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I don't get something. There seems to always has been a problem of diversity in tech. Yet US has done just ok with males (white and asian) doing this stuff. Ie

• InclinedPlane 11y ago
  How is it possible that you don't see the problem in this line of reasoning? Do you really not? Edit: honestly, I'm curious how this mindset comes about. How is it possible to ignore the importance of people being given the opportunity to work wherever they are capable? How is it possible to ignore the impact of being denied access to an incredibly lucrative and glamorous industry? How is it possible to ignore the many ramifications that has on lives and livelihoods? How would you feel if you were kept out of the tech industry? Would you be placated by sentiments that the industry was seemingly "doing just fine" without you?
  • TickleMeHellNo 11y ago
    This comment contributes a lot to the conversation.
  • PostOnce 11y ago
    I think the idea is that women CAN get into compsci if they want to or are interested, it's just that on average, they appear not to be? It sort of feels like saying there aren't enough people named Gavin in compsci. Why do we need people named Gavin? If Gavin wants to do compsci, that's cool, but if not, then he can go do whatever makes him happy? The point is, we don't need _person type X_ simply for the sake of an equal number of all types of people. Unequal numbers/types of people don't necessarily mean they're being kept out, that doesn't follow. There aren't enough male hairdressers? There aren't enough female linesmen? There aren't enough Democrats named Duane? Whether or not this is true I don't know, I just consider this the popular sentiment. I could be an elementary school teacher as a male, I'm just not inclined to. I don't feel kept out.
• AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
  Your argument seems to be basically: is 2 really a bigger number than 1? We are 1 right now, and the rest of the world is less than 1, so isn't that proof that its better? Show me the studies that prove 2 is better than 1.
  • omonra 11y ago
    I imagine that to someone of your political persuasion, this is self evident. But humor someone who doesn't share your views and actually demonstrate (empirically for example) that you are right. I personally don't care whether the geeks who work at a given tech firm are of particular gender or race, as long as they produce quality stuff. I would care if someone couldn't get into the industry because they are X - but if these individuals don't want to - it's not something I consider a problem.
    • AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
      Not sure where my political orientation comes into it. Also note I am not from the US, so it is unlikely I fit into whatever weird party conceptions you have over there anyway :) The point I was making that increasing numbers and diversity in something means more stuff is produced and there is greater innovation. It means the pool of candidates for a given role is larger, allowing better selection. This is all self-evident - as Bill Gates has said, doubling the size of your workforce cannot help but improve things.
      • pgeorgi 11y ago
        > as Bill Gates has said, doubling the size of your workforce cannot help but improve things Especially for those who are paying the wages and don't like to be in a seller's market.
      • omonra 11y ago
        Ok - you think so, I don't. So we can agree to have a difference of opinion. However - on my side is every single real-life example of success in tech. EVERY SINGLE successful technology company was NOT diverse (and only once they get big enough to be targeted by diversity scammers that they start to pay lip service to this). Therefore if diversity was indeed at all important, wouldn't you be able to point to examples of more diverse companies being actually more successful? Heretofore the empirical argument is 100% against you.
• rewqfdsa 11y ago
  > Why is this a problem First-order logic: if (A AND ~B -> ~C) AND C, then (~A OR B). The persistence of the gender gap in technology despite decades of effort to "fix" it is an annoying refutation of the blank-slate theory of human nature on which the entire worldview of many people, particularly gender activists, rests. In other words, if it's simultaneously true that tech is gender-imbalanced and that there is no systemic discrimination involved in this gap, then groups of human being might have innate differences, and acceptance of this fact has far-reaching and upsetting consequences. Therefore, there must be no gender gap or there must be systemic discrimination. Since the existence of the gender gap is obvious, there must be systemic discrimination, and the pundit class has been on the warpath trying to uphold this narrative and cherry-pick evidence supporting it.
  • AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
    In other words, correlation DOES imply causation right? And any evidence to the contrary is a conspiracy theory by the 'pundit class'. Gender bias towards a given domain is a generational problem, like racism or homophobia and so on. Changes do not happen overnight, and because they haven't happened over night does not imply that 'white or asian men are innately better at tech than the other 95% of the population'.
    • rewqfdsa 11y ago
      Do you think that in a fair world, it is necessarily the case that every profession is a microcosm of the population as a whole? Let me ask a different way: in a world where no unjustice exists, is it possible for programming to be 80% men?
      • AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
        Programming is a purely intellectual activity, so I would argue that there is no gender or racial advantage one way or the other. Contrast this with, for example, physical professions like professional basketball, where the faster ability to grow in fitness and strength, along with certain racial advantages with height or speed means the population tends to skew in one direction - enough so that creating separate leagues allows for fairer representation. Software development is not like that. The very fact that the majority of programmers used to be women back when it started should be enough to show that current bias' are societal or fashion-based.
• hkmurakami 11y ago
  Our society has agreed that if any specific subset of the population is being biased against its wishes to pursue a path, then this is an injustice that shall be remedied. Distinctions include but are not limited to race, gender, socioeconomic background or current status, geographic origin, sexual orientation, and preexisting medical conditions. It is an implied social contract that forms the foundation of our modern American society, irrespective of functional necessities or efficiencies. Efficiencies are not the point here.
  • rewqfdsa 11y ago
    > against its wishes That's the bone of contention here. Nobody is keeping women out of computer science; they're largely just preferring not to enter the field. The point of the article, echoed by many commentators over the past few years, is that it's a "problem" that women are largely staying out of computer science. If you believe in the blank slate theory of human nature, of course it's a problem, because under this worldview, women's default preferences are the same as that of men, so some external factor must be pushing them away from computer science. The teach for this factor has become increasingly desperate the past few years: now we're down to Star Wars posters. I believe it's more parsimonious to reject the blank slate theory and understand the world through the lens of innate differences in life preferences between genders, and that it's this innate difference that leads to different gender balances in various fields.
    • memu 11y ago
      Premise 1: There are some innate differences that obtain between people of different sexes. Conclusion: The gender disparity in computer science is the result of innate differences between the sexes. Seems legit...
      • rewqfdsa 11y ago
        You misunderstand. I'm not making a statement on the cause of the gender disparity in computer science. I'm making a higher-order argument about why we're so apt to attribute this difference to discrimination. I hope you understand the distinction even if you disagree with my argument. The idea is that if you believe that humans have no innate differences and you observe group differences, then you must attribute these group differences to external discrimination, and hence injustice. If you accept that groups of humans might have innate differences, you are no longer required to attribute group differences to discrimination. Some group differences might arise from discrimination, but it's plausible that they might not. A lot of people take it as an article of faith that there are no human group differences, so they're forced to look for discrimination in order to explain the world. For these people, no amount of evidence can prove the fairness of the CS world, since the idea that (gender disparity -> discrimination) is a necessary logical consequence of their worldview.
• pcl 11y ago
  Here's an economic rationale for diversity in hiring: Your project's total addressable market probably includes a diverse population of people. Meanwhile, the decisions in your project are made by the folks involved in it -- maybe some PMs, hopefully some UX and design engineers, and probably some programmers. I believe that our opinions are informed in part by our environment -- as someone living in California, I come up with California-oriented solutions to problems a bit more easily than ones suited to other locations. (I think this is why Dark Sky came from a team in New York, for example.) So, I conclude that a diverse team will come up with ideas that are broader, and as a result, solutions that help more people, than would a less-diverse team.
  • rewqfdsa 11y ago
    A diversity of technical perspectives can be helpful, but there's no reason to suppose that 1) gender diversity correlates to a diversity of technical perspectives, or that 2) to achieve a diversity of technical perspectives, we need to force the demographics of programmers to match that of the population. If you want to increase diversity of thought, you'd be better off recruiting from schools other than Stanford and the ivys.
    • wutbrodo 11y ago
      Seriously, with even a cursory amount of thought (which is far more rigor than proponents of diversity tend to give policy proposals) it's clear that much of the ideas coming out of tech these days caters to the problems of young urban fairly affluent users, which is in large part due to the tendency to want to solve problems that you're familiar with (and to be fair, the fact that it's harder to monetize low income users). Diversity of perspective across class lines makes way more sense than just assuming that more women of the same social and educational background will magically open up an appreciably wider set of technical perspectives.
      • mcguire 11y ago
        As an aside, comments such as "which is far more rigor than proponents of diversity tend to give policy proposals" tend not to make your arguments more persuasive.
• mc32 11y ago
  I don't think it's a problem of group or national achievement as a group. We do very well, and so do undiverse Russians and undiverse Chinese students (and yes, both countries have underrepresented minorities) The problem we want to solve is spreading success across the members of society who could take advantage of the opportunity. Just different priorities. One interesting observation, for which I don't have any citation, is that I find there is less trepidation to enter CS and Engineering careers from women who curiously come from Russia and China, which at least historically have been quite patriarchal. In some ways it might be that constant drumbeat to succeed and emphasis on science over softer subjects could have an impact, but it's all speculation on my part.
• RA_Fisher 11y ago
  There's no counter-factual, maybe we'd be even better? :)
• analog31 11y ago
  One downside is if entire segments of the population have no stake in supporting STEM education, or in keeping STEM careers in the US.
• mcguire 11y ago
  I can't be certain, but I'd bet quite a bit someone made the same argument about women working outside of the home.
• hackuser 11y ago
  I think it's a serious problem when more than half of society is denied a fair opportunity. > Yet US has done just ok with males (white and asian) doing this stuff. Ie better than anybody else in the world. That doesn't mean the US and others can't do much better. Think how much talent is lost - more than half of it. There's a shortage of talent in SV. There is much that needs to be done in the world. > Is there any proof that increased diversity has any effect I've read about a lot of evidence that more diverse groups make decisions significantly better.
  • Kalium 11y ago
    > I've read about a lot of evidence that more diverse groups make decisions significantly better. You have to be careful with this one. It only applies to certain kinds of diversity and certain kinds of decisions, and even then only over a sizable number of decisions. It's not as simple as diversity makes things better, full stop. And this is without weighing costs!