I find it frustrating that while everyone seems to be fine discussing privilege afforded by ethnicity, lack of disabilities or gender, the elephant in the room tends to get ignored: people like Zuckerberg or Gates weren't just privileged because they were born in the right skin (including the dangly bits) but also because they were born into the right families.
If you are studying in an Ivy League tier university in the US and your parents know influential people in major companies, you are incredibly privileged. And as the article lays out, this actually reflects two forms of privilege: social class and economic class (of parents, close family, potential love interests and eventually yourself as an aggregate).
The number of trans, non-male, non-white or non-heterosexual founders and leaders in major tech companies gets talked about every now and then. But I doubt any of those (proportional to the absolute distribution across the population) is significantly more concerning than the number of people from lower social and economical classes in the same roles.
Of course these attributes can compound (e.g. "race" is often used as a handle for social class) but diversity needs to take all factors into account in order to fulfil its promise. Nepotism isn't just about skin colour and dangly bits, and class discrimination is far easier to hide behind "culture fit" than other forms of discrimination.
If you are studying in an Ivy League tier university in the US and your parents know influential people in major companies, you are incredibly privileged. And as the article lays out, this actually reflects two forms of privilege: social class and economic class (of parents, close family, potential love interests and eventually yourself as an aggregate).
The number of trans, non-male, non-white or non-heterosexual founders and leaders in major tech companies gets talked about every now and then. But I doubt any of those (proportional to the absolute distribution across the population) is significantly more concerning than the number of people from lower social and economical classes in the same roles.
Of course these attributes can compound (e.g. "race" is often used as a handle for social class) but diversity needs to take all factors into account in order to fulfil its promise. Nepotism isn't just about skin colour and dangly bits, and class discrimination is far easier to hide behind "culture fit" than other forms of discrimination.