What’s your theory on that disparity?
oh god
Well the current assumption apparently is that hiring managers and recruiters are racist and sexist and wouldn't interview them unless they are forced to
Not enough diversity-sensitivity training.
Hedgehogified?
How many black Software Engineers have you ever referred to your employer?
I think rather than pointing to the companies and the industry on this, perhaps we should look at the colleges. I went to a top school in California and the ratio of men to women in the cs major was easily 20:1. There was 1 black guy who graduated with us in the major. 1. That's it. I think a better question is why are companies trying so hard to get 50% women in their engineering orgs and a significant chunk of blacks / Hispanics when that is clearly not representative of the demographic coming out of top schools with cs degrees.
Bias aside, the chronic poverty, due to actual racism for centuries, leading to being stuck in bad neighborhoods with bad schools, lack of opportunities, or money for good education, and finally environment and lack of role models.
Wow this was very succinct
I’ll add that the culture in inner city regarding education is different and affects the amount of people that can make it out by a lot. No parent really places emphasis on education (no active effort other than maybe yelling at their kid to get at least a C or something). Kids make fun of each other if they get good grades (yikes!). You can always get an education if you tried in America, but you have to actively pursue it which is tough with that kind of culture climate. Asians don’t do better in school on average because they went to good schools, it’s largely because they were told to work hard and they spent extra time studying.
It’s like asking where are all the Asians in the NBA/NFL/MLB/MLS
We can't do a whole lot better than the graduating demographics for the year consistent with the seniority of the position. Sadly that is pretty dismal for women, blacks, and Hispanics in most of the STEM areas. It is absolute bullshit to compare it to current regional demographics for anything except an entry level position. For the record I have known a few black software engineers and they have been exemplary. I'm not surprised, I imagine they had to overcome more than the rest of us to reach their position. The same as women in similar positions.
Black software engineer here and trying to figure out how I can answer this without being a jackass and, instead, just assume you dont realize how ignorant of a question this is... Let's see... Blacks are only about 12% of the American population so not sure why you would ever think this percentage of disparity wouldn't translate to engineering or anything else in the world.
Are they 12% of software engineering?
I dont know. But I would suspect not. Because that would mean that the ratio of racial disparity in engineering (each race) would have to match the racial disparity of the world's population exactly and everyone in the world is not an engineer. But regardless, the racial disparity in overall population is just one factor that explains why there are so few black engineers. It's much more complicated than that.
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