On the surface, Silicon Valley looks like the perfect meritocracy. Half its startups are founded by immigrants. You see people from all over the world collaborating and competing. And race and religion are no barriers to success.
But (...) with a couple of notable exceptions, women are rarely found in the executive ranks of tech companies. The Valley’s echo chamber—what I call the “mafia”—is oblivious to criticism about this. It doesn’t seem to care about the imbalance.
Note the #Twitter IPO filing. It shows that all of its board members are #male, as are all of its executives—other than one lawyer whom the company added a few weeks ago—and all of its investors.
(...)
a common behavior in Silicon Valley, where power brokers proudly tout their “pattern recognition” capabilities. They believe they know a successful entrepreneur, engineer, or business executive when they see one. Sadly, the pattern is always a Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos—or themselves. Nerdy white males.
To me, pattern recognition is a code name for sexism and racism. It must end.