Diversity in Silicon Valley Essay

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Diversity

Silicon Valley struggles with hiring a diverse range of people for a couple of reasons. As the case indicates, the Valley tends to look at specific feeder schools, and they do tend to typecast the ideal employee. In particular for engineering, it is usually somebody who has been coding since childhood. Such candidates are different from the ones normally found at African-American universities like Howard, for example. In one sense, any school not among the elite will fail to put many graduates into Silicon Valley, and the few schools that do graduate many people into the Valley tend to lack diversity in those particular programs.

The bigger issue, of course, is that many minorities are not represented in engineering and computer programming because there is a specific culture that is drawn to the field -- white or Asian, male, nerdy and usually in a middle-class or wealthy upbringing. Anybody that does not fit into that paradigm will essentially struggle to be noticed both by the top engineering schools and by the companies that rely on those schools in their recruiting.

2. The issues, therefore, are largely sociological in nature. Homosocial reproduction is the idea that a "dominant coalition" reproduces itself. What this means in practice is that the people who are hiring for positions in Silicon Valley look for candidates who are like themselves. As such, the people who have access to those particular channels are going to be the people who pass through those channels into those jobs. Then, when they take those Silicon Valley jobs, they repeat the cycle, hiring people like themselves, from the same schools and same general culture. This can be seen with how long it took major Silicon Valley companies to even recruit at Howard -- and minor companies do not do it at all.

The reason why the culture reproduces itself is that there is an implied trust in familiarity. Silicon Valley is known for its technological innovations, but ultimately this is a culture that distrusts other cultures. The culture is most comfortable operating in a familiar environment, and anybody from a different culture will be challenged to be accepted.

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One of the interns had this struggle, not fitting into the dominant culture at all. Thus, people who are not from the Valley's dominant culture are unlikely to pursue a career in the Valley and many are outright dissuaded from doing so. There is this element of mistrust that exists in a monoculture where outside ideas are sometimes viewed negatively, and there is risk in bringing in somebody who might be too different (as the idea of Googleyness illustrates).

So the comfort level is simply not there for these companies to look for African-Americans or other underrepresented groups. They seek out those to whom they most easily relate, and that ends up being people who look the same and who are culturally the same. The latter is arguably more important -- there are not a lot of poor rural whites working in Silicon Valley as programmers either.

But then there is the resources issue. This works in two ways. First, Silicon Valley's leading companies are among the only ones who are recruiting at Howard -- many companies are relatively small and do not have the resources to actively seek out answers to the diversity problem. The resources issue works on the other end, too. The leaders in the field educationally are going to continue to attract the best talent, especially as they are the places where recruiters look for new hires. For other schools, already playing catch-up in terms of their computer science programs, the challenge is going to be greater, as they will need to improve at a higher pace, even without the best students, instructors and resources. In essence, it is easier for those who are on top to stay on top than for anybody else to catch up. This affects a school like Howard that is not traditionally a tech school.

Tokenism is not the solution, however. Companies want to hire the best people, and there is intense competition in the Valley for top talent. One thing that is relevant is giving opportunities for people who have demonstrated potential but lack the right background. As noted, most of the students at Howard have….....

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