From the San Jose Mercury News
Blacks, Latinos and women lose ground at Silicon Valley tech companies
By Mike Swift
The unique diversity of Silicon Valley is not reflected in the region's tech workplaces — and the disparity is only growing worse.
Hispanics and blacks made up a smaller share of the valley's computer workers in 2008 than they did in 2000, a Mercury News review of federal data shows, even as their share grew across the nation. Women in computer-related occupations saw declines around the country, but they are an even smaller proportion of the work force here....
Other reasons, experts say, include a history of valley companies hiring well-trained tech workers from the Pacific Rim, a weak pipeline of homegrown candidates, and a hypercompetitive business environment that leaves little time to develop workers. "This is like 'top gun' school for techies. Basically, that's one difference between Silicon Valley and the other tech centers," said Vivek Wadhwa, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley [School of Information], Duke and Harvard who has studied the work-force dynamics of tech centers around the U.S. The intense premium on education "inherently gives Asians an advantage, because they tend to be stronger in math and science."...
Others point to the public education system, noting that recent achievement test scores for black and Latino students have been even lower in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties than for the state overall. "It certainly is a self-reinforcing cycle," said AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information at UC-Berkeley....