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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."
So basically everyone who is not an Asian?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
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?
Because everyone knows the only way to beat discrimination is by discriminating.
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.
[TLDR: Bravo Google, but I think we're attacking the issue on the wrong side]
offering a free pass into code school for underrepresented groups is touching the problem too late.
If Google were genuinely interested in generating a more diverse, technically sharp population, they'd be looking at elementary, middle, and high schools (notice the AND). Education is an iterative process, adults that love to code and code well are either savants, or have had a decent education growing up. This doesn't mean we need One Laptop Per Kindergartener, but it would help if there were learning materials and dedicated staff in elementary schools. It would help if there were rudimentary computer labs in middle schools that did more than surf a subset of the internet. It would help if math was as celebrated as sports in high schools.
Many of the people who will be taking these coding classes will not have had the background in math that strengthens critical, algorithmic thinking - it doesn't mean they can't develop that thinking, but so long as their background is limited to the 'last step' (learning to code), they will continue to be hired on as quota-fillers.
I do applaud Google for doing something. Giving these underrepresented groups easier access to some kind of technical education should have a positive effect on the observed hiring-disparities. However, addressing the issue at this 'last step' level will not be nearly as powerful as improving the limping-machine that is our public education system.
I do think we are overly concerned with the racial make-up of [company x]. Most companies are going to hire the candidate that will help them make the most money. The lack of diversity in [company x] is likely reflecting the lack of a skillset in population subsets y and z. The lack of diversity is a symptom, not the problem. It's just easier to point an angry finger at [big faceless corporation] than at our own communities.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
What else is a small minority at Google?
Programmers over 45 years old.
Funny, they aren't getting free classes. I guess youth privilege is still golden.
If you are woman or minority that got into tech through Codeschool and the like, you won't be working in my shop.
If you even have a "shop", you might consider hiring someone to filter you careless comments. Taken by itself, this statement suggests you discriminate against women and minorities, but not white men. If you really meant to exclude everyone who "got into tech through Codeschool and the like", you would have said so, right? I see you clarified your statement below, but from the perspective of a potential investor in your company, I hope you agree this is not a good way to get your point across.
When do we take our foot off the accelerator and stop stepping on the younger males (of all races)?
I agree- men are doing FINE in the board room. But it's really starting to suck everywhere down from there.
I was formally trained that if all things were equal - we should hire the "most diverse" candidate first.
Even tho Caucasian males were under represented at the bottom three tiers of the company, they were trying to balance against the lily white top two tiers (1 white female vp- the rest all 55+ year old white males). Middle management was about 60% female and they were blatantly discriminating against men and you knew the EEOC wasn't going to step in.
Don't get me wrong. I'm out. Retired. I'm speaking as a mostly disinterested party.
It just seems like society is continuing to beat up on young males (and esp white young males) and promote and give free stuff to everyone else.
When are you going to stop? What's the criteria for stopping? How far past 58% does it have to go before you can say things are addressed?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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?
Two things:
1) It's Google, so probably not. There was a time when the things they did were interesting and relevant, but those days are long over. See Glass for more information.
2) More importantly, these classes are designed to lure uninterested people into becoming code monkeys. It will undoubtedly consist only of the most basic of concepts, and in Java, and won't bother covering the underlying math (sort of like Indian "universities"). It will attract people with both a victim complex and zero self-motivation, as people who have any are already enrolled in real CS courses. Everyone will get a certificate and a juice box when it's over.
The thought of this program being even remotely good gave me a bit of a chuckle, so thanks for that.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
This is a racist policy. Let's be very clear about the language here! By "minority" they mean: NOT WHITE. Right? Or am I wrong?
So this is a policy which discriminates against whites. Well we are a poor white family. Why can't my family benefit from this? Oh, because we are white. But hey, that is not discrimination, right? We have not been discriminated against! Right? Because we are white and there are some rich whites (look at Al gore, he is very rich). So because we are a poor white family, we must be rich and advantaged, right?
This is f*cking outrageous that any organisation can on the one hand be sued for discriminating against "minorities" but on the other is lauded for discriminating against whites!
Take it any way you want it; if it's pejorative, you've earned more than a few pejoratives thrown your way.
Ah, but you're not; you're striving for social justice that puts the heterosexual white man down. I'm aware you think that's because we have unearned advantage that you'd like to take away, but even if that's so, it's still not bettering us all.
You know the term "white knight" comes from modern feminism, right? And it's pejorative there. It's about the only thing in these discussions nearly all parties agree on (except the white knights) -- nobody likes a white knight.
As for your anger at a perceived "locker room mentality" (which is pretty ridiculous, considering the traditional divide between geeks and jocks), getting angry at those who disagree with you might work in an environment like the workplace where you have authority to back up your anger and claims that disagreement counts as oppression; it isn't going to work here.
Ah, but that's just the thing; you have neither consensus on what "the program" is nor the power to impose it on those who don't agree. You're skipping the step of demonstrating that your "program" is in fact the right thing, and getting angry when everyone won't just fall into line.