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

Posted by timothy on from the what-factors-control? dept.

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?

19 of 310 comments (clear)

  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 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.

    5. 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
  2. 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 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.

    2. 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.
    3. 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.

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

      Reality is rarely politically correct.

      --
      The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
    5. 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
    6. 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
    7. 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.

  3. 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

  4. 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.

  5. "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
  6. 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.

  7. 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.