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Silicon Valley Tech Workforce Is Vastly Different From US, Say Feds (computerworld.com)
Reader dcblogs shares an article on Computer World: In recent years, major high-tech firms have started releasing workforce diversity data, along with a promise to improve. And there is much room for improvement, according to federal officials. Among the top 75 Silicon Valley tech firms, whites make up 47% of the workforce, Asian Americans 41%, Hispanics, 6% and African Americans 3%, according to an analysis by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Women account for 30% of the workforce at these 75 firms. The diversity makeup of these Silicon Valley high-tech firms is very different from the national employment picture. When compared to overall private industry employment, the tech sector nationally -- not just Silicon Valley -- employed a larger share of whites (63% to 68%), as well as a larger share of Asian Americans (6% to 14%) and a smaller share of African Americans (14% to 7%) and Hispanics (14% to 8%). Employers with a workforce greater than 100 file reports to the EEOC about their employees' race, color, gender and national origin. Nationally, 64% of the employees in high-tech are men versus 52% in the broader workforce. Women account for 36% of the tech workforce, versus comprising 48% of the broader workforce.
So, my takeaway from this is that Indians (i.e. from the subcontinent, not the reservation) self-report as white.
I'd say the "average" IQ is higher... there are some people who write javascript.
I do not find the racial and sex mixture for Silicone Valley to be odd considering the following factors. I am not saying these are good things, but they are the big influences IMO:
1) Privilege and Opportunity - It has been my experience that many of these people either grew up in a solidly middle class or upper middle class environment. A good education was available for them from birth, right through to university. This education makes a big difference.
2) Birds of a Feather Flock Together - People often associate themselves with others who are like-minded, and similar in a number of characteristics. This could even include race.
3) Females & Sciences - Women in general are under-represented in the sciences, especially within IT. IT has built itself a nice little sausagefest.
Having noted all of the above, SV is getting more diverse now by giving the high paying jobs to people with H1B Visas. I am not so sure this is a good thing. It would be awesome if the USA can get more opportunities for its current population.
Why is this news? There's only a conspiracy if the ratio of applicants' races differs greatly to those hired, and if there is proof that high quality applicants were turned away. Maybe African Americans and Hispanics just don't want to work 16 hour days with an expensive mortgage to cover.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If you look only at 2nd-generation-or-more Americans (those whose parents were born and raised in America), parental education probably accounts for most of the difference for Whites, African-Americans, and Hispanics.
High-tech is typically skewed towards the highly-trained, which is correlated with parents who value education.
Among those whose parents aren't immigrants, having parents who value education is correlated to having educated parents. Having educated parents is also correlated to growing up in a middle-class-or-higher household.
Thanks to American's sad history of racial discrimination, having educated parents is also highly correlated to being non-Hispanic white and negatively correlated with being anything else, at least with respect to people whose parents were raised in the United States.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I guess we need more Asians in the national employment picture to bring them up to the level of Silicon Valley.
Sure, the Silicon Valley tech companies could do better to match the national diversity average of some of the demographics, but that's possibly irrelevant. What's missing, as is all too often the case in diversity stats, is the breakdown of the locally available workforce that is qualified to actually do the jobs in question. If the qualified employment pool simply isn't there then there's not a lot else they can do except employ lesser qualified people to make up the numbers for the diversity figures rather than just going on merit, which just serves to generate resentment, reduces productivity, and potentially risks an entire demographic being stereotyped as illsuited for the job in question.
Or bring up the diversity numbers through staff brought in from the necessary demographics via H1-Bs, of course.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
These numbers are effectively arbitrary, especially without knowing about the demographics, skills, certifications, qualifications, etc., of the applicants.
Articles such as this suggest a lot of things in a very hypocritical manner, or are at least exceedingly one-sided in scope. The author is jumping to conclusions without having any data to back it up.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
...culture does.
Until people start rejecting thug culture, or barrio culture, and start embracing "white" or "asian" culture, with proper english, a commitment to academics, and a disavowal of violence and misogyny, they're not going to get into the well paying tech jobs.
People in Silicon Valley are far less bigoted about sexual orientation than most other people. However, there aren't nearly enough women and minorities there.
It sounds like you are inferring that women and minorities are more bigoted about sexual orientation.
Americans of Asian descent were very badly treated in the past. For a good example, read Robert Louis Stevenson's "Across the Plains", published in 1892.
"Despised Races
Of all stupid ill-feelings, the sentiment of my fellow Caucasians towards our companions in the Chinese car was the most stupid and the worst. They seemed never to have looked at them, listened to them, or thought of them, but hated them a priori. The Mongols were their enemies in that cruel and treacherous battle-field of money. They could work better and cheaper in half a hundred industries, and hence there was no calumny too idle for the Caucasians to repeat, and even to believe. They declared them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of choking in the throat when they beheld them. Now, as a matter of fact, the young Chinese man is so like a large class of European women, that on raising my head and suddenly catching sight of one at a considerable distance, I have for an instant been deceived by the resemblance. I do not say it is the most attractive class of our women, but for all that many a manâ(TM)s wife is less pleasantly favoured. Again, my emigrants declared that the Chinese were dirty. I cannot say they were clean, for that was impossible upon the journey; but in their efforts after cleanliness they put the rest of us to shame. We all pigged and stewed in one infamy, wet our hands and faces for half a minute daily on the platform, and were unashamed. But the Chinese never lost an opportunity, and you would see them washing their feetâ"an act not dreamed of among ourselvesâ"and going as far as decency permitted to wash their whole bodies. I may remark by the way that the dirtier people are in their persons the more delicate is their sense of modesty. A clean man strips in a crowded boathouse; but he who is unwashed slinks in and out of bed without uncovering an inch of skin. Lastly, these very foul and malodorous Caucasians entertained the surprising illusion that it was the Chinese waggon, and that alone, which stank. I have said already that it was the exceptions and notably the freshest of the three.
These judgments are typical of the feeling in all Western America. The Chinese are considered stupid, because they are imperfectly acquainted with English. They are held to be base, because their dexterity and frugality enable them to underbid the lazy, luxurious Caucasian. They are said to be thieves; I am sure they have no monopoly of that. They are called cruel; the Anglo-Saxon and the cheerful Irishman may each reflect before he bears the accusation. I am told, again, that they are of the race of river pirates, and belong to the most despised and dangerous class in the Celestial Empire. But if this be so, what remarkable pirates have we here! and what must be the virtues, the industry, the education, and the intelligence of their superiors at home!
Awhile ago it was the Irish, now it is the Chinese that must go. Such is the cry. It seems, after all, that no country is bound to submit to immigration any more than to invasion; each is war to the knife, and resistance to either but legitimate defence. Yet we may regret the free tradition of the republic, which loved to depict herself with open arms, welcoming all unfortunates. And certainly, as a man who believes that he loves freedom, I may be excused some bitterness when I find her sacred name misused in the contention. It was but the other day that I heard a vulgar fellow in the Sand-lot, the popular tribune of San Francisco, roaring for arms and butchery. âoeAt the call of Abraham Lincoln,â said the orator, âoeye rose in the name of freedom to set free the negroes; can ye not rise and liberate yourselves from a few dirty Mongolians?â
For my own part, I could not look but with wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. Gun-powder and printing, which the other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never had the delicacy so m
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
We only need more woman and minorities in tech if they want to be here. Or are you implying we should enslave enough black people to raise their presence from 3% to 14%? Or force women to sit in front of a computer the way 1950's housewives were forced into the kitchen until women make up an additional 18% of the tech workforce?
That just seems wrong to me.
Show me reports of minorities and women trying to work in tech and not being able to find jobs, enough of them to make up for the disparity; then I'll agree we need to hire more of them. Until then, I'll go on assuming that those who want to work in this field do work in this field, and I'll be fine with that as I'm, personally, against forcing people into positions.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Any story like this I pretty much ignore because of Simpson's Paradox.
You are a racist bigot when you assume the diversity hire *isn't* the best surgeon available.
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