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The Other Side of Diversity In Tech
An anonymous reader writes: We frequently discuss diversity in the tech industry, and all the initiatives getting underway to encourage women and minorities to enter (and stay in) the field. The prevailing theme is that this will be good for companies, good for innovation, and good for the future of technology. While that's true, greater representation will also be good for the individuals themselves. Erica Joy has been in IT for a long time, and she's worked in many of the industry hotspots. She's written an insightful article on how the lack of diversity has affected her throughout her career. An excerpt: "Unfortunately, my workplace is homogenous and so are my surroundings. I feel different everywhere. I go to work and I stick out like a sore thumb. ... I feel like I've lost my entire cultural identity in effort to be part of the culture I've spent the majority of the last decade in."
The summary says that increasing diversity will be good for innovation and technology, with no stated reason as to why. So I'll ask: why will increasing diversity be good for technology and innovation?
We frequently discuss diversity in the tech industry, and all the initiatives getting underway to encourage women and minorities to enter (and stay in) the field. The prevailing theme is that this will be good for companies, good for innovation, and good for the future of technology.
There was a time when we said that race and sex don't matter. That you should be inclusive, at least in the sense of not being prejudiced, because its right and moral to not judge based on these attributes, which are uncontrolled and doled out at birth. Now we say otherwise, that they do matter? Which is it? Is it irrelevant that you were born with a certain set of physiological characteristics, or are people truly intrinsically different? Because here I thought I was being progressive by thinking the latter notion, in whatever form you wish to give it, was what we were fighting against. I miss the old progressives. The new ones have stared into the abyss so long they're becoming part of the problem.
The author of this blog article (and that's what Medium is, it's livejournal 2.0) is flat out complaining that it's wrong for people to like things she doesn't like. It's not good enough that people accept her doing her own thing, they have to NOT do theirs. It's unacceptable that everyone else enjoyed playing rock band and a sign of horrible discrimination and exclusion that she should ever become part of another culture or group instead of everyone else changing to suit her exact tastes and preferences.
And she wonders why she feels like people walk on eggshells around her and why she feels like she makes people uncomfortable. As usual these days Susan Sons' article on girls and software should be mandatory reading.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
So different teams, different bosses, different roles, different companies, different locations, different time periods and they all sucked, she was always the outsider... the only commonality was the author. Her attitude is the problem, not the rest of the world.
The assumption is that there is no diversity because of discrimination. An analysis of the women in college demonstrates that fewer are hired in tech because fewer train for that field.
Therefore the burden is on the college not the tech company.
The College will respond that the burden is not on them because the student chooses what they want to study.
Which either means women have to take responsibility for this or we regress back into their history blaming their high school, their grade school, their parents, or society...
And I wish you all a hilarious time with that little journey. I'll be over here in the real world just getting on with it.
*rolls up window and drives on*
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I've lived and worked in the South my entire life and worked on teams that were overwhelmingly white. I've never heard coworkers make "terribly racist and sexist jokes" at work. What this leads me to believe is that either her West Coast or New England coworkers were much more inclined toward racism and sexism (a possibility, since New England is actually more racist than much of the South today) or she was indirectly proving why they felt the need to walk on egg shells around her (the habit of certain people to find racism and sexism where it doesn't exist).
Much of her argument comes down to the fact that she wants to work with people who look and act like her, not like me. That's fine, but let's call it what it is. She prefers her own and in white people that's called "racism" by the left. But as we know from the left's vanguard, minorities cannot be racist since you have to have power to be racist and minorities allegedly have no power.
According to current social justice theory being a white male, especially a heterosexual white male, is a privilege you need to be ashamed of.
I know this: I am not my job. I am not my industry or its stereotypes. I am a black woman who happens to work in the tech industry. I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted.
Excuse fucking you? No wonder people felt like they had to walk on eggshells around you.
Let me rephrase that for you to for exactly what was said here, as I don't feel the need to walk on eggshells. "White people do not have the same background as I do as a black person, I feel more comfortable and included by black people. White people have to change what they're doing to be more like black people so I can feel included without changing who I am"
People do not need to be your friend, they don't need to like you. I did read some disgusting behaviors in there by coworkers and managers, that was exceptionally inappropriate, however, you do not need to be included in social aspects of work.
That goes with people having similar interests and background. I don't get to come to work as a white guy to talk to other white people and demand I feel included because we're all white with white backgrounds. If I have different interests in my co-workers, which I often do, I'm not part of any secret communications, or making fun of other people. In fact, I don't care to gossip at work at all so I'm likely the target of some of the gossip, and I don't get invited to these 'things'
I am a white male. My responsibilities in the work place to my co-workers; I must respect them, they are human beings. Their gender does not matter. If I can reconfigure our cisco routers, any women of any race with the same knowledge and expertise can do the same thing. I will provide them equal respect for this as I would a caucasian male. I will treat them professionally without discrimination. I will include them in any work related activities on a business level of productivity and participation within the company.
I do not have to like you. I do not have to be your friend. I do not have to embrace your values, or way of life, or anything about you in a non professional manner. I am in my full rights to keep a strictly professional relationship with you, regardless of your race and gender.
As with any co-worker, that is likely the case, I do not engage socially beyond work related social interaction with most people. On occasion, I run into person of who happens to share similar interests and behave the way I do. These people I may end up calling friends.
You cannot hide behind the mask of racism and gender discrimination to force people to like you and want to be your friend. The opposite will happen.
My final comment on this - I'm sorry you experienced some assholes who were disrespectful to you. They were assholes, and it's not a reflection of the entire industry, progress is being made on that front, and here is the biggest shocker of all. White men have to deal with these assholes too, sometimes they just don't "us" either, and we get treated with shitty condenscending comments where we're shocked we didn't punch them in the face for it and what they said is HR worthy.
I found it a very interesting and quite moving post.
I'm a white male from a relatively privilaged background, yet I have felt like an outsider many times over the last thirty years of my career. Yet if I choose to I can put on a cheap suit and smile and most people's first impression of me will be 'he's one of us'.
When people start to get to know you they pick up, of course, on the things you do and say that are not quite what they expect, and some will dislike that, and some of those people will turn to harrassment and bullying.
Now, I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to begin at the point where one or two people have taken to bullying, and the rest are reticent about chatting and socialising. It certainly can't be easy (well it could be, I suppose, if you're a sociopath and simply don't care what others think of you).
If you spend long enough somewhere, and you are basically a good person, then of course you will end up with friends who like you for who you are. But getting to that point takes time, causes stress for many, even when you feel welcome and people are supportive. Getting to that point when you already feel you don't belong must take tremendous strenght of character, and I know there's no way I could have gotten through what she has.
She doesn't like that she conformed to the group she was in and feels that is a bad thing. But yet recognises that she feels much comfortable amongst people who "share her cultural upbringing" and doesn't think that's a bad thing. There's inconsistency there.
But then when she talks about joining a group at work who enjoy going out to have a beer or two and then complains that they she doesn't like beer and that they should do something else. Not very appreciative of views diverse from her own there!
At one point she mentions that she was the only black women in her team of two. As opposed to what, being two black women alone in the same team? That's not very diverse now, is it?
The problem is really the boundary of the culture. It's got very little to do with the externalities as much as natural human grouping and cliques.
I work in schools. In my most recent workplaces, I feel incredibly out of place. The reason being that they have been private schools.
I was educated in a state school, in a very working-class area. I have a "common" accent. I drop my H's and sound very working-class. Even some of the maintenance guys are former "boys" of the school and correct my English. They mean no harm, it's just the way they were brought up and there's a friendliness there anyway. We get on very well.
As such, there's a divide, however. You can spot other "working-class" people in the school. They become your friends more easily, you have more in common, you have a common "enemy" in your "you'll never guess what happened today" chats, even.
But you can feel it. The divide is there. It's definitely present. And the same is in all schools anyway (I guarantee you that teaching staff do not mingle with "admin" or "facilities" staff naturally - you can see the divide in office, staffrooms, social events, etc.).
And, yes, I have been mistaken for everything from a parent to a cleaner to an outside engineer. It happens, purely because of people's assumptions and the mental categorisations they make. And it happens with both children and adults. The polite ones, you might not notice because, well, they're just polite to everyone anyway. That's an issue of basic manners, not to talk down to someone that you might perceive as "lower" than yourself. It's really a function of such manners - it doesn't matter who you are if you're not accepting of others and try to find commonalities.
And there is no workplace where there's not a divide - none that I've ever seen anyway. The tech guys go over there, the admin people sit over there, the management huddle together and then force themselves to "do the rounds" to the other cliques but never linger, etc. It's how people work. It's a human trait. We do it for good reason - to surround ourselves with people we feel comfortable with, can talk to, can sympathise with, can help out. I can't help out the headmaster of a private boarding school socially - we're in different worlds. So long as we're both accepting, we get on fine, however. I'm never going to come to a wine-tasting, and he's never going to come dig through the dusty network cabinets and hold cables for me. But it doesn't mean that we ignore each other, or talk down to each other, or wouldn't hold the door or give the other a hand with something heavy.
I absolutely do not condone racism or any other discrimination in any way. I could never do so in my workplace and I constantly feel that my generation are stupid if they continue the mistakes of the previous generations.
But there will always be groups, cliques and social circles. It's human - and animal - nature. When I go to a social event, unless there are other IT guys there, it's the maintenance guys that I end up leaning towards. They talk on the same level as myself, have the same expectations, have similar experiences and histories, and I identify more with them.
As such, when someone without those properties is trying to ingratiate themselves into my social circle, it's more difficult for them.to do so, no matter how welcoming we are. It's literally time for them to smile awkwardly and pretend they sympathise or know what we're talking about (especially in IT!).
Nobody asking those people to change. Nobody should make me change to make them more comfortable. We should be accepting of others but also understand that, you know, sometimes the guy in the same department doesn't want to go for a drink with the rest of you after work. It's not offensive, he just doesn't fit in, or want to fit in, or has his own plans etc.
The problem only comes when people FORCE acceptance. Then you end up with a secret social group that excludes others anyway, and a faux fron
"social justice" is based on the extremely faulty assertion that everybody is the same and that absolutely every trait or preference you may have is culturally constructed. Once you take on board the basic concept that men and women are different and that on average their college major and career preferences reflect this difference, it's not hard to understand why there's less "diversity" in technology businesses.
Straw Man indeed.
It's called solipsism. You can't really negotiate with a solipsistic person since even abstractions that obviously are intended to show them things about others invariably, in their minds, come back to them.
Word of advice, though, from experience in dealing with these types of people. The best defense is to make it clear you are a hard target. By hard I mean, you will defend yourself and make it costly even if they nominally win the fight. No one wants to suffer at best a pyrrhic victory.
From TFA: "I feel like I've lost my entire cultural identity in effort to be part of the culture I've spent the majority of the last decade in"
White male here. I was with a company for many years that had a _very_ different culture than I was used to. Let's just say some of the stuff that went on would be firing offenses and many other companies or at least be highly offensive to some. I learned to fit in and emulate the culture. When I left, I realized how much I had changed, just like the woman in the story said she has lost her identity. This is not just a racial problem.
It used to be about equality of opportunity. But now we have equality of opportunity it has morphed into equality of outcome. This is a very different thing indeed.
Dude. Your dog whistle is broken. Everyone can hear it.
I read the woman's article and I guess it hit closer to home for me than some people, because while I'm a white male, I'm married to a black woman who works in I.T.
There are certainly some workplace lessons to be learned from the author's insights, but I'm not sure they're all necessarily the ones she would conclude herself?
For starters? Whether you like it or don't... want to admit it's true or don't ... Geographic location has a lot to do with the workplace environment you can expect and its racial makeup. As she admitted herself, the job she took with Home Depot's corporate offices in the South (Atlanta) was one of the places she felt most "comfortable" among her co-workers. If this was as high of a priority for her as it sounds like it was (to the point of her describing health problems due to stress), I would have advised her never to go to Silicon Valley for work - regardless of the promised pay and benefits.
It sounds like, to an extent, she's upset that she can't "have it all" -- meaning working amongst a large population of blacks (with a nice chunk of them being female as well) who share her values and interests, while still earning "top tier" salaries in her field with the biggest industry "movers and shakers".
I'd counter that we simply don't live in a perfect world, and like everyone else, she has to make some tough choices. As a white male who has always had an interest in technology and computing, I knew it was my career field of choice. At the same time? I grew up in the midwest, and found some of my own values made it difficult for me to do such things as running out to the west coast in the dot-com boom era (even when some of my friends did and a couple wound up millionaires). I chose to stick with doing I.T. for manufacturing firms who couldn't afford to pay me that well, but offered some measure of stability and a concept of "life / work balance" that the big tech places lacked. I had family in the midwest that I didn't want to leave, and good friends that I grew up with as a kid and still hung out with. Considering all of that plus the fact that cost of living and housing was reasonable where I lived, it seemed prudent to stay put.
My wife grew up in Memphis, but I think she always knew that she wanted to get out of that area, in order to find more career success. She wound up in New York for a while, Texas for a while, and now out on the east coast with me. She's definitely not anything close to your stereotypical black woman. (Yes, she listens to alternative and classic rock by choice, and doesn't care for much rap music. She also converted to Judaism, among other things people might find outside the norm.) She never had much interest in playing competitive video games though (well, outside of a bit of Guitar Hero until she got bored with it after playing through several songs). (I, on the other hand, still like playing first person shooters, even though I'm in my early 40's.)
If you're working someplace where it's clear the vast majority enjoys and values things you don't -- guess what? That can happen to ANY of us. I worked in I.T. for union steel shops where everyone's interests included hunting, wrestling, monster trucks and country music. I was the only one who listened to alt. rock instead, and cared about a computer as more than just "a pain in the ass tool management forces us to use". I guess I *could* have tried to go hunting or fishing with the guys or start listening to country to try to make new friends. But I didn't.... I just accepted that we liked different things, and went to work to get work done, period. It's a lot easier to enjoy your free time if you have a paycheck and the bills are all paid.
If you're not willing to do that? That's ok... but you have to do your job search based on what's important, then .... which would be finding like-minded co-workers. I know it exists, but she's right that at least for what she was looking for -- it probably won't be found in the "tech giants" of plac
Because people who know different stuff know different stuff.
"Hello Team! This is our new team member, Ug. Ug is actually an unfrozen stone-age caveman who we brought in to add some diversity and new ideas to the development of our game. Now, keep in mind that Ug doesn't know anything about programming, or games, or how to use a toilet, or anything like that. But we're hoping that his fresh new perspective can really help us rethink some of our cultural assumptions about game development. So we need you to treat him as an equal and really listen to what he has to say. Are there any questions?"
"Yeah, what does Ug think of the game so far?"
"Well, when we showed it to him, he screamed, attacked the monitor, and yelled something about a vision from the thunder gods."
"So we should strive to make the game more sensitive to those who may not understand how electricity works?"
"EXACTLY! And we should probably also avoid any sudden movements in the game. Sudden movements REALLY seem to make him uncomfortable. Do you have anything to add, Ug?"
"Ug happy to be part of team tribe, Ug honor team chief, no kill his son or take his woman."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.