Anonymous asked: I have a hard time taking these "ugh white people in tech" articles seriously. Once you start writing an equal number of articles complaining about the dominance of black guys in the NBA then we can talk.
The thing is, I care about tech. And not about the NBA. Since I work in tech and am not even clear on the rules of basketball beyond that it’s usually two points when you throw the ball into the hoop unless it was a really cool shot and then it’s three.
If you are expecting everyone who cares about a certain kind of disparity to care exactly as much and have exactly as much to say about all other kinds of disparities then I think you might want to reexamine your expectations.
Even if your complaint is on a societal level, there are like thousands of times more people in tech than in the NBA and the respective concern about racial disparities seems reasonable.
I have a lot of concerns about the way ‘diversity in tech’ conversations happen. I think they’re often essentializing and simplistic and ignore or misrepresent data and create perverse incentives. I think the extent to which the difference is a legitimate preferences difference sometimes gets downplayed by people with ideological commitments to not saying ‘sometimes there are differences in how commonly boys like something and how commonly girls like something even when we raise them in a very egalitarian environment’. But the problem there is irresponsible and misleading coverage, it’s not that the topic gets discussed at all.
I presume that the argument you’re trying to gesture at here is not ‘disparities in the NBA matter as much, and therefore should be discussed as much, as disparities in tech’ but ‘just like disparities in the NBA are probably explained by there being more tall black men, disparities in tech are probably explained by there being more programmer-y white men’. But ‘programmer-y’ is affected by more things than ‘tall’. (In particular, countries vary wildly in their tech gender ratios; if other countries also had basketball teams and there different skillsets dominated, that’d sure look like reason to wonder what is going on with our talent pipeline.) Consider me less than convinced that people who can’t take seriously articles about what goes into ‘programmer-y’ have it all figured out.
“Black guys in the NBA” nope.
But I do think that “the entire finance industry” gets attacked much less than tech in the pages of the NYT and the FT, for much worse sins, while employing more people and making more money per capita. A few theories.
1. New industry means new conflict, and a changing industry means new conflict, and tech is just more newsworthy then “nothing has changed, or if anything has changed, it’s changed very slowly.”
2. People like bashing nerds. Techies are low status and an easy target, but are also a valuable target because they have money and other resources.
3. The finance industry knows how to deflect and evade criticism, techies don’t.
4. Professionalism (but there are large parts of the finance industry, particularly some high-profile parts, that aren’t that professional.)
5. I’m wrong, tech is a unique cesspool of sexism unrivaled by other industries.
Personally, I lean towards 1.
Edit: @transgirlkyloren points out
6. Tech has more feminists, and people complain locally first.
This seems really plausible to me.