"What do you mean by the above? As you know Joanna, at least in the Silicon Valley, the hiring in most companies is carried out by a particular team...very little of the decision to hire the person is carried out by HR and certainly none by the Chiefs of the company. Obviously in some cases, there could be teams where the decision makers are racist but in others they are not. Firing is done pretty much along the same lines."
OK. We work for Sun, which is a bit of an exception in that the Santa Clara campus employes an overwhelming number of third-world peoples...and pays them accordingly. Otherwise, my general cast of characters in hi-tech is as follows:
Management (above first tier): white male Marketing/Sales: white male Engineering: white male with some third world exceptions at some companies Support Engineering: white male and female Quality Assurance: third-world, male and female Tech Writing: white male and female
Although some companies are now hiring a lot of third-world (Indian/Asian) hi tech workers, the number of black american and latino workers are virtually zero. Lets put it this way, in twenty years in hi tech, I have met two black american QA persons and one latino tech writer. That's it.
Racism is seldom, very seldom conscious; but that is not to say that it doesn't exist.
Joanna