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Google Is Offering Free Coding Lessons To Women and Minorities

Posted by Soulskill on from the building-a-strong-base-of-coders dept.

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."

3 of 376 comments (clear)

  1. I don't know about this one... by Alex+Vulpes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:I don't know about this one... by leereyno · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is no problem to be solved.

      Women who want to become software engineers are free to do so. There are no barriers. That women tend to choose other careers is the result of human nature. Like it or not, boys and girls are different, and those differences are immutable.

      As for "minorities," the very term is meaningless. Anyone of any color, creed, sex, or religion is (in America at least) free to pursue these careers. Trying to bean count the number of Inuit who are code jockeys is ridiculous and ultimately degrading to those being counted.

      Google is being shook down by the race and sex hustlers, nothing more. They company is all too aware that these free classes are not going to change the demographics of software engineers. They're doing this as a PR stunt to fend off the hustlers, who will eventually move on to some other target who is more willing to be shook down.

      Men are an extreme minority in the child care services industry. Early childhood development programs at colleges and universities are essentially estrogen clubs. There are no men anywhere. Why? Because human nature is what it is, and the nature of men does not include such things.

      --
      Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
  2. Sexism and racism by msobkow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.