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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'"
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.
"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.
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.'"