Howard University's black students struggle to get hired in Silicon Valley, despite tech companies' diversity initiatives
Vauhini Vara / Bloomberg Business : Tweets: @buzz , @sarahfrier , @ericajoy , @ericajoy and @sarahfrier Tweets: Buzz Andersen / @buzz : One reason everyone should support increased tech diversity: it forces everyone to grow up. http://www.bloomberg.com/... pic.twitter.com/rxOftDyEoT Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : For all the diversity talk from tech companies, they're not actually hiring the black coders they say they want. http://www.bloomberg.com/... @ericajoy : This article highlights a lot of what's wrong with “diversity” in Silicon Valley, namely, ignoring inclusion. http://www.bloomberg.com/... @ericajoy : Let's move on to the notion that HBCU grads aren't good enough or whatever bc their CS program isn't good enough. Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : great detail in @vauhinivara piece on how tech cos trip up while trying to hire black coders http://www.bloomberg.com/... pic.twitter.com/TPmNAphSt9
Context & Ripple Effects
Vauhini Vara's Bloomberg Business report uses Howard University as a test case for a promise Silicon Valley keeps making and breaking: companies tout diversity initiatives while black coders with the right skills go unhired. The piece lands amid a public debate — Buzz Andersen argues diversity forces the industry to grow up, while @ericajoy points out the deeper flaw is treating diversity as a hiring metric while ignoring inclusion.
The story reads differently now than it did in 2016 because the arc it started has kept repeating: four years later Bloomberg found the giants renewing their vows while still failing to retain the Black and Latinx employees they do hire (renewed vows that fell short on retention), and by 2021 Wired reported Black founders remained sidelined in venture funding despite post-protest promises and special funds (Black founders still sidelined despite special funds).
First-order effects
- Howard's black computer science students face a hiring market where the companies publicly courting diverse talent are not converting applications into offers, making the gap between stated commitments and actual hires measurable and public.
- Tech companies' diversity initiatives come under scrutiny as performative — @ericajoy's critique reframes the problem from representation numbers to whether hired black engineers are actually included once inside.
Second-order effects
- Pressure shifts downstream of the offer letter: as the 2020 coverage shows, companies that do hire Black and Latinx engineers then struggle to retain them, forcing diversity programs to expand from recruiting into retention and workplace culture (workers describing discrimination and isolation).
- The credibility gap pushes accountability toward capital markets, with Black tech founders calling on VCs to move past what they label diversity theater and address the absence of top-level Black investors funding Black-run startups (founders pushing back on diversity theater).
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across hiring, retention, and funding, Silicon Valley's diversity apparatus becomes structurally self-referential — initiatives measured on announcements rather than outcomes — which is exactly why the TechCrunch-era analysis argued change depends on new startups and VCs with inclusive-minded CEOs rather than incumbent programs (inclusive-minded CEOs framed as critical for change).
- The durable risk for the industry is a closed loop: under-hiring at HBCUs like Howard starves the future founder and engineer pipeline, which then reproduces the investor-side exclusion Wired documents — each stage citing the previous one's failure.
The trend: Silicon Valley's diversity commitments have become a decade-long cycle of renewed pledges that repeatedly stall at execution — first in hiring, then retention, then venture funding.