To Solve the Diversity Drought in Software Engineering, Look to Community Colleges (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Community college is not flashy and does not make promises about your future employability. You will also likely not learn current way-cool web development technologies like React and GraphQL. In terms of projects, you're more likely to build software for organizing a professor's DVD or textbook collection than you are responsive web apps. I would tell you that all of this is OK because in community college computer science classes you're learning fundamentals, broad concepts like data structures, algorithmic complexity, and object-oriented programming. You won't learn any of those things as deeply as you would in a full-on university computer science program, but you'll get pretty far. And community college is cheap, though that varies depending on where you are. Here in Portland, OR, the local community college network charges $104 per credit. Which means it's possible to get a solid few semesters of computer science coursework down for a couple of grand. Which is actually amazing. In a new piece published in the Communications of the ACM, Silicon Valley researchers Louise Ann Lyon and Jill Denner make the argument that community colleges have the potential to play a key role in increasing equity and inclusion in computer science education. If you haven't heard, software engineering has a diversity problem. Access to education is a huge contributor to that, and Denner and Lyon see community college as something of a solution in plain sight.

Comments

alternative

[micahraleigh]

How about we start allowing ourselves to hire developers over 45 ?

Re:alternative

[jellomizer]

We don't want Old guys who specialized on these old time sharing mainframe systems where you had a big system, and you had charged the customer for the computing needed then provided the data remotely back to them. To be working the state of the art cloud computing platforms, where we charge the customer for the computing needed then provide the data remotely back to them.
Or these guys who specialized in Witting desktop apps for Single use PC's with under 4 gigs of RAM and screen sizes under 12" to be making mobile apps on these mobile devices with under 4 Gigs of Ram and screen sizes under 12".

A lot of the new stuff, is just a rehash of older technology, the theory behind it is the same, just some of the details have been improved.

Re:alternative

[cayenne8]

No. They're all white men.

Yep, diversity applies to pretty much everyone....except old white guys....

Re:alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Based upon that statement, you MUST work in HR and not in any kind of engineering.

Re:alternative

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yeah, but we're old WHITE guys, which diversity experts say shouldn't have jobs anymore.

Diversity is just skin deep, you know.

Couldn't possibly, say, hire these old white guys to teach at community colleges, now could we?

Re:alternative

[jellomizer]

No, I was stating their experience in the older technologies, can directly apply to newer technologies, due to cyclical nature of technology. The problem is the industry thinks the old guys haven't been keeping up with the trends, while for the most part the newest and hottest trends are just old hat.

Re:alternative

[irrational_design]

I have a female student who was asking me if she would have a problem getting a job since she is in her late 30s. I told her that anyone who is not white or an older man shouldn't have any trouble. Even though she is white, her gender will almost guarantee her a job.

Re:alternative

[cayenne8]

Part of the problem is the "worshipping of rockstars" culture. The flashy, self-promoting 25 year olds who crank out code 100+ hours a week because they have no other obligations are what gets the press. What gets the press gets the attention of the MBAs writing the checks. Standing out in an environment like that working normal hours and producing steady good-quality results is hard.

Well, you do the standing out and resume experience gathering while you are young and can do it.....with the eye on the future!!!

You need to NOT plan on being a code monkey your entire career, it doesn't work that way.

You set yourself up with experience AND contacts, so that you can, if going the W2 route, work your way into management, or if you like to stay more tech, go into the 1099 contracting circuit. If you are US citizen, try doing federal contracting.

But you just can't plan to stay and do the same job your entire life, even if you do switch companies.

Re:alternative

[liquid_schwartz]

No. They're all white men.

Yep, diversity applies to pretty much everyone....except old white guys....

Actually it doesn't apply to white guys at all, regardless of age. Even suggesting diversity could ever positively involve a white male will get you fired.

Citations:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... http://dailycaller.com/2017/11...

Re:alternative

[ranton]

yeah, okay but the details are completely different and they matter a ton. when a 55 year old guy who specialized in programming Z80 chips for smart bombs is laid off his skill set is useless in today's market.

No, he is "useless" in today's market for maybe a month until he has picked up some new knowledge. I have been hired twice as a senior level developer in a language or platform I have never worked in, and it generally took a few weeks to get up to speed. It took closer to six months to a year to be what I consider a true senior resource in those technologies, but I was very useful to my computer in week 2.

Re:alternative

[interkin3tic]

That's disingenuous. You provide two separate right-wing news stories about the same incident.

Furthermore, yes, if your ENTIRE JOB was to provide PR cover for a company, to shield them from accusations that they're only hiring white dudes, as her job was, then yeah, that's a dumb thing to say.

"THIS JUST IN: CRITICIZING THE PRESIDENT WILL GET YOU FIRED! (example: Rex Tillerson saying his boss Trump was a fucking moron)"

Re:alternative

[Lips]

I'm 50 and the only thing that has been constant in my 28 year career is change. I'm still changing and learning. Here are the things I've worked with.

• serial data comms, X25, TCP/IP
• messaging
• who has used a HP protocol analyser? these days I use Wireshark
• Unix (BSDs), Linux, Windows
• PHP/FI
• C
• x86 assembly
• Pascal
• VB 3/4/5/6
• VB.NET, C#
• .Net Framework and related stuff like EF, MVC
• Java
• Javascript/JQuery/AJAX
• Python
• Perl
• Fortran
• bash, dos, powershell scripts
• virtualisation but not cloud yet unfortunately
• ScrumMastering
• Visual Source Safe, RCS, CVS, Subversion, GIT
• Atlassian suite setup/admin/customisation
• miniSQL, mySQL, Postgres, MS SQL, Oracle, BTrieve (ok its an ISAM)
• TSQL, PL/SQL
• COM/DCOM
• TDD/BDD
• DevOps/CI and Jenkins/Hudson/Bamboo
• XML/XPath/XSL/XSLT
• Salt, Ansible
• Design patterns,DI/IOC

At home I'm having a play with .Net Core and docker on my Debian box. But my first linux distro was Yggdrasil. Some of this stuff I haven't touched for a while, but you get the idea. When I attended my university course (CS degree) orientation in 1985 we were told that the half life of our knowledge is about 5 years, and that's about right.

I know of very few people who have been in the industry for as long as I have and have not been constantly changing and learning to stay in the game.

Solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't a diversity problem. Diversity isn't related to any challenges in software engineering.

Re:Solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a white man, given the choice to work with either another white guy or with a cute asian woman who's single, I'd pick the asian woman. Not because I'm a man, but because I'm a man AND a lonely nerd.

Re: Solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny I actually never hear it in that direction. I'm always hearing about how the brown people and women are complaining about the nice things white old men built and want in on that.

Re:Solve?

[cayenne8]

As a white man, given the choice to work with either another white guy or with a cute asian woman who's single, I'd pick the asian woman. Not because I'm a man, but because I'm a man AND a lonely nerd.

Well, you'd pretty much better never TALK, email, IM or otherwise communicate with her.

Otherwise you'll likely see yourself losing your job due to "sexual" harassment. And even if you keep to yourself, if she doesn't like you, even the hint you were ever inappropriate to any woman since you were just DNA is enough to get you tossed out on your keister, so....be careful for what you wish for.

Re: Solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

It might if it were historically factually accurate, but since it's just Hollywood wish-fulfillment fiction, it will be difficult to get any information on the real world from it.

Re: Solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Asian guy here. I've actually never heard complaints from asian guys about 'equality' in software dev. If anything, we discuss how there's a severe lack of black dudes there and how that would fix economic imbalances, if they would join and take interest. 'Brown' people are overrepresented in the tech industry compared to background demographics... unless your definition of 'brown' is 'not white', as in including black guys.

The loudest SJW types who push for forced diversity are always white men and women themselves, from downtown cores, leaning to the left. I'm certainly not complaining about them, but pointing it out that the noise really comes from white SJWs.

Kinda similar to another thing: I know well over 1000 muslims in north american and have never heard of one single one wanting 'happy holidays' over 'merry christmas'. That whole thing was also started by SJWs and muslims end up paying the political price. (Christ is a holy figure for muslims, so even the most religious muslims are happy to celebrate his birthday).

Re:Solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked in a civil service job with mostly female colleagues for 14 years and have never had any of the problems to which you allude.

credits may not transfer and few offer 4 year degr

[Joe_Dragon]

credits may not transfer and few offer 4 year degrees.

Even when credits do transfer some 4 year Colleges may force you to retake classes or say you may have X credits but only some of them counted to what you need to get the degree from us.

problem

[religionofpeas]

If you haven't heard, software engineering has a diversity problem

There's unequal participation. That doesn't mean there's a problem.

Re:problem

[edittard]

If there wasn't a problem, We should expect to see participation at around the same percentages as the population of the area.

Basketball is pretty racist then.

Re:problem

[religionofpeas]

We should expect to see participation at around the same percentages as the population of the area.

Why should we expect that ? Do you think everybody has the same interests ?

Try a simple experiment. Go to youtube, and look up videos on "Arduino". Check the ratio of men and women. Now do the same for "Scrapbooking".

Nobody is stopping women from ordering an Arduino and recording a video, and nobody's stopping men from ordering some scrapbook supplies. The barrier to entry is extremely low in both cases. How come we still see this division ?

Simple: different interests. The average woman thinks Arduino is stupid, and the average man thinks scrapbooking is stupid.

Re:problem

[_Sharp'r_]

"We should expect to see participation at around the same percentages as the population of the area."

This is factually and statistically false. There is no significant area of human endeavor where the percentages of the population naturally lines up neatly with the percentages of participation. If software engineering started to do so, it'd be a first.

Here's a fun random internet example:

An analysis of the ESPN database of NFL players for the 2016-2017 season by position for place kickers and punters reveals the following:

1. Of the 35 place kickers on 2016-2017 NFL rosters, 34 are white, one is Hispanic (Roberto Aguayo of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and none are black.

2. Of the 34 punters on 2016-2017 NFL rosters, only 1 is black (Marquette King of the Oakland Raiders) and the rest are white.

Even though black players represent 69.7% of NFL players overall this season, they represent less than 1.5% of players at the positions of kickers and punters – only one of out 69 players at those positions is black.

The exact same people would have to discriminate against black kickers in the NFL as would be discriminating in favor of blacks in the rest of the NFL. That sort of proves the disparate statistics in either direction can't be the result of bias based on skin color, unless you can come up with a reason they'd be biased based on skin color only when the player's job involves kicking or not.

Re:problem

[gweihir]

In the mind of those where fixing the statistic fixes reality (i.e. the most dumb SJWs with the absolute least understanding of reality), unequal participation must of course always be because of discrimination. That people of different genders and of different cultural backgrounds may just make different choices (if they are free to make these choices according to what they want) is an idea these SJWs cannot understand. Hence they basically follow a fascist approach where people have to be forced to be equal.

Re:problem

[blindseer]

But for a software engineer, just as long as you are able to interact with the computer and have average inelegance, with appropriate training, there isn't any real reason why people of different genders or races can do the job.

I agree, there is no real reason these positions cannot be filled by people of either gender or any race. What we do see is that people of certain races and genders will, on the average, tend to score higher than average. If the seat is filled competitively then people of these races and genders will tend to fill those positions over other races and genders. Companies that wish to ignore this tendency will hire based on race and gender over their intelligence will likely be able to fill that seat, and also be at a competitive disadvantage with other companies on their final products.

I saw an interview a while back where the people were discussing South Africa and the racial tensions there. That is a nation, due to its location on a major shipping route going way back, where Europeans immigrated in much larger numbers than other African nations. Even so the indigenous Blacks still make up 80% of the population with the rest being mostly European and mixed ancestry. That nation has never seen any major engineering project until the Europeans showed up, not even so much as a two story building. This ability for the immigrants to do so much better angered the locals.

Testing for intelligence among the population shows that those of European or mixed ancestry will have 50% score above 100 IQ. Those of pure indigenous ancestry will have 20% of the population score above 100 IQ. So, sure, you can find people in South Africa of any ancestry to fill a position that requires an average intelligence and appropriate training. What you will also find is that the qualified applicants will be made up of about 4 Whites to every 1 Black.

Imagine a company that needs people with average intelligence, or above, and appropriate training to fill thousands of jobs. In fact let's ignore the training part, and assume it's only about intelligence and the training is obtained on the job. Filling that first 5 seats with a proportion matching the general population will be easy, find 4 Blacks that score above 100 on an IQ test and 1 White, then hire them all. Now iterate this. This company is pulling from a pool where 50% of Whites can pass the test but only 20% of Blacks will. With each iteration the pool of Blacks that can pass the test gets far smaller on proportion than the Whites.

Assuming the highest scoring of the applicants are selected the quality of applicants of each iteration will be lower. Also, the quality of Black applicants will fall far faster than the White applicants. What happens after years of this and many many other companies hire people based on proportion of the race of the general population rather than the proportion of the population that can pass the IQ test with a score above 100? Something has to give.

To make this work the hiring practice has to start ignoring the racial makeup of the general population, and hire more Whites. I suppose the hiring criteria can change to have this racial proportion continue, but then you have people with below average intelligence tasked with work that may be beyond their abilities. What happens then? Is the company supposed to keep these people hired even though they cannot do the work they've been hired to do? Perhaps the work can be divided up, so more complex work is given to the more capable people and the less complex work given to the less capable people. Now you have "senior" engineers and "junior" engineers to differentiate between the more capable and less capable. In the larger group of "engineer" the racial composition is 80% Black and 20% White but the senior engineers is now flipped with 80% White and 20% Black. What happens then?

I know what happens. We'll have a bunch of people complain of racial discrimination and demand that senior engineers hav

Does diversity results in better code?

[sinij]

Does diversity results in better code? Please provide citations.

Re:Does diversity results in better code?

[AlanBDee]

The best developer on my team is a girl from Vietnam. My experience has been that diversity is a good thing, but I'm not convinced that there is a "diversity problem". We're so desperate to find competent developers that we couldn't be discriminatory if we wanted to be.

Re:Does diversity results in better code?

[RedK]

The best developer on my team is a girl from Vietnam.

Is the only reason she's the best because she's both a girl and from Vietnam ? Because if so, all programmers should now be Vietnamese Girls and thus diversity is bad.

Or is it because she's simply the best programmer, regardless of her sex and nationality ? Because if so, then diversity of skin color, nationhood, and sex don't matter.

So which is it, is diversity bad or does it simply not matter ?

Solutions require problems

[Dog-Cow]

In order to solve something, there must be a problem first. As long as no one consciously attempts to exclude a group, there is no issue. If women or Blacks or whoever feels uncomfortable, that's their problem to solve. It's not anyone's job to make someone else comfortable. If more women join, the atmosphere will change of its own. No one needs to force "diversity training" (unfortunately, it's a thing) on anyone.https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/12/04/1915224/to-solve-the-diversity-drought-in-software-engineering-look-to-community-colleges#

Re:Solutions require problems

[serviscope_minor]

As long as no one consciously attempts to exclude a group, there is no issue. If women or Blacks or whoever feels uncomfortable, that's their problem to solve.

So you think it's ok to be sexist and/or racist as long as you're not consciously doing it?

No that's bullshit. To go be a problem you must not actually be excluding groups. Whether or not you are being conscious about it or not is irrelevant to the group you're excluding. In other words, your precious feelings don't matter, only your actions.

Re:Solutions require problems

[Aighearach]

As long as no one consciously attempts to exclude a group, there is no issue.

I assume you apply the same logic to everything else, not just this, right? If you forget about gravity, you can fly! Right?

Or does it not actually make any fucking difference at all if you did it consciously or unconsciously, if you actually did it? Your argument seems to be that since you refused to admit why you did it, you think people will refrain from even being able to see the problem. But that is some pretty weak Theory of Mind! Expect to always lose that argument, and if you have it at work, to be fired.

Quality Beats Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in the minds of everyone but the Social Justice Warrior set.

Being a different skin color or sex doesn't improve coding ability. The year is 2017, not 1959; there are no legal structures keeping black people from studying programming or being hired by any company who choses to do so. Jim Crow is dead.

Stop pretending that the United States of America is the most racist nation in the world, when in actually it is probably the least racist country.

Just stop shoving this SJW bullshit down our throat, Slashdot. It isn't helping, and it isn't working.

Re:credits may not transfer and few offer 4 year d

[ShanghaiBill]

credits may not transfer

In most states, credits from CCs are guaranteed to be transferable to the state's 4 year public universities. In California it is easier to transfer credits from a CC into the UC system that to transfer from the "Cal State" system. The CCs are explicitly set up as an affordable pipeline into the 4 year public universities.

and few offer 4 year degrees.

That is not what CCs are for.

Big fan

[AlanBDee]

I'm a big fan of Community Colleges for one reason, they're inexpensive. I think we can all agree that you don't need a degree to be a good software engineer, although a degree can increase the salary you can demand and the return on investment is worth it.

Given that, it makes sense to start in a Community College and then finish up at a local in-state university. If I look at Salt Lake Community College and Weber State University in Utah you could do this for under $20k with room to spare.

In the end, it's how well you can program, not what school you went to.

Not $104 per credit. For most in Oregon, it's free

[StevenMaurer]

Here in Portland, OR, the local community college network charges $104 per credit.

Thanks entirely to the Democratic ownership of the state legislature and the governorship, Oregon promises free community college for any legal state resident starting out college from highschool (or GED), who isn't a trust fund baby, and has at least a 2.5 GPA, via the Oregon Promise Grant. You do have to file out some forms, but then you're golden.

You must meet all of the following criteria:

• Complete an Oregon Promise Grant Application by the appropriate deadline
• File a FAFSA or ORSAA application and list at least one Oregon community college
• Be a recent Oregon high school graduate or GED recipient
• Document a 2.5 cumulative high school GPA or higher; or a GED score of 145 or higher on each test
• Plan to attend at least half-time at an Oregon community college within 6 months of high school graduation or GED completion
• Be an Oregon resident for at least 12 months prior to college attendance
• Must not have more than 90 college credits completed or attempted
• Beginning with Fall 2017 applicants, students may be subject to eligibility criteria based on their Expected Family Contribution (EFC). The EFC limit for 2017-18 applicants is $18,000. New applicants who are above the EFC limit will not be eligible for an award. The EFC criteria is subject to change.

There are plenty of web development classes as well.

CS != Web App Development

[ErichTheRed]

I agree that looking to other sources for hiring programmers is a good thing. Not everyone is rich or brilliant enough to go to Stanford and get a CS degree, nor does every developer in your company need to be a Stanford grad. I'm in systems engineering with no formal university training...I got a degree in chemistry way back when. Since most of what I do is integration work getting developers' "masterpieces" working in production, it's very clear that a large percentage of developers have very little idea about how the machines their code runs on work.

Real computer science education starts pretty close to first principles and builds up. It doesn't start at a web framework or query language 478 levels of abstraction up the stack and work down. The big problem with "software engineering" is that people actually do need some of this first-principles understanding to be useful outside of the abstracted environments. Both community college and university education is often derided as being too theoretical because unlike coder bootcamps they don't start you off at a point where most problems are solved. But if inexperienced developers had some clue about how the magic box works beyond gluing together more magic libraries and frameworks on top, software quality might improve.

Re:Considering degrees go to women more...

[iggymanz]

Indeed, and white men in particular have higher barriers in education and employment performance metrics than many minorities for whom lower standards are applied. It's disgusting, "equal opportunity" should not mean lower performance acceptable.

Community College, Diversity and California

[jfinn]

I'm not making this up, but I wish that I were. I'm a computer science Ph.D. with a lot of teaching experience. Recently, a community college in California wanted to hire me to teach a computer literacy class as part of the Year Up program. I was emailed a 203-page pdf of hiring materials. There, buried on page 37, was a loyalty oath that I was required to sign as a condition of employment. It is reproduced below. I refused to sign it and was not hired. Is this the fascist left or the fascist right? California Uber Alles, y'all.

"I, (Print Name) Do solemnly swear, or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter"

Nonsense

[gweihir]

Software engineering is a field that is still more art than craft. It will remain that for the foreseeable future. That has been known for a long, long time now. And for an art, you need an aptitude or you will never be any good. While we definitely should get anybody with that aptitude into it, we must get rid of all those without it, because their lack of skill is costing society extremely. Mediocre software engineers have negative productivity, sometimes massively so. "Diversity" will be a side-result of that. Not that "diversity" actually has any value when the individuals are all highly skilled. Highly skilled individuals in any STEM field are rare enough that all that can be found will have very good opportunities. Diversity only has a place in jobs most people can do because only there can you realistically discriminate.

Re:Not $104 per credit. For most in Oregon, it's f

[joelgrimes]

Here in Portland, OR, the local community college network charges $104 per credit.

Thanks entirely to the Democratic ownership of the state legislature and the governorship, Oregon promises free community college for any legal state resident starting out college from highschool (or GED)....

And the Republican legislature of Tennessee says "Welcome to the club, Oregon! What took you so long?".

The fact is, a lot of states are doing it. California offers one year of college. Rhode Island offers 2. New York even includes 4 year institutions. Last month the city of Dallas got in on the action..

Sadly, it's not quite as good as it sounds. They aren't simply dropping the cost of community college to zero. What these things are is a "last dollar" scholarship where they ensure you first get all the federal student aid you are eligible for and the scholarship fills in the rest.

couldn't agree more

[bingoUV]

I agree wholeheartedly. Authoritarian hell holes like Scandinavia, Western Europe have far more unequal participation of men vs women in software development than egalitarian utopias like India and China.

Men are identical to women, period. Genetics and chromosomes are two hoaxes on the flat earth made by God in 6 days 6000 years ago. Free will, my ass!