What Intel's $300 Million Diversity Pledge Really Means

itwbennett writes Intel's Rosalind Hudnell is responsible for implementing the company's much-publicized $300 million initiative to bring more women and under-represented minorities into its workforce by 2020. But even with Intel's renewed commitment to diversity, the company's workforce will still be just about 32 percent women in five years, Hudnell estimated. Here's a rough breakdown of how the money will be spent: The funds will be applied over five years to change hiring practices, retool human resources, fund companies run by minorities and women, and promote STEM education in high schools.

Comments

What it means:

[kuzb]

Passing up perfectly qualified candidates in order to appease a quota. I'm all for qualified women being seriously considered for tech jobs, but this will do more to harm the industry than it will do to help it.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

DING DING DING!!! We have a winner. Close this thread, kuzb nailed it.

And remember kiddos, reverse discrimination is still discrimination!

Re:What it means:

[Rideak]

Exactly my feeling as well.

Equal opportunity != equal outcome. nor should it be.

just watch, the headline in 10 years:
"intel's diversity not reflected in team leads or management" (because they lowered the bar for underrepresented groups the over represented group's relative performance was better and hence will be promoted more)

followed by:
"intel pushes for new diversity initiative in promotions"
10 years later:
"intel files for bankruptcy after repeated market failures related to its line of privilege checking chips which underclock themselves based on the current user's level of privilege metric."

Re:What it means:

[Chess_the_cat]

In this construction it would be "fewer" not "less."

Re:What it means:

[Intrepid imaginaut]

A group of people rigs the game to the where where they have a stranglehold, to the detriment of ALL others.

By all means provide evidence for this rigging.

Re:What it means:

[hcs_$reboot]

It means someone has to feed all these nerds..

Re:What it means:

[Rideak]

watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE

Afterwards you will understand why women will never be equally represented in technical fields like engineering and programming. Across all cultures even from birth women are generally less interested in mechanical things. There is evidence that this is biological and related to testosterone. For the same reason, men will always be underrepresented in fields focused on people like nursing, psychology etc. It's simply what each gender is more inclined to be interested in. There's nothing wrong with that either.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Watch this 38 minute video - I'm unable to even regurgitate these talking points myself. My time is too valuable."

Re:What it means:

[CrimsonAvenger]

There are plenty of qualified candidates who aren't white males, who have been "passed up" for a century

I'm curious. Do you happen to know of any specific people or groups of people who've been, how did you put it, "passed up for a century" for a job at Intel?

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, everyone knows that misogynist nerds have no hiring power in tech! What's more, they're unable even to contribute to a culture of misogyny, because their neck beards are too thick.

Re:What it means:

[Rideak]

This video explores the following question "why are there less female engineers than male engineers and why are women over represented in careers focused on human interaction". Research across disciplines shows there is clear evidence that these differences are based in biological processes and are not purely cultural. This video interviews numerous scientists from various fields and exhibits the cognitive dissonance portrayed by proponents of gender studies and sociology.

Re:What it means:

[uncqual]

"less white" might be correct -- maybe AC meant that darker complexioned, i.e. "less white", males should/would be hired.

Re:What it means:

[Rideak]

Nah, he means the white males being hired are too fat and we should be hiring skinnier ones.

Re:What it means:

[uncqual]

It might not hurt the industry much.

It might hurt Intel though because they would end up hiring less qualified people OR end up extra unqualified people to fill quota. If Intel hires less qualified people, it makes it harder for Intel to win and easier for others in the industry to win. If Intel just hires extra people who are 'diverse', but less qualified, these people will cost Intel money in salary, benefits, and other employee costs without sufficient return and Intel will need to figure out a way to keep them from distracting and/or interfering with the more qualified employees (perhaps Intel could open an entire campus for 'diversity hires' and isolate them to prevent this though).

Re:What it means:

[jazman_777]

Not necessarily. It could mean their HR department is going to become 50% of the company.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is being passed up. Intel would snap up any woman or minority who applied for the past thirty years and do their best to keep them. If you look around at Intel you will see twice as many non-white males as white. The white males you see are frequently transplants from Europe. Most of the women you will see are from India and most of the rest from China. They have a policy to discriminate against hiring experienced workers in their technology and manufacturing division, which is most of the company. That means only so-called recent-college-graduates need apply. Look at the demographics of EE, CS, Physics and mechanical engineering graduate schools in the US and add in the fact that they sponsor in a lot of kids fresh out of foreign schools, particularly Europe and India. The applicant pool isn't white males on average, not by a long shot, it is foreigners. This PC HR crap is so out of touch with what is actually going on inside engineering portions of the company it is laughable. The whole "diversity in STEM" charade is just a joke. Americans of any color and gender aren't getting the jobs in the first place because there aren't that many of them in the applicant pool to begin with.

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

By all means provide evidence for this rigging.

It has been shown in some specific fields (the scope of the study was limited, naturally) that women with equal qualifications are consistently rated as less competent than a man with the same qualifications.

This was found by submitting fake CVs, so quality of the applicants was controlled for perfectly.

So, this rigging has been more or less proven to exist in some technical fields.

Re:What it means:

[SydShamino]

False on two points.

1. Intel wants to hire the "best" candidate for a position, not necessarily the most "perfectly qualified". The definitions of both terms are subjective, so let me explain the difference with an example. I have interview a candidate for a senior position, whose resume was a mile long with impressive work. He had the necessary experience, and he might have the insight necessary to find novel solutions to our problems. But, in 30 minutes with him, I could tell he was an asshole. His attitude would shut down brainstorming sessions, drive wedges between other members of my team, and possibly drive some of them away. He was perhaps the "most qualified" candidate but he was certainly not the "best". The person I hired instead had less experience but a very positive work attitude, and has learned what he needed to become a good designer. If you don't agree with me on this point then let's just agree to disagree, because we need to spend more time talking about point...

2. Intel believes that the "best" candidate for a position might not be applying for the position. Is that hard to imagine? When your company has a job opening, they don't necessarily look at all of the resumes, pick the one that sucks the least, and hire them. Maybe they didn't cast a wide enough net to gather interest? Maybe they need to change their recruiting practices entirely? Sometimes you pick "none of the above" and try again. Intel believes that the best candidate for some of their positions isn't applying for the job, because she was told in fourth grade by her science teacher that she wasn't cut out for computer work, because he was sexist. They know they'll have a job opening in 2027 for a talented young computer scientist, and they are concerned that they won't get the "best" candidate because that candidate decided on a different career.

Re:What it means:

[zarthrag]

Kudos for taking a statement out of context so knowingly - making it sound as if I was implying that Intel has done something wrong. (Learn how to read, or at least make a valid point)

Minorities (women, or non-Caucasian males, doesn't really matter) aren't traditionally considered on equal footing. It's not some new concept. But you know that already, don't you?

"passed up for a century" meaning that, even when qualified - blacks have quite famous been "last hired, first fired" from WWII until the well after the civil rights movement. None of those groups have pay equality today. That concentration of wealth and jobs aren't some simple line-item. That represents education, and voting power (especially today).

To make myself clear:

I never said "reverse discrimination" is the right thing. But acting like the status-quo is cool [because it benifits you] pisses me off.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bro, it's not about misogyny.

It's about ethic in video game journalism.

Re:What it means:

[zarthrag]

benifits... here come the nazis...

Re:What it means:

[ArcadeMan]

You're right Rideak.

Most men prefer jobs that are about things.
Most women prefer jobs that are about people.

It's the truth but yet a lot of people just put their fingers in their ears and go "la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you" because they think it's not politically correct. Well, fuck you politics.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

By all means provide evidence for this rigging.

It has been shown in some specific fields (the scope of the study was limited, naturally) that women with equal qualifications are consistently rated as less competent than a man with the same qualifications.

This was found by submitting fake CVs, so quality of the applicants was controlled for perfectly.

So, this rigging has been more or less proven to exist in some technical fields.

When you said "it has been shown in some specific fields", name it, give us the links, show it to us that those 'evidences' are valid

Anyone can allege anything, that is why we should not allow ourselves to fall victim to baseless accusations

If there truly is a rigging going on, expose the case, name names, let the world know

Going round posting 'it has been shown in some specific fields' is totally meaningless. Worse, it is actually misleading because you are alleging something without wanting to prove it !

Re:What it means:

[zeroduck]

Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination

We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. Federal contractors and employers who list Equal Opportunity Employer' in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

What it means?

It means I buy nothing but AMD from now on.

Re:What it means:

[BarbaraHudson]

When you said "it has been shown in some specific fields", name it, give us the links, show it to us that those 'evidences' are valid

AC must be one of those guys who can't even use Google. If you do your own searching, you can control whether you're being fed only one side of the story. Since you can't do it, maybe you can have your female assistant do it for you :-)

Re:What it means:

[russotto]

A group of people rigs the game to the where where they have a stranglehold, to the detriment of ALL others. That same group (or their progeny) then cries that those not-so-fairly won advantages shouldn't be taken away for the sake of the industry ...and themselves.

Yes, tell me again how those Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese people have had the game rigged against them by that bogeyman of bogeymen, the cis-white-hetero-male.

Re: What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no rigging of anything. Ive worked in the technology sector for many years and not once has anyone cared what Gender or race you are. All that matters is that you are qualified. This whole agenda is bullshit being pushed by people not even in the sector and they are getting paid to do it

Re: What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the above statements are completely clueless. What it means or more accurately, what is ,is the simple fact that the entire planet is male dominated. I can't believe how myopic and retarded people think on /. In fact, the more women are acknowledged and hired, the better in my opinion. This in no small way offsets the major imbalance that is all too obvious worldwide.

Re: What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

As well, to think that women are more suited to this that or the other, aside from bearing children, is another dumbfuck statement. Welcome to /.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

And everyone will assume you're not qualified because you're a woman. I worked QA at an all male gaming company. They advertised for a female, and I was the only application. Everyone assumed I had no idea what I was doing. I think Intel is doing this to hurt women. This will only hurt the women that work for them now and that are hired later.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

You are being a sexist misogynist supporting the shit-lord cis-gendered patriarchy. Meritocracy is a sexist tool of the patriarch. Think I'm shitting you? Read feminists in their own words. If people understood that feminists DO NOT WANT EQUALITY (ie, people to be judged on merit), maybe they would finally understand why so many in gaming have had a problem with them pushing their way in and changing things and why Atheism had such a problem with them (see Atheism Plus) and why much of the scientific community has become fed up with them pushing their bullshit there.

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy
------
However, meritocracies tend to promote those who not only have the skills/experience, but are also outspoken enough to let everyone know about it. This pushiness/ego/self-aggrandisement is something that women are generally discouraged from doing.

A number of geek women have blogged about problems with the concept of meritocracy:

FLOSSPOLS, sexism, and why meritocracy really isn't (Nerdchic)
Questioning the merit of meritocracy (Geek Feminism blog)
Geeks, meritocracy, and gender (Scientist Carrie)
Where meritocracy fails (Selena Deckelmann)
you keep using that word (Garann Means)
The journal article "The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations" empirically confirms the hypothesis that an organizational culture which promotes meritocracy results in greater inequality.
-----

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not understand feminism? Go read tumblr or twitter. When men talk about "meritocracy", they're really being sexist.

If you thin I'm being hyperbolic, go read up. I shit you not.

Also, how many more decades are we going to work on getting more women in tech before we realize they don't really want to be in tech - they just want to complain about how more *other* women aren't in it? The women who WANT to be in it already fucking are.

Maybe we need to stop given women the freedom to choose their career and just start forcing them into tech jobs.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I don't get your point.

Your solution is to discriminate against people who are perfectly deserving of a position or a promotion and have done nothing wrong and have the merit for the position by favoring someone else based on race or gender or sexual orientation?

Don't get me wrong. I've no doubt there are some biases by some people in some places that play into their hring or promoting. For example, I worked for a vietnamese director in a major tech company years ago who wouldn't even look at you when you walked down the hall if you didn't have a college degree (though I knew of two exceptions including myself). He also did not like to hire anyone who wasn't vietnamese, too, unless he had no other options. I also knew an indian guy in the bay area who hired fellow indians first. Only reaching out elsewhere once there weren't any others he could tap on the shoulder for a position.

But the people he picked weren't lacking talent or merit or skill or knowledge or hard working or ethics.They didn't do anything wrong by having been chosen. So should they have been fucked over so that some white guy could get the position just because "we need to have X percent of every race and gender make up a company's population"?

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already happening. I've heard anecdotes from managers regarding female employees who don't do good work being promoted in focal for "diversity goals".

They just promoted a bunch of new VPs/Fellows and in the comments section for the article, there were the usual suspects whining that there weren't enough women.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I get a job if I say that I'm genderfluid, so I'm a woman the second I step on the work premises (a raging lesbian, at that) and a man the second I leave the premises?

Re:What it means:

[goose-incarnated]

For those too lazy to read that study - it doesn't support the OP's point that women are discriminated against. Read it and see.

Re:What it means:

[Mr.CRC]

That's complete made up nonsense. Everyone knows that only white males would ever engage in discrimination!

Re:What it means:

[Mr.CRC]

This video should be banned. No one should be permitted to even research such things. Only the truth must be allowed to be spoken: women and men are exactly equal. There are no differences whatsoever except for insignificant macroscopic anatomical form.

Re:What it means:

[Mr.CRC]

No, fuck you! And fuck me too! Because politics is about force. And you and I are the ones standing at the business end of the gun barrel.

Re:What it means:

[Mr.CRC]

Bingo. While I work at a .gov lab, I've attended numerous courses and events at semiconductor and photonics companies in Si Valley. At one course (Xilinx), while helping the foreign instructor get his points across, I noticed that the class was composed predominantly of Asians, and Indians, and a few white folks. At least 2:1 non-white to white. In engineering/tech firms in Si Valley, Asian and Indian women and men are present in no obviously differing amounts. The only missing species is white females.

The dominant ethnic feature of the landscape, at least btw. the valley and S. SF, is that the hills of the West Bay are neighborhoods dominated by Chinese, Indians, and other Asians. I'm talking about the most expensive houses with the views.

Re:What it means:

[Mr.CRC]

That's perfectly reasonable. The asshole guy should be a consultant. The one you contract with when you absolutely have to have the 99.9th percentile experience and skill. But then he better hope there isn't a non-asshole consultant with the same or better quals. I've seen both kinds.

Re:What it means:

[AmiMoJo]

Apparently you didn't read about their policy so allow me to explain it. They are not lowering the bar at all. The best candidate will always be hired, regardless of gender. All they are trying to do is increase the available pool of good candidates, and then naturally more of the best ones will be women.

Hopefully we can agree that men and women are of equal intelligence and capability in STEM, so if you have a pool of 10 suitable candidates and 9 of them are men then statistically the chance of the best one being female is only 10%. If you have a pool of 15 candidates and 9 of them are men then there is a 40% chance that the best one is a woman. See how it works?

Re:What it means:

[TheGratefulNet]

bay area resident, here. living here for quarter of a century. born and raised in the US.

bay area companies (cisco, etc) are about 95% asian, at this point. wander the hallways, if you get a chance. its not about men vs women, its about US vs non-US. you can walk the hallways and not hear a word of english, for many hours at a time. people think nothing of speaking some foreign language while at work, doing work, in a large open setting.

when I grew up, it was considered rude to 'talk in codes' in front of people. I'm at a loss to understand why english is disappearing from the american tech workplace (again, in the bay area, at least). no one seem to tell the guys who were not born here that its FUCKING RUDE to speak in codes. especially when their english is perfectly fine and understandable. yes, I get offended. I would not 'speak in codes' in front of someone. I just ask that we all speak a common language and maybe I know about the bug or feature or problem you are having with your code. but how the fuck can I help if you avoid speaking in a common language? its rude, guys. just realize it. no one seems to tell you this, so I'm telling you now. ITS RUDE. STOP IT. you are not winning friends this way (maybe you don't want to win local friends...)

this kind of things just separates people. we have enough problems with separations; we don't need to make the problem worse.

just think about this for a bit. maybe you will react negatively to this news, but please just think about it and how you would feel if people went out of their way to hide their communication when around you and allow only a select few to understand what you are saying, working on, etc.

when off-work, do what you want. but if you are at-work, you should think about how you are seen when you act this way.

over the last 10 years, I've seen this behavior skyrocket. please be aware that its not a good thing, to be this way. we all need to work together. speaking in codes does not bring people together.

the men/woman thing is a red herring. the real problem is that the workforce is anti-american and also ageist as can be. show some grey hairs and you might as well be a non-person to many tech companies.

these are the problems we need to fix. the men/women thing is not a real problem.

Re:What it means:

[drinkypoo]

Hopefully we can agree that men and women are of equal intelligence and capability in STEM

Dunno. Intelligence, sure. Capability? On average, you will get less work out of them. That's borne out by the statistics. It shouldn't be surprising, either. Men don't have the responsibility of making more humans. That can really cut into your schedule. That's not a reason not to hire them, nor a reason for this level of disparity, though it probably is a valid reason for some disparity.

Many have noted that women may also be less likely to put up with a career lifetime full of bullshit, since they have other options. It's not like it's all their fault, or even biology's. There's some things wrong with the workplace.

Re:What it means:

[AmiMoJo]

Another way of looking at it is that men are being exploited by employers who expect them to do more hours and take less time off than is good for them. Men should be getting the same rights when it comes to paternity leave, and not be expected to work longer hours just because they don't have kids to pick up after work. It's exploitation.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less#Historical_usage

Less has always been acceptable. Some pedantic 18th century grammarian tried to say otherwise but it was his opinion, not a hard and fast rule.

Fewer sounds worse in a lot of applications. What do you read at cash registers? 10 Items or Fewer? Get out of here.

Re:What it means:

[drinkypoo]

Another way of looking at it is that men are being exploited by employers who expect them to do more hours and take less time off than is good for them.

I don't disagree with that, but since that's completely legal for them to do, from their standpoint it's the same thing. Obviously, that shouldn't be legal. Nobody should be forced to work more than 40 hours a week just because someone else can't be arsed to plan. That's just slavery lite. If your business requires people to waste their lives for you, then it sucks anyway.

Re:What it means:

[Threni]

> this will do more to harm the industry than it will do to help it.

Will this statement still be true once they achieve parity, or just while we get there?

The point of this sort of rule is so you don't exclude people who are talented enough for the job, right? The idea that you just pick the right person for the job regardless of race, sex etc clearly isn't working,as you can see by the current figures.

Re:What it means:

[zeroduck]

My bad. This is the one I wanted to link, but it was equally easy to find: Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students

Re:What it means:

[CrimsonAvenger]

TFA is about Intel doing things to "level the playing field". It's not about society in general.

Intel may or may not need to do things to "level the playing field", depending on their own internal culture. I've got no opinions about that.

But Intel's need to fix things (or not), and the methods they use (or don't), are the subject at hand. NOT society's problems in general. Not even the tech industry's problems in general, though a lot of commenters have extended it to that.

You, on the other hand, seem to have decided that society's problems in general are the subject of TFA. Your privilege. But when everyone else is talking about the 40-year-old tech industry, comments about the century-old problem are, at best, jarring.

I never said "reverse discrimination" is the right thing. But acting like the status-quo is cool [because it benifits you] pisses me off.

He says to the guy whose wife has been working in the tech industry as a programmer for nearly thirty years....

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

I was referring to the PNAS article that always does the round on this thread. If you have something to refute the article, I'd be interested because it seemed reasonably sound to me.

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

Eh my bad, claim with no evidence. There's a fairly well known article in PNAS. Can't search and provide link because on phone. Fortunately someone else in the thread dug the article out for me. So, there you go. Scan the sub thread for it if you care.

Scratch that, Slashdot wants me to wait Five minutes. Guess I can dig out the link. So, here you go:

http://m.pnas.org/content/109/...

Re:What it means:

[frank_adrian314159]

... as if I was implying that Intel has done something wrong.

Those of us who live near the beast already understand everything that Intel does wrong - in terms of how it subjects its manufacturing employees to time theft, to how it pollutes local environments. Working at Intel is considered a last resort around here. The benefits to any "encouragement" they give to minorities in STEM will first go to any other company in the area which generally provide better working conditions. They're known for doing the minimal amount required by law. What else do you expect? It's a big company with many rentiers to support.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Another way of looking at it is that men are being exploited by employers who expect them to do more hours and take less time off than is good for them.

Another way of looking at it is that society, contrary to feminist rhetoric, is actually very anti-male. Employers simply have internalized misandry, being tough on men because they believe men are supposed to stay out of the kitchen, and stay in the garage/office/trenches. That it is actually women who are sexist, treating men as objects, tools that earn money, which then they're supposed to hand over the lion's share to their GFs/wives/daughters.

This theory would explain a few things that feminist theories couldn't. Namely, why feminism is still falling short at bringing equality despite being so active over the years. In some areas, such as tech, there is even a backlash of decreasing interest from women, as well as populist movements pushing back at feminists such as GamerGate.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

With 17% of teachers being male in Elementary and Middle school and 25% overall up through High School, it's unlikely any woman would have had a male science teacher in the fourth grade.

Which doesn't mean the woman teaching Science didn't tell little Suzie she wasn't cut out for Computers.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a definite tendency when "slavery life" is going on for businesses to fail and fail spectacularly.

Problem is, now with about a third of men slated to never have kids or get married, those men eventually are going to realize they have nothing to lose.

And then you get incidents like what happened to Sony.

Re:What it means:

[goose-incarnated]

There's nothing to refute - it's a study in the fields of biology or something, not CS. I'm not sure why you think it applies to a story about CS and engineering.

Did you find one that applies to CS and engineering?

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that you're a troll, but for anybody following a long. The use of the word "cis" is horribly offensive and serves only to cram men into a narrowly defined set of gender roles in order to placate trans-folks that don't much give a shit about other people's well being. The correct term if you really need to refer to people that aren't trans is non-trans.

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

I strongly suspect that if your saw one for engineering, you'd dismiss is because it wasn't cs, and if it was CS, you dismiss it because wasn't the right sub sub sub sub sub field.

You're also so full of rage and belief that you are more or less unable to read without coloring it so strongly work your preconceived beliefs that it's a wonder you ever even bother to read.

What I have is proof that discrimination does happen for certain I some technical areas, whereas many puerile here believe it doesn't happen at all. So, it's proof that discrimination does happen. Does it apply to CS? Not directly, but it's close enough that claims that it doesn't happen without evidence backing those claims begins to feel rather suspect.

But I know nothing will divert you from the true religious path of ignoring all evidence and going on what your feelings tell you you must believe. See? It's not just you who can make stupid religious analogies. I can play that astonishingly dull and pointless game too.

Re:What it means:

[goose-incarnated]

I strongly suspect that if your saw one for engineering, you'd dismiss is because it wasn't cs, and if it was CS, you dismiss it because wasn't the right sub sub sub sub sub field.

Hell no - the last time you posted it I asked you to find the one for either CS or IT. You coudn't find one then. Saying "Well, if I found one you'd dismiss it" is a cop out.

You're also so full of rage

Find even one post of mine that has insults in it :-) I dare you.

and belief that you are more or less unable to read without coloring it so strongly work your preconceived beliefs that it's a wonder you ever even bother to read.

What I have is proof that discrimination does happen for certain I some technical areas, whereas many puerile here believe it doesn't happen at all. So, it's proof that discrimination does happen. Does it apply to CS? Not directly, but it's close enough that claims that it doesn't happen without evidence backing those claims begins to feel rather suspect.

I didn't claim that it doesn't happen. I ask that you post this evidence you keep referring to but can't produce. You stance is the same one chosen by creationists, anti-vaxxers, AGW, etc... It is not up to me to disprove your claim, it is up to you to provide evidence. I keep saying this but you have yet to provide any.

It's very simple actually - when you make a claim, provide the reference. It's not very hard.

Re:What it means:

[hairyfeet]

Sigh...say it with me boys and girls, correlation does not equal causation and 5 whole seconds of logical thought (which when we are talking about post modern feminism is practically impossible) would let you know WHY things are the way they are!

Its really VERY simple, the women are as high as 5 times more likely (depending on age, background, education level, etc) to decide that they cannot ignore their biological clock and quit to raise a family...the man does not do this. this means that the not insignificant investment they make in the woman is a lot more likely to go sour than it is with the man therefor the man is worth more...its all down to the $$$, just as it always is. Why do you think Apple is offering to pay for the freezing of eggs of some of their employees? Because somebody sat down with the actuary tables and crunched the numbers and found in those cases its cheaper to pay for this than retraining...its math, simple as that.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, white privilege in a nutshell.

Isn't it interesting how the _assumption_ here seems to be that because the white workers are *all* qualified, hiring non-white workers equals "lowering the bar" or "hiring less qualified minorities"? OF COURSE because in the minds of many white people, advancement is a zero sum game which means that all minority advancement MUST come at the expense and to the detriment of the majority.

No doubt for many of these "I'm not a racist, some of my best friends are minorities... so just stop playing the race card!" white workers, diversity could *never* actually mean an influx of potentially *more* qualified candidates. Dare I imply that the very suggestion that the enlightened majority contemplate such blasphemy, in and of itself runs the risk that heads across this nation might explode in great numbers and grand fashion?

Perhaps I should...

Yep, every white person who owes their job to a *connection* (legacy, nepotism, friendship) that despite said connection being unavailable to their minority counterpart somehow subsidized the " (air-quotes) merit " (close-air-quotes) behind their employment-- Oh no, we couldn't start with letting any of THEM go in favor of giving a minority who probably had to work harder for it (because they didn't have access to that extra-meritocratic connection) an opportunity... George W Bush's father George HW Bush was a Yale alumni. It seems that despite being a self-admitted "C" student, legacy meant that it was more important that little George get in than any minority who might have had BETTER than George's "C" grades.

The reason why we need such initiatives is to put to rest the lie that white people are qualified to whichever jobs they hold by default. The truth is that like ALL populations, some are but like most populations MANY are NOT. Think of it this way: White people never knew had badly they could suck at sports until minorities were allowed to participate. The inclusion of minorities in baseball, basketball, golf, football, and other sports was no threat to TRULY talented white people from Joe Dimaggio, to Larry Bird, to John McEnroe, to substitute-your-white-example-of-athletic-excellence-here. The inclusion of minorities in sports have only truly displaced mediocre white athletes who suffered from the illusion that they were great in the absence of being tested.

Besides that, I doubt seriously that anyone would tell you that diversity in sports has LOWERED the standard for the sport in question. That's certainly not true of basketball or football, and thanks to Tiger Woods, that's not even true of golf. When Jackie Robinson first joined the Dodgers, white people insulted him and predicted the downfall of the American pasttime. A few years later, they would crowd the stands and buy and/or sing songs about his greatness.

So if you are keeping score:

Just ask any serious musician where the chord progressions of rock came from, ask Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney (oldtimers) or Eddie Vanhalen or Eric Clapton who their inspirations were. Ask Picasso where he found the inspiration for cubism. In fact, you should either visit a library or Google precisely how much minorities have contributed to this society in general from the long term storage of human blood, to the traffic light, to the expression of non-violent protest.

AND YET always minorities are confronted with nonsensical, history-defying, egocentric, self-serving rhetoric such as this thread whenever it comes time to discuss access to the opportunities that the majority has become accustomed to (and obviously feels ENTITLED to) TAKING FOR GRANTED. Always a call or implication that minorities have something to prove as if the very non-negotiable rights guaranteed them by the Constitution of these United States has ever been fully honored let alone implemented.

Even if there WERE a quota for minority hiring, I don't think I've ever heard that it would be more than about 10 percent, roughly reflective of minority populations in t

Re:What it means:

[ganjadude]

the correct term is "normal"

Re:What it means:

[kuzb]

"Hopefully we can agree that men and women are of equal intelligence and capability in STEM"

We can, without question. I would include all other races and nationalities as being reasonably equal as well.

"f you have a pool of 10 suitable candidates and 9 of them are men then statistically the chance of the best one being female is only 10%"

It shouldn't be able picking the best man or woman, it should be about picking the best person. This idea that gender must play a role in selection is as stupid when it's anti-female as when it's pro-female. We need to get to the point where it's pro-person.

The real problem is you get in to a system where you're giving preferential treatment to one group of people. Maybe it's not in the hiring phase - maybe it's in the education phase. For example, lets say a large portion of my education is paid for in grants, but only if I'm a woman. Is that still fair?

Re:What it means:

[kuzb]

You need to ask yourself a few things:

1) Will we ever achieve parity when it's readily apparent that the majority of women prefer professions working with people over working with things.

2) How can we tell when or if it's "working"? Parity, even if it is achievable doesn't mean that the best person for the job gets selected. It means a quota was met.

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

Find even one post of mine that has insults in it :-) I dare you.

Again with the reading and comprehension problems.

Anyway on to your other point. I can point at all sorts of examples of sexism all over the place. This is not hard.

Here's some more examples full of citations:

http://skepchick.org/2013/02/p...

Still not CS. Personally, I don't beliee CS is special and somehow immune from basic human bigorty. You also have no evidence of its specialness, and claiming specialness as you do is not some null hypothesis that you get for free.

And then there's all the personal anecdotes one hears from actual people in the field. There's the stuff I've personally witnessed at CS conferences directed at women that I've never seen directed at men.

There's also the fact that women are more likely to be victims of sexism than men simply by virtue of there being fewer of them.

http://iangent.blogspot.com/20...

So, it adds up. The last one for me is particularly convincing because it doesn't require any conspiracy, nor does it require men to be systematically more bigoted than women. All it requires is the existence of sexism in either direction and a difference in numbers.

So there you go. If you think CS is immune from the effect of maths and immune from basic human bigotry, then go ahead and think that. But be aware you're making a very strong assumption with no evidence at all.

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

So, in other words, people are rating women based on their genetalia rather than on their qualifications.

That is 100% the textbook definition of sexism.

So well done, you've just argued very forcefully for why sexism exists.

Re:What it means:

[Crosshair84]

He has pointed out the FACT that men and women are different and make different choices based on those differences and this is somehow sexist?

What next? Are you going to say that the fact that White people sunburn easier than Black people is also racist?

That the fact that the sky is blue is discriminatory against colorblind people?

Guess what? Life isn't fair. Never was and never will be. The sooner a person realizes that, the sooner a person can start looking at what can be done to make the world a better place and what is simply a pie in the sky fantasy..

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

So in other words you should judge people by their genitals, rather than their skills, qualifications and achievements?

Re:What it means:

[kuzb]

No, that's not what they mean at all. It seems you wrote a small novel based on a broken premise.

The "lowering the bar" comes from the fact that if you want to achieve 50/50 gender levels given today's number of applicants there is a greater likelihood that you'll need to compromise at some point when it comes to the female hiring. This is not because women are inherently incompetent or incapable of holding technical jobs - it's because there are fewer of them interested in such positions. if you have 6 positions to fill and you have 10 guys apply and 3 women your options become somewhat limited when trying to fill the positions with the best person for the job. Maybe all 3 women are qualified and excellent, maybe 2 are great and 1 failed the technical interview.

If you get in to "filling quotas" essentially you run the risk of needing to hire people just to fill that quota, even if there's a guy there who is perfect for the position. That is where it hurts the industry.

Re:What it means:

[kuzb]

It's not based on their genitalia. It's based on a risk assessment, and it's well founded.

I've personally seen it five times in the last 3 years at the company I work for. Women get pregnant, take maternity leave for the entire allowable duration, and then give their notice as soon as they get back.

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

It's a risk assessment, based on their gender. In other words, you are judging them based on their gender, not their achievements, skills and etc. So basically, you are saying you prefer men for the jobs over women.

That's sexist because you're discriminating based on sex. That is literally the dictionary definition of sexist.

What you are arguing is that sexism is ok and well founded. You're free to argue that if you wish.

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me again how many people in leadership positions aren't cishet white men? Go on, I'd love to see exactly how you justify a representation of Asian people in code-monkey positions as evidence against racism.

Just listen to some Asian people about it! They can tell you all the shit they get from Silicon Valley managers for being "repetitive, unremarkable" and how they're either supernaturally better than white people (which is, by the way, racist and dehumanizing, just like how crackers think black people have more magic/feel less pain is racist) or unfairly, undesirably outperforming whites.

Shut your mouth with your "model minority" bullwark.

Re:What it means:

[russotto]

Tell me again how many people in leadership positions aren't cishet white men?

• Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corporation.
• Kathleen Hogan, Executive Vice President, Human Resources, Microsoft Corporation
• Amy Hood, Executive Vice President and CFO, Microsoft Corporation
• Peggy Johnson, Executive Vice President, Business Development, Microsoft Corporation
• Qi Lu, Executive Vice President, Applications and Services, Microsoft Corporation
• Harry Shum, Executive Vice President, Technology and Research, Microsoft Corporation

That's 6 out of 15 on Microsoft's Senior Leader page.

• Tim Cook, CEO, Apple
• Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice President, Retail and Online Stores, Apple
• Lisa Jackson, Vice President, Environmental Initiatives, Apple
• Denise Young Smith, Vice President, Human Resources, Apple

4 out of 15 for Apple (and no Asians), but still not all cishet white male.
(Additionally, Eddy Cue, SVP of Internet Software and Services might qualify as Hispanic)

For Google, we've got

• David C. Drummond, Senior Vice President of Corporate Developmenr and Chief Legal Officer, Google
• Amit Singhal, Senior Vice President, Search, Google
• Lorraine Twohill, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, Google
• Rachel Whetstone, Senior Vice President, Communications and Policy, Google
• Sanjay Ghemawat, Senior Fellow, Google
• Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Comemrce, Google
• Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President, Android, Chrome, and Apps, Google
• Susan Wojcicki, Senior Vice President, YouTube
• • 
    That's 8 out of 20. (Also two Iranians)

    Facebook has 1 out of 5 (Sheryl Sandberg, COO)

    Shut your mouth with your "model minority" bullwark.

    Your term, not mine.

Re:What it means:

[kuzb]

When you say "the best person for the job" you have to include risk assessment. It's just makes sense. That entails things like "how long a person will remain with you". Even when someone has experience there's still substantial cost in bringing them up to speed with what is going on, the codebase, the tools that are used, etc.

Maternity leave means 4 - 5 months where that person is not available, and you're not allowed to replace them. This means you either have to make someone else pick up the slack for that time, or hire a temporary worker to fill that position who also costs time and money to train. Then what happens when a person has a change of heart and decides to just quit the moment they have to come back? Your investment has just been flushed down the toilet. It happens _a lot_ more than you think.

Think of it like this. If you show up at a fast food joint and ask for a job with a PhD on your resume there's a good chance you'll get rejected solely on the basis that you'll quit rapidly. We don't balk at that kind of risk assessment, because it's just logical. How is it any different with gender when it can be shown reasonably that there are serious and provable drawbacks?

Re:What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

The federal government and the progressives have been forcing this type of "affirmative action" policy on companies since the 1970s. It is one of the main forces that drive American jobs overseas or to automation.

Re:What it means:

[hairyfeet]

SJW alert! How to spoot an SJW...when reality goes against the political narrative ALWAYS choose to ignore reality and just continue to hammer the political narrative!

Tell me probable SJW, do you also scream "sexist!" at the fact women pay less for car insurance than men? Its because STATISTICS show that women are less likely to drive reckless or at very high speed, thus the odds of having a large payout with women is lower, do you scream and rail about this? I bet you don't.

What you are sticking your fingers in your ears and ignoring is a little concept that has been known and written about for...ohh over 100 years! Its called Labor Burden as in, the actual cost of the employee? And in a highly technical field training and orientation is a VERY significant cost, after all you can't just be dropped in the middle of some 10 million LOC project and just be told "get on it" now can you? Now if I have 2 candidates for a position and the statistics show that, no matter how much money I offer her, the female has a 1 in 3 chance of leaving my company in the next 4 years whereas the male candidate has a virtually nonexistent chance to leave (because I can always offer more money and benefits to keep him) I'm supposed to just roll the dice on what could mean a half million plus in training and lost time...why? So I can wave the progressive flag?

But you already know this, don't you? You're not a retard...you're just selfish and self centered and think companies should ignore statistics, just eat the huge costs (instead of pass them on to YOU which just FYI is what they do when they have to ignore real risks, they make YOU pay for the risks with higher prices) of lost training, momentum, hiring the temp when they take maternity leave AND the cost to start aaaallll over again when they QUIT (because the last figures I saw had something like 70% of women who take maternity leave quitting within 4 months of returning) and all so you can pretend that men and women are nothing but completely interchangeable cogs with no actual differences...and folks wonder why SJWs and progressives have become the butt of jokes, its because they are as wedded to dogma over reality as a young earth creationist.

Re:What it means:

[serviscope_minor]

Ah the cry of SJW! That almost vertainly means you're a moron, just going by past experience.

Tell me probable SJW, do you also scream "sexist!" at the fact women pay less for car insurance than men?

Um, yes? Sheila's wheels used to be an insurance agency that catered only to women, on the grounds they were safer drivers. So, why would I scream and rail about it? The law seems to deal with that sort of thing well enough.

Your entertaining rants about SJWs aside, the word "sexist" has a perfectly good definition and any perjorative is by implication because many people thing "sexist==bad". You are merely arguing that sexism is justified because you should be able to discriminate based on gender.

Just because you think it's justified, doesn't make the dictionary magically vanish and change the meaning of words. You believe that discrimination based on gender is reasonable. That's fine, but you will have to accept that is literally the definition of sexist and therefore you are sexist. You are perfectly free to thing that is a sensible point of view.

You are not free however to have language redefined to make you feel better about yourself.

What it means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hire less white males!

Extortion

[Stormwatch]

That's a nice company you got there. It would be a real shame if someone accused it of sexism...

Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

... The fashion industry needs more straight men. I'm all for increasing stem programs for high school. But don't be bigoted about it. Let everyone participate. And if women don't want to go into tech by choice... Get the fuck over it.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

What is this copy/paste, tin foil hat, fucktarded stupidity? Did you have something to say or are you just going to post Big Foot's manifesto?

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I actually do agree that more straight men need to get into fashion. Because the idea that straight cisgender men are just more likely to not get into fashion by the nature of their being is offensive. Women are being actively discouraged against being into STEM at young ages in a variety of ways. Some are really subtle but do have a disproportionally larger effect than you'd think.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

First off, no one is going to use the "cis gender" term. There are two genders in our species. Any genders beyond those two are in your head. You might as well list "dragon" or "unicorn" as a gender. That shit is literally make believe.

Second off, please badger the fashion industry to put quotas so that more hetro men feel comfortable. Also completely change the culture because the whole thing is uncomfortable for hetro men. When you've gotten any traction there, we'll talk. Also... hetro men want to be in fashion about as much as hetro women want to be in computer science. Aka... not much.

Third, women are not actively discouraged from being in STEM. How is giving boys action figures and girls dollies causing men to go into science and women to go into women's studies? How is GI Joe more a scientist then barbie? Ironically, your women's studies programs are probably doing more to derail women from getting meaningful degrees then anything. What is the value of a women's studies degree in business? Zero. Simply removing women's studies entirely as a valid major would probably significantly increase the number of meaningful degrees women get in college. Think about that.

As to the subtly of these things... you know you're in trouble when your theories become indistinguishable from one of those ghost hunter shows.

Men are not trying to keep women out of tech. We want them in tech. But tech is a meritocracy. Your vagina is a vagina. That is its value. And here's a news flash... computers don't care if you sit down or stand up to pee. When you get to coding... all anyone is going to care about is your coding. And you're going to compete against men working 50+ hour work weeks and if that is hard for you... tough shit. That is the job. Furthermore, if you do bad work or your work needs correction then that is going to nit picked and corrected by your peers. Your feelings don't matter because the fucking computer doesn't care if your feelings are hurt. Improve your fucking code.

And that is why lots of women that get so far as that point decide on a career change to do something else. It isn't because the people there hate women. It is because it is hard, obsessive, and impersonal. Whether women can hack it or not, most don't like it. And as I said... that's fucking tough. That's the job. You fuck with the US development houses and they'll either create smoke and mirrors to do the same thing while tricking you into thinking they're not doing it or they'll outsource the entire division to India where you're not going to interfere with the process. Hurray.... now no one has a job.

Leave it alone. It works. The life is not for everyone. Those that can handle it and like it stay... those that don't... leave. It isn't about your gender. Lots of men can't handle it either. No one sheds a tear for them. I'm not shedding a tear for someone in the 21st century just because they have a vagina. Get the fuck over yourselves and act like adults. That means toughen up, take personal responsibility for your own shitty choices, and stop blaming your parents or society for your serial fuck ups.

How anyone takes this shit even moderately seriously is a mystery to me. It sounds like nothing but naive childish whiny crap from end to soggy sobby end.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[tompaulco]

How exactly are they being actively discouraged? By being forced to take a computer class as part of core curriculum when they aren't really interested in computers? By being encouraged to take AP science and math so that they can get into a good college? By being given equal opportunity to choose which electives they want to take? Literally the only discrimination I see in any of the education programs is in the sports program, which I think the school's could do without anyway. If anything, not letting the girls play some of the rougher sports probably encourages more of them to go into academics, including STEM.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Women are being actively discouraged against being into STEM at young ages

Bull crap bull crap bull crap.

The rate of austism in males is dramatically higher than in females. WHY? BECAUSE male / female brains are different. Get it? Genetically different.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[AmiMoJo]

But what if women do want to go into STEM by choice but are put off by the gender based barriers placed in their way? What are you going to do then if you can't take any action that specifically addresses those issues because you consider it "bigoted"?

Your argument is made again and again on Slashdot, but no-one ever includes the follow on statement about how they will fix the problems that exist. Well, sometimes they deny the problems exist, but since we have large numbers of people telling us they have experienced them that doesn't seem very likely.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what if women do want to go into STEM by choice but are put off by the wizards and dragons in their way?

On the other hand, you and the other SJWs vaguely refer to these "gender based barriers placed in their way", and then proceed to "address" them without ever identifying them. What are these barriers? Are they actually real?

The most important part of addressing a problem is identifying the problem. You can't just wave your hands and pretend that the problem is whatever happens to fit your preferred solution the best.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

And which barriers would those be? I've heard them referred to but every time they've been examined in any detail they don't go anywhere.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[wiredlogic]

I'm all for increasing stem programs for high school.

All for continuing the lie that there's a bounty of science jobs available if young people just reach for the stars and wish it to be true?

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[chihowa]

A good deal of the problem likely comes from broad generalizations and/or moving goalposts. Is there a lack of diversity in "STEM" or in computer programming and engineering?

I'm in science and there is no discernible lack of diversity in my department. Many scientific fields are even predominantly female. Math has a bit of a male bias, but the applied maths are more balanced. I have no idea what careers "Technology" refers to. Engineering and computer programming (technology?) are the fields that are the most biased. Even in them, it's hard to define what these barriers are that you refer to.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what if women do want to go into STEM by choice but are put off by the gender based barriers placed in their way? What are you going to do then if you can't take any action that specifically addresses those issues because you consider it "bigoted"?

Just like everyone else, they (the individual woman, not some nebulous group called "women") take on the challenges of succeeding in their chosen field, unfair barriers and all. If a woman can't be bothered to pursue her goals, when faced with some opposition, then she can get out of the way of those who will bother. Whining about the unfairness of life earns no respect in this world (except possibly negative values), and makes one sound like a child. We all have barriers placed in our way. Face them or be buried by them.

To answer your second question: You take the action that specifically addresses those issues, while not giving a damn about what shaming buzz-words like 'bigot' that people might use.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Altus]

While I disagee about the two genders thing you clearly don't understand what cis means. A cis man was born genetically male and identifies as male. A cis female was born genetically female and identifies as female. The opposite is trans. A trans man was born genetically female but identifies as a man. A trans woman was born genetically male but identifies as a woman.

The prefix is derived from the terms trans and cis as they are used in chemistry. Cis is not a gender, it, like trans, it refers to the dynamic between genetic sex and gender identity.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Altus]

The thing is these discourage to take place well before these programs. I'm not saying that there are not barriers later in life but so much of it is formed very early including the tendency for some men to think that women are not able to manage this stuff. For every young girl discoraged there are young boys hearing the same thing. They both learn early that " Girls aren't good at math or engineering."mIf we don't change this at a very young age then a highschool aged program will have little to no effect.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

As to two genders, there are literally only two genders. Ask a biologist how many genders exist amongst mammals on planet earth... in REALITY?

They will tell you "two"... male and female. The male carries sperm and the female carries fertile eggs, the ability to gestate those fertilized eggs in her womb, and can even provide high quality nourishment for the BABY when it is born which she excretes from her breasts.

Now. Those are two sexes that exist... in reality.

Now you have additional sexes? You say men that identify as woman or women that identity as men?

What is a man that identifies as a unicorn? What "sex" is that? What about a man that identities as a very confused glass of orange juice?

Sex has NOTHING to do with self identification anymore then my height or weight or the number of fingers I have on my hands has anything to do with how I identify the above variables.

Lets say I identify as someone with 25 fingers but I really just have the same 10 or 8 plus 2 thumbs that everyone else has? How many fingers do I have? Identification as you call it is make believe.

As to genetic sex and gender identity... genetic sex is real. Gender identity is in your head. And that's fine. You can believe whatever you want. But your gender is in your genes. Simple fucking fact.

I'm sorry that some people are not the genders they want to be and I have no problem with people transitioning or just cutting their dicks off and doing whatever kind of make believe makes them happy. That is their business and I won't interfere with it.

However, you are not a different gender just because you feel like you're a different gender or just because you cut your dick off. You're your genetic gender. Sorry. Now if you want to get into genetic engineering where the transitioning happens at a biological level, then that is another matter. You do that and I'll consider you a man or woman or whatever. But if you just cut your dick off and put a wig on... then you're a dude that cut his dick off and put a wig on.

Sorry.

I understand perfectly what this cis crap means. I've been bombarded with halfwits telling me about for months. You're not what you identify as... you are what you are. If men want to walk around in dresses or cut their dicks off then that is fine by me. I will neither judge them nor interfere with whatever makes another person happy so long as whatever they're doing is consensual.

Forcing me or attempting to force me to acknowledge you as a gender you are not however is not consensual. It is manipulative and coercive. I do not respect such actions and take them as an affront to MY individual rights. Just as I extend to you the right to do as you please and believe what you like... I am likewise afforded the right to believe what I like.

If you presume to tell me I must accept non-females or non-males as either females or males then I'm going to take that as a hostile move. The social contract between us will be broken and I'll be under no obligation to respect your rights since you've shown no respect for mine.

It is my belief that this cis stuff is bullshit. My belief. I back that with objective reality if you'd like to go there but I don't think I need to.

You be tolerant of me and my beliefs and I'll be tolerant of yours. Being tolerant does not require me to have or even understand your values. I merely have to tolerate them. And I do. You can believe whatever makes your boat go vroom vroom. That's just super. I'm not participating, condoning, or accepting any action that doesn't conform with my personal beliefs any more then those people are forced to accept my beliefs. We tolerate each other. You leave me be and don't try to impose your nonsense on me and I'll not impose the cold hard light of reality on you.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

I said no such thing. As to why I'd be happy to have stem education increased indifferent to jobs?.. because it will make children less ignorant of how the modern world works.

The reality is that increasingly EVERYONE is going to have to know a bit about all these things. It isn't acceptable to have only a small subset of the population know anything about it while the rest is largely ignorant of it all.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Altus]

Sex (the biological definition, not the act) and gender are not the same thing

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

yes they are...

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Women are put off by your White Knighting and patriarchal attitude that they need to be "protected" by noble dicks such as yourself. Why would women put up with your neuroses when they can simply take an accountancy degree and work with actual professionals.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

Boys are not told that girls are bad at math and engineering. I never heard that growing up and I am simply baffled at where you think that is coming from.

What I did know was that girls don't like to obsessively work on projects alone or suffer uncompromising criticism from peers or superiors.

The culture of the literal world where things are right or wrong is not one that a lot of girls tend to aspire to. I'm not sure why that is but it is.

They stay away from most jobs where doing the wrong thing is black and white WRONG. How many female surgeons are there? Largely male dominated you will find. Lots of female doctors though. They just tend to be diagnosticians or something where they aren't using a scalpel to cut tumors out with their own hands. And that's despite the fact that women are supposed to have better fine coordination.

It hardly stops there. Look at the world of investment finance where a wrong move costs millions in an instant. Right and wrong.

Same in engineering, most of the hard sciences outside of biology, and much of computer science.

Maybe I'm finding the wrong pattern here but you will notice that all those jobs have a very clear and uncompromising notion of right and wrong. Now, consider jobs that women tend to dominate as a comparison... how many of them have absolute measures of right and wrong built into them?

Here, I suspect you'll say that all those jobs I listed are sexist and full of a hostile anti woman atmosphere that rejects women. But do you really think an investment bank gives a flying fuck who is managing accounts if they're making money? They don't. You could be a two headed dog from the moon for all they care. Do you think either the man under the knife of the hospital cares so long as the surgeon saves lives? Nope. How about companies that hire engineers or the people that buy the products made by those companies? Do they go "eww girls made this!"... nope. It either works and is a good design or it isn't and no one cares either way. Do you know or care who made your car or your washing machine or the jet engine in your airplane? No one cares so long as the work was done properly.

Same with coding. How often do you think people go through and find out who made their program? They probably know the name of the company that made it but they're unlikely to know the name of the CEO much less anyone on the team of coders that slapped the program together.

Neither your sex nor gender matters when the work gets serious. The distinction is irrelevant and arbitrary to the task. If your genitals aren't going to do the work then who cares if you stand up to pee, sit down, do it through a tube that goes into a bag tied to your leg, or whatever creative way you've figured out how to make water. It really doesn't matter. And no serious professional gives a shit what you have between your legs unless it is relevant to the work. So if you're a prostitute... perhaps it is relevant... otherwise... no. Perhaps once people cared... but today... no.

You're fighting old battles that were already won a generation ago. This whole thing is like some sad misguided Renascence fair only with the 60s being the time to reenact. Its a stupid game. Lets all wear tie dyed shirts, put on blue tinted sun glasses, make some hand painted signs, and throw peace signs around.

Let me make this deal with you... I'll not pretend you're a dragon/orc/evil knight that I have to slay in mortal combat for my liege lord... and you don't bore me with your nonsense. It isn't real. Accept that you are living in the year 2015. Girls and boys make their own choices and if girls and boys want to be treated like adults and not children... then they had best accept their choices as theirs.

Re:Tech needs more women like...

[Karmashock]

Only commenting because people are still rating me up and down here... just out of curosity... can I have my "gender" be "unicorn"?

And if not... isn't that unicornphobic?

Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is discrimination fought with discrimination...

Do people not know how to hire the best candidate anymore?

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

When the best candidate isn't even applying because they don't feel welcome then you've got a problem. And Intel is spending $300 million to try and solve it.

Re:Sad

[jedidiah]

Ironically enough they probably don't "feel welcome" because of how shabbily companies like IBM treat their talent.

It also doesn't help that nerds are shat on in popular culture and the communications and journalism majors never pass up an opportunity to dump on nerds even more. This article and your response is another fine example.

When measured up to "lawyer babes" and "doctor babes", how can STEM hope to captivate a crowd that is still quite honestly still in the thrall Vogue and Glamour?

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

And how much is the NBA spending to make white basketball players feel welcome?

Re: Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as much as they need to spend on compensation to the people who bring in the money.

Here's a hint. It isn't the owners.

Re:Sad

[frank_adrian314159]

Do people not know how to hire the best candidate anymore?

Anymore? Did they ever?

Tech needs more aliens

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard that aliens make amazing programmers, we just need to sink our money and effort into a time wormhole device.

Do a big push to hire male teachers and nurses

[Anonymous Coward]

That way, fewer men will be available to be engineers and scientists. It's foolproof!

Re: Do a big push to hire male teachers and nurses

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been tried. They won't settle for the low pay, worse hours and poorer treatment.

Re:Do a big push to hire male teachers and nurses

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. Men WANT to be nurses, but women are actively keeping them out. We need to equally hire men, even if they are less qualified.

Who responsible for editing summaries?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Come on, Dice. It's the first sentence of the summary.

Diversity or wages?

[manu0601]

Is it about diversity, or just having more engineers in the job market so that wages can be kept low?

Re:Diversity or wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, at this point, I have to wonder if something more nefarious isn't afoot.

Seems to me promoting diversity over ability is a subtle way to hamstringing smaller companies.

Intel and the like can afford to have token employees, and even have the means to scalp the very best from that limited pool. Having forced diversity quotas, with an increased risk of sub-performing employees isn't likely to hurt them too much. I've already seen quite a few under-performing employees promoted to a nice safe distance from being able to do actual harm.

Smaller companies however can't afford to carry that much dead weight, and if they are forced to pick from the scraps in the name of some misguided diversity initiative, that's enough to sink them or risk holding them up to public scorn for being a bastion of whatever ism is most hated at the time.

Re:Diversity or wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me promoting diversity over ability is a subtle way to hamstringing smaller companies.

Yeah, that's a BRILLIANT idea. Promote diversity over ability, and then wonder why all the ABLE people you've passed up on end up working for your competitiors, who then destroy you.

Intel really has this evil empire thing down to a science.

Or maybe you're just fucking high.

Re:Diversity or wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may shocked to learn, but no company operates with only brilliant people. Especially for larger companies, you want at most 20% brilliance and the rest worker bees.

And as we've seen from the countless whining treads here, seems quite a few of the able are going hungry, unable to compete against the barely competent but cheap. Worse case scenario, you work out anti-poaching agreements like Intel has already done to keep your talent in place.

You might try lighting up yourself.

Re:Diversity or wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may shocked to learn, but no company operates with only brilliant people. Especially for larger companies, you want at most 20% brilliance and the rest worker bees.

So what you're saying is that no company hires "the best" candidates anyway, and they frequently choose to promote diversity over ability, so the point is moot? You're really on a roll broseph.

Re:Diversity or wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Promote diversity over ability, and then wonder why all the ABLE people you've passed up on end up working for your competitiors, who then destroy you.

Not if everyone is legally required to hire non-asian minorities. And Intel has no real competitors. AMD they already crippled and ARM is beating them but only on their home turf.

Intel really has this evil empire thing down to a science.

Pretty much, except they're not an empire. Empires follow the law.

Re:Diversity or wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite, boy genius, more "the best" is dependent on the particular roles that need to be filled. Not everyone can be Kirk. You need a few red shirts to fill out the line.

Aaaand diversity in that context refers to the roles, not the genders or race of the people.

Judging from the lack of discernment in your comments, the only large organization you've dealt with, if ever, is maybe the Rush fan club.

People get hired all the time for simply having nice tits or being the cousin of the brother of the branch manager. The organizations don't collapse in some artifice to the sanctity of meritocracy. Most large organizations have a ton of dead weight.

And being able to dictate what forms of dead weight other companies must carry is a huge advantage.

But don't take my word for it. Simply ask yourself how Intel survived the colossal hemorrhaging of money that was Itanic, and cry your little eyes out that the world isn't fair.

Re:Diversity or wages?

[AmiMoJo]

So your argument is that women should stay in the kitchen you keep your wages a little higher? Maybe we should just scrap STEM education altogether to prevent any future generations competing with you?

Re:Diversity or wages?

[frank_adrian314159]

Is it about diversity, or just having more engineers in the job market so that wages can be kept low?

Intel (and other large companies) says: Why argue when you can have both?

Re:Diversity or wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say that you did. GP only suggested that the stated goal may be a smokescreen and that there may be an alternate goal.

First I guess you might want to ask yourself "given the general attitude of corporations toward its workforce is it more likely that they care about gender and minority representation or that they are looking for a legal way to artificially increase supply and therefore place downward pressure on price e.g. their payroll".

I'll give you a hint, only one of these two possibilities increases shareholder value.

Hmm

[MPBoulton]

I hope the money will not be prioritised to the items at the start of that list, because encouraging everyone to do STEM subjects is the only sustainable solution to this that doesn't pad out a quota at the expense of expertise.

Re:Why the United States Always Loses Its Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.
  - Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

Somethig wrong with that

[frovingslosh]

What a Diversity Pledge Really Means is that a company is committed to discriminating against the best qualified candidate if that candidate is a white male. Let the lawsuits begin.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

What a Diversity Pledge Really Means is that a company is committed to discriminating against the best qualified candidate if that candidate is a white male. Let the lawsuits begin.

I have dumped all my Intel stocks or else I would launch a class-action suit against Intel of wasting shareholders' money to promote discriminatory practices

$300 million is not a small amount, you know?

I rather Intel distributes that $300 million to the shareholders than to use it to promote a discriminatory program !

I do not care what they want to term it - be it 'diversity' or 'reverse-discrimination' --- the whole thing walks, quack, and smell like a racial segregatory and gender segregatory program, and no amount of political correctness is going to help America's technology to become even more advance!

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't blame Intel.

The idea that corporations control the government is a mostly a myth and these diversity "investments" are proof. Intel knows that an investment in diversity is insurance against the government. It's a payoff. It's protection money.

If Intel didn't have to worry that its business might be in danger from an aggressive government, they wouldn't bother making this pointless investment.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Its an issue If they hire a less qualified woman over a more qualified male just because she's a woman. Thats exactly what programs like this encourage.

Should more women enter technology? Sure. Is anyone stopping them? NO. Is it outside the realm of possibility that less women are interested in the technology sector than men? NO. I have a lot of female friends. I grew up with 2 sisters and no brothers so I have more female friends than male. Only one of them has any interest in technology and ive asked why..ive asked if they were ever discouraged from any stem field and they all said no, they just WERENT INTERESTED.

The one who's into technology works in a robotics lab. She loves it and has never has any issues with the men around her.

This whole current pushing of this nonsense no women in tech is going to turn and bite the sector in the ass. You can't force interest and if you start lowering the bar to meet hiring quotas thats not only unfair to everyone else its also a great way to lower quality output.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

How brave of you, rushing to defend the status quo with uninformed opinions.

If you remove identifying information from resumes before they get to hiring managers, diversity goes *up*. Which means that we haven't been hiring the best and the brightest. We've been hiring those who are similar to us. There are many hiring and HR practices that when changed, do improve diversity.

Not just that, but as Neil de Grasse Tyson said about being black and in STEM, who was left behind? Who was told, "No don't focus on STEM, go play sports go do something else, you're black, STEM's not for you." So all of the money being invested in education is also going to mean is to try to stop the meme that, "you're a girl you shouldn't get into STEM. Go into arts or history or become a homemaker."

To suggest that the current status quo is acceptable is ignorant, if not dangerous.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[radarskiy]

No, it means committed to not discriminating against the best qualified candidate if they are not a white male.

Since no one has ever been able to even fake some data showing that white males as a whole are more qualified, having a disproportionate number of white males means that qualified candidates have been overlooked.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

If you literally believe that nobody is getting in the way of women entering technology, you're crazy. Simply crazy. It's not as if it's hard to find extreme examples.

You have to stop being convinced that complex problems always have a simple, single answer. Non-interest is a potential part of the answer, it's also a potential part of the question (interest in a thing is not uncorrelated with the realities of the world around us).

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is that they fell for and supported an ambulance chaser like Anita Sarkeesian. A communications major with nothing on her resume other than stirring shit up and extorting groups for money and sympathy the same way Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition do (that is, scummy people scamming the systme like the mafia but under the guise of a supposedly worthy cause).

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

>If you remove identifying information from resumes before they get to hiring managers, diversity goes *up*

What study has shown this? (Genuinely curious).

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

[If you remove identifying information from resumes before they get to hiring managers, diversity goes *up*]

What load of bull. Where do you come by this? Anyone hiring blindly solely based on resumes without interviewing and practical tests has no clue especially in the tech industry as resumes often means as much as politician's promises so your claim seems dubious at best but probably willingly skewed to promote your agenda.

Maybe Dr Manning's Youtube videos are right after all.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[tompaulco]

Study after study supports that hiring and compensation programs have a gender bias.

That is correct. Women are paid less than men with equal skills and equal jobs. And yet somehow there are still fewer women. Could it be that companies are so foolish with their money that even though a just as competent woman is cheaper, they would still hire the male?

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove your tin hat man. So you imply that there is some far reaching conspiracy among white males never discovered before to only hire white males rather than another more logical explanation. Your attempt at applying reductio ad absurdum is so absurd its laughable and its clear why you've been overlooked in the tech industry.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just that, but as Neil de Grasse Tyson said about being black and in STEM, who was left behind? Who was told, "No don't focus on STEM, go play sports go do something else, you're black, STEM's not for you." So all of the money being invested in education is also going to mean is to try to stop the meme that, "you're a girl you shouldn't get into STEM. Go into arts or history or become a homemaker."

I work in STEM and I'm going to call bullshit here. Nobody I know would ever say something like that - be it about ethnicity, gender or any other characteristic unrelated to ability. Maybe someone is saying that to black kids or women, but they sure as hell aren't from within the STEM sector - most likely the problem exists within the minority communities themselves. I am utterly convinced that the biggest putter off for women coming into STEM, for instance, is all these feminists from outside STEM who go around pronouncing STEM to be an utterly horrible and oppressive environment for women. I saw a (male) "feminist" the other day criticising people for referring to someone as a "lady professor" yet "feminists" are precisely the people who will make a big deal out of someone's gender. The "less feminist" people I know couldn't care whether you have a penis, vagina or anything else so long as you're good at what you do. But no, feminists have to go around scaring people off by claiming that men in un-PC shirts will eat them alive if they go into STEM.

/rant over

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

People are also getting in the way of *men* entering technology. You're crazy, simply crazy if you think otherwise.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Embedded2004]

Look at the % of females graduating at top colleges with computer science degrees, it's small %. At top schools it's only 14%. A 32% target is only possible if they hire unqualified candidates or the % is balanced by non-tech positions (e.g.: HR).

Or, are you sexist and believe that the 14% of women entering college are proportionally superior to 86% of the males?

Until more women become interested in tech careers expecting to see significant changes in hiring isn't going to happen (other than by failing or soon to be failing companies).

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Women are paid less than men with equal skills and equal jobs. And yet somehow there are still fewer women. Could it be that companies are so foolish with their money that even though a just as competent woman is cheaper, they would still hire the male?

It's not that simple. Like most business decisions in the real world there are plenty of mitigating factors. Knowing nothing else about the candidates it can be shown that a woman hire is statistically much more likely to take time off for family reasons or maternity. This has a non-zero cost to ongoing projects, long term productivity and the like, all of which must be discounted to balance the risk a company takes when hiring a woman instead of a man who is much less likely to take time off for family reasons and even less likely to take any substantial maternity leave. This balance comes in the form of a pay cut to the woman to balance out these risks. The business world is tough and companies aren't charities. The directors are duty bound to maximize value for the owners and they cannot do that by running the business as a charity or at least not without the permission of the owners. Now of course there are always individual exceptions to these general rules. Indeed, there are many excellent female executives working in corporate America these days and a fair share of worthless men, but it's best not to delude ourselves with misguided reasoning on why companies prefer to hire men for some jobs. Just because you don't see the reasons doesn't mean there aren't any, especially when one considers the goal of any company, and especially publicly traded companies, which must be always and everywhere to maximize shareholder value.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Pentium100]

Or it means discriminating against the best qualified candidate if he's a white male and they currently have too few women hired.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if it means discriminating against men in the same manner that feminists claim women are discriminated. I'm sure you love opposite day.. just like every marxist. The old 'freedom is slavery' bit.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Mr.CRC]

Who is doing this "guidance counceling" anyway? Is guidance counceling dominated by white males (not in my experience)? Or are the people so concerned about diversity the ones doing the discouraging--to create a self-fulfilling prophesy which can only be solved by... Guess?

No one should be telling kids what they should do or be interested in anyway. And if the kids are so weak of self respect and awareness that they need someone to tell them what to do, this is a profound endictment of the entire public school system. It simply needs to be abolished.

Guidance councelors should only be providing kids with the honest truth about what needs to be done to accomplish what the kids say they want to do. The only exception might be to show an objective comparison of effort vs. probability of payoff for special cases of very hard to enter fields, such as movie star or NFL player. But even still, if someone wants to be an NFL player and falls short, maybe they can leverage their extensive training experience into a career in physical education, research, etc.

Failures rarely have to be total.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Mr.CRC]

Under no circumstances will SJWs allow the problems they tirade against actually be solved, or progress constituting effectively 90-99% improvement, be recognized. Thus they will certainly contribute to the problems, in the most insidious ways.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Loki_1929]

If there are some women who are perfectly capable of learning to do the job, and they're being steered away from tech careers by well meaning guidance counselors because "vaginas!" then it is NOT an issue. Even if it *is* an issue of emphasizing genitals over ability, that is NOT "segregation," as the GGP poster stated.

It isn't "segregation", but it is discriminatory hiring practices. If we take the view that less qualified individuals should be hired on the basis that they are "perfectly capable of learning to do the job", then Intel and other companies shouldn't be targeting women, but high school drop-outs, illegal immigrant farm workers, and convicted felons who will be cheap and easy to find. Those groups are most certainly more under-represented than women in that field.

We can debate the merits of a strategy utilizing apprenticeships for certain jobs, but the fact is that there are plenty of people who don't need to learn to do the job who are looking for work. Until it comes to pass that that's no longer the case, then hiring anyone but the most qualified for the job, especially when race, sex, or other such factors are overriding job qualifications, is prejudicial and discriminatory and it ought to be illegal. That goes both ways; excluding women or minorities as well as excluding whites and males.

If we want fairness, let's have fairness; not unfairness in the other direction.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you remove identifying information from resumes before they get to hiring managers

By all means do that. I think that is a great idea. But when you start discriminating white men, you are bad and should feel bad.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Kohlrabi82]

What social justice warriors get wrong is that they say that diversity is the ultimate goal, and everything else must bow to that. They think that diversity is an aim and not a symptom. But what does "improving" diversity mean? There might as well be people who argue that less diversity is an improvement. So SJW have already pre-decided what the "best" outcome without using any form of metric other than the ratio of men to women.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, this is just foolish. You are basing your opinion on false premises:

  > Is anyone stopping them? NO.

FALSE. Wrong answer! Almost everyone a girl meets on the way up the road steers her the other way, from parents and friends and teachers to supermarkets and socks.

> Its an issue If they hire a less qualified woman over a more qualified male just because she's a woman.

You assume that "qualified" is easily quantifiable, which suggests that you haven't much experience with the hiring process. You're also assuming that there's just one axis of better and worse, and that the people who write the job descriptions have the foresight to see what they'll need in a year's time.

The hiring process - along with most workplace interactions - bias heavily in favour of People Like Me. But such people are less likely to do things I wouldn't think of, and they don't challenge my preconceptions.

Let me put it another way: Goldman Sachs takes this stuff incredibly seriously. You think you know better about business and qualification than Goldman Sachs? Or are you just considering the lame-ass end of the market? (Or "lame ass-end" - works both ways, xkcd).

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Chrisq]

If you literally believe that nobody is getting in the way of women entering technology, you're crazy. Simply crazy. .

I'd like to point out that this could be good news, as Intel is seriously under quota for crazy employees. Microsoft on the other hand ....

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Vintermann]

Yes, it could be, in fact. Few companies are on such an existential knife-edge that they can't afford to make a few godawful decisions. If you don't believe that, I have a couple of teambuilding activities and motivational speakers to sell you.

As it happens, I think that companies do rush to hire competent women, and even less competent women due to quite rational reasons (a company's productivity is not simply the sum of its employees skills). It's a supply problem, and it starts long before high school. But whether I am right or wrong about that, an argument that a business sector can't possibly collectively and systematically make poor decisions, is a weak argument.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Vintermann]

Intel knows that an investment in diversity is insurance against the government.

It's not government they're afraid of, it's their rivals' PR teams, and powerful people in media who on a whim might decide to throw their power around.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Vintermann]

Which means that we haven't been hiring the best and the brightest. We've been hiring those who are similar to us.

I agree, and I totally support blinding of resumes, and as much blinding as possible in general. But there's one thing you overlook, which leaves your argument vulnerable:

It's possible that hiring the best and the brightest is not the wisest move. It's possible that it's a good idea to hire those who are similar to us. I don't think so, but it's possible, we don't know.

To take a concrete example, take the study that showed lab assistants were rated more poorly with a female name on the resume. That's solid proof of gender prejudice. But playing the devil's advocate here, we don't know that it's unjustified prejudice. Perhaps the people evaluating the resumes have had tons of lab assistants of both genders, and found a clear tendency that the women performed worse than their resumes suggested, and the men performed better.

Thing is, even if that were true, I'd advocate for blinding. It's not for efficiency's sake that we should end discrimination, but for justice's sake: You didn't choose to be born a woman, you deserve to be judged on individual merits. Even if women on average were awful at this job, that information should be off-limits to use in hiring decisions, because using it would be a great injustice to those who are not awful.

This is of course even more salient in the case of race and ethnicity. Because while it is highly implausible that women should be worse lab assistants, we do have crime statistics, and if people were allowed to discriminate based on those, it's quite possible that a shop owner could "reasonably" deny Roma entrance to his shop, for instance. It will probably reduce shoplifting! But it's also a horrible injustice to those Roma who do not shoplift. It doesn't matter if that is 90%, or 10%. It doesn't matter if there's just one honest Roma in the whole country. No individual should answer for the statistical proclivities of a category he didn't choose to be in and can't even escape.

But this also shows why blinding yourself to information about race and gender can't just be a "best practice". That asshole shop owner who denies Roma entrance to his shop, he's doing a great injustice, but he might well a comparative advantage over more fair shop owners. Being just can be costly, and because of that, it's important that we demand sharing that burden fairly. We can hope that when we do, we find that it isn't so costly after all, maybe it's even a net benefit. But we must never base our demand for justice on such hopes. Justice first, then profit.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[AmiMoJo]

Oblig. XKCD: http://xkcd.com/385/

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[AmiMoJo]

Look at the % of females graduating at top colleges with computer science degrees, it's small %. At top schools it's only 14%.

That's why they are spending so much money at the school level. If they can get that number up to 32% then naturally when selecting the best candidate 32% of the time they will be female. A company like Intel needs a lot of good talent, and when you need something that is in limited supply one of the obvious things to do is increase the supply.

This scheme will work well for Intel, because when the those women that they helped do graduate with high marks Intel will already have a relationship with them and Intel staff will be well networked at university/college level, so get the first pick of the best minds.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

So women are a "minority group"? I thought that 50% of the population was female? Isn't that good enough for you?

Idiot.

Most women aren't interested in computers. Nothing is stopping women from learning how to code, etc. They just aren't interested. Why aren't you bleating about there not being enough women working on oil rigs, down mines, building skyscrapers, in metal smelting plants, etc.?

Did I mention that you were an idiot?

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[DasDad]

And I love how the less substance there is to an argument* the faster its proponents will pull out strawmen and baseless accusations. * Such as in this case: The argument that tech needs to diversify with more women. Regardless of how many women actually are interested in a career in tech. msn

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[DasDad]

And I love how the less substance there is to an argument* the faster its proponents will pull out strawmen and baseless accusations. * Such as in this case: The argument that tech needs to diversify with more women. Regardless of how many women actually are interested in a career in tech.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Macthorpe]

Replying to undo accidental moderation. This is a great post.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[hairyfeet]

This is what I hate about that section of the left now called "Social Justice Warriors" which we used to call "East Coast liberals" is that they are NOT for what Dr King marched for, the right of ALL PEOPLE to be judged by the content of their character, no they are for racism and the only difference between their racism and the racists of the early 20th century is the colors they discriminate for and against! And you can bet your last dollar that its this group that let loose the waaahmbulance and got Intel to throw money at this racist crap to get them to go away.

But I want to thank Intel, I've said ever since it came out Intel was bribing OEMs and rigging benchmarks (which they do to this very day BTW, just recently Cinebench was caught using CPUID to tell the software to slow down if the chip was AMD) that we should vote with our wallets and go AMD, which I have exclusively ever since, but this kind of bullshit just gives me an extra warm and fuzzy feeling to know that not only am I saving my customers money while giving them really good performance but the icing on the cake is I'm not supporting racism...thx Intel!

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[drinkypoo]

A company like Intel needs a lot of good talent, and when you need something that is in limited supply one of the obvious things to do is increase the supply.

Yeah, and one of the ways to do that is to increase the demand. When intel stops hiring H1-Bs, we can take them seriously. Until then, fuckem.

This scheme will work well for Intel, because when the those women that they helped do graduate with high marks Intel will already have a relationship with them and Intel staff will be well networked at university/college level, so get the first pick of the best minds.

The ones that actually go to work in the field at all, that is.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

You're full of it. You know who encouraged me? No one. In no direction, other than my dad's blue collar dead end job as a mechanic.

Who held my hand? No one. I got good on my own. Without college, I may add (I went and graduated 10 years after everyone else because I simply had no money to do that before). And you know what? I still made it.

I'm tired of others making excuses why they don't make it. Fucking go out and do it! No one holds our hand in life. Why should it be different for them?

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Equal opportunities do not necessarily result in equal outcomes.

Intel is going to lower the bar for women to make a quota like they're doing in the military. And you know what you get? Worse candidates who will increase the workload for others to pick up the slack.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, out come the racists, every time.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. When you say "diversity goes up", you mean "fewer white males are hired", which is GENOCIDE. Why don't you want to live in your own country, around your own race? Why can't you leave white people alone? Why are you here?

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Dr. Evil]

At those numbers, it means that a female graduate has >2x the chance of being hired at Intel than her male classmates.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Bengie]

According to many, resumes are a horrible way to hire people, but a great way to limit the number of people you wish to interview.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[firex726]

Also ignore the STEM aspect, if women were paid so much less then men, then the natural effect of capitalism would make it so they are much more desired.

As a business owner, you'd be able to cut your employee salary by 30%, that is a lot to most businesses.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[firex726]

Maybe they meant to get to the interview portion?

Remove gender and suddenly more women are being interviewed?

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck getting a job there in the future if you have a dick.

To be followed in a few years by the headline "Once-great Chip Maker Intel to Sell to AMD for Cheap," which will feature the quote "We're not really sure what went wrong" from its female CEO.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[NotDrWho]

You're right - it's total segregation to want to bring more women into the workplace with men!

No, idiot. It's total segregation when you attempt to SEGREGATE a particular gender/racial/ethnic/religious group by your hiring practices. You know, like discriminating against one group over another based on gender/race/etc. ....which is EXACTLY what they're doing here.

"But their INTENTIONS are noble," you say. Yeah, so were Hitler's.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[west]

That is correct. Women are paid less than men with equal skills and equal jobs. And yet somehow there are still fewer women. Could it be that companies are so foolish with their money that even though a just as competent woman is cheaper, they would still hire the male?

Indeed, that's why discrimination against blacks never occurred in post-slavery America. Businesses used androids who weren't actually subject to exactly the same bias as society as a whole to decide their hiring thus maximizing their profits.

Anyone who doesn't believe that culture doesn't beat profit 9 times out of 10 doesn't understand how human beings work. Krikey, put culture vs. survival, and a strong majority will choose culture.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Roodvlees]

there's plenty of good women candidate. What they are going to do is look for women and make an effort to find female candidates instead of just taking the first male white candidate that offers up.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[DocSavage64109]

They don't even have to hire women into technology positions. I bet they suddenly have a huge influx of female secretaries and such.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners) is behind this “pledge”. They are the largest terrorist organization on Earth.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[HornWumpus]

What? Do you know anyone who works for Intel?

They're like EDS. Nobody that knows the them, would consider working for them.

They used to be a great engineering company, now they are a great marketing company. R&R reflects your skill at marketing.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Penguinisto]

Fun question: If women are truly paid less for the same job, then wouldn't it be more profitable to hire them instead, given that they're, oh, I dunno... *cheaper*?

Think about this - women are underrepresented in the industry, yet every company and its dog wants to keep employee overhead costs down as much as possible. So maybe you can tell us exactly *why* you think it is that there is some effort to exclude female job candidates - a few usable cites will help.

Now old factors such as pre-1964 era racism I could understand, but the argument you present makes zero sense, since there's no "girls are icky" factor to speak of (let alone prove) in STEM-oriented industries.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

So all of the money being invested in education is also going to mean is to try to stop the meme that, "you're a girl you shouldn't get into STEM. Go into arts or history or become a homemaker."

Have fun with that, while a vocal minority is screeching 'you're a girl you shouldn't get into STEM, you'll be raped the instant you settle your hands on a keyboard and no one will believe you.'

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[russotto]

You just have to understand what "diversity" means. You'd think it would mean that across employees, you had a varied set of genders, races, nationalities, etc, right? Nope. Diversity applies to an individual person. If you're a white male or an asian male, you're non-diverse. If you're anything else, you're diverse. A company made of 100% black women has perfect diversity; a company with 20% white American men, 20% white European men, 20% Korean men, 20% Japanese men, and 20% Chinese men has no diversity at all.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[ganjadude]

Study after study supports that hiring and compensation programs have a gender bias.

Citation? because ive seen the opposite, meaning if 2 people, one male the other female start the same job path at the same time, and dont have kids they get paid the same

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[ganjadude]

most likely the problem exists within the minority communities themselves.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. but we cant talk about that or we are sexist or racist.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[ganjadude]

they are taking a play right out of al sharptons playbook

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[AmiMoJo]

Can you explain how an effort to get more women into STEM is racist?

Maybe you were talking about something else. Can you perhaps explain how a charity helping underprivileged black kids is racist? Are you arguing that because they are not helping white kids as well, that makes them racist? I think you will find that racism is doing things that are harmful to one race, not simply failing to help them because your focus is elsewhere.

Maybe you mean it is discrimination. There is some merit to that argument, in that it fits the dictionary definition, but when people talk about discrimination they usually mean discrimination with negative consequences. Hiring the best person for the job is not "discrimination" as most people would define it, even though you are discriminating by not giving everyone a job.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[AmiMoJo]

I've tried really hard to not to call people misogynists, preferring to assume good faith based on some misguided views. Well, fuck it, the SJW name calling is just getting worse. I won't descend to name calling, what I'm saying is that it's indicative that there is actual misogyny at work here.

It's a campaign to keep women out of CS, and the current tactic is to accuse anyone trying to improve things of sexism, racism, discrimination and call them an SJW. There is no rational argument, it's just a ridiculous attempt to claim that fixing the problem is somehow worse than maintaining the status quo, which happens to favour the misogynists.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[russotto]

The only people campaigning to keep women out of STEM (CS and Engineering anyway in particular) are your allies. You know, the ones who say the guys in the field are so horrible that women have to be on constant guard, that the level of sexism and misogyny is so high that it's nearly intolerable. The ones who talk about "microaggressions" as if life is free of difficulty for cishet white males and we are making it difficult for others. The ones who claim women have few opportunities for advancement in the field, and will just end up leaving. You want to know who is keeping women out of CS and engineering? Look in the mirror.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

You are cancer. You are a mutated anti-body cell that attacks healthy, normal productive tech workers under the pretense of "wiping out misogyny". You have done more damage to tech and the geek community than an entire platoon of stormfronters.

Either that or you are an amazing troll. Either way innocent people are sick of being splashed with your bile.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[lsatenstein]

Its an issue If they hire a less qualified woman over a more qualified male just because she's a woman. Thats exactly what programs like this encourage.

Should more women enter technology? Sure. Is anyone stopping them? NO. Is it outside the realm of possibility that less women are interested in the technology sector than men? NO. I have a lot of female friends. I grew up with 2 sisters and no brothers so I have more female friends than male. Only one of them has any interest in technology and ive asked why..ive asked if they were ever discouraged from any stem field and they all said no, they just WERENT INTERESTED.

The one who's into technology works in a robotics lab. She loves it and has never has any issues with the men around her.

This whole current pushing of this nonsense no women in tech is going to turn and bite the sector in the ass. You can't force interest and if you start lowering the bar to meet hiring quotas thats not only unfair to everyone else its also a great way to lower quality output.

I think you are wrong... Given a woman, or a black woman, with qualifications, and given the ratio of people of colour in the population, discrimination would be the refusal to hire said qualified skilled women. And while some women go into engineering, not all that do go to IT. In our community, some of the best construction engineers are "woman". Our local condo housing project was designed by a "she" and she got it right.

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

thats "equal opportunity employment" for you if you work in a feild in witch few wemen orminorities go in to. Companies are more afraid of getting sued than hiring the wrong person for the job. I think we need to coke up with an interview prosses that makes it impossible for the interviewr to determine sex age or race of the applicant

Re: Somethig wrong with that

[Mstr Rick]

https://drive.google.com/file/...

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[hairyfeet]

Because it makes one race more worthy of help than another? As Al Sharpton LOVES to point out there is more whites on welfare than blacks...yet you just TRY setting up a program that ONLY takes poor white kids and see how quickly you get shut down!

You see, call me "non PC" but I actually bought the words of Dr King, that we should treat ALL by the content of their character...so if you wanna do something for poor kids with no riders? I'll be happy to sing your praises. But you can pour all the sugar on dogshit that you want, it don't make it a cupcake, and reverse racism? STILL racism.

Re:Somethig wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

White men aren't overrepresented in tech. Men as a whole are, compared to the populations, but there are proportionally more East Asians and Indians in tech than there are in the general population.

Don't bring race into this when this is about gender. Plenty of people could fake data to show that any group you want are more qualified as a whole, but why do that?

Get Ready for Rev Al's shakedown....

[Anonymous Coward]

You just opened yourself up to a visit form Al and he's going to demand you pay up, I mean donate to his choices of worthy causes (from which he personally benefits of course.) I might be wrong, Jessie Jackson's Rainbow Collation might want a piece of this action...

The feminists are probably not interested in you but if you insist on dragging 300Million though the trailer park, who knows what might take the bait.

Seriously, why on earth would Intel just out and announce some program like this? Did they get caught at something? If you REALLY think diversity is the way to go, then shut up and do it internally. Set up your hiring programs to target what you think is best, train your managers in your policy of diversity and just do it. All this PR stuff is no better than throwing money at it, handing out toys and candy to kids to people feel better about you. It just seems fake.

How to slow America down

[mi]

By breaking, what works:

1. change hiring practices,
2. retool human resources,
3. fund companies run by minorities and women

. No, there will be no "PROFIT!!!!" at the end — elimination (or, at best, reduction) of profit is the goal here.

Why would various corporations suddenly start doing that to themselves? The only possible reason is undue pressure... Some free country we got ourselves into...

Re:How to slow America down

[Kohlrabi82]

You can notice that all across western societies. People who are actually productive and produce value for companies are paid less and are laid off, while at the mean time management, bureaucrat and "soft skill" jobs are on the rise. In the end you will have half of companies consisting of people discussing amongst themselves but unable to produce a screwdriver.

Re:How to slow America down

[mi]

while at the mean time management, bureaucrat and "soft skill" jobs are on the rise

Unfortunately, those too are awarded with consideration to "minority" status and like things, which should have no effect on hiring decisions. That moron just fired by Sony is a plump example...

What they mean by 'under-represented minorities"

[Anonymous Coward]

Please noticed that when they talk about the 'under-represented minorities' they are not talking about only non-Whites

They also talk about non-Japanese, non-Koreans, non-Indians and non-Chinese

As far as I know, all the four groups above are 'less white" than the "Whites"

When diversity + anti-discrimination = uniformity

[diamondmagic]

Diversity is great, diversity of opinions and such is good for a workplace. This is well known, and documented in The Wisdom of Crowds. And for tech companies with respect to gender, it means no more lines out the men's restrooms.

Except actually pulling it off means assuming a cost, giving up the next best alternative.

I'd love to hire genders more equally, except that might mean taking on less qualified people.

Or, I could offer a bonus and better salary to perfectly qualified women from other companies. Except, well, that's illegal. The very law that was supposed to do away with inequality is threatening me that I can't use salary to lure qualified minorities.

Waste of money

[Yakasha]

Why?

1. Primary schools are biased against women in STEM.
2. Primary school funding/quality in the US is stupid lopsided against minorities & the poor.

Working to change High School programs is better than working to change college admissions criteria or setting hiring quotas, but until the primary school funding disparity is fixed, there is no such thing as equal opportunities.

We can't (and shouldn't) demonize or try to change cultural influences on how children are raised. If people want to raise their children in a way that is counterproductive to succeeding (financially) in a capitalist democratic society... that is their choice. Hippies can live in barns with the chickens... or whatever other stereotype you want to believe in. That is what being free is all about: making choices that other people think are stupid. Equal opportunities can only be considered upon, and must be limited to, what society has chosen the government to be responsible for: education, law, (health?), defense, water, power, etc.

It is just as absurd to think you can fix the race & sex disparity problem at the high school level as it is to think you can cure a cold by wiping your nose.

Re:Waste of money

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

This I kind of agree with.

However, I think it's worth investing the money to educate teachers, parents and anyone else who will shape a kid's life about the subtle nuance of sexism in our culture. I think it's worth doing it at any level. Even though it'd be way more effective at primary school levels.

Re:Waste of money

[drinkypoo]

It is just as absurd to think you can fix the race & sex disparity problem at the high school level as it is to think you can cure a cold by wiping your nose.

Nobody credible thinks that can be done. But anyone who has put more than two seconds of butt-hurt thought into this realizes that you make a difference where you can and hope that this difference is compounded in the next generation.

Re:Waste of money

[Yakasha]

Nobody credible thinks that can be done. But anyone who has put more than two seconds of butt-hurt thought into this realizes that you make a difference where you can and hope that this difference is compounded in the next generation.

Obviously by doing some research I've not put more than two seconds of butt-hurt thought into this. But you do bring up an excellent point: bigots throwing insults instead of offering up their own two seconds of thought on the matter ruin discussions.

Intel can make a difference at the primary level. $300 million can make a huge difference (and I'm not talking about just throwing money at individual schools). They're instead making the wrong decision to do what is popular and visible to short-sighted morons for the PR benefit, not to actually deal with the problem at hand. There is no reason to hope the next generation fixes the real issue if you work on fixing it yourself.

Re:Waste of money

[Yakasha]

It is well known that educating at a younger age is more effective. What is the point of offering technology classes to girls that hate mathematics due to the previous 10 years of being told that math is for boys? What is the point of offering technology classes to minorities that have trouble with basic algebra due to poor schooling? By the time kids reach high school, their brains have already slowed considerably in relation to their ability to learn. They are already indoctrinated to "how the world is". Take the previously reported issue of forcing kids to wear RFID necklaces. The arguments against such I remember on /. were all about the evils of indoctrinating kids to think such mandatory collars were normal, thus leading to future generations being completely accepting of increasingly Orwellian laws & traditions. By the time such kids reach high school, to convince them the RFID tags are bad, you have to fight their faith in the system.

Pope Francis, though I disagree with the specifics of his message, said it right in that if you insult somebody's faith, they might just punch you in the face. That is what you're fighting against in high school. I'm not saying they're going to punch you, I'm saying they already believe, in their hearts, that STEM is not for them and so are instinctively opposed to the idea. Offering to teach STEM is not enough as the classes will be ignored. You first have to teach that STEM fields are awesome, else they'll never choose to use what is offered in high school. You can teach that at the high school level, but it will be as difficult as converting a Muslim to Christianity.

Will the high school funding make some difference? Sure. I'm not saying don't put any money in high school programs (They will need it soon enough even if you do start at the primary level). I'm saying the timing, doing it now without first addressing the underlying issues, is insane. It won't work as hoped (just like Affirmative Action didn't work), and so is wasting money (unless your goal is a $.01 stock price boost from the PR)

Are white males not a minority?

[Anonymous Coward]

In terms of total planet population are white males a minority or not?

Re:Are white males not a minority?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. White males are the minority of the population. Women + minorities are the majority.

Re:Are white males not a minority?

[tompaulco]

Even in terms of STEM, white males are a minority. It is mostly Indians and Asians.

What it really means:

[BarbaraHudson]

Intel justifies this move as a way to, among other things, get a more diverse set of perspectives and inputs as it moves from being just a chipmaker into more diverse markets.

Hiring "more of the same" just reinforces the echo chamber of opinions and options - more of the same. In today's world that makes it more likely to be blindsided. That would be bad for Intel, their employees, suppliers, and yes, even the shareholders. So increased diversity is a "must have" going forward. In this scenario, the best technical chops simply aren't enough - they're just one more variable when looking at the "whole package."

Re:Patton had it right

[BarbaraHudson]

That is so totally beyond belief stupid. First, if Putin cracks, who's to say he won't push the button to start TNWW1 (Thermo-Nuclear World War One)? After all, the Israelis have the same policy if they believe that they are about to be defeated - launch all the nukes and make sure that if they go down, so do their enemies.

Second, why would anyone take on the responsibility for hundreds of millions of people with a failed economy? Because you don't just get the land and slaughter everyone.

... This is dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, you can't "bring more women" in a field where there's already few women in the first place. They need to employ people who knows the field and it's just a simple fact that there's less women in schools right now aiming toward the tech field than there is men. You can't force them to be something they don't want to be. This isn't some magical world where qualified workforce just appear out of nowhere.
They are literally throwing money out of the window right now.

Just a question of pushing down wages

[tsotha]

It means Intel is exploiting every opportunity to bring more people into the field and keep wages down. Apparently they didn't get enough H-1B people to do the trick.

What it means...

[Anonymous Coward]

SELL SELL SELL!!!!! ;)

300 mil... what about womens wages?

[ThomasBHardy]

I'm curious. I have no knowledge of Intels' payroll policies, but I wonder if the $300 million could not have been better spent insuring that wages are fair across genders at Intel. Unless they already have a perfectly balanced gender neutral payroll balance, any company chasing this dream of more women programmers is just marketing fluff!

Diversity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Diversity is another word for tyranny.

A Pledge to Waste $300 Million?

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt the shareholders will be pleased.

Capitalism.

[Anonymous Coward]

If capitalism and patriarchy are so evil, why is it that women have the most freedom, the most advancement, the most (equal, even) rights, AND THE MOST COMPLAINTS ABOUT IT in those countries which have the most capitalism and supposed patriarchy?

Class Action Lawsuit anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I own some INTC stock, how about we sue them for violating their fiduciary duty by using our money for unprofitable political charity?

Sequel Mashup time

[CODiNE]

A down on his luck coder finds it impossible to satisfy the requirements of headhunters. 2 years of Swift?? C# AND COBOL??! Besides that, the jobs he CAN get pay less than flipping burgers. It seems there's plenty of jobs being outsourced, and women are being aggressively recruited... why take his chances picking the wrong one... when he can become BOTH??

Working as a tanned, eastern-accented, weight-lifting coder named "Vidya De Milo"... Jim Carrey finds out people start to treat him a little differently in ...

TOOTSIE SOUL!!

Re:Patton had it right

[Mr.CRC]

Unfortunately, some of these types would in fact be happy to slaughter everyone.

Discrimination is wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a person is denied based on their race or gender is a personal tragedy. Denying a white male with the best qualifications is much worse than denying a African female with bad qualifications. Discrimination is a personal thing, not a statistic!

Hewlett Packard, a generation ago

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

When the company was still run ethically, the ethics included opening the engineering department to women, not just on paper but in real life.

The word spread. Women in engineering schools knew where to apply when they graduated. HP had a larger pool of bright people to choose from, people who were shying away from their competitors.

There's more to being open than sticking the phrase "Equal Opportunity Employer" on the recruiting ads. Get it right, though, and it's sound business.

under-represented minorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if it's anything like Ireland, Irish people are the under-represented minorities.

Bruce Jenner

[Baldrson]

Its simple guys... make like Bruce Jenner, only be a better woman driver.

Stop making people like things they don't like

[ZankerH]

I could think of a few other fields that are much more patriarchically male-dominated than tech. Garbage disposal, oil-rig maintenance, construction, homelessness, etc. Take your fake moral crusade elsewhere, or at least stop pretending you somehow support "equality".

Jewish Bolshevism in action...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nation-wrecking, one employee at a time.

This is blatantly about stopping WHITE MEN from getting jobs. Good luck employing thousands of sub-70 IQ Africans, Intel...

"Diversity" = Genocide of white people.

ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

NBA teams are nearly exclusively black because they make the best players. Likewise, tech companies are predominantly European and Asian males because they make the best workers. Forcing companies to hire anyone but the best is just downright stupid.

What it REALLY means...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is a torrent of outrage on Slashdot from people who are happy that the system is already biased towards them and don't want it to change, even though there is plenty of evidence that more women in the tech workplace (particularly at the management level) makes it more productive.

Re: What it REALLY means...

[DasDad]

Just a shame that women aren't interested, eh? We know that, since the number of applicants in colleges and the number of women graduating with a degree relevant to tech, is roughly the same as the number of women working in tech. In other words: There's no discrimination, ladies just aren't interested.

Discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of this programme is built on discriminating people based on gender. Where I live (medium-sized European country), something like this would be in direct violation of the first article of the constitution. Is this really allowed in the United States?

A dash of hypocrisy perchance?

[DasDad]

Could anybody who supports the drive for more women in tech, explain to us why equality in THIS field is so important? Nursing and Teaching are two fields, where women outnumber men almost five times. Despite the importance of male role models for young boys, you rarely hear any complaints about the fact that less than 20% kindergarten teachers (or nurses for that matter) are men. Where are the attempts to diversify nursing or teaching? What is it, that makes women in tech such a priority? No strawmen please, no avoiding the question or posting platitudes, just a straight up answer please?

Re:A dash of hypocrisy perchance?

[drinkypoo]

Could anybody who supports the drive for more women in tech, explain to us why equality in THIS field is so important? [...] No strawmen please, no avoiding the question or posting platitudes, just a straight up answer please?

Equality in every field is important. You are whining because some people are trying to make improvements in their field. We're not following improvements in those fields, because this is slashdot. HTH, HAND. Stop fucking whining.

Re:A dash of hypocrisy perchance?

[serviscope_minor]

You win the thread.

Basically that is the right answer. Also, what the hell had Intel got to do with nursing and teaching?

Re:A dash of hypocrisy perchance?

[dcw3]

Blah, blah, blah. You don't answer the question...where's the push to get more men into teaching and nursing.

And for the record, I've personally hired more women then men for the last several years. Sometimes for the right reason...they were more qualified, but more often than not, it's only to meet the quota. Not only that, they're given larger pay raises, and more are promoted to meet this politically correct agenda at my company. So don't start your bullshit about whining.

Re:A dash of hypocrisy perchance?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't important. Making bald assertions like "diversity [of genitalia or skin tone] is important" isn't a compelling argument.

Diversity of background, skills, and interests is important. You can get much more meaningful "diversity" from two 24 year old Irishmen one of whom is a software developer and the other an EE than you might from a female Eskimo and a female African American both of whom graduated in CS from Harvard.

It's always amusing when people swallow that diversity class they took once hook, line, and sinker. Diversity means different things in different fields. In social work, advertising, marketing, entertainment, and many other fields genital/skin tone diversity is certainly important. In STEM? Almost not at all.

Re: A dash of hypocrisy perchance?

[DasDad]

And could you answer the question? Without retorting to platitudes like "diversity in all fields is important", which undoubtedly came from the same book of cliches-to-pull-out-to-avoid-a-question as "every life matters" or "even one is too many". Why is diversity in tech so important? The number of women in fields like plumber, electrician or bricklayer is even more disproportionate than in tech (And we need more tradesmen/women!) where is the push for diversity in those fields? Or in one of the many fields where women are more numerous than men? Since diversity in every field is important, like you just said, I assume you've supported many efforts such as this previously, and helped push for diversity in the trades and teaching?

Re:Patton had it right

[drinkypoo]

Because you don't just get the land and slaughter everyone.

Someone should tell the US government that.

Re:300 mil... what about womens wages?

[Dr. Evil]

There's evidence that women are more discriminatory against women, so it's possible that an increased female workforce would encourage a greater wage disparity and fewer management opportunities.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070318083402/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/newspapers/sunday_times/britain/article1265356.ece

Short Intel Stock

[xtal]

This is insanity; you hire the best and brightest.

Promote tech and diversity, but the level of change they're talking about isn't possible without disruption; never mind any of the other related issues.

If I was a shareholder (I'm not); I would want the absolute best in the world advancing my technology. Regardless of race or gender. This is an arbitrary decree.

$hort. Profit.

How and why is the diversity data collected

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I have not seen addressed is the mere fact that a company like Intel has accurate stats about the 'diversity' of their workforce. I have worked almost 20 years in global tech companies and not even once a gender or ethnicity question has come up. I mean in international email conversations most of the time I have no way of knowing any irrelevant details about the persons involved in a technical discussion. Irrelevant in this context would be age, race, gender, right/left handed, height, weight, morning/evening person, smell, hairstyle, clothing or lack of it. As long as the patch lands, compiles and works as advertised, it's all good.
How and why is the ethnicity data collected? Where is it stored? I do not remember giving that kind of information in interviews nor job contracts, I mean does Intel have people going through identification card photos or how do they collect their data?

Fire all the White guys...

[Mstr Rick]

At AIG they either forced out or fired almost all the White guys from the IT department and replaced them with Blacks so the department would have "commonality". LOL Gotta love "diversity"!

Scientific Research about Women & Stem

[sampson7]

So I'm a white male that's actually done a little reading on the issue of women and STEM. Folks should recognize that there's a vast literature out there about the impacts of both conscious and unconscious bias in testing, hiring and performance of minorities and women in STEM fields. Like many of you out there, I never personally experienced these issues (being a white male), and it was illuminating for me to read about the weird ways in which the human brain internalizes various societal cues about how women and minorities fit into STEM. Anyone who wants to comment on this topic seriously should at least read through this research:

* Book - "Whistling Vivaldi," written by Claude Steele . Professor Steele isn't the best writer in the world, but the experiments he describes are just fascinating. I challenge anyone to look at his results and not refine their views on these issue. Nice mix of pop-psychology and scientific research. http://www.amazon.com/Whistlin...

* Planet Money Podcast - "When Women Stopped Coding", very much pop-psychology, but thoroughly entertaining and I certainly found some basic truth in their theory. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

* Article in the journal "Nature" on what the GRE test actually measures, http://www.nature.com/naturejo... Also see a partial refutation of the initial (which I found less convincing, but I put it out there anyway): http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

* Recent pop-science article citing a meta-analysis about "Genius" in male and female professors (interesting, if somewhat anecdotal): http://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/8...

Reading this research (even at the cursory level pop-science perspective) certainly got me thinking about women (and minorities) in STEM. Personally, it turned me from a skeptic of the type of program Intel is purposing into .... well, I'm not entirely sure. Read the research and I think you'll see what I mean.

Apologies for bringing actual science to a flame war.....

White guys need not apply...

[Mstr Rick]

https://drive.google.com/file/...

'Diverse society will fail' --Putnam;

[NewYork]

'Diverse society will fail' --Putnam;
Let black Police deal with black Culprits;

"Diversity" means NO White guys...

[Mstr Rick]

At AIG they either forced out or fired almost all the White guys from the IT department and replaced them with Blacks so the help desk would have "commonality". LOL Gotta love "diversity"! https://drive.google.com/file/...