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Tech Jobs and Apple: Every Bit As "Fun" As Pleasure Island?
theodp writes: On the eve of Apple's big Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the lack of diversity in tech is 'our fault' — 'our' meaning the whole tech community. "I think in general we haven't done enough to reach out and show young women that it's cool to do it [tech] and how much fun it can be," Cook explained. Indeed, the WWDC scholarship winners shooting selfies with Cook at the San Francisco Four Seasons to celebrate their iPhone apps and other WWDC attendees looked to be having as much fun as, well, Pinocchio at Pleasure Island. But, as the NY Times recently pointed out, Cook can be guilty of overlooking inconvenient truths. Which here is that most young women (and men) wouldn't find it 'cool' or 'fun' to live with 8,000 co-workers in factory dormitories where they can be roused out of bed in the middle of the night by Apple for an emergency 12-hour shift to fit glass screens into beveled iPhone frames, although that too conjures up a scene from Pleasure Island.
OK, I've worked in the industry for a very long time now, and it can be 'fun' for the few bits where you actually get to prototype or work on the bulk of the features. That takes 10 percent of the time. The rest of the time you are going to be trying to find obscure bugs, introduced by crappy programmers rushing to get features out. Meanwhile you will be micro-managed through the 'agile' process asking you to account for every hour of your time. Then we will throw ill defined features at you, and expect them to be done within this two week time period, and be shocked when you reach the end of two weeks, and they are not done. This is usually due to the fact that meanwhile 16 support tickets were also thrown at you that are all critical in nature. Then you have those late night calls with your Indian counter parts that you can barely understand or stay awake for. But it is fun!
I don't know what planet these people live on. It is a tough career with crazy deadlines and weird policies. You have to constantly keep up on the latest trends, or you will be viewed as 'too old' for the job. Meanwhile, computers never sleep, nor do they expect you to. You have to push back constantly to maintain your personal time.
That said, I love computers. I love programming. I just don't love the industry as it is now. There is a reason that most women don't want in. They may in fact be much smarter than men in this regards.
Why is Tim Cook even wading into this discussion? Mainly because the SJWs are shaming companies such as Apple and Intel to do something about what they perceive to be an epidemic of gender skew in technology professions. Funny how they're nowhere to be found when it comes to nursing or other female-dominated professions, nor all the factory positions in China where men are worked to the death. Yet all the idiot CEOs take the bait and run with it.
What they all fail to realize is that equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome. Nobody gets me out of bed in the morning, brushes my teeth, forces me to do a particular job or anything else, so it's up to me to do that. Same with careers. If you have a specific problem, there are LOTS of legal protections to prevent this kind of thing - lawsuits, DoL complaints, and so on.
Ask any person of any identifiable group whether they feel good about being hired not because they were the best candidate, but because of some identifiable characteristic. You'll get two groups of answers - the majority who would feel awful about it, and the minority who would feel proud and entitled because of it. As long as that difference exists, this nonsense will continue.
Diversity for the sake of diversity is NOT a good thing. Granted, if a company has a thousand employees, and the only black face in the crowd belongs to the janitor, then there is a problem. But - if the company's demographics perfectly reflect community demographics, then we all know that the company is more absorbed in public relations and catering to special interest groups, than it is in BUSINESS.
I work for a woman. I work with women. Women work for me. I prefer the company of women, truth be told. But - I'm sure as HELL not going to hire a female because she's female. Or black. Or Asian. Or gay. Or whatever. I'm going to hire the MOST QUALIFIED PERSON FOR THE JOB! If that happens to be a straight white male - so be it. If it happens to be a gay Chinese woman, again, so be it.
Screw diversity. It's a waste of my time, waste of your time, and a HUGE waste of company resources.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
IQ never changes upward after birth
Of course it can, here is one example. You are on crack or something. More specifically, you are only looking at studies that confirm your preconceived viewpoint, which is how you are able to remain racist.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
. "I think in general we haven't done enough to reach out and show young women that it's cool to do it [tech] and how much fun it can be,"
Do "we" reach out for the young men?
Nobody ever "reached out" for me, yet here I am. Have I just been living under a rock?
It should also be noted that in those same studies..... whites are pretty moronically stupid in comparison to their asian cousins :p
Actualy a white's IQ level (which is used as a "base" also) is *on average* at 100, an (Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc) Asian's is at 105 (other Asians, e.g., Indians, Arabs are much less than that, about 90), and a black's at 80...
So, it is the blacks who have a very low IQ (if i use YOUR words: "moronically stupid in comparison to" others). A good starting point for -scientific- research (without so much of the other "stuff" that are usual in this kind of discussions) is the book "The Bell Curve" - contains many IQ studies.
Unfortunately this fact (i.e., blacks have lower IQ than other races) is so problematic to discuss because it "paints" anyone who express it as a racist who *hates* blacks - i am a racist, but i don't hate blacks, i just believe in racial differences (actually, i believe that i love blacks more than many people who try to suppress their low IQ fact, because i think that they can be helped socially if we recognize the *biological* fact, in the right way: there is a reason we WHITES have special education programs for our WHITES with low IQ...)
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!