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He argues that the 30% share current top US CS schools are getting is the global maximum. I think he is missing the “Whys” for women in tech and “perceived sens
by dzink 8y ago
He argues that the 30% share current top US CS schools are getting is the global maximum. I think he is missing the “Whys” for women in tech and “perceived sense of individual strengths being too good for tech”, is not one of them.
Coding is a form of communication. Knowing how to write is essential today and you’re not going to write less about your passions just because you are so much better at swimming. Some of the reasons I pursued coding were:
- Because I grew up in the middle of nowhere and knew the whole world could see my work online. I didn’t want to be put under a lid. Code, like writing, lets your work be seen across locations and time.
- Because of economic opportunity - I could build tools that earn a living for me, so my earnings are not dependent on my work hours (a very VERY attractive feature for women).
- Because every coding effort is cumulative. No work result is dependent on the testimony of others. You can see if it works or doesn’t and the more you do, the more people see when they see you. Fantastic property when women are often discounted in the workplace.
- Because no matter what new passion I develop, I could always make a living building something around it with code. Handy skill, if you think you have social abilities, not a disadvantage.
The curious part was that I’ve always loved to code, but the periods of burnout that I’ve experienced came from work culture not the nature of the work. Coworkers hitting on female programmers and retaliating when feelings are not reciprocated; meatgriding business models that push for time spent billing vs actual productivity; discounting biased people, who make your life hell by presumption instead of fact. The cure was always to take an entrepreneurial route - work to rise above the role that drains you by using some of those notorious social skills, then build a kick ass project that relies on your skill and not someone else’s permission.
Coding is not a narrow career path and neither is a CS degree. It is a power and a freedomm. Show everyone the basics and let them taste the opportunity it presents in a required K-12 class.
- ioquatix 8y agoI agree with a lot of your points. But I feel compelled to respond. > Coding is a form of communication Yes, but it's also so much more than this. Not everyone is capable of the mental gymnastics or visualisation required to be a good software engineer, and that's okay. > Because of economic opportunity... While there are a ton of practical reasons to do things in life, if you don't love algorithms and data structures (at some level), programming will ultimately be a chore. That being said, I agree that learning to write code is empowering, and everyone should learn to do it. But that's different from working as a software engineer. You might enjoy this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imV3pPIUy1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imV3pPIUy1k
- dzink 8y agoTrue, and the mental gymnastics in Law, Surgery, and a number of other fields are also hard, if not harder, but they still attract =>50% women these days. Maybe we could draw some of these women by showing the broader purpose behind coding as a challenge worthy of a career. Working as a software engineer is an undersell. You could be a founder of a tech company, a researcher in AI tool that finds cancer better than Radiologists.
- mantas 8y ago> - Because of economic opportunity - I could build tools that earn a living for me, so my earnings are not dependent on my work hours (a very VERY attractive feature for women). Perhaps which is why developing countries like India has much more women engineers than rich developed countries? Once women can pursue their passion and have reasonable incomes, programming goes way down the list? > Show everyone the basics and let them taste the opportunity it presents in a required K-12 class. Is programming NOT a required class during high school anywhere in a developing/developed country? I got out of school a decade ago and programming was a part of "IT" class, which was required. From what I hear, now they're putting even more programming into curriculum and introducing it at earlier age.