How diverse would you say your friend/acquaintance group is? Are they from the same background as you? Do they have similar life stories? If not, how can you possibly imagine that you're not just soaking in confirmation bias?

Don't like my opinion? How about someone else's opinion? https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/

There are countless examples of talented people who have been ill-served by the hiring environment and tech culture we have today. For every one of them that gets lucky and finds success through non-traditional hiring practices at a great company (for example) you have to wonder how many others (others who live where there is less opportunity, etc.) are just passed by and left behind by the system.

Your attitude is very much a "let them eat cake" attitude. You look around and you say "everyone I know is successful, what are all these other people's problems?" Trust me, there are poor people out there, there are disadvantaged people out there, and partly because of unfairness built into the economy and our culture. And that extends even into the tech world. There are tons of talented people who are unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise disadvantaged simply because they don't match the traditional model of what a talented tech person looks like.

Do you see anything incongruous in the way you are comfortable casually rejecting InclinedPlane's experience but using your personal experience to conclude that it's not a widespread problem?

Why is their experience more valid than mine? I'll go with my own observations before that of an HN commenter. Yes, I know that's what I am too.

Reread what I said and note that I didn't say you were definitely wrong, only that it's inconsistent to treat two anecdotal accounts in completely opposite ways. I'm entirely comfortable accepting that what you wrote is what you honestly believe but you're trying to argue that your limited personal experience represents an entire field so completely that everyone who says otherwise is either confused or lying.

If you want to convince anyone, post some actual data or peer-reviewed analysis. Otherwise it's just a question of whether this is garden variety argument from authority or some sort of stronger argument from Dunning-Kruger version.

> it's inconsistent to treat two anecdotal accounts in completely opposite ways.

I can either believe a random person on the internet peddling a rather trendy political opinion or my own extensive industry experience. I'd expect outsiders to treat both our claims with a grain of salt and instead use their own observations.

To anyone other than yourself, you are the “random person on the internet peddling a rather trendy political opinion”, especially since it's easy to find people with just as much industry experience who both disagree with your portrayal and have reasonable explanations for why you might not be aware of their experience.

Hence why I said: "I'd expect outsiders to treat both our claims with a grain of salt and instead use their own observations."

Do you not understand that these are not comparable things? Your position is that no one in tech is generally ill-served by the system, which is backed up by your own personal experience. I've shared with you the fact that I've seen many examples of people ill-served by the system. That is a direct counter-example against your position, and as such invalidates your claim.

The only way it doesn't is if I'm lying. Are you calling me a liar? Or are you just too narrow-minded to imagine that there are experiences outside of the bubble you live in?

Are you claiming that my experiences and observations are too narrow and un-representative of the industry whereas yours are more general and representative? By what basis do you make that claim?

Edit: Evaluate it from a logical perspective. There are two hypotheses: that iniquity in hiring in tech don't exist, and that they do exist and are somewhat common. Then evaluate the "evidence". On the one hand we have your experience, where you've seen a lack of iniquity, on the other we have mine, where I've seen plenty of examples of iniquity. And we have the example I gave of other observations of iniquity, and the evidence from the article for this whole discussion, which also highlights examples of iniquity. If iniquity was common, we would still expect some situations where it was locally uncommon, especially among people of similar cultural/socio-economic backgrounds, so you would not expect a complete absence of perspectives like yours, you'd expect a mix of perspectives. If iniquity was uncommon, you'd expect that there would be very few perspectives with examples of iniquity. The only way the evidence in front of us makes sense under that hypothesis is if I'm a unicorn with utterly unusual and unique experiences, as are the examples from the article and from the sources I've brought up. That is a much less intellectually tenable position, to claim that all of the evidence against your favored hypothesis doesn't matter because it's all outliers or otherwise unreprestantive. Meanwhile, how do you explain the statistics which show that there are systematic iniquities in the system? How do you explain the countless stories with examples of people who have been ill-served by the system as it exists? Your claim seems to be incredibly weak and based on nothing more than a refusal to accept that anything outside of your own personal experience is real or important.

Read it again, they are not the same. You are claiming that my observations don't exist. I'm not claiming that your observations aren't true, I'm saying that my observations are still true. If we combine our observations together they are consistent much more with my hypothesis (that iniquity in the industry is common) than with yours (that it almost doesn't exist at all).

By what basis do you claim that my observations are so extremely unrepresentative of the industry that they should be dismissed? I'm not dismissing your observations, you're dismissing mine. Why?