Twitter Engineering Manager Leslie Miley, the only black engineer in a leadership position at Twitter, just publicly announced that he has left the company. In his post, he says his reasons for leaving have everything to do with the way Twitter is addressing diversity and inclusion.
OK.
Twitter’s workforce consists of 1% African-Americans, 3% Hispanics and 13% women, according to its latest diversity report. Miley argues that Twitter’s issues with growth and engagement are related to the company’s issues with diversity.
“For some at Twitter, diversity is an obstruction to avoid,” Miley wrote. “With my departure, Twitter no longer has any managers, directors, or VP’s of color in engineering or product management. From this position, Twitter may find it difficult to make the changes to culture and product.”
Entirely possible: not enough people within the company understanding the various cultures outside it. OK, let’s test that:
Pew said blacks also tend to use Twitter more often, noting that 22 percent of black Internet users access Twitter at high levels compared with 16 percent of whites. Overall, 73 percent of black Internet users and 72 percent of white Internet users use Twitter.
Oh, maybe that’s why he was fired (and he was). Because an engineer who is empirically wrong isn’t of much use to anyone, are they?
‘VPs of color’. Fuck me. What am I? What’s light beige?
Anyway, if he’s such a genius, why doesn’t he start up a rival outfit employing only people ‘of color’ and take twitter’s ball away from them?
“Anyway, if he’s such a genius, why doesn’t he start up a rival outfit employing only people ‘of color’ and take twitter’s ball away from them?”
*fetches giant bag of popcorn*
I’ll wager that Mr Miley consists of a greater volume of manager than engineering. Missed his calling to HR obvs.
‘its latest diversity report’
I think I see the problem.
Well, I’ve just never understood how picking someone solely for their race can not logically be considered racist.
After all, isn’t that what they’re meant to be fighting?
I think this is great. The sooner companies realise that pandering to SWJs with this diversity bullshit only makes the SWJs hate them even more the better. One day we’ll see a CEO with some balls who will fire his diversity department and answers only to the Board and shareholders.
I’ve got the iPad equivalent of the golfing “yips”, which is by way of apologising for a double post.
“Hey man, you’re racist because you have 90% white people”
“Er, no, I just pick the best people for the job”
“Shit, man, I want you to employ this black guy”
“Why?”
“Because he’s black”
Doesn’t work for me…
Hmmm…
Looks like he’s not up to much as an engineer.
Those are impressive companies on his CV: Walmart, Google, Apple, etc. But look at what he actually did – QA and “engineering manager” roles. Not actually building products.
QA and engineering managers are needed, natch. But I get the feeling he was promoted as a diversity hire. His publicly flouncing away from Twitter suggests he’s a liability, not an asset.
If the management of companies is supposed to reflect their customer base then presumably fake-tan manufacturers will have no black execs? And we can have protests if they do?
Presumably Twitter has plenty of Chinese and Hindu employees?
Are there quotas for white basketball players in the USA to reflect the general population or do they just hire on the basis of talent?
Usage stats do not provide a test of the company’s employment diversity policies so I fail to see how that is relevant.
It’s not about reflecting customer base, but rather about reflecting the diversity of the country in which the company is employing their staff. With 13.2% of the US population being of African American heritage 1% on the staff suggests a disparity that could be addressed.
Reading the linked tech crunch article suggests he’s got a better grasp of IT engineering than twitter’s SVP of engineering, certainly in respect of data analysis. For fuxache, name analysis as a means of monitoring ethnicity? Really?
The fact that the guy was willing to forgo his severance package in order to retain the ability to speak out on this suggests that he cares deeply about the subject. There’s a world of difference between being fired and laid off so I can only assume that the term was used pejoratively. Perhaps twitter used the mass layoffs as an excuse to get rid of someone who was prepared to ask awkward questions and challenge assumptions.
Finally, having looked at his LinkedIn profile, it certainly seems that he has high levels of technical competency so saying that he’s a manager not a techie is somewhat disingenuous.
But hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good bitch-fest?
Usage stats do not provide a test of the company’s employment diversity policies so I fail to see how that is relevant.
It’s relevant because businesses exist to serve customers. Black customers obviously don’t give a shit about the skin tones of the engineers fiddling with Twitter’s servers.
It’s not about reflecting customer base, but rather about reflecting the diversity of the country in which the company is employing their staff.
Businesses don’t exist to reflect the diversity of the country in which they employ staff. They exist to make money.
With 13.2% of the US population being of African American heritage 1% on the staff suggests a disparity that could be addressed.
Yes. It suggests black nerds need to man up. Nobody rolled out a red carpet to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg. They built their own companies. Crying that the white man and the asian man aren’t giving you special treatment is for losers.
The fact that the guy was willing to forgo his severance package in order to retain the ability to speak out on this suggests that he cares deeply about the subject.
People care deeply about all sort of fucktarded and even ficticious things. For example: global warming, rape culture and the Kardashians.
Nobody cares that you care deeply. The world only cares about what you can offer it.
Finally, having looked at his LinkedIn profile, it certainly seems that he has high levels of technical competency so saying that he’s a manager not a techie is somewhat disingenuous.
His LinkedIn profile shows he’s a glorified admininstrator, whose achievements include:
Managed the 7 day development and roll out of the iPhone4 free case program.
Which is necessary but hardly inspirational stuff. In most businesses the QA guys and engineering managers aren’t regarded as senior leadership. This guy seems to think his role was Professional Black Man.
And he hasn’t managed to hold down a single job for more than 4 years. On average he moves on after just over 2 years, which is also a red flag. Looks like he either gets quickly found out or flounces off in a huff.
>The fact that the guy was willing to forgo his severance package in order to retain the ability to speak out on this suggests that he cares deeply about the subject.
Or he figured that the publicity he could get from making a fuss about it would be worth more to him than whatever the severance pacakge was worth.
Look out for his regular spot in the Guardian.
‘Managed the 7 day development and roll out of the iPhone4 free case program’
Nice selective quotation to support your argument.
Changing jobs after a couple of years is the best way to advance and shows initiative. I’ve heard that 6 months to two years is the optimum time to stay in a role.
‘Nobody cares that you care deeply’
Nor should they, just pointing out that the gentleman in question does.
‘Businesses don’t exist to reflect the diversity of the country in which they employ staff. They exist to make money.’
Twitter isn’t a business by that definition then, aren’t they there to fleece investors and piss money up the wall?
There is class and privilege in the world and they act to the detriment of many who are outside. It’s wasteful and self-perpetuating.
‘There is class and privilege in the world and they act to the detriment of many who are outside. It’s wasteful and self-perpetuating.’
Jeeeze . . . is it okay that I choose my friends?
Nice selective quotation to support your argument.
Do better then. Show me something in his CV that demonstrates innovation.
Changing jobs after a couple of years is the best way to advance and shows initiative. I’ve heard that 6 months to two years is the optimum time to stay in a role.
You’ve been misinformed. If you’re interviewing someone who has 5 different employers on their CV over the past decade, the first question that comes to mind is “what’s wrong with him?”
Contractors and freelancers, fine. But middle management types tend to stick around longer if they’re any good.
There is class and privilege in the world and they act to the detriment of many who are outside.
Perhaps this kitty can help.
Ok. Trigger warning. Non PC reality imminent.
The different races are not equal. They’re certainly not “social constructs”
Why are Jews so overrepresented in areas of high achievement. Why are the NFL and the NBA so overwhelmingly black?
The different races have different attributes/gifts/strengths and weaknesses.
This was documented in the Bell curve in its study of IQ’s.
The only way that the diversity warriors will achieve their goals is to punish the high achievers and over promote inadequate people.
But again its just the war of equal opportunity vs equal outcome. And all equal outcomes will do is reduce humanities inventiveness and progress.
But to point this out will cause significant damage to your career.
Fraggle850,
“With 13.2% of the US population being of African American heritage 1% on the staff suggests a disparity that could be addressed.”
But not necessarily.
Two things:
1) only about 4% of software engineers are black in the United States. So, while Twitter is a problem, it’s less of a problem than it first appears
2) Twitter is based in San Francisco, and SF is a very white and Asian place. Not just in terms of the population, but also in terms of culture. Portland, Austin and SF are all StuffWhitePeopleLike places – places that white hipsters go to as some sort of status symbol or something. If you look at Red Hat, in Raleigh NC, their technical staff are 3% black. And that’s because Raleigh has a larger black population.
Look, according to Wired:
“Miley wrote his “low moment” came when he asked a senior member of Twitter’s management “about what specific steps Twitter engineering was taking to increase diversity”. Management allegedly responded with “diversity is important, but we can’t lower the bar”.
And I don’t understand why that’s a “low moment”. That’s trying to be colour-blind about race, to hire people only on merit. There might be deeper problems about black people going into software, but is that Twitter’s responsibility?
There is class and privilege in the world and they act to the detriment of many who are outside. It’s wasteful and self-perpetuating.
Translation: “I’m one of the fuck-ups who can’t hold onto a job for more than a year before being sent packing by my boss. Therefore, the world must be changed to fully accommodate fuck-ups so I can keep a job for more than a year.”
Yeah, well accountability (what you call “class” and “privilege”) is a bitch, isn’t it?
I suggest you try a bit of reflection and self-evaluation. Chances are, if you’re completely honest about it, you’ll discover the rather shocking truth of the matter is that this: It isn’t the world that needs to change.
How many Asians? Oh, that’s right, shitloads (29% of US workforce in 2014).
Twitter is plenty diverse, just not of the diversity Leslie Miley wants.
Parkinson’s Law relating to building shiny head offices could be equally applied to when a company decides to build a rainbow workforce. The company is no longer focused on the business but on appearance.
Fraggle850 wrote:
To quote Ronald Reagan, “we have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.”
Why force down entry standards into institutions or flat out destroy them when it would be for the benefit of all if the apparently underprivileged and of the wrong class built their own and competed.
‘Companies lucky enough to have a workforce as diverse as the population find themselves armed with many perspectives, views and ideas that add strength to their ability to strategize, communicate and deliver.’ – smallbusiness.com
Just think what Twitter could have accomplished had it had diversity. They are only hurting themselves.
“The longer I verk here, diverse it gets.”
“Changing jobs after a couple of years is the best way to advance and shows initiative. I’ve heard that 6 months to two years is the optimum time to stay in a role.”
Ha ha ha! Yeah right, in useless fuckers fantasy world it is. Try that one in your next interview.
@ Dennis the Peasant
> Translation: “I’m one of the fuck-ups who can’t hold onto a job for more than a year before being sent packing by my boss. Therefore, the world must be changed to fully accommodate fuck-ups so I can keep a job for more than a year.”
Never had that problem myself, have held down jobs for a number of years and have, on occasion, done freelance work for ex-employers.
> Yeah, well accountability (what you call “class” and “privilege”) is a bitch, isn’t it?
In what sense does ‘accountability’ = ‘class and privilege’? If you are going to argue a point please try and make sense.
> I suggest you try a bit of reflection and self-evaluation. Chances are, if you’re completely honest about it, you’ll discover the rather shocking truth of the matter is that this: It isn’t the world that needs to change.
I frequently do, and when I come to the conclusion that I need to change then I try to do so. I suspect that there’s much less of that sort of self-reflection amongst many of the commentards around these parts. But I do often come to the conclusion that the world needs to change, not me.
@ The Stigler
Fair points, well made.
> There might be deeper problems about black people going into software
I suspect there are and I’d contend that this largely boils down to class and privilege
@ Flubber
> But again its just the war of equal opportunity vs equal outcome. And all equal outcomes will do is reduce humanities inventiveness and progress.
I’m certainly not in favour of equal outcomes, that’d make me a goddam commie (and a moron too) but I am in favour of equal opportunities, and the deck is so very stacked against some.
‘I suspect there are and I’d contend that this largely boils down to class and privilege’
I suspect projection.
Fraggle850 – But I do often come to the conclusion that the world needs to change, not me.
Me too.
I’m writing a book about it, called “MONGOL MARKETING: THE SALES SECRETS OF GENGHIS KHAN”
Watching HBOs Project Greenlight on making a movie and there was a moment when the producer insisted they change the person carrying in another characters bags from the car on the grounds that she didn’t want the only person of colour to be portrayed in a servants role. So instead they used a “white” extra.
I remember from a friend who did some work as an extra is that being picked for this sort of one off appearance even with no lines is actually a good thing.
Still diversity and role portrayal after all, she also wanted to pick the director based on gender/race and was shut down on the basis of we pick the best person.
In what sense does ‘accountability’ = ‘class and privilege’?
Think it through to its logical conclusion.
Too many of the world’s fuck-ups see themselves as victims of class and privilege when the real issue is said fuck-ups inability to overcome their own inabilities. Rather than acknowledge failure and engage in a bit of self-assessment that might lead to a bit of self-improvement, they decide the fault lies with everyone else.
The problem with that is as follows: Just because fuck-ups don’t (or won’t) see their failure for what it is doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t (or won’t) see it for what it is. The fuck-ups cannot stand accountability – quite understandably, for they cannot thrive in a world based upon it – so they attempt to demonize it by labeling as that which it is not.
Anymore, when I hear the bleat of someone claiming victimhood because of such chimeras as ‘class’ and ‘privilege’, I assume I’m dealing with either a maladjusted moron, a con artist, or both. I have yet to be disappointed in that regard.
Love this bullshit about moving on after 6 months to 2 years. Unless you’ve got some really esoteric specialist skills used on discrete projects, you’re probably a cunt.
As for Mr Diversity it sounds like technically he’s a manager rather than a technical manager. I try to be cynical but after 30+ years in engineering it can be hard to keep up.
‘ they decide the fault lies with everyone else.’
Personality Disorder is the clinical description.
Changing jobs after a couple of years is the best way to advance and shows initiative. I’ve heard that 6 months to two years is the optimum time to stay in a role.
Clearly you’ve never been responsible for hiring/managing/firing in a job environment involving sophisticated tasks requiring sophisticated skill sets.
The cost of turnover of burger flippers at Burger King is minimal. Low-ish costs of training, integration and productivity gaps and all that. Cost of turnover for senior biochemists with serious project management experience at a biotech firm? A bit higher.
For a job that is worth a shit, the last thing a manager wants to do is hire someone who will bolt the position short-term. If he’d needed a short-term hire, he’d hire an independent contractor, not an employee. Chances are, if you moving every 6 months to 2 years, you’re moving from one dead-end job to another. And if you’re doing that, it’s probably because you’re a victim of either class or privilege. Or both.
Personality Disorder is the clinical description.
Yeah, but I’m trying to keep it simple.
“and the deck is so very stacked against some.”
You’re missing my point clearly. If you look at the IQ distributions by race, there are simply fewer 110/120+ IQ people who are black vs the distribution for whites.
And the smart black people have better options that being Twitter coders thanks to positive discrimination/mania for diversity.
But for everyone else – prepare for incoming “Waycisst” alarm..
“Companies lucky enough to have a workforce as diverse as the population find themselves armed with many perspectives, views and ideas that add strength to their ability to strategize, communicate and deliver.’”
Except the reality of “diverse” environments is a group of men and women of all colours all sharing the same opinions.
Except the reality of “diverse” environments is a group of men and women of all colours all sharing the same opinions.
This. Diversity in everything except thought.
When all the diversity BS kicked up over 20 years ago, I asked, “What about Japan?” It has the most homogenized, non diverse population in the world, yet they are one of the top producers in the world.
The diversity cult ignores reality.
I once reviewed a book called “The Trouble With Diversity” which made exactly this point from the left. What the writer meant was that there weren’t enough communists around but still….he was right. Diversity of view is the important bit.
This diversity stuff. Is that why the USA is doing so well in the world.
“Leadership position”.
Gack.
Did they mean “management position”?
There is great merit in having many eyeballs available to look at things, and it is good when those eyeballs bring different perspectives. Hard to imagine that the perspectives are usefully tied to eye color, hair color, skin color, though.
Wow, all the racists have really come crawling out of the woodwork for this one. Euch.
Tim, aren’t you ashamed to have these human viruses on your side? Doesn’t anything serve as a wakeup call?
Dave – “Wow, all the racists have really come crawling out of the woodwork for this one. Euch.”
Dave, meet the Real World Cluebat. Cluebat, meet Dave.
What racism Dave? Who here has said anything that is remotely racist? The closest I have seen is someone pointing out the fact that there are very few Blacks with IQs in the 120 range. Which is true.
“Tim, aren’t you ashamed to have these human viruses on your side? Doesn’t anything serve as a wakeup call?”
SJWs like you have had 40 years to fix these problems. The rest of us have given you support and encouragement. Fix them you have not. Blacks are still not doing well at school.
Is 40 years of failure not enough? Isn’t it time to, oh I don’t know, re-examine your prior assumptions?
“Changing jobs after a couple of years is the best way to advance and shows initiative. I’ve heard that 6 months to two years is the optimum time to stay in a role.”
Can’t get my head around this one at all, particularly in the context of management.
There can be few serious technical or engineering projects that can be delivered within that kind of timeframe.
A big part of management is understanding the capabilities of your people, teams, industrial assets, subcontractors, corporate partners etc and deploying them effectively. That requires a deep organisational knowledge that you’re not going to have on Day One that you walked through the door.
PeteW – “There is great merit in having many eyeballs available to look at things, and it is good when those eyeballs bring different perspectives. Hard to imagine that the perspectives are usefully tied to eye color, hair color, skin color, though.”
It is the NASA rule again. When NASA was young, it was almost entirely White and male. But they had all come from different places – industry, defence, straight out of school, the SS, that sort of thing. It put a man on the Moon. Now NASA is ethnically and gender-ishly diverse. It has been pushing affirmative action since 1973.
It can’t do f**k all. Everyone has been at NASA their whole careers. What matters to them is what matters to NASA and that means paperwork, not boots on the ground.
Fraggle850 – “With 13.2% of the US population being of African American heritage 1% on the staff suggests a disparity that could be addressed.”
It could. But should it? Silicon Valley is one of the most vile PC places on the planet. Racists they are not. If they could hire Blacks they would. So the choices here are either there is a vast hidden neo-Nazi conspiracy among the elite companies of Silicon Valley (and frankly I don’t think people called Zuckerberg are going to buy into that) or there are not enough skilled Black programmers. Which do you think it is?
Personally I think Twitter could hire 12% of its workforce to sit around and talk about Scandal all day. But I don’t see how that would help.
“For fuxache, name analysis as a means of monitoring ethnicity? Really?”
Standard practice is social science. And marketing. You know when they send out CVs of Black people and of White people to prove everyone is racist? They rely on Black names. I think most of us know anyone called Trayvon ain’t a WASP although it was surprising to see George Zimmerman was Afro-Peruvian.
“Finally, having looked at his LinkedIn profile, it certainly seems that he has high levels of technical competency so saying that he’s a manager not a techie is somewhat disingenuous.”
What is your factual basis for that claim?
Citing an individual’s LinkedIn profile in support of that person’s claims to a skill seems somewhat disingenuous too.
In fact it’s so spoilt my previously buoyant mood that even the idea of Dave whistling the Horst Wessel song is failing to keep my spirits up.
SMFS>
Your response amounts to ‘it’s not racist to say all niggers are stupid, because niggers are stupid’. We get it, you’re racist scum who spreads racist lies.
‘There is great merit in having many eyeballs available to look at things, and it is good when those eyeballs bring different perspectives.’
We followed GAAP. Other perspectives not welcome.
Dave, blacks don’t need your protection. Why do you think they do? You don’t think they can take care of themselves?
Don’t mess with Dave.
Dave – “Your response amounts to ‘it’s not racist to say all niggers are stupid, because niggers are stupid’. We get it, you’re racist scum who spreads racist lies.”
At this point Dave, even you must realise that you have a problem here. You are becoming a parody of the Social Justice Warrior writ large. More to the point, throwing your toys out of the pram and screaming racism isn’t going to help.
No one in the world disputes Blacks are under-represented at the upper end of the IQ spectrum. No one. The dispute, in so far as it still exists, is whether IQ tests are biased by hidden cultural assumptions (and no they are not any more if they ever were) or whether IQ measures anything real or useful (and yes it does appear so). Certainly Blacks are under-represented among STEM graduates. This is a simple matter that can be shown by counting them. As people have done.
There is simply no racism whatsoever about those facts. If someone argued that these were caused by race, that would be racism. If they argue that it is caused by social disadvantage and exclusion, that is hardly racism, is it? All your SJW friends make that argument after all.
It turns out that in their rush to admit Black graduates many universities accept Black students with low SATs into courses they promptly fail. So in the second year they tend to move them from STEM courses into easier ones like African Studies or sociology. As Thomas Sowell pointed out, students who might have passed at a lower ranked college, fail at an Ivy. This is an observed fact. It is an explanation of low graduation rates that is not caused by the observer’s racism. It may even be true.
There is no large pool of Black programmers for Twitter to choose from. That may be caused by racism in schools. It may be caused by a legacy of slavery. It may be caused by the rising and waxing of the full Moon. Who knows? But it is hardly Twitter’s fault and it is impossible for Twitter to fix.
But if you get a secret thrill saying the N-word, now you are too old to listen to NWA, please, don’t let me stop you. Not. My. Problem.
Fraggle850 – “Changing jobs after a couple of years is the best way to advance and shows initiative. I’ve heard that 6 months to two years is the optimum time to stay in a role.”
Ford, as TW is wont to point out, introduced the $5 a day wage for its workers because it was sick and tired of having them quit and then needing to train new ones.
The fact that they could afford to buy a car was a helpful bonus.
And the smart black people have better options that being Twitter coders
This!
“I’ve heard that 6 months to two years is the optimum time to stay in a role.”
Heard from whom? It takes you at least six months to even grok a non-trivial codebase to the point where you can make useful contributions to it.
In my experience of software engineering there is indeed deep-seated and strong prejudice among Those Who Code. It is between people who can write code well and the hapless Untermenschen who cannot. If you can code, it does not matter if you are black, white, khaki, teal, have a willy or not, fancy people of the same sex, fancy cartoon Japanese schoolgirls with cat ears, support Jeremy Corbyn or Donald Trump or Malcolm Turnbull (to the extent you give a fuck about any of these people). If you cannot, you are a pitiable monkey who may perhaps be usefully employed in, say, the food preparation and delivery business but if encountered in a professional setting is likely to be, at best, an annoyance and at worst an active hindrance to the main task, which is writing cool code.
It’s just we don’t often say this, because people tend to take it the wrong way.
Haha This thread has turned into the brilliant South Park season 9
Season 19 even.
“I suspect there are [deeper problems about black people going into software] and I’d contend that this largely boils down to class and privilege”
And the evidence for this is..?
Coding is something you can teach yourself. Instructional material is available free online, computers are available at schools, libraries, etc. and you can get a good IDE for free. And once you can code, you do not need a degree to get a job as a programmer.
Love this bullshit about moving on after 6 months to 2 years.
To be fair, I’m a bit like that. I really struggle to fit into corporate organisations because I have a habit, which runs in the family, of calling Walter Mitty-type managers out on their bullshit and trying to get the job done instead of arselicking and “keeping my head down”. In the modern oil and gas industry, you generally don’t last long doing that. I would change, but I can’t. 🙁
A big part of management is understanding the capabilities of your people, teams, industrial assets, subcontractors, corporate partners etc and deploying them effectively.
Find me a manager who can do that in a modern corporation, and I’ll show you where his unicorn is stabled.
“Except the reality of “diverse” environments is a group of men and women of all colours all sharing the same opinions.”
I think it was Thomas Sowell who said, ‘Ask them how many Republicans are in their sociology departments.’
Dave – you sure this isn’t about the jews, somehow?
“Coding is something you can teach yourself. Instructional material is available free online, computers are available at schools, libraries, etc. and you can get a good IDE for free. And once you can code, you do not need a degree to get a job as a programmer.”
I’ve seen a video of a kid in a Mumbai slum learning coding on Coursera. It’s kind of comical to think that getting a job in software engineering (say) is dependent on “privilege”. Getting made partner in a 200-year-old Boston law firm, OK that might be hard to crack.
Tim N
“Find me a manager who can do that in a modern corporation, and I’ll show you where his unicorn is stabled.”
Fair point, but if they can’t then objectively they are failing at something they are theoretically there to do. I’m sure there are some businesses of a decent scale that are still well run, but imagine their entire senior staff doesn’t turn over every two years.
I’ve had some very good line managers over the years. Without exception, they were all very good engineers (not necessarily software) beforehand.