Why are companies pushing women into IT? Simple. Follow the money. If companies could find a way to make IT interesting for women, then they could double their workforce. Doubling the supply of workers for the same number of jobs means that companies could cut salaries in half. Cutting salaries means increasing profits and bonuses for executives. That's the real motivation, not some altruistic concern over womens' rights or equality.
You'll have to look beyond school. What is media telling men and women about IT?
Not many third graders pay attention to "the media". Why didn't the media keep women from becoming doctors, lawyers, police officers, and soldiers? Why is it ONLY with professions that involve solitary interaction with inanimate machines, that women suddenly turn into delicate snowflakes and collapse in the face of the slightest, almost undetectable, pressure from "the media"?
Exactly. Why are auto mechanics overwhelmingly male? It's the same damn reason. Most women aren't interested in working alone with machines. If women were interested in this work, then they'd already be doing this work.
Whenever I see articles like this, I keep getting the feeling that we're trying to hammer square pegs into round holes. Then we sit and wonder why we see a problem.
Because I want to see flying cars, robotic maids, and real AI, in my lifetime. The chance of that happening is a lot lower if we waste half of humanity's brain power. If there is something we can do to get more girls interested in science and tech, then we should at least try to do it.
Sorry, if end goal is to turn out engineers, then I don't see the logic in pushing uninterested girls to become interested when we're turning away boys who are already interested. From my experience, the kids that do best in any field are the ones most interested in that field. If you really want to see all those technological marvels, then we should be focusing effort on the kids with the interest, motivation, and drive to learn the topic. Let's focus on the kids who are interested regardless of their gender.
We didn't just build industry. We built the freeway system. We built the space program. We rebuilt our military to defend the world against the Russians. That was all government spending. And yes, our top tax rate was 91%. Millionaires still made buckets of money. But, they paid their taxes and shit got done.
Then, Reagan came into office and lowered that top rate. All of a sudden, the government deficits started going up and work didn't get done. Millionaires started using their new buckets of money for speculation. Now, we're in a recession as a result of Wall Street speculation and we can't fix a fucking pothole let alone pave a single new freeway.
The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so.
Funny. Customers pay their ISPs for an advertised bandwidth. Content providers also pay ISPs for advertised bandwidth. Yet, ISPs are still able to turn up the speed if content providers pay them extra. It sounds like ISPs are purposefully not living up to their advertising in order to extort money from people who aren't their customers.
Provider pays to provide information, customer pays ISP for access to internet and then has to pay a per view fee to view content at reasonable speeds. So long as there's money to be extracted, the consumer will be squeezed.
This buys into the framing of the argument pushed by the ISPs. The content providers were already paying for their own connection to the internet. Now if content providers want to provide fast connections to their customers, then they not only have to pay their own ISP, but they also need to send money to every other ISP in the world. This fundamentally changes the structure of the market.
And you, as a customer, get a crappy connection to the internet unless the content providers pay. That's true regardless of what you pay your ISP for their advertised bandwidth.
If this goes too far, customers will eventually start suing their ISPs for false advertising. ISP customers are paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, not a certain amount of bandwidth IF the content providers also pay.
Microsoft is a major employer of technical talent in the Seattle area even though you didn't see that in your anecdotal experience. Microsoft employs just about 101,000 people worldwide. About 43,000 are in the Seattle area. Yes, not all of them are technical staff. Companies need to employ more than just developers, testers, and admins to operate properly. (Duh?)
Amazon has more employees at about 110,000. It has about 15,000 in Seattle. Those are mostly highly paid engineers, managers and programmers. It's hiring like crazy.
Boeing has about 170,000 employees. About 81,000 are employed in Washington state.
T-Mobile has about 4,800 employees at its local headquarters.
AT&T near Seattle manages operations in the Western US and performs engineering and testing. It has 4,592 employees in Washington.
Adobe's Seattle office employs about 500 people, focusing on product development and operations.
F5 employs over 1200 workers in Washington state.
The Seattle area hosts Google's third-largest engineering center. It has about 1000 employees.
You are simply wrong about the speed of internet connections and the government. Areas in the north has access to Verizon fiber. Other areas have access to high speed internet from Comcast. As for the government, they're working with private companies to establish citywide fiber. People aren't electing "anti-Internet candidates", whatever the hell those are.
Fighting increases to the minimum wage. A higher minimum wage would increase wages for both the people at the low end and those immediately above the low end. Republicans don't like that.
Fighting government stimulus which provide jobs. Fighting stimulus creates a surplus of workers. More workers means more people looking for work. Businesses don't need to offer good pay to find workers. Republicans like that.
Fighting unemployment payments, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, and housing assistance. All that money eventually enters and supports jobs in local economies. That increases the demand for workers. That also increases salaries. Republicans hate that.
Fighting against sick or vacation days. Keeping people at work means that employers don't need to hire as many workers as companies in other countries. That creates lower demand for workers. That keeps salaries down. Republicans like that.
well there were not many women doctors not too long ago and now there are quite many. I assume if programming is as attractive as medicine then this will also happen.
Yes. When developer salaries rise to match the salaries to those in medicine, then the field will get flooded with all types of people looking to do development work. This will include women. That's economics 101: supply and demand.
I worked at Microsoft from 2004-2005. This was before the iPhone or Android phones. Most people had flip-phones. If you wanted a smart phone, you either got a Blackberry or a Windows phone. Those were the most advanced phones on the market. They were around years before Apple thought of getting into the phone business.
Keep in mind that Microsoft mainly earns its money through the sales of Windows and Office. So, every product they make is engineered to drive the sales of those two products. One of the initial groups I interviewed with at Microsoft were the guys making the Windows phones. (No, I didn't end up working with this group.)
Yes, they absolutely were attempting to bring the Windows PC experience to the phone. And yes, that was a disaster.
The problem was that tiny screens don't work well with a Windows type of interface. Users don't like the clutter. Microsoft needed to make the interface transparent and focus on what people actually wanted to do with their phones, which is use applications.
Hiding the Windows interface doesn't work when you're attempting to promote Windows. Marketing which promotes "Windows on your phone!" doesn't sell phones. I remember thinking during my interview, "what does Windows on my phone actually get me? Why would I want that?" Microsoft itself couldn't adequately answer that question until the iPhone and Android came out and focused on the apps. Even then, Microsoft still screwed up their answer to the iPhone and Android. They simply can't get away from promoting Windows and Office.
A restaurant could kick you out. Or, they could call the cops. The police do take these actions seriously. You could get charged with theft. And you could spend time in jail. That's happened to people I've known. And, it's harmed their lives. Try getting any serious job with a theft conviction on your record.
They didn't steal accounts from each other. They shared. What is this world coming to? A place for fascist corporations and governments who clearly support them.
Try going to a buffet restaurant and using the "it's only sharing" argument. It won't work. Buffet restaurants aren't "fascist" for not allowing you to feed all your friends for the price of one person.
As a contractor when I submit code, I leave a certain amount of time for the customer to test that code and supply me a list of bugs. I fix that list. Once my contract time elapses, I expect sign-off and payment. I've fulfilled my end of the contract. I expect my customer to fulfill his end. If he doesn't pay, then I'll send my bill to a collection agency.
My code is not guaranteed indefinitely. Any bugs which appear after the contract is expired can be fixed under another contract if I agree to fix them. I am certainly under no obligation to do that later work at all and especially not for free.
Printers are sold with an embedded chip that prevents the printing of currency. From what I understand, the chip is typically buried so deep into the printer that they simply can't operate if you could find it and remove it. We could attempt a similar requirement on a 3D printer.
However, gun parts can vary wildly. And, a part for a gun could conceivably be used as a part for a completely different, legal machine. I don't see a practical means of programming such a limitation.
The problem with printed firearms is that they're plastic. We have no means to detect them. They instantly obsolete our security infrastructure. You can walk onto an airplane with one. You could walk into a courtroom with one. You could walk into the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court with one. That is a major problem.
Sure, these plastic firearms could have been made previously. However up until now, the people with the means to make such a weapon were smart enough to not make such a weapon given their inherent problems. Now, any idiot who doesn't realize or care about those problems can print off their own gun by simply printing the 3D design.
...having companies held hostage to some nation wide union of american workers is not a good thing in the long run.
Good for who? The limits may be inconvenient for foreign workers. They may be inconvenient for international corporations. But, keeping American jobs in America is good for American workers. And yes, America makes more than enough highly skilled workers to fill all these jobs.
The competition for commodity software is international. However, the companies selling this kind of software have such a first-mover advantage that they're entrenched into their market positions. For example, just about no one's developing a serious competitor for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc because Microsoft got there first. Google's close, but they've spent years developing and still don't have the same capabilities.
The other side to consider is custom software typically run by medium-sized companies or larger. It's damn hard to explain customer requirements to someone over the phone. That's true when they're from another culture. That's especially true when they don't speak English as their native language. About the only way you can do that successfully is spending time in-person. That means you need local developers to get good, quality software that fulfills customer requirements. That is exactly why there are still software companies and IT departments left in Australia, the US, and Europe. Offshored software sucks even if it is incredibly cheap. You get exactly what you pay for.
Here's a question: if there is an IT skills shortage, why have IT wages been flat for five years.
That gets to the heart of the matter. Labor follows the laws of supply and demand. Workers supply labor. Companies demand labor. The point where the supply curve and the demand curve meets is the wage. Were there an actual shortage of labor supply, we'd see increasing wages. The fact that wages are not increasing means there is no shortage of labor.
Your problem is that your competition is now international, and Australia has a very high cost of living... Why would a company want to pay an Australian developer a high rate of pay when he can pay an Indian developer a lower wage and the Indian guy gets to live in the lap of luxury? Why would a company or consumer want to buy software developed in Australia, when Indian, American or European software can be bought cheaper over the net? (Region locks have plusses and minuses in this case)
The competition for commodity software is international. However, the companies selling this kind of software have such a first-mover advantage that they're entrenched into their market positions. For example, just about no one's developing a serious competitor for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc because Microsoft got there first. Google's close, but they've spent years developing and still don't have the same capabilities.
The other side to consider is custom software typically run by medium-sized companies or larger. It's damn hard to explain customer requirements to someone over the phone. That's true when they're from another culture. That's especially true when they don't speak English as their native language. About the only way you can do that successfully is spending time in-person. That means you need local developers to get good, quality software that fulfills customer requirements. That is exactly why there are still software companies and IT departments left in Australia, the US, and Europe. Offshored software sucks even if it is incredibly cheap. You get exactly what you pay for.
Any company that could save money by moving overseas has already moved overseas. The ones left are still here because there's an advantage to being here and close to their customers. They will never leave.
The problem is not a shortage of engineers. The problem is that software companies don't want to pay competitive salaries. Were salaries higher, that would attract capable workers into the software field such as engineers or physicists. It would also further increase the number and quality of students studying computer science.
There's a reason interest in software development work peaked in the late 1990s. That was also when salary increases peaked.
This is typical political BS so prevalent in the US. When the Dems blame the Republicans for some issue, the Republicans say the Dems do it too. That's regardless of whether either statement was true or not. The point is to deflect blame and raise suspicion of the other side.
Further, since we can't trust the media to actually dig into the actual truth on this or any issue, the Chinese likely will be successful in their efforts.
Slashdot Mirror
Why are companies pushing women into IT? Simple. Follow the money. If companies could find a way to make IT interesting for women, then they could double their workforce. Doubling the supply of workers for the same number of jobs means that companies could cut salaries in half. Cutting salaries means increasing profits and bonuses for executives. That's the real motivation, not some altruistic concern over womens' rights or equality.
You'll have to look beyond school. What is media telling men and women about IT?
Not many third graders pay attention to "the media". Why didn't the media keep women from becoming doctors, lawyers, police officers, and soldiers? Why is it ONLY with professions that involve solitary interaction with inanimate machines, that women suddenly turn into delicate snowflakes and collapse in the face of the slightest, almost undetectable, pressure from "the media"?
Exactly. Why are auto mechanics overwhelmingly male? It's the same damn reason. Most women aren't interested in working alone with machines. If women were interested in this work, then they'd already be doing this work.
Whenever I see articles like this, I keep getting the feeling that we're trying to hammer square pegs into round holes. Then we sit and wonder why we see a problem.
But why is it really frustrating?
Because I want to see flying cars, robotic maids, and real AI, in my lifetime. The chance of that happening is a lot lower if we waste half of humanity's brain power. If there is something we can do to get more girls interested in science and tech, then we should at least try to do it.
Sorry, if end goal is to turn out engineers, then I don't see the logic in pushing uninterested girls to become interested when we're turning away boys who are already interested. From my experience, the kids that do best in any field are the ones most interested in that field. If you really want to see all those technological marvels, then we should be focusing effort on the kids with the interest, motivation, and drive to learn the topic. Let's focus on the kids who are interested regardless of their gender.
We didn't just build industry. We built the freeway system. We built the space program. We rebuilt our military to defend the world against the Russians. That was all government spending. And yes, our top tax rate was 91%. Millionaires still made buckets of money. But, they paid their taxes and shit got done.
Then, Reagan came into office and lowered that top rate. All of a sudden, the government deficits started going up and work didn't get done. Millionaires started using their new buckets of money for speculation. Now, we're in a recession as a result of Wall Street speculation and we can't fix a fucking pothole let alone pave a single new freeway.
The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so.
Funny. Customers pay their ISPs for an advertised bandwidth. Content providers also pay ISPs for advertised bandwidth. Yet, ISPs are still able to turn up the speed if content providers pay them extra. It sounds like ISPs are purposefully not living up to their advertising in order to extort money from people who aren't their customers.
Provider pays to provide information, customer pays ISP for access to internet and then has to pay a per view fee to view content at reasonable speeds. So long as there's money to be extracted, the consumer will be squeezed.
This buys into the framing of the argument pushed by the ISPs. The content providers were already paying for their own connection to the internet. Now if content providers want to provide fast connections to their customers, then they not only have to pay their own ISP, but they also need to send money to every other ISP in the world. This fundamentally changes the structure of the market.
And you, as a customer, get a crappy connection to the internet unless the content providers pay. That's true regardless of what you pay your ISP for their advertised bandwidth.
If this goes too far, customers will eventually start suing their ISPs for false advertising. ISP customers are paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, not a certain amount of bandwidth IF the content providers also pay.
Java's been around for almost 20 years. For a "fad" it has incredible staying power.
People used to think the internet was a fad too.
Microsoft is a major employer of technical talent in the Seattle area even though you didn't see that in your anecdotal experience. Microsoft employs just about 101,000 people worldwide. About 43,000 are in the Seattle area. Yes, not all of them are technical staff. Companies need to employ more than just developers, testers, and admins to operate properly. (Duh?)
Amazon has more employees at about 110,000. It has about 15,000 in Seattle. Those are mostly highly paid engineers, managers and programmers. It's hiring like crazy.
Boeing has about 170,000 employees. About 81,000 are employed in Washington state.
T-Mobile has about 4,800 employees at its local headquarters.
AT&T near Seattle manages operations in the Western US and performs engineering and testing. It has 4,592 employees in Washington.
Adobe's Seattle office employs about 500 people, focusing on product development and operations.
F5 employs over 1200 workers in Washington state.
The Seattle area hosts Google's third-largest engineering center. It has about 1000 employees.
You are simply wrong about the speed of internet connections and the government. Areas in the north has access to Verizon fiber. Other areas have access to high speed internet from Comcast. As for the government, they're working with private companies to establish citywide fiber. People aren't electing "anti-Internet candidates", whatever the hell those are.
So yes, Seattle IS a significant tech hub.
Fighting increases to the minimum wage. A higher minimum wage would increase wages for both the people at the low end and those immediately above the low end. Republicans don't like that.
Fighting government stimulus which provide jobs. Fighting stimulus creates a surplus of workers. More workers means more people looking for work. Businesses don't need to offer good pay to find workers. Republicans like that.
Fighting unemployment payments, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, and housing assistance. All that money eventually enters and supports jobs in local economies. That increases the demand for workers. That also increases salaries. Republicans hate that.
Fighting against sick or vacation days. Keeping people at work means that employers don't need to hire as many workers as companies in other countries. That creates lower demand for workers. That keeps salaries down. Republicans like that.
well there were not many women doctors not too long ago and now there are quite many. I assume if programming is as attractive as medicine then this will also happen.
Yes. When developer salaries rise to match the salaries to those in medicine, then the field will get flooded with all types of people looking to do development work. This will include women. That's economics 101: supply and demand.
Microsoft was not looking to make a Phone a PC
I worked at Microsoft from 2004-2005. This was before the iPhone or Android phones. Most people had flip-phones. If you wanted a smart phone, you either got a Blackberry or a Windows phone. Those were the most advanced phones on the market. They were around years before Apple thought of getting into the phone business.
Keep in mind that Microsoft mainly earns its money through the sales of Windows and Office. So, every product they make is engineered to drive the sales of those two products. One of the initial groups I interviewed with at Microsoft were the guys making the Windows phones. (No, I didn't end up working with this group.)
Yes, they absolutely were attempting to bring the Windows PC experience to the phone. And yes, that was a disaster.
The problem was that tiny screens don't work well with a Windows type of interface. Users don't like the clutter. Microsoft needed to make the interface transparent and focus on what people actually wanted to do with their phones, which is use applications.
Hiding the Windows interface doesn't work when you're attempting to promote Windows. Marketing which promotes "Windows on your phone!" doesn't sell phones. I remember thinking during my interview, "what does Windows on my phone actually get me? Why would I want that?" Microsoft itself couldn't adequately answer that question until the iPhone and Android came out and focused on the apps. Even then, Microsoft still screwed up their answer to the iPhone and Android. They simply can't get away from promoting Windows and Office.
A restaurant could kick you out. Or, they could call the cops. The police do take these actions seriously. You could get charged with theft. And you could spend time in jail. That's happened to people I've known. And, it's harmed their lives. Try getting any serious job with a theft conviction on your record.
People get caught for "dine and dash" all the time. They do face theft charges. They do go to jail.
Sorry, serving up video isn't free. The company pays for servers, electricity, bandwidth, and the salaries of all the people required to make it work.
They didn't steal accounts from each other. They shared. What is this world coming to? A place for fascist corporations and governments who clearly support them.
Try going to a buffet restaurant and using the "it's only sharing" argument. It won't work. Buffet restaurants aren't "fascist" for not allowing you to feed all your friends for the price of one person.
As a contractor when I submit code, I leave a certain amount of time for the customer to test that code and supply me a list of bugs. I fix that list. Once my contract time elapses, I expect sign-off and payment. I've fulfilled my end of the contract. I expect my customer to fulfill his end. If he doesn't pay, then I'll send my bill to a collection agency.
My code is not guaranteed indefinitely. Any bugs which appear after the contract is expired can be fixed under another contract if I agree to fix them. I am certainly under no obligation to do that later work at all and especially not for free.
Printers are sold with an embedded chip that prevents the printing of currency. From what I understand, the chip is typically buried so deep into the printer that they simply can't operate if you could find it and remove it. We could attempt a similar requirement on a 3D printer.
However, gun parts can vary wildly. And, a part for a gun could conceivably be used as a part for a completely different, legal machine. I don't see a practical means of programming such a limitation.
The problem with printed firearms is that they're plastic. We have no means to detect them. They instantly obsolete our security infrastructure. You can walk onto an airplane with one. You could walk into a courtroom with one. You could walk into the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court with one. That is a major problem.
Sure, these plastic firearms could have been made previously. However up until now, the people with the means to make such a weapon were smart enough to not make such a weapon given their inherent problems. Now, any idiot who doesn't realize or care about those problems can print off their own gun by simply printing the 3D design.
...having companies held hostage to some nation wide union of american workers is not a good thing in the long run.
Good for who? The limits may be inconvenient for foreign workers. They may be inconvenient for international corporations. But, keeping American jobs in America is good for American workers. And yes, America makes more than enough highly skilled workers to fill all these jobs.
The competition for commodity software is international. However, the companies selling this kind of software have such a first-mover advantage that they're entrenched into their market positions. For example, just about no one's developing a serious competitor for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc because Microsoft got there first. Google's close, but they've spent years developing and still don't have the same capabilities. The other side to consider is custom software typically run by medium-sized companies or larger. It's damn hard to explain customer requirements to someone over the phone. That's true when they're from another culture. That's especially true when they don't speak English as their native language. About the only way you can do that successfully is spending time in-person. That means you need local developers to get good, quality software that fulfills customer requirements. That is exactly why there are still software companies and IT departments left in Australia, the US, and Europe. Offshored software sucks even if it is incredibly cheap. You get exactly what you pay for.
Here's a question: if there is an IT skills shortage, why have IT wages been flat for five years.
That gets to the heart of the matter. Labor follows the laws of supply and demand. Workers supply labor. Companies demand labor. The point where the supply curve and the demand curve meets is the wage. Were there an actual shortage of labor supply, we'd see increasing wages. The fact that wages are not increasing means there is no shortage of labor.
Your problem is that your competition is now international, and Australia has a very high cost of living... Why would a company want to pay an Australian developer a high rate of pay when he can pay an Indian developer a lower wage and the Indian guy gets to live in the lap of luxury? Why would a company or consumer want to buy software developed in Australia, when Indian, American or European software can be bought cheaper over the net? (Region locks have plusses and minuses in this case)
The competition for commodity software is international. However, the companies selling this kind of software have such a first-mover advantage that they're entrenched into their market positions. For example, just about no one's developing a serious competitor for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc because Microsoft got there first. Google's close, but they've spent years developing and still don't have the same capabilities.
The other side to consider is custom software typically run by medium-sized companies or larger. It's damn hard to explain customer requirements to someone over the phone. That's true when they're from another culture. That's especially true when they don't speak English as their native language. About the only way you can do that successfully is spending time in-person. That means you need local developers to get good, quality software that fulfills customer requirements. That is exactly why there are still software companies and IT departments left in Australia, the US, and Europe. Offshored software sucks even if it is incredibly cheap. You get exactly what you pay for.
Any company that could save money by moving overseas has already moved overseas. The ones left are still here because there's an advantage to being here and close to their customers. They will never leave.
The problem is not a shortage of engineers. The problem is that software companies don't want to pay competitive salaries. Were salaries higher, that would attract capable workers into the software field such as engineers or physicists. It would also further increase the number and quality of students studying computer science.
There's a reason interest in software development work peaked in the late 1990s. That was also when salary increases peaked.
This is typical political BS so prevalent in the US. When the Dems blame the Republicans for some issue, the Republicans say the Dems do it too. That's regardless of whether either statement was true or not. The point is to deflect blame and raise suspicion of the other side.
Further, since we can't trust the media to actually dig into the actual truth on this or any issue, the Chinese likely will be successful in their efforts.