OT: Math

[an]

Coronita, I love it when people use racism as a solution for racism and conscious bias to fight unconscious bias.

[Coronita]

I don’t disagree that in the past HP did use to sell high quality hardware products. At least before fiorina days.
I just chose not to use them because of their premium and arrogance and my personal bias

There eCommerce software division, on the other hand, was sort of a joke, which was the bulk of my limited involvement with them. Many people probably didn’t even know they a had a ecom software group that tried to productize something in the past. It wasn’t pretty. but some reason they got the idea that they were great with printers and computers, that e-commerce enterprise software would have been a walk in the park .Sort of like the mentality that intel had thinking they are great at x86, 5G LTE would be a walk in the park. It didn’t end pretty for both companies.

As far as their printers goes. I definitely stayed away from HP when they started gouging their inkjet printer customers. One of there strategies was to sell printers at cost or even a small loss because they know they could make a lot money on the cartridges they sold. in fact, they were the ones put the chips in the cartridges that would make the cartridge expire early well before the useable ink that was still left inside. and then when there were refill companies designing ways to get around those inside the cartridges, they were also the companies that tried to sue under anti-piracy/theft laws to prevent people from defeating the cartridge expiration chips. They lost a few lawsuits over it if I recall…

I’ve been kinda a then Sun Microsystems, IBM/Lenovo, Epson , Brother kinda person…
I have had so many Brother laser printers that I bought for work and home. They just work so well, and their supplies are reasonably priced.
my latest color laser all in one is just awesome.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=svelte][quote=Coronita]

And it had a very ugly result…You see, throughout my career, I never ever sought a job with HP. I was celebrating when Carly Fiorina destroyed HP, and when many people at HP from that Palo alto office were looking for a job when I was still up there, I made sure to toss all their resumes in the trash can, among many reasons, many of their engineers had their head up in the clouds with that sorry excuse of a distributed software architecture called “e-Speak”…. I never entertained a resume from Palo Alto HP. Neither did anyone in my group…never bought any office equipment from HP, or computer, or computer peripherals with HP label on it.

For me, there was no unconsciousness in my bias. I was young them, and didn’t know better ..

So forgive me if I roll my eyes when someone mentions about how “diverse” they think they are champions of “diversity”. In my experience, most of the time people who claim they are champions of diversity are most of the time full of shit and have a lot of unconscious biases lurking in their closets that either they don’t realize or even if they do, don’t care so long as they have something they can do to easily check the diversity box….[/quote]

When I graduated with a CSCI degree in northern CA, HP did very heavy recruiting at my university and supplied most of the servers in our labs. We used bid points to do interviews, so I bid heavily on HP, Lockheed, and Chevron. I was young and stupid and didn’t know that my GPA wasn’t high enough to get hired by any of those companies. My GPA wasn’t bad, it’s just those companies wanted the very high end of the GPA curve and I wasn’t it.

When I did land a job with another company, it was in San Diego and because of my college experience with HP equipment, I was assigned projects that developed software to run on HP servers. I worked with the HP reps very closely and got to like them a lot. They had a certain way of dressing, of acting, of caring for the customer and I began modeling myself after them. They were great guys and I think learning from them has helped me in my career.

At my company, the attitude everyone had was that HW developed by HP was very high quality, but any SW they put out to run on that HW was terrible. And it was. I went to several HP SW training courses at HP’s Fullerton location and part of my mission was to ask for workarounds to the shortcomings of their SW. As it turns out, I knew more about their SW than HP instructors. One started turning to me for answers when other students asked questions! It was bizarre.

On to your bias comments. Completely agree – I have a great deal of skepticism when someone portrays themselves as unbiased. Quite often, it ends up being that they are biased in the other direction!

Everyone is biased. Whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, everyone. The best we can do, in my opinion, is to be aware of our biases and do our best to not act on them, to take them out of the equation. That is easier said that done, I know.[/quote]

Snap judgments, biases, stereotypes rule the day in jury selection. Unless a potential black juror is military, law enforcement, or blatantly pro-cop, watch the prosecutor twist themselves into a pretzel trying to find a way to kick them off.

[svelte]

[quote=scaredyclassic]

Snap judgments, biases, stereotypes rule the day in jury selection. Unless a potential black juror is military, law enforcement, or blatantly pro-cop, watch the prosecutor twist themselves into a pretzel trying to find a way to kick them off.[/quote]

That’s not a one-way street. I’ve had fellow engineers complain that defense attorneys kick them out of jury pools because (in their opinion) it appears they think engineers will weigh scientific evidence (blood tests, etc) heavily when making a decision.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=svelte][quote=scaredyclassic]

Snap judgments, biases, stereotypes rule the day in jury selection. Unless a potential black juror is military, law enforcement, or blatantly pro-cop, watch the prosecutor twist themselves into a pretzel trying to find a way to kick them off.[/quote]

That’s not a one-way street. I’ve had fellow engineers complain that defense attorneys kick them out of jury pools because (in their opinion) it appears they think engineers will weigh scientific evidence (blood tests, etc) heavily when making a decision.[/quote]

Absolutely. Too thoughtful. Gone. Teachers, not too deep, love rules, authority figures. In. Unless black– out.

Defense lawyer: any black person: in. Accuse prosecutor of racism for kicking blacks.

The utter simplistic stupidity of it all makes one think.

[Coronita]

Damn, maybe next time I get called for jury duty, I need to stop wearing my t-shirt that says “guilty as charged” ??

[scaredyclassic]

If you want to get off, all you have to do is honestly say, i cant be fair. Can you honestly say that?

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic]If you want to get off, all you have to do is honestly say, i cant be fair. Can you honestly say that?[/quote]

Sure, but when I was on chemo, I had a temporary medical excuse. I think though, that temporary excuse ended up being permanent.

But the one time I was doing jury duty, I remember the trial was for this lady that shoplifted some feminine hygiene products. Honestly, I was the the last possible jury candidate in the court, and was never called. But if I was, I probably would have said something to the effect that I probably wouldn’t be the best candidate because I fail to see why we need to spend so time and energy to go through with a trial over shoplifting feminine hygiene products. Couldn’t we settle this outside of court with some community service and probation?

[an]

Coronita, I had a very similar case. It wasn’t of a woman still feminine hygiene, but it was a small $ amount theft. I straight up said I think this is a waste of everyone’s time and $. I was excused soon after.

[ucodegen]

[quote=Coronita]
When it comes to education and career opportunities, the average Asian male of course is white. that’s why things like sca-5 and prop 16 conveniently disregard asians as minorities. Prop 16, which ironically got defeated because not only asians overwhelming voted against it , but so did latinos….I guess now because both asians and latinos make up a large percentage or UC and CalState demographics based on merit, both groups really don’t want any sort of government heavy hand changing that….lol.[/quote]
The same applies to career opportunities and education for those of Indian (not American Indian, but those of East Indies descent). This is why my comment of ‘black… but not black’. Somehow there are people of ‘color’ that have managed to be successful as a race in the current job market. None of the current racial equality activists seems to want to ask themselves why (maybe it is an uncomfortable question). These same people decry income disparities but do not look at what education paths that different races tend towards. I went through college initially as a Physics major, 3rd year I switched to EECE because of career opportunities. I had already been programming computers since I was 14 – since mid ’70s – easy transition. Within those course fields (Physics, EE, EECE, CS), I only saw one person of black descent in my classes or classes I TA’d. Most students of black descent were in Sociology, Linguistic and some in Psychology. One’s choice of major can significantly affect future income. I don’t think those racial equality activists want to look at this aspect. If the real solution was known and used, there would not be much to demand funding or special set-asides for. Choices in life really matter.

[quote=Coronita]Is an asian american male being denied senior management positions at tech firms simply because he isn’t a big NFL or NBA fan or a frat boy?[/quote]
I’m not asian, however I ran into this problem at one of my previous job. The promotion path was through the company’s golf club. (Senior Management was… very senior). Sales staff and some other upper management was very NFL/NBA/MBL. Being a gear-head though, did not help much with upwards job mobility, and I suspect that these days it helps even less. That all said, my investments have ended up making me more each year than any two years or more together on the W-2 job.. and much less stress than the W-2. Any failures on investments are not caused by anyone else and then pushed off on me to fix. I also don’t get such comments on salary review where I am blamed for “Gold Bricking” a project at the same time told that my actions are responsible for saving the company a lot of time and money by doing work that does not need any rework as well as the ability to get the job done difficult projects.

[quote=an]Coronita, when it comes to higher education, it’s worst being Asian than white.[/quote]I would have to disagree with you there. A surprising number of white families do not pull together to help their college bound students.

[sdrealtor]

I think he was referring to admission policies. Honestly hearing these stories makes my heart ache for the unfairness. At the same time I wonder if some of this has to do with being first genereation American born or immigrants. Im not saying its fair but people like to work with people like them and the more recent arrivals are less assimilated to Amercian culture. Looking at friends that are second generation American born many are diehard fans of the American pro sports, golf etc. They interact seamlessly with us “white folk” whereas the first generation ones struggle more. I wonder if just being here a few generations has something to do with ones ability to socially network. Again not saying its right or fair but Id hypothosize that your kids may have an easier time just due to being more assimilated to American culture their whole lives.

[an]

[quote=sdrealtor]I think he was referring to admission policies. Honestly hearing these stories makes my heart ache for the unfairness. At the same time I wonder if some of this has to do with being first genereation American born or immigrants. Im not saying its fair but people like to work with people like them and the more recent arrivals are less assimilated to Amercian culture. Looking at friends that are second generation American born many are diehard fans of the American pro sports, golf etc. They interact seamlessly with us “white folk” whereas the first generation ones struggle more. I wonder if just being here a few generations has something to do with ones ability to socially network. Again not saying its right or fair but Id hypothosize that your kids may have an easier time just due to being more assimilated to American culture their whole lives.[/quote]
Assimilation can only take you so far. If you’re Asian w/ an Asian last name, you’ll still be discriminated at top tier universities (except for UC, since affirmative action was removed 20ish years ago. But democrats here have been proposing to bring it back for the last few years) when applying, or when applying for a job in tech. I had one boss tell me diversity is not hiring all Asian male and that I need to try harder to increase the diversity of my team.

This would only be a non-issue if you’re a mix race and hide your Asian-ness.

[an]

[quote=ucodegen][quote=an]Coronita, when it comes to higher education, it’s worst being Asian than white.[/quote]I would have to disagree with you there. A surprising number of white families do not pull together to help their college bound students.[/quote]
You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re assuming at all Asians are the same. There’s a huge difference between Chinese/Korean/Japanese with highly educated parents immigrant vs Hmong, Laotian, Cambodian who in general don’t value education as much. But colleges don’t ask what was your socio-economic status or what kind of Asian you are.

Search up the term “Jungle Asian”.

As the Yale lawsuit shows, you’re 1/10 likely to get into Yale as an Asian compare to Black, but only 1/4 less likely if you’re White. So, as a whole, you’re worst off being Asian.

[svelte]

[quote=Coronita]I don’t disagree that in the past HP did use to sell high quality hardware products. At least before fiorina days.
[/quote]

We never talk HP at home, but my wife out of the blue today said what a piece of crap her new HP printer is as she tried to print something.

I said funny you should mention HP quality, we were just discussing that online!

[Coronita]

[quote=svelte][quote=Coronita]I don’t disagree that in the past HP did use to sell high quality hardware products. At least before fiorina days.
[/quote]

We never talk HP at home, but my wife out of the blue today said what a piece of crap her new HP printer is as she tried to print something.

I said funny you should mention HP quality, we were just discussing that online![/quote]

For laser….Get a Brother printer. They are so we’ll built, affordable, and supplies are so reasonably priced.

[Author]

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