Slashdot Mirror


Research Suggests 'CS For All' May Mean Lower Pay For All

theodp writes: The NY Times reports that new research suggests as women take over a male-dominated field, the pay drops. "A striking example," writes Claire Cain Miller, "is to be found in the field of recreation — working in parks or leading camps — which went from predominantly male to female from 1950 to 2000. Median hourly wages in this field declined 57 percentage points, accounting for the change in the value of the dollar, according to a complex formula used by Professor Levanon. The job of ticket agent also went from mainly male to female during this period, and wages dropped 43 percentage points. The same thing happened when women in large numbers became designers (wages fell 34 percentage points), housekeepers (wages fell 21 percentage points) and biologists (wages fell 18 percentage points). The reverse was true when a job attracted more men. Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige." Addressing concerns raised about gender pay equity in tech, Amazon recently told the SEC to get off its case, explaining that it's working with organizations such as Code.org, the Anita Borg Institute and Girls Who Code to increase women's involvement in the technology industry. But even if such efforts achieve pay parity, will CS for All result in lower pay for all?

310 comments

  1. D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ya think!

    1. Re: D'uh! by WarJolt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To add to that an individual decrease for some. A net increase for all. What's not to get?

      We're going to automate 50% of the workforce right out of their jobs anyway, so I'd rather have lower pay then people on the streets.

      It's been my experience that when you get great software developers together it creates demand for more software developers. I don't think a simple supply and demand model works.

      Think about how many software jobs wouldn't exists without the Linux Kernel. Enabling technology creates more jobs than congress could ever hope to.

    2. Re: D'uh! by godrik · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > It's been my experience that when you get great software developers together it creates demand for more software developers. I don't think a simple supply and demand model works.

      Agreed. It seems we are currently in a place where there are so many projects to pursue that the demand might just accomodate to the supply. I don't buy that argument here.

      It always baffles me when people apply simple models to make their claim. Especially in economics, I keep hearing (even from economics graduates) things like, if we deregulate a market, prices will drop because the optimal point gets better. It is as if they never attend a game theory class and heard of Braess' paradox and of price of anarchy...

    3. Re:D'uh! by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nah, because all of this "everyone learns to code" thing is more or less crap.

      We also teach everyone how to do math, if you recall. And the vast majority of population /still/ can't do it, despite such a huge educational focus. And despite the efforts of Common Core and other initiatives to improve math literacy, the actual number of people who will end up doing math professionally probably won't change.

      The number of competent programmers may increase slightly, but comparing a career in programming to a career of "recreation", it's bullshit. This study is nothing more than some SJW spewed crap and Cornell should be ashamed to even ever put their name on it. It manipulates figures to make itself sound meaningful. Consider:

      TFA:
      "Consider the discrepancies in jobs requiring similar education and responsibility, or similar skills, but divided by gender. The median earnings of information technology managers (mostly men) are 27 percent higher than human resources managers (mostly women)"

      Wow so they compared two different fields with supposedly "similar" education and responsibility and then concluded that because one of female dominated, wages are higher for one than the other. I guess logic isn't something they did well with.

      TFA:
      "The same thing happened when women in large numbers became designers (wages fell 34 percentage points), housekeepers (wages fell 21 percentage points) and biologists (wages fell 18 percentage points). The reverse was true when a job attracted more men. Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige."

      I'm sure this had nothing to do with the apparent increase and demand in computer programming, not to mention how the field has evolved over the past five or six decades at an incredible rate. The focus has shifted from menially making punch cards to writing OOP in a high level language. The actual job changed so dramatically and the skills required to do it increased quite dramatically.

      TFA:
      "While the pay gap has been closing, it remains wide. Over all, in fields where men are the majority, the median pay is $962 a week — 21 percent higher than in occupations with a majority of women, according to another new study, published Friday by Third Way, a research group that aims to advance centrist policy ideas."

      Another failure to do basic statistics. Maybe women simply choose lower-paying jobs due to social expectations of them to choose said jobs. Other factors also play into it, but this statistic is completely meaningless. They even mention this themselves: "Yes, women sometimes voluntarily choose lower-paying occupations because they are drawn to work that happens to pay less, like caregiving or nonprofit jobs, or because they want less demanding jobs because they have more family responsibilities outside of work."

      TFA:
      "But many social scientists say there are other factors that are often hard to quantify, like gender bias and social pressure, that bring down wages for women’s work."

      Then don't fucking try to quantify it until you can.

      ---

      And that's all I can handle of this supposedly "scientific" study. Cornell is shit for publishing it, and so is the author.

    4. Re:D'uh! by superwiz · · Score: 1

      The focus has shifted from menially making punch cards to writing OOP in a high level language.

      I hope this is a joke. It was more difficult to create something simple because no tools existed to create it. That made the effort more challenging rather than less challenging. Having to balance real-world considerations and algorithmic considerations is, by definition, more complicated than only concerning oneself with real-world impact of the programs. Decoupling the algorithmic considerations and allowing majority of programmers to be application programmers, who are only concerned with real-world considerations, made programming simpler rather than more complicated.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    5. Re:D'uh! by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 1

      I never used the word complex, but a task that "requires skill" is not the same as a task that is menial, involved, and requires attention to detail. It's precisely because computers have automated the more mundane aspects of programming that programming has become more about problem solving.

      The fact these tasks could be automated by computers means they didn't require a terrible lot of thought to begin with, unless you consider multiplying large numbers together to be a good measure of a person's ability to think.

    6. Re:D'uh! by tsotha · · Score: 1

      Agreed on all points. This author has a bright future writing about glaciers.

    7. Re: D'uh! by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      While if you have a team of great developers, that means you are producing a product of higher demand. Thus proving more sales, so you higher more developers to keep the product and add additional products. However even the best team's peak at a particular size. For most products a Software Development team more then 8 developers per product hinders efficiency and quality, as you will need additional managers to manage the people, causing additional conflicts.
      However if there was a near 100% surge in developers then the cost per employee will go down, as you will not be able to grow your company to meet the customers demand for products higher than a surge of available employees

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    8. Re:D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well yeah, and isn't that the whole point? When supply exceeds demand it's the employers and big businesses who benefit. And who owns the government?

    9. Re: D'uh! by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Think about how many software jobs wouldn't exists without the Linux Kernel. .

      Probably, without Linux, there would be even more jobs because of all the extra people needed to support the additional Windows Servers that would be in use.

    10. Re: D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "lower pay then people on the streets"

      That's pretty much what happens. People get lower pay, then they end up on the streets. Perhaps you meant to use "than" there.

    11. Re: D'uh! by KGIII · · Score: 2

      As much as I like Linux, and I am using it right this very minute, I'm inclined to speculate that those jobs would exist even without Linux. Something else would be in its place. Many, many kernels and operating systems have come and gone and still exist. There was a need and software, like life, seems to find a way. I may be waxing philosophical but I really do believe the ecosystem would exist without Linux specifically.

      It might have been BSD, it might have been QNX, it might have been MINIX, it might have been SunOS/Solaris - even when it was open, it might have been any one of a number of things. Life finds a way. Software seems to be a bit like that as well. The jobs might have different titles but the goals would be largely the same. Instead of "Linux Evangelists" we'd have "BSD Evangelists."

      There's a chance, albeit a minuscule chance, that we'd have people being paid to be "HURD Evangelists." It could happen.

      But, the jobs would probably still exist sans Linux. They'd just be titled differently but the ends would be the same. I see no reason to believe that niche would not have been filled by someone/something. I love Linux, I really do. I am inclined to believe that people would have had the same goals and passions without it. It's really likely that something else would have taken its place.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    12. Re: D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know who could have replaced Linus and his project at the time, but it wouldn't have been the BSD folks. I think it was much more a social phenomena than a technical one. Linus somehow made people feel welcome to participate and catalyzed a rate of community growth that just wasn't happening in BSD-land. It was a very easy to transition from learning about his project to learning about ours.

      I was a CS student at UC Berkeley when Linux announced the kernel, and it was remarkable how quickly it became the obvious choice for anyone just trying to adopt a free, unix-style os for home use. We downloaded and passed around the SLS two-floppy set, and later the growing Slackware distribution. We found help and guidance to get stuff running on our commodity PC hardware, dealing with disk and graphics drivers since the very beginning.

      Ironically, I found a student posting from Finland and his rag-tag band of international collaborators to be more welcoming and helpful than the BSD acolytes I could find by going down the hall and knocking on doors on campus. The BSD folks acted like a closed priesthood, not interested in a popular movement. Many of them sneered at using PCs, as if there should only be as many hobbyists as could be supported by the surplus and hand-me-down server and workstation hardware that passed through their old-boy networks.

    13. Re: D'uh! by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Oh, it wouldn't have been the same culturally, granted. The Free Software movement was already in place, however. That needs to not be overlooked. I admit, I don't really like the goobers who run around insisting it's GNU/Linux but they do have a point.

      Note: I did not say that it would be the same. In fact, I said it'd be different. What I assert is that the jobs would still exist, even without Linux in particular, and that things would have ended up much the same. I'm not sure how to articulate that better? The path would have been different but the destination likely very similar. I guess that's the best way I can think of to describe it.

      Would it have been BSD? Hell, could Amiga have made it further? Would it have been RISC? MINIX? SunOS? I do not know... HURD? Maybe... There were so many things in play at the time, and not long after. I've read a bunch of things that go into this, at some detailed levels even, and there really were a lot of other options in play at the time but Linux took off and those seemed to move to the wayside. Linus has a powerful personality but I'd imagine it'd have still happened.

      Don't get me wrong - please. I'm very grateful to Linus and for Linux. I'm using Lubuntu right this minute to post this. But, I was there and I've been here since. I really do think something else would have taken its place.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    14. Re:D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You obviously have not seen old photographs of the women that worked in the computer science industry in the early days. They were the ones carrying the tapes from one side of the room to the other.

    15. Re:D'uh! by careysub · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...The focus has shifted from menially making punch cards to writing OOP in a high level language. The actual job changed so dramatically and the skills required to do it increased quite dramatically....

      I have been around long enough to have seen this entire transition from punch card/main frame primitive time sharing systems (MVT fixed memory allocation), or alternatively having to program by entering machine code in registers with switches, to modern tools and languages on the super-fast computers of today. And this is complete nonsense.

      Believe it or not, programming the early 1970s involved problem solving on the same level as today, with much worse tools. Not exactly the same problems, of course, but it was in no way simpler. Since computers were several orders of magnitude slower with much less memory it was necessary to understand the internal architecture of the system quite well, how data was represented in memory and applications mapped to memory (necessary to interpret core dumps as your primary debugging tool), algorithmic efficiency (otherwise you couldn't get anything useful done), and archaic things like planning efficient use of tape movement.

      On the other hand, I have observed the rise of a new class of semi-skilled programmers (that I don't hire, BTW) who, with modern OOP languages and vast class libraries, can only be called "application assemblers", chaining together existing class components within a framework (Struts, Spring, etc.) that means that they don't really have to understand anything about algorithms, OS's, or computer science generally, to set up working systems.

      This shows the real value of those OOP languages and libraries, that it is possible for such people to exist and for this to actually work; but to argue that they are doing dramatically more complex work is simply ignorant.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    16. Re:D'uh! by friesofdoom · · Score: 1

      My grand mother was considered a "programmer" in her day, but all that involved was translating instructions that were written by the real programmers onto punch cards, she neither knew what the instructions meant nor did she really know what she was doing.

    17. Re:D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I always stop reading when I come across the acronym "SJW" because it immediately reveals the author to be a basement dweller who knows nothing of the world.

    18. Re:D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I always stop reading when I come across the acronym "SJW" because it immediately reveals the author to be a basement dweller who knows nothing of the world.

      That must be a convenient filter. It saves you the trouble of actually having to read and understand other points of view.

      Reminds me of the Objectivists who shout "evasion!" and promptly end the discussion. Who's really doing the evading there..?

    19. Re:D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet you have no problem throwing the word "bigot" out several hundred times per day.

      Someone bumps into you while you're walking? Bigot!

      Someone gives you a dirty look because you cut them off in traffic? Bigot!

      Cashier gives you incorrect change? Bigot!

    20. Re:D'uh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're saying they spent more time coding and less time programming. I get paid for creating solutions, not for writing code. The more time I spend writing code, the less I am worth. Automate away the mundane stuff, the more productive I become, and the more I am worth. Just because something is more difficult, like programming the ENIAC, does not mean it's worth more value.

      Flying is difficult for me, but airplanes do it quite well. I doubt I could get paid much to move a person from one country to another on my back, but pilots get paid quite a bit.

  2. Supply and Demand by JBMcB · · Score: 5, Funny

    You mean when there is a larger supply of something, and demand stays even, the price of that thing goes down? That's crazy talk, it's almost as if this were a field of study or something. It may even involve charts.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    1. Re:Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would make sense except... the examples given include roles going from mainly male to mainly female (not mainly male to 50:50) corresponding to a massive decline in pay - that doesn't sound as simple as extra supply.

    2. Re: Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The MtF trannies on the other hand tend to be pretty good at it.

    3. Re:Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And how did those roles become mainly female, by adding a lot of new female applicants to the market. Things were only mainly male because half the population wasn't applying.

    4. Re: Supply and Demand by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 0

      But we STILL get paid less

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    5. Re:Supply and Demand by guruevi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For all the examples given there is a massive oversupply of people for the jobs.

      Back in the day, designer meant you were able to engineer, in the last 50 years the availability of complex compounds and small scale, custom manufacturing, you can bring to life any sort of design you want with minimal effort and minimal engineering knowledge because the internal structure of the compound you use will hold the design up whereas you can't do that with mass manufactured basic materials.

      The same goes for camp leaders, back in the day, a scouts leader had military training and athletic-based camps had coaches and trainers. I remember my sports camp leadership had an olympic athlete. These days any pimply faced 16 year old is a camp leader and all they have to do is follow scripts and cater to the weakest.

      The investment in the sciences in general have been in decline after the moon landing, all scientists regardless of their branch earn a lot less now than they did when America was a world power.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    6. Re: Supply and Demand by mikael · · Score: 4, Informative

      Maybe women like to work part-time and choose the hours they want to work. Working as a nurse required working shifts with hours like evening (2pm to 10pm), night (10pm to 6am), afternoon (6am to 2pm). Some days, they would have to do double shifts, sometimes they would get a day or two off. Hairdressers get to do the same.

      There was a political issues in one village where the local mothers used to be able to work part-time at a large hotel. They could cover for each other if someone needed an afternoon off to take the children to the doctor. But when new countries joined the EU, the hotel owners preferred to employ East European workers who lived in the top rooms and worked full-time.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    7. Re:Supply and Demand by DontHackMeBro · · Score: 1

      Yes, the programmer bandwagon initiative has just created an oversupply of programmers. But this is also politics 101 - the politicization of market forces.

    8. Re: Supply and Demand by Type44Q · · Score: 1, Funny

      Maybe women like to work part-time and choose the hours they want to work.

      Corporate America let's you choose your hours?! That's so great; I honestly had no idea...

    9. Re: Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Pay is also determined by negotiation skill, where "balls" have an advantage. There are more men in prison, should there be gender equality there too? In the grand scheme, pay rates are not determined fairly, but as little as possible is by rule paid out. Only robber barons get paid as they want to.
      If you don't like your pay, walk out. If you can't, too bad, that sucks for you.

    10. Re: Supply and Demand by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Maybe women like to work part-time and choose the hours they want to work.

      Or maybe TFA is based on bogus data. The factoid that computer programmers used to be mostly women has been debunked. They were mostly key-punch data entry clerks, not "programmers". They were keying in programs written by others, or converting flow charts to code. Very few of them were designing algorithms.

      I also doubt if ticket sellers were really paid 57% more in the past. Why would a movie theater pay that much for a job requiring near zero skills? Likely because in the past the data was either very sparse or including people like the theater owner. I would like to see where this data came from.

    11. Re: Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I suspect the conclusion of the study may be wrong. Perhaps women entering the field don't drive down the salaries, rather, women begin to dominate fields that see their pay drop to where men can find more lucrative alternatives with their skill set.

      So, in other words, if women started dominating cs jobs, that would indicate that the average pay dropped, not the other way around.

    12. Re:Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean when there is a larger supply of something, and demand stays even, the price of that thing goes down? That's crazy talk, it's almost as if this were a field of study or something. It may even involve charts.

      But my horoscope always tells me that I'm going to be rich and have everything I desire. Are you telling me that Astrology isn't right?

    13. Re: Supply and Demand by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Why do more women than men want to work part time? It's mostly to do with needing to look after children. That suggests the burden of child rearing falls more heavily on the shoulders of women.

      In fact, we know this to be true. Some European societies have reached a point where the division of labour is close to 50/50, and sure enough men there want more flexible working too. Once everyone wants it, the laws get changed, employers make more effort to offer it, and the gender pay gap narrows.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    14. Re:Supply and Demand by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      I thought everybody knew that was the point. Why would Facebook et. al. be interested in education? To create more workers so they have to pay them less, of course.

    15. Re: Supply and Demand by tsotha · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are lots of jobs in the US where you can influence your hours. Back when I had menial jobs I could (and did) swap shifts with the other employees as long as the manager was okay with it.

    16. Re:Supply and Demand by tsotha · · Score: 1

      It may be they became "mainly female" because the men left in search of higher pay. That is, the "mainly female" part was an effect of the pay drop rather than a cause.

    17. Re:Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are huge problems in the world that desperately need solving: poverty, disease, conflict, etc. Even just considering disease, until we have cures for all the diseases of the world, there is an essentially unlimited amount of real work that desperately needs doing. And it's not just highly skilled work that needs doing. There are all kinds of neighborhoods that are not safe because of high levels of crime. There is an essentially unlimited need for people with integrity, but not much in the way of academic skills, to patrol these dangerous neighborhoods.

      And, at this point, we have the technology to produce the basic necessities (food, clothing, housing, etc.) for a simple comfortable life very efficiently. There's no fundamental reason why we couldn't produce enough basic necessities for everyone on the planet to be provided with everything they would need for a simple comfortable life.

      So, there's enough real work that desperately needs doing for everyone on the planet to have good meaningful jobs and we can produce enough basic necessities for everyone on the planet to have simple comfortable lives. Why, then, aren't we doing that? Why are so many people trapped in poverty working in sweatshops producing frivolous luxury items like designer handbags?

      Personally, I don't really know. But I look around the world and good government seems to be a big part of the answer. Some countries, such as the Scandinavian socialist countries, manage to do pretty well at providing most of their population with good jobs and comfortable lives. Obviously, though, many other countries are an epic fail in that regard. The countries that do well seem to have low levels of corruption and high levels of economic redistribution - but not necessarily as direct cash transfers, per se - mostly in the form of things like infrastructure and education.

    18. Re: Supply and Demand by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      There is no pay gap. There's an earning gap and it's based off of individual choices.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    19. Re:Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean when there is a larger supply of something, and demand stays even, the price of that thing goes down? That's crazy talk, it's almost as if this were a field of study or something. It may even involve charts.

      Well, typically there's a "supply" curve: in the case of labor, the total number of hours that people are willing to work on a particular job - as a function of the wage for that job. And then there's the "demand" curve: in the case of labor, the total number of hours of available work - as a function of the wage for that job.

      Now, intriguingly, you can actually make arguments that either curve should slope either way.

      For the "supply" curve, you could argue that people are sitting around enjoying their leisure time (or perhaps working some other job) but that if you pay them enough they may just choose to do a bit of work on the job in question - that more people will be willing to work more in a particular job as you increase the wage. But you could also argue that people have certain basic needs and that once these needs are satisfied people will choose to sit around doing nothing - so if you increase wages then people will be able to work less and still satisfy their basic needs - that people will work less as wages are increased.

      For the "demand" curve, you could argue that there's a trade-off between labor and capital - that employers will choose less efficient means of production employing more labor as wages decrease. But you could also argue for economies of scale - that as more labor is hired, each unit of labor becomes more productive - that the wages that an employer can afford to pay actually increase as the employer hires more workers. For example, imagine a small factory where one worker produces shirts all by hand - the worker would be lucky to produce even just one shirt per day (and obviously couldn't be paid more than the value of that shirt or the company would go bankrupt). But imagine a factory of 100 workers that produces 10,000 shirts per day in a highly organized and automated process. In that case the company could potentially pay each employee as much as the value of 100 shirts per day.

      Of course, in practice the math only makes sense if each curve slopes a certain way - and not the other - so most economists assume that that's how the real world works. But the whole notion of supply and demand determining wages for labor is on much shakier foundations than most people realize.

    20. Re: Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those statistics are skewed by the fact that women are gold diggers that outright refuse to marry a man that earns less than her.

    21. Re: Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Flexible hours are great, but there's no reason the laws should be changed. I'm fortunate enough to have that in my office, with some limitations...we have "core" hours, where you must be here. But, are you suggesting that we should force flexible hours on small businesses? If I need someone to cover a desk from 8am to 5pm, how do I do that when Joe Blow calls in and says he's coming in at noon today?...hire an extra person? That gets really expensive, really quick.

      FWIW, part of my job is to work up staffing models where our customers require 24/7, 16/5, 8/5, etc., schedules, at a minimal cost to our customers, and thus sparing some of our tax dollars. All sorts of things are taken into consideration...skill sets, vacation/holiday time, shifts, frequency of various (sometimes random) tasks popping up, etc.

    22. Re:Supply and Demand by taylorius · · Score: 1

      "So, there's enough real work that desperately needs doing " ...
      "Why are so many people trapped in poverty working in sweatshops producing frivolous luxury items like designer handbags?"

      *Jumps up with hand in air* Ooh, ooh, I know! Is it because humans are mostly self-centered, irrational, aggressive large-brained primates?

      Why would we expect any other outcome? No-one cares about their fellow man. Plenty of people talk (a lot) about caring, but that's just showing off. If they really cared they'd go and help some poor people in Africa / India etc. But very few people sacrifice their own quality of life to help others, beyond the odd token gesture - which (again) is designed to make themselves feel and look good.

    23. Re: Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The only thing that has been debunked is the notion that women are paid less than men for the same work.

      They are not.

      1. That's already illegal.
      2. If not, it would correct itself very quickly - as no-one would hire men when you can hire a women for less.

      Things that HAVEN'T been debunked:

      1. Men are more productive per hour of the same work
      2. Men work longer hours - full time + overtime
      3. Men take less time off sick
      4. Men are more willing to travel to get work
      5. Men choose high paying, risky, difficult and demanding jobs.

    24. Re: Supply and Demand by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      My informal observation is that jobs that are considered "women's work" tend to be underpaid in this culture, regardless of things like difficulty and risk. Nursing requires long hours, is demanding, can be difficult, and has its risks. Nurses are generally not paid for that, since it's dominated by women.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    25. Re: Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nurses are paid quite well in Canada AFAIK.

    26. Re: Supply and Demand by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Really? Guess that's why there's tens of thousands of lawsuits under various "equal pay acts" you know, the legislation that was put in place over 50 years ago in every western country that makes it illegal to payscale workers based on sex/race/etc. Nope, guess there aren't.

      The only thing that AMA proves it that women don't negotiate for pay as aggressively as men.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    27. Re: Supply and Demand by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Nurses are paid quite well in Canada AFAIK.

      True. It's also because they have a lot more responsibilities then say in the US. Head nurses here can clear $100k easily, your average nurse easily pulls in $50-70k, not counting overtime in both cases. A friend of mine who works at the local GH pulled in $133k after overtime, she's not even a head nurse. Last year was just a bad year, especially early 2015 for the cold/flu and number of people suffering problems due to age related diseases. $133k for someone two years out of nursing programs, and is 23 is doing pretty well in my book. Especially since the median wage in my county is around $52k.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    28. Re:Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, there's enough real work that desperately needs doing for everyone on the planet to have good meaningful jobs and we can produce enough basic necessities for everyone on the planet to have simple comfortable lives. Why, then, aren't we doing that?

      Turns out throwing money at the issue creates more problems than it solves. Giving free food to poor Africans quickly gets corrupted and a mafia/gang builds up around it and threatens the life of the locals worse than the benefit of the free food. Any time you create an artificial increase of wealth, someone will take advantage of it and create more issues than being solved. Helping poor people is a very difficult issue. The only one thing that is safe to do is to educate them and help them help themselves.

    29. Re: Supply and Demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Saw a study on this. It compared college graduates, male and female, who interviewed and were made offers for the same or equivalent jobs. Candidates were equivalently qualified. In one particular case both candidates were hired with a proposed salary of $35,000 ( a good salary at the time.) The man countered, asking for $3000 more. The company wanted him enough to accept the counter offer. The woman just accepted the job. On their first day the man was making $38,000 and the woman $35,000. Whose fault was it that she was making less?

  3. Did Ric Romero leave fark by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Informative

    and start submitting stories to /.? No kidding. That's the _point_. If you haven't figured that out by now you haven't been paying attention.

    The more interesting question is will people ever notice that the 1% does stuff like this? Every time the rich target an industry for lower wages I'm baffled that folks pretend like it's not happening. They tell me I'm a conspiracy loon because the idea that somebody might think 10 or 20 years down the line is nuts because well, they don't think that far down the line so why should anybody else?

    This is kinda why workers formed Unions folks. The 1% are _always_ looking for ways to stop paying you. You know how you look for ways to save money on your day-to-day expenses? You clip coupons, they depress wages. Basically the same thing.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The 1% are _always_ looking for ways to stop paying you.

      It occurs to me that this is more of a push by forced equality groups than anybody else. On a side note, one of the original purposes behind the first unions in the US was to keep Asians out of the workforce, up to and including through the use of violence.

    2. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by swb · · Score: 1

      What do you have to demonstrate that "more coders" is about a long-term conspiracy to reduce demand by increasing supply other than it's coincidental logic?

      You could also say that "more coders" is about enabling more business growth because limits on the availability of coders limits growth of software businesses by making costs too high to support expansion.

      It might even be possible that both are true at the same time, that capitalists may want to work to drive down costs in the near term, knowing that it will enable rapid expansion which will ultimately raise prices back to current levels when growth slows.

      I'm actually inclined to believe that capitalists see coding as just a form of assembly work and want to push prices down closer to traditional factory wages because of how much traditional business economics is based on older industrial economic models and class structures.

    3. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The 1% are _always_ looking for ways to stop paying you.

      It occurs to me that this is more of a push by forced equality groups than anybody else..

      And just who likes to fund these movements?

    4. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      You're asking the wrong question; it's now who funds them, but how they're funded. How they're funded is civil rights groups either sue them into submission or launch a negative PR campaign to do the same. The NAACP has mastered this technique:

      http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/naa...

      As a non-profit, the group’s donations aren’t disclosed, but the sponsors of its yearly NAACP Image Awards, a star-studded event celebrating “the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts” are public. In the past five years, sponsors of the Image Awards have included companies like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Wal-Mart and FedEx, all of whom have been sued for discrimination – in some cases by the NAACP itself.

      The Justice Department’s civil rights division secured a nearly $200 million settlement with Wells Fargo in in 2012 over accusations the bank steered minorities into subprime loans – a lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore alleged that loan officers referred to subprime loans as “ghetto loans” and black borrowers as “mud people.” The NAACP dropped its lawsuit against Wells Fargo – an NAACP contributor at the time the lawsuit was filed – in 2011, after the bank agreed to help establish the NAACP Financial Freedom Center, whose mission is to “educate and empower consumers and provide tools for effective advocacy.”

      The Justice Department also secured the largest settlement in the division’s history with Bank of America, $335 million, over similar accusations that its Countrywide unit discriminated against minority borrowers.

      Wells Fargo began sponsoring the Image Awards in 2010, and Bank of America has sponsored the Image Awards since 2008. Both banks, the NAACP announced, agreed to the organization’s “responsible lending principles.”

      FedEx, which has sponsored the Image Awards since 2008, agreed in 2012 to pay a $3 million dollar settlement over accusations that they discriminated against job applicants on the basis of race and gender.

      The NAACP also backed Betty Dukes, whose class action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart went all the way to the Supreme Court, where in 2011 the conservative majority severely restricted the ability of workers to sue for discrimination as a class. Wal-Mart was a sponsor of last year’s Image Awards, and has supported the NAACP’s work on helping the formerly incarcerated reenter society.

    5. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And how could the civil rights groups afford lawyers in the first place? Did, or did not, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation help fund the feminist movement in the 70s, and did they ever have best interest of women in mind when doing so?

    6. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      In a lot of cases they're pro bono, but they don't necessarily need lawyers to get funding.

    7. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It occurs to me that this is more of a push by forced equality groups than anybody else. On a side note, one of the original purposes behind the first unions in the US was to keep Asians out of the workforce, up to and including through the use of violence.

      If you're looking for racism and bigotry expressed in America, you're WAY too late if you're looking at 1885. Try the Know Nothings which was primarily anti-Catholic, at the time that was mostly Germans and Irish.

      Now if you want the labor movements, try Commonwealth v. Hunt and the derivations from English Common Law. Which exist for various and sundry reasons, but most likely the Guild system offended those in power at some time or another. And really, there were problems with indentured servants versus free colonists and settlers before the Revolution as well.

      It's nothing new.

      If you look, you can find these issues in Roman and Greek dialogues as well.

      And to borrow from a later post of yours...

      That sounds like a dystopia to me.

      Why?

      Really, you should have a fuller explanation so others can understand your reasoning.

    8. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by tsotha · · Score: 1

      Yes, groups like the NAACP and Rainbow Push fund themselves by shaking down corporate targets. But that's not an accident. The legal environment for that kind of business model was put into place because it allows the large corporations, through the government, to play the races and the sexes off against each other without appearing to do so.

    9. Re:Did Ric Romero leave fark by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Given the number of companies making the news for firing workers in order to (illegally) replace them with H1Bs, it's entirely safe to say that supply isn't the problem, unless one of your critical factors is the cost of said supply.

  4. SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've never found a woman coworker to be even half as passionate about technology and computers as I am.

    I'm coding at home on the weekend, coded for hours last night, will code for a few more hours today. During my breaks I'll read more about crypto or learn about a new fad language to see how it's gone off course.

    When I am at work, I only go to lunch with other passionate types mainly so we can talk about our little "side" projects at home. I'm writing a few opengl games, a friend is writing a CMS, another is writing an order management system for healthcare, another is writing a tabletop boardgame application.

    The women we work with however talented they may be, lack passion. They will go to lunch and get mad at us for "still talking about work". Then they wonder why they don't get invited next time around.

    I've worked with a few that are that passionate, and they end up being published and respected like other men. They would be a welcome addition to our lunch crew but women like that tend to have other priorities which don't involve eating lunch with a bunch of men.

    My passion is what makes me better at what I do. The fact that I don't stop should mean I get paid more than someone else "who only does it as a job". That's the black and white issue at play here.

    1. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Thanks for proving his point. He's far more valuable to an employer than you.

    2. Re:SJW crap by SQLGuru · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not just women. I find that developers who lack the passion to continuously learn and play with technology (not necessarily directly related to their day job....just technology in general) tend to be the ones that are middle of the pack in large companies. They aren't necessarily bad at their job, but they are never the ones that leap ahead of the pack. For them it's just a "job".

      The question becomes: how many "average" developers can you get away with and still be a successful company? The "rock stars" are expensive, so you want to have as few of them as you can and have them cover for the rest of the team......and they'll do it willingly because they love what they do. It's the reason that I left my last job......I was tired of covering for everyone else.

      It's even worse when the "average" developers are in a different country.

    3. Re: SJW crap by snowsnoot · · Score: 1, Interesting

      He's doing what he loves, what's wrong with that? He also has a point about not only women, but many people working in technology. They get into it because it pays well, but they really lack the natural interest (passion) in the field to take it beyond being work. People like the GP are the ones who succeed in tech because they do it for the right reason, i.e. they love it and are good at it. The same can be said for any profession, and its the advice I give to my kids and others.. Do something because you love it and you're good at it. We are all good at something.

    4. Re:SJW crap by slashping · · Score: 2

      There's a fine line between passion and addiction which you likely crossed long ago. I won't even ask about work/life balance, because you don't have any, which is likely what all those who are "lacking" passion are doing; living their lives.

      He's living his life too, but in a more meaningful way.

    5. Re:SJW crap by naughtynaughty · · Score: 2

      Different people have different passions in life, accept it instead of ridiculing it because they aren't like you.

    6. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      pfft, you eat lunch? Everyone knows that people with real passion work non-stop

    7. Re: SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You really shouldn't be.

    8. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sound defensive. The O.P. is better at software development than you will ever be, and enjoys high job security and salary because of that. By stamping your foot and saying "you are mentally ill! You should be spending more time doing things that don't make you a better software developer!" you sound like someone who is deeply intimidated by his obviously superior skill and value. You are trying to shame him for his superiority, and rob him of it.

      His values are different than yours. You can't talk him out of them. He receives the benefits his values instill, as you receive what benefits yours instill. Don't be surprised when the only people who come to your defense are obvious trolls.
       

    9. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, I thought this was about passion, not what's valuable to who?

      Weird, I'm very passionate about 1960s electronics. Where's my job?

    10. Re:SJW crap by gweihir · · Score: 2

      And if all people were like you, humanity would still reside in caves. Any good engineer or scientist critically _needs_ this passion.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    11. Re: SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "People like you" -- what do you mean by this?

      The O.P. loves his* job, and prefers the company of people with a similar interest. What in God's name is wrong with that? Nothing.

      The O.P. observed that his female co-workers don't exhibit the same passion. It sounds like an objective observation. He didn't say anything about paying them less, or discriminating against them when hiring, or harming them in any way. The only impact was that he doesn't invite them to lunch with him, and that *only* because they don't like to talk about what he likes to talk about. There is nothing wrong with this. Most people prefer to socialize with people of a common interest. It is OK to do that.

      How is he opposing social justice?

      * the O.P. is most likely male, though didn't explicitly say this, and could possibly be female.

    12. Re:SJW crap by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      now that's a laugh, talking about SJW wondering why anyone is still single. That's the epitome of butt-ugly rejects that no man wants, plus the fat greasy slob man-feminists that are part of their online circle

    13. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Original Anon here, I'm married. One is in the oven.

    14. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...They will go to lunch and get mad at us for "still talking about work". Then they wonder why they don't get invited next time around.

      No, they're actually wondering why you're still so single. (FYI, the answer isn't found in a readme file)

      There's a fine line between passion and addiction which you likely crossed long ago. I won't even ask about work/life balance, because you don't have any, which is likely what all those who are "lacking" passion are doing; living their lives.

      I still can't figure out how some people think the word "single" is an insult. I'm over 30, male, single, never married. Life's pretty good right now. I have a good income, a good career, as good a level of job security as anyone can hope for in this economy, and I'm well on the way to paying off my home. But more to the point, do you know what I don't have? I don't have to worry about wasting any time or money on women who only see me as a walking wallet anyway. I don't have to worry about some woman divorcing me, leveling a fake rape or domestic violence charge against me, or just plain calling the police and saying she "feels threatened" and then stealing my house and most of my money from me. I don't have to justify any personal expense to anyone other than myself. My time is my own to spend on myself in any way I chose--and a lot of that does include happen to include hobbies that straddle the line between work and play.

      My experience has been that anyone who thinks being single is a bad thing will, given enough time, find out for themselves that not being single is a far worse state. Just ask literally everyone I ever met in high school and college, 10 or 15 years after graduation.

    15. Re: SJW crap by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      That's the epitome of butt-ugly rejects that no man wants

      They just need to move to Oklahoma; those folks'll fuck anything that moves (and how do I know? Easy; they fuck each other.)

    16. Re:SJW crap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Troll

      "I've never found a woman coworker to be even half as passionate about technology and computers as I am."

      +5 for this misogynist crap?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    17. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Doesn't matter. As long she has the same formal qualification as you, she's your competition and will be used to drive down the price you can ask. It takes a long time to establish that you're worth more than a piece of paper can convey. While you're working on that, your price is lower than it would be without the additional competition, and you have to work yourself up from there, not from where you would start with less competition.

    18. Re:SJW crap by Howitzer86 · · Score: 2

      Everyone is different. Living the dream at work is not typical. A dream job for you may just be a paycheck for someone else. Most jobs are compromises that we accept because our dreams are either unrealistic or unlikely, and finding work is more important.

      If you can use your talents at work great. But I think the most an employer should expect from an employee is competency. Anything more is a gift.

    19. Re:SJW crap by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You don't need a pack of alpha sleigh dogs. That only ensures that you have everyone pulling into a different direction and everyone's wasting everyone else's energy. You need one, maybe two, to give the whole thing a direction and a bunch of others who're going to do the pulling.

      Just like our society needs the movers and shakers to break open barriers, but we need far more conformists and followers to keep the structure together. Have you ever seen those "passionate" types try to meet project deadlines and stay in budget without someone reigning them in? In this time and age of IT, driven by cost sheets and milestones rather than the will and ability to innovate the next big thing, the question is rather how many of those special snowflakes you can get away with and still be successful.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    20. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you're a bitter, twisted shell of a human being counting his material goods, all alone? What a winner you are.

    21. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No he is not more valuable to his employer. He and his friends put a lot of effort into non-work hobbies. That is not nearly the same as putting a lot of effort into work projects. Note how none of his mentioned proofs of passion do something for employer. I know his kind, they slacks real work on the job because they care more about hobby project at home.

    22. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey obvious troll....

      He is passionate about something for which there is demand. You are passionate about something for which there is no demand. That isn't hard to figure out.

      His passion is not leading him to harm anyone else, and it is providing him with a fulfilling life. You are arguing that he would be better off with less passion, but your argument is hollow. It is obvious that his passion is serving him well, and your advise wouldn't improve his lot at all (though, if everyone like him took your advice, that might improve your lot, since you would face easier competition in the industry).

      I find your position to be lacking in merit.

    23. Re:SJW crap by slashping · · Score: 4, Insightful

      +5 for this misogynist crap?

      Sounds like a simple fact of his life. And now that I think of it, it's also been true in my career.

    24. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People who "leap ahead of the pack" are the ones that are aggressive about taking leadership/management role. The ones who focus on tech the most are not the one whose career go up.

    25. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've never found a woman

      Fixed.

    26. Re:SJW crap by 1jpablo1 · · Score: 1

      You obviously care a lot about excelling at what you do. Been so laser-focused has a few disadvantages though: there are a lot of really good ideas / metaphors / patterns out there that you will miss if you don't diversify a bit.

      I'd only add that salaries and passion or hours put into the job are only correlated in a very narrow sense. Salaries are a function of supply / demand (in an fictionalized scenario) but also of gender bias / connections / corruption / other stuff in the real world.

    27. Re:SJW crap by oakgrove · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Reality is rarely politically correct.

      --
      The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
    28. Re:SJW crap by Snotnose · · Score: 1

      Not buying it. The ones I've seen "leap ahead of the pack" have pretty balanced lives. They do their job, they don't spend half the day on FB, they don't stand around the water cooler yammering. They go to work, work, go home.

      At home they have wives, girlfriends (sometimes both), kids. They've got other hobbies. One of the best engineers I've ever worked with had something like 9 kids (not exaggerating here, if his wife wasn't preggers he was trying to get her that way). He was also a huge conspiracy enthusiast. Face on Mars, Kennedy, MLK, you name it, he was an expert on it.

      The guys who live and breath this stuff tend to be boring know it alls who, when push comes to shove, know everything but how to do their job.

    29. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you're a bitter, twisted shell of a human being counting his material goods, all alone? What a winner you are.

      Heck no. Every time I've ever met up with one of my old college buddies and listened to their sob stories about the meat grinder that girlfriends, marriages, and divorce court put them through, I've discovered a whole new level of gratitude for a life in which I've apparently dodged many bullets.

      But the fact that you think "no romantic and/or sexual relationships" = "all alone" does say a few things about you.

    30. Re:SJW crap by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 1

      When working at IBM as a t2 tech, I would come in at 6:30-7:00AM, grab all the "easy" tickets, and then just skip lunch. I was leaving at 2:30-3:00pm, doing my eight hours. Eventually some coworkers complained that I was "leaving early", so I showed that I was doing my full eight to my boss. A day later, HR sent out a "memo" that we were required by company policy to take a minimum 30 minute lunch with a max of 60 minutes.

    31. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Your "passion" sounds like a mental illness.

      Ah, yes, the eternal cry of the socialist and SJW: everybody who doesn't conform to the socialist view of society is mentally ill. When you people come to power, the next thing you do is throw people into reeducation camps. And when that doesn't work, you kill them.

      You are a very shallow human being if that's all you do

      Where as you are a dangerous totalitarian. I take the "shallow" techie over sociopaths like you any day.

    32. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Very good points.

      Of course, marriage can and does work for many people. Based on current numbers, nearly half of all marriages never end in divorce. Presumably, some subset of that population are also happy in their marriages.

      So, marriage isn't an automatic fail, but I agree that it isn't an automatic win either. Nor is staying single an automatic fail, for all the reasons you gave. I will add a few:

      1) Less time spent on chores, since leaving your socks on the floor isn't being rude to anyone (though you are free to spend more time on chores if you please).
      2) Less time spent fulfilling other people's needs (unless you choose to volunteer or whatever, for your own self-actualization).
      3) Significantly less exposure to disease (primarily from the lack of kids in the house, unless you freely choose to work with kids).
      4) Significantly less stress from other people's demands on you and your time (presumably you still have friends available for when you need someone to talk to...and if you don't, seriously, therapists are affordable and this is exactly what they do, and they give you better advise anyway).
      5) Less attachment (a real boon for people who are into meditation).
      6) More free time.
      7) More freedom to define yourself, and pursue your true passion, whatever it may be.
      8) More freedom to drop everything and relocate. You aren't selfishly failing to think of the emotional needs of your kids and spouse, if you don't have any.
      9) More money (unless you spend recklessly, which you are of course free to do without guilt).
      10) More sex. You can, if you wish, have a greater variety of partners, and once the sex diminishes you can end the relationship and move on. Of course, this is expensive (whether you are having sex with prostitutes or girlfriends), and re-introduces some exposure to disease, etc. But if sex is what drives you, staying single will generally provide more of it (though, it is possible to marry a swinger or nymph, these are rare).

      It really is a good deal, for those who don't have a compelling need to pair-up and/or breed.

    33. Re:SJW crap by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      Oh please, most people i know have the most inane hobbies. Following Sports obsessively is right at the top of the list. I consider every fan of 'March Madness' to be a shallow human being.

      --
      Good-bye
    34. Re:SJW crap by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I consider my hobbies at home to be my real work. My job just funds it.

      --
      Good-bye
    35. Re:SJW crap by robi5 · · Score: 1

      > I've never found a woman coworker to be even half as passionate about technology and computers as I am.
      [..]
      > I've worked with a few that are that passionate, and they end up being published and respected like other men.

      So which one is it? Maybe the passionate ones weren't coworkers, but clients, consultants etc.?

    36. Re:SJW crap by robi5 · · Score: 1

      > Your "passion" sounds like a mental illness. You are a very shallow human being if that's all you do... Jesus Christ, just reading your post makes me want to go outside and hopefully not meet someone like you!

      I'd pick the passionate one over the offensively judgmental one any time of the day.

    37. Re:SJW crap by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      > So you're a bitter, twisted shell of a human being counting his material goods, all alone? What a winner you are.

      You are just an idiot that can't accept that other people have their own values and have made their own choices for themselves. I don't need to agree with this guy to acknowledge his right to live life the way he sees fit. I see no point in imposing my values or my choices on him.

      My life choices don't depend on suppressing his. Neither do yours.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    38. Re:SJW crap by robi5 · · Score: 2

      How do you know he isn't learning skills and fluency in things that more or less directly applicable to his work? Assumptions... It is also possible that he got the job in the first place due to his former enthusiasm, amassed skill, or maybe a github or app store portfolio of things that his employer appreciated.

    39. Re: SJW crap by robi5 · · Score: 1

      If you like labels, anon, I'm sure you took on a few others too, with this kind of seeing things black&white and being judgmental.

    40. Re:SJW crap by robi5 · · Score: 1

      > There's a fine line between passion and addiction which you likely crossed long ago. I won't even ask about work/life balance, because you don't have any, which is likely what all those who are "lacking" passion are doing; living their lives.

      You anon certainly have a more than healthy amount of passion for telling other people how to spend their time.

    41. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sounds like you work at my company. Passion about technology is exactly what most guys I've worked with have, and most women I've worked with do not have. They guys come to work all excited about some crazy new technology they learned about the night before, and the women (most of them anyway) couldn't care less. The company (a huge DoD contractor) is desperate to hire women though, so the place is swarming with them.

      While the guys are working late, and the women are off to spinning class or yoga. I guess you could argue that the women have the right idea about life/work balance, but I know whom I'd rather hire, and who gets more work done faster.

    42. Re:SJW crap by vel-ex-tech · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Yeah, +5 for that misogynist crap.

      Your cisgendered hunnies frankly lack passion when it comes to anything else other than spinning some kind of FEEL GUILTY narrative. I suppose if I had all the privileges of a cisfemale in today's world, I might not have been too different. I'd like to imagine I would have been the same person in the end, but I'm not stupid enough to think that all the bad shit I went through that cisfemales have the privilege of being even unaware they had the privilege of avoiding hasn't helped make me the insane misanthrope I am today.

      I'll tell you the breadth and scope of the interest every cisfemale who has ever gone "I wanna be a programmer" was envisioning: they wanted my job. When they found out that the reason I had my job was because I combine areas of expertise from system administration to programming and multiple OS paradigms such as Windows, Linux, OS 7 (back before iThingies) and even back from Second Age of the Internet before Eternal September when a consumer computer just booted to a prompt where one could type in a program in BASIC. No DOS, nothing. Just a prompt. And I'm on the young side here. I missed all the fun of the First Age of the Internet when Ma Bell wouldn't let modems connect directly to the phone system and tic-tac-toe games were programmed on punch cards.

      I realize I started a sentence there but never finished it. Every cisfemale who has ever gone "I wanna be a programmer" was envisioning having my job. When they found out that the reason I have my job is because of extensive experience brought about by utter passion, suddenly I became the sexist who was just making everything too technical because for some reason I think cisfemales shouldn't be programmers. I see no neurological reason cisfemales cannot be programmers. After all, I've got the same wetware in my head and the same hormones in my blood. The difference is socialization. It was made utterly clear to me that if I wasn't the fucking best, I'd be a fucking homeless bum.

      Yeah, I'm being half-facetious here by comparing the evolution of information systems to the history of Middle Earth, but I hope it drives the point home. The reason I know shit is because I was passionate about it. I wanted to know where it came from and where it was going. I'd never imagine that I'd be carrying around a supercomputer in my pocket that I'm unable to program myself simply because of digital restrictions management.

      Everybody has their reason why we buried ourselves in this shit, why we slept it, ate it, drank it, etc. I lived in a world I couldn't understand. My genitals hurt because I had to be cut up all for your cisfemale hunnies. I knew I was a girl. I even had a teacher confirm that I acted like a girl, but she also informed me I would need to be punished simply because of the gender I was assigned at birth. So, I dove into technology.

      What did it get me? I was promised millions. I currently have nothing but a pile of shit to show for it in the end.

      Frankly, I really don't give a shit about your cisgendered hunnies. The one thing people like you need to get through your tiny little heads is that there is nothing standing in their way.

      Well, there is one thing. I'm sure in an alternate reality I was able to buy the cosmetic surgery I had wished I'd be able to buy with my millions (really, only roughly $20,000 as a high estimate), GP and I might have run into each other, and his mind would have been blown that this hot chick is talking about how to troubleshoot his double free with him over lunch. Of course, his mind would be unblown upon finding out I was assigned the male gender, the expendable gender, at birth. (I think I've said before I've come around to a revelation about TERFs. They're exactly right, and they're exactly wrong, with apologies to Captain Sulu.)

      I'll leave you with one last thing. I've recently learned that your cisgendered hunnies have their heads so far up their asses they've managed to fin

    43. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact that I don't stop should mean I get paid more than someone else "who only does it as a job".

      No. Wrong. Incorrect. You are paid according to how much or how little your employer values your work output and how willing they are to see you walk out the door, not how much or how hard you work. Their goal is to profit from your work output to the maximum extent possible and pay you just enough so that you won't quit and go somewhere else, nothing more.

    44. Re: SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I grew up with computers, coded all the time, and all the things you listed. My female coworkers are just plain smart, and manage to get more done than I do while still having a social life. Of course where I work we can actually afford to pay a real wage and have actual maternity benefits, so we don't drive off the woman who do like programming for their career. And we're not perfect by any means; just look at the diversity reports the major software companies are putting out; we're all struggling to get over the mindset that only nerdy, obsessed people can be good programmers and engineers. It's just a false stereotype.

    45. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Have you ever seen those "passionate" types try to meet project deadlines and stay in budget without someone reigning them in?

      Well, no, but as long as we continue to call them "artists" and make sure that they stay fed, they're f*cking priceless. Source? I'm an art dealer.

    46. Re:SJW crap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      I know women who are extremely passionate about CS. Just because you and the OP don't, doesn't mean there is something inherent about being female that makes a person disinterested in engineering or certain branches of science.

      Fuck you and your political correctness red herring. The statement was a best idiotic, but more likely born of a condescending, arrogant belief that women are somehow inferior and just incapable of being good engineers. It's bigotry, plain and simple.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    47. Re:SJW crap by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      No he is not more valuable to his employer. He and his friends put a lot of effort into non-work hobbies. That is not nearly the same as putting a lot of effort into work projects. Note how none of his mentioned proofs of passion do something for employer.

      Really? I can't count the number of times something that I've done at home has made things easier (meaning it takes less time, in turn meaning it costs my employer less) or even possible at work. Having a broad range of technical interests off the clock means that there are a lot of assignments where I can hit the ground running instead of spending time on training or otherwise becoming familiar with something new to the workplace.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    48. Re:SJW crap by NormalVisual · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You don't need a pack of alpha sleigh dogs. That only ensures that you have everyone pulling into a different direction and everyone's wasting everyone else's energy.

      Yeah, it's always fun when you have a handful of "rock stars" that are convinced that their way is the only way and that everyone else is an idiot, failing to note that no two of them can agree on the "right" way to do something.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    49. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All the crap about targetting people who have been in the industry the longest, along with pushing "unrepresented" minorities who are otherwise not actually interested in CS, is only about raising the wages.

      As for the 1%'s involvement, there is a reason why SJW mouthpieces can live in some of the most expensive cities with no real jobs. Most of them happen to be the black sheep of wealthy families who weren't smart enough to be involved in the family business.

    50. Re:SJW crap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The whole alpha/beta thing is bullshit. Leadership skills can be learnt and you want someone intelligent, experienced and diplomatic to run your team for maximum effect. Otherwise people just get pissed off and leave, or the alpha doesn't even try to use their ideas and expertise and just does what they think is right.

      Leaders are not born, they are made, and the best ones don't need to crack the whip.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    51. Re:SJW crap by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      That "bitter, twisted shell of a human being" seems pretty happy to me, judging from his post.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    52. Re:SJW crap by superwiz · · Score: 5, Informative

      "I've never found a woman coworker to be even half as passionate about technology and computers as I am."

      +5 for this misogynist crap?

      While it does seem like he is implying a sweeping generalization based on his personal experience, he does stop short of actually making such a generalization. So his response is less knee-jerk than yours.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    53. Re:SJW crap by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      The "enforced lunch" is something that annoys me to no end. I'd much rather get in early, do my time, and get out early. Avoiding traffic is a major plus, and the reduced travel time as a result means more free time at the end of the day. On top of that, if I'm in an hour earlier, I get a lot more done because no one is bugging me. I'd also rather work 4 10-hour days and save one day's drive to/from work.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    54. Re:SJW crap by Goragoth · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, he's living his life in a different way. We could all do with a bit less judgement, though I know it is hard. There are many perfectly valid ways of living your life and the most important thing is that you are happy with the way that you live it, because we are all dust in the end.

    55. Re:SJW crap by Teriblows · · Score: 1

      This is true, many males who excel in areas simply have a wider scope of skills and focus on the areas which matter. It's men after all who spend their free time on hobbies which have practical application, hot rodding cars to making game mods, men build additional skills for fun, and no pay, and these simply add the disparity seen between the sexes. There tends to be more self directed building of skills with men, people like Woz learned outside of school, women seem to only involve themselves in these areas as a practical consideration which probably accounts for much of the difference. People want to play at a role are simply not going to be good as people who live the role, and frankly as you said, have no choice but to thrive or fail. Women choose men with higher pay and education, the fundamental motivators simply aren't there for women on the same scale, so there is no benefit for them to sacrifice on the same level. An old woman who has thrown away her youth for a job title is simply not attractive as a young woman to any man, no amount of feminist complaining will change this, and the presumption one role is better than the other is again, without basis. Just look at the average shopping mall and one will see the signs of privilege, most of the shops cater to the leisure class, the leisure gender, that is the bargain women make, so it is ridiculous to complain about it without looking at the full picture. It's really obnoxious how these publications close comments so early, I saw the usual citation of the git-hub study claiming women's code was better. Study was pure junk science, not peer reviewed. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016... But i guess that's why they do it, it spreads a lie out there to be repeated, no different from this new article which conflates titles where the job description changes radically through the generations.

    56. Re:SJW crap by Zaelath · · Score: 2

      Sure, the point wasn't about the outlier though. It was about the "average". He even acknowledged the exception to the rule, albeit I guess not quite up to his rabid levels of passion, and that those women rise just as high.

      It's not that it's particularly insightful, or that passionate necessarily means good. I've met a lot of idiots that were keen as mustard.

      I think you just got triggered by the title...

    57. Re:SJW crap by m00sh · · Score: 1

      I've never found a woman coworker to be even half as passionate about technology and computers as I am.

      I'm coding at home on the weekend, coded for hours last night, will code for a few more hours today. During my breaks I'll read more about crypto or learn about a new fad language to see how it's gone off course.

      When I am at work, I only go to lunch with other passionate types mainly so we can talk about our little "side" projects at home. I'm writing a few opengl games, a friend is writing a CMS, another is writing an order management system for healthcare, another is writing a tabletop boardgame application.

      The women we work with however talented they may be, lack passion. They will go to lunch and get mad at us for "still talking about work". Then they wonder why they don't get invited next time around.

      I've worked with a few that are that passionate, and they end up being published and respected like other men. They would be a welcome addition to our lunch crew but women like that tend to have other priorities which don't involve eating lunch with a bunch of men.

      My passion is what makes me better at what I do. The fact that I don't stop should mean I get paid more than someone else "who only does it as a job". That's the black and white issue at play here.

      I've met many women with passion for technology, and they were not making a few OpenGL games or a new CMS during the nights and weekends.

      They are creating new technology and startups. Or they are just passing through and will be working at the top research labs and companies within a year.

      If anything, I was super jealous of how easy they found to get support for what they were doing. Everybody wanted to work with them and they found it so easy to get help for things they couldn't do themselves.

      Perhaps you should be in a blissful state of not knowing women passionate about technology. When you meet one and they leave you in the dust as they rocket by to bigger and greater things, you will realize how inadequate you are at the skills you need to succeed.

    58. Re:SJW crap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      No. The rest of his comment makes it clear he is generalising. He talks about "the women we work with", clearly meaning "us men". The replies to his comment all assume he is generalising too.

      Don't try to lawyer him out of this.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    59. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the reason you weren't accepted by female cs women was because they're stem princesses. They're the type of girls that are so focused on boys that they deliberately try to set themselves up as the "cool chick". So they're try hard females. And try hard females will always see biology and they'll think of you as a beta man and not a trans woman.

      You would be more accepted among with psychology majors, and bio majors and more feminine women. They, would see you as a fag hag.

      And of course SJWs. They would bend over backwards to be your friend. You would carry a lot of privilege with them. It's a pity for you that Social Justice is intellectually vacuous.

    60. Re:SJW crap by tsotha · · Score: 2

      The guys who live and breath this stuff tend to be boring know it alls who, when push comes to shove, know everything but how to do their job.

      So true. There are a lot of technical people out there with average intelligence who know all the ins and outs of the latest language or framework because they don't do anything else. But you don't get a lot of actually productivity out of people like that - what you get is complaints because the language you're using doesn't have closures, or the the type system is too static or too dynamic and we'd be so much better off using the language they read about last week. Or nobody is using this framework anymore and how could someone be expected to meet deadlines with something so yesterday.

      Someone who is actually brilliant will take that stuff in stride and be productive, in the same way that Tiger Woods can still play a better round of golf than me with only a seven iron.

    61. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So's the Mormon who never drank coffee and spends his whole life reading his holy books and going to church.

    62. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Add to that the issue of needing to study new things in the tech sector or risk stagnating and your hard-earned and learned skillset becoming useless. Tech people _HAVE TO_ keep studying and learning. Both on and off the clock. They have to or they simply can't be competitive in the industry.

    63. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How the fuck is this modded insightful? It is one person's anecdotal evidence. Worthless. I can state my own experience if that's the level we're at here - and every female developer I've worked with has been as passionate as I am. Putting in the hours and contributing to open source projects.
       
       

      I've worked with a few that are that passionate, and they end up being published and respected like other men. They would be a welcome addition to our lunch crew but women like that tend to have other priorities which don't involve eating lunch with a bunch of men.

      Honestly fuck off with that kind of ignorant nonsense. People like you are a huge part of why women have such a hard time as developers, and you assholes mistakenly get praised as "the good ones". How delusional can you get?!

    64. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Source for that bullshit?

    65. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your post sounds like projection from a troll to me.

    66. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not my experience. 2/3 of my dev team is female, every woman on the team does work outside, every woman on the team has their own side projects.

      I think it's just a cultural thing, how we raise women, set expectations of behaviour and interests, and that's something that absolutely can and should change.

    67. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shockingly, I've reliably found if I neglect to take lunch, yet stay until 5, nobody bats an eyelid.

      It's the feigned caring about your wellbeing that bothers me most, just mandate core hours and be honest about it ffs.

    68. Re:SJW crap by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Employers perhaps shouldn't expect more, but there's no reason they shouldn't pay (for) more when they can get it.

    69. Re:SJW crap by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      That's why ONE such guy can be awesome for your train never running out of steam. 3+ of these guys means that you're wasting a lot of it on fights between them who gets to be the alpha geek.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    70. Re:SJW crap by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      *sigh*

      Ok, alpha/beta stuff in the presence of SJW discussions is tainted beyond belief. Accepted. Could we try to return to their meaning in the sociological sense before the bullshit tossers got in?

      "Leadership", "running a team", "diplomatic effort" ... BULL SHIT! You know what the fallacy here is? That you get a bunch of people together and make a team out of them. That is the fallacy. You don't just assemble some random people and then look how you get these people to perform as a team. You ASSEMBLE A TEAM. You pick the right people for your team, and not just by looking at their skills but you look at the position they NATURALLY assume in the team. A team is a delicate composition of various characters, not just a bunch of people who're somehow working together. You need various different character traits so it can work out. You cannot make people assume a position in that team, they have to fit that position naturally because (and this is critical!) BECAUSE THEY ARE THAT WAY.

      And no, there is no "bad" team member. Depending on the size of the team you do even need the bumbling idiot. Don't want to go into detail about this now, but you do not just need "rock stars", "ninjas" and whatever else buzzword is currently the craze for some outstanding wizkid. What you need mostly in a good team is the nondescript conformist who does his job reliably. Yes, that uninteresting, unassuming guy in the back who doesn't really stand out. They keep your cart on track.

      The VERY LAST thing I'd want is 3 people who think they're leaders and constantly waste time on the fight about who's in charge!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    71. Re:SJW crap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      You seem to be agreeing with me, but are sound kind of upset about it. I'm confused.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    72. Re:SJW crap by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Joyfully I've found that if I go home at lunchtime and work from home in the afternoons, everybody looks at my contribution instead of worrying about my time in the office.

      I like my current employer, it has sane policies.

    73. Re:SJW crap by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      My passion is what makes me better at what I do. The fact that I don't stop should mean I get paid more than someone else "who only does it as a job". That's the black and white issue at play here.

      Depends on if you're supposed to be working it and are thus being paid overtime or if you are volunteering your time above and beyond.

      Let's say that has a value of X. If you work above and beyond that amount by an amount of Y you should get X + Y but that doesn't mean that the X part should be less for either you or a coworker (of either sex) who doesn't work more than X.

      Of course people who enjoy being wage slaves - or people who have no life (no offense) and nothing that they prefer to do other than their job will work more than they should without complaining about it but that's not a normal or healthy situation.

      Anyone who sacrifices their life for their job has their priorities completely backwards - especially if they don't own the company.

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    74. Re:SJW crap by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      It's not just women. I find that developers who lack the passion to continuously learn and play with technology (not necessarily directly related to their day job....just technology in general) tend to be the ones that are middle of the pack in large companies. They aren't necessarily bad at their job, but they are never the ones that leap ahead of the pack. For them it's just a "job".

      The question becomes: how many "average" developers can you get away with and still be a successful company? The "rock stars" are expensive, so you want to have as few of them as you can and have them cover for the rest of the team......and they'll do it willingly because they love what they do. It's the reason that I left my last job......I was tired of covering for everyone else.

      It's even worse when the "average" developers are in a different country.

      Does 'average' = not willing to sacrifice their personal lives for the job?

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    75. Re:SJW crap by careysub · · Score: 1

      I've never found a woman coworker to be even half as passionate about technology and computers as I am.

      ...

      So you say.

      As a software team lead and project manager with a few decades of experience delivering project I have never found women developers to be inferior to men. Indeed looking back at over my best hires and staff members, women are - if anything - over represented relative to their numbers.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    76. Re:SJW crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ditto, and that real work is what you depend on later in life. There's your path to success.

    77. Re:SJW crap by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

      I still can't figure out how some people think the word "single" is an insult. I'm over 30, male, single, never married.

      It's the shame game. Society gets a great deal of work out of men using women as the motivator. It's no secret - it's been this way in almost every society ever documented, from the primitive matrilineal mosuo to the most advanced western societies today. As a man, you get shamed if you don't support yourself and at least one other person.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    78. Re:SJW crap by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

      "I've never found a woman coworker to be even half as passionate about technology and computers as I am."

      +5 for this misogynist crap?

      Pray tell, how is this in any way misogynist?

      Looking at the OP's score and your score (currently -1: troll), I'm inclined to remind you once again that you look just as foaming-at-the-mouth-insane as the far right groups like the WBC. Your ideology is just as devoid of common-sense as theirs.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    79. Re:SJW crap by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

      I know women who are extremely passionate about CS. The statement was a best idiotic,

      The statement was "I never found a woman that...", and not "woman aren't..." Your reading comprehension is extremely poor.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    80. Re:SJW crap by superwiz · · Score: 1

      No. The rest of his comment makes it clear he is generalising. He talks about "the women we work with", clearly meaning "us men". The replies to his comment all assume he is generalising too.

      No, he is talking about specific experiences of his friends in the paragraph before that one. So "we" clearly refers to the specific group of individuals composed of him and his friends. Therefore, it's not a generalization. You are the one grasping for straws to support your weak argument.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    81. Re:SJW crap by avandesande · · Score: 1

      And these middle of the pack developers are more likely to stay and retain the majority of the business knowledge. I think 'rock stars' have an inflated view of their importance.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    82. Re:SJW crap by friesofdoom · · Score: 1

      And that's probably why he earns more than you. What you need to realize is that different people have different drives. You are very shallow for for assuming that what you want out of life makes you any better than him.

      But then we all know you'll be the one bitching at the next pay review that you didn't get the same raise as the guy who is passionate about what he does.

    83. Re:SJW crap by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      I haven't observed people of average intelligence reading up on new computer languages in the first place. They tend to know what they're doing without much curiosity about how things might be done better.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  5. Demand raising as well as supply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More supply equals lower wages is only true if demand doesn't go up also. Honestly, do we think we're going to need the same number of programmers or more in the next twenty years?

    1. Re:Demand raising as well as supply by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Honestly, do we think we're going to need the same number of programmers or more in the next twenty years?

      Yes. Baby boomers are retiring and the workforce will shrink over the next 20 years. While most young people will probably go into health care for the money, we will still need programmers and technicians.

    2. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Retiring population is such a stupid argument. Did you ever consider the population had increased by 100,000,000 since the 1980s? There will be less workers... Ya right.

    3. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      While most young people will probably go into health care for the money

      Were you trying to be funny?

    4. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Did you ever consider the population had increased by 100,000,000 since the 1980s?

      Please educate yourself.

      IN THE 20th century the planet's population doubled twice. It will not double even once in the current century, because birth rates in much of the world have declined steeply. But the number of people over 65 is set to double within just 25 years. This shift in the structure of the population is not as momentous as the expansion that came before. But it is more than enough to reshape the world economy.

      http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21601248-generation-old-people-about-change-global-economy-they-will-not-all-do-so

    5. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by slashping · · Score: 1

      Did you ever consider the population had increased by 100,000,000 since the 1980s? There will be less workers... Ya right.

      You can have a bigger population and less workers, especially talented ones. Kids these days are wasting a lot of time with games and social media.

    6. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Were you trying to be funny?

      Nope. Older people will need more health care in the next 20+ years as they get older, sicker and less able to care for themselves. Young people will get encouraged to go into health care because that field will be expanding significantly, and, due to fewer workers being available, paying more money.

    7. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by slashping · · Score: 1

      The lady that does preventive teeth cleaning at my dentist's office charges $145 per hour. That's quite a bit of money for a job that's not much more complicated than cutting somebody's hair.

    8. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Kids these days [...]

      Heard every generation for at least twelve millenia.

    9. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by kenwd0elq · · Score: 1

      Also; health care, especially geriatric care, is unlikely to be so thoroughly automated as other professions. Carl Karcher Enterprises, the parent company of Carl's Junior and Hardee's, is said to be working on a restaurant with no employees at all. This is likely unattainable; SOMEBODY will be needed to fix the machinery when it breaks, but I've seen video of the hamburger-cooking robot, and more and more fast food places have self-service order kiosks. It will be a while before a robot can properly change a bedpan or a dressing.

    10. Re: Demand raising as well as supply by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      It's easy to call someone else's job simple and easy, I've noticed.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  6. Who cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Soon you'll be like like...
    You: computer make me a game
    Computer: OK. What kind?
    You: something like doom
    Computer: what do you want the environment and computer opponents to look like
    You: lava caves and evil
    Computer: what do you want your character to look like
    You: Hillary
    Computer: Wait... You said you want your opponents to look evil so I'm using Hillary already

  7. Competition Is Good - But Sometimes Bad.... by kenwd0elq · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "But even if such efforts achieve pay parity, will CS for All result in lower pay for all?"

    Yes. Not because women depress pay scales, but because when more and more people get into a field, competition inevitably causes lower prices. Lowe prices for the things we buy - like groceries or electronics - is good. Competition in the stuff we sell - like our labor - is bad.

    1. Re:Competition Is Good - But Sometimes Bad.... by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 1

      The Labor movement called this tactic "Whipsawing".
      But we all know professional coders have no need of grubby unionizing and would never soil themselves by acting like any corporate entity to fix prices for adequate ROI, now would they?

    2. Re:Competition Is Good - But Sometimes Bad.... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Or rather it will result in 90% earning far less and 10% (the ones that clean up the messes) earning far more. Of course, the 10% would have been the 90% if it was just "CS for those that can actually do it well".

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    3. Re:Competition Is Good - But Sometimes Bad.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the correct answer on all of the speculation happening on this page.

      Scarcity drives value.

    4. Re:Competition Is Good - But Sometimes Bad.... by supremebob · · Score: 1

      Most of the big tech companies who are funding these efforts have no interest in hiring more US based coders, when they can get foreign developers for 1/5th the price.

      This "teach your kids to code!" initiatives are just a smoke screen. They are meant to keep the various media outlets busy posting feel good stories about tech companies like Microsoft and IBM while they are busy outsourcing as many workers as possible.

    5. Re:Competition Is Good - But Sometimes Bad.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And we all know self-proclaimed "labor parties" would never encourage mass immigration to win votes at the expense of workers.

    6. Re:Competition Is Good - But Sometimes Bad.... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      This is true of all new fields though. When it's new demand is high, and after a while it attracts more people and demand is satisfied. The great thing about tech is there is always something new, and always something old. You can keep learning or you can find a niche.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. As always, the push to simpler coding yields by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 1

    lower wages, faster turnover, more offshoring.
    Ask anyone who used to work in gate array / fpga in non-military work in this country
    First the move to standardized HLL such as Verilog, SystemC, VHDL and a few proprietaries.
    Result of standardized code?
    Lower speed, higher prices, longer time to market, cheaper labor
    Cheap labor is the sine qua non of high stock prices.
    But does it really create more product to export?
    Ask the several ten thousand unemployed / former engineers replaced by Chinese and Indian H1-B and offshored labor

  9. Re:SaD by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 1

    Wrong. In high tech, higher supply has always resulted in rising offshoring and H1-B wage cutting

  10. One size CS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe it was just me but the first CS course I took was an intro to FORTRAN programming way back in 1984 (ha!) and it was difficult. I struggled with the concepts taught at the university level but eventually "got it". I worked as a C programmer for 12 years before switching to systems management. Many of the students I met along the way to a BS CS degree failed or lost interest. I just don't see CS for the masses ever taking hold. It's like pushing Calculus on everyone.

  11. Or is it the other way around? by abloylas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As pay drops, women take over male-dominated fields.

    Heck, what do I know. I'm just a middle aged heterosexual white guy.

    1. Re:Or is it the other way around? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As pay drops, women take over male-dominated fields.

      Heck, what do I know. I'm just a middle aged heterosexual white guy.

      As pay drops, men stop going into those fields. Pay disparity is vastly more about the fact that for women we talk about opportunity and choice; whereas for men we give you a social boot up the arse unless you stop pissing about in that low-pay career and get yourself a proper career you lazy slob.

    2. Re:Or is it the other way around? by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 1

      There's also the general statistic that women are paid less for the same job on average, no matter the field. So, if you add more women to the field, the average pay for the field decreases because people pay the women less. So this could be just be a methodology problem.

      (Well, and the general problem of why the heck we value the work less if it's done by a woman. But that then isn't an issue with the field's gender balance, it's an issue with how we compensate people across all fields.)

      --
      'Sensible' is a curse word.
    3. Re:Or is it the other way around? by Cederic · · Score: 1

      There's also the general statistic that women are paid less for the same job on average, no matter the field.

      No, there isn't. Indeed, the general statistic is that women get paid more right up until they have children, at which point comparisons get complicated due to career breaks, working hours and other factors.

    4. Re:Or is it the other way around? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Women's pay is lower even if you control for those factors. But that's fine, let's just deny that this well documented, unjust phenomenon exists.

    5. Re:Or is it the other way around? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Once the 'work duties' of the profession become common place, the pay drops as the available workforce increases. Men, who have been delegated the role of bread-winner (women are the bread-makers), seek out high paying jobs in related but emerging fields. I don't have to give birth, my wife doesn't have to provide the majority of finance.

    6. Re:Or is it the other way around? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heck, what do I know. I'm just a middle aged heterosexual white guy.

      agree, it's backwards. You have to pay a premium if you want men because gender roles in dating, marriage, and social status force men to be narrowly money-focused when choosing work. There's a pay gap partly because men _have_ to make more than women to be taken seriously, so they'll make compromises women wouldn't to achieve that. Women take whatever jobs strike their fancy, as they're told to do.

      Now that it's socially acceptable for women to work anywhere, they've spread out, causing two things:
        - men are compressed into less pleasant jobs.
        - the quality of employee in the jobs women used to backfill, like teachers and nurses, has gone way down.

    7. Re:Or is it the other way around? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This would mean the H1B planeloads over the last 20 years were really about opening up the tech industry to women and not just executives seeking to drive wages down?
      That makes it much better.

    8. Re:Or is it the other way around? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Women's pay is lower even if you control for those factors

      But the difference is less than the margin of error. Something like once you adjust for the other factors, women get paid 97 cents on the dollar compared to men. It's ridiculously close. May as well be the same.

  12. No problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Being a productive coder is about personality as much or more than intelligence or classes. Knowing how to code teaches some problem solving skills, but a class in playing checkers would do the same thing.

    I have been coding successfully for 20 years, and my degree is in psychology. I have also taught many programming classes, and coding is the easy part. Know what to code and how to structure the code is the hard part.

    Some people may become developers because they like coding, but most won't.

  13. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Driving down computer weenies' wages is only a good thing. Let's push those shit nerds into the gutter!

  14. Borg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's what we get for listening to the Borg Institute. "Resistance to wage decreases is futile!"

  15. "Take over"? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Since when does "become less dominantly male" become "taken over by women"? Or is it the submitter's contention that men will start fleeing the field as more women enter it?

    The group I'm in is all guys, and all of the people who were here when I got hired were guys. Any time we have an opening, the applicant pool is 95% male (and for Unix positions I think it's been 100% male). I like my coworkers, but sometimes it'd be nice if the place were a little less of a nerd sausage-fest.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:"Take over"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I like my coworkers, but sometimes it'd be nice if the place were a little less of a nerd sausage-fest.

      Be careful what you wish for. What you probably have now is a relatively drama-free workplace where people can actually focus on getting things done and where people can laugh and have fun without a constant dread of the repercussions of even the most lighthearted joke.

      Why mess up a good thing?

    2. Re:"Take over"? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      I have, over the years, been both lead and support on several long-term projects that required working closely with women - and I can't say I've seen this world you seem to think exists. It seems apparent you (whoever you are, AC) don't have a lot of real-world experience with them.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  16. This should get the big players motivated... by Rambo+Tribble · · Score: 1

    ... to push women into IT.

    1. Re:This should get the big players motivated... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      ... to push women into IT.

      Why? IT has a lot of down-sides: instability, stress, low office status, repetitive-motion injuries, offshore-risk, long-hours, and constant re-training, often on your own dime. No career is perfect, but don't over-sell one.

    2. Re:This should get the big players motivated... by Rambo+Tribble · · Score: 1

      What I mean to imply is, if the major players take the message that bringing more women into IT will lower payrolls, they'll pump that strategy, as they do H1-Bs.

      In the end, the bottom line is a far greater incentive to corporate America that fairness or social equity.

    3. Re:This should get the big players motivated... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Okay, I get it now.

  17. Re: SaD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Which is why there are more tech jobs per capita in the US in 2016 than there have been in its ~240-year history.

  18. Big companies *need* average workers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You cannot build a scalable (grow-able) organization by depending on a few 4 sigma outliers to do all the work (read up on "bus factor"). Successful large scale means developing processes that use the median skill employee that is readily available. Maybe you need one or two with the drive and passion to set the general direction, but all the *work* is done by folks at the 50th percentile (or more realistically, people within 1 sigma on any given day of the week, with the population varying around that over time).

    And that "rock star" (how I hate that term) shouldn't be "covering".. they're performing their function, and management is responsible for making sure there's enough median performers to get the work done, that budgets and schedules are aligned to median performance, not exceptional performance. And if that "rock star" gets all "divo/diva" like about "covering for others", then they either need to realign their thinking (if the company is otherwise well run) or head to the door (if the company is mismanaged).

    1. Re:Big companies *need* average workers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A successful large scale operation does not in any way shape or form mean scaling up linearly in median employees, and only having median employees, unless you have them all doing repeatable work of no value and taking no initiative. Then you can scale up that.

      Targeting shitty delivery and taking exceptionalism out of the process entirely is a great way for accountants to slowly kill a company that once had value. Since that's you, your company sounds pretty mismanaged, and you sound like one of the many reasons.

    2. Re:Big companies *need* average workers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd have lunch with you. Because you sound knowledgable.. even if it's just about business managment.

    3. Re:Big companies *need* average workers by Cederic · · Score: 2

      Multiple multi-billion Indian outsourcing firms have proven very effectively that you can great a successful large scale operation - in IT no less - with very much below median people.

      It's all down to process. Their processes deliver shitty work but they deliver it fast, they deliver it cheaply and they have a massive market that prioritises those two outcomes.

    4. Re:Big companies *need* average workers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      management is responsible for making sure there's enough median performers to get the work done

      Some hard mental work cannot be done by median programmers because the problem it beyond their ability to solve, except by luck. And "enough" median workers? Productivity of programming does not scale linearly with the number of programmers. You quickly run into negative performance gains as you add more workers. In domains like programming, productivity is on a power curve. 60% of the value is created by 20% of the workers. 80% of programmers are below average, and a sizable portion create net negative value. A small group of the top 10% can run circles around the other 90%.

  19. And yet... by zkiwi34 · · Score: 2

    You really won't get any work as a coder unless you've done college. College however requires Calculus/Physics, and places little or no value on high school CS experiences. So... What was the point of CS for all again? There's also the observation that, particularly in year one, college CS seems to be a desperate attempt to get butts on seats as opposed to having any end goal.

    1. Re: And yet... by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      College however requires Calculus/Physics

      That's good to know; I was really beginning to lose respect for all these passive/aggressive, self-intelligent "millenials" and it's reassuring to hear that they're not actually that stupid after all (geez, appearances sure can be deceptive!).

    2. Re:And yet... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      You really won't get any work as a coder unless you've done college. College however requires Calculus/Physics [...]

      When I went to back to community college to learn computer programming and get my technical certifications after the dot com bust, neither calculus nor physics was ever part of a programming course. The community colleges graduates coders. The universities graduates computer scientists, who may or may not need to know more about calculus and physics.

      There's also the observation that, particularly in year one, college CS seems to be a desperate attempt to get butts on seats as opposed to having any end goal.

      Introduction to Computers is often a general education requirement for ALL students and the first class for students interested in a computer-related major. State funding is based on "butts on seats" per class. I found your observation to be... uninformed.

    3. Re:And yet... by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Computer Scientists rarely need to know much physics, but they frequently need Numerical Analysis, which means a lot of Calculus, and, guess what, college physics tests and reinforces the Calculus that you learn in college math classes. So taking physics is a good idea.

      N.B.: As a programmer I've never needed to know much of either physics or numerical analysis. But I've never regretted learning them.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    4. Re:And yet... by superwiz · · Score: 2

      Linear algebra is probably the single most useful math subject to CS majors. But then again, I am biased because I think it's the single most useful subject to mathematicians as well (because representation theory is).

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    5. Re:And yet... by blindseer · · Score: 1

      So... What was the point of CS for all again?

      It appears you are under the mistaken belief that a computer science program from a typical college exists to teach it's students how to program a computer. It is not and really never was. Computer science is the discipline of, wait for it... learning the science of computing. That means getting some physics so that you know how the electrons move on the circuitry. It also means getting enough mathematics to understand algorithms and number theory.

      If you wanted to just learn how to program then you could have gone to a trade school, community college, or just sit in your basement with a computer and Google the rest.

      I studied computer engineering and with the large overlap with the computer science program at the school I went to there were a number of computer science majors in many of my classes. Talking with them I found this delusion that computer science was supposed to teach people how to program was a rather common delusion. A few people understood that computer science is applied mathematics and these people further understood that if they are going to be successful in creating software that they'd need to understand proper engineering.

      A fairly recent trend is the emergence of software engineering programs for people that want to learn how to write quality software. There still is the requirements to know physics and mathematics because without knowing how the bits and bytes are represented in the computer it can be difficult to resolve some uncommon errors in software and impossible to write low level code.

      Another aspect of a typical computer science program is that it is a liberal arts program. With a liberal arts education comes things beyond just computer science. I did a computer science program for a while and it's quite different than a typical engineering program. The computer science program required much more in the fine arts. I chose to learn how to play the upright bass as part of that program, something I'd never do as an engineering major. I also took a modern literature course, where we had to read a comic book (or is it a "graphic novel"?) among other things. Had I not sat through four years of Spanish in high school I'd have had to take a foreign language too.

      If you are complaining about the coursework required in a typical computer science program then I think that your academic advisor lied to you or as the program was being explained you chose to lie to yourself.

      Complaining that an employer won't hire someone to program a computer without a college degree is a different matter. I don't know if I'd hire someone to program for me if they did not have a college education. I would not want to hire a programmer that did not understand what "big O" meant, hadn't seen even the most basic of sort algorithms, didn't understand the difference between iteration and recursion, or did not understand some basics of statistics and probability. I've seen people write code that did not go to college and some of them do very well. These people are also not the norm. A college degree is a shortcut for determining if someone has a basic understanding of many different aspects within programming a computer. One of them being having the ability to get up in the morning to show up on time.

      Speaking of which, I must go now because I have my numeric analysis class tomorrow morning, I need my sleep.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    6. Re:And yet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Computer Scientists rarely need to know much physics, but they frequently need Numerical Analysis, which means a lot of Calculus, and, guess what, college physics tests and reinforces the Calculus that you learn in college math classes. So taking physics is a good idea.

      Exactly. Calc I just seemed like a continuation of algebra: memorize rules in order to perform derivatives and integrals.

      It wasn't 'till Newton's Laws and later Maxwell's equations that the calculus started making sense.

    7. Re: And yet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As far as anyone has stated the point of CS for all is to get a large chunk of the population involved in coding. Yet employers stereotypically want a Bachelors, with associates being much more difficult to market. A lot is being said (not necessarily being done, yet, if at all) about CS in K12, but to what end if there is little or no bridge to the market?

    8. Re:And yet... by Cederic · · Score: 1

      I don't know if I'd hire someone to program for me if they did not have a college education.

      Only 20% of the people in my generation went to university in the UK. Some of the rest went out and got a job and gained three years industry experience while I was pissing about partying and playing MUDs.

      In IT (maybe more than other careers), hire people based on their skills, experience and capability. The industry is full of intelligent knowledgeable passionate people that couldn't be arsed with this continued education nonsense.

      Disclosure: Yeah, I do still mention my degree on my CV. It would be silly not to :)

    9. Re: And yet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      College typically doesn't require Calculus and Physics. However, a major in Computer Science usually does require Calculus, and often Physics. So please continue with your lack of respect of "millenials." :P

    10. Re:And yet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I dropped out of 2 different universities, failed miserably at CS, never got a qualification other than high school. But I keep getting flown all over the world to work on game engines of pretty big projects like Silent Hill, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex and Final Fantasy. And I get paid pretty well too.

      Now, while I don't recommend dropping out or not going to Uni, I am living proof that you don't actually need it.

    11. Re:And yet... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Things like combinatorics, graph theory, and discrete math are likely to be much more useful than linear algebra, from what I've seen.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    12. Re: And yet... by blindseer · · Score: 1

      "A lot is being said (not necessarily being done, yet, if at all) about CS in K12, but to what end if there is little or no bridge to the market?"

      The K-12 education system is not supposed to be a job training program. At least I don't think it should. I thought that teaching CS in K-12 was to better prepare future adults for college, life in general, or at least let them try things to find out if it appeals to them before choosing a major in college, a trade school, or military specialty.

      In my high school we had computer classes, not "computer science" classes since I don't believe these qualified. I took two such classes, each a semester long, and the first was more of a computer literacy class, we got to play with word processors, graphics programs, and a little bit of BASIC programming. The second class might be called a computer science class since the teacher wanted us to create what might be considered rudimentary "functions" in the form of subroutines, we did some basic sorting routines, and some rudimentary databases.

      Why do this in high school if it does not prepare a student to be a programmer after graduation? Because in college when my classmates were struggling with even typing on a keyboard or understanding basic program layout I was getting my homework done. Even a customer support drone that has to follow a script while talking on a phone will find these skills helpful to interact with a computer and manage data on a screen.

      What you are asking is, why bother teaching algebra in high school if students will be taking calculus in college? Because while I was taking Math 185: Calculus I some of my classmates were taking Math 10: High School Algebra. Yes, some students graduated high school, were accepted into college, and were in a pre-engineering program without having passed a high school algebra class. I do not know how many were successful in engineering since I was already from high school effectively a year ahead of them, I never shared another class with such students again.

      In hindsight I see that my high school was unusual in that it had created paths for college bound students, and a path for those wishing to enter a trade school or work on the family farm. Those that wanted to go to college took pre-calculus, those that did not took wood shop.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  20. I used to be just like you! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I woke up one day in my late thirties, alone, burned out and grossly overweight. I spent thousands of dollars on dating services and many dates with obese head cases.

    My employer then fired us all and sent the work to India.

    I realized I spent the best years of my life in front of a fucking computer allowing myself to be exploited by employers who took advantage of my "passion". And when you get into your 40s, employers don't give a rat's ass about your 'passion' because they want cheap 20 somethings who are stupid enough to spend all their time in front of the computer and training themselves on their own dime and time.

    To make a long story short, all of your "passion" will amount to nothing in the end.

    And the 6' 3" ballplayer with the square jaw who got his degree in Marketing that we laughed at when we all started? Well, while we were getting kicked out after our jobs were off-shored to India, he was getting kicked up to the executive suite.

    Just to put things into perspective for you guys.

    1. Re:I used to be just like you! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you willingly signed up for it, then you were not exploited, you were involved in a trade. You traded your time and expertise for money.

    2. Re:I used to be just like you! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      They point is the rewards for "passion" were not what the poster expected. I have to agree, overall. Office BS politics matter as much as technical passion, if not more.

    3. Re:I used to be just like you! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't get this at all. I'm a 20 something dev, and about half of those I work with are in their 40s. They're paid well and seem to be pretty happy with their careers.

    4. Re:I used to be just like you! by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

      ... allowing myself to be exploited by employers who took advantage of my "passion... ...To make a long story short, all of your "passion" will amount to nothing in the end...

      I don't know why you got modded up - you spent you "passion" on your employer, the OP is spending his on his own stuff. If you can't see the difference then there's something wrong with you.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  21. It's about careers by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

    I'm not really sure why we're assuming more people are going to go into CS because they took it earlier in school. Computers have been in school for a long time. I am not young, and I remember programming logo in school. There was enough exposure for the kids to find out that it was what they wanted to do. A MUCH bigger motivator is the QUALITY OF LIFE you have when you go in the field. It is up to hiring companies collectively to make it a good and solid career with good earning and a good quality of life if they want people to go into the field. That is really all there is to it, and from what I see today they're totally failing. I don't care what my kids learn in school, I don't see good jobs in tech, and everyone I know in tech is leaving the field or getting let go, so I'm not going to encourage my kids to go into tech at all. If they love it then fine, they can go in as long as they understand what the future will hold for them. But will I encourage them? No way.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    1. Re:It's about careers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are not your job. The sooner people realize this, the better. Like you, most tech people that I've know from college days have also left their jobs by mid fourties and started their own businesses to partially retired.

      If you make a lot of money while young and are smart with it, you can retire in 10-15 years with a high quality of life. Buy a house or couple @100k in a low cost part of the country/world, pay then off 100%, save .5M and live comfortably on $25k/year. This has worked well for a number of close friends who got exceptionally lucky in 2008 when house prices crashed. I never looked, but have been told there are multiple resources that show you how to do this.

      I worked with one woman who was a contractor and she would buy a new house every time she got a new job and had to move. She owned seven when i knew her in 1999. It's just one option. There was a guy who I knew at university. He was majoring in engineering technology (the people who build and solder the things that engineers design) and not engineering. It didn't pay as well as engineering, but his rational was that it had a better starting salary and the best way for him to make money in hurry to start his own restaurant. He was an immigrant and had a plan for his whole life. Working 45 years and hoping for a good retirement package from a company was not part of it.

    2. Re:It's about careers by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Perhaps in a very large city, but not where I live. I live where I live because I've always realized I am not my job and family never ceased to be more important to me. But we're talking about my kids here, who might be happy making a million dollars and working their lives away or might be more like me. The important part is to be happy, agreed. This is why I have not ruled out technology for them, but I will ensure they understand what they are getting themselves into by going a certain way.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  22. Sighs by pentagramrex · · Score: 1

    I wish more women pushed themselves into the intellectually hard jobs that they are capable of. Childcare sometimes takes them away from the workplace (my career suffered when I was at home looking after the offspring). We need to remind our employers that even if noone is indispensible, it is hard to find people who can make your product any good.

  23. Everything the industry does is to hurt your pay. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Besides the usual stuff like H1's and cries of "not enough CS grads!", companies also endlessly push the myth that open source software is "better", and have conspired to ensure that programmers who do not contribute to open source are less employable. This means that new coders just starting out in the industry have to work for free just to be able to be considered for a job, giving companies like Google and Apple a huge base of code from which they can freely benefit without having to pay anyone. The "Open Source" marketers really pulled off an amazing coup against the profession with that one.

  24. college for all = a big loan mess by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    college for all = a big loan mess.

    What happens when you have masses defaulting and filling for a undue hardship

    1. Re:college for all = a big loan mess by HiThere · · Score: 1

      IIUC they've got special terms on the college loans that mean you can't recover by going bankrupt. While this makes some sense (if they didn't have such terms, who would loan?) it allows financial pressures that are inhumane.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  25. Numbers don't lie, do they? by OpenSourced · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As always with this kind of studies you have to wonder about cause and effect. Perhaps men tend to flee from the work fields where wages are dropping, and flock to fields where wages are going up? Perhaps women not so intensely?

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
    1. Re:Numbers don't lie, do they? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or maybe, women aren't paid the same as men for the same work - despite protestations from the MRA crowd, and so once more women enter a field, the median goes down simply because there are more people that aren't paid as much.

  26. Dear business owners... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

    Fuck you.

    CS needs to form a union to push back at these assholes hard. Electricians all across the country get really good pay and their job is 80X simpler than CS. Yes. it is, I was an electrical journeyman I got my card but I prefer working at a desk writing code and programming lighting systems for whole buildings than pulling wire in unfinished building and wiring panels.

    It is time CS and IT formed a Trade union and started fucking business owners hard with the biggest stick we can find.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Dear business owners... by slashping · · Score: 1

      CS needs to form a union to push back at these assholes hard.

      LOL. They'll just fire you all at the same time.

  27. You seem to be mistaken... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...let me explain it to you:

    From the dictionary:

    Mysogyny: a hatred of women.

    Google provides this definition: dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.

    Absolutely *nothing* in his post fits these definitions. At no point did he say he disliked women, nor did he disparage women in any way. He stated that the women he has met do not show passion for his field of work. Passion-for-work isn't necessarily vice nor virtue. Many people react that he is too passionate, and would be better off being more like the women he has observed, thus what he said is construed (by that audience) as complementary towards women (for their more appropriate work-life balance). Regardless of how one interprets the OP's own passion, the fact remains: he said nothing hateful towards women.

    You are looking for excuses to over-react.

    1. Re:You seem to be mistaken... by fredgiblet · · Score: 0

      Welcome to 2016, where anything that isn't slobbering over how amazing women are is misogyny.

    2. Re:You seem to be mistaken... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, feminists do enjoy using their own definitions for words. Take feminism for instance, the educated know it as the advancement of women's rights such that women have at least everything men have. As opposed to egalitarianism which wants equality. People of the third-wave slant believe they are doing the latter but call it the former while ignoring anything that puts anyone that isn't born a woman at a disadvantage.

      Ever seen a feminist rally for a father's right to take part in their children's lives? Of course not, because feminists don't care about equality.

    3. Re:You seem to be mistaken... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, well there you go. A dictionary said that technically the semantics of the word don't 100% agree.

      Therefore the post was perfectly fine, and the original poster doesn't have any problem with women whatsoever!

      And Islam isn't a race, and really it's about ethics in games journalism.

    4. Re:You seem to be mistaken... by careysub · · Score: 1

      Of course not, because feminists don't care about equality.

      As a life-long feminist, who also happens to be a man, I can say this is ignorant bullshit. Move along, nothing to see here but self-congratulatory preconceptions.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    5. Re:You seem to be mistaken... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL, male feminist! How's that going for you? I bet you must get looooads of sex... Oh wait, you're a regressive beta male whose only hope of getting any ass is to play into the feminists game, not realizing that those same women get wetter looking at literally any MRA/MGTOW than they do from looking at sorry piece of shit like you.

  28. When? by tandavanadesan · · Score: 1, Informative

    Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women.

    When was this ever the case? The first programmers were mostly engineers, the designers of the systems, and mightily male.

    1. Re:When? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      The first programmers were mostly engineers, the designers of the systems, and mightily male.

      The first computers were women in World War II, who calculated artillery tables for gunners.

      Before the invention of electronic computers, âoecomputerâ was a job description, not a machine. Both men and women were employed as computers, but women were more prominent in the field. This was a matter of practicality more than equality. Women were hired because there was a large pool of women with training in mathematics, but they could be hired for much less money than men with comparable training. Despite this bias, some women overcame their inferior status and contributed to the invention of the first electronic computers.

      http://ethw.org/Women_Computers_in_World_War_II

    2. Re:When? by DontHackMeBro · · Score: 0

      Engineering, programming and system design are heavily dependent on logic and it has been proven thorough numerous studies that males are the more logic-minded of the two sexes. Women are generally not as suited to independent thinking, and perform better in a social setting.

    3. Re:When? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The quote is correct. At first people figured that programming and operating computers would be a menial task that required little more than a high school education. The real intellectual work would be the engineers or mathematicians who designed everything from a high level perspective.

      See e.g. these pictures:
      http://plyojump.com/classes/mainframe_era.php
      and see how many of the people operating the computers are women.

    4. Re:When? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The first programmers were mostly engineers, the designers of the systems, and mightily male.

      The first computers were women in World War II, who calculated artillery tables for gunners.

      Does this mean that if computers compute, and programmers program, that somehow we cou--hey, wait, what year is this? Where am I? Has the war ended?!

    5. Re:When? by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Do some research, you'll find people computing long before WWII.

    6. Re:When? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmm...no concept here that maybe women were being hired because the men were off at war...you know...getting killed in the millions? Funny, its also why women entered a bunch of manufacturing jobs as well, cause the men weren't around to do them...so yes it was a matter of 'practicality', if you need workers & your normal resource pool is all dried up then you seek another one...

    7. Re:When? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes 'computers' NOT 'programmers'...learn the difference

    8. Re:When? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      We went into WWII with lots of artillery tables. I'd say that we started needing them when we started having long-range artillery fire, in the very early 20th Century. Even before that, there were tasks that required a lot of computation.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  29. It's got less to do with equality by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    and more to do with maintaining a decent standard of living for 99% of the population.

    Yes, any large organization can be abused. The Army Core of Engineers does great things. They prevent floods, bring water into disaster areas. Build bridges. They also gave smallpox blankets to Native Americans.

    The solution is not to throw up your hands and declare defeat. It's to keep an eye on them. If you think you and your little lonesome stand a snowballs chance in hell of maintaining a middle class lifestyle without some sort of unified front to protect your interests then again, you're not paying attention. Go read the summary again for a good reason why you want/need this.

    Put another way, there's a Grover Norquist Quote about a gov't small enough to down in a bathtub that sums up why you need large, powerful organizations to protect your interests. Sooner or later anything that's on your side and doesn't have some weight behind it is going to get the bathtub treatment from 'ole Grover.

    What the US needs is a 20-30 hour work week, mandatory voting (ala Jury Duty), parliaments and the end of Electoral Colleges and in general we need to drag everybody into managing their long term well being. This is the sorta thing the Investor Class does with their time, and we need everybody to do it.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:It's got less to do with equality by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      Mandatory voting? No.

      --
      Good-bye
    2. Re:It's got less to do with equality by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      What the US needs is a 20-30 hour work week, mandatory voting (ala Jury Duty), parliaments and the end of Electoral Colleges and in general we need to drag everybody into managing their long term well being. This is the sorta thing the Investor Class does with their time, and we need everybody to do it.

      That sounds like a dystopia to me.

    3. Re:It's got less to do with equality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Equality is really a fools errand anyways. Gender is just one dimension to consider when thinking about equality. What about racial representation and pay in IT fields? Representation and pay for those with (and without) the various religious faiths?

      And so far this is only talking about what the government has, so far, defined as the operative attributes of "protected classes". What about inequities between taller and shorter people? Fatter and thinner? Those that are folically-challenged and those who are not?

      And the problem is, if you monkey with one factor, it can unequalize others. Maybe more women in IT means worsening equality in some other dimensions. You can't make anything equal across all possible dimensions -- because there are infinite dimensions to consider -- so you can never achieve actual equality. Picking one or three things is just mental masturbation.

      But your 20-30 hour work week is a good idea.

    4. Re:It's got less to do with equality by blindseer · · Score: 1

      They also gave smallpox blankets to Native Americans.

      Why does this myth keep coming up? The germ theory of disease did not come into common medical practice until years after the Native Americans were infected with smallpox. That is assuming the smallpox came from the blankets to begin with.

      The US Army did not wage germ warfare on the Native Americans because at that time no one knew what a "germ" was.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    5. Re:It's got less to do with equality by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Without commenting on the behaviour of the US Army Core of Engineers, infecting people with germs through use of blankets was indeed known at the time.

      E.g. http://www.nativeweb.org/pages... is giving approval to do exactly that, in 1763.

      So your entire basis for dispelling the alleged myth is flawed and false, sorry.

    6. Re:It's got less to do with equality by careysub · · Score: 1

      Knowledge of contagion was universal before the germ theory of disease. They just did not know what the mechanism of contagion was, and so conversely how to sterilize (remove) the contamination.

      And yes, fabric that comes in contact with small pox infected people absolutely can spread infection. Small pox outbreaks occurred in textile miles in England in the 1950s from contaminated cotton imported from Egypt. Study of variola survival in cotton found that "if cotton can become contaminated with smallpox scabs in temperate climates (20-25C) or is already contaminated when imported at this temperature, the experiments indicate that a few particles of virus may survive for as long as 18 months."

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    7. Re:It's got less to do with equality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The last thing the U.S. needs is to descend into democracy. The founding fathers had a justified fear of a mobocracy. If things were left the way a majority of the U.S. wanted them we'd still have Jim Crow.
      The Investor Class is us. The majority of reasons that Corporations are pushing down wages and doing a host of other bad things are because Wall Street wants to keep profits up. They want to keep profits up because institutional investors, that's the people who manage retirement funds, union funds and government workers unions need companies to be profitable to maintain payouts to retirees. Its not 1%. Its the middle managers and traders, most of whom are not 1%. So if you have a 401k, union pension, municipal pension or other pension which depends on stocks you are the investment class.

  30. Not worried by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been in the industry professionally for about 15 years and I am not the least bit worried.

  31. Re: So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wages won't go down. The thing is, over 90% of those is in tech industry suck ass. Despite their degrees, certs, and experience they somehow still don't "get it." Their pay for sure will remain near the bottom, but the companies who are willing to pay for actual talent will continue to shell out the big bucks, more like the sports and entertainment industries.

  32. Giant hole in the argument by rbrander · · Score: 2

    ...is that all the jobs they compare to are not professions.
    I keep coming back to this point on slashdot, across multiple topics - H1B competition? Wouldn't be as easy to displace you if you were a profession.
    Women also jumped big into accounting in the 70s, medicine and law in the 80's and now engineering in the 21st century; wages in exactly none of those professions went down.
    Professional organizations like the AMA act a little bit like unions, if not exactly like them - they don't negotiate money or conditions, but they do negotiate required education and skill levels, which prevents employers from constantly undercutting wages by threatening to switch to employees that are a little cheaper, then a little cheaper again.

    Women entering a mere "job category" lower salary expectations because they've been discriminated against, and are hungrier, the way H1B immigrants are hungrier. But in a profession, there's a basement put on how much effect that has.

    IT badly needs to be a profession like accounting, medicine, law, engineering. On a societal basis, I don't think it would even cost anything. Sure, programming would get more expensive - but how much money is wasted right now by bad programming?

    1. Re:Giant hole in the argument by tomhath · · Score: 1

      The jobs they compare aren't even comparable. Women never dominated computer programming, they dominated key punching. That disappeared when the programmers started using terminals and data was captured electronically. I'll bet if he looked more closely at the other jobs he would see something similar. When the high paying part of a job appears or disappears the men follow the money.

    2. Re:Giant hole in the argument by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK here are two, actual, professions that for some reason were not mentioned in the blurb.

      Teachers and librarians. Both used to be very high status - until women started working in them. I am talking early 1900s and perhaps before, not the last few years.

    3. Re:Giant hole in the argument by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wages were climbing quickly in the 90's, particularly in the runup to Y2K, all over the tech sector. Even tech support phone centers were paying $40k+ salaries.
      Then a bunch of suits, Gates, Groves, and others, took a trip to DC with their checkbooks and twenty years later those are minimum wage jobs if they exist at all.

  33. Interviews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Recently I sat several interviews with "the boss" for a junior contract position. From various candidates, there were many who pretty much had carbon-copy resumes of school experience, but one guy who had some outside CS+personal experience, plus a girl who had less technical interest/experience but good communications skills and looked to be a fast learner.

    We both agreed that the guy seemed to be the best candidate (of all interviewees) as he had more experience than the others and his motivation seem to lie more towards IT self-improvement.

    However, before we passed it up to HR, my boss asked me "unless you'd prefer a girl on the team. " It was a very off-the-cuff remark but I wanted to scream "what the hell does the gender or even my preference therein matter". Also illegal, but frankly few people seem to care unless it's a white CIS male getting the preference. That really bugs me.

    The selection should be the BEST candidate. I don't care if we get a gay transexual as of asian-hispanic decent so long as it is somebody who can do the job, work with the team, and has good hygiene (the last being an oft-missed importance in IT).

  34. It actually goes like this: by fyngyrz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige

    It actually goes like this:

    Extremely simplistic computer programming done in the earliest days of trivial computer architectures and largely trivial computing tasks, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by anyone possessed of a week's familiarization and two wet brain cells to rub together. But as computer architectures became more sophisticated, and the programs written under them were both more aggressively complex and able to utilize considerably broader and deeper resources in terms of both hardware and data, the job began paying more and gained prestige. A process that continues to this day.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re: It actually goes like this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But, but, patriarchy!

    2. Re:It actually goes like this: by aberglas · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually no.

      The early computer programs were to solve differential equations and required far more maths than most programmers today could muster. Several of those women were mathematicians. And programming the Eniac (say) was non-trivial. Highly parallel, lots of weird timing considerations, that all had to be literally wired together.

      Whereas any idiot can write a program on a modern IDE. Which is why most Slash dotters insist on using vi.

      Most of the women you see in the early photos were operators, not programmers.

    3. Re:It actually goes like this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I still write programs that solve differential equations. Well, linear diferentrial equations; I do a lot of linear algebra obviously :-)

      There is still room for those who want to program mathematical software. Most companies need some system that does some sort of computation, and someone needs to develop and maintain that computational system. It is possible that some solve this by having a mathematical person instruct a developer, but it is my (limited) experience, that developers that can fullfil both roles simultanously are highly desired. (Also because an arcitecture in a computational system, really needs to be defined both in terms of the equations and in terms of the software, as both are part of the whole; the result is a robust and simplified system of a high order)

      Where I work, there seems to be much more equality in gender, in these roles (we have titles as "Specialist" in our company), than within the generalist software developer roles. (Clearly male dominated)

      As a woman, I also worked hard to get this role. It has been hard to be listened to, and taken serious. Now that I am a specialist, and can finally speak and be heard, as my title gives me manager-like authority over the systems I maintain and develop. Many other women I know, aim for the same, by doing extraordinary work daily. (Which sadly also means that me, including many of those I know, have had sick leaves with stress)

    4. Re:It actually goes like this: by bondsbw · · Score: 1

      Computers became orders of magnitude faster, smaller, and cheaper, and the industry realized simultaneous reuse (large up-front investment in writing an OS or program, and relatively tiny or zero cost to scale)... those things made computing ubiquitous, drastically raising demand.

      If all of the computing industry had the same people working on it as we did in the 50s and 60s, they would be paid millions of dollars an hour today. The demand is so much larger and far outweighs any argument of meniality.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    5. Re:It actually goes like this: by Kiaser+Zohsay · · Score: 1

      Which is why most Slash dotters insist on using emacs.

      FTFY.

      --
      I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
    6. Re:It actually goes like this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It'ss a terminology thing. Back then, what we now call operators were called programmers - they entered the programs into the computer, scheduled the programs, and then told the computer to run them. The actual programs were written by other people who provided them to the "programmers" via special forms.

    7. Re:It actually goes like this: by erapert · · Score: 1

      Most of the women you see in the early photos were operators, not programmers.

      Because actual programmers, male or female, are not photogenic.

      Has anyone already coined the notion that one's technical and intellectual stature is inversely proportionate to one's physical attractiveness?

    8. Re:It actually goes like this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But of course then the question becomes: How many of the real programmers were women?

  35. Re: So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ha! You wish, geek loser! What's that line again, we should have been kind to you neckbeards 'cause you would have been our bosses? LOL! Guess what, I get to hire and fire tech weenies and right now we're downsizing IT to the bone and pushing wages down so much those keyboard humpers will soon beg us to let them eat our snot. Hah! I never thought I would have made a career out of shoving nerds into trashcans!

  36. Did they correct for wage stagnation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Teachers' salaries also decreased dramatically relative to inflation in the same timeframe. It's partly a reflection of the changing perception of educational and child-rearing value, and also a huge dose of wealth transfer out of the middle class.

    1. Re:Did they correct for wage stagnation? by Bartles · · Score: 1

      Citation?

    2. Re:Did they correct for wage stagnation? by tomhath · · Score: 1

      Teachers complain about their gross pay, but they forget to mention it's for five hours a day, 9 months of the year.

    3. Re:Did they correct for wage stagnation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit, not true. Teachers work long hours, overtime, much of it unpaid.

    4. Re:Did they correct for wage stagnation? by orledrat · · Score: 1

      Teachers complain about their gross pay, but they forget to mention it's for five hours a day, 9 months of the year.

      Exactly right. These weaseling teachers somehow always seem to neglect that fact.. it's time to make them go to Law School, not High School, to learn something about honesty and the consequences of gross negligence.

    5. Re:Did they correct for wage stagnation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have no clue where you get 5 hours a day. Teachers work at least as many hours at school as office workers do, though it's more like 8 to 4. They're expected to be there for the kids' clubs. Then they have to grade and prepare assignments after they return home, all as part of their negotiated salary and not as overtime.
      As for 9 months of the year? They work during the summer too. Not full-time, but they have training and planning that needs doing.

    6. Re:Did they correct for wage stagnation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For most of them, its not five hours a day. There is some minimal time required for grading papers, and preparation. Some of that can be done during free periods, during group work, during tests and quizzes, etc. However, even the laziest teacher is probably more like 6-7 hours per day, and the many of the more conscientious will be spending more time than that. Though still for only 9 months, as you say.

  37. It's a kindercare bandwagon, though by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Yes, the programmer bandwagon initiative has just created an oversupply of programmers.

    Yes, the programmer bandwagon initiative has just created an oversupply of wannabe script kiddies playing around in HLL sandboxes while having mega-angst attacks about utterly insignificant UX issues. While mostly making a huge bloody mess. And inflicting travesties like roll-over activated menus and pop-ups on everyone they can. They're so busy appity-apping their grossly overweight, minimally functional apps they haven't had time to learn how computers work or build deep algorithmic competencies. Nor do I ever expect they will.

    FTFY. :)

     

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  38. In other words... by Bartles · · Score: 1

    ...pay in industries in decline goes down as the industries decline, and pay goes up in growth industries as they grow. Who possibly could have imagined this happening?

  39. Re: Congrats on the stupidity award! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love when idiots claim more jobs than ever buy completely neglect to think about the number of working adults is higher than ever as well. 240 years ago the population may have been 3-5 million at best! It's 300M now. Use your brain!

  40. Perspective .... by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Honestly, the trick is to funnel your passion for your work into something that pays you back in the long-haul. If you're giving 110% all the time but all your effort is just going back into a salaried job where your hard work is more taken for granted than respected? Then yeah, you're going to wind up in your 40's, burnt-out and with nothing to show for it but prematurely grey hair and a lacking social life.

    The Anonymous guy who posted would have had a much different story if he had the guts to take a chance on going it alone, working for himself. If you're such a good software coder, you need to write your own killer app (or even game!) and start marketing it yourself. That, or at least work as a freelancer, getting paid per project on terms you negotiate each time.

    When you look at who actually owns the companies that employ you, you'll usually find those folks had a real passion for something having to do with the business. That's how they built the whole thing up into something successful enough, they could afford to hire you. Not everyone is in a position where they can be or want to be that person .... But if you're young and full of motivation/drive and passion for a subject, you shortchange yourself not to try to be one of those people.

  41. Other industries by eyebee · · Score: 1

    Retail Management. Haven't wages dropped in that area since more and more women started working in retail management, which once, albeit some time ago, was largely a male preserve? Public Transportation. Wages have dropped in the bus industry since women started driving buses in larger numbers.

    --
    Onwards & Upwards!
  42. Strange by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... which went from predominantly male to female from 1950 to 2000 ...

    Women tend to afflict their careers with personal issues like marriage and pregnancy yet many employers are choosing women over men. Part of that is, the workplace now offers flexibility to women (but male workers rarely get the same flexibility) and part of the reason is many employers want people who have more 'soft' skills, meaning women, in all service roles.

  43. More men tolerate soul sucking jobs than women by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think more men are tolerant of soul sucking jobs for higher pay, than women are. That seems consistent with society disliking economically unsuccessful men than economically unsuccessful women. Fat, bald 40s man: worthless.

  44. Nothing to seize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They say you can't take away a college education. The problem is that the bank can not seize your college education. So, why make the loan in the first place?

  45. Oh no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    High school kids with the knowledge of writing the most basic of programs?!? Well, it might be something for front-end script-monkeys to worry about.

  46. Causal arrows are backwards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When a job is hot, it pays well, men are attracted.
    When its not, less competition, women go there.
    Its not that women bring down salaries (though, due to lack of experience equal to males, they do)
    its that there are more openings for less desirable jobs.

    1. Re:Causal arrows are backwards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The less desirable jobs are all filled with men.

  47. Exact opposite of the truth by Archtech · · Score: 2

    "Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige".

    As soon as you read those two sentences you are done. Nothing this person writes can be taken seriously, because she is hopelessly ignorant about the subject she is supposed to be explaining. And one can guess that she is also hopelessly ignorant of her hopeless ignorance.

    Computer programming started as an extremely difficult and challenging job mostly done by people with advanced qualifications in mathematics, science or engineering. Early programmers wrote their own operating systems, device drivers, and primitive libraries. Most of their programs were algorithmic, so they had to be experts on algorithms too. And pay was (on the whole) very low indeed.

    Gradually, as first assemblers and then compilers were introduced, more and more people began to be able to write adequate programs. Then languages like Cobol appeared, which were supposed to allow ordinary business people and accountants to program (they didn't really though). Followed by 4GLs, which promised the same (and still didn't deliver). And then Visual Basic and its horde of imitations, which lowered the bar a good deal by delegating all the difficult stuff to libraries and reducing many decisions to menu-driven choices. And now we have the Web, which once again makes programming dramatically easier by dint of vastly reducing its scope. Today, a few programmers (and designers and analysts and architects) command very high salaries; but mostly because of their ability to combine programming dexterity with excellent understanding of the problem domain (such as trading).

    None of which has anything to do with men or women, as Admiral Grace Hopper could tell you if she were still alive.

    --
    I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
  48. Supply and Demand by scamper_22 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So what you're saying is in the private sector there is something called supply and demand?

    Tell me more of this new age concept!

    Not everyone can mandate their wages via government fiat no matter how many people are qualified to enter the field.

  49. Because you need more women. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Women take more time off which means you need more of them to equal the work of men. More people doing the work means the declining wages.

  50. Just like in medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    where the flood of women doctors has resulted in no appreciable decline in wages. Though more women are entering, there isn't suddenly an increase in the supply of doctors.

    In CS, if more balanced classes of women and men are entering without some sudden increase in supply, then there will be no wage shock.

  51. Really? Supply vs. Demand? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Increase the H1-B's because software developers are too expensive.
    Let's Train Everybody because software developers are too expensive.

    In Seattle, a CS BS with certs will get you $40K.
    In San Fran, a CS BS with certs will get you $60K
    In LA, that same pile of paper will get you $50K
    In Chicago, $80K
    In St. Louis, $120K
    In Detroit, $140K

    Why? Multi-language developers are a dime a dozen in Seattle, San Fran, and LA. Very few brogrammers want to live in Chicago. St. Louis really does not have the resources to support a software development industry (hardware, but no software), and Detroit is desperate for people who speak LISP, Fortran, COBOL, and C++. Just get your CCW, some 3A+, and pack a few water filters.

  52. Wh is setting the salaries? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oprah Winfrey addressed this issue long ago. While working with a male co-anchor, Richard Sher, she was paid less for the exact same job. When she confronted her boss, his rationalization was that Sher was a man and had to support his family. As long as the hiring and wage setting is predominantly controlled by males, this kind of bias will be evident.

  53. HELLO? McFly???? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do morons think the very same companies pushing for an explosion of H1-B visas are also pushing for everybody to learn to code in school???? Those two concepts are completely contradictory..... unless the goal is to push-down wages. If the perception is that "everybody can code"(the facts matter less than the perception), then it'll be like tying a shoe - a skill assigned no particular monetary value in the mind of the public. When a skill is perceived to be without value, then the billionaires who employ people with that skill will be able to maintain a "good guy" public image and go to all the fashionable parties while getting richer off the labor of slaves, and telling politicians that these are jobs the middle class just won't do.

  54. Math is harder than programming by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    at least until you reach a complexity of programming where the two are indistinguishable, and the "Teach everyone to code" movement recognizes that at that level you're not going to be able to depress wages (which is the real goal) because you're basically dealing with genetic freaks that we don't yet know how to create.

    It's got nothing to do with SJWs and everything to do with a longstanding economic pattern, namely that when capital notices labor prices going up it takes measures to increase supply. You remember Supply and Demand, right? That's what this is. Pay is good and programmers have middle class lives because supply is low. Middle Class lives don't come cheap, and somebody is actively looking to make it cheaper. This is how things work.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Math is harder than programming by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 1

      That's actually the point, the supply is only increasing marginally. Increasing initiatives to "teach" people how to code won't necessarily make them good enough to be software developers.

  55. Art for all!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The concept of ANY one topic for all is narrow-minded and just plain idiotic. We don't do this for ANY other subject. Not math. Not English. Nothing. Only MORONS suggest this concept.

  56. Symptom not cause by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Symptom not cause - isn't it obvious?

  57. It takes more than just a few classes by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 1

    Only 10% of my fellow freshmen computer science majors, actually made it to a degree (most changed majors). Of those, only a fraction actually became software engineers. Teaching computer science to "everyone" might net a few more software engineers, but most everyone who has the ability and desire to be one, already becomes one. If the pay isn't enough to attract more people to the profession, then throwing more people into classes surely isn't going to attract them!

  58. The law of secretly intended consequences: by GrantRobertson · · Score: 1

    Pay will go down, but not because women are coming into the field. (Although, I would take a cut in pay to get to work next to a smart woman instead of yet another egotistical techno-jock.) Pay will come down because it will be even easier to round up a bunch of resumes that almost but don't quite meet a set of precicely overinflated requirements. Then they will hire an H1-B-er.

    I am now convinced that all those Indian "recruiters" are actually H1-B candidates, and their first task is to gather up a bunch of resumes of Americans that don't quite meet the requirements. Once they have enough to satisfy the labor dept. (or whoever) then the employer can justify hiring them. This is why I won't even reply to or talk to any recruiters with Indian names or accents any more. Sorry if that smacks of racism. It's just the little bit that I can do to throw a wrench in the H1-B grist mill.

  59. Those will never ever be fixed by s.petry · · Score: 1

    Those problems have been around since.. well, forever. Ya see, we like to hold this fantasy of Utopia. In fact since we have written things down we see that type of story. Many of us _want_ peace and harmony but forget that human nature means that other people lack that same morality. History is this long chain of events where the higher morals revolt and squash the immoral leaders, and since human nature is to be trusting pretty soon we find ourselves back in the same position again.

    So yeah, Povery is a problem. We have had the know-how to fix poverty and starvation for at least a century. There will always be an excuse for war, power grabs, land grabs, punishing those other guys for what they did, etc...

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  60. We have been saying just this by s.petry · · Score: 1

    These pushes are the same thing as H1B pushes. It's a competative race to the bottom.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  61. Minimum wage by cbhacking · · Score: 2

    I also doubt if ticket sellers were really paid 57% more in the past. Why would a movie theater pay that much for a job requiring near zero skills?

    Or for the simplest reason of all: minimum wage has not kept up with inflation (and TFA's numbers are, as you'd hope, inflation-adjusted). Obviously if you go far enough back, minimum wage didn't exist. However, if you look at historical, inflation-adjusted minimum wages, they trend downward nationally... because for some reason, the minimum wage wasn't indexed to inflation and requires an act of congress to update it.

    --
    There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  62. Or in other words... by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 1

    In other words, the glass ceiling doesn't only affect women, and abolition of the glass ceiling would actually help male wages too.

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  63. Re: So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obvious troll is obvious

  64. Which was the point of it all anyway. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When you double the size of the worker pool, pay drops. Duh.

    And you thought any of this was about morality? Well yes, but that isn't why it will actually happen.

  65. Supply & demand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More people enter a career...supply goes up, pay goes down...duh, that's real hard to figure out...how is this about 'pay equity' (which in itself is a non-sense notion...eg. 'equal pay for work of equal value' begs the question of 'who sets the value'?)...if people can't negotiate a salary commensurate with what they THINK they are worth then they aren't worth a higher salary.

  66. Lower Pay for Us != Lower Pay for All by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll gladly take a cut in pay if it means more people can get out of the unskilled labor market.

  67. It's all BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "I ain't denyin' the allegations; I'm denyin' the allegator."

    Clair Cain Miller is an SJW reporter, quoting a "study" by an SJW organization. Probably the results are just a twisting of statistics, and are not valid. Previous studies have shown that almost all the difference in pay between men and women can be attributed to longer hours put in on the job -- not because hours x pay = more money, but because longer hours yields both more expertise and higher valuing by the organization. In fact, women later in their careers do as well as or better than men, when they are no longer limited by for example family obligations from putting in heavy hours, or achieving the same level of expertise as men who had earlier put in heavier hours.

    Unfortunately, once these issues become partisan, everyone wants to twist the statistics, and you can no longer believe ANYTHING anyone says.