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0 pointsVexXtreme12y ago0 comments

Many developers in the world don't live in SV and they are not privileged young white males. Care to get out of your bubble once in a while?

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3 comments · 1 top-level

dredmorbius12y ago· 2 in thread

Developers in SV are overwhelmingly male, and generally of European, East Asian, or South Asian heritage. There are very few who are of backgrounds more typically found engaged in janitorial services, typically Hispanic or black.

Pointing out the skewed demographics, if not outright racism and sexism in the software world, is quite on point in the context of TFA.

kenrikm12y ago

I would contend that the reason there are not more Hispanic or Black people working as developers has more to do with social and cultural reasons in the home and community and less to do with the willingness to hire them, any decent developer can get a job in the valley.

That's a deferent debate and completely unrelated to the point I was making about the guilt over seeing a janitor who's race was not mentioned, stereotype much?. You can try to twist my comment into something it is not but know that you do so with no basis as you do not know my actual views on the subject.

Should we be trying to bring more STEM into courses? Absolutely! and I'm pretty sure that subject is well known as an issue we need to solve as a country. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-randall/increasing-diver...

dredmorbius12y ago

As I said: skewed demographics, certainly. Outright racism? Quite possibly.

I'm not questioning your views specifically. I'm making a comment on my own informal, but long-duration, observations of composition of technical vs. unskilled positions.

If you can provide racial demographics on people holding janitorial positions, please do.

There are numerous studies which show hiring biases for identical resumes with different names attached to them:

"Employers' Replies to Racial Names" http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback.

"Should you be concerned with name discrimination on your resume?" http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/career-management/should-yo...

"How an ethnic-sounding name may affect the job hunt" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/ho...

My experience with janitorial and housekeeping staff through much of the US, including the west coast, is that they're frequently economically disadvantaged minority or immigrant in ethnicity. It's a low-education position.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Building-and-Grounds-Cleaning/Janitor...

Finding specific references to ethnic composition is difficult, but the incidental evidence is strong:

White janitors are exceptional and notworthy: "Even the Janitor is White" http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED534328

A union history of west-coast janitorial labor organization emphasizes Mexican and Hispanic groups: "Unions and the Fight for Multi-Racial Democracy" http://dbacon.igc.org/Unions/11mulrac.htm

Working-class power will determine especially if this democracy represents the needs of African-American, Asian, Latino, Native American and other people of color, who are overwhelmingly working-class themselves.

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