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Jesse Jackson To Take On Silicon Valley's Lack of Diversity
New submitter wyattstorch516 writes "San Jose Mecury News reports that Jesse Jackson will lead a delegation to HP's next board meeting to discuss the hiring of technology companies in regard to African-Americans and Latinos. 'About one in 14 tech workers is black or Latino both in the Silicon Valley and nationally. Blacks and Hispanics make up 13.1 and 16.9 percent of the U.S. population, respectively, according to the most recent Census data.' Jackson sent a letter to HP, Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and others about meeting to discuss diversity issues."
Seriously, I was sick of his guilt-peddling bullshit decades ago.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Black culture doesn't reward or encourage intelligence.
I don't see much diversity in professional hockey.
Maybe Jesse should start his own company, hire strictly based on race, and compete.
Just not his minorities, queue the shakedown parade.
He just wants Jessie Jr to find decent job after he's out of prison...
When you think of all the good people that suffered long, painful deaths from cancer this year, it is simply a travesty of justice that Jackson was not one of them.
Seems like this would be an education issue not a hiring issue. e.g. are there really a lot of underemployed / unemployed black or hispanics with CS degrees?
I suspect the tech industry has a high percentage of minorities due to Indians and other Asians ethnicity.
I've been in the tech industry (software, circuit board design, chip design, and then back to software) for 24 years. I've worked with engineers with heritage from India, China, Korea, various eastern European countries, and probably a couple other countries in Asia. I've never had a black or latino co-worker. In all those years, I've only ever seen us interview a single black candidate, and he so inadequate that he got sent home after speaking with a single interviewer.
Hiring is not the problem. A lack of black and latino candidates worth hiring is.
I'm guessing he also wants them to overlook criminal convictions in their hiring process?
Give us jobs or you get bad press?
I don't think HP is the right place to go for this ploy. HP's done a real bang-up job in relation to their consumers in almost every market to say nothing of their staff relations.
The best Mr. Jackson can expect that is that the shareholders concoct a way to pay minorities less than the current staff to save a few bucks on the bottom line.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
Is the rate at which software engineers find employment affected by racial attitudes? I doubt it. If JJ wants more minorities in tech he needs to encourage said minorities to choose it as a career path. I doubt he's interested in that, though. He'd rather shame these firms into hiring underqualified minorities to increase the ratio.
I guess "diversity" only applies to black.
I think "insert-sport-here" league should hire short, slow, weak players.
I think everyone should be subjected to this race baiting bullshit as consistently and aggressively as possible.
This is the solution to people like this... they exploit white guilt. And in exploiting it, they use it up.
Look at this very forum... look at all the people saying "f this guy"... exactly. Those are the people that are already tapped out of guilt.
I'm amongst them of course. But not everyone has gotten there yet. Let Al run rampant... Everyone he comes into contact with will be inoculated against his tactics.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So do we know the diversity situation for Jesse's organization? Just curious, as I have no idea what the situation is.
I've worked in high tech (computing) doing software close-to the hardware (assemblers/compilers/binary translators/binary instrumentation tools/some device driver work) since 1985. And in every single company, the primary hiring criteria has been skill set. If you had the right skills, you got hired.
In the companies I've worked for: SKIN COLOR IS IRRELEVANT. Small unknown ones, up through: DEC/HP, Cisco, AMD
To be blunt, if there were two equally qualified candidates for a job, and one was 'not a white guy', the 'not a white guy' got hired in order to improve diversity in the company.
The real gap occurs prior to the engineering hiring process. The real gap starts in grade school.
So if Jesse Jackson can make a dent in the supply of talent, I applaud him for that. He needs to put his money where is (large) mouth is and start some targeted science endowments
What percentage of Computer Science or Engineering graduates are Black or Latino?
Cracker-Jackin Jackson is at it again, let no company fail to donate to the cause lest they be labelled racist and boycotted. Rainbow Push must need more money to pay off another staffer he knocked up.
I dont have a problem with Jesse Jackson...
I **do** have a problem with this reductive, tone-deaf initiative of his...this program won't improve anything.
Just as with the lack of women in tech, the lack of racial diversity is a ***symptom of a greater problem*** and trying to hit some sort of abstract "number" is ridiculous.
The problem goes all the way back to middle school & all the way up through funding for graduate research. We don't know how to **teach technology**...partially because of misperceptions of how the industry works. Steve Jobs as "technology genius" is a perfect example. Jobs was a 'genius' at marketing & dealmaking. He applied innovation to opening new markets & had the vision to see potentials. These are great traits, but have ***nothing to do with actual computing***
The misperceptions influence organizaitonal decisions...which influences academia...which just reinforces the cycle of bad theory/practice.
Diversity is an evolutionary advantage, but it's **two steps** beyond fixing right now...tech's problems are systemic and hitting some artificial quota will not help fix things!!!
First step is to acknowledge we have a problem & start talking about refining + improving how we explain tech to non-techs and students...and integrating those improvements into our systems naturally.
It's sort of a "healing algorythm" that has to go throughout the whole system to optimize.
Thank you Dave Raggett
should go after outsourcing and H-B1 they are the real killers of work.
Asians are not the "right kind" of minority because they spend their time working and have no need for troublemakers.
FTFY
How many black/latino students are 1) attending college and 2) studying CS? (Or 3, self-taught programmers). How many apply for jobs in tech, and what's the acceptance/rejection rate? Are there a significant number of people who decide not to study CS in the first place because of a perception of not being welcome in the workplace? Are there relatively few black/latino tech workers in senior positions because of some adverse selection or simply because there are fewer of them in the industry to begin with?
Similar questions apply to women, who make up roughly 50% of the population but also have low numbers in tech.
Raw numbers don't tell the whole story, although they help direct the questions that we should be asking.
My experience has been that IT is more color blind than many other departments in large companies I've worked at. The problem is lack of qualified job candidates. Hiring somebody or giving them preferential treatment in the hiring process based on their race or skin color is discrimination.
Stop affirmative action.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
...and I am going to take a delegation to the NFL board meeting to talk about under-representation of south asians in NFL.
I wonder what percent of the US population is Indian or Asian. Wikipedia shows 4.8 % Asian American. I work with a disproportionately high number of Asian Americans and Russians at my current job. Previous jobs have had disproportionately high numbers of people from India and Pakistan.
Which is more likely?
Global conspiracy to prevent blacks from having and keeping jobs.
or
Blacks in general are less predisposed to being intelligent and employable.
I've worked in tech for 15-20 years now. Since about 2005, I've sat on interview panels.
In all that time, I've interviewed maybe three black people (two of whom ended up getting hired). Same with women. It wasn't that we were intentionally ignoring resumes we thought were from black people or women, we just simply did not ever get them.
I went to college at a school that had a large black student body (although it wouldn't be classified under the "Historically Black College" scheme). Looking at their website, the college is 52% white, 27% black, 10% hispanic white, 3% Asian. However, in my CS101 class (~50 students), it was all white and Asian guys and one white girl (who ended up changing majors).
The high school I went to was roughly 50/50 black/white, but my AP Computer Science class in high school was 100% white. There was actually a pretty good split of girls and boys, though (it was the only "computer" class that offered honors credit, so there was an attraction to people who wanted high class-placement even if they weren't interested in CS).
So yeah. While I don't doubt some corporations are biased in their hiring practices, there also just aren't a lot of black of female applicants, and not a lot of black and/or female CS graduates. I don't know how to address that end of the problem.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
I had an Indian supervisor recently who was racist. He rode me like a horse for two years. I did everything he (it) expected but it kept riding me. Indians are racist against Whites. Get them things out of my face!!
There have been a large number of tech startups started by small shops (2 or 3 founders). Nothing prevents anyone who is talented enough from starting up a small software shop. Race, gender does not matter; talent and execution does.
You're kidding me, right? If there is one industry that is by its very nature not racist it's IT. Xenophobia simply doesn't work out if half your coworkers are hailing from abroad. You have all sorts of people working together, the whole thing reeks of favoritism.
Or, in other words, Mr. Jackson trying to play the race card in an attempt to guilt-trip.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
awesome MADTv sketch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'm guessing he also wants them to overlook criminal convictions in their hiring process?
As we can see, the incarceration rates for African-Americans is much higher than the general population.
It is easy to just brush it aside as it being a sign of the inferiority of Black Culture in the US - like how "those people" do not value education or being smart.
Granted, there is (some) truth in stereotypes, but I just have to ask why? Is it really true that it is believed that being smart is acting "white" in that community? Is that attitude a way of dealing with lack of opportunities - sour grapes "I really don't want to be an engineer because it's acting white."
Now, I'm sure there will be folks that will jump all over the "lack of opportunities" stated above and point out all the scholarships and the affirmative action policies of universities. Much of that IS true; no doubt. What I'm talking about is education UP TO college.
It sucks in black neighborhoods.
But wait! There's more! There is the family unit. With so many Black men in jail, it's pretty hard to have stable families.
Side note: Now I am over simplifying a very complex problem for a Slashdot post - but the theme is something we all can understand.
Anyway back to incarceration rates. It's the way Black neighborhoods are policed and our idiotic drug laws.
And as we all know, in this society, jail birds are fucked for the rest of their lives and you can kiss ANY decent paying work good-bye forever.
So, we as a society can just say (by implication) there are no minorities because they have inferior character or we can actually work to solve the problem.
Yeah, I thought so. Sorry Black people, you're fucked.
Here is data for C.S. and C.E. bachelors degree recipients in the U.S. See page 5. About 8.7% of degrees were awarded to blacks and Hispanics, which is about one out of 11. So Silicon Valley isn't far off what one would expect based purely on # of degrees awarded. A significant portion of bay area tech workers are likely immigrants to the United States and got their degrees elsewhere. This group likely contains very few blacks and Hispanics. So, if the discussion were limited to Silicon Valley workers born in the United States the the percentage of blacks and Hispanics may well line up with expectations.
Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton are classic shakedown artists.
To this day, many cities continue to use exclusionary zoning to keep minority groups out of certain neighborhoods. In Silicon Valley, is density tightly controlled? Are minimum parking requirements in place? If so, this could help explain Silicon Valley's lack of diversity.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
But, before hitting Silicon Valley, why not make a stop by the NBA?
I mean, asians and whites are dramatically underrepresented there. I'm sure you see this as a big problem, too.
Right, Jesse?
Um, Jesse?
Do you have ESP?
Everyone in the article keeps saying that Jackson is "shining a spotlight" on the problem. Is he really? He pointed out the lack of blacks and latinos in the tech industry and did fuck-all to state what he believes to be the problem and what we can do to resolve it. If he had come out with figures that showed that there were tons of unemployed or underployed blacks and latinos in the tech industry and that the underlying problem is due to discrimination, then that would give us something to work with. But that doesn't seem to be the case at all. What does he expect these companies to do? Hire underqualified people just to get the numbers to match?
This sounds like what my dad was telling me the other day. He used to work for the federal government and they had very detailed lists of minorities in each department. Every department was often under stress to get their numbers to match percentage of populations. But what population do you go by? National? Regional? Many of these departments were more focused on meeting these quotas than hiring the most qualified candidates, so overall these systems are counterproductive.
And if we're so focused on quotas of fairness, should we put a quota that only 13.9% of NFL players should be black? The fact is that Mr. Jackson did a lot of good when qualified black people couldn't find work due directly to discrimination. And while discrimination may not be completely gone, it is a lot better than it used to be and not every case of underrepresentation today is due to discrimination. So keep fighting the good fight against discrimination, but if you're going to complain about underrepresentation and completely fail to show that it is a result of discrimination rather than a lack of interest or qualification, then you can kindly STFU.
I am not feeling any LOVE at all for Jesse or DIVERSITY. :-D
Shame on you people. Cmon, lets get with it.
In, before Affirmative Action strikes again !
As someone w/ Asian background - they've already made it hard for us academically. Now this - yeah keep em coming.
Nice business you got here, be a shame if something happened to it...
Pay him a tidy sum and he'll move on to the next company.
http://calwatchdog.com/2014/02/22/shakedown-street-jesse-jackson-targets-silicon-valley-again/
http://www.cypress.com/?docID=17901
We all understand how the bell curves go but are afraid to say the truth.
Has Jackson forgotten what happened 15 years ago when he brought his extortion racket to the Valley and tried it out on T.J. Rodgers over at Cypress. Didn't work out too well as I recall. Jackson is the worst kind of opportunist there is. His political capitol these days is greatly reduced, so I see no reason for the current crop of execs to even give him the time of day. There are serious people working on racial justice in this country, but Jackson has never been one of them - he is just in it for himself.
Has nothing to do with being a "nigger". Fact is the culture in the inner-city has a social norm of intimidating kids who want to learn. Just look at the poor kid who got beat up in Chicogo. Jessie should focus more on inspiring inner-city people to get educated. He can then focus on educational institutions to offer more than an athletic scholarship (which is where education makes money - colleage sports is a money racket). Jessie should also focus on black-on-black deaths. More blacks are killed by other blacks than "whitey" lynchings. Jessie is a bad case of the pot calling the kettle black. Let's refrain form the word "nigger" as it only adds ammunition to Jessie, that everyone (AKA "white people") is against them. Personally, I think there are more problems *socially* in the intercity that need to be addressed. IMHO, the only thing holding them down is their own culture. As long as they can blame others, one won't fix themselves first. I have known and worked with many minorities and can only say, that the successful ones succeeded in spite of the jacked up community they came from (I had same problem myself in a way).
Affirmative Action is so decisive that I feel I need to give a bit of background. For all intents and purposes, I'm White (I do have native American ancestors, but too far removed to count tribal membership). I grew up in a part of Hawaii where only 30% of the population was White. Among my own spouse and the spouses of my siblings we have two Asians, one Pacific Islander, and three Latinos (one Latina also is part Black). I do not generally consider myself a racist, nor do I feel any White guilt. Slavery ended so long ago that I would be surprised to meet anyone in the US whose grandparents were slaves in the US. My own ancestors weren't slavers and I believe slavery to be evil, but people of all races can make their own future now.
In Hawaii, preferential treatment is given to Pacific Islanders. At my university, the highest paying jobs for students ($10 / hour) were reserved for Pacific Islanders, while White like me had to be content with $5.25 per hour. I have been turned down numerous times so that a company could get government credit for hiring a less qualified person from a protected class.
We are in the 21st century. We need to get rid of diversity quotas. Let the most qualified person get the job. Bill Cosby is right in that Blacks need to rid themselves of the ghetto mentality and educate themselves. Blacks (everyone, really) need to take responsibility for their own situation instead of blaming it on events from the 1800s.
When the IQ of non-Hispanic whites is normalized to a mean of 100 and SD of 15, the African American mean falls at about 85 with an SD of about 13.5. The black IQ distribution both lags behind and is narrower than the white. The small difference in width manifests itself significantly at the bell curve extremes, reducing both the numbers of retarded and exceptional blacks.
Simply put those with the require intelligence to work IT jobs are more of a rarity in the African American population.
Unfortunately, the diversity of the population does not equal diversification in job skills.
This is a repeat of Equal Oppertunity and job quota's from 2 decades ago. In the 70's I had a job with a TS clearance in a technical field and I noted the stark lack of some ethnic groups. I asked my employer about this ethnic bias toward White. He showed me the stack of applications. Minorities very rarely applied or even trained in the high tech trades.
Due to affirmative action in the 80's by t US Goverment, a family relative applied for an apprenticeship with Bonniville Power Administration. He had the highest test score, until another canidate passed him due to race, ethnicity, etc. My brother was passed by for the position. The selected canidate failed out of the program. By this time 6 months had passed and he took another posiiton in private industry.
Now 30 years later, the BPA HR staff is in the hotseat because they gave preference to minoriities as part of Affermitive Action, but did not give any preference to Veterans. I and my brother are vets. I did not even apply with BPA because at the time I knew the deck was stacked against me.
Mainzer's email to staff said BPA was now working with DOE to identify the first wave of applicants, including veterans, who were disadvantaged and provide them with priority consideration for positions at BPA. But his email also suggested that the problems went on until April 2013, a year longer than initially reported.
http://www.oregonlive.com/busi...
Stating only a low number are hired is only part of the story. Poor inner city schools, culture, and other factors disadvantage these minority groups. When they change culture, work ethic, schooling, etc and enter the trades, only then will the numbers start to match up.
Do not fix a lack of a race by hiring 100 percent of the applicatents from a race while only picking 5 percent of a mjority. Testing and qualifications do matter to private industry. It should matter in government positions too.
The truth shall set you free!
Maybe if black people stop killing each other and joining gangs they could do well in school and actually get these jobs.
Friends of mine who would be considered black in the US have no problem getting jobs. However, they have a real education.
As a side note, the US definition of black is stupid. Unless you have porcelain white skin you're considered black.
All those celebrities bitching and moaning about their black heritage make me laugh my ass off.
If they went to some maroon village in south america they would be called white.
Slavery is over. It's time to stop bitching about it. You don't see me bitching and moaning about how the Romans mistreated my ancestors, or how the Egyptians enslaved the Jews. While I'm ranting and raving I'll just bitch out indian (the american kind; I don't know what the current PC name is) reservations too.
It's a stupid idea. If they had just made them all regular citizens and given them some amount of land (to individuals) we wouldn't have the problems with them all being drunk and working at burger king. The whole argument about maintaining traditions is also BS.
If the tradition was so great it would maintain itself. Write that shit down and forget about it. We don't keep the french living on reservations so they can keep painting in caves like they did 10000 years ago. Given the choice most people would prefer to live in modern houses with a job and the ability to buy food at a store.
Even in countries where people still live in little villages in the interior wearing loincloths and learning about plants they try to get out of that shit because they don't want their kids to die from malnutrition and disease. Sure, culture changes and we forget about some dances, but that's the price for living 2 to 3 times longer.
Seriously. We don't need dead even numbers across the board. I'm tired of this "we don't have enough color X, or gender Y in tech so lets throw money at the problem" because it's NOT A PROBLEM. Stop making it easy for some people while making it difficult for others. Treat everyone the same for a fucking change.
We don't create equality by making minorities more equal than everyone else.
When you see this kind of disparity between the demographics of the population in an area and the demographics of people in certain businesses, there is almost certainly something wrong. We have seen a slow improvement in diversity in NFL quarterbacks, NFL managers, university students, etc etc and we need to see that in tech as well. I live outside DC and work in tech and have seen a severe disparity between the population of the area and the demographics of my co-workers. I think it is complex, it is partly cultural and may not always be deliberate. I _have_ seen it done deliberately though. I was on a search committee where a candidate with an appropriate degree and experience was ruled out at the resume reviewing stage because of the college she went to (a traditionally black college). In any case, I know there are arguments against quotas, arguments saying affirmative action punishes qualified applicants, I know those things need to be considered. But tech jobs are good jobs, especially in today's economy, and I'm sure a lot of black and Latino people would do well at them given the chance. I am white if you care.
There is nothing better than a Slashdot comments discussion of racial issues. You know you're always in for a dose of thoughtful and intelligent views on race relations.
It always makes me feel so good about my fellow man. The first post (in this case, with the subject line: "Fuck that guy") usually sets the tone and it just gets better from there.
Usually, it's just a matter of time before the first mention of the GNAA and the fact that black people have a "special bone in their foot that prevents them from playing hockey". Look it up.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Honestly when I came out of school (1998) and during the dot-com explosion it was far worse. Now there are a lot more black and latino CS grads and a lot more minority talent in the SF / valley area than it used to be. I can believe there is still an issue, but its nothing like it used to be.
niggas be too stupid to work in STEM fields. End of story.
If I were a talented and academically inclined African-American, why would I go into STEM careers when I could go into medicine or the legal profession?
STEM, medicine, and the law all require hard work and some talent, but the latter two have a significantly higher status, and they both offer many direct ways to give back to your community.
I know that the top-tier IT talent like Zuckerberg give back boatloads of money, and I know that you can't get much higher status than Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I also know getting into those slots are about as likely as being a pro football player or a famous rap star.
i'm not against the concept at all, but it's got to be at a larger scale in multiple areas
most of our "tech industry heroes" were ***alienated*** from both Academia & Corporate America. it was their alienation from the "tech industry" that drove them to create something that subverted the bad tendencies that caused their alienation.
we can all think of examples of this
my question: how is setting up a dumbed-down version of a system that ***doesn't work*** going to help?
we don't need to "re-invent the wheel" but we do need to refine how our theory/practice in Academia
we have a whole **public education system**...we don't need headline grabbing "hackathons" where a bunch of Detroit HS students are sat in front of a computer & taught a few lines of C++ or w/e
we need **qualified teachers** in every school in America...teaching from a **coherent theory of Human/machine interaction** that they learned from **gov't funded professors** writing papers that establish a theory that can be put into practice consistently
industry needs to open the wallets as well if they expect to have a quality workforce to draw from and a consumer base with enough disposable income to buy their gadgets
Thank you Dave Raggett
He does the following:
1) complain about lack of diversity in an industry/group.
2) Get some people to protest.
3) Suggest to that group that a donation to his "rainbow coalition" will help.
4) Accepts large check
5) repeat step 1 with different group.
It's no different from protection rackets of years past. He's just using guilt instead of baseball bats.
Nearly 100% rejection of race-baiting and skin color preferences. Things really have changed for the better.
Let me sum it up: The "race" problem will exist as long as people (such as Jesse Jackson) insist on making it an issue. While the current generations (I'd go so far as to say 60 years and younger - as a rough ballpark) have largely learned, moved on and have accepted people of all races as potential (I say potential because no 2 people are exactly equal in terms of ability, aptitude or motivation) equals, some people (the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc) want to continue to harp on the issue of race to raise money for political purposes, to garner votes that further other ulterior motives and to weigh in on issues in an unfavorably weighted matter.
Jesse Jackson isn't some saint or savior of the black community, he's holding it back. He just breeds hatred and vitriol. Hell, he is a prime example of what other races despise about the black community. Lack of family. Lack of parenting direction and guidance. Just look at how good of job he did with Jesse Jackson Jr.!
PBS program last week about struggles of black people from 1960s through today. Near end of program it was mentioned about maybe reason why so many blacks are still living in poverty (inner cities) is because racism has been institutionalized. Also for many white people they don't see blacks except on TV where typically they are seen as sports stars, entertainers, or getting dragged off to jail. There is the President but lately his popularity is not that high. Couple months ago Charlie Bolden, NASA Administrator, said he has experienced walking into a convention (where he is the only black guy) everyone looks at him like he is out of place (or is he one of the waiters?). When someone recognizes and points out he is the NASA Administrator (and former astronaut and Marine general), at an instant he becomes the most brilliant person in the room. (ok, there are many saying Bolden is not effective NASA Administrator but that's another topic for another discussion. Besides there have been white guys that were ineffective administrators).
It seems to me society should encourage math and science but lots of luck as this country is mesmerized by football. Or put resources into inner city schools will be a good start but unfortunately people will cry foul ("that's socialism!") or say we can't afford it (well we sure found plenty of money to pour into Afghanistan and Iraq). But perhaps ask those at these engineering societies, http://www.nsbe.org/ and http://www.ncalifblackengineer... for their suggestions on what they would present at HP.
mfwright@batnet.com
Excellent is not a skin color. Outstanding is not a race.
The person that seems to have the most alignment with this message is Bill Cosby.
Sadly, many of the young'ns don't know much about him... Maybe his new show can provide a platform for his message.
Now that Jesse Jackson is on the case, we can all rest knowing that, as long as there is any discrimination, he will never give up trying to exploit it for personal gain.
Are you being accused of being racist? Are you actually racist? It doesn't matter. All you need to do is give Jesse Jackson money, and he will promise not to make your problems worse than they already are.
Seriously, I was sick of his guilt-peddling bullshit decades ago.
It isn't a question of guilt. It is a question of demographics.
In the future the biggest demographic change in the U.S. is the rise of the majority-minority, an odd concept that shows that we still haven't gotten over the ides that white males are the norm and everyone else is a stranger.
To thrive domestically as well as globally, being multicultural is essential.
How Will Changing Demographics in the U.S, Influence Business In the Coming Decade?
The geek would probably agree that the Republican Party is slowly losing ground as a national force because it is too white, male, inbred and insular. He probably knows that the conflict between the poor and middle class of San Francisco runs deeper than gentrification,
But he refuses to draw any larger conclusions from the evidence which surrounds him.
From the article (quoting Jesse Jackson)
"Technology is supposed to be about inclusion, but sadly, patterns of exclusion remains the order of the day"
In all of my professional career I have NEVER seen a "pattern of exclusion". I wish more energy was spent on how to make positive changes in society to allow for a more diverse pool of qualified candidates. Instead, all I see is negative energy feeding into this, which will accomplish nothing.
He was required at his job to train them and even 5 years into the job people coming in with a degree a tier higher than him were earning the same or more than him, despite him having to train them on concepts *THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN FROM COLLEGE*.
Additionally many of them lacked the critical thinking and self-start skills necessary to do their jobs effectively and would sometimes make mountains out of molehills because their degree meant they were smarted than everybody, even if they didn't read the documentation for the software/hardware etc they were commenting on.
I've gotten to listen to years of these stories, and I can tell you: The stupidity is endemic to the people, regardless of class, education, claimed experience, etc.
Point being: Maybe it's time to start judging impartially based on practal merits, rather than claimed ones. The proof is in the pudding as Cosby would say :D
The only thing stopping more diversity is the lack of candidates with the right skill set. My company has made offers to a wide range of people and we don't care what their background is as long as they have the skills needed. One of the best candidates I interviewed was transgendered and we made her an offer but sadly she didn't join. Everyone who interviewed her recommended her. I have never seen discrimination with any of the tech companies I have worked for. I just have never seen any Latino or Black candidates, period. If I see a compelling resume I'll do a phone interview and if that goes well it leads to an in-person interview. I don't care what the color of their skin is, their sex, whether they're straight or gay, only that they have the skills we need.
If Jesse Jackson wants more diversity then he needs to look at the people graduating from college with computer science and computer engineering degrees and applying those degrees (not going in to IT).
Unfortunately most of the people I interview are not qualified regardless of their race or background. They exaggerate their skills on their resumes or their C coding skills are not up to snuff. I always give the same programming problem as well which I don't consider very difficult and there's more than one way to solve it though most use the simplest method. Sadly, 60% of the people I interview fail it utterly and another 30% miss key corner cases. If they say they've worked on the Linux kernel, I'll ask some basic Linux kernel questions. If they say they've worked on U-Boot, I'll ask some basic U-Boot questions.
Right now we're looking for people who can work on bootloader code for 64-bit embedded chips (U-Boot and/or UEFI). All we ask are that you have the skills and speak English (and even that doesn't have to be perfect if the skills are present). Most of the stuff we ask should be known by anyone with a decent computer science degree and an understanding of basic CPU architecture.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
We're fucking *EXPORTING* thug culture.
I visited Antigua not long after Obama became president.
They renamed their tallest mountain after him. Many cars had 'thug culture' stickers plastered on the windows. There was more 'energy drinks' (Monster/Rockstar) for sale there than *HERE* despite them costing 3-5 dollars USD and costing 2x as much in Carribean Dollars (3:1 ratio to USD) despite minimum wage there being only 6.25/hr.
In addition to that, the quality of the roads/sidewalks (many cobblestone dating back to colonial times) and disrepaired state of the older houses (Many 50+ years old with siding so bad you could see through it), the disrespect for the beaches (according to my friend there the majority of trash on the beaches, tourist attractions, etc was actually from LOCALS), and the lack of potable water from the faucet, one has to wonder what sort of shining example we're providing to our neighbors, especially those who are our biggest fans. (Despite Antigua having won a case with the WTO over the US not living up to it's treaty arrangements, which Obama 'Mr. Hope'n'change' didn't resolve without WTO intervention for some of his biggest fans.)
While I didn't have any problems while I was there, I was lead to believe much of the island that wasn't tourist traps or heavily urbanized was not places you should go as a local, nevermind as a 'tourist'.
Of marijuana related criminal convictions for non-violent African-American offenders would solve the majority of that :)
Mind you they'd still have to pass the mandatory drug test everybody enforces nowadays, but it would get them the opening, whether they chose to take advantage of it or not.
And the Tech Industry replies...
Hell, we sent most all our jobs to India and China, how more diverse do you want us to get!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?
Jesse Jackson has been so discredited as a race baiter and antagonist, that really its best to just ignore him. There is no racial discrimination. It all has to do with qualifications. The fact is, blacks need to stop flunking out of math class if they want these kinds of jobs. The lackadaisical attitude I would see from blacks in schools is indicative, they just didn't care and they did not want to learn the subject. Most of them want to play football and basketball and had little or no interest in mathematics. In most cases, it was the whites and orientals that took the most interest in and excel at mathematics and engineering. Blacks have had the same opportunities in schools but they refuse to avail themselves of it, so its their own fault.
The problem is that ghetto culture has become regarded as authentically Black. Check out www.blacksvsniggers.com
(BTW - we did make the black candidate and offer - he accepted, then shot us down after getting a counteroffer from his employer to stay. )
the man can teach his tech hopefuls binary...
Oh, and BTW, I'm a female white midget.
Where's the diversity?
Oh ? Diversity ? Ha ha Jackson ! Diversify your own House First Fucker !
Boo hooo Jesse Jackson!
Look at you cry you motherfucking bitch...
Why you and your family don't go back to the southern cotton fields for once and for all and stop playing the racism victim game already?
How about you teach blacks that studying and getting out of their own rapers, hip-hop and car stereos thieves infested ghettos will lead to better jobs in the long run?
I think Jessy Jackson is a racist. Instead of focusing on race, he should focus on educating kids. Oh wait, he is a democrat, they don't want to educate people, that is why he wants to just force companies to hire who they say to hire.
On the one hand, Democrats think corporations are greedy and only care about money, on the other hand they think those same corporations would hire less qualified employees because they are racists.
nuff said
There's your problem Jesse.
Programming, Silicon Valley - none of these things are cool enough for the people you claim to represent, they prefer their gangs and hip-hop, big bootied girls, etc..
Once these other things are cooler, you know, like busting caps in Bill Gates Ar$e or something, then maybe, but until then, fuck that noise.
It will continue to exist as long as people bow to the loud mouths. We have enough collective wisdom showing that he isn't telling the truth or representing the facts. Twenty years ago, we could claim we didn't know or understand. Today, we have mountains of data and research to prove out all of the problems associated with this issue.
When I was in university, there were no persons in my smaller classes of African heritage. None, zip, nada. There were white kids, there were asian kids (in some classes, lots and lots of asian kids), there were at least in the earlier classes, first-nations kids, and there were kids with Indian heritage (from India). There were white male professors, white female professors, asian male professors (including the department head). There were none with African heritage. Predominantly male (although classes with math majors taking CS as a requirement had more women), then asian male, then asian female, then Indian male. That was the demographic breakdown. I don't know how representative my university was compared to others, but they can't get a job without the background. Its hard to 'break in' when you are the only one. Its easy to play (stereotype) basketball when everyone else is doing it. Computers are considered 'nerdy, geeky, stupid', until the affirmative action guy comes and says: "hire this guy: he can hit the basket from 50 feet out: he will be your new database guy; if you don't I will call you racist".
YES.
You're one of those closet Republican, "I hate anything the government does always no matter what" people & debating you is pointless.
If you want to talk about your defunct ideas, slide on over to Foxnews.com and have fun in the comments section...
Thank you Dave Raggett
News for nerds, stuff that matters
RIP slashdot
People get jobs based on two important factors: chemistry with the people who interview her or him and skill set. So how many white people have to lose their jobs to put things in balance for the perversity police? A totally absurd situation...
Companies only see green. They don't care about any other color, unless it equates to more green.
Rather than force the companies to hire people who they don't think are qualified, why not sponsor some minorities for 7+ years to them interested in CS and get them a good degree in CS.
Or better yet, Jesse should shut his mouth, go get a technical degree himself, and then do some real work. IMO, he talks a good game, but he doesn't back it up with his lavish lifestyle.
...that the tech industry doesn't so much discriminate against certain groups of people just because they are those groups, but that being in those groups produces a tendency on the part of a large number of that group's members to discriminate against the tech industry by not preparing themselves to be qualified to fill positions in it.
If the tech industry adjusted its standards downwards as far as what they expect hirees to know and be able to do, it wouldn't be the tech industry anymore, and pretty soon everybody working there would no longer have jobs no matter how much the requirements had been relaxed.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Just give him a camera to take photos of himself, and a small printing press to print his own money. The man would never leave his home.
It's said that one of the most dangerous places to be is between Jesse Jackson and a reporter's camera. He will run over you to get in front of it.
I'm kinda guessing the proud and hard-working Latinos don't like being grouped in with African Americans? Obviously demagogue Jackson see opportunity in including the growing population of Latinos. But, take prison gangs for example, it's not like the Norteños and Sureños want blacks in there, that's why they're totally separate gangs. No one works harder than the proud and respectful Mexicans, not sure if I can say the same for surly African Americans. Lastly, given the huge number of Asians (Indian/Chinese) in tech, why does Jackson think there is lack of diversity???
Jackson is a master of corporate shakedowns and this has *nothing* to do with equality except where his wallet is concerned.
If discrimination is no longer a problem, Mr. Jackson has done his job and needs to retire. If discrimination is still a problem, Mr. Jackson has not done his job properly and needs to retire. Either way...
A solution still in search of a problem...
The race card has been played.
The keyword in Equal Opportunity Employer, is Opportunity.
You have the opportunity to be selected as the best candidate, and nothing more.
Most of these places are also notorious for having rigid technical phone interview prior to even seeing anyone in person. Unless there is new technology on the market to tell the color of your skin over the phone, then I think Jessie is barking up the wrong tree, as usual. There's nothing stopping employers from stipulating that a candidate must have a fluent knowledge of the English language and be able to speak it without accent, slurring, or use of urban slang.
"Let me "axe" you a question Señor."
Some Hispanic gangs are trying to cleanse their communities of blacks by terrorizing them. Check out the Azusa 13. No love there just because they are both minorities in the US.
But they happen *way* the crap earlier than with people trying to get jobs. You want to fix things? Fix things at like the elementary school level. People living in poverty will have kids that will also be living in poverty. Kids living in poverty are not nearly so likely to a. value getting a good education, or b. be able to get a good education even if they do value it. People who don't get a good education are less likely to get good jobs. People who don't value a good education are less likely to even *want* to aspire to have a good job, or even know where to look.
So, there are totally still racial inequalities... but it isn't really fair to blame Silicon Valley companies, who I can't imagine for the most part would really care what color your skin is, as long as you're the best at whatever job they're hiring for, and can at least like speak English more fluently than not.
"pull up your damn pants, don't get ugly tattoos all over your body, learn to address people in respectful language and study your ass off rather than trying to figure how you can goof off more. "
An in case some of you "underrepresented" folk have a problem with the above sentiments, you might consider where America and other Western countries have come from - the road towards these brazen demands. The above sentiments imo, are a genuine (at least they would be in my eyes) attempt to point the logical direction.
We all know the world is not fair, but some of us seem to moan and whine a lot more and only exacerbate the stigma labelled on them, in stead of showing some get up and work mentality. The journey of America for example is part of the reason. African Americans (for example, Jess Jackson), due to history, have become so entrenched in civil right that they have allowed it to contaminate their virtues and character. It's a complex not unlike arrogance, superiority complex, or victim complex, any complex - it proliferates too much in the culture of the group so that it becomes like a disease.
And the first step is to recognise you have a problem, man up and be the kind of person people respect, and if you think like me - be the kind of person who deserves respect even if you don't get it. That;s how I see it. There's no guarantees in life and it's wrong to demand them.
I would amend his above quote and apply it to any race of people, ANY:
"pull up your damn pants, don't get ugly tattoos all over your body, learn to address people in respectful language and study your ass off rather than trying to figure how you can goof off more and enjoy the fact that you at least won't regret never having tried to be an honest productive positive-minded human being. "
The worst thing about people like Jesse Jackson, is any further affirmative action that favours minority groups will just entrench resentment against them even further.
Some of you might find this video goofy but I love it:
I guess John Thompson must have hidden that he was black and that was why he rose to the top of IBM and then was CEO of Symantec /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
He might also do well to remember a heck of a lot more Chinese, Indians, and Africans have opportunities in the first place if they're prepared to work fro them as opposed to say China or India (Africa is still developing) where an American will never get the opportunity of a native. Maybe Jesse Jackson should see how African people do in those places, because if America sinks, what opportunity will African people have outside of America and Europe - SQUAT.
The white hatred is greatly misplaced. People just don't get how this world really works.
I'm European and for every time I hear another demand for white people to just bend over to minorities, I increase my support for countries like Russia - that seem to stand up for their own people and ignore minorities...
I've already changed my thinking. I respect Russia, and think countries like America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and European countries could learn a lot from her. How much bending over are we going to be required to do..?
We should all roll up our sleeves and do the best with what we have or flea if we have to. Fight your own corner. Thats how I see it. I'm white and I've never had anyone in my corner afaik.
"I've worked with talented black IT professionals, but, they were from South Africa, not the USA.
Americans have a "Thug Culture" that makes them stupid in general. It's not a racial thing at all. It's an attitude thing."
That's a point I overlooked. Slavery f*$ked America I think. At least in South Africa, native Africans knew they were never going to be spoon fed and demand things. America's civil rights movement got used as a carnival to take a mile from an inch. I can honestly say that I never met an African person from America I liked. I also don't like the Canadian ones. But, I met plenty of African people from South Africa I liked. Night and day. Generally I also prefer European blacks to American but not by a whole lot. Obama mania has done nothing but harm - arming a generation of African people to expect free gratis. Lose the attitude and stop trying to bum-rush everyone or power-play everything and you might even get people to like you, not that most of you give a shit about that.
This whole topic creates so many issues for me. We should hire based on SKILLS and NOT SKIN. If a person is capable of doing a job that person should be considered. Race, ethnicity, and nationality shouldn't even be on an application. Those things simply do not matter. What matters is if the candidate is qualified for the position or not. What is going to happen to the quality of products produced in America if we are forced to hire on skin color alone? I don't believe this is fair to anyone; especially not to the unqualified person hired to do a job he/she is not qualified to do simply because he/she is not white. Affirmative Action should not exist because the only thing that should ever matter is a person's ability to perform.
Parents need to start seeking help for their children at an early age. They should be worrying about getting their children educated enough to compete in any market. I grew up poor. I paid my own way through college, while working full-time. I'm STILL paying for college. Why is that okay for some, but not okay for others? Racism will NEVER go away if we don't stop treating the races differently. Everyone should be treated the same.
While the lack of African-Americans and Latinos in Silicon Valley is certainly a problem worth remedying, this isn't a hiring issue, it's a training issue. Sure, these minorities make up 13.1 and 16.9 percent of the general population, but they make up only 4.6 and 5.2 percent of the Science and Engineering (S&E) workforce - See Table 3.22, NSF S&E Indicators 2014. If we want more of these under-represented groups in our tech companies, we need to first get them to pursue S&E degrees in our schools.
Hell, he is a prime example of what other races despise about the black community.
Well, *that* hurt. (I'm black.)
And, you're giving Jesse *way* more credit (with black people) than reality dictates.
Who thinks this is a good idea ...?
Jackson only gets involved if there is an opportunity for his organization to extort money from a company.
He's not a scientist and he proved it when he signed off on the Cosmos program, which focused on irrelevant crackpot Bruno instead of actually discussing the history of our understanding of the universe.
He's a monkey in a suit who goes around the country showing that he's a monkey in a suit.
Until you are willing to recognize that Blacks do not have the same level of intelligence as any of the other races, you will continue to ask why we have to still be having these conversations. The IQ scores have been stable for 100 years.
Do you want to invent a better IQ test that gives Blacks 100 instead of 85? Go ahead and try, this has been the holy grail of psychometrics for 50 years, universally clamored for.
President Bush's 3rd and 4th terms.(IE I can't see how anybody could like or hate one and not have the same opinion of the other.)
Then he will go to Black and Latino neighborhood schools and urge kids to take math and science... Oh, wait...
I wonder if Jessi would march on predominantly black schools to lecture the kids about wanting to be nerds instead of pro sports players?
I do mentoring at the middle school level... and almost every male black kid wants to be a pro sports player. You do hear some Hispanics say "computers" or "technology". But I have never heard any black male kid name anything other than sports or "rapper" as a career.
This is only males.
Females dream much bigger in scope!
Does using that word make you feel like a big man?
I work in Silicon Valley and have worked at several startups. I am also white. I am also the minority. In most of the companies where I have worked, the majority of the software people have been Indian or Asian. Other jobs in the companies seem to be predominantly white/American. Why do I think this is? Well, our education system and values are a good start. We have been trying to grow the company and have several head count to fill. Most candidates coming in the door are also Indian or Asian, have at *minimum* a Master's degree or PhD, and are very driven to succeed. We pick candidates solely based on their skill sets. If a green girl with tentacles came into the office and was a good technical and business culture fit, we would hire them. Want to get more African-American and Latinos in our doors? Make them better candidates. Period.
What about the lack of diversity in the NFL and NBA? Could it be that that differences in abilities and interests are skewed along along racial lines? No, of course that cannot be true. It is simply impossible. Everyone knows that.
Not a chance he will even mention the case of female entrants and employees :)
How does 50% of humanity strikes you, buster?
Whenever I see these discussions on /. I grow so frustrated and disheartened. Usually I go do something else instead but this time I'll try and contribute.
I am African American. I have two BS degrees in STEM (one in mathematics and one in engineering), an MS (engineering), and am just finishing a PhD (in engineering). I also have over 10 years of work experience. These are my observations.
I've been in the tech industry (software, circuit board design, chip design, and then back to software) for 24 years. I've worked with engineers with heritage from India, China, Korea, various eastern European countries, and probably a couple other countries in Asia. I've never had a black or latino co-worker. In all those years, I've only ever seen us interview a single black candidate, and he so inadequate that he got sent home after speaking with a single interviewer.
I've worked in tech for 15-20 years now. Since about 2005, I've sat on interview panels.
In all that time, I've interviewed maybe three black people (two of whom ended up getting hired). Same with women. It wasn't that we were intentionally ignoring resumes we thought were from black people or women, we just simply did not ever get them.
Hiring is not the problem. A lack of black and latino candidates worth hiring is.
Empirically speaking, there is a smaller number of black and latino participants in the STEM labor force. Many of you have never had a colleague from an underrepresented group. When asked, this is what most people say...
I agree. If a person is qualified, ill hire him regardless of race. Just because you are black or latino you should not get any special treatment. If we do let unqualified people in, then it perpetuates the problem by highlighting their lack of skill.
However, many of you believe...
Americans have a "Thug Culture" that makes them stupid in general. It's not a racial thing at all. It's an attitude thing.
"It's not because of racism, it's because black people sag their pants, get tattoos*, are disrespectful, and lazy."
Oh, okay.
*Side note, I work in a non-technical white collar job, and a surprising number of my colleagues have tattoos.
So when I walk in the door for an interview this is what the interviewer is thinking, the framework from which they are beginning to form their perception of me and those that look like me. For people who fit the proper stereotype there is an assumed level of competence. Now I don't sag my pants nor have a tattoo. I can't take that chance even if I wanted to. For underrepresented ethnic minorities and women there is often an assumed incompetence that we have to combat as soon as we walk in the door. As a result, I often have to be substantially and demonstrably better in order to be in the same candidate pool with everyone else. This assumed incompetence is worse with individuals who don't know anything about blacks or hispanics except for what they've seen on TV or in the movies. Unfortunately, with so many hiring managers from less ethnically diverse places like China and India this is often a common occurrence. Assuming we can get in the door we are eventually judged on our merits... assuming we can get in the door.
so unless Jackson thinks HP should hire unqualified people just because they are black or latino, he should probably focus his efforts earlier in the pipeline
There is a point to be made here. If you hire incompetent people from other races one would think you would hire incompetent minorities at a similar rate. However, what often happens is that because of an assumed incompetence and an increased level of scrutiny due to low numbers minorities have to demonstrate they are better than average candidates to have access to the same opportunities and rewards. This often takes the form of more degrees or certifications than the average applicant
"Silicon Valley demands Jesse Jackson address lack of qualified applicants interested in working there"
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.