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Facebook Launches Initiative To Attract More Minorities and Women To Coding (thestack.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the come-together dept.

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.

17 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. How about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about hiring more people over 40 as well.

    1. Re:How about... by RingDev · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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
    2. Re:How about... by tripleevenfall · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      Maybe we should stop putting people into categories and treating them differently (+ or -) based on the amount of pigment in their skin?

      Maybe we should judge people not based on the color of their skin but on the content of their character?

  2. It's a daily SJW treat now! by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hooray smash the patriarchy!

    1. Re:It's a daily SJW treat now! by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm still waiting on all the "Why aren't there more straight men in the fashion industry?" articles that I just know must be coming any day now. ....still waiting......

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    2. Re:It's a daily SJW treat now! by NotDrWho · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The only thing keeping straight males out of the fashion industry is feedback from straight males.

      Nope, these articles have taught me that the only possible explanation for the underrepresentation of a gender or race in a given field is that the field is either hostile or discriminatory (or both). It can't possibly be by personal choice or because of social pressure from within the gender or race itself.

      If someone isn't present, it's because they're being excluded or discriminated against by the powers in the field.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  3. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why not just get people who are actually interested in coding to participate? Why do they have to be women or minorities? That seems rather bigoted.

    1. Re:Why? by x0ra · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because STEM is paying well, and the induced physical risk and requirement is null. You will never see a progressive campaigning to have more women working in mines.

  4. YAMICI by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    I reckon these initiatives are close to outnumbering the people in the target groups. They'll have to start moonlighting to keep up with the supply.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. Re:Facebook to abuse minorities and women! by plopez · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yep. Women and minorities work for lower pay.

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  6. The purpose is to reduce wages not increase them. by trout007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can be sure anytime employees want more people in a field it means they want to reduce labor costs.

    --
    I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
  7. Programming is not a language by tomhath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    seeks to analogise coding skills with language skills to make the subject of computer science less forbidding and opaque

    Good luck with that. Programming is about logic, not language.

  8. Re:Why not just hire the best people for the job. by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because SJW.

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  9. Women are better by mesterha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if woman are better at languages then there are differences (surprise) between the sexes. If you open that door, maybe men are better at programming.

    --

    Chris Mesterharm
  10. Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What I learned today: It's okay to say women are better at language, but clearly men can't be better at programming.

  11. Politically Correct Compliance Test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let's see what passes the PC compliance test:

          "Women are better at learning spoken languages" - PASS
          "Therefore men are not as good as woman at learning spoken languages" - Eyebrow inperceptively raised, but PASS
          "Men are better [on average] than women at computer programming" - RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT !!!

  12. Re: It is about culture. by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do geeks very laid more now? Do they get hassled less? Do women swoon and men feel small at the sound of a Star Wars quote from a neckbeard? The mainstream may have appropriated geek things but little has changed for the average geek. Just watch Big Bang Theory for an example of how geeks are viewed.