivially) give them the pathways to level the playing field.
The reason Asian kids don’t avoid it is because of how seriously their parents take their education. You guys want to fix the pipeline problem, talk to Asian fucking parents and learn something.
They care about them so long as the posturing that they engage with can make them money.
In my opinion, they get away with this because the word equality, when they say that they "care" about "equality," no longer has any attachment to class consciousness.
Amazon does this right in front of our faces. Nike and Apple do it but you have to peek behind the curtain a bit. Google, as well, but now you really have to dig, hence this article.
Your comments based on personal experience and curiosity are of course welcome.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people. Honestly, it feels like you simply did not like what I stated and decided to instate your vague guidelines as reason to remove my comment.
I enjoy HN and the discussions that are had here, but I don't believe that curious conversation has to consist of emotionally muted statements.
I do think you were wrong to remove my comment given what the guidelines state.
No one's saying you have to be emotionally muted! (I probably have to be, but it doesn't mean anyone else does.) There's no problem with vibrant emotion—the problem is with the sort of repetition that makes up with intensity for what it lacks in new information. It seems to be a kind of mechanism—the mind turns to indignation in the absence of anything more substantial: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
When you say "My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people."—it's precisely that which your comment lacked. I believe you that it was based on your experience, but it didn't actually share any of that experience; it just angrily repeated some stale tropes. Such a comment is activating rather than interesting, which is why it evokes worse discussion from others. If you had actually shared your relevant experience the comment would probably have been more interesting than activating, and that is what evokes better discussion from others.
(I didn't remove your comment, but I did auto-collapse this low-quality flamewar subthread. That is one trick we use to try to jiggle the system out of its failure modes.)
It's quite irritating to have something done like that by someone who is essentially the shot-caller on a site like this on an issue which boils down to opinion. The highbrow condescension isn't necessary either... Anyways, perhaps it's moderation like this that's necessary to keep the forum quality. I do wish it were approached in a different manner however. Even just asking for more clarification or elaboration would have been a better move in this situation.
Anyways, thanks for moderating I guess. I understand that it's a thankless job.
Calling the shots doesn't just boil down to opinion–there are principles here. They don't determine everything precisely—different people would make different calls. But the principles aren't infinitely flexible, either, and we have a lot of practice in applying them.
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What does this even mean?!
No pay/peekwall --> https://archive.is/Idmdc
Companies, not just Google, seem to have a real blind spot here, insofar as they seem to think they can just wait for Harvard or Stanford to graduate more Black students with the degrees they want. A lot of the Black people they want to hire are at HBCUs. Many upper middle class Black people—the folks whose kids had access to technology to tinker with growing up, just like the upper middle class white and asian people who make up much of Google’s workforce—attended HBCUs. And their kids want to go to HBCUs, both to be in a supportive environment but also out of a sense of contributing their economic and social capital to a primarily Black college or university. (Obviously this doesn’t describe all Black people. But it describes a very large group of Black people, and is something that has no analog among white or Asian people. I myself was totally unaware of this dynamic until moving to an area with a lot of affluent Black people.) If companies cared about equity, they should be lining up to hire from HBCUs.
In fact, I’d say it’s the only saving grace of Leetcode, that it doesn’t discriminate on any level. The great equalizer.
Is Google wrong about this? Google would not be successful if it were unable to evaluate technical competence.
The fix is simple.
Focus on your own home and yourself first.
Teach your kids more at home. Be more involved with them. Teach them to take responsibility. Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans. Do more STEM. Start a small business. Eat better food. Exercise.
Sure there is systemic stuff out there - but it’s 2021 and you have a choice now in what you want to do with your life.
An additional 10% of the population of every race doing just the above would make a bigger difference than any company, government or organization could.
Google does not owe you anything.
This is literally the ethos of HBCUs, which graduate a disproportionate share of Black STEM majors. The point of the article is that Google is ignoring HBCU candidates.
...
> In lieu of a tier, Google’s University Programs recruiting division, responsible for forging partnerships with universities, labeled [HBCUs] “long tail” schools, in reference to the fact that it could take a long time before they would produce a large number of graduates qualified to work at Google, according to the Google employees.
...
> At the time, the 16-year-old company had not hired a single HBCU computer science graduate into an entry-level software engineer role, according to a 2013 document.
I think "basically wouldn't hire from" is a fair characterization of hiring zero for 16 years, and only a handful since then. (And no, interns are not hires).
That being the ethos of HBCU’s is already too late.
Wow, I'm glad you have the program down for all the low income people. Why don't they pick themselves up by their bootstraps (which, incidentally, is physically impossible).
> Teach kids at home
Assumes your parents are educated and have time. Neither of my parents passed the 10th grade. What were they supposed to teach me precisely?
> Be more involved with them
Hard to do when my parents worked jobs and had to rely on public transportation and/or bicycles to get to work. Hard to be really involved with your kid when you continually face 12+ days just to make slightly-above minimum wage
> Teach them to take responsibility
What does this even mean? "Sure little Johnny. That company says you weren't a 'culture add.' Now take responsibility, internalize that and... do whatever it is that would make you a culture add. Who knows?"
> "Don’t do silly degrees that cost huge student loans."
Hi there. I get paid 6 figures at a FAANG and I triple majored in liberal arts. It's not that degrees are 'silly.' It's that business has a narrow view of what's important.
My team is full of people with Master's degrees. Other than the military vets, I'm the only person without a master's degree. They all ask me how I quickly diagnose problems.
Pro tip: It's because my silly bachelor's taught me how to critically think and synthesize disparate pieces of information into a coherent whole. Their 'prestigious' degrees taught them how to write C++ and Java. Neither of those skills are useful on my team.
> "Do more STEM"
Not everyone does well in STEM, nor does tech require a heavy STEM background. Also, it's a little difficult to get help on trigonometry when your parents are under educated.
> "Start a small business."
Creating small businesses take time and money. So does your 'Teach your kids more' and 'be more involved with them'. Where are you going to find all this extra time?
Not to mention you have to have some cushion failures in business. If you don't have generational wealth (which people who go to HBCU's typically don't), creating a small business is a perilous enterprise that can ruin you easier than it can pull you out of poverty.
> "Eat better food"
Takes more money (non-processed food is by in large more expensive) and time (non-processed food has to be cooked). So that's 4 things that take more time.
> "Exercise"
The fifth thing that takes more time.
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Where are low income families supposed to get all this extra time when they're spending most of their time simply trying to make it to the next paycheck?
This advise may make a good self-help book. You might even make a bit of money (see how successful Dale Carnegie got with his tripe!). But simple fix ignores the realities of growing up in a generationaly poor family with under-educated parents.
Among people in the top 20% of income ages 40-50 (a reasonable proxy for the households where most Google employees grew up), 7% are Black compared to 12% of the overall population that is Black. It’s ignorant to turn every issue involving Black people into a discussion of inner city poverty. (And especially ignorant in the context of discussing HBCUs, as in this article, which are a pillar of the Black upper middle class.)
Because HBCUs are a gateway to the middle class for many low income people who come from generational poverty? It's an outlet for many first-time college students and those scraping toward the middle class.
And the 'ride bicycles to work to make barely above minimum wage' is from both personal experience and the fact that the generationally poor are largely dependant on forms of transportation other than personal vehicles.
> "It’s ignorant to turn every issue involving Black people into a discussion of inner city poverty. (And especially ignorant in the context of discussing HBCUs, as in this article, which are a pillar of the Black upper middle class.)"
HBCUs are a pillar of the Black upper middle class, but the majority of students are still lower-income. So it's relevant to talk about low-income students.[1][2][3]
[1] https://cmsi.gse.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/EMreport_R4... (p. 11) [2] https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/10/01/more-ec... [3] https://archive.is/swhoh
[1] How to pretend systemic racism does not exist? (with eng subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg
[2] Let's talk about what it's like to be a black person in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8mWq0Hdcw
[3] Let's talk about being armed and black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_IX8yX_JU
[4] How cops are trained to shoot you in your home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuzQrbio2Qw
Other resources include James Baldwin's books and documentaries. His 'The Fire Next Time' is just 120 pages [5].
'The Price of the Ticket' and 'I Am Not Your Negro' are good documentaries [6][7].
[5] https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/06797...
[6] https://www.amazon.com/James-Baldwin-Price-Ticket/dp/B01M25W...
[7] https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T
[8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc
it just goes to show when you make your bed with an alligator, it eventually eats you too.