Airbnb will build a new tech hub in Atlanta

One thing to add to this list, which gets talked less about is : Work Culture and Work Diversity. I work in a major tech firm that has offices in Atlanta. To mildly put it, it isn't friendly. Bay Area, Seattle, and to a certain extent NY and Austin have a certain set of values set in the workplace that simply don't exist everywhere. Your race, gender, nationality, and plenty of other things can invite an unwelcoming vibe towards you. Work life balance are less respected. And the fact that at the end of the day we are just human beings working with other human beings seems to be lost to many.

I recently moved to the bay area, and I've gotten the vibe that work life balance is less respected in the bay area compared to where I came from.

I think we might be the same background. What notable experiences have you had working in Atlanta? I'm curious because I have never worked there professionally, but have heard some stories.

I have to agree with the other comment. I found the Bay Area to be more hostile and discriminatory than any other work environment I've been in. Specifically if you even slightly disagree with certain social viewpoints. We may have achieved better racial diversity (somewhat) in the Bay but at the expense of minimal ideological diversity.

I've even seen firsthand how racism against asians and Indians is rampant and often conducted by those that supposedly are advocates for minorities.

Altanta has issues but the reason why it hasn't become a tech-hub is external to these factors. It is basically a snowball effect - one major company settles and the rest will come. There is a bit of inertia.

What you're alluding to is simply not true. I worked at several companies and have several friends in Atlanta area that have no such problems. I think you're extending African American population density in Atlanta to fit a narrative that simply has no backing. In fact, companies in Atlanta area are more diverse than Austin or whatever techhub you want to name, except SF Bay Area I would say.

I'm not trying to be that guy, but have you ever worked for an extended period of time in the American South?

I had a mentor at a college internship request I be transferred to another mentor a couple days after they learned I was atheist. The ~50 person software dev org I was in was 90% male, 90% white in a >60% Black city.

For context, I'm a tall, straight-passing white dude with a slight Southern accent. I'm a guy who has had people tell me racist jokes unprompted because they assume they're in good company, and I could still see this kinda shit around me. Shit's unreal as a woman or person of color.

This was at a Fortune 50 company with a couple thousand IT/engineering employees (and this was <36 months ago).

I get that the Bay Area is not always the progressive paradise it pretends to be, but "California == liberal" in many non-West-Coast eyes for a reason.

My experience is that the Bay Area is a big place with a variety of employers and work cultures. May I ask what kind of social viewpoints you’ve seen causing a hostile workplace for people who disagreed with them?

Err, that's not what I meant. Quite the contrary tbh. I don't know about the rest of the population, but majority of employees in tech offices in Atlanta tend not to be African American, so I am not sure if you got my point at all.

Yes, racism exists in Bay Area. I doubt any city in America can escape that curse, but to what degree matters.

I don;t live in Atlanta. I've just worked in two separate companies that have an office in Atlanta. I've worked with the people in those offices and my experience so far has been, well, not a fun one. Not to say that everyone is bad, just like not to say everyone in the bay area is great, but the number of difficult situations you get put into, rise dramatically when you deal with offices outside the Bay Area.

I see. You need to also consider the pool of black college graduates with qualifications for the job and what percentage of total pool they represent.

I don’t understand how you think Atlanta workplaces aren’t as diverse as Bay Area or Seattle. I mean Atlanta literally has the highest percentage of middle class African Americans not to mention lots of international people.

Racial diversity and the mixes of culture are one of the big upsides, I think and are pretty rare (compare racial diversity in Bay Area and Seattle and Atlanta).

Also Atlanta has been a hub for lgbtq culture for decades. Not the same as Bay Area or NY but probably #3.

Maybe you had some bad experiences or it’s your company.

> majority of employees in tech offices in Atlanta tend not to be African American

Genuine question - how does this compare to other industries in the city? If AAs are underrepresented in tech in Atlanta, I imagine that part of this is caused by the same problems faced by AAs in other white-collar jobs. How much of it is a problem with tech specifically?

> how does this compare to other industries in the city?

Tech firms underperform massively on this metric compared to other local industries (law, accounting, general Fortune 500s like Home Depot/Delta/UPS).

That said, tech firms in Atlanta in general have more African Americans than do similar firms in e.g. Austin or SV.

If I'm African American, Atlanta is a better place for me to get hired and promoted in tech than other tech hubs. My suspicion is that the fact that managers live in Atlanta normalizes for them the notion that African Americans can excel at white-collar work, so biases that exist everywhere are somewhat reduced here.