It pains me greatly that the tech industry lacks diversity from minorities like blacks, hispanics, and women. However, I strongly believe that looking at the tech companies and asking why they don&#x27;t hire more minorities is totally missing the real problem.<p>This is of course one datapoint, but the university I went to (top engineering school in the Northeast US) hosts a big panel for computer-field majors at the annual admissions event. Any students remotely interested in technical majors are invited to attend - you don&#x27;t even need to be accepted to the university. The marketing for the event makes it as clear as possible that no prior programming experience is required, they just want to get people excited about computing. When I served on the panel as a CS student, I looked out the audience and saw a fully packed room (300+ people) of almost entirely white&#x2F;Asian male prospective students and their parents. At that point, how do you recover and get diverse people? How do you get people interested when everyone showing up fits the same description?<p>In my view, the problem starts way before college&#x2F;job seeking. I was lucky, as a white male, that my parents noticed and encouraged my technical interests at an early age. By the time I was entering college, I had years of programming experience, not even at any company, but just working on my laptop in my bedroom. It kills me that so many minorities and women <i>never even get that opportunity</i>. Parents of young girls don&#x27;t seem to see&#x2F;nurture those interests, and sometimes actively encourage them <i>not</i> to go into technology. It makes perfect sense that later they&#x27;re not interested in pursuing college&#x2F;careers in computers.<p>I have worked at companies where the people doing hiring have literally whispered (since it is illegal to say so) that they are <i>desperate</i> to hire minorities and women. I once heard someone say, &quot;Man, I would love to hire this person, but I have to be fair, and if they were male I would have rejected them immediately&quot;.<p>Yes, tech companies need to be as accepting as possible towards minorities and women. Yes, minorities and women need role models in the industry. But we&#x27;ve got to start at the source at the problem and get parents to allow their children to be interested in computers in the first place!