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The Changing Face of Software Development
CowboyRobot sends this excerpt from Dr. Dobb's:
"Ten years of surveys show an influx of younger developers, more women, and personality profiles at odds with traditional stereotypes. Software development is an art and a science that is not attainable for just anyone. It takes a special type of person to write code. Developers are detail-oriented, very literal, and intelligent. Logic is paramount, and they share a passion for their craft that rises above the desire to make more money. They are also typically married, middle-aged, have children, and most likely a mortgage. In one of a series of surveys that we've performed every six months since 2001 (interviewing each time more than 1400 developers worldwide), we find the typical developer is a married, middle-aged male, who has two to three children. Males have dominated the profession for as long we've been tracking this; and during that time, they have accounted for anywhere from 84% to 94% of the workforce. The number of male developers is currently close to the low, at 86%, which might indicate more females are taking up programming."
Can we stop saying "females" when we mean "women". We're not Ferengi.
And the others put "Yes, please" in the box marked "Sex".
Total garbage magazine now. I equate it to something like "People" magazine and "US" magazine. Poor writing and fluff. Last I looked they loved kissing Microsoft's a$$ as well. Back in the day when grownups used to run it, it was the shizzle.
More males than females leaving the profession. I don't think that is what happening, but you asked what else could account for the shift.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
In my experience, 70% of female programmers sucks. Contrast this with the 30% of good male programmers.
"The number of male developers is currently close to the low, at 86%, which might indicate more females are taking up programming."
Might indicate more females? Do we have a large number of non-gender or 3rd gender in the workforce taking up programming?
I think cats are on the rise!
I really have to take issue with the "very literal" comment. In my experience (stretching over 20 years), it's the non-literal types who are the best software engineers. They not only have an imagination, but understand nuance as well. I'd say a literal-minded person might succeed at programming at a very low or entry level, but beyond that, it's imagination and creativity that win the day.
I wonder how much of that is simply due to the stigma associated with the word "introvert."
I'm an introvert. Far to the introvert side on the Meyers-Briggs test: 18/20 if memory serves. When I tell acquaintances this, they're shocked. "Oh no!" they exclaim, "You're not like that at all!"
What that suggests to me is that mainstream society has a very poor understanding of what an introvert is. Extraverts don't understand introverts -- and they don't have to, since about 70% of the general population is extraverted -- so there's part of the problem. Because of the stereotype (or, as I say, "stigma"), asking people to self-identify as introverts is a fool's errand. No one wants to be *that.*
So "moderate extravert" could very well mean "introvert who does not know the technical definition and does not accept the stereotype."
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
We need a BBC Wildlife style study of the Software Developer narrated by David Attenborough so that we can start legitimately referring to the gender of this species as "male" and "female" accordingly.
"The number of male developers is currently close to the low, at 86%, which might indicate more females are taking up programming."
Might indicate more females? Do we have a large number of non-gender or 3rd gender in the workforce taking up programming?
It could possibly indicate that there a fewer programmers in total.
Example: a team of 10 persons, 8 guys, 2 girls. One of the guy leaves, no one replaces him. This lowers the men ratio of the team (from 80% to ~78%), yet there are no more women than before. So the higher women ratio does not necessarily mean there are more women than before.
http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Unix%20Programmer
I don't think we should be fighting the battle of sexist stereotypes by constantly complaining we don't have enough women in IT, or we don't have enough men in day care centers. If someone wants to get into a profession, by all means they should be allowed to pursue that the same as anyone else. Same goes for race. Until people as a culture are truly able to absolve their 'isms all of these "OMG Think of teh ________" campaigns are just a bunch of intellectual masturbation because the root problem still exists. And worrying about it is just another form of sexism, only in reverse. Oftentimes, these campaigns end up tipping the scale in the other direction, marginalizing the prior majority which is *also* wrong (How many places care about health care costs for single males?) I don't see anything wrong with having professions largely dominated by the stereotypical stereotypes. Sometimes they are that way because men are men, and women are women. People should be allowed to choose without the fear of some cultural 'ism pushing them down and that's the core problem as I see it.
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I should have expected that mentioning Myers-Briggs would have opened the can of worms about its validity and the whole subject of psychometry. Since I'm not a psychologist, I cannot participate too deeply in that discussion. If you want to classify the Myers-Briggs (sorry, I misspelled it originally) as cargo cult science, I will not argue against you.
Even poor science can include accurate measurements, though. From Wikipedia:
Since my remarks are restricted to the I-E scale, and that's the part of the Myers-Briggs that critics say holds up to a bit of scrutiny, I maintain that my Myers-Briggs results are the best available evidence that I am an introvert. If you're aware of a better diagnostic test, I'll take it.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
now that would be a fantastic documentary.
Or, perhaps we middle-aged men are leaving the profession as a guaranteed living in the field is no longer a given.
Yesterday, I received an email from an offshore "provider" who offers services at $10/hr. Most of us can't raise a family, pay a mortgage, let alone survive at that rate. The rate I have been billed out was $120-$160/hr. If people are just looking at the bottom per/hour line vs what a local agency or provider can give them for the added cost, it's pretty hard to compete.
The new IT "normal" is that IT departments are manned by "disposable or transit" workers. This is not how we "grew up" in the industry - we were valued for what we brought not only to a "project" but to the company as a whole. Companies felt their employees were assets - there was a sense of "belonging" that made people proud to for their employer. Now, it's just a paycheck.
While not exactly relics - those of us who have been around for a while are:
1) Migrating into management roles.
2) Becoming consultants (either independent or with an agency that pays benefits)
3) Running our own companies.
Younger individuals, with not as many responsibilities are moving into the developer ranks and cutting their teeth there. And, women, well many are finding that this field needn't be male dominated. Many see having this knowledge as a stepping stone to moving into project management or pre-sales. Rather smart, if you ask me.
That can't be changed, because it's part of America's culture and Americans' hatred of intellectualism. Culture can be changed, but only when there's a strong push to do so, like with gay rights where a minority shames the majority into changing its ways by pointing out their immorality. That's not going to happen with geeks, because they're generally well-paid and they're not forced into that profession by birth, so they're not seen as an oppressed group. A bunch of geeks having "geek pride" parades and complaining loudly that they don't get laid enough isn't going to be taken seriously. It'd be better for geeks to simply move to places where they're more accepted, and let the places they left suffer.
Women who do development are few and far between. I think I've worked with 4 women developers over the past 15 years or so, at best they were average but I haven't really seen a rockstar coder among them. And out of all of them I would have never wanted to sleep with any of them...
Same with black coders or IT people. Some are average but never seen any rise to rock star level. Sorry might be racist but just my own observation.
It's not racist or sexist to point out demographic trends.
These things are all easily explained. Women in America have historically been discouraged from pursuing any field related to science or math or computers, because they're supposed to play with Barbie dolls and be prepared to be good little housewives and mothers, so of course they aren't going to be interested in computer-related jobs. Couple this with America's anti-intellectualism and hatred of smart people and especially its hatred of introverts and this explains why, historically, only introverted men went into these jobs, so they could be bossed around by a bunch of big-mouthed assholes who take most of the money. This only changed some during the dot-com boom because of the huge paychecks involved.
As for blacks, it's similar: they come from much lower-class backgrounds usually, and unlike little white boys, they never got computers as christmas gifts and were never encouraged this way, just as they were never encouraged to go into scientific fields; their parents weren't in such fields, they never had any mentors or role models in these fields (since white people didn't generally associate with black people and vice versa), so computer-related jobs never were on their radar growing up. Hollywood may have tried to change this with Richard Pryor in Superman III, but it didn't have much effect.
As a software developer and a woman, I can say I hope more women find their way into the field. I have worked with a number of other women and find them to be on average just a capable as the men. As far as "rock stars" go, I have yet to meet one at all. I've met a few who thought they were, but mostly they were just egotistical and unwilling to work in a group and follow the rules. I think you'll find fewer women in that category because as a mindset, we're probably less likely to do vigilante coding and hope that someone sees it as awesome.
I understand there are some truly great programmers out there, people who come up with clever solutions to difficult problems. But the lone wolf guy who feels the rest of the team is just holding him back - he may look like a rock star, but he's really just a jerk.
Nothing is necessarily wrong with a gender-dominated profession, but I do want to know why it's gender-dominated. There's all sorts of reasons why it could happen, and we've found discrimination in a lot of fields. In this one, I've seen a lot of credible reports from women about hostile workplaces and the like, so I have reason to suspect discrimination.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The fact is most people pursue a career and eventually move into other roles like technical architecture, or move into upper management.
People aren't getting fired at 35+ they're just getting on in life and moving down a different path.
There are some that don't. Those that are the bottom of the pile and hence don't get promoted because they're not talented or competent enough. Those ones just sit and whine on Slashdot instead about how it must be ageism.
It's the same in most careers, you don't find anywhere near as many 35+ fast food chain workers but it's not ageism, it's just that no one wants to be flipping burgers all their lives. People want to move on to something else. Software is no different - contrary to the stereotype a lot of developers do get bored of doing it professionally after a while, love of software development doesn't always equate to love of being a professional software developer because the majority of software development jobs are writing entirely uninteresting software.
Earning potential in software isn't as great as in, say, banking, but it's still way up above most professions. I see little to complain about as a 30 something software developer earning way above the national average and a comfortable path into even better paid upper management if I so choose in the next few years. I don't pretend I'm as close to as well off as some of the high earning bankers and the like, but I can't say the profession has done me badly in the slightest. Especially as I still have over 70% of my working life ahead of me to keep growing still.