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Facebook Launches Initiative To Attract More Minorities and Women To Coding (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has launched TechPrep, a new initiative to attract more minorities and women into coding. The project draws a very strong analogy between the learning of computer coding skills and the learning of spoken languages, a field which is important to people whose first language is not English, and which engages with the popular understanding that women are better at learning languages. TechPrep is seeking to engage with parents and guardians to get its target audience into coding earlier in life.
I can't speak for Facebook, but my team is currently comprised of
8 Caucasian men
1 Caucasian woman
5 Indian men
4 Indian women
2 Asian men
(Note that my metro area is ~78% white). I can only hire from the applications I receive, so I can't bring in Latino or African American devs/BAs/PMs/etc... I've been thinking about doing an outreach program to see about visiting some of our local high schools' CS programs and see what I can learn about our next generation of coders.
The youngest people on my team are late 20s. A couple of months ago one of the women on my team retired. I have multiple team members that are looking at full retirement in the next 5 years (one of whom I hired last year). Probably half of my team is in the 40+ category and a good portion of that has been hired on in the last 3 years.
There are dev managers in the world that don't give a crap about your age or skin color as long as you can code, document, lead, teach, test, implement, or what ever else we need done.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Listen, if I get an application that fits the profile and the person provides what I'm looking for, I'm hiring him or her.
I am not going to compromise the financial situation of my company for the sake of pandering to some PC fad.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh yes, I forgot. Your definition of "miners" is not the common one of "people who work in mines".
SJW n. One who posts facts.