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Google Is Offering Free Coding Lessons To Women and Minorities
redletterdave writes: According to a blog post from Gregg Pollack, CEO of the Code School, Google is paying for three free months for any women and minorities interested in tech to expand their skills. The offer is part of Google's $50 million "Made With Code" initiative, which aims to help close the gender gap in tech. While Google is also offering the same vouchers to the women in attendance at its annual I/O developers conference this week, the search giant has released an online application that's available to women everywhere. Google says its available vouchers for women number in the "thousands."
I'd still like someone to rationally explain to me how giving such free benefits to women and the ever-so-indistinct category of "minority," specifically because of their gender and/or "race," (and for which those not in those categories are excluded) is not sexism and racism.
But I'm a white male. I have nothing Google wants. :(
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I feel like a minority
I get what they're trying to do, but this seems like the wrong approach. You don't fix discrimination with more discrimination, even if it's in the opposite direction.
Seems like it would be better to find out why the industry is so racial/gender imbalanced, and try to solve that problem (whatever it turns out to be) rather than covering up the symptoms.
On a global scale, whites are a minority. Isn't Google a global company?
I didn't realize that the gender and minority gaps in the software development industry was simply due to availability of lessons! It's proper, and not at all ironic that we can fix this entirely obvious case of discrimination by making sure to treat certain groups differently than others based on those differences they have no control over, as opposed to merit-based evaluations that judge the worth of an individual regardless of their gender or skin color.
Boy, whew, is that good news though.
I mean, if it was something like self-selective behavior that arose largely from fundamental differences in behavior and temperament due to genetic predisposition, coupled with cultural bias a would-be/could-be programmer brings with them, it'd be really hard to overcome. That'd be a real problem, no doubt. How to make certain groups want to be a programmer, outside of all the opportunities they already have, literally thousands of hours of videos and lectures, hundreds of thousands of tutorials, and millions of step-by-step examples available from libraries, public schools, and for free on the internet - that's a very tough job. It'd be like trying to get kids to like broccoli and lima beans.
But gosh, wow, thankfully we really figured it out this time.
This will certainly solve everything, and we'll make sure that we have nearly-matching statistical matches between the greater population and these careers, just like every other career path or employment opportunity out there, from the military, to civic service, from elementary education to nursing and construction workers, we'll have finally caught up with the other trades.
Thank goodness too, that this didn't morph a naturally arising statistical evaluation into a minority rights issue, where even discussion of the problem is verboten to the perceived majority, and failure to blindly throw money at it while artificially inflating your employee base through heavy handed discrimination would single one out as racist, sexist, or simply an unethical organization.
We really dodged a bullet there, and I can only applaud this important step towards real equality.
"We'll give you free stuff if you're of the appropriate race and/or gender" If someone offered something like that for white males only, they'd be sued out of the world. I don't see why this is different.
Honestly folks. I learned to program because I wanted to. Years and years ago. I continue to code and learn to code because I wanted to get better. I was still interested. When Microsoft came out with Windows 3.0 and 3.1, I tried to learn to code using Windows' API but it was annoying and I really didn't have an interest. I was interested in OS/2 but at $2,000 for the API, I was out of luck.
I code because I like it and want to. I muck with computers because it's interesting and challenging at times. I admin systems because there's a bit of coding involved, challenging tasks, and troubleshooting. It's fun.
In this case, Google is simply trying to jump-start the interest in women and minorities. I got interested because of Dungeons and Dragons and Car Wars. In other words, I had an idea and needed to learn to program to implement the idea, and I did. And it was cool.
People complain that they're keeping guys from coding. Hell, there are guys who code and nothing can stop them.
We (humans) have access to a world of information at our fingertips. If you want to code, freaking code. Don't wait for some corporation or person to give you incentive to code. To me, that feels like cheating. I personally don't want to say "Google gave me money and free lessons to learn how to code". Heck, I would be embarrassed to say that in an interview. Someone had to interest me into coding so without that, I wouldn't have been interested in the first place? Doesn't sound much like motivation to me. If I were interviewing someone for a coding job, I might knock a point or two off for that. My girlfriend says she has done some programming but can't think of anything to code up to help her learn. Someone in a forum said pretty much the same thing. They wanted to be a DBA but didn't have any ideas on how to start.
Write a simple inventory program. Start off with the idea that you want to identify and store all the stuff in your room, apartment, or house. Write one to manage your music collection. Then expand it to add stars or figure out how to normalize the database. Sure, there are lots of programs out there that'll help you inventory your gear. Heck, there are programs that'll read in your UPC bar code and give you all the details you'd ever want.
But you don't learn to code by using someone else's program.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Sexism and racism are perfectly acceptable if you're against men and whites.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Is part of the reason why there aren't more women and minorities in tech. Only a few comments in, and it turns into a circlejerk about how women and minorities are genetically inferior, and white males are so horribly oppressed by this move which takes nothing from them. As a minority, if this is what the tech community is like, I want no part of it.
I agree that underrepresentation is real and obvious; I do not agree that it is obvious that this is a problem, and I certainly don't think it's the sort of problem which is so dire that the ends justify nearly any means.
Please. You know brogramming was a hoax, right? That the reason the hoax was funny is because the stereotype of geeks is so far from the stereotype of nerds that the juxtaposition is funny. There may be a few brogrammers out there in a life-imitates-art kind of way. But it isn't and never was any sort of norm.
That's sort of amusing, as I'm the only white American on my team right now.
I'm supposed to believe that I had and continue to have it easy because I'm a white man, and that this justifies any amount of discrimination against me? That any (e.g.) white woman has had it infinitely more difficult than me? No, I do not subscribe to your philosophy.
A buddy of mine is a white male and dirt poor. He has a real drive to learn how to code, he's wanted to make video games since he was a little kid. But there is no way he'll ever be able to gather enough money to attend any sort of 'programming school.'
I'm tempted to tell him about this initiative and tell him to lie on the application by feminizing his first name. He doesn't need a certificate or anything, just the mentorship to help him with the learning.
Thoughts?
How do you propose to fix the obvious and real problem of underrepresentation of over half of our population?
Well for starters, I will point out that the "problem" is neither obvious nor real. Just as how we don't need to do anything to "fix" the "problem" of a small pool of male nurses. Because it ain't a fucking problem in the first place.