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Code.org: Blame Tech Diversity On Education Pipeline, Not Hiring Discrimination
theodp writes: "The biggest reason for a lack of diversity in tech," says Code.org's Hadi Partovi in a featured Re/code story, "isn't discrimination in hiring or retention. It's the education pipeline." (Code.org just disclosed "we have no African Americans or Hispanics on our team of 30.") Supporting his argument, Partovi added: "In 2013, not one female student took the AP computer science exam in Mississippi." (Left unsaid is that only one male student took the exam in Mississippi). Microsoft earlier vilified the CS education pipeline in its U.S. Talent Strategy as it sought "targeted, short-term, high-skilled immigration reforms" from lawmakers. And Facebook COO and "Lean In" author Sheryl Sandberg recently suggested the pipeline is to blame for Facebook's lack of diversity. "Girls are at 18% of computer science college majors," Sandberg told USA Today in August. "We can't go much above 18% in our coders [Facebook has 7,185 total employees] if there's only 18% coming into the workplace."
I graduated in 2001 with a CS degree. There was ONE female student in the program when I was there that I can remember (and maybe 5 female faculty members). And there were NO African American students or faculty. The lack of diversity in tech workforces is no surprise to anyone who has a degree in a technology field.
is diversity "code" for a $ (grant, charity, etc.) thing? is it political optics to "look good"? why are competent coders a problem?
Even at 1 day old, girls look longer at objects with faces and boys longer at mechanical objects. Differences like this are measured at all ages.
As long as the few women that want to get into coding can do so then there's no problem. And it's really easy for any woman to get into it that wants to, for instance at my college CS was controlled entrance for men but any women that applied was let in regardless of qualifications.
tl;dr the only problem is people whining about other people choosing not to get into coding.
An organization should hire the best resource regardless of origin, gender, color etc. which I am sure most for-profit organizations try to do but an organization should not try to be diverse just to report some numbers to media on how diverse they are. Frankly it is nobody's concern on how diverse an organization is, so they should not be even disclosing these numbers.
On the one hand, we are told that the race/gender/etc. of individuals results in very different experiences and desires, and sometimes these are so different that members of one group can't really understand members of another group. (E.g. "It's a black thing.") On the other hand, if individuals in these different groups then turn out to (on average) want different careers than pure statistics would predict (e.g. all professions aren't 51% women), then we are told it's a Terrible Social Problem and Something Must Be Done.
You can't have it both ways, folks.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Not too far from the truth. The implications they make in their commentary are quite clear.
I'm pretty sure research bears out that both education and hiring processes are deeply flawed when it comes to hiring underrepresented people. One issue may be more "root cause" than the other, but they're both important. I'm actually kind of surprised Code.org went on record saying this...
People before pixels.
It's not the employers or the schools. It's the people. Some people just don't like certain things. That's what diversity is about.
How about we hire and promote based on merit and competency?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Do we have to hear about this every second week, year in and year out? On average, girls are - for whatever reason - less interested in math, physics, chemistry. Meanwhile, boys, on average, are less interested in things that revolve around social interaction. Likely, these preferences are based in biology. Make sure the playing field is as level as reasonably possible, and then leave off. Let individuals decide what they want to be.
The other aspect addressed by the article is race. Here, there may also be biological factors in play, but within the US cultural factors play a huge role - specifically: support for education within the family. Cultural issues are very, very difficult to address - because, cultural change needs to come from within the culture itself. There is very little to be done about it by the tech companies, or even by the educational system.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I know it is terribly libertarian to say that the companies that hire people have no obligation to the community that hire from. But these are the same people spending money on lobbying for more H1B visas. What are they doing to improve the "education pipeline?"
Sorry - but this entire story is bullshit.
There are tons of programmers and technical people that are self taught and are typically light years ahead of any college graduate.
This is all made up shinola to cover up that they just don't want to have to "PAY" for real talent, so they pay even more for all the mistakes, cost overruns, bugs, security vulnerabilities and exposures that come from those (rant mode follows - cheap-assed-you-get-what-you-pay-for-no-talent-no-education-scum-sucking-fuckwads from overseas ).
If you want real talent, hire the best person for the job, forget age/sex/race - just look for the best candidate, and be willing to pay for them.
Paying extra for a top person will SAVE you more money in the long run. Possibly millions or even your entire corporation.
Finally someone standing up and going "The problem isn't discrimination, the problem is those people just aren't THERE to be hired!"
Except these code.org people are absolutely wrong, as usual. They're closer to the trail than the feminists and others who blame hiring practices, but they're still far from the root cause.
The real problem isn't the education pipeline. As TFS notes, only one male student in Mississippi bothered to take the AP CS exam. What most of these organizations don't seem to understand is that this is not the Soviet Union, and you can't force people to go into degree fields they're not interested in. The problem is our culture, plain and simple. No one wants to go into this field except a certain subset of the population which is almost 100% white and male, and also certain groups of non-Americans (or at least 2nd generation immigrants), namely Indians and also some Chinese. It's all about culture.
In American culture, being a developer or software engineer or whatever term you want to use is simply not seen as a prestigious career path. People in this career path are generally treated poorly and don't make that much money compared to career paths with similar educational requirements and difficulty, and the prestige is pathetic. Honestly, someone who starts a restaurant or a plumbing business has more social prestige and status than a software engineer. For the same education, you could get a degree in finance and work on Wall Street and have beautiful NYC women throwing themselves at you. You won't have that in the software field; women will run the other way when they find out what you do for a living (though they'll want to call you up when they have a computer problem, expecting you to come over and fix it for free).
As far as I'm concerned, there's simply no way to fix this. America has long been an anti-intellectual culture; just look at how many people still believe that vaccines cause autism. People here would rather believe a comedian who tells them this, rather than hordes of doctors and scientists who tell them it's bullshit. Think about this for a minute: the average American, looking for medical advice, will believe a comedian over a doctor or a medical researcher. What does that say about our culture?
I think we should just give up and accept that this is not going to change. You can't change culture with a government mandate.
Sure, a few folks have fun jobs, but the majority of the work in this field is miserable and women are wise enough to avoid it.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Brogrammers at Work
In my first year of computer science in CEGEP, we were 60 students. 2 of them were women. They accepted pretty much anybody who applied based purely on your highschool grades. Right off the bat you've got a 97% male program, and there was no bias in that selection either (for what it's worth, the person deciding on applications was female). Women simply did not apply for the program in the first place.
It's always been obvious to me that the reason that there are so few female developers has little to do with hiring practices and a lot to do with the lack of interest in computer science among women. You just have to look threw a stack of CVs when people apply for jobs at your company for it to be obvious: when there are so few CVs from women in the pile, statistically you're not going to hire as many of them.
People in this career path are generally treated poorly and don't make that much money compared to career paths with similar educational requirements and difficulty, and the prestige is pathetic.
I don't think that's even remotely true. In San Francisco, people are freaking out because the techies are making (what many consider) too much money and all sorts of financial types are abandoning Wall St. for Silicon Valley because tech is considered way cooler than finance.
Is that adjusted for cost of living.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's genetics and hormones.
In any event, we already have too many programmers. We need to reduce the supply of programmers so that pay levels increase and it's easier to find a job.
In any event, we already have too many programmers. We need to reduce the supply of programmers so that pay levels increase and it's easier to find a job.
If you're a programmer and find it hard to get a good-paying job, I suggest you take a long hard look in the mirror.
I have not seen a job market this bubbly since 1999.
The cart doesn't push the horse - the reason housing prices are so high in SF and SV is because tech workers earn exceptionally high salaries compared to virtually every other industry. Only medicine, finance and law pay better but law (and to a lesser degree finance) is a total crapshoot with a lot of lawyers earning almost nothing from their JD.
$150K + equity is pretty standard for a moderately experienced developer living anywhere between San Francisco and San Jose and you can live pretty damn well on that, even in the bay area.
During one of my years at graduate school there were ZERO female applicants. And this was at a major university with around 90 admissions into the graduate program every year.
It really got the university panties in a bunch as they couldn't lower the standards or pretend they were somehow qualified through subjective means. It's completely backward and demoralizing to others when you lower the bar to keep up admissions based solely on ones gender.
Another major problem was there was a single black female graduate student. The university failed to take disciplinary action when they had ample evidence of falsifying papers that had been published in peer reviewed journals, blackmailing of professors, harassment of other students, and just in general being an *******. That was the point any modicum of respect i still had slipped away.
The real problem isn't the education pipeline. As TFS notes, only one male student in Mississippi bothered to take the AP CS exam. What most of these organizations don't seem to understand is that this is not the Soviet Union, and you can't force people to go into degree fields...
While I have a natural affinity and aptitude for computers science, mathematics, analysis and associated critical thinking skills, if I could turn back the clock I would have chosen another career rather than information technology. I don't regret honing my analytical and communication skills which would have proven equally necessary in another career. However, I do regret not taking another path in life. As much as I enjoy programming, solving business problems, troubleshooting systems, etc. I have felt empty inside for years. Companies do not appreciate "out of the box thinkers" despite the job advertisements claiming such thinkers are wanted. Companies devalue the contributions many of the exceptionally talented people in the field make to their organisations; likely as an outgrowth of the flood of mediocre people in the field in the aftermath of the DotCom Bubble. In the workplace I prefer female co-workers because they actually get the job done and contrary to popular mythology these women are not engaged in backstabbing and political machinations unlike many of my male co-workers. It only takes one political operative to destroy a team and jeopardise projects.
I see these silly ads on TV, but I think that anyone smart enough to be a really good engineer/programmer, can also see that it's a dead-end job. The corprate execs are going to hire CHEAP, period, whether in the USA, imports, or offshore.
Take your math skills and get into finance.
Do we have to hear about this every second week, year in and year out? On average, girls are - for whatever reason - less interested in math, physics, chemistry.
How do you explain the large number, often a majority, of doctors and veterinarians graduating who are women? These women obviously studied the hard sciences at some point either during their undergraduate degree or during medical or veterinary school. And when I attended university for my undergraduate degree the best students tended to be women; they also were more willing to ask for assistance of the professors and/or of more knowledgeable fellow students in the computer labs. I enjoyed mentoring them because with few exceptions they wanted to understand the "why" not just the "how." It was the only way I a shy guy like myself could talk to a woman and be seen as normal. LOL
I've heard the stories of harassment from ladies in the tech field, and I have coworkers consistently offend and use harassing language. It's not an enjoyable experience working in that environment.
But that's a work environment. I can't recall hearing any serious stories like that from educational institutions unless it involved an elevated BAC or similar lack of sobriety. Yet, similarly, of all the 200+ CS courses I was in or around, I can recall two woman, three non-caucasian (two of them were ethnic Europeans).
Some people have mentioned fashion. Education is another field I'm aware of that I see some fairly prevalent unequal gender ratios in. At any of the elementary schools in a public district I'm familiar with, of the roughly 50 building employees, there will be over eighty percent women and... call it eight men. Five of those men will be custodial/maintenance staff. That comes up to six percent of the building employees are men who work directly with the children. Ratios start to move more towards 75/25 split out as you get to higher level, but most of them are in, surprise surprise, science and math. Every elementary school principal is a woman. Women are a majority in principals at all levels.
I think the education field is a good example of where part of it, I think, is biological, and I can see where a large portion might be cultural.
... then nothing comes out the back.
When I went back to school in 2003, the CS department had a grand total of zero (0) US women in the graduate program. There may have been one woman in the undergrad program. This despite the following: the department head was a woman; almost 1/2 of the instructors were women; about 1/4 of the foreign students were women; and the _founder_ of the department in the 1970s was a woman. There weren't that many US men either - probably 3/4 of the grad program were foreign students. These folks were there, paying full tuition and working hard, because coming from other countries they knew that for them this was the difference between a comfortable middle class life, and dirt poverty. The plain fact is that engineering, if taught correctly, is hard, and many people don't feel the need to work hard for a distant goal, especially when that work involves technical knowledge and analysis. Plus, not everyone has the analytical bent, and that's OK. We need other talents as well.
It's easy for me to think / assume that part of the problem lies in the way education is done. If a real engineering and analytics approach with the self-discipline to think the hard thoughts were imbued into students early - primary grades, at least - perhaps the pipeline would have something going in the front. I'm hoping that our future robotic/AI childhood learning specialists that will be replacing much of the education system will be able to make a difference.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
In the workplace I prefer female co-workers because they actually get the job done and contrary to popular mythology these women are not engaged in backstabbing and political machinations unlike many of my male co-workers. It only takes one political operative to destroy a team and jeopardise projects.
My wife disagrees with you. She hates women with a passion, because of her time in the legal field where women (esp. the lawyers) were mostly horrible, backstabbing, jezebel cunts.
I suspect this phenomenon varies largely with industry. I've worked with women in my software engineering jobs, and never had much trouble with them, and preferred working with them to men. (I'm a man BTW.) However, I imagine the women who are attracted to engineering careers are quite different from the women who go into legal work. So many of these generalizations ("women are backstabbers") are both true and false: they're false in the sense they're not true everywhere, but they're true for certain subsets of whatever population is being generalized. It's like the generalization that Christians are all homophobes; this is definitely true for some of them (thanks to WBC), probably for very many of them (evangelicals are usually homophobes), but not for all of them (there's some protestant sects which have openly gay ministers). The question is whether the generalization covers the majority of the group being generalized, or not, and that's very very hard to determine.
While I have a natural affinity and aptitude for computers science, mathematics, analysis and associated critical thinking skills, if I could turn back the clock I would have chosen another career rather than information technology.
Another problem I've seen in the engineering/IT/CS fields is people like you. (Please note I'm not criticizing you in any way; your opinion is valid and you have every right to express it, it just proves my point about the career not having prestige and workers not being treated that well.) In other careers, like medicine, if some kid comes up to a doctor and asks him if he likes his job, the doctor will evangelize the career. He'll talk about being able to help people, save their lives, how important the work is, maybe that he's paid really well, etc. Many professionals will do this if asked by children or high school students thinking about what to major in in college. But I can't tell you how many times I've read engineers say they've discouraged their kids from going into the field. People in these fields just don't evangelize it the way people in prestigious fields do with their careers. And for good reason too I think, but the effect is: kids get turned away from these fields, because we as a society don't value these careers that much, and employers don't treat people in these fields very well (cue recent Microsoft layoff of 15000 employees). Even when the pay is pretty good, the work conditions can be rather maddening, as seen in your own comments.
How ever did your wife ever find horrible, backstabbing Lawyers? I'm shocked!
the reason housing prices are so high in SF and SV is because tech workers earn exceptionally high salaries compared to virtually every other industry.
Uh no. That's pushed things up significantly, but even before the tech boom San Francisco had massive cost of living. It comes from being some of the most apparently desirable real estate in the world (I can think of a half-dozen places offhand with better weather and just as good connection to the world via sea, air, and internet, but whatever) and there being an extremely limited quantity of it available. Before it was a tech center it was NoCal's financial center and before that it was a shipping hub. And before that, Gold. Tech salaries have contributed, but they are as high as they are in part because the cost of living in San Francisco is so high. The cart and horse push each other at different times.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Too many people just want to program in C. You really need 15 different languages & new languages every week.
It wasn't just the lawyers, however, it was a good deal of their staff. Many of the secretaries were also horrible, backstabbing jezebels jockeying for power within the firm, even though the attorneys treated all the non-attorneys like shit.
My wife could write a book about how horrible the legal field is to work in. She worked at a bunch of different places (a lot of temp-work), and I think her estimate was that about 2 out of 100 lawyers were actually decent people, the rest were all scum. The staff were a lot better, but still there were a lot of horrible women in there (not men though; male staffers were OK, but male lawyers were assholes), and for some reason the HR departments always refused to do anything about the horrible women, no matter how ridiculous their behavior was (probably for fear of being sued or something).
Huh, Google is around 18% too. Go figure.
...and Poe's law. /thread.
The real problem isn't the education pipeline. As TFS notes, only one male student in Mississippi bothered to take the AP CS exam.
Actually, yes, though it's a bit winding in the reasoning, the education pipeline (and the cause, lack of funding and emphasis) is definitely to blame for much of it. The real problem with the statistics quoted in the article isn't related to the number of female or male students taking the AP CS exam, per se, it's that they used *Mississippi* as an example!
According to that chart there were 28 students in the ENTIRE state of Mississippi who took the Calculus BC entrance exam. That's about the same number who took that exam at my high school in Illinois - and it wasn't that big a HS, senior class was about 400.
And while, of course, Mississippi is probably one of the poorest and worst educated states, I'm not going to attribute it all to "cultural differences" or "interests". I really had no interest in Calculus BC, but it was a near-requirement to get into the best colleges. The reason I was able to take it is my high school district was wealthy enough to offer it, and the students wealthy enough to have the previous education to be ready for it.
In American culture, being a developer or software engineer or whatever term you want to use is simply not seen as a prestigious career path. People in this career path are generally treated poorly and don't make that much money compared to career paths with similar educational requirements and difficulty, and the prestige is pathetic.
What, are you fucking kidding me?! It's one of the highest paid jobs right now, maybe the highest paid with a BS degree right out of college. And with the popularity of Facebook, Silicon Valley etc, startups, etc it's considered fairly prestigious. Claiming plumbing is more "prestigious" than software engineering, while I'm pretty sure isn't true almost anywhere, it's laughable in the areas of the country that actually *hire* engineers.
I will give you that going to somewhere like Stanford or Berkeley is different from the University of Mississippi - the former are actually at the point they have almost *TOO MANY* CS majors, and it's making the system somewhat unbalanced. But I'm also pretty sure the number of doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers from the former schools also massively outweighs the latter. But at the top schools heavily involved in the tech boom CS is almost the social norm, not the exception. And the grads are getting $100k++ straight out of college and being recruited from the best tech companies like rock stars.
I don't know, sounds like you are either not in the field, or you are and you have been socially burned too many times so you are bitter...
Do you live in SF Bay Area? I'm assuming not because the previous poster totally has it nailed. Of course the city has always been expensive, but the booming tech industry (both for commuters to companies like Google and SF companies like Twitter) is the primary reason for the recent gentrification/housing boom/whatever you want to call it. I mean, jesus, this isn't even really a debatable argument, it's all anyone in the city or the local media ever talks about these days...
Yes, gold was the reason 150 years ago. But now THE reason is highly compensated tech employees - and especially the younger employees who want to live in the city, and given the shortage of talent right now are making a shit-ton of money right out of college compared to past years.
And as the parent said, it's not just SF, it's SV as a whole. Hey, my SV "suburban" house has appreciated over 30% in the last 3 years because of all of the tech employees with their high salaries (and higher stock options/bonuses) are looking for something to buy...
Tech salaries have contributed, but they are as high as they are in part because the cost of living in San Francisco is so high. The cart and horse push each other at different times.
Oh, and that is easily disproven, as if it were explainable simply by cost of living, *ALL* salaries would be going up proportionally and that's clearly not been the case.
Wow, that post was all over the place. And a bit too borderline mysogynist without any actual point.
Pretty sure you could have just summarized it as: humans are humans, and there are "backstabbers" and political machinists regardless of gender. I can't stand people who try to generalize this sort of office behavior by gender - it mostly means they don't understand it at all, not that they have "figured it out".
The main difference is likely in the approach - women may be a bit more subtle about it, and men more aggressive. But who cares if you got poisoned or shot, you're still dead.
programmers over age 40.
Now the companies have no easy excuse about the 'education pipeline' or any such nonsense, when there are plenty of applicants with both experience, knowledge, and a strong intent and interest.
And yet.....
Somehow this discrimination, which is overt and very deep, doesn't ever matter.
Or, you know, people could be doing what they want to do. Shockingly, not everyone wants to do the same things in the same numbers as overall population demographics.
Try being an automechanic or driving tow trucks for a living.
I, and all the other programmers I know, are doing fairly well. In general it's not a lucrative career but it pays the bills and there a LOT worse things to do for a living.
I hear ya, but let's not forget the financial district.
At my workplace - financial services firm in East Coast - I can see about 30% of IT workforce being women - coders, testers, managers and so on.
All are from India except for one from China.
Tat Tvam Asi
Ada Lovelace, Top Secret Rosies - http://sites.temple.edu/topsecretrosies/
"We can't go much above 18% in our coders [Facebook has 7,185 total employees] if there's only 18% coming into the workplace." Umm your total workforce is not the same size as the amount of students coming in to the workplace. Of course your gender ratio could change with those students available and looking for work.
I think there's an issue in assuming that it's a problem. IT gets done, people get paid. There's nothing that says that there should be an equal balance of the sexes in any profession or field other than certain (sometimes questionable) cultural biases.
Lets get a few things straight right off the bat.
It isn't African American, it's American African; you are not a Latino American, you are an American Latino.
Every news-speak writer wants to divide and conquer, one great way to do that is point out your grandparents 5 generations ago came from Italy, and their parents came from Sicily, so really we aren't one country striving for a common goal, we're a bunch if bias'd pricks and everyone needs to get theirs because it's a dog eat dog jungle out there. Then, those same cunts saying that same bullshit, back stab you with sixty six thousand pages of IRS tax code, then when rome burns, and they know it, they've got the audacity to piss on your back and tell you it's raining.
Second, the computation sciences, as a profession, is the most abused profession within the Continental United States. We build things, but get no overtime; we cannot work for ourselves as contractors. We deal with numerous monopolies and bullshit from companies trying to make things too complicated. Of course women don't want us, we have no time for them. We compete with foreign labor that really doesn't know what they are doing, but corporate management likes to use them just to beat our pay grade down because hey, we opened a corporate office in India to do what department X did and fired everyone and look at the savings. It's only years later when the companies foundation has been replaced with a rickety tree fort built by a bunch of functional 5 year olds, and the company collapses, that they realize this might have not been the best idea. It has gotten so bad we've got a special name for when everyone walks out on their employer, permanently; a programmers walk.
As if that is not enough, we've got a career shill like Hadi Partovi getting himself free advertising on the internet lacing his articles with connotations that you, white male, working 60 hours a week for 1% of market pay are a horrible person for driving [insert racial flavor of the week] from the technical market, and you need to be fired and we need to hire someone who is not a white male for that position. Not mentioned is that the count of positions hasn't changed much, and what those people who have been working, who've invested late nights, weekends, youth, blood sweat and tears in building robust bullshit-free infrastructure that just works, those people should be fired for doing their jobs so the world can be more diverse because it'll work better, somehow. Not explained is a single organization where having a brotha or sista on the management team actually helped anyone because they were a brotha or sista.
This entire discussion is really about gentrification and eugenics; Harvard educated gentlemen such as Havi here don't want an organized labor force, he wants his millions of dollars and to feel like he accomplished something great when really, great leaders are great because they promote people within.
As always, lets make people feel insecure and get them riled up, it's a slow news day. No need to report on things that matter, lets just post articles every week or so discussing how there isn't enough black people in IT to keep awareness of it up, and piss off everyone.
I've been noticing there are far fewer comments than normal on slashdot; people are moving on.
Another great website is biting the dust.
> $150K + equity is pretty standard for a moderately experienced developer
This is a myth. The big software/service companies have grown to the point where there's some strange perception that the market is represented by a microcosm, because their microcosm is affected. Moderately experienced developers do not get $150k/yr standard. The pay is generally under $100k/yr...which is pathetic? by Grishnakh's standards.
The Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of this world don't allow themselves to become concerned with the facts about discrimination or equal opportunity or anything else that doesn't advance their agenda. When the facts don't support their case, which is 99% of the time, they ignore them and silence dissenters by playing the race card. Essentially, these guys are after hush money when it comes to corporate America and their strategy is to make such a nuisance of themselves that companies agree to public concessions, to allow a face saving retreat, while Jackson and Sharpton get their money in exchange for quietly dropping the matter. The Silicon Valley tech people are even more foolish than I thought if they honestly believe that they can win a logical argument with these people. As I've said, they're not interested in facts or logic. They deal in emotion, grievance and the culture of victimhood. If you really want an honest take on discrimination and its actual status as a non-issue in the American workplace today, I would strongly recommend Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies.
The 100k number for new grads get tossed around a lot, but you will find that most of those 100k entry level developer jobs are in one of two places: San Francisco or New York. Being offered 100k in New York or San Francisco is like being offered 40k somewhere else where it isn't so damn expensive to live. For example, in San Fran it costs nearly $3000 a month to rent a broom closet, unless you've been there for decades in a rent-controlled situation and even those people are now finding themselves squeezed out by the other rising costs of living and the much maligned "condo conversions", hence the tech bus protests in San Francisco last year.
It's always been obvious to me that the reason that there are so few female developers has little to do with hiring practices and a lot to do with the lack of interest in computer science among women. You just have to look threw a stack of CVs when people apply for jobs at your company for it to be obvious: when there are so few CVs from women in the pile, statistically you're not going to hire as many of them.
How dare you speak truth and use a logical argument to further your observation. Don't you realise as a male, we are all guilty of oppressing women. ;-)
The average IQ of an African is 70.
SEVENTY.
Why don't all these poor, hard done by non-whites MOVE to their OWN countries, and live around their OWN kind, if 'evil', 'racist' whites are 'holding them down'?
Why don't they want to live around their own race? I just can't imagine...
ANYBODY promoting 'diversity' is committing GENOCIDE against white people, who clearly do not want to live with non-whites - otherwise they wouldn't have to be FORCED on us. Anybody committing genocide will face trial and the death penalty. So carry on - while you can...
I'm pretty sure research bears out that both education and hiring processes are deeply flawed when it comes to hiring underrepresented people. One issue may be more "root cause" than the other, but they're both important. I'm actually kind of surprised Code.org went on record saying this...
Correction. HR is the flaw in the hiring process across all sectors and careers. I regularly see companies repeatedly running the same advertisement for the exact same position. Is the salary offered too low to attract an applicant to accept an offer of employment? Has the company tried recruiting on-campus at the local college or university including community colleges? Does the company really intend to hire anyone or is it a subterfuge used as smoke and mirrors against competitors? Do any of the applicants get their resume pasted the human resources drone and into the hands of the appropriate manager? Unless a person writes in a style indicative of a particular demographic there is no way to tell their ethnic or cultural background because even names can be misleading. Oh your family name is Boisvert...you must speak French. Or your surname is Shakespeare...we're looking for a Latin-speaking candidate. Age discrimination is another factor at play in some situations.
Do you live in SF Bay Area?
More or less. I was born in Santa Cruz. I have lived in SF, however, when I worked for gay.com.
Yes, gold was the reason 150 years ago.
Very good. You're paying attention. I was giving you a history lesson which demonstrated that SF has always been expensive real estate, not claiming that gold is still the driving force behind the San Franciscan economy. Don't prevaricate.
But now THE reason is highly compensated tech employees
You are on crack. In order for that to be true, San Francisco would have to be peopled mostly by tech employees, which is very far from the case.
And as the parent said, it's not just SF, it's SV as a whole.
SF is not in the SV. HTH.
Hey, my SV "suburban" house has appreciated over 30% in the last 3 years because of all of the tech employees with their high salaries (and higher stock options/bonuses) are looking for something to buy...
Yes, you are experiencing a bubble tied to another bubble. Sell now, if you're interested in actually getting that money. You will not have another chance.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
as if it were explainable simply by cost of living, *ALL* salaries would be going up proportionally and that's clearly not been the case.
Of course it's explainable simply by cost of living. Tech workers expect to get paid more than the baseline, because their job is harder and requires more exclusive knowledge. Fair enough. But the baseline is higher. They wouldn't have asked for that much money if the cost of living weren't so high. They in fact do not ask for so much money when moving someplace else. The cost of living is high, so the salaries are higher in SF than they would be someplace with a lower cost of living, like say Austin. And in fact, that's exactly what you see.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If companies want a diverse workforce then the people who are not well represented would command a higher salary, for the same skills, since companies in essence would be bidding for a scarce resource. While the pay gap is large, small or non-exsistant, depending on the study you use; the existence of a gap or parity indicates companies do not value diverse workforces enough to pay for them. However they want to appear to do so and thus need to find a reason why it's not their fault; the educational pipeline is convenient and kills two birds with one stone; "we can't hire more women because schools aren't producing enough with STEM skills and by the way that's why we need more H1-B's." As Hal Holbrook said, "follow the money..."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
About 25% of AP computer science test takers are women, which is about representative of tech companies.
This video explains the lack of women in math and science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
People in SF are freaking out because they see techies make lots of money with a profession they also hold in low regard. That's the norm, not the exception: people also generally despise people working in finance and law.
Many intellectuals and artists believe both that their work is more valuable and that society isn't giving them enough money, and that drives both their politics and their attitudes.
Price per square foot in San Francisco is about $700. Compare that to some other cities: Monaco, $5300, London, $2050, Paris, $1800, Geneva, $1500, Moscow, $1300, NYC, $1300. San Francisco is not an expensive place to buy real estate, in particular when you take into account high US and California after-tax salaries.
San Francisco also isn't a "gentrified city"; it's a cheap, dirty dump mostly composed of dilapidated buildings, with large numbers of homeless and drug addicts roaming the streets. That's the reason why it's cheaper than European cities.
Very far from the truth. The education pipeline is low because the long term compensation vs work is low. Anyone that is smart enough to get a CS degree can get double the money with half the effort with an MBA.
...Out of college if they're decent they're ONLY in the top 6%* of income in the country...
Even though your statistic is not supposed to be real, it's conceptually incorrect and should be lower when you normalise it with initial investment.
Then you should also give it some context by considering initial investment in terms of time and effort - i don't think many would disagree that if you put in the effort then you are at least deserved of an equivalently better income and not just lucky or greedy.
Now take your normalised statistic with context and apply it to "that software developer in the US" who is being manipulated into lower pay... "Poor" would be an exaggeration, but "Cheated"... perhaps.
>anyone smart enough to be a really good engineer/programmer, can also see that it's a dead-end job
I'd be giving that advice too ... if I were a third rate engineer/programmer who wasn't worth a damn at anything. Amazon, Google, etc. are hiring like mad and they pay hella good money for dev, PM, and even QA.
Having children is a lifestyle choice. If one isn't OK with the compromises that choice brings, one should make a different choice. From what I hear, having a kid or two is pretty rewarding in it's own right. Despite what people say, it's unlikely a person can really have it all without taking something from someone else.
The American educational system is a capitalist educational system , not a meritocratic educational system.
'Nuff said (or else it should be, if not eveyone qualifies as an Ameritard today!)......
bradley13, otherwise people might begin to wake up and realize that with all the offshoring of jobs, the insourcing of foreign visa scab workers, any actual education is besides the point when the jobs base has been decimated!
One-fifth of the US workers were laid off over the past five years. The president mentioned in a speech the other day that 10 million new jobs have been created in the private sector (but only 5.5 million can be verified, and a job can't be verified when it doesn't exist! ).
By all these so-called "studies" from Pew Research Center (FYI: the very same guys who, a few years back, claimed the American corporatemed was majority "liberal") and elsewhere, which are psychometrically balanced to divide and conquer, people have their attention redirected from the real causes, their real enemy.
Again, ranton, this is all besides the point. The other week, our weak AG, Eric Holder, filed EOE lawsuits against companies allegedly practicing biased behavior against transgendered individiuals, yet for how many decades now have entire IT departments at corporations and organizations been entirely replaced with foreign nationals from India, for chrissakes?
That is also against the EOE laws, yet zero attorney generals have acknowledged this.
And yet Seattle comp for tech works is pretty much the same and but we enjoy a higher standard of living up here. I've researched the the differences multiple times over the past 7 years, as various Bay Area companies have tried to get me to relocate there. Always comes down to not being able to enjoy the same standard of living down there due to higher housing costs, higher costs of goods and services, state income tax, and necessarily having a long commute from where an affordable (one what they are offering) house is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Up until they get to old anyway. Then good luck getting a job. In the fields of law, medicine, and finance the experience that comes with age is actually sought after rather then being derided. I wouldn't have gone into this career if I had known that it would become ageist. Now people know. The better questions might be why is anyone still going into this field?
I am not addressing the need for diversity and more access for women and non-white people to tech. There are too many white male geeky engineers in tech, and it shows in product missions and designs. There is not enough humanity in tech, as yet. But this is not why I have something to say about this topic. It is that Facebook, of all companies, has the least justification to say anything about the quality of software, of product design, or of product engineering and its relationship to hiring diversity. I have a Facebook account and use the site to keep tabs on friends and family members and yet I am disgusted by most of what it is, and my objections have to do with business and engineering and if that means that fewer women work or want to work at Facebook, I would not be surprised. The OP cites that Facebook has about 7100 employees, in my view most of what those people do is misdirected and a waste if my freedom of expression is encumbered by manipulation and spam as a result of their business model and Mark Zuckerberg's philosophy. So, it hardly matters that Facebook has 31% women or more as long as the result of its design is so bad as to limit conversation and exchange between its users in a design that is designed to create problems for users. Facebook needs an alternative. Judging from reactions I've heard from women in my life, I'd say to them, go and bury Facebook in a service that is kinder to people and better designed for humane communication. Do away with the three-fold grid and the blog and allow for real exchanges. I sincerely hope that Facebook fails.
The 100k number for new grads get tossed around a lot, but you will find that most of those 100k entry level developer jobs are in one of two places: San Francisco or New York. Being offered 100k in New York or San Francisco is like being offered 40k somewhere else where it isn't so damn expensive to live
But that $100k starting salary is still WAY more than the starting salaries of most new college grads in other fields, which was the point. Cost of living in different locations is orthogonal to starting salaries between different fields.
For example, in San Fran it costs nearly $3000 a month to rent a broom closet
Actually, you can get a small but decent 1BR in the $3000 range, or split a nice 2BR with a roommate for $4000 ie. $2000 each. Is that really expensive? Yes. But it's FAR from a "broom closet". And the fact is a $100k salary can afford that while still having plenty of money to spend or save. That's the whole point of being paid more.
Most people I know separate jerks into two main categories: 1) Asshole men who will act like jerks to your face, but you can mostly just stay away from 2) Back stabbing women who will act nice to your face, bad talk you to everyone else, and make it their mission in life to make your life horrible.
They prefer jerk men than women.
Do you live in SF Bay Area?
More or less. I was born in Santa Cruz. I have lived in SF, however, when I worked for gay.com.
In other words, you are not in fact up to date with the housing situation int the area over the last few years.
Yes, gold was the reason 150 years ago.
Very good. You're paying attention. I was giving you a history lesson which demonstrated that SF has always been expensive real estate, not claiming that gold is still the driving force behind the San Franciscan economy. Don't prevaricate.
Just like in the previous bit - things change, and you have not been here to see the latest, apparently. 150 years ago lucky prospectors drove up prices. Today it's tech employees. But the *point* is this is the cause of the "tech bubble" (if that is what it is, we'll see), which has changed the *rate* of increase in prices. To put it simply, 5-10 years ago rents were going up a few percent a year, now they are going up double digits.
But now THE reason is highly compensated tech employees
You are on crack. In order for that to be true, San Francisco would have to be peopled mostly by tech employees, which is very far from the case.
No, that's a total logical fallacy. The demographics are CHANGING, that's the point, it doesn't have to happen overnight to be true. Obviously anyone who already owned property or is living in rent-controlled property is less affected right now. But in that case rates are determined not by the average rental/housing prices, but by the AVAILABLE rentals, which given the housing crunch is like
And as the parent said, it's not just SF, it's SV as a whole.
SF is not in the SV. HTH.
You should have read the OP you replied to, which was explicitly talking about the whole Bay Area. And clearly it's different geographically, but in terms of the tech industry and housing discussion they are increasingly becoming indistinguishable (just looking at the commuting situation over the last few years between the two, it's gotten crazy).
Hey, my SV "suburban" house has appreciated over 30% in the last 3 years because of all of the tech employees with their high salaries (and higher stock options/bonuses) are looking for something to buy...
Yes, you are experiencing a bubble tied to another bubble. Sell now, if you're interested in actually getting that money. You will not have another chance.
Not at all. In the area I live housing prices never dropped. They just slowed down for a couple of years. In fact, the SF housing prices are much more of a bubble than in SV, since the former is driven by over-paid 20-somethings at "startups", and the latter is driven by the 30+ with families who have already made a ton of money on the last round of companies that succeeded (Google, Facebook, Apple, etc).
Nothing you said actually addressed my point that it would still be *proportionally* the same. The issue is that the gap between tech and non tech has INCREASED, which is the whole point of the thread. If everyone's salary increased proportionally (i.e. it was ONLY a cost of living difference) then the non-tech people would still be in the same situation (i.e. still struggling, sharing rooms, etc), rather than getting priced out of the area COMPLETELY.
Hire the best. If you worry about headcounts that mirror the population, help the schools, help children get interested in something besides the latest clothes fashions and entertainment flavors of the month.
"and preferred working with them to men. (I'm a man^H^H^H^H^H an Uruk-hai BTW.)" FTFY ;)
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
And as the parent said, it's not just SF, it's SV as a whole. Hey, my SV "suburban" house has appreciated over 30% in the last 3 years because of all of the tech employees with their high salaries (and higher stock options/bonuses) are looking for something to buy...
What the fuck? $100k/yr is chump change in 2014. Median wages should have climbed up to that figure but have not. Desirable salary? Only in comparison to the rest of the American paupers. Meh.
Or we could just call them Americans, or gasp, maybe even humans/people.
Though I understand that there are some people out there who have some reservations about referring to someone with a different skin color as an equal
Anyone ever stop to think that it might be remotely possible that more women just don't want to work in this IT field? I mean, I don't hear anyone complaining that there aren't enough male cosmetics workers at the Sephora counter at JC Penney; is this because men are driven away from it or because they are not drawn to it? Good Grief, folks.
I'm not an Uruk-hai, those are a different breed. I'm an orc captain. I enjoy slaughtering men! But I really hate Ents...
When I was in grade school, it was made real clear to me by my friends and family that showing I was bright in Math or Chemistry or Physics was not cool. My female friends were praised for winning piano or horse-riding competitions - I received very high marks in Math and Science and even participated in the Science Fair - no praise for me. In high school, I got straight A's in advanced level Math courses and had to put up with a friend of the family (he was an engineer) castigating me at a dinner party for even thinking I had the brains to do Math. In college, I had to deal with guys staring at me when I was the only woman in class. They would sit in a group in the Math Library and work on problems together, but if I asked to join them, the group would either split up or say, something like, well, this might be over your head. The final straw came when one instructor said, "You know, I really don't want you in this class. Anything I teach you will be useless, because all you'll ever do with your life is get married and have babies." Granted this was pre-70s when things started changing for women. I pretty much gave up on Math and didn't use any of it until I got into the tech industry years later. I still see the same prejudices come up when assignments go to men who are less qualified.