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?
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.
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
As pay drops, women take over male-dominated fields.
Heck, what do I know. I'm just a middle aged heterosexual white guy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.