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Girls Take All In $50 Million Google Learn-to-Code Initiative
theodp writes: On Thursday, Google announced a $50 million initiative to inspire girls to code called Made with Code. As part of the initiative, Google said it will also be "rewarding teachers who support girls who take CS courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy." The rewards are similar to earlier coding and STEM programs run by Code.org and Google that offered lower funding or no funding at all to teachers if participation by female students was deemed unacceptable to the sponsoring organizations. The announcement is all the more intriguing in light of a Google job posting seeking a K-12 Computer Science Education Outreach Program Manager to "work closely with external leaders and company executives to influence activities that drive toward collaborative efforts to achieve major 'moonshots' in education on a global scale." Perhaps towards that end, Google recently hired the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), who was coincidentally also a Code.org Advisory Board member. And Code.org — itself a Made With Code grantee — recently managed to lure away the ACM's Director of Public Policy to be its COO. So, are these kinds of private-public K-12 CS education initiatives (and associated NSF studies) a good idea? Some of the nation's leading CS educators sure seem to think so (video).
Are you a girl? Great! Here's all kinds of grant money to help people make that happen.
Are you a boy? Get out of my classroom, if we have too many of you it will threaten our grant money.
That's "progress" for you.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
End of story.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
As a woman and ex-coder, I'd say I got out of software development because of immoral companies like Google with their boot-licking race to the bottom when it comes to respect for the individual. My aversion to the field is an aversion to macho culture only to the extent that "might makes right" (i.e. "we do it because we can") is macho culture. I don't think they're appropriate in the workplace, but I'm not put off by sexist jokes, assumptions that I will fail (if anything, I've been treated too "delicately") and what-have-you.
So now Google thinks they need to pay women to learn to code? What an absolutely sexist campaign. Women are plenty capable of learning to code, they don't need cash payouts by patriarchal companies; this is akin to prostitution and Google should be ashamed.
There's been an ever-increasing push over the last 10 or 12 years to get more girls and women into tech, with almost no visible results; in fact, the number of women in tech has been declining for decades. This seems odd at first, but the reason this push is constantly being attempted at all is that it's part of a larger effort to increase the pool of applicants and decrease salaries. It's the same reason that Facebook, Google, et al. want to increase the number of H1-B visa workers.
There is nothing stopping a girl or woman from learning programming/networking/etc. if she wants to, and these increasingly bizarre, desperate, and creepy attempts to lure in women will end up pushing away the ones who might have pursued tech careers otherwise.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
I don't blame misogyny for girls not getting into programming, because I don't think computer programming is necessarily characterized by social interaction. The lone "cowboy[/cowgirl] coder" is much more of the norm than our zealous gender imbalance adjusters think.
When I was getting into programming in the 90's I certainly didn't rely on anybody else's affirmation -- I learned how to program sitting by myself at my computer(s) with very little in the way of two way communication with the outside world. I realize it's not the 90's anymore, but the argument that says you have to have a vibrant Twitter presence and go to local programmer meetups to be a coder today is, quite frankly, hogwash. It's about the code, friend.
Here's another theory that I will probably be flamed for -- maybe girls don't get into programming as often for the same reason that female deer don't bash heads against each other as often as the males do. Maybe it boils down to testosterone. Males of many species have an impulsive drive to accomplish certain things, and in humans' case this is largely independent of intellectual aptitude. Yes, girls are smart. Many could be good programmers. But do they want to? Are they driven to? Am I (at least partially) driven to my peculiar lifestyle of being glued to a screen and eschewing much social interaction because of testosterone? ("Yeah, you'd like to _think_ so" I can hear my naysayer naysaying.) But these are questions I honestly ask.
Because sexualization of women whenever the topic of women in IT comes up is a great way to interest more women in IT?
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Why doesn't someone put fifty million into figuring our why fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before, instead of trying to "lean in" on what feminists perceive as "soft skill white collar" industries.
Sounds good?
Maybe the "whatever" is that we are importing a steady stream of H-1B workers to reduce salaries, and that you're about as likely to find a job in IT after 45 as you are to find one in the NBA.
Maybe the "right environment" is where we only allow H-1B visas when unemployment is below 4%, and make it a felony to fake job postings to give jobs to foreigners instead of Americans.
45-year old guy here says you are full of it. Unless we are confining the job search a very narrow area with a history of ageism (Silicon Valley), I call bs on that kind of statements (statements I've been seeing for the last 20 years). Some of my colleagues/ex-colleagues are approaching their late 50's and are still getting well-paid, 6-figure gigs (both perm and contract).
If you are worth your shit, you will get a job in IT regardless of your age.
All males are beta in high school. They turn into release candidates once they go to college.
Ezekiel 23:20
Asian males and white males get screwed.
http://www.thisismetis.com/rub...
Yes, they are. In the sense that men look upon women and have a desire to sleep with them.
The problem is thinking that women are only sex objects.
Agreed with all but this one bit:
...a career path that doesn't cap out by the time they're 35...
Not everyone in IT is a developer, eh?
At one month shy of 45 years old, I'm drowning in recruiters wanting me to talk to people, testing on my part has shown that employers are hella eager to speak with me, and they all see "20 years of experience" right at the top of my frickin' resume.
Seriously though - where in the hell does everyone get the idea that just because your beard turns gray you're suddenly worthless in IT? Sure I've seen IT folks who are, in all honesty, well past their expiration date - but this is mostly because they've either mentally checked-out, burned-out, or they're deluded prima donnas with demands that no other employer with a brain would want to even contemplate. The prima donnas are usually considered to be rock stars within the little company where they've worked for 15 years or so, but discover to their horror that the sweet little deals they have with their employer is something no other employer would want to buy into. The first two are fucking helpless whenever something new or unusual comes along. None of these, single or combined, make up the majority, and judging by my own experience, most employers know it.
Assertions aside, there's also the hordes of graybeards out there who not only read and write COBOL, FORTRAN, et al, but along the way write their own effing paychecks. Why? Because they know the ancient languages which the trend-chasing .NET and Ruby-on-Rails s'kiddies apparently can't be bothered to learn. ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It is filled with socially awkward beta males because they are working on their computers Saturday nights while the teen girls are banging the alpha males. I can tell you that if more girls would have wanted to have sex with me in high school, my technical skills would have been far lower.
So, the non-mysoginist explanation of what is deterring women from the field is that women are not being deterred. They are just not being attracted to the field because they are at a disadvantage due to the fact that they spent their youth treating men as sex objects instead of studying technology.