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  • - Hey, welcome back, TechLead here.

  • Now, first of all,

  • I wanna say I did not really want

  • to make this video about anti-diversity

  • because I believe

  • that the intentions behind there are good.

  • However, I feel that we have gone too far

  • and I wanted to do a follow up video

  • on the manifesto video

  • that I did a few days ago about

  • how tech has become hostile

  • to certain types of people.

  • See after I posted that video,

  • I started getting some tweets from other people

  • and I did some more research into this

  • and I realized

  • that there's a lot more discrimination

  • in this field than I had thought.

  • And that's really disturbing to me.

  • And I know some people will say,

  • I'm one of the privileged people.

  • When you're privileged,

  • then equality feels like oppression.

  • No, this isn't really about me anymore.

  • This is about future generations.

  • My son, for example,

  • I would like him to get into tech as well.

  • And I'm just imagining this field

  • that can be very hostile to him

  • and other people like him as well.

  • So let me show you what I found

  • and I want you to keep an open mind about this.

  • Diversity, it's a very delicate subject to talk about.

  • It triggers a lot of people immediately

  • and I feel that if we can not even discuss

  • whether the approach is right

  • without somebody blowing up in your face,

  • then I think that's going

  • to lead us down a tenuous path.

  • And I want to preface this by saying

  • I support everybody get into tech.

  • I think that we can all learn the skill

  • but it should be a meritocracy.

  • So let's get into the first piece here.

  • So somebody sent me this screenshot

  • for an Oracle summer internship

  • that lists a bunch of eligibility requirements

  • like a GPA, computer science degree.

  • And then this says explicitly

  • that you must be African American,

  • Latino, Native American and/or a woman.

  • And that just seems pretty racist and sexist to me.

  • It excludes so many different types of people.

  • Not to mention it's also requiring you

  • to be a sophomore.

  • To me that sounds like age discrimination.

  • Now, regardless of moralities,

  • if you're to take a look

  • at the Civil rights Code Section 703 it says,

  • "It shall be unlawful employment practice

  • "for any employer to fail or refuse

  • "to hire any individual

  • "because of such individuals race, color,

  • "religion, sex or national origin".

  • So here's my problem with this.

  • The way I had to understood diversity programs was

  • that they would be for students

  • for underrepresented minorities

  • and they will not be in any employment capacity,

  • no internships, no full time jobs.

  • Because I believe that this is illegal by the way.

  • But if you wanna teach high school students

  • how to code,

  • if you wanna engage

  • with elementary school students

  • and get them more interested in STEM topics,

  • then that sounds perfectly good to me.

  • Just widen up that funnel.

  • But as soon as we started talking about internships,

  • internships, especially tech internships,

  • as say Facebook, Google, Oracle,

  • any of these tech companies,

  • they are so valuable.

  • Having an internship on your resume

  • is essentially a key

  • into a full time position.

  • And an opportunity like that,

  • especially if it is paid.

  • And offers you real-world work experience.

  • I don't believe that we should

  • be discriminated on that.

  • I believe it excludes too many people.

  • It's not fair.

  • It is not meritocracy,

  • and it may be illegal as well,

  • where the public and society have deemed

  • that this type of discrimination

  • on key opportunities simply should not be acceptable.

  • Now thinking in a little bit more,

  • I also noticed that we've got Facebook University

  • and Google STEP,

  • which is student training

  • in the engineering program.

  • But if you read the descriptions,

  • both of these programs,

  • they explicitly say

  • that they are internships, paid internships.

  • And so I find myself wondering,

  • well, why don't we just have internships

  • where we explicitly list certain races

  • and genders in which we'll accept

  • and which we won't accept.

  • And, I have the suspicion

  • that perhaps that these programs,

  • these diversity programs

  • are thinly veiled internships just

  • to skirt around the law of employment.

  • To me, it's kind of a loophole.

  • So when I posted about this on Twitter,

  • I got a bunch of responses,

  • but some of the responses really shocked me.

  • One of the responses was

  • from the leaders of BlackTechTwitter

  • and she said,

  • "I'm happy those are the eligibility requirements

  • "and all of you are mad about it

  • "well I don't care lol".

  • Someone else replies,

  • "Please find more of these,

  • "I would like to post them to my friends

  • "and colleagues so that they can apply".

  • And they justified this by saying that,

  • "It's illegal because up until now institutions

  • "were discriminating on gender and ethnicity

  • "and they wanted to change that".

  • So now, it's essentially reverse discrimination

  • and that was not what this movement

  • I thought was going to be about.

  • I thought it was about that firstly equality

  • and creating a better world for all of us.

  • Me and my children included,

  • not at our expense.

  • And then someone sent me this link to WomenHack

  • where they offer invite only events focused

  • on connecting top female engineers,

  • designers and product managers

  • with opportunities at diversity first companies,

  • you have to apply for an invitation

  • and you can meet a bunch of companies,

  • top tier tech companies like Facebook,

  • Oracle, Google, Lyft, Square, Asana.

  • And honestly once you allow discrimination,

  • the sword really cuts both ways.

  • I found this other internship

  • which only allows Indians,

  • H-1B visa Indians,

  • and they're only looking

  • for these types of people

  • for iOS engineering roles.

  • And so when I think about our children,

  • let's imagine someone has a white male son

  • and then they adopt a black daughter

  • and they're raising these two kids

  • at the same time in parallel,

  • these kids are not going

  • to have equal opportunities

  • and it's going to be strange.

  • The white male son won't be excluded

  • from virtually every coding curriculum,

  • bootcamp, internship, job fair training program,

  • events, conferences, parties, everything.

  • This white male son won't be excluded

  • and they may just make tech feel unwelcoming

  • and hostile to him,

  • especially when it is so unbalanced

  • in terms of the programs that were offered.

  • There's virtually no program out there