I wrote about my experience working as a software developer and being black in the industry and I was lucky to have it published on BBC [1].
What immediately followed, every large company reached out to have me work as a consultant for their diversity program. I found it fascinating that they had a team of DEI experts in place already. Like what makes one an expert?
In addition to my job, I spent nights developing programs trying to help these companies. Some folks right here on HN shared their successful experiences and I presented it to several companies. I was met with resistance every step of the way.
Over the course of a year and hundreds of candidates I presented, I've managed to place just one developer in a company.
However, most these companies were happy to change their social media profile to a solid black image or black lives matters. They sent memos, they organized lunches, even sold merch and donated. But hiring, that was too much to ask. A lot of graduates told me they never even got to do a technical interview.
Those DEI programs like to produce a show. Something visible that gives the impression that important work is being done. Like Microsoft reading who owned the land where the campus was built [2] in the beginning of every program. It eerily reminds me of "the loyalty oath crusade" in Catch-22.
I am Wasq'u (a tribe in the PNW), I am connected to my tribe, and I am one of a handful of remaining speakers of the language. I am really tired of being caught in the maw of people fighting about my identity, what I am owed, and to some extent what place my identity has in society.
To the pro-DEI crowd: I have some hard truths for you. Actual change requires commitment and focus over an extremely long period of time. That means you have to choose probably 1 cause among the many worthy causes, and then invest in it instead of the others. You can't do everything. The problems that afflict my community are running water, drug addiction, lack of educational resources, and secular trends have have made our traditional industries obsolete. I am not saying that land acknowledgements and sports teams changing their names from racial slurs are negative developments, but these things are not even in my list of top 100 things to get done.
We all want to help, but to have an impact you must have courage to say no to the vast majority of social issues you could care about, and then commit deeply to the ones you decide to work on. Do not be a tourist. I don't expect everyone to get involved in Indian affairs, but I do expect you to be honest with me about whether you really care. Don't play house or go through motions to make yourself feel better.
When you do commit to some issue, understand that the biggest contributions you can make are virtually always not be marketable or popular—if they are, you take that as a sign that you need to evaluate whether they really are impactful. Have the courage to make an assessment about what will actually have an impact on the things you care about, and then follow through with them.
To the anti-DEI crowd: focus on what you can build together instead of fighting on ideological lines. The way out for many minority communities in America is substantial economic development. In my own communities, I have seen economic development that has given people the ability to own their own destiny. It has changed the conversation from a zero sum game to one where shared interests makes compromise possible. If you want to succeed you need to understand that your fate is shared with those around you. In-fighting between us is going to make us less competitive on the world stage, which hurts all of us.
I'm a PoC, and stuff like this reads extremely bizarre to me. On the one hand, you're acknowledging rolling back DEI initiatives in part because of the "political landscape," and that you were already committed to diversity on your teams. That's all well and good, but then, why the initiative in the first place? It seems to me you're doing at least 1 thing here, and acknowledging that such DEI program was performative in the first place. This kind of announcement seems extremely self defeating and unlikely to please anyone and piss off just about anyone that cares about this in any way shape or form, on either side.
Diversity in tech hiring never felt like the right end of the funnel. It’s why I went into teaching and I’m proud to say after what seems like a ridiculously short amount of time (“they grow up so fast” etc.) the girls from my classes are now entering the work force as SWE and ML interns. Not many, but more than none.
When we focus diversity efforts on high school kids then we get a turnaround at the funnel entrypoint in as little as only five years. Companies could be far more impactful here than any lone teacher could hope to be.
I am a Black male and worked as a developer for mostly small unknown companies from 1996-2020.
I then pivoted to cloud+app dev strategic consulting when a job at AWS (Professional Services) fell into my lap. I now work for a third party consulting company as a staff software architect.
For the last 5 years, I have had customer facing jobs where I am either on video calls or flying out to customer sites working with sales.
When I first encountered the DE&I programs at Amazon, I couldn’t help but groan. The entire “allies” thing felt like bullshit.
The only thing that concerns me is that I hope companies still do outreach to colleges outside of the major universities and start partnering with them to widen the funnel and partnering with smaller colleges to help students learn what is necessary to be competitive and to pass interviews
firefoxd ·6 days ago
What immediately followed, every large company reached out to have me work as a consultant for their diversity program. I found it fascinating that they had a team of DEI experts in place already. Like what makes one an expert?
In addition to my job, I spent nights developing programs trying to help these companies. Some folks right here on HN shared their successful experiences and I presented it to several companies. I was met with resistance every step of the way.
Over the course of a year and hundreds of candidates I presented, I've managed to place just one developer in a company.
However, most these companies were happy to change their social media profile to a solid black image or black lives matters. They sent memos, they organized lunches, even sold merch and donated. But hiring, that was too much to ask. A lot of graduates told me they never even got to do a technical interview.
Those DEI programs like to produce a show. Something visible that gives the impression that important work is being done. Like Microsoft reading who owned the land where the campus was built [2] in the beginning of every program. It eerily reminds me of "the loyalty oath crusade" in Catch-22.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23669188
[2]: https://youtu.be/87JXB0t6de4?si=wtnQtBOE-fs4V7gR
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antics ·6 days ago
To the pro-DEI crowd: I have some hard truths for you. Actual change requires commitment and focus over an extremely long period of time. That means you have to choose probably 1 cause among the many worthy causes, and then invest in it instead of the others. You can't do everything. The problems that afflict my community are running water, drug addiction, lack of educational resources, and secular trends have have made our traditional industries obsolete. I am not saying that land acknowledgements and sports teams changing their names from racial slurs are negative developments, but these things are not even in my list of top 100 things to get done.
We all want to help, but to have an impact you must have courage to say no to the vast majority of social issues you could care about, and then commit deeply to the ones you decide to work on. Do not be a tourist. I don't expect everyone to get involved in Indian affairs, but I do expect you to be honest with me about whether you really care. Don't play house or go through motions to make yourself feel better.
When you do commit to some issue, understand that the biggest contributions you can make are virtually always not be marketable or popular—if they are, you take that as a sign that you need to evaluate whether they really are impactful. Have the courage to make an assessment about what will actually have an impact on the things you care about, and then follow through with them.
To the anti-DEI crowd: focus on what you can build together instead of fighting on ideological lines. The way out for many minority communities in America is substantial economic development. In my own communities, I have seen economic development that has given people the ability to own their own destiny. It has changed the conversation from a zero sum game to one where shared interests makes compromise possible. If you want to succeed you need to understand that your fate is shared with those around you. In-fighting between us is going to make us less competitive on the world stage, which hurts all of us.
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JohnMakin ·6 days ago
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gorgoiler ·6 days ago
When we focus diversity efforts on high school kids then we get a turnaround at the funnel entrypoint in as little as only five years. Companies could be far more impactful here than any lone teacher could hope to be.
Show replies
scarface_74 ·6 days ago
I then pivoted to cloud+app dev strategic consulting when a job at AWS (Professional Services) fell into my lap. I now work for a third party consulting company as a staff software architect.
For the last 5 years, I have had customer facing jobs where I am either on video calls or flying out to customer sites working with sales.
When I first encountered the DE&I programs at Amazon, I couldn’t help but groan. The entire “allies” thing felt like bullshit.
The only thing that concerns me is that I hope companies still do outreach to colleges outside of the major universities and start partnering with them to widen the funnel and partnering with smaller colleges to help students learn what is necessary to be competitive and to pass interviews
Show replies