Michelle Rial / BuzzFeed News
Leslie Tita's tone grows oddly anxious as he curls into the back of a Lyft, and speeds away from Howard University. Tita is a successful entrepreneur who owns a co-working space for entrepreneurs from Africa. He's strikingly tall and sturdily built, with long fine dreadlocks and an infectious grin, and doesn't seem the type to be worried about anything. But ask him about the "pipeline problem" in tech — the notion that tech companies don't hire enough people of color because there is not enough available talent — and you'll see his brow furrow.
“Lately there's been a lot of talk about race in general and that’s translated to tech, but what worries me is that it feels very trendy,” he says. "I have mixed feelings on how the big companies are trying to address it without working together, and I feel this fear that in a couple of months it's going to die down."
Tita has reason for this trepidation: Despite tech’s insistence that the talent pool for engineering students of color is insufficient, that it is a so-called pipeline problem, data suggests that’s not exactly true. A study in USA Today last year suggested that universities are graduating black and Hispanic computer science and computer engineering graduates at twice the rate that technology companies are hiring them.
Perhaps its because they're looking in the wrong places. The feeder universities for the big tech companies, like MIT and Stanford, have their own diversity issues. (At Stanford, African-Americans represent a paltry 7.8% of undergraduates. At MIT it's 10%.) In short, tech firms are building pipelines from places without any black people to begin with.
Which explains why Tita is volunteering his weekend as a mentor for an event called HBCU Hacks — a series of two-day hackathons held at historically black colleges and universities, organized by the nonprofit organization Black Founders. At these events, computer science and engineering students of color spend their weekends to conceive of, code, and hopefully finish some variety of app, game, or technical product. In short, they're trying to re-route the pipes.
That is, if they can get the internet working. A few minutes before we bailed in the Lyft, Tita was moving across the floor inside the wood-paneled reading room in Downing Hall, a linoleum-floored engineering building on the edge of the Howard University campus. Fifteen or so students were also milling about quietly, idly tapping their phones or staring at the ground, backpacks on their shoulders. Tables strewn with ethernet cables sat empty, and a table with breakfast food and cold cardboard jugs of Starbucks coffee had been picked apart by bored and hungry students. One student wearing a hooded sweatshirt with Google's logo across the back tended to a sagging sign that read "HBCU Hacks." It should be an exhausting, nonstop event, but the students and mentors were idle, due to a particularly vexing hurdle: a campus-wide internet outage.
"There's really only two things you need for a hackathon, and that's a computer and internet and, of course, we're missing one of them," said Tita, before letting out a strained laugh.
Black Founders
The Howard hackathon comes at a time when tech companies are under increasing scrutiny for their lack of diversity. Yet as the likes of Apple, Google, and Facebook increasingly roll out diversity reports and announce new efforts to fix the pipeline problem, the obvious fact remains that it's especially hard for people of color to gain employment at the elite companies of Silicon Valley. Diversity is frequently discussed among big tech companies now but it remains underserved in terms of actual hiring.
“We are working to increase diversity in the talent pipeline and make Yahoo a great place to work for a diverse employee base,” Yahoo’s 2015 report read after disclosing that African-Americans made up just 2% of its workers. Facebook, whose 2014 report revealed the 5,500 person company had only 81 black employees, stressed that it was "trying desperately to have a more diverse workforce and deal with the constraints on the pipeline.” And yet to some extent, the problem may be that tech companies view the problem as, well, a pipeline.
Despite hopeful and sometimes even grand gestures from companies like Apple, which last year gave a massive grant to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, much of the difficult work of building companies that genuinely reflect the ethnic makeup of their users will ultimately fall to the students of color and their institutions. The majority of that work — as many black entrepreneurs see it right now — won't take place onstage or at a press conference, but under the fluorescent lights of co-working spaces and engineering halls, where engineers, coders, and designers of color strive to build the workforce that can bridge Silicon Valley's diversity gap.
It’s this sense of self-reliance that has led people like Monique Woodard, the executive director of the diversity-in-tech nonprofit Black Founders, to partner with historically black colleges and universities across the country for this series of hackathons. Black Founders hopes to create the foundation necessary to build a culture of innovation in the tech space that, pipeline or not, Silicon Valley won’t be able to ignore.
“You see a lot of companies paying lip service about diversity, but when you talk about HBCUs there’s some pushback. That’s not where they’re recruiting,” Woodard told BuzzFeed News. “They are still looking for a Stanford student, a Harvard student, an MIT student — they just want that person to be black now. That’s not always realistic. Why not work with the engineering and business schools at HBCUs as well?”
Black Founders
Of course, no matter where they come from, they need internet to get there. And currently, the Howard hackathon is all out of that. But resourcefulness is the rule of the day. So Tita hatched a new plan and offered to host the students at his office, I/O Spaces, a few miles up the road in Silver Spring, Maryland. "Everybody call an Uber or Lyft," one of the hackathon organizers told the group. "Grab a buddy and let's just get out of here."
On the ride over, Tita was upbeat and focused on getting the students up and hacking. "I think it's so important to give young engineers at these HBCUs the chance to see what it's like to build something and maybe even get the chance to get funding," he explained. "But really, it's a chance to say to them, 'Hey, this is real — this tech stuff is not just like a specific niche of people. You can build a startup.'"
As the Lyft driver pulls up to the co-working space Tita says that part of his urgency comes from the realization that although the world appears to be paying closer attention to racial inequality across the country, he’s worries it’s a momentary cycle, and is aware that window might close.
But his wariness passes quickly. “The good thing is that even though it's a trend, people can make good money off of trends,” he says, flashing a smile before entering the co-working space. “The question is, how can we, as black entrepreneurs, make the best of this moment in time?”
Hackathons aren’t much as far as spectator sports go. Save for trips to the bathroom and scuttling back and forth to a modest table stacked with pre-made sandwich wraps and soda, the students rarely move from their respective seats. Allee Clark, a senior computer science student at Howard, is working at a table with three other students on an app called Nemesis, which will employ a Tinder-like swipe interface to allow friends to find worthy partners to debate on any number of issues. “Arguing with people is pretty much the oldest and best part of the internet,” he laughs, before explaining that the group will try to develop “a behavioral API of sorts to show what kind of person you are.” The project is light-hearted and Clark and his team are using the weekend as valuable practice. They are less focused on the outcome than the experience. “If I weren’t here, I’d probably be be back in my room trying to build something else, but here there’s at least some free food,” Clark says.
That lackadaisical mood is a bit disheartening to Aaron Saunders, a local entrepreneur and adjunct faculty member teaching computer science at Howard. Saunders worries that Howard and other HBCUs have fallen behind in providing a curriculum advanced enough to graduate top-tier engineering talent.
“When I finally got in to teach, I told myself I was going to focus on getting students to build, and it was a struggle because I was asking them to make something and they’re only being taught theory, not real-world application,” he explained. “They're prepping kids to go off to Lockheed Martin and IBM and those kinds of jobs and that’s all fine and good but they’re not doing what Stanford and the best universities are doing — preparing kids to create things — to create their own company.”
Black Founders
Worse, Saunders worries that curriculums at many HBCUs can be too slow to evolve to match what’s happening in the private sector, putting graduates at an even further disadvantage when they try to score jobs at big, fast-moving tech firms. “My personal opinion is that I don't think a lot of these kids are, on the whole, ready to work at Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter. And that's the harsh reality,” he said. “If you’re not turning out a product these tech companies want, then you’re setting people up for failure.”
While Saunders admitted tech curriculums lag at many public institutions across the country, he argues the effects are amplified at HBCUs like Howard. “If you go to some other state schools and say, 'Hey, raise your hand if you know somebody in software development,' there's a likelihood that in that network they know somebody. That doesn’t exist at HBCUs. The difference is other communities have a strong network. Most here don’t.”
The students suggest a more nuanced perspective: Access to bigger tech companies is available, but only on the companies’ terms. “Google is always around; they have Googlers that come to stay and teach at Howard’s campus, so Google is literally, like, downstairs,” one junior engineering student said, speaking of Howard’s Googler in Residence program. (Google declined to make its Googlers in Residence available for comment, but Yolanda Mangolini, Google's director of diversity and inclusion, told BuzzFeed News via a prepared statement that "Historically Black Colleges and Universities are and have always been an important pillar in the black community, and embedding our Googler engineers as instructors has helped bring practitioners to the classroom.")
Indeed, the Googler in Residence program has its engineers embed and teach not just at Howard, but also at Hampton University, Fisk University, and Spelman and Morehouse colleges. The mere fact of that presence can make a difference, say students. “Google makes it a lot easier to get an internship, not because they’re biased toward us but because they are here. Microsoft and Facebook are around maybe twice a year at most, but when I apply to Microsoft using their site I get nothing; no response, no confirmation email. Never. It's like it's going into a black hole,” another junior mechanical engineering student said.
For Alanna Walton, a Howard sophomore in computer engineering, Big Tech’s real presence at the university has helped shape the trajectory of her still-young academic career. After taking a class with the Googler in Residence, Walton secured an internship at the search giant over the summer. By the time she made it back to campus this fall, she’d already begun laying the groundwork for her startup idea with three other Howard students, a customizable haircare business called GottaBeYour. Walton is soft-spoken and wears a high school shirt that reads “Powderpuff Seniors” but speaks about her business with the concern of a seasoned entrepreneur, already trained in speaking about scalability and unreliable vendors.
At the hackathon, Walton sits cross-legged on the ground, balancing her laptop on her knees, deep in focus. Amid haggling with shampoo vendors for GottaBeYour and bootstrapping the project with the money she made at Google, she’s using the weekend to build something different. “Bringing something that you already started into a hackathon, that feels weird or kind of like cheating,” she said. “Plus, I can try something different and maybe learn another thing or two — I’m really into wireless beacons right now.”
And so she and her partner Lucretia Williams are working on Food EZ, an app that allows people to set up drive-thru orders ahead of time but that aren’t sent to the kitchen until you reach the beacon’s connectivity radius. “Maybe it won’t work, but the technology is really interesting and there’s a lot to figure out.”
To talk to the hackathon mentors this ability to embrace and be comfortable with failure is just one of many cultural barriers complicating diversity programs — and learning to embrace it is critical. “We talk about culture fit all the time and accepting failure is just completely outside of our culture. We don't have the luxury to fail,” Howard graduate and mentor Beverly Turner, who runs her own private technology exposure programs, said.
That willingness to try something new — and maybe fail at it — is prized worldview in Silicon Valley. Failure, breaking things, the perennially available exciting and potentially lucrative opportunities on the horizon for every failed startup founder: This is the standard template for success in the tech industry. But as even the most successful entrepreneurs of color have found, the luxury of failure is a foreign concept.
Black Founders
According to the Internet Archive, for every minute of TV ads that supported a San Francisco ballot measure that would restrict Airbnb, there were 100 minutes of opposing Proposition F.
Via blog.archive.org
Ads opposing a local ballot measure that would restrict Airbnb in San Francisco vastly outstripped those in favor of the measure, according to a review by the Internet Archive.
Proposition F would limit the number of days a year hosts can rent out their homes to 75, require home-sharing platforms to report regularly to city government, ban rentals of in-law apartments and more. Airbnb has spent $8 million so far in hopes of defeating the ballot measure, which they say is overly aggressive.
The Internet Archive records and stores hours and hours of TV footage, but claims to have found only one ad supporting the ballot measure. That ad, their survey says, played 32 times for a total of 16 minutes; in comparison, ads in support of Airbnb aired for more than 26 hours.
Of course, these days, TV ads are only one part of how the campaigns have tried to reach voters; both sides have played in the digital space as well. In fact, the campaign that support Prop F, known as Share Better SF, released a new ad on YouTube today, which in a press release was said to be part of a "significant digital media buy."
Shift is the latest in a string of on-demand companies that have decided to stop using independent contractors.
Via Flickr: hugo90
Shift, an on-demand startup that helps people buy and sell cars, is looking to make employees out of its contract-based labor force. Almost 100 California-based "car enthusiasts" — what Shift calls the people who do price checks, coordinate inspections, facilitate test drives, and otherwise help with the transaction — are being given the opportunity to join the company as employees, starting December 1.
Use of contract labor by tech companies is a hot topic. Companies including Postmates, Washio, Handy, Lyft and Uber are currently being sued by workers who say they should be receiving the benefits and compensation befitting employees.
Not all on-demand companies use independent contractors — Munchery, WashUp, Alfred and Managed by Q, to name a few, use employees. Still others, such as Shyp, Instacart and Sprig, have announced intentions to transition their workforce from contract-based to employee status.
While lawsuits are a definite threat, those on-demand companies that forego the savings associated with hiring independent contractors often say its because hiring employees is better for business long term. A car is a big purchase, a Shift representative said in an email, and W-2 employees help the company deliver "premium, white glove service" to customers. As employees, the "enthusiasts" are now eligible for equity in the company as well; a spokesperson for Shift said the news was greeted with cheers.
Do you recycle nudes?
Comedy Central / Via giphy.com
Jack Dempsey / Invision for Universal Music Group
South by Southwest director Hugh Forrest said Friday he "made a mistake" in canceling two panels on gaming and online harassment amid threats — a decision that drew criticism — and said he is reinstating an all-day panel on the topic.
“Earlier this week we made a mistake,” Forrest said in a blog post published Friday.
Several media companies — including BuzzFeed and Vox — said they would not participate unless the panels retuned.
"The resulting feedback from the individuals involved and the community-at-large resonated loud and clear,” he said. “While we made the decision in the interest of safety for all of our attendees, canceling sessions was not an appropriate response.”
“By canceling two sessions we sent an unintended message that SXSW not only tolerates online harassment but condones it, and for that we are truly sorry,” Forrest wrote.
SXSW said that the Saturday March 12 “Online Harassment Summit” could feature participants from the two previously planned panels, including Katherine Cross and Caroline Sinders from the session “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games."
While the sessions have been reinstated, Recode quoted original panelist Randi Harper saying that not all panelists have agreed to speak.
Rep. Katherine Clark, who also criticized SXSW's decision in a letter to Forrest, has been invited to speak at the summit.
"Online harassment isn’t just a virtual problem, and the decision earlier this week by SXSW to cancel a panel on the topic was a glaring example," she told BuzzFeed News.
"I am grateful to the thousands of people who spoke out against this ill-advised decision. Their collective effort to stand up for those who are bullied, marginalized and threatened online has done more to raise awareness about this issue than one panel ever could."
She added: "I am proud to join such a distinguished list of speakers and thank SXSW for their willingness to listen and for taking a role in keeping the internet open to everyone.”
US Chief Information Officer Tony Scott. Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images
Tony Scott, the country’s chief information officer, wants to overhaul the way government IT is run. On Friday, he will announce a long-term cybersecurity strategy focused on hiring elite technologists, utilizing emerging tech, and fostering consistent, rapid responses to cyberattacks.
“Most of the things we have built systems out of today have their design point 10, 15, even 20 years ago,” Scott told BuzzFeed News. “I’m talking about operating systems, I’m talking about hardware and software. What we’ve had to do in response to today’s cyberthreats is kind of air-bag and Bubble Wrap the things that we’ve built. And we can only do so much of that.”
Scott envisions a government model built on cloud computing and recurring upgrades. He will task federal agencies with taking a more active role replacing outdated networks and their underlying technology. And he hopes to lure cybersecurity talent with appeals to public service and with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of protecting government networks from multiplying adversaries.
Scott’s cybersecurity implementation plan follows a series of sophisticated data breaches targeting government agencies. The largest hack, and perhaps the most embarrassing for the Obama administration, struck the Office of Personnel Management earlier this year, when millions of Social Security numbers and fingerprints belonging to current, former, and prospective federal employees were stolen. The colossal theft, which affected more than 21 million people, led to the resignation of OPM’s director, Katherine Archuleta, and urgent calls to update antiquated networks and to rectify the government’s glaring IT vulnerability.
In the aftermath of the breach, Scott instituted government-wide security measures, including patching vulnerabilities, shrinking the number of privileged administrators, and utilizing basic tools, like two-factor authentication. The use of smart cards by federal employees to securely access government machines has increased from 42% following the breach to 80% in mid-October, he said. This form of strong authentication is believed to function as a preventative measure. In both the OPM and Target data breaches, compromised credentials granted hackers a way in.
“I think that one of the key differences between this effort and things that have gone on before is we are going to measure,” Scott said, referring to quantifiable improvements within the federal workforce. “And Congress is watching, the inspectors general are watching, the GAO [Government Accountability Office] is watching, and we are reporting the results. That creates a focus that might have been missing before.”
In what has been described as a victory for tech companies, the Obama administration has decided to not seek legislation forcing Silicon Valley firms to install so called “backdoors” on their encrypted devices, a thorny cybersecurity issue that companies like Apple and Google have been watching closely.
Throughout 2015, the FBI Director James Comey and other government officials have expressed their frustration to Congress with what they describe as the “going dark” problem, whereby encrypted devices and applications place criminals beyond the reach of the law. In turn, cryptologists and privacy advocates argue that granting privileged access to law enforcement is both technologically unworkable and necessarily introduces security weaknesses.
On this debate, CIO Scott is clear: “I think in the long run we are probably not well served by backdoors to encryption and in general we end up benefiting as a society by having very strong non-hackable encryption,” he said. “And I say that knowing that it will present some challenges for law enforcement and investigative agencies.”
Scott is the country’s third CIO, a position established during President Obama’s first term in 2009. Before joining the federal government, Scott served as CIO of VMware, Microsoft, and the Walt Disney Company.
Facebook today announced a couple of process improvements meant to smooth the road for those unfairly removed from its service due to its 'real names' policy. The changes are designed to give people caught up in the policy more room to provide context, and will also now require more information from anyone reporting violations.
The policy, which requires people to go by their "authentic name" on Facebook, has been heavily criticized, largely by members of the trans community as well as advocates who find it dangerous to use their real names in their work.
"We want to reduce the number of people who are asked to verify their name on Facebook, when they are already using the name people know them by," wrote Facebook VP of Growth Alex Schultz in a letter the company released today. "We want to make it easier for people to confirm their name if necessary," he added.
To that end, those required to "confirm" their name to Facebook will now have the ability to add context and details to the cases they make to the company. They were previously unable to do so. "This should help our Community Operations team better understand the situation," said Schultz. "It will also help us better understand the reasons why people can’t currently confirm their name, informing potential changes we make in the future."
The second big change is a new requirement forcing Facebook users who flag others under the policy to provide the company with more information about why they are reporting the profile. The change should add more friction to the reporting process, potentially lessening the likelihood it will be used as a weapon, locking certain people out of their profiles via the name-proving process.
The changes are expected to start rolling out in December.
Despite the introduction of these changes, Facebook is not backing away from the policy, which Schultz argued is making Facebook a safer place. "When people use the name others know them by, they are more accountable for what they say, making it more difficult to hide behind an anonymous name to harass, bully, spam or scam someone else," he said.
Schultz's letter comes in response to an open letter sent to Facebook by a number of groups — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and ACLU of California — calling Facebook's policy "broken" and demanding it be fixed.
"Facebook maintains a system that disregards the circumstances of users in countries with low levels of internet penetration, exposes its users to danger, disrespects the identities of its users, and curtails free speech," the letter said.
Once someone gets shut out of Facebook for violating the real-names policy, the process of "confirming" an authentic name can be arduous and frustrating. Given that, any process improvement will likely be welcome, though it's difficult to say if it will smooth out the edges enough to make the policy work for everyone.
