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Microsoft Uses US Women's Soccer Team To Explain Why It Doesn't Hire More Women
theodp writes: "It is not surprising that the U.S. women have been dominant in the sport [of soccer] in recent years. The explanation for that success lies in the talent pipeline," writes General Manager of Citizenship & Public Affairs Lori Forte Harnick on The Official Microsoft Blog. "Said another way, many girls in the U.S. have the opportunity to learn how to play soccer and, as a result, they benefit from the teamwork, skill development and fun involved. That's the kind of opportunity I would like to see develop for the technology sector, which presents a different, yet perhaps even more significant, set of opportunities for girls and young women. Unfortunately, the strength in the talent pipeline that we see in female soccer today is not the reality for technology. The U.S. is facing a shortage of Computer Science (CS) graduates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every year there are close to 140,000 jobs requiring a CS degree, but only 40,000 U.S. college graduates major in CS, which means that 100,000 positions go unfilled by domestic talent." Going with the soccer analogy, one thing FIFA realized that Microsoft didn't is that if you want girls to play your sport, you don't take away their ball!
You don't have to be terribly talented to be a tech worker in the large companies. Actually, it helps if you're not.
Yep. I once worked for a talented manager and he was able to find a place for just about everyone. He put the "lesser" talents on projects that would bore the shit out of the "geniuses". And many times, the "lesser" guys did some excellent work - even genius work.
People are too quick to discount others in this profession these days. It wasn't like that when I started 25 years ago. If you loved tech and learning, you were part of the crowd. Now things have gotten cliquish and even elitist where the entry ticket is a CS degree - others need not apply.
Forget IT! If your typical SJW really cared so much about gender "equality" they'd be focusing on the lack of women working in construction jobs!
The Linux community doesn't really stand a chance since Microsoft isn't 100% technical where as most of the "linux community" doesn't have any overhead or advertising or accounting or datacenters or call centers or executives or web designers or game developers or.... For instance up until recently Microsoft's highest level woman employed was in HR. There is no HR (although maybe there should be :P) on a github project.
The other contributing factor is that Microsoft does hire a lot of women in technical positions but a lot of them are international where tech is viewed as just a "Good high paying job" not as "A bunch of geeks and mouth breathing virgins". That's why I always bang my head on the table when stories go something like this: "Tech is a toxic soup of misogynistic assholes... and we need more women to choose computer science!" Regardless if it's true as long as that stigma sticks around women aren't going to be knocking down the doors to be the first person to be victimized and discriminated against. However while women are far more likely to pursue tech in a developing country like India, it's mostly because "Tech is a good high paying job" not "Tech gives you the opportunity to contribute to an ideologically driven project that is an unpaid position in your free time!" That's the opposite of a "Good high paying job" that's a no paying job.
Also the "Linux Community" is all around pretty small. It doesn't take *that* many people to create an operating system. Even if the Linux community had the same demographics as Microsoft it's safe to say that Microsoft employs about as many people to develop windows as the number of people working on the linux project. Both projects are similar in scope and design. By comparison, Microsoft not only makes windows they also have Office and Xbox and Azure and Microsoft Game Studios and Movies and Music and Hotmail and MSN.com and Cortana and Bing and Here and Lumia and Surface and... So you would need to do an apples to apples comparison of Microsoft's Windows Team vs the 'Linux Community'.
#1 the companies want a glut of workers so they can pay them nothing and use them as tools discarding when completed.
#2 Women being slightly smarter than men don't WANT to go into an industry built on virtual slavery and worker abuse. In general they aren't as flexible or willing to commit as much to a career given the option of a family, there are of course exceptions everywhere, but as long as the IT industry is run like a feudal system that thrives on worker sacrifice it is unlikely to achieve a balance of genders. You can't hire those who don't apply, and you can't force women into a educational course they don't want to pursue.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?