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!

Comments

Interesting..

[El Lobo]

There are more women working at MS that women contributing to the Linux community.

Re:Interesting..

[gweihir]

As anybody that wants to can contribute to the Linux community, that should tell us something. (No, prissy, huge-ego women that barge in, want to tell everybody how to do things, predictably get ridiculed and pushed out again and then start to whine about that do not count as "wanting to contribute". Neither do female "kernel developers" where you are hard pressed to find a single meaningful commit. Those that actually want to contribute are welcome. Those that want to do politics are not.)

This whole thing is about equal opportunity and women have had that for a long time now. It is not about equality, which involves forcing people to do things they obviously not want to do.

Re:Interesting..

[Anonymous Coward]

They lack the beard growth required for OSF commits.

Re:Interesting..

[im_thatoneguy]

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'.

Re:Interesting..

[davester666]

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."

Of course, there are not 140,000 new jobs. There are a whole bunch of layoff's, office closures that puts a bunch of programmers out of work [like, say, Microsoft did not too long ago].

There are a whole bunch of already-graduated programmers that are explicitly rejected from these 'new jobs' because they can't afford to work cheap enough.

H1B's to the rescue!

Subject

[itamihn]

When I studied CS there were 5 women and 200 guys in my class. With that in mind, complaining about an IT company not hiring many woman is nonsense.

At least they are trying to solve the problem

[davidwr]

The important part of the article that was left out of the summary is that Microsoft is trying to address the problem by funding programs that encourage girls to get into the talent pipeline at a young age and stick with it.

Re:Luckily you don't need just a CS degree

[jedidiah]

Not everyone in IT even needs a STEM degree. A lot of position are more about soft skills anyways. There are also people who thrive in tech positions without a STEM degree.

I even know someone that managed to get promoted into IT off of a factory floor.

This is more about the consequences of large corporations treating their employees like disposable cogs to be laid off by the "Two Bobs" guy during the next business lull. They are no longer wiling to invest in their own people, even the ones that have gone to great effort and expense to be desirable as new hires.

You don't have to be terribly talented to be a tech worker in the large companies. Actually, it helps if you're not.

Re:Here's a bold idea...

[ShanghaiBill]

Why don't you try offering them MORE MONEY

Because gender discrimination in pay is illegal.

Re:Luckily you don't need just a CS degree

[tompaulco]

Some engineering degrees (Computer, Electrical), math degrees, etc. can be used in lieu of a CS degree provided you can prove you can code.

In fact, a CS degree is not proof that you can code, it is proof that you understand the theory of Computer Science. An associates degree in computer programming from a trade school proves you can code.
More than likely, a CS major can code. Almost certainly a Computer Engineer can code. Lots of people can code. There is no shortage of people who can meet the demands of these 140,000 jobs. In fact, Microsoft just laid off 6,000 people that can fit the bill.
Looking more closely, the article says that 100,000 jobs require a CS degree. So they are being specific here. They need 100,000 people who went through college to understand the theory of Computer Science. Not programs, very specifically they need Computer Scientists. I'm not sure why. In fact, I think that they don't understand the requirement they are asking for. I am guessing they want code monkeys, not Computer Scientists. In which case, we have those available in spades.

Fortunately

[tompaulco]

Fortunately, in technology as in soccer, nobody has taken away the ball, and the women that are interested in the field have just as much if not more opportunity than males to learn, study and pursue a career in Computer Science, and the whole article is bullcrap.

Re:Statistics need verifying

[tompaulco]

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

Is this statistic really true? Are those 140,000 net new jobs, or just job openings that exist for some period of time during the year?

The article cites but does not link to a source for this statistic.

Also, a CS degree is a long, tough slog through dull material that has dubious relevance to most jobs that require a CS degree.

Those are 140,000 openings, so you don't necessarily need new graduates to fill them. You can fill them from other companies (which in theory leaves the same number of openings, but most companies don't fill voids, they just make the other people work harder), or you can fill them from unemployed CS people, of which there are tens of thousands, if not more. There are at least 6,000 more as of a week ago, when Microsoft, the company complaining about the worker shortage, fired 6,000 people.

Bad calculation

[Geoffrey.landis]

"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."

And this would be a logical inference if the only people looking for jobs were that year's college graduates.

But, actually, very few job openings are filled by fresh-outs.

Conclusion: mIsleading and false.

BINGO !!!!

[Archfeld]

#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.