College friend is depressed because he thinks he's a FANG diversity hire

Oct 8, 2020 130 Comments

My friend recently graduated from a CS program at a low-ranked US university and was hired into FANG as an SDE. After hearing stories about how difficult it is to get into FANG in general, let alone as a minority from a non-target school, he feels that they only hired him because he is black, and believes his skills are subpar to that of other college hires.

He feels lost and undeserving of this opportunity - he doesn't want to be a D&I poster boy. I told him it's normal to have imposter syndrome when you're hired into a major company like that, and if he was truly lacking in skill they wouldn't have hired him. And besides, he shouldn't give a shit about how he was hired - all that matters is he uses his opportunity wisely to benefit from it.

Thoughts?

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TOP 130 Comments
  • I agree with you. I'm also in his position as a black girl in tech with imposter syndrome. What makes me feel a bit better is knowing I grinded hundreds of leetcode(400+) like everyone else and worked hard to get here (over 400 job applications last year). It still sucks to wonder but I just work the best I can. Also lots of people get jobs just through connections which is technically unfair but extremely common place. Whether you were born into upper middle class or lower class someone else gave you a favor along the way. Remind him also that the smartest 20% of people in FAANG probably wrote 70+% of code and everyone else is riding their brilliance .
    Oct 8, 2020 43
    • DoorDash
      sfshitfree

      Go to company page DoorDash

      sfshitfree
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_discrimination

      https://www.dictionary.com/browse/reverse-discrimination

      If only you could just google it. You are part of the problem who just denies and denies instead of doing a simple search and finding answers for yourself. Your stupidity means nothing. If you cant even search and find the meaning of word that is even in dictionary and literature then are an imbecile. Did you even consider that we might be suffering from media magnification of incidents for political gains? Anytime you open cnn or fox news you hear polarized news. So get off the media and use your brain if you have any left. We are not in 60s when there was systemic racism. We at most have pockets if incidents and that will go away in time if media was not so insistent on flaming the divide. So you want a solution, stop watching tv/reading cnn/fox.
      Oct 19, 2020
    • Amazon
      Pipped😢

      Go to company page Amazon

      Pipped😢
      Crazy sjw... or another urm who feel threatened to lose privileges
      Oct 25, 2020
  • Amazon
    BigPIPin

    Go to company page Amazon

    BigPIPin
    If he gets PIPed, he was a diversity hire. Otherwise he deserved it and should shut up and do his job.
    Oct 8, 2020 9
  • Tell him I’ll trade him seats if possible.
    Oct 8, 2020 0
  • Equifax / Eng
    Namasthe

    Go to company page Equifax Eng

    PRE
    Capgemini, Honeywell FM&T
    Namasthe
    Interviews for diversity hires are easy. If not, interview evaluation is easy, if not promotions are easy. Been there done that.
    Oct 8, 2020 2
  • VMware
    jedP10

    Go to company page VMware

    jedP10
    ask him to focus on how he can make use of this opportunity instead of worrying about why he got hired. nobody cares! most of the work people do can be learnt by anyone in few years. code doesn’t care why the person was hired. play your strengths
    Oct 8, 2020 8
    • Twitter
      hfjdjdud

      Go to company page Twitter

      hfjdjdud
      If you're dumb you can't learn coding. IQ matters
      Oct 18, 2020
    • Amazon
      gawr

      Go to company page Amazon

      gawr
      funny cus i knew a girl a year younger in HS who I thought was dumb as bricks (had to be carried through extremely easy AP CS problems/projects) and she ended up piloting her college's hackathon program and is now at twitter. Low IQ btw.
      Oct 18, 2020