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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'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.
Why is there no media outrage at the low male attendance at fashion colleges? There's a pretty big one around here called FIDM, and all I saw walking around campus were females.
Shouldn't the diversity crusaders be making waves calling for more male enrollment in fashion?
Or should they STFU and accept the fact that males and females tend to like different things, and short of forcing students into majors they don't like, you're never gonna get perfect diversity?
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.
Shouldn't the diversity crusaders be making waves calling for more male enrollment in fashion?
No, because no one feels the lack of diversity in fashion affects the efficiency of our economy.
and short of forcing students into majors they don't like, you're never gonna get perfect diversity?
That may be your contention, but there is a great deal of disagreement around this. Many people believe that culture has a significant impact on the careers people pursue. Many people feel someone working as an engineer improves society more than someone working as a retail worker, and that it is worth the effort to help women meet their full potential. I will sure try to do this for my daughter.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
"Gender parity is important." Why? And parity at what? All things? Be specific and provide an argument that is more than opinion.
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.
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.
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...
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.